As wonderful as this trip has been, and that is very wonderful, we do miss being home for special occasions, like birthdays and anniversaries. We hope you got your appropriate card and we are sorry we missed the big day. We were thinking of each and every one of you.
Now back to the trip. The last 3 days have been interesting and not at all what we thought they would be. (I was about to type “what we had planned” but I knew you wouldn’t believe we planned anything, and you would be right…)
We found out on the internet, our “trusty” dbbaun.com, the German train schedule that we have used this whole trip, that there were 2 trains from Pirot to Belgrade each day. So we planned to take the afternoon train, since the train we came on arrived at 11pm and that was our other alternative. So like good soldiers we got a taxi and we arrived at the train station about an hour early and I asked someone who looked official what track our train would be on. Well I got a speech in Serbian. She kept trying to tell me something and I hadn’t a clue. She tried having other people help, but no luck. Then she showed me a schedule and pointed to our train’s time and said “Ne”. You can translate that. So no afternoon train today or tomorrow. Now what?
Luckily one of the desk clerks at our hotel had mentioned that the bus took 4 hours while the old trains took 6, and we should consider taking the bus. At that time I told her we had Eurail passes and the train was free, so we would probably take the train. Little did I know. So we knew there was the possibility of a bus. So they called a taxi for us and we went to the bus station and got a ticket for the bus at 4:30, 4 hours later. The nice lady at the reservation office let us sit in the office and even turned on the a/c for us. So after I ran back downtown to find an ATM so we could pay for the bus ticket ($36 about) we read and waited.
The bus was air conditioned and the ride was fine. The countryside is beautiful and we went through some mountains, we love that. I think we went through at least 10 tunnels. And the highways are wonderful 4 lane freeways with tolls.
Only problem was when we arrived in Belgrade. I knew where the hotel was from the train station, but not from the bus, but all went fine.
So now we are in Belgrade and intend to stay one day, so we can see what there is to see. We thought we might take a bike tour for 4 hours, but after sitting in a bus for 4 hours yesterday, we decided to just walk around.
We really enjoyed the day. First we found a street market with tons of food and stuff.
Then we found a park that was having a photo display from different counties, Russia and Poland and others.
Also in this park was a fortress, yes another one, and this one was wonderful. Everywhere we turned was another great view. The fortress was rebuilt in the early 1800’s not recently, so things are old. Some things are not even excavated and others are falling apart. I, personally, love that. Much better than new construction based on old stuff.
In the fortress we found this church and of course we went in. They were giving out healing water to drink and to take come and use, We will see how well it works. We don’t know the story about the water because no one spoke English.
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