Rush, Rush

Day 539
I was up early and packed my bags quickly and put them in storage. On the way to the train station I picked up some breakfast. I got lucky because the line at the station wasn't long. My train took off about 10 minutes late and arrived to Novi Sad about 20 minutes late all together.

I didn't have a map, but luckily wandered the right way and then the first person I asked directed me the rest of the way. I picked up a map from the tourist office and then grabbed some lunch while I planned out my day.

I then headed across the bridge to Petrovaradin Fortess. Before heading up the massive hill I wandered around the cute streets right below the structure. Actually, I couldn't figure out how to get up there. Once I was up in the fortress I just sorta wandered around. None of the museums were very attractive to me. There was a mother dog and a puppy. I don't know if they were stray, she seemed to friendly to be a stray, but too skinny at the same time. She seemed to be begging me for food but I had nothing to give her. I felt really bad, but I don't think that feeding a possible stray is very smart, I think its best to just stay away.

I then went to check out the Lojvodina Museum, it was meant to be really good. The sign on the front said that it would reopen in September. The last time I checked it was September and it was still closed, bummer. Instead I ended up killing some time in an i-cafe before heading to the train station.

For unknown reasons the train I wanted was canceled for the day so I had to wait for another one. This meant that I would have 1.5 hours between arrival and when my night train departed. I spent the extra time working on my journal.

The train arrived a bit late but I didn't worry until it stopped short because someone tried to jump off and kill himself. I then fell asleep. When I woke up I realized that we were very late. Apparently there was some construction on the lines that was slowing everything down. When we got back to Belgrade I had 12 minutes to get my things from the hostel and then get back to the train station. It took 7 minutes each way to walk to the station.

I ran like I haven't run since high school. When I got to the hostel I was so out of breath all I could get out was ˝train late, train soon, bags˝. Luckily I was understood. I then ran with my bags faster than I thought possible. I jumped on the train and when I had walked down the aisle and gotten to my compartment it departed. I had made it by about 30 seconds. One of the women in my compartment told me that that is was the only train in the country that ran on time.

I was drenched from running and hungry as there wasn't a restaurant car and no time for dinner. I was able to find a plug though so I could charge my ipod. The cabin was stifling and I couldn't sleep, it was warmer than India was. I ended up out in the hallway for a long time. When we got to the Serbian boarder and the passport control people turned on the lights the guy on the bed across from me and I played with the air con dials, it turned out that someone had fixed it backwards at some point and even though it said it was on high it was on low. After the Hungarian boarder crossing I was finally able to get a bit of sleep.