Day 122: To Belgrade

I woke up at six the next morning to catch the 7:48am train to Vrsac, Serbia, where I would transfer to Belgrade. After bumming another ride off the tram, I arrived at the station with 20 minutes to spare to buy a ticket. The train to Vrsac consisted of only two passenger cars but it wasn't so crowded that I couldn't find a seating area to myself.

When we reached the border station for exiting Romania, most of the passengers left the train, perhaps to continue into Serbia via car or bus. Romanian officials board the train, collect the passports of everyone who stayed aboard, and return them 10 minutes later with stamps. From the exit station, the train continues half an hour more to Vrsac, where Serbian officials come aboard and collect passports, before returning them some time later with stamps allowing you to leave the train.

The super cool train that got us to Vrsac

I then waited 30 minutes in the station for the train to Belgrade to arrive. While waiting, I met a man who had grown up in San Francisco, but had been a full-time professor at a university in Brno, in the Czech Republic, for the past 8 years. We sat together on the train to Belgrade and chatted all the way to Beograd Dunav Station. From Beograd Dunav, it was a 15-minute walk to El Diablo Hostel.

Belgrade is one hour behind Romania, so by the time I arrived around 12 I still had most of the day ahead of me. Although I was tired from not enough sleep the night before, I saw a bit of the area south of the confluence of the Danube and Sava Rivers before looping back through Old Town to the hostel. I unsuccessfully tried napping before heading out to a cafe to sip tea and catch up on my blogging until a more reasonable sleeping hour.