Don took me to the train station in Valence on Friday, Dec. 3. Stopped by a cafe for lunch before my departure and had a great potato and spinach giant hash-brown thingy. Bought the ticket to Grenoble, figuringm I'd work out the rest once there. Glad to see the Macedonian family no longer in the train station. Rode for free to Chambery. Walking the streets at night, a guy pulls up in his car, miming sleep. Eventually figure out he thinks I am homeless, and in the sub-zero air and quiet streets, tells me to ring the buzzer on an unmarked door of a seemingly-derelect building. Oh well, you only get murder-raped once. might as well have it happen in Chambery, France. Turned out to be a frost shelter for bums like myself. I sign my name, country of residence, place of birth, right along side those of Box Car Pierre and Wiley-Wooley Guibert. Given a clean set of bedding, I shack up in the concrete and tile palace, with drains on the floor in every room, for easy hose-down. The smell of the place was an artful combination of the human secretion potential, with a hint of nutmeg for the holiday season. After I got over the comically-frequent burping, farting, snoring, and hacking-cought noises echoing throught the halls, and loosened my grip on my pocket knife, I enjoyed a short but restful night's sleep.
Up and out by dawn, I got a ride about half way to the Italian border. Another two, and I was at the border, except the Alps were blockng the entry. A free ride on the train across the border, and into the mountains of Italy to a ski town, Bardonaccia. After a while, a mountain rescue guy took me down into the valley. Walked/hitchhiked the rest of the daylight hours, then sucked it up and got the 3.50 euro train to Torino. Downtown Torino is quite nice looking , high end fashion shops, baroque buildings. Cooked some ravioli on my stove in the squre next to parliament or city hall or something. Managed to fine 23 euro ticket to Venezia at 4:30 a.m. the next morning. Shivering, unpleasant night in the open air train station. The police made me sit on a steel, low-backed chair, as the rest of the station was shut down for the night. Just me, two police and an overzealous guy riding around on a floor-buffer proved to be a very long night. Finally stood up a bit before 3 a.m. Don't remember much until about 30 minutes outside of Venice, including switching trains in Milan. Venice by far made up for the previous-night's unpleasantries. Sun shining, not too many of my fellow tourists, which I hear is a rarity in this sinking city. A brisk 1 hour tour of the old town before the train to Trieste. Mistakenly bought a child's ticket, which explained the extremely cheap fare. The conductor threatened a 12 euro fine, then 50 euros, then realized that he had better things to do than deal with an American pleading stupidity, and handed back the handfull of change that I emptied into his hand. Trieste was a bitch of a city to escape from on foot. Took hours after turning back at [NO AUTOPUT] signs heading to the highway, and mountain tunnels that ran out of pedestrian real-estate only once through the other end. Finally received aid from some locals, and rode some busses into and out of town to Bassovizza. Walked from there into Kozina in Slovenia, over a mountain pass that offered a peaceful snowfall and view of Trieste and Monfalcone on the coast below. The night watch at the Kozina train station let me sleep on a bench in the heated lobby. Slept poorly, but definitely beat the misty wet exterior.
Mon. Dec. 6
Rainy morning, no rides. Get soaked, trying to make it to the Croatian border, some 25 km away. Stop to warm and have a coffee at a cafe. Someone paid for it, but never found out who. For the hell of it, raise my dripping-wet thumb outside the cafe, and within 30 seconds, I have a ride to the border. Emerging from the mist to exit the EU, the Slovenian border patrolman gave me a suspicious look, and asked if I was carrying any marijuana. I said, 'nope', and he then proceded to stare at me for the next 5 seconds. Figuring this was something he learned during a 2-hour interrogation seminar, I made sure to maintain eye contact throughout to definitively show that no, I was not masking my true purpose as a drug mule. A long, awkward 5 seconds, but once I passed his test, I was into Croatia. Learning that walking in attempts to make progress is a fool's venture when trying to make large distances, I forced myself to stay at the exit of the border patrol and wait for a ride, despite the crappy weather and low traffic volume. Only ten minutes or so before I got a ride from a guy going past Rijeka and half way to Zagreb. Failing to mask my enthusiasm, I thanked him profusely, and we set out, with me acting as the navigator. The only real turn we had to make, I told him to go the wrong way, but luckily it only took us about 5 minutes to get back on track. The guy spoke English well, and was more than willing to inform me of the greatness and idiosyncrasies of ex-Yugoslavia. He had served a compulsary year in the military in his youth and felt much of the world would do well to serve a compulsory term in the Yugoslav army... to experience the gritty life and traverse unknown lands. Not sure what to take from that, I responded by saying that our military service is a minimum 4 years. Reprimanding our "professional" armed forces, I figured this was perhaps a touchy subject, and wary of delving into my actual thoughts on joining any murderous organization under the pretense of "seeing the world", we found ourselves at a bit of a loss for words. Yay, no more military talk. The guy was very nice though, and dropping me off at the exit ramp to his destination, I once again thanked him heartily, and posted up at the tollbooth for the highway to Zagreb under clearing skies.
Another two guys were already there, trying to get rides. One got a lift right away, but I walked over to and talked to the other as we waited. He was Croatian, but spoke English well and lived a life on the periphery by preference. He had with him a large plastic jug of homemade rakija, which he shared with me as the cars paid their toll and rejected our alternating thumbs. Feeling somewhat bad for perhaps decreasing his odds of getting a ride by standing with him, I offered to sit aside, but he assured me he was in no hurry, and so we talked of jobs, life, and bicycles; the later two of which he was an enthusiast. I quite enjoyed the conversation, and so was happy when we were both offered a ride to Zagreb by a surveyor returning from the jobsite. The surveyor spoke of weed the whole time and how in his village of 1000, at least 700 smoked. Dropping me off, the two headed into the city, and I tried for a ride to a town in the direction of the Serbian border. Hours passed, and I couldn't find anyone going that way to give me a ride. Plenty of offers to Zagreb, though. Turned down about ten of them before giving up on the idea of the road to Serbia. Wrote Zagreb on a piece of paper, and had a ride within moments. The ride unfortunately must have accelerated a bit too quickly out of the gates or something, and was pulled over by a cop about 500 yards from the tollbooth. Leaving my to twiddle my thumbs in the passenger seat, he walked to the cop car. Apparently he already had an unpaid speeding ticket, and resigning to the fact that "they were going to catch me eventually", he returned to the car with a sizeable fine. Sorry about his luck, but pleased that the police had no interest in me, we continued to drive to Zagreb.
Dropped off at the train station, I found myself with a lack of will to spend a couple more days to get to Belgrade. With a train headed there at midnight, the potential of seeing Isidora by 7:20 a.m. the next morning was enough to convince myself to take the 11 p.m. train. In the mean time, I walked around the center city. It was lively, old, romantic and whatnot, but I found myself rather tired, and lacking of the enthusiasm required to fully appreciate being in a new, foreign city. So, I sat at the base of a statue in a square, and listened contently to some Croatian '80's rock band perform as tourists and locals passed, danced, and clapped. Some guy, slightly younger than myself sat down next to me and asked if I wanted to talk. Was some Austrian kid, travelling the region by himself, and just looking for human interaction. I talked to him about my travels, and he reciprocated. Looking homesick overall, he nonetheless expressed his plans to venture further, remaining faithful to his desire to experience. An admirable chap, I talked until my train departure grew nigh and wished him luck. Walking back and waiting on the train platform, I ran into an English guy and a German who probably spoke better English than either of us. We shared a car on the night train, and had a good conversation, exchanging travel stories, and our grievences toward the others' cultures. The Brit expressed particular frustration in finding the linguistic logic behind my pronunciation of 'route' as 'root'. I managed to quell my attack on their retarded way of saying 'aluminium' and 'vitamin'. Anywho, nice guys, both seemingly well-to-do. The German shared some beers with us, and upon arrival in Belgrade, I wished them luck on their respective journeys to Bulgaria and Turkey, and hopped on the 40 tram back to the apartment.
