How my Balkans trip came to an end [1]
On the way with refugees
My trip gets more and more interesting when it’s about to end. I took a night train from Skopje to Belgrade. It was arriving from Thessaloniki (well, currently from the Greek Macedonian border due to the refugee crisis) and was an hour late on arrival. We departed with an 80-minute delay.
After the train crossed the Macedonian Serbian border a group of people from Syria boarded the train. A Syrian family of four (a mother, two sons, one aged 8, and a daughter) came to my compartment as I was there alone. The kids’ cousin, a girl, joined us in the compartment. I started talking to this girl, she was the only one who could speak some English. They were from Damascus and had been travelling for 20 days. By air, by sea, by rail and also on foot. They travelled via Jordan, Turkey, Greece, Macedonia and finally Serbia. They were going to Germany to reunite with the girl’s brother who had been in Germany for two months. Her mother and brother were also on the train.
The train arrived in Belgrade with a three-hour delay, not because of the refugees. I guess it is just this part of Europe where delays are part of travelling by train.
There is a refugee camp near the central station of Belgrade. Quite a few people have found temporary homes in tents in a small park there. A cistern with drinking water has been provided, presumably by the city. At this very moment there is a thunderstorm which might not be the best thing for these people. Just for the record, the last time I saw rain was three weeks ago in Albania.
Tomorrow I am taking a night train from Belgrade to Budapest. From there I wanted to take a train to Vienna as I had already bought a ticket, but just yesterday the Hungarian railways suspended all international trains leaving for Austria and Germany (via Austria as well as Slovakia and the Czech Republic) until further notice. The trains depart from the borders and no extra trains seem to be run to transport passengers to the borders. I also have a ticket from Vienna to the Czech Republic. I am hoping to catch this train, which with all the delays and everything is a long shot. This will make for an interesting Sunday morning.