This article is not about the opera... Or is it? :-)

For those who have heard of the Indian trains... full to the brim with Indians one more "colorful" than the other â€“ and wants to see them too, there is a good choice muuuch closer to home. Also, those who keep complaining about the Romanian trains should try some regional Serbian or Bulgarian ones, but my recommendation is the Belgrade-Sofia route because this is, isn`t it, an international train... :D

Firstly, it has three wagons, of which two are sleepers, so, if you are at the second class, you have nowhere to hide. And, after you have travelled second class at night in England, Denmark, Germany and Austria, you have no reason for not being at the second class, don`t you? (I`ve omitted Italy, because there, at night, at the second class they travel like sardines and among blacks speaking their lingo loud and with no care toward the others` sleep, not mentioning a thick-skinned one who is listening African music, theoretically at head-phones, but in fact making itself heard in half the wagon.)

You get on, try to sit, and the first thing you notice is that absolutely all the chairs are filthy. Then that almost every â€œroomerâ€ occupies two or three seats, their legs on the seat in front of them, how otherwise? Meantime, the train has left Belgrade, so the odyssey is only at the beginning. You finally find a place to sit, and then the big dilemma comes: how to sleep in such a train, in such a company?! In front of you, an old Serb, a die-hard drunkard, as he looks. To the left, on the chairs from the other side of the aisle, (passenger wagon, not with compartments), a Turk and a Serb (all from here on are young) are chatting in good English. From time to time a Serb with a silly face comes and talks only to his Serb, probably because he doesn`t understand anything in English. Outside, on the lane between the entrance doors in the vlak, alias wagon, two with the phizes already swollen, dressed in red medical staff clothes, drink beer after beer and smoke cigarette after cigarette, switching to Serbian even when you tell them that you "ne panimaiu srbiski" ("I don`t understand Serbian") :-) ) )

In another group of chairs there are two girls sleeping, so you dare going to sleep, but just after you`ve prepared the necessary stuff for sleep and, certainly, your trolley, adapted to be used as a pillow, :-) - in front of you sits a vile (sorry, but this is the sweetest word I found :-) ) ) ) who is frowning at you! :D Farewell, sleep, you don`t feel like sleeping not even after the crow falls asleep (I`m referring, of course, to a bird in the train :-) ) ) ) and not even after the bird wakes up and gets off, sorry, I mean flies :-) ) )

Anyway, trying to sleep would have been useless. Behind you there is a group of Serbs closely related to a group of full beer cans, and the two groups commute all the time between the seats behind you and the space from outside the "compartment", where they meet with a group of cigarettes that transform into a group of thick smoke, mixed with a group of Serbian words and bellows, and you realize you actually recognize some words, "Partizan" and "CurÃ£tz, Crverna Zvezda"! Later you would find out that "curatz" (intentional cacophony) doesn`t come from the Romanian "a curatza" (â€œto cleanâ€), but from... But let`s continue! :-)
Let them say I don`t make sacrifices for the opera! :-) ) )

The international train â€“ I feel very tempted to repeat this idea â€“ stops in all the big stations (such as Chiajna, Clinceni, Galateni, Baicoi or Sugatagul de Sus halt :D), and the groups change all the time. In front of you sits another bird, female and coloratura soprano, of course, so you can`t even go to the toilet. And when you finally do it, you realize a fact about the water crisis: it is not a legend. :-) ) )
How that wc was going to smell later in the compartment? I`m not sure I want to remember! :D

You start chatting with the Serb and the Turk. The Serb pretends to be a communist, the Turk is, actually, Australian of a Turkish origin, who had come in Europe to visit it and to see his family and, after you interact verbally with all of them you conclude that he is the only one you could call intelligent. But he is in a party mood, so he joins the beer clearing group. As the sleep has long flown away, which cannot be said about the fatigue, you join the lofty discussions about Partizan, Grobbers (the club`s fan gallery), Scheisse Crverna Zvezda (kind of "Damn Red Star! ") and who is the best Romanian football player â€“ as if Romania still had football or football players â€“ and others of this kind.

At a dead time in the delicate conversation, you ask which are the traditional Serbian food and drink. Pleskavita, certainly, which doesn`t surprise you, as you were eating this when you got on the train. Rachia is a drink, but its name takes you to rachiu, which gives you the air of "ours (tuica & palinca) is better". But you have the idea (brilliant, after all) to ask the Serb if he has some, and he gets even happier and asks you is you want. Yes, sure, and, after a couple of gulps and cheers, Partizan and Craiova become twin teams. :-) ) ) Nobody was sleeping, anyway, the girls, two Turks, had long since woken up â€“ in the meantime one of them has "got together" with one of the Serbs, and each one shouts on their or the other`s language "Partizan", "No Partizan, man, Red Star", "Craiovaaaa" and others alike. Those who try to sleep are woken up on the principle â€œWhat is sleep and what does it serve to? ". The Turk falls asleep for a few minutes, though, not more, the same a Turkish girl, and we, the others hang nicely and shapelessly on the train benches. Beer cans on the floor, smoke and, in the compartment, wc smelling, everything that a civilized journey with this more than international train needs. :D

In the morning, with a one hour delay, of course, the train arrives in Sofia. Weary and red-eyed, the former wagon colleagues separate happy and with tears in their eyes. :-) You remain in the company of the Turk for several hours until the next train, him going to Stanbul, you to Vidin. But about the Sofia-Vidin train there is little to be said, a lot of sleep, despite the "coloratura sopranosâ€ in the train. :D

PS: A good observation made by the Australian Turk: "Among other things, yes, this train does not have wifi! " :-) ) )

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