My Balkans junket was a dream, but after nearly 2 weeks of city-hopping every few days, I was already getting burned out by the time I got to Dubrovnik. I had planned on meandering up the Croatian coast on my way back to Hungary, but by that point, all I really wanted to do was get “home.”
When “home” is Hungary and you’re trying to get back there from Croatia, it turns out it’s a little tricky these days. The train that ran from Zagreb to Budapest has been suspended temporarily, the border crossings shut down on account of the refugees. There are no buses between Zagreb and Budapest, either. I decided to try my luck in Sarajevo, which is closer to Budapest and more on the way than Zagreb. I knew I couldn’t get a train from Sarajevo to Budapest, but I assumed there would be some kind of bus service between the two capitol cities…
There was not. There was nothing, actually, that would get me even remotely closer to Hungary except a bus to Belgrade, where I could catch a train (or bus) to Budapest. Sarajevo has two bus stations – central and east. I got dropped off at the central bus station, but had to go to the east bus station to get the Belgrade bus. When I asked the woman at the ticket counter at the central station about the Belgrade bus at the east station, she couldn’t help me at all – she knew nothing about the buses at the east train station. I thought that was awfully strange. I hailed a cab to take me to the east train station.
My cabbie spoke pretty good English (or he spoke English well, for my fellow grammarians out there) and explained to me that we were entering East Sarajevo, which is its own city in the Republic of Srpska, and that it was very different from Sarajevo. I think I wrote about this before, but the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina has two federal entities, drawn along ethnic lines, that act almost entirely as separate countries save for a few common government services (military, money, courts, etc.) and open borders (as between U.S. States): the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (predominantly Bosnian Muslims and Croats) and the Republic of Srpska (predominantly ethnically Serbian and fought with the Serbian army against the Croats and Bosnian Muslims during the war). One of the concessions to end the war while keeping intact the existing borders of the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina was to create these two semi-autonomous federal entities as part of the Dayton Agreement.
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because the cab driver tells me that, when he drives into East Sarajevo, he has to take his “taxi” sign off the roof of his car or else face a steep fine. I guess where your taxi is registered – in the Federation or in the Republic – has an impact on where you’re allowed to pick up customers. That seemed really strange to me. I started to realize just how divided the city and the country still are. I realized the bus to and from Belgrade travels between Serbia and the Republic of Srpska, which is why it goes to and from the east bus station rather than the central station. Understanding dawned on me why it was that the woman in the central station could tell me nothing about the buses at the east station. When I used ATMs in Sarajevo, there were so many languages offered I didn’t even pay attention to what they were, I just picked English and went about my business, but in the Republic of Srpska there are only two options – English or Serbian.
The extremeness of the division between two halves of one country struck me as unsustainable. The majority Serbs in the area that is now the Republic of Srpska did not want to split from Yugoslavia when Bosnia declared independence and their soldiers fought to unite with Serbia as one country. As far as I can tell, this desire to be part of Serbia is still there. The rift that tore the country asunder is still there and it seems a lot of effort is devoted to keeping it that way. All of this made me very sad to see how, in this small way, the war still hasn’t ended but remains a present day reality for so many people.
When I got to Belgrade last night it was windy and raining. I didn’t have any accommodation arranged in the city – I had hoped to arrive early enough to catch the overnight train to Budapest. The thought of wandering around Belgrade at 10:30 at night looking for a place to stay – and potentially not finding one – is the exact fear that keeps me from being a more spontaneous and adventurous traveler. Strangely, though, once I was there I wasn’t too bothered by it. Perhaps my familiarity with the city made the prospect less terrifying. Still, not wanting to spend too much time looking for a place and knowing I would have an early train to catch the next morning, I popped over to an eccentric hotel I remembered from my previous stay in the city with an excellent location just across the street from the train station – the Mr. President Design Hotel.
Fortunately, they had a vacancy and the price was lower than I expected it to be. I did have to sleep with a picture of Nelson Mandela watching over me…
I woke up early this morning for the long day of train travel ahead of me: 8.5 hours from Belgrade to Budapest followed by another 3 hours back down to the farm. When I arrived at the train station it was dark and raining, just as it was when I’d taken off three weeks ago, almost like I never left at all.
In other news of the you-can’t-make-this-shit-up variety, my farmstay host tells me there’s a volunteer here right now who’s a swing dancer, a Polish girl named Gosia. It was a Polish girl named Gosia I met at Herräng that introduced me to the website I ended up using to find this farmstay. It turns out she’s here for Budapest’s big annual swing dance event, Lindy Shock. I’m guessing the odds on these two swing dancing Polish Gosias not being the same girl are significantly lower than 1%. Stay tuned to find out!
TL;DR: Fabulous Balkan getaway quickly disappearing in the rear-view mirror as I look to what’s ahead.
