After about 20 hours of travel, we got to Belgrade, Serbia. Man that place was cheap, we could eat anything we wanted, buy pretty much anything we saw, so naturally we had a good time. That night Soph and I decided to try and find a boat party we’d heard about, but I managed to get us spectacularly lost (being lost in alleyways at midnight in Serbia is heaps of fun), so we settled to have a beer and watch a live rooftop band near the hostel. After another day of exploring Belgrade, we caught an overnight train down to Skopje, Macadonia. ‘Overnight train’ is apparently a symonim for getting drunk; we had some beers with some Dutchies, a couple of English backpackers and a swiss guy, was good fun, we were pleasantly surprised. Anyway, as soon as we ditched out bags in Skopje, we jumped on a bus to Kosovo for the day. We were expecting a war torn city, still half reduced to rubble, but we were pretty wrong. The city was alive, contruction everywhere, hard to tell that 7 years ago it was in a heavy war. There were a few telltale signs though, like speed limits for tanks alongside the limit for cars, a few ruins, and some NATO military presence still in the area. Hugh gave us all a lesson in the history of the area and the story of Yugoslavia, and me and Soph learn’t a fair bit. Then we had a restaurant meal and beer when we got back (came to about 3 euro’s each), and hit the hay.
They next day we explored Skopje (surprisingly more run down than Pristina in Kosovo), and then jumped on a train to Thessaloniki – Greece. A couple of German guys taught us a new card game that we have been playing ever since, and are getting near obsessed with. Anyway, got there at around 11pm, and it was still stinking hot, it was around 37 degrees throughout our time in Greece. Thessaoniki had a few cool sights that we saw the next day, including a fair bit of history and some cool markets, but we had only 1 night there before we went down to Athens. A big city, pretty dirty, but some interesting sights there, like the Akropolis and the first Olympic stadium, we enjoyed wandering around. But the heat drained us pretty bad, didn’t have a whole lot of energy for evening ‘activities’. We parted with Hugh the next afternon, as we got on different ferries; we went on an overnight ferry to Bari, Italy, where I am at the moment. The ferry was an experience, being backpackers we got our free deck pass included with our rail pass, and ended up playing cards with a few other Aussies until it was time to sleep, and we opted to sleep under the stars, on the helicopter pad on the roof of the ferry. Pretty windy, and cold at times, but there were some pretty good views. So now I’m at a macas in Bari, Itay, trying to connect to the internet but failing miserably due to Italys stringent anti-terrorism laws. Unfortunatly, the train we thought we might catch is booked up, and we have to now catch a train that gets us into Rome about 11pm. It’ll take serious effort to stay up until then…
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