The last few weeks have been utter madness, and despite my best intentions, I didn’t spend any of the dozens of hours aboard trains, planes, and automobiles working on blogposts. What can I say: sometimes being on-the-go lights a fire under me, and sometimes it just sets me on fire. I was so anxious about missing a connection, leaving something behind, getting stuck at passport control, losing luggage, getting lost, or any number of other potential catastrophes that I couldn’t focus on work.

And in-between the constant transport, we were snatching at opportunities to see these new places and getting totally turned around, ending up with plenty of new adventures to write about. We’re way behind on the story-telling here, folks, so buckle up. This post is going to be a long one.

Belgrade, Serbia

We drove back from our trip down the coast of Croatia and I had two days to wash my clothes and pack them back up before hopping on a bus for Belgrade. I was feeling nervous about how close we were going to cut it with our 90 days in Croatia. October 3rd, our leave date, would be my 90th day (Nicole’s 89th), and I was worried about there being a problem if I’d somehow miscounted. So I decided to put my worries to rest by scampering across the border to Serbia for three days (and adding a new country to my passport).

This was my first experience with FlixBus, which is a great resource for anyone trying to see a lot of Europe on a budget. The tickets are affordable, and the buses are relatively comfortable. Be aware, however, that although they advertise WiFi, they don’t actually have WiFi (not that we’ve been able to get to work, so far).

My plan for arrival in Belgrade was to get off the bus at the station on my ticket, which I believed to be the main bus station, hit the ATM (because bus stations, as a general rule, have ATMs), and grab a cab (because bus stations, again as a general rule, have cabs hanging around out front) to my hotel. The entire region had been dumping rain for two days, and the bus ride was just as wet. By the time we reached the city limits of Belgrade, it was getting dark out. I’d made friends with a couple of my seat mates during the latter half of the drive, and as we pulled up to a stop, the guy sitting next to me asked which stop I was getting off at. I showed him my ticket.

“Oh!” he said, “that’s this stop.”

I looked outside dubiously, “This stop?”

“Yes, yes, this is that stop.” He gestured to the others around us, who looked at my ticket and agreed.

I am not good under pressure. I panic. In hindsight, the place was clearly in the middle of nowhere and I had no cell phone service, no map, no local currency, no knowledge of the language, and no further form of transportation, so staying on the bus was definitely a better option, no matter where it might be taking me. Better to be stuck at the final destination bus station, where there would be more resources, than at a tiny, random bus stop in some random neighborhood in the outskirts of Belgrade. But I didn’t think it through until I was standing in the rain watching the bus drive away and mentally chastising myself for being an idiot. All I thought, in that moment, was that the bus might drive away before I could get off, and this was my stop, and who knew where I would end up.

Well, I ended up alone in the rain with no idea where I was and no plan.

Still, I knew my hotel was in the center of the city, near where the rivers meet. Downtown was pretty clear, in the distance, so I made my best guess and started walking.

At first it was kind of fun. But as the rain persisted and got progressively worse, and I got progressively more hungry and cold and tired, it became less and less fun. I did figure out that while my phone wouldn’t load the map, it would focus on the grid square my hotel would be in if there was a map, and it would show me where I was and which direction I was facing. So I could use that like a compass to keep myself moving progressively closer and closer to the hotel, and eventually I was able to find free WiFi to navigate the last few blocks.

I did get the opportunity to see a lot more of Belgrade than I imagine most tourists do. Six miles of it, to be precise, and most of it through neighborhoods that I doubt get regular visitors. I saw a sleek, beautiful business park, tiny run-down neighborhoods, towering Soviet-style apartment buildings. Big tech stores with flashing signs and glass walls, high-end car dealerships, and down an adjacent street tiny businesses crammed in what looked like storage containers beside the sidewalk.

I ended up treating my trip to Belgrade more like a retreat than a visit to another country, but I did explore Belgrade Fortress and Start Grad, the hilltop area overlooking where the rivers merge. There’s a Kalemegdon Park is beautiful and neighbors an extensive high-end shopping district, where I had a great meal. I enjoyed an outdoor exhibition on children’s perceptions of war during World War II compared to the current situation with Ukraine, as well as the informative signs all around the fortress. I definitely plan on going back to Belgrade one day. The historic city is beautiful, and the city is clearly looking towards the future.

Luckily, my return to Zagreb was a lot less eventful, though we did get stalled at the border for an hour, and I still don’t know why. It didn’t seem like anything was happening, no one was looking at the luggage or the engine, so it wasn’t border inspection or mechanical issues. We simply sat there, just beyond the border control gate, as time ticked by and the bus grew ever more uncomfortable. But then, at least the bus was there.

Ljubljana, Slovenia

View of Ljubljana descending from the castle

My return from Serbia coincided with Nicole’s parents coming for a visit, which kept Nicole busy our last few days in Zagreb, and then, quite abruptly, it was time to go. It startled us. We knew it was coming, counted the days, but one night we were going to meet friends for dinner and I said something about having a week.

“It’s four days,” Nicole corrected me.

“No, it’s a week,” I insisted, sure of myself.

I was wrong. We had four days, and I still had a month’s worth of things I wanted to do. Funny, when you have more time you often end up doing less. It’s easy to put things off until tomorrow when you have 90 days to do them. But “tomorrow” turns into a week, and then a month, and then you wind up with four days left, and too much to do.

We left Zagreb nervously, feeling like we must have forgotten something. It’s difficult to parse out what you brought and what was there, whether that conversation about buying a wine opener happened in another city or this one, and are we really sure none of the three wine openers here belongs to us? We made it onto the bus, and then to the border. We passed easily through passport control, and waited for the bus. It pulled up, people pressed forward to get back on board.

And then it drove away, turned around, and went back across the border, with all our luggage still on it.

Nicole and I stared after it, jaws dropped. We walked out into the road, trying to keep it in sight, but the bus kept going, and going, and it disappeared. We both issued a few choice expletives while we wondered aloud what was going on, and looked around at all the other passengers, who mostly seemed bored but otherwise unbothered by the whole thing. A few other people looked as freaked out as we were, but since we seemed to be in the minority, we decided to grab a vending machine coffee to help settle our nerves and hope for the best. There really wasn’t much we could do, anyway. I was grateful I’d taken my whole backpack with me when we disembarked for passport control, because Nicole didn’t have anything except her phone and her passport on her.

My mom suggested that the bus might have had to go through some kind of search, which apparently happened to my parents crossing the border from Canada to the United States last year. She said they got their luggage back, first, though. Still, I think it’s the most likely explanation, because the bus did eventually come back, and we did get our luggage back. Still, it’s unnerving to see all your possessions driving across an international border without you without any sort of explanation.

From the bus station in Ljubljana we managed to find a taxi, and got a tour of the city when the driver took us to the wrong address in the opposite direction of our AirBnB (Aliceva Street versus Alesovceva Street), but we got there.

Ljubljana is one of my new favorite places. If this city isn’t on your bucket list, it needs to be. Stunning doesn’t begin to cover it. It’s fantastic. We explored the hilltop castle (the site of which has roots dating back to hunter-gatherers 5,000 years ago), walked the historic city center and its countless bridges, and I visited the Ljubljana City Museum. It’s a beautiful building with well-curated exhibits, particularly the permanent historical exhibition on the second floor, which walks visitors through six distinct periods of Ljubljana’s history chronologically in a way that really does feel like a stroll through time itself and includes the oldest wheel ever found, which was uncovered in this area. Below the building are ruins from the previous 5,000 years of history, and visitors can see layers of history clearly defined, along with artifacts from each era juxtaposed to one another. There was a display with six shelves of bowls and pitchers, the oldest on the bottom and the youngest on the top. The slow transition of techniques and the consistency of the craftsmanship simultaneously emphasized the expansion of human technological capabilities and the ingenuity of ancient peoples, both because of the intricacy and beauty of the work they produced with simpler tools and because we still use the same basic shapes and items today, despite advancements.

Our last day in Ljubljana brought back my nerves. When we booked it, a 3 am bus ride sounded like a great idea. We could sleep through it, arrive in plenty of time before we could check in at our AirBnB in Bassano del Grappa, and it was cheaper. As the journey approached, however, I was anxious about when it would be wise to sleep, for fear of missing the bus or our stop, and about forgetting something, about getting a cab at 2 am in a country where Uber doesn’t exist and we still didn’t have phone service. Bouncing all over the Balkans was wearing on us, and we were excited to get through the final leg of our transition to Italy.

Venice, Italy

Lucky for us, the AirBnB host had mentioned a local taxi app, and we were able to get quick and easy transportation to the bus station in plenty of time. The bus was already there, waiting, so we boarded quickly and settled in our seats. I was still too anxious to sleep, but the drive was eerie and beautiful, with foggy views of the sea and the rolling countryside, and then ancient walls and cobblestone streets as we rolled into Italy and Treviso. Many of the views reminded me vividly of the movie Luca, particularly those scenes at night when the two boys are sneaking around. I felt transported.

We arrived in Venice just as the sun was rising on October 8, and dragged our suitcases on a zigzagging path over three bridges to get to the train station, where we settled in to wait. We couldn’t check in to our AirBnB until 3 pm and figured it made more sense to wait in Venice than Bassano. The lack of sleep was really starting to wear on us, by this time. Nicole had taken a couple hours’ nap the afternoon before and had managed to sleep a little on the train, but I hadn’t been able to actually fall asleep, despite my efforts. By the time we boarded the train to Bassano, I’d been awake for over 25 hours straight and was definitely feeling it.

I was more prepared for Bassano than I had been for Belgrade (or so I thought). I’d looked up bus and walking routes and taken screenshots of everything (I swear, I remember doing so very clearly), and once again, plan A was to catch a taxi, anyway. This time we did make it to the main train station, and there was a lane with a big “TAXI” sign in front of it. There weren’t, however, any taxis there, so we settled into wait. One did show up, but a group of teenage boys jumped in and snatched it. I went looking for my screenshots and couldn’t find them anywhere (I’m still not sure if I accidentally deleted them, or took them too far back and simply couldn’t locate them, or what). Nicole asked the ticket seller about taxis and we called the number he gave her, but we got some sort of message in Italian about the number not connecting. We’d pulled up Google maps while on WiFi at the Venice train station, and were able to figure out how to walk to our AirBnB. By the time we’d been waiting around for an hour with no taxis in sight, we decided to just walk. It was not the most pleasant experience, lugging 70 pounds (best guess, we didn’t have access to a scale) a mile and a half over cobblestone roads with minimal sidewalks or shoulders after being awake for 30 hours straight, but we managed it, and when we finally arrived, I flopped face-first on my bed and promptly crashed. Nicole somehow still had the energy to go to the grocery store and get food, she tried to rouse me when she left but I was so out of it I couldn’t process a thing she was saying.

In hindsight, we should have kept the next two days open for recuperating and settling in, seeing as we were then going to fly to London for five days. But we are quite good at over-estimating ourselves, and so had bought tickets to an opera, Apollo and Hyacinthus, in Venice for October 9. We got a late start after the hectic days before, and were unfamiliar with the route to the train station and the trains themselves. We missed the train we needed, and although we rushed through the streets of Venice, it’s an easy place to get lost and we missed the opera. But, as were were already there and all dressed up, we decided to buy tickets for a different opera later that night. It was a smaller production, about Vivaldi and his muse. We walked across the courtyard to a cafe and settled in with a glass of wine.

“You know,” I said, looking at the 8 pm start time on the ticket, “We should probably check what time the last train leaves for Bassano.”

Once I’d said it, I felt the pit in my stomach. Luckily the cafe had WiFi, and we quickly looked it up.

“9:57.” We stared at each other. Looked up how long it would take to get to the train station. Twenty-five minutes. Nicole went back across the courtyard to the theater to ask how long the performance was. She came back smiling.

“It’s an hour and fifteen minutes. She told me we should have plenty of time, as long as we know the route back.”

Venice, for anyone wondering, is a bit like a corn maze. Except the buildings are a good deal taller, very few of the streets are actually straight, and half the dead-ends are water with another path laying tantalizingly on the other side, just a bit too far to leap across. Plus, there’s the Grand Canal, which is 300 feet across at its widest point, and cuts through the city. There are only four bridges spanning the 2.5-mile-long waterway, so ferry service across can often save a lot of time and effort (particularly if someone (say, me) were crazy enough to wear heels).

We checked the route, the duration, reassured ourselves we had an extra 20 minutes even if we got a little turned around, and settled in for dinner before returning to the theater for the show.

It was… fine. I’m no expert on opera, but I’ve always been under the impression that the costumes and over-acting was meant to convey enough of the story that you could follow the general plot without needing to understand the language. Although there were moments where there was a lot I could infer (such as a scene where a man and woman stood apart from each other, reaching longingly toward one another before turning away, the woman clutching a bloody scarf), most of the production featured characters sitting or standing still and monologuing, and I was completely lost. It was difficult, too, to keep the characters clear as it seemed there were different actors portraying younger versions of the two narrators. It also wasn’t held in a theater, but a ballroom, with chairs set out in rows and a short platform at the front of the room. Even when characters were standing, it was difficult to see them from our seats near the back, and the muse was seated for most of the performance, so she may as well have not been on-stage at all.

Still, the singing and music were lovely, and it made us curious about what a more traditional opera in a theater might be like.

At 9:18, Nicole and I darted from the room while the performers paused for applause. I’m not sure if that was the end or not, but we couldn’t afford to find out. I didn’t like our chances of finding a place to stay in Venice at 10 pm, especially not something either of us could afford. So we hurried out of the theater and down the street, following Nicole’s freshly-reloaded Google maps directions. We were making good time, and then:

“That’s a dock.” We stood there and stared at it. It was empty of both boats and people. We checked the map again. It wanted us to take a ferry across. A ferry that, clearly, was no longer running. We checked the sign, just to be sure. It had closed hours ago. Google lied to us. We looked up the Grand Canal towards the Rialto Bridge and cursed in unison. It was far away. Too far. Still, this was why we had the twenty extra minutes. We took off running, in our formal dresses and me in heels, trying to be careful of the cobblestones. The map wasn’t loading anymore, and we didn’t have time to stand around looking at it at every intersection, anyway. We ran, and hit dead ends, continuously trying to reach the canal-side walkway that would give us a straight shot to the bridge and coming up short. The same man with a dog watched us race by four times before we finally found a way through, and we kept running. My feet were on fire, but I wouldn’t mind nursing blisters for the next week if we could just get on that train.

We emerged from the streets to another dead end at the Grand Canal and looked at the Rialto Bridge, which didn’t seem to have gotten any closer at all. We were down to twenty minutes until the train left, now. Not enough time, even if we were at the bridge right then. We still would have had to cross half the city, buy a ticket, and get on board.

“Does that say ‘taxi’?” Nicole pointed out breathlessly.

It did. There were two guys there, chatting, probably thinking they were done for the day. It was nearly 10 pm on a Sunday, after all. But we ran up to them, panting and sweating in dresses and jewelry and hair done up.

“Are you still running?” I pleaded.

“Where are you going?” one of the men asked.

“The train station. Santa… San Lucia?” Nicole and I were talking over each other, and I know I fumbled with the name, trying to remember and hoping the guy got the idea.

He spoke to his friend, then said, “Fifty euros. Five-zero.”

Nicole and I looked at each other. We both knew that if we got trapped in Venice, we’d be lucky to find a room for the night for less than a hundred, and that was assuming we happened to stumble on the cheapest possible option. So we agreed, and the man started flicking switches and helped us into the boat.

“We’re Cinderella, we’ve got to get home by midnight,” Nicole joked. It was actually a really good point, the train leaving at 9:57 would drop us off in Bassano at around 11:15, and by the time we collected our bikes and got back home to shed our formal wear, it would probably be just about midnight.

Our ‘carriage’ had shiny wood paneling and plush leather seats and a minibar. I declared that we’d accidentally booked ourselves a water-limo. It was open in the back, and we sat on the bench looking out over the 13th-18th century buildings lining the canal as the wind cooled the sweat on our brows. Soon we were on our feet, watching Venice in all it’s nighttime finery glide by us as the water splashed and played. People on the streets stopped, heads turning to follow us as we went by, and I imagined what we must look like, with our makeup and updos, glittering jewelry, dresses fluttering in the breeze as this gorgeous boat glided through the mostly-empty canals of Venice.

“This was so worth 50 euros,” I told Nicole, both of us grinning.

I paid the guy as we hurried off the boat, twenty feet from the train station with 8 minutes until departure. I flat out refused to run again, now that I knew we would make it the pain was making itself known. In my defense, I’ve worn those heels to work before, and had no problems standing on them for six hours a day and walking all over the school in them. But they’re a little loose and there’s a seam right under the ball of my foot, where most of the weight settles. Apparently when I’m running, or at least speed-walking, it rubs the skin raw. It didn’t help that it’s been a few months since I’ve worn heels at all. And I didn’t expect to be doing quite so much cardio.

We slipped onto the train with a minute to spare and collapsed into our seats before recounting our day with dazed giggles.

View out the back of our “carriage” as we raced from the ballroom to get home by midnight

“You know, we probably should have just stayed in Bassano when we missed the train in the first place,” I pointed out.

“But then we wouldn’t have had a story to tell,” Nicole retorted.

So there you are, dear readers. I hope you enjoyed the story, because we went through quite a lot of chaos to get it for you.

The train set off, our third time making the journey between Venice and Bassano in less than two days.

“I can’t believe we have to repack and do this again the day after tomorrow.”

We both groaned.

London, England

Like I said, this post is massive. But never fear, we’re coming to the end of it soon. This section should be shorter. Hopefully. Unless I’m forgetting another chaotic adventure, which is entirely possible. If I am, it will surely come out as I work my way through the last week.

Tower Bridge, with Tower of London in the background

Booking a 10 am flight out of Venice seemed like a good idea. After all, 10 am is a perfectly respectable hour to be somewhere. But then you take into account that the gate closes at 9:25, and you have to check in and go through security and passport control, and there’s a bus to take from the Venice train station to the Venice airport, and the train to Venice takes an hour and only runs once every hour, and the buses weren’t running early enough in the morning and we still hadn’t figured out how to call a taxi, and what you end up with is two still very tired girls leaving at 5:30 in the morning, muttering about how the planing of this entire month of our lives was an utter disaster and we both wanted to sleep for a month.

Still, we were relieved when the whole process went off without a hitch, and although hassled and tired and hungry, we made it to London and sat down to enjoy a pint (of cider, neither of us likes beer) and a burger with chips before venturing across the city to check in.

London, for me, was more of a relaxing getaway than sightseeing opportunity. I was fortunate to study abroad at Imperial College the summer of 2015, and saw all the major sights during those six weeks. Plus, I love London enough that I have no doubt I’ll find my way back there again in the future, and given how hectic the last couples of weeks were, all I really wanted to do was enjoy being back and hit up some old haunts. With that in mind, I went back to my old dorm and the building I had classes in, wandered through nearby Hyde Park and found a tree to sit beneath and while away the afternoon with The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. Nicole and I walked the Thames from the Tower of London and met up with a friend we met in Zagreb, Julie, at the Porterhouse Pub in Covent Garden. We perused the books in Waterstones and Hatchard’s at Piccadilly Circus (having used the release on Tom Felton’s Beyond the Wand as a flimsy excuse to make the trip in the first place). I introduced Nicole to Nando’s and followed her through Westminster (a bit reluctantly, the crowds in that area are a total nightmare—if you plan on visiting, I recommend going early, before traffic really picks up steam). Before we knew it, our relaxing escape was coming to an end.

I think we both really needed the trip to London. Although we aren’t fluent in the languages of the countries we’ve been visiting and in large part are still communicating in English, we’re still surrounded by it all the time, and everyday transactions are more complicated when you don’t share a language. It wears on you, trying to be understood and trying to respect the local language and culture and trying not to look like you expect everyone to speak English, because you don’t, but you also can’t magically learn a language in a month, and so English is what you’ve got. To suddenly be surrounded by English, to be able to understand everything going on around you without effort, to know that everyone you talk to is going to understand what you’re saying and you’ll be able to understand them in return… it’s such a relief. That’s something that comes with time and fluency. It can be achieved in a foreign language. We just aren’t staying anywhere long enough to even approach that level of comfort.

I found myself wishing we’d booked another day or two in London, but it was time to get back to Bassano, where we only have a couple of weeks to soak everything up.

After another round of transportation bingo (tube, train, plane, bus, and another train), we were so ready to be in one place for a while, and wishing we had more time in Bassano to relax before moving again. The last train was crowded, but after a couple stops it started to clear out and we were able to snag a couple seats near the door, a man settling in across from us. We were chatting idly, tiredly giggling over some nonsense I’d been reading, when the man leaned towards us.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said, with an American accent, “but where are you from?”

We told him we were from Nevada, and he said he was from Idaho—Coeur d’Allene (still wish I’d made it up there on my last trip with Danica, but c’est la vie). And then he asked us where in Nevada, and we said Lake Tahoe, and he told us he used to live in the area, so we narrowed to field further (this is a game you start playing when you travel abroad long enough. Everyone knows the United States, so you start with that and throw in the state, because most people will roll their eyes at you for just saying “USA” because they’ve usually already guessed that much and it’s almost 4 million square miles, so it hardly means anything at all. So you start with “United States, Nevada” and then narrow it down progressively as it becomes apparent the other person might actually know what you’re talking about) and said “Gardnerville.”

Church near our AirBnB in Bassano del Grappa

“I used to live behind the Anker Car Wash!” he told us. We were flabbergasted. It’s one thing to run into somebody who happens to be from the same little town when you’re in an airport or another place tourists congregate. Weird, but if you’re going to run into someone from home it makes sense it would be in one of those places most tourists wide up at some point or another (a hotel, the Trevi Fountain, Pompeii, Eiffel Tower). But this was a regional train to a town just as small as our community back home. It was mostly locals, headed home from work or school. And even then, the train ran every hour, and had a dozen carriages, and he happened to sit down right next to us.

His name was Tim, and soon his wife Deonne came over to join us, and the next hour sped by as we exchanged travel stories and recounted details from home. They’re a wonderful couple, and I hope we’ll be able to meet up with them again before we head south for Otranto.

It’s funny, how small the world really is. And how, just when you’re starting to forget that, it will inevitably remind you.

And so On It Goes…

Alright, I know that was a MASSIVE update, so thank you for bearing with me if you made it to the end. We’re all current now, which is a huge relief for me! I’ll be back in a week or so with an update about Bassano itself, now that we have a chance to explore it.

In other news: I’m making progress on The Next Town Over. The podcast will launch on December 27th, so mark your calendars! Or you can just sign up for updates by clicking the button below. We plan to host a virtual launch party, and I think it’s going to be awesome—so don’t miss out!

October 17, 2022: Jet-Setting and Train-Hopping: Belgrade, Ljubljana, Venice, and London

Belgrade, Serbia

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Venice, Italy

London, England

And so On It Goes…