Day 9 - Last Day in Budapest/Train to Belgrade

-I braved the cold and snow that morning to fetch some eggs and bacon, and while I cooked the bacon and grated the cheese, Kaitlyn made hashbrowns and fried the eggs. Mmm...I was definitely full at that point. We cleaned up the kitchen, I packed up my bags, and a bit later we were off to the train station.

Braving the snow to get eggs and bacon at the supermarket

The morning snow

Kaitlyn's singing...thing :)


-Only when we arrived did I think to check my ticket - my train was at 10 pm, not 3pm! Apart from being 7 hours early because I'd mistaken the date with the time (that's what happens when they don't print the damn things in English), no harm was done. So we went and dropped my bag back at her place, then had a quick lunch at the mall before meeting 2 of her friends, Julie and Audrey, for the 5pm showing of Oz: The Great and Powerful.

Kaitlyn's crazy kitten, Cinna

-Had a quick nightcap at Julie's after the movie, then went back to the train station where Kaitlyn and I said our final goodbyes.

Coffee at lunchtime

-I found my bed on the train, and soon the conductor (or whomever he was) ushered two other girls, Daniela (Czech) and Elena (Spanish), in with me, "so we'd be safer." I hadn't been worried in the first place, but wasn't going to argue with him. We got all tucked in to our cold beds, and the guy comes around again and tells us to move to the next car because the heating is broken in this one and we'll freeze if we stay. So we went to the new cabin which was a 3-berth (as opposed to the previous 6-berth), warmer, softer beds, and a door with two locks instead of one. Then another conductor guy comes in, shuts the door, and grabs this long red metal crowbar thing and shows us how to wedge it through the doorhandle to prevent anyone from getting in while we're sleeping.

The crowbar thing...fun times

-Well that was all fine and dandy, but getting it un-wedged the three times after that for ticket-checking and border patrol was not fun. The first, ticket-checker, came about 30 minutes into the trip. Then 2 hours later we were at the Hungarian/Serbian border, and after unsuccessfully scanning the photo page of my passport 4 times with his little portable machine thingy, the officer had to scan/x-ray/whatever the embedded chip in the front cover in order to find whatever info he was looking for to give me my "exiting Hungary" stamp. About 30 minutes after that, we stopped again, this time so the Serbian-side border patrol could scour all the pages and give me a Serbian entry stamp. Needless to say, it was a long night.