Yesterday and today are travel days. These are probably some of the most adventure-filled days on the race, at least for our team. It seems that on travel days something is probably not going to go as planned. Yesterday was such a day.
We were scheduled to depart Uzice on a bus for the capital city Belgrade at 10:22am. Unfortunately, the bus was about 30 minutes late. When it did arrive, they were short room under the bus and couldn't fit all of our packs in. it was a bit stressful for a few minutes before the finally had us put a couple of bags above in the bus stairwell.
We had about a 2 hours difference between when we were scheduled to arrive in Belgrade and when we needed to catch our train. Due to our late departure, challenge in getting bags loaded and traffic, we instead arrived in Belgrade about 45 minutes before we needed to catch our next train. This would not be a big deal except we still had to walk to the train station, buy tickets, find some food, exchange our money, etc. We were able to accomplish everything with about a minute to spare. Nothing like rushing for another train.
We got on and although it was rather hot (temps in the 90's) and the train did not have air conditioning life was going well. We were hoping to get to Timasoura, Romania in time to catch a train at 10pm that got us to our next ministry location of Draganesti, Romania around 6am. But, that was not meant to be. We hit the border with Romania and evidently some people were trying to smuggle alcohol and liquor into the country. At one point, we saw bottles of alcohol flying out the train windows as people tried to get rid of it before being caught. They literally tore the train apart looking for anything illegal. We had to step out of our train compartment on a couple of occasions while they pulled up benches, used screwdrivers to unscrew vents and generally ransacked the place. It was odd as they never checked our bags. But, we sat for a couple of hours and we saw them locate a number of cartons of cigaretts during their searches.
Eventually we started moving again, but because of the delay we didn't arrive in Timasoura until 10:30 meaning we missed our train. So, we ran into an Australian girl who had a hostel reservation and using the Kindle (so worth every penny) we were able to find out it still had openings. So, we bargained with 2 cab drivers to take us to the hostel.
Our life then got a bit sketchy. They dropped us off on this street and we don't see a hostel anywhere. We had bargained that the cabs would be 15 lei each (roughly $5) and the Australian girl gave them a 50 expecting 20 in return. They refused and demanded more money. Meanwhile, we are on this street and don't see a hostel anywhere so for all we know we are being dropped off in the middle of nowhere. They got really upset and the one cab driver knowing they are cheating us and we aren't happy throws his car into reverse to escape. Unfortunately, we had taken Ben and Staci's bags out of the trunk of the car, but hadn't moved them yet. So, he starts to run their bags over and drag them down the street. We are shouting for him to stop and he does and then throws his car into gear so we jump out of the way as he and his buddy drive off. I miss Serbia.
We found out the hostel was just a few places down the block and it is great and we all enjoyed a good night of sleep. We are hanging out here for the day before catching the train tonight. Oh the joys of travelling. Life is never dull.
