Too far behind and dont have the energy to backdate entries for stuff i´ve started to forget. Today i should have been kayaking, instead i spent the whole day in the hostel, feeling like a dead dog, shitting black water every 10 minutes. Food poisoning is great.
Day 11 Saturday, Jul 28 2007
Euro 07 1:52 pm
So after getting to sleep for what felt like 10 minutes, we were loudly awakened by continuous banging on the door and shouts of POLIZIA! PASSPORT! This was border control #1. A horrible bastard of a policeman, who happened to be one of the ugliest men i have ever seen, came in and woke us up, examined our passports as though they were made of dog excrament, and then gave mine and Graham’s back. However, as Stephen’s surname is Paveleck, the guard took extra care to check and re-check his passport just in case he was an Eastern European who had acquired a fake UK passport and was using it to sneak out of Croatia with two genuine UK passport holders.
I drifted back into sleep when BANG BANG on the door and POLIZIA PASSPORT was again heard, but this time with more banging to boot. This was our Serbian border inspection. We got a little taste of what it must be like to live in a dictatorship; uniformed police banging on your door and shouting at you, shining light in your face. I gave my passport to the first policewoman and she started shouting at me to get up so she could see my face, but then when i did just ignored me. Again Ste had his passport thoroughly examined, because everyone knows the Poles are trying to sneak into Serbia all the time. The police then left, though didn’t bother to close our door. At the time i was quite pissed off, but thinking about it now it’s no surprise really: 8 years ago the UK spearheaded a NATO bombing of Serbia, which while i think was justified, can’t be very popular with the Serbian people. I guess i’d be pissed off if i was Serbian and some spoilt brats from the UK were keeping me up at 4am.
Eventually we got back to sleep, though it wasn’t easy because the night train people have this fantastic idea: it’s called drive really really fast, and then come to an abrupt halt so that all the people and asleep nearly fall out of their beds onto their faces. This is not how they describe it in the interrail booklet.
I woke up about 11, and it was already roasting. The train was supposed to get in at 17.40. How naive of us to think that it might. At about 1pm, we stopped in the middle of Serbia, and just stopped. The train waited at this station for literally 2 hours, in the baking heat, and nobody bothered to even try and explain what was going on. We leaned out of the window desparate for air, but I didn’t want to get off because my friend the ticket inspector was glaring at me with a look of death. Eventually i plucked up the courage to go and fill up our water bottles from the drinking fountain, keeping and eye on the corrupt-looking Serbian policemen. I know you can’t tell they’re corrupt just from looking, but well they didn’t look very nice.
Eventually the train got going again. The only bareable part of the trip was when we passed though a mountain range in southern Serbia, with cliffs rising up on either side, shooting through tunnels and over rivers, hanging out of the windows to cool down and check out the scenary which is some of the most beautiful imaginable. But it really was hot. The temperature must of been at least 35, and i spent most of it in my underwear reading the same page from Norman’s Europe: A History. Apart from that it was all old men with goats and people living in absolute grinding poverty, trying to grow crops on land that didn’t look like it had seen rain in 6 months. Again, some perspective for a rich kid who thought it was a bit hot.
Eventually we approached Sofia (had another border check, but as Bulgaria is now EU we passed through quickly, although Ste’s passport did get studied a lot longer than mine and Graham’s, again) at about 8pm. The run up was quite something. Sofia is surrounded by shanty towns that look like something from Brazil,. where people live literally under four pieces of wood and a sheet of corrugated iron, whilst horses and dogs abound. I suspect these areas were mostly populated by Romany people, but the poverty was shocking, and it made the estates of Croatia look like Belle Air.
Sofia central station is a monstrosity, a legacy of the Communist era. The central area rises about 100ft into the air, with the sides decorated in modern sculpture, presumably with some originally intended propaganda purpose. Nowadays, with half the lights not working, they look like giant demonic spectres, looming over tiny people on the dirty linoleum floor. It’s hard to describe just how forbidding the station is. Outside there was a giant statue, which now covered in dirt and pigeon shit looks like the petrified guardian of some ancient satanic temple.
Undeterred, we headed for our hostel: we booked this specially on the internet because it looked amazing. Free pasta, free internet, a widescreen TV with a choice of films, our own room, right in the city centre. In short, the works, and all for about 5 quid a night. However when we got there, the hostel staff were genuinely sorry to inform us that there had been a mistake and they had given our rooms away. They were actually really nice about it, and sat us down with a glass of beer each. They sorted us out with another hostel down the road, and then actually gave us a lift there.
The lift was quite something. On Bulgarian roads, there are basically no rules. On some stretches there are simply no traffic markings, and the lights are only nominally acknowledged. The guy driving us, who was actually incredibly nice and helpful, asked us where we were from. We said near liverpool, and commented that it was somewhat different on the roads. He laughed and said “yes, the further East you get, the more chaotic it is!”. He then proceded to explain that in Bulgaria, nobody cares about cars much; if you have a bump, then you apparently you can tell by the impact and noice what damage there is, and if it’s not bad the drivers just wave at each other and drive on. As he put it “many crashes, very few fatalities!”. He illustrated this by pointing to his two wing-mirrors, which were part of the car only by virtue of masking tape, and then proceded to swerve the car around the road to show just how much fun driving in Bulgaria is. For someone who hates rollercoasters, i was shitting myself. When asked about insurance he replied that if you have a bump, you just tell the insurance your car was parked and somebody hit it “after all, you pay insurance in case car gets hit, so if car gets hit, insurance pays: if nobody hurt, insurance don’t ask for police report”.
We got to our new hostel, which was a bit rubbish really, and where the door didn’t lock properly, and quickly dumped our stuff to go looking for something to eat. We hadn’t eaten since 9pm the day before, and it was now 10 in the evening. We wandered about, then found a restaurant with an English menu (Bulgarian writing looks like Russian; we didn’t even have a chance of deciphering even the word “pizza”)
In delight, we proceded to order food that WAS NOT PIZZA. Graham and I are vegetarians, and finding vegetarian food in Europe is hard enough, especially when you can’t read menus. This has meant that pretty much every day we have eaten cheese sandwhiches for lunch, and margharita pizzas in the evening. And believe me, bread and cheese starts to get really fucking boring when it’s all you see and taste for 10 days. But tonight we had glorious salad (i made a mockery of the “for two” notice on the salad menu), a fantastic vegetarian lasagne, pancakes, coffee and orange juice. It was all delicious, and it worked out as about….7 quid. Unreal. Whilst i must admit i felt very guilty pigging out for peanuts while people down the road live in slums, I was also grateful not to be eating pizza. Does that make me a shit person? At the time i didn’t really care. Stuffed full, we headed back to the hostel for a big night’s sleep.
Day 10 Saturday, Jul 28 2007
Euro 07 1:08 pm
Today we didn’t really do much. After dropping the bags off in the safe lockers at the station we walked around Zagreb, saw the Cathedral (from the outside; you couldn’t go in if you had shorts on!) etc. Then we decided to take a trip up the mountain; this required two trams and a bus ride because the cable car was broken, but it was worth it. Also, it was nice to meet a genuinely helpful and friendly transport worker. The bus driver spoke no English, but he went to great lengths to explain to us what to do and when the return buses were. He may have taken the hairpin bends at speeds that made my life flash before my eyes, but at least he was a nice guy! At the top we took a walk through the forests and looked out over Zagreb (although the view was blocked by trees and the best view we only got from the bus on the way down!).
After that we wandered around around Zagreb for abouit 7 hours because we had decided to get a night train to Sofia, capital of Bulgaria, that didn’t leave until 00.15….and wasn’t scheduled to get in to Sofia until 17.40.
At 00.00 we go on the train. A really unpleasant ticket conductor then demanded our interrail tickets. Then he wrote on them, and then he wouldn’t give them back. This really freaked me out, and I gestured that I wanted them back. He refused (all this was done with no English, just gestures and angry faces). I went away, then 5 minutes later tried again. This time he just shouted SOFIA at me. I gave up (partly because he looked like he was going to crack me one) and prayed he would indeed give them back in Sophia.
We bedded down in our little 3-man compartment, and tried to get to sleep. This was somewhat impeded by the fat American and 2 Greek guys having an argument about politics in the corridor outside. It wasn’t so much that they were being loud as that they were talking total rubbish that got on my nerves. In the end I managed to drift away with my Ipod on.
Day 9 Thursday, Jul 26 2007
Euro 07 12:49 pm
Today we decided to take a trip to one of the 8 Croatian national parks.
What we didn’t realise was that it was a 2 hour coach trip to get there. Undeterred, we borded our coach, which looked like it should have been put out to pasture in the lat 1980s, and settled down for a sweaty trip. After about 45 minutes the coach pulled into a service area, and the driver shouted something in Croatian. After about 10 minutes it became clear we weren’t going anywhere fast. We got off the bus and had a look, and by the look of it something had snapped in the engine. We then spent a rather irritated hour and a half sat on hot concrete, watching cars go by. This did, however, afford us the opportunity of seeing where the majority of Croatians appear to live, in delapidated high rise blocks that to be honest look like living hell. Sitting there it brought it home to me just how lucky i am to be born into a comfortable, Western European family in a nice house in a safe area. And to think that the majority of people on this planet are even worse off than those poor Croatians.
Eventually we jumped onto another coach and started winding though the Croatian countryside, which is reallz quite beautiful. However two things stuck out. The first was the houses with bullet holes in the sides of the walls and the occasional burnt out tank or piece of artilery. I’d basically forgotten that Croatia was at war just 15 years ago, and that we’re over the border from the site of one of the 20th Century’s worst genocides. The second was the white power and nazi graffiti that is peppered around the country. I wonder to what extent the two are connected.
The national park was incredible though, and well worth the journey. We didn’t get there til 4pm, but in the end that was OK because it meant it had cooled down outside. We spent 2 and a half hours walking around crystal clear lakes stuffed with fish, backed by rolling mountains with gushing waterfalls; without doubt one of the most beautiful places i’ve ever witnessed.
The bus ride back to Zagreb was kind of cool, i just sat on my own and watched the countryside go by. Back in the city we got cheap pizzas, then i went home to read for a bit while Ste and Graham stayed out for a few beers. In its simple way that was one of the best days so far.
Day 8 Thursday, Jul 26 2007
Euro 07 12:18 pm
Most definitely the worst nights “sleep” yet.
The fat man kept smoking and talking as loud as he could, while his daughter who was sat next to me stole all the good leg space. Also, i found it hard to get to sleep because I was really self-conscious about falling asleep on the girl and her dad going mental. So i sort of drifted for about 3 hours, until they got off somewhere in Austria.
I thought this was my chance to get some sleep, even though it was still really hot, but after about an hour and a half it was border control #1. I think the policewoman who checked our passports was from Slovenia, though why she checked our passports on the way out of Slovenia I can’t say. After she left, i thought it was time to get some more sleep, but what felt like 5 seconds later it was border control #2. A big croatian policeman came in and did a rigorous check on all our passports, and asked us a bunch of questions like “where are you from?”, “where are you going?”, “how long are you staying for?”. I had to fight hard to resist the temptation of replying “Look at my passport you idiot” or “Do you really think we’re trying to sneak into your shit little country”. Not only because those are really silly things to say, which i didn’t mean i, was just tired, but because he had a gun and he scared me.
We got into Zagreb at 9am and it must have been 30 degrees already. We got some water and sat in the shade, then decided to go looking for a hostel. The tourist info place at the station gave us a map with cheap hostels on it…a map that was subsequently dubbed The Map of Lies because none of the hostels were where it said they were. Despairing, we found one hostel, where a snooty old woman informed us that we couldn’t check in until 2pm, and basically told us to fuck off.
We trapsed around in the boiling heat, with our packs and me still in trousers and eventually found the “Hostel Help Point”. This was lucky, becuase inside a really nice lady sorted us out with a place to stay that was nice and cheap. This did mean a 15 minute train ride out into the suburbs, where we found the “Chill Out Spot” (as it was called) which claimed to be part of the Croatian Irish Society. We didnt see a single sign of anything Irish in all the time we were there. The place was run by a young American guy. He was nice enough, but to be honest he was quite weird. After realising we had no money and trapsing back to the cash points, we checked in and hit the sack for 5 hours.
When we woke up, the weather had turned; over-cast and windy. We cooked egg and chips for tea (not cos we’re moronic Brits, but because the guy had neither pan nor tin-opener in his Kitchen – told you he was weird – and that’s all we could cook) then we headed into Zagreb, where we sat at a cheap bar and watched Dinamo Zagreb play Hazar in what we think was a UEFA Cup Qualifier. About half way through the heavens opened and we were sat under a 2hr thunder storm, because all the TVs are outside the bars in Zagreb.
After Zagreb managed to win 3-1 in extra time, we went back to the hostel, and got a proper night’s sleep.
Day 7 Thursday, Jul 26 2007
Euro 07 12:00 pm
Munich is a truly beautiful city.
Unfortunately, we didn’t really make the most of it. We planned to do the Third Reich tour, but never got round to it, and instead just walked around and had enormous beers in a beer hall (not even THE Beer Hall though). Due to the fact our hostel had actually been a bit rubbish, with beds that screamed if you moved an inch, we were pretty tired and went to sleep in a park for a couple of hours.
That night we took a night train to Zagreb, capital of Croatia. We got stuck in the seat compartments again because there was no proper sleepers. Sharing with us was a fat slimey man and his reasonably-hot daughter. The fat slimey man clearly didnt like us, not least because we were drinking Jim Beam straight out of the bottle, but to be fair i didn’t like the fact he closed the window when it was roasting hot and then sat there smoking.
I tried to get to sleep….
Day 6 Monday, Jul 23 2007
Euro 07 11:23 am
Today we decided to head south, to Munich.
We took the high-speed ICE train, which was amazing. A tip for anyone travelling in Europe, ignore what the Interrail booklet says; reserving seats is basically needless. Every time we have tried to reserve a seat or a sleeping compartment, the ticket people at the station have told us the train is full. Every time we get on the train regardless, and there’s space.
On this occasion we were told by the ticket person in Berlin station that we would have to sit on the restaurant car for the whole 6 hours. Bollocks. We sat in 2nd Class and nobody cared cos the train was half full. But what a train. The max speed we witnessed was 240kmh, which is quite something, especially when the train leans, except it looks from the inside like the world is sliding away. The seats were really comfortable and had little headrests, and the leg-room was to die for. And this was 2nd class. So as far as i am concerned, this is the final nail in the coffin for privatising public railways. The state-operated DB in Germany puts English train services to total shame. Take note Richard “Plundering Wanker” Branson, your Aids-Ridden-Whore-Trains could learn a lot from the continent. (A good policy, at least from a non-profit perspective, is to avoid cramming as many seats into a carriage as possible, as this prevents the human beings inside feeling like pickled sardines).
Anyway, Munich is lovely. We got lucky and found a hostel right by the station, and then went out for a look around. The most amusing thing we found were the little “wank booths” in the sex shops. For just 2 euros you can choose from over 2000 videos in your own private little booth. I may still believe that prostitution is not something i can get behind, but masturbation (after 6 days sharing rooms) is just fine. Best 2 euros i ever spent.
After that we went for a drink, except Ste and me and another daft fight (more precisely he flipped out on me with as far as i could tell no provocation, and stormed off). So me and Gray went for a drink in the FC Bayern Bar. I said it looked rough and he laughed, but 10 minutes later a table got up-ended and there was smashed glass everywhere, with two guys at each others’ throats. We watched while sipping our beers. The two calmed down, and one went to the toilet. At which point his enemy semi-molested his girlfriend. We decided to leave before it got messy.
Walking through Munich we witnessed an incredible sight: a genuinely funny German; a busker who did a mixture of cover songs and off the cuff stand up had us in stitches for about 30 minutes. He was too good to try and repeat, although when he saw a stray dog and shouted “Koreans! A dog! Eat it!” in a Chinese accent in front of about 15 Koreans i nearly wet myself.
In the end we found Ste, had a couple of drinks and made up, all friends again. Then we went back to our hostel and discovered that the beds were the worse beds ever, but was we were drunk it didn’t really matter.
Day 5 Monday, Jul 23 2007
Euro 07 11:06 am
Today we just did the touristy stuff in Berlin, saw the sights etc. If you ever come to Berlin, TierGarten is amazing to just chill out in, and there are loads of enormous fish in the river. I got a nice snap of me next to Karl and Freddie, as well as next to chunks of the Berlin wall. Also, the first of the Mystery Postcards were purchased, but not sent as I had no stamps.
That night we went out into Berlin, which was nice again, except Ste and myself had a fight, over basically nothing, and I had a mood and didn’t talk to anyone. Bit silly but these things happen.
On a different note, something else struck me about Britain vs. Europe. Another thing that I’d never noticed before is how wrapped up in cotton wool Britain is. For example, in Amsterdam the network of canals is open; there are no barriers lining every stretch of water just in case some imbecile can’t grasp the concept of not walking off the pavement and falling in to drown. Likewise in Berlin, the U-Bahn platforms are not adorned with enormous yellow lettering and white lines screaming GET BACK, THIS IS THE EDGE! IF YOU WALK OFF HERE YOU WILL DIE!!!! In Berlin, the authorities asume that human beings have the cognitive capacity to work out for themselves that standing where the trains go = bad.
Why is this? My guess is that it has a lot to do with sueing culture. In England, if some idiot fell in a canal they would sue whoever they could on the grounds there were no barriers to prevent them falling in, even though it was their own stupid fault. Likewise for jumping under trains. In Europe the money-for-anything attitude doesn’t prevail, and so it seems the authorities are therefore not so preoccupied with covering their backs.
The net result is that i much prefer Europe on this front. There’s a sense that you are just being left to get on with your life; you don’t need to be reminded and guided and restrained at every turn to ensure you don’t turn around and sue the authority that provides your roads, hospitals, schools etc etc etc. Something to think about, i think.
Day 4 Monday, Jul 23 2007
Euro 07 10:56 am
Trying to sleep across 3 hard seats in a small, hot train compartment with 2 other lads who haven’t showered for 2 days is not fun. Although to be fair i have to claim the prize for most disgusting smelling feet.
We spent about 5 hours drifting in and out of half-sleep in the said compartment. At 7am we were discharged on the platform of Hamburg Central, having forgotten that we needed to change carriages to get to Berlin. Undeterred we went for a look around. It was cold and grey, nothing was open and so we went and sat by the river. That was super boring, except for a swan that appeared to have no neck, and so we decided to catch the next train to Berlin.
Berlin is a BIG city. Amsterdam is so compact and centralised, but Berlin just sprawls. For obvious reasons it has no main city centre, which is sort of a pain in the arse when you’ve never been there before and you are trying to orientate yourself, but it’s also kind of cool as it gives it a distinct character. Having no place to stay we located an internet cafe to book a hostel. In the cafe i ordered an avacado sandwhich and went to my bag to get my wallet. Which i couldn’t find. I spent the next 10 minutes freaking out, throwing my shit all over the floor of this cafe as a bemused Chinese man watched me getting closer and closer to what those who know me might understand as “Sagar-flip-out-and-destroy-things” point. Luckily, just before reaching the said point I realised my wallet was in my bag, and so I’d just made a total tit of myself for no reason. Awesome.
We found a really good hostel in the end, and had a room to ourselves. We then went to sleep for 5 hours straight. After that we took the U-Bahn into some part of Berlin and had a few beers. I’m proud to say we did our bit to reverse English stereotypes and sat there nice and quitely, savouring our Weißbier and not being horrible little shits.
Which got me thinking about drinking culture. The more I see of Europe, the more i start to dislike things about England, and the English attitude to alcohol is certainly near the top of the list. Seeing Berlin on a Friday and Saturday night really brought it home; can you imagine Kebab shops selling beer in England? Or fridges on the pavements with beer in them that you are trusted to take back into the shop to pay for? Or a train service that runs 24/7 with no security, but beer and vending machines at all stations, yet with not a single person being loud, throwing up or causing trouble? Or a major city centre on a Saturday night not crawling with paraletic drunken imbeciles intent on ruining somebody else’s night in the name of “a laugh”? No. But that’s the norm in Berlin. And i much prefer it.
Anyway, after proving ourselves capable of drinking beer without turning into spitting, fighting, swearing yobs, we took the U-Bahn home and got another solid 12 hours sleep.
Day 3 Friday, Jul 20 2007
Euro 07 2:34 pm
Day 3 was more respectable.
We started off by actually checking out on time, and then went to the Anne Frank museum. We jumped about a million Americans in the que because this old Swiss tour-guide needed to fill a spare 3 places or something, and offered it to us. But i felt the whole museum was sort of off the mark; hundreds of tourists just wandering through made it all seem so sanitised and distant, while the coffee area and gift shop didn’t really help much. Later that day we ate some awesome pizzas and then went to see the Van Gogh museum, but because it was expensive we sat outside and watched Dutch kids play basketball.
We then decided to go and sort ourselves out for a night train. However, we left things really late and ended up queing for 2 hours to see an international travel advisor so we could reserve some night-train spots. Unfortunately, the guy serving us was a real dick, and just said that we’d have to go to Brussels to get a connection to Berlin, but that he couldn’t reserve us a seat on the Berlin sleeper, cos he thought it was full. We asked if there was any other way and he said he didn’t know. What a great guy.
So we decided to gamble, and took the train to Brussels (three hours). We got to Brussels with 10 minutes before the Berlin train was due to depart, and quickly realised that the counters for reserving seats were all closed. We decided to just go for it and ran for the Berlin train anyway. We got to the platform with time to spare, and made the decision that we were getting on the train no matter what. When the train pulled in, two ticket inspectors got off right in front of us. I decided to gamble, and asked the first guy if there was any chance we could get on (making up some sob-story about nasty bastards in Amsterdam). He then turned to his mate and said (in French) “can you talk to this guy? He’s speaking English but too fast, i don’ understand him”. At which point i switched straight into French, and his face lit up like a bonfire. After 2 minutes of blagging in French i got us on the train.
For a while it looked like we were sleeping on the floor at the back with the bikes. I wasnn’t too bothered because of the nice looking French girl sat no the floor with us, but as she was a tad anti-social i went for a wander….and bumped into our French ticket inspector friends. 5 minutes later i had us a compartment and 6 seats to our selves. Bingo.
To celebrate we drank dirt cheap German beer until 2am and then retired for the worst night’s sleep yet. Oh, and just before we went to bed, the Frenchies informed us that unless we wanted to go to Hamburg, we better move to the back of the train after 2 hours cos they were getting separated. We were too tired to care.
