Smuggling Aboard the Balkan Express

So today, nothing on the agenda but the 9-hour train from Sofia to Belgrade, Serbia. Good as much, since it was pretty dreary and rainy throughout the whole region. I was accompanied by three Slovenians on their way home via Belgrade, so I wasn't completely alone navigating the confusing Soviet train station.

The train system here couldn't be farther from Spain, haha. We are riding in these WW2-era trains, that aren't reliably on time, where no one abides by their assigned seat, pedal-operated trap-door toilet, etc etc. It wasn't as run down as the train from Cairo to Luxor we took last spring break, but it was close.

However, I was in for a funny an interesting surprise; all the other people in my cabin, along with numerous others throughout the train, were professional smugglers! They go to Bulgaria with cheap Serbian cigarettes, sell them, and on the return journey come back laden with cheap Bulgarian sunglasses and shoes. We were in the cabin with literally a three-generation network of smuggling. This old woman was running the whole enterprise, and her son and granddaughter - around high school age - were taking orders from her. One of the Slovenians, a girl named Melita, was sitting next to me and relayed these people's conversations to me after they'd left the train en route. But the first hour worth of the train ride, they were packaging these sunglasses and shoes and wrapping them together in packing tape and then stowing them around the cabin. Once the customs officers came and swiped everyone's passports at the Serbian border, though, they were able to operate "in the open," per se. At one point, they asked if Melita and I would get up from our seats for a moment. When we did, they pulled the seats off and removed the bulk of their smuggling booty: tubs and tubs of goat cheese!! Hahah. Exceptionally cheap in Bulgaria, apparently it can be pawned off as nicer stuff in Serbia and sold for a high price. It was just hilarious because of how many tubs there were - maybe twenty or thirty of those buckets that you can buy cookie dough in back in the States. They blatantly gave the station people some Euros when they disembarked somewhere in Serbia, and that was that. Haha - a little up close taste of the corruption and bribery that's the main reason Serbia isn't allowed to join the E.U. for.

Once those people left after the Serbian border crossing, Melita and I had the cabin to ourselves and we were able to put our feet up and sleep for a bit. Overall, it wasn't nearly as bad a train travel experience as Frommer's implied it was good to be. Plus, we all learned a valuable lesson: don't buy goat cheese out of unlabeled white buckets in Serbia; it's not as high quality stuff as you might believe! Ha.