Dueling Backpacks

Day 440 (September 20, 2019) – Novi Sad, Serbia We left Budapest from the main train station. We were headed to Novi Sad in Serbia. It was going to be a long trip. We spent down the rest of our Hungarian Forints at a bakery and a convenience store inside the train station and departed before noon. The scenery along the way was pretty but repetitive. Lots and lots of farmland. Departing the Budapest Train Station. On our way to Serbia. This was the view, more or less, for hours on end.  We had to stop on the Hungarian side of the border to get our exit stamp before crossing the border into Serbia. This was the most dramatic border crossing we had seen in a long time. There was a barbed wire fence stretching off in a perfectly straight line for as far as you could see. It really felt like we were off to someplace new. On the Serbian side we had our passports checked again and then switched to a Serbian train to go the rest of the way to Novi Sad. It was past s

Day 447 (September 18, 2019) – Budapest, Hungary Our arrival in Budapest really felt like it was the beginning of the end. We had said goodbye to friends in Dusseldorf and Brussels and Travis and I were out on our own until we arrived back at home. It also came with slight feeling of panic because we had a lot of trip planning to do. We had been so busy the last few weeks that we had nothing planned or booked past Budapest. We had a rough itinerary, but no specifics worked out yet. We had a little over five weeks until we had to be in Rome to catch our cruise home and we had to make sure we left Europe’s Schengen area for an appropriate amount of time so we wouldn’t overstay our 90-day allowance.