Dueling Backpacks

Day 474 (October 15, 2020) – Zagreb, Croatia Agh, why did we leave the coast? was our first thought on arriving in Zagreb. We had taken the train from Split . It was a very modern train, only two carriages long, but it traveled at a decent clip to cover the 250-mile distance. This trip from Slit to Zagreb was the Croatian equivalent of going from sunny southern California to the gray and dreary Northeast. It was cold here. We had to dig out more layers from our bag to keep us warm on the walk from the train station to our Airbnb apartment. This was also the very first apartment of our entire trip that had heating and that we felt a need to use. This isn't, of course, considering all the times we didn't have heating and would have really appreciated  it. We had a good time in Zagreb, but I kept thinking while we were there, we could have been at the beach right now…

Day 470 (October 10, 2019) – Split, Croatia Off mainland Croatia are thousands of islands scattered in a broad arc across the Adriatic Sea. The thing to do in summertime is to hop from one island to the next, which is made very accessible by a huge network of inter-island ferries. We thought about doing this ourselves, but we were a little late in the season. In October, many of the ferry routes were running limited service, and by November many would cease entirely until the spring. We'd also already had our island hoping experience across Thailand’s Andaman Sea , so we felt like we weren’t missing out on too much.

Day 466 (October 6, 2019) – Dubrovnik, Croatia At some point on this trip we got tired of bus rides. When we were planning the last leg of our trip around the Balkans, we were really trying to use train lines to connect the dots on our travel map. We found train journeys more relaxing, entertaining, and convenient than sitting on a bus for hours. So rather than thinking of where we wanted to go, we were instead thinking, where can the train take us? Well, we soon realized that the trains around the Balkans were not like their central European counterparts. It was near impossible to plan an itinerary entirely by train. There are sections of track closed for construction in random places (like the short distance between Novi Sad and Belgrade ), and disputes between countries have effectively closed certain international routes (like the connection between Zagreb and Sarajevo). As a result, we ended up on a handful of buses.

Day 462 (October 3, 2019) – Kotor, Montenegro M ontenegro kept surprising us. Budva wa s beautiful, but Kotor might have been even more so. Kotor was only a short bus ride up the coast and while it didn’t have the beach appeal of Budva, it had some spectacular scenery and a really charming walled town. It was a nice place to spend some time.

Day 458 (September 29, 2019) - Budva, Montenegro It took us absolutely forever to get to Budva, but it was entirely worth the effort. The trip involved a 12-hour train ride, an overnight stop in the town of Bar, and us waiting at a bus station for two hours before finally catching the hour-long bus ride from Bar to Budva.

Day 454 (September 25, 2019) – Belgrade, Serbia In full disclosure, it is the beginning of May 2020 as I write this. Since being in Belgrade, our trip has come to its close, we spent four months at home, and I even started a new job. In some sense, Belgrade feels like a lifetime ago, but then I look back at the pictures and it feels as if it could have only been a few weeks ago. So before our memories of Belgrade and the entire rest of the trip fade too much, I wanted to finally finish up this blog. Now that I’m working, I expect that this is going to take a while, but better late than never.

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 pa...

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.

Day 441 – (September 12, 2019) – D ü sseldorf, Germany We, once again , found ourselves back in Germany! After leaving Brussels by train and making a quick transfer in Cologne, we had arrived in D ü sseldorf. We were starving by the time we got there so the first order of business was to find some food. We went for a couple mustard-slathered bratwurst to mark the occasion. What could be more German than that?

Day 438 (September 9, 2019) – Brussels, Belgium We flew to Brussels on Ryanair, which meant that we were flying not to the main Brussels Airport but to the Brussels South Charleroi Airport, which is used by most of the low-cost carriers. It’s kind of a stretch to include Brussels in the airport name as it’s about as close to Brussels as it is to France, but there was a bus service from the airport to downtown. An hour or so after boarding the bus we arrived in the center of Brussels where we found the subway and took the short ride out to the home of Lauren and Kyle (and their dog, Ellie). Lauren, Travis, and I all went to graduate school together, and Lauren and Kyle used to have a house in Philly not too far away from ours before moving across the pond to Brussels for work.

Day 434 (September 5, 2019) – Bratislava, Slovakia Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, was only a short train ride away from Vienna . After arriving at the Bratislava train station and walking to our new apartment, it was clear that Bratislava was a much smaller and more manageable city than Vienna. It was still the afternoon when we got settled in, so we went for a walk downtown. Waiting in the Vienna train station for our train to Bratislava. Walking around Bratislava. The downtown area was very cute and very European, but with a hint of Soviet flair. The city is situated on the Danube River and one of the major bridges across the river is decorated with a giant gray concrete UFO-like structure at the top. There is really no other way to describe it, but it screams of Soviet-era architecture. Otherwise, most of the city is composed of cute pedestrian streets, outdoor cafes, and a handful of noteworthy buildings, like the Historical Building of the Slovak...