GETTING HOSTELS WITH THE HOMIES IN SOFIA AND BEOGRAD

Bulgaria is a bright spot in a sometimes dismal Balkan landscape. Away from the heavily touristed Dalmatian Coast of Croatia, Balkan Europe is an area best known for its senseless internecine squabbles and Yugoslav Communistic past. Like Albania, Bulgaria remains apart from all that, and is something of an enigma from the get-go. Named for the Eastern steppes tribal marauders who invaded the area not long after the Roman Empire’s collapse, and straddling a region comprising Greeks, Thracians, and later Turks, Bulgaria beame a conduit for Slavic immigration and to this day has the reputation as the oldest of southern Slav cultures. But they were never a part of Yugoslavia, and have moved quickly to distance themselves from the past.

Modern Sofia never sleeps. On the morning I arrived the Bukowski Bar next to the entrance of the hostel I’ve booked is still going strong from the night before as mid-morning creeps up. It’s taken me that long to find the place after a long walk from the bus station and the confusion arising from multiple McDonalds when directions depend on such landmarks. Alas and alack that hostel is full, but they’ve got another around the corner that shares an entrance with an Irish pub, apparently presided over by a real live Irish person, or at least a Brit. That’s who the patrons are. Thus a proud tradition finds fertile soil in the Balkans, that of the British ex-pat, scattered far and wide across the globe, putting down roots wherever the soil is deep enough to park an elbow and the beer strong enough to mitigate any regrets. This has been going on for years, as much a part of the Pax Britannica as limes and baked beans. I doubt sterling will drop so far on FX markets to change that any time soon.

Sofia’s not bad, maybe like a po’ boy’s London or at least Birmingham, plenty of decent food and coffee, bakeries as good as anywhere I know. After starving myself in Albania, too lazy to deal with currency exchange, I’m gorging in Sofia, plenty of foreign exchange since the transport companies won’t take €, and I had to cash a wad. I’d like to go on to Prishtina in Kosovo, but it looks like there’s no direct route so, since I’ve already passed through Skopje, I’m favoring a detour to Beograd in Serbia. That’ll be better any way, since I don’t want too many simple passes in my quest to ‘do’ every country, hopefully every major culture, in the world. Regional transportation is all flakey. The bus requires a transfer in Nis. The train won’t sell tickets until the hour before (?). It seems like I’m spending all my time in Sofia at the bus station.

So finally I decide to buy a bus ticket and try to enjoy the rest of my time in Bulgaria. There are lots of other places in the country to visit, of course, but winter’s hardly the optimum time to do it. Trying to wing it in a country without the local tongue is a test of will, also, as much as ability. It gets old. So does the surliness of the counter help. Would it hurt to smile a little or say ‘thank you’ once in a while? It’s just as easy and twice the fun. Maybe it’s a leftover of Communism, or maybe it’s part of the collective personality. Who knows? Strangely enough it seems in the Balkans that the more English they speak, the politer they are. Just the opposite is true in Thailand, where English is the language of aggression. At least now I know why Albanians considered themselves the nicest people in the world. They were comparing themselves to their neighbors! Sometimes personality traits like these are learned, not given. At least they’ve got nude women on TV after midnight in Sofia, so capitalism accomplished something. Thank God for small miracles.

By now I’ve got pretty good at reading Cyrillic, so that helps keep the belly full. Some words are almost the same. Except for the broken leg MAPKET is easily recognizable as ‘market’, pronounced exactly the same. I assume it’s a loan word, so it should. From there things gradually increase in difficulty. It’s like learning a secret code you invented as a child. PECTOPAHT is ‘restaurant’, pronounced exactly the same. It gets weirder than that of course. ‘Bar’ is 6AP and ‘bazaar’ is 6A3AP, all pronounced like their Latin cousins. Now they’re looking more like techie passwords. If I had a Cyrillic keyboard we could go on, but I don’t, so you get the idea, right? Of course there are some incongruities like ‘HOBO’ (pronounced ‘novo’= ‘new’ of course), advertising new merchandise in fashionable boutiques. About the only food they bother to write in English is pizza, assuming that’s all we eat I guess. Sometimes it seems like that’s all THEY eat, not even bothering with the tomato goop in Cuba. It’ll fill you up at least. It can also constipate you. I may be used to the dry little goat pellets that pass as traveler’s turds, but that doesn’t mean I like them. Drink lots of liquids. Or you can smoke lots of cigarettes like they do. That’ll keep you slim, if it doesn’t kill you first. It’s killing me.

I left Sofia… and headed for Beograd, but not without some trepidations. The reign of terror by Slobodan and his slobs is still fresh in the memory and apparently on the maps with references to things like ‘Republika Srpski’ and other entities that I have no knowledge of. Apparently buses from Beograd to Sarajevo stop on the outskirts, on the Serb side of town. Huh? What century is this? But still it feels like a heartland for something, in contrast to the tentativeness I’ve felt so far in the countryside. There are black cemetery head-stones and red-tile roofs in Serbia, and garden spots well defined. But this bus is half empty, like most I’ve been on. At least they tend to run on time. I have to change buses half the way in Nis so I’m assuming that’ll be a self-evident process. It’s not that easy, but I figure it out and continue on, despite the fact that no one speaks English. By the time I get to Beograd it’s mid-afternoon. By now I’ve gotten wise and book a hostel right close to the bus station. That helps for blitzkrieg tours. The place is bright and cheery and since the private rooms cost triple the dorm price, I opt for the dorm. I figure it’ll be good experience, and it is.

The only problem is the staff’s constant cigarette smoking, but other than that it’s way cool except for the loss of privacy. There’s got to be a trade-off, right? It’s all men, too, from Germany, Australia, and one who I later find out is Mexican, from Guadalajara. Like I say the G8 of international travel is now expanding to G30. I consider that proof of justice in the world. He even speaks good English. I’ll feel hurt if he rebuffs my Spanish, of course, but go for it anyway, Psycholinguistics 101. It’s getting harder to speak foreign languages, at least for an American, with the advent of world English. But we’re cool, talking about things Latino into the night, fueled by the jug of decent Serbian beer being offered. I decide I like hostels; they give a safe haven and source of information to travelers and interaction with others where such is almost impossible with locals. I might open one in LA, which could probably use it.

Beograd is pretty uninspiring, but not so bad. It could use a coat of paint. They say nightlife is the big attraction, but that doesn’t much work for me any more. Alcohol is poison; handle with caution. I see no bragging rights involved in being able to ‘handle your liquor.’ If that’s the goal, then what’s the point? Me, I got travel plans, on to Kosovo, soon to be the newest country in the world, all the while thinking about Ethiopia, so bored I am with the cold weather I’ve had the last month. That Ethiopian visa is burning a hole in my passport. Stay tuned.

NIGHT BUS TO SOFIA VIA SKOPJE

There is no direct bus from Tirana, Albania, to Sofia, Bulgaria any more, so you have to transfer in Skopje, Macedonia. Sounds simple, right? Nothing is as simple as it sounds, especially in the back woods of Europe, the forgotten lands, the old country. The bus to Skopje leaves from the ‘muddy patch in front of the train station’ at 9am so I get there bright and early to get my ticket, me and a handful of locals and another backpacker who seems to want nothing to do with me, probably some Euro-trash who’s ‘more backpack than thou’, afraid that contact with another groover might spoil the authenticity of his experience. Maybe he’s right. Two can play that game I guess. Who needs him anyhow? He seems to be rapping with the drivers, probably hasn’t even realized yet that they don’t understand a word of his English pidgin shit. So we head off into the hazh-pazh countryside of Albania, broken bruised and beaten, not yet having received the coat of paint that the capital has, a splash here, a stripe there, and a mosaic in between, anything to try to forget the lost decades of Commonist rule and the psychological misgivings that can ensue. Somehow Nature always survives regardless of men’s mistakes. Still Albania seems a bit more broken than most, with neither plan nor order.

By the time we approach the border we’re high into the hills again, past 19^th century-style mining operations and failed industry. By this time I’ve broken the ice with my fellow backpacker. Turns out he’s Croatian and a really nice guy, hardly the arrogant a**hole I’d imagined. I feel foolish, but not as much as I would have if we’d traveled the whole way unspeaking. He’s on his way to India via Istanbul and speaks good English, having practiced much in the tourist industry of Dubrovnik. His name is Mladen. There are a lot of backpackers from non-traditional Western countries now, including China. The common bond is a modern western ‘tude, a pocket and a head full of change, and a decent command of English. Upon reaching the border itself we find it so clogged that we change buses to avoid formalities; big mistake. As we continue on the other side it’s soon snowing. Even Mladen looks at me and goes, “WOW!” And I’m thinking, ‘Don’t you freak out or I’ll really freak. You’re a local!’ But I didn’t say anything. It’s been a long hard winter for Europe.

We make it through the snow okay, but that’s not good enough. The old bus pops a gasket or something and soon is wheezing like an old woman climbing six flights of stairs. We pull over and the driver puts on his greasy mechanic’s apron like, “That’ll show the bus who’s boss!” Yeah, right. This old bag of nuts and bolts ain’t goin’ nowhere. So we wait and wait and wait for the company to send a van to pick us up. Mladen’s going to miss his bus to Istanbul, but that’s good for me, since he’ll continue on to Sofia, like me, instead. At this point his presence, and command of All Things Slavic are very reassuring to me, particularly since we’ve become quite friendly. I realize at this point how vulnerable and insecure I am, hardly the master traveler and linguist I may come off as sometimes, to myself if not others, whether intentionally or otherwise. Down deep I’m a scared little child. The only difference is I’ve been there before, lived my whole life there in fact, trembling before the vagaries of Circumstance and creating new gods to save me. Bottom line: I hate that sinking feeling when you’re stuck out of luck and there’s nowhere to pass the buck. I know it well.

The bus driver finally flags down an empty van and pays the van driver to take us on into town. Hell, we could’ve done that an hour ago. That’s what we would’ve done ten years ago without cell phones and the miracles they bring. So by the time we finally limp into the station at Tetova, Macedonia, it’s dark and cold and lonely. I’m really glad Mladen is there. Maybe he’s glad, too, but I don’t ask. Guys don’t do that. Problem is, the bus to Sofia leaves from Skopje, and that’s still an hour and another bus ride away, something I didn’t like in the original plan, and am now regretting. If you want to traipse the Balkans, bring a friend. You might need it. We persevere on to Skopje, where there’s a bus to Sofia at midnight. So we buy tickets and have time to kill; things are looking up. It’ll be Sofia by morning, an up-and-coming tourist destination, there and Bulgaria in general. But now we’ve got three hours to kill so we trade stories and talk trash and eat more oily pies, which Mladen explains to me is ‘real Balkan food’, as if I didn’t already know after living on them in Tirana. He also tells me that Macedonia has the best music in the Balkans, and good food, too.

At first I regret passing through without really stopping but the more I see of it, the less that Skopje agrees with me, apparently splayed out wide, unfriendly to walkers. There’s nothing worse for a backpacker than that. ‘Backpacker’ may not mean ‘hiker’ anymore, but it definitely means ‘walker.’ Going through twelve countries in two months, I’m entitled to a few quickie transits, aren’t I? Macedonia is the TAFKAP of countries, officially the ‘Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’, FYROM, apparently to appease the sensitivities of Greeks for whom the concept of ‘Macedonia’ has entirely different connotations. I don’t know about the music or the food, but the women certainly seem to exude a certain fashionable sexiness that I haven’t elsewhere in the Balkans… or much of anywhere for that matter… and we’re in the bus station for God’s sake! But such things hardly interest me any more these days… yeah, right.

This is Cyrillic country now, everything written in the alphabet that the first millennium Orthodox monks Cyril and his brother what’s-his-name so methodically adapted from Greek to fit the Slavic tongue. If Albanian seemed foreign, this seems downright alien! Fortunately I’ve already got a head start in Greece, and the difference between this and that are less than the differences between that and the Roman alphabet, so my little brain’s already going to work on it. Unfortunately all the Slavic alphabets seem to have minor differences between them, so total mastery may never be complete, but still it’s nice to be able to read a menu, regardless of whether I can actually speak the language. People talk about the difficulties of Croatian, exclaiming, “At least they use Roman letters!” when in fact that’s the easiest part. I wish I could absorb a language acoustically as fast as I can its graphic symbols. That may be the one part of language that you actually can ‘pick up.’ Most things you can pick up from foreign tongues I wouldn’t take home to show Mom.

At least there’s a real bus station in Skopje. That’s refreshing. Tirana had nothing of the sort. ‘Muddy patch’ indeed! But our mignight bus is late and I’m freezing outside waiting for it. I mean FREEZING! I’ve been cold this whole trip, but this is ridiculous! Our bus finally shows up and we pile on quickly. Macedonia passes under our wheels, almost an entire country traversed in darkness. At least the border crossing to Bulgaria is civilized; they collect the passports then bring them back all stamped up and ready to go. Mladen had to go discuss something, but came back unperturbed. When the bus finally pulls into Sofia the sun is rising. Mladen and I say our goodbyes and I go for a cup of espresso. It costs less than the 3-in-1 Nescafe. It’s good, too. Things are looking up.