A Bus to Serbia at Dawn

"Either everyone at the money exchanges, restaurants and taxi stands has been honest or their scams are so conservative as to go unnoticed. A little goes a long way here."

 

Chapter 5 - An Early Bus, A Pause at Customs, Lost in Time, Shutdown, Pizza

If you have the opportunity to see a cloud of birds backlit by the Bulgarian dawn, I suggest taking it.

Quiet little exit from the Mold Dominion. I quite liked the loft and the upstairs sitting area, but the Lovecraftian dripping downstairs and the fact that my wet footprints never dried made me eager to bid these lodgings farewell.

It was early enough to where I could walk to the bus station. It's North of the city, more northern even than the Lion's Bridge, which was as North as I had been previous. I wanted to take the subway, though, to say I'd done it. So, it was a dark little walk past the Soviet monuments to the metro.

It looks like the subway runs 24 hours, which seems unnecessary, but I have no idea what goes on around here at night. With so many early morning plans and buses that can't be missed, I've been careful about not going out and getting trashed. I lost a day in Poland that way.

I bought a ticket from the counter. I was like, "Bus Station" and she was like, "Wha?" and I was like, "Uh, Luh-vuv Most?" and she was like, "Ah, Lavov Most!" and gave me the ticket. When you know the word for bridge and the animal that guards that bridge, you can go anywhere.

It was only one stop away from the bus station.

I made myself laugh on the escalator thinking about repeating the arms flapping trick that helped me find the Bridge of Eagles. "Most? ROAR!"

The subway is fast, clean, and awesome. Even with a change of lines, I made it

There are about forty different bus companies servicing, I guess everywhere. I was looking for something called Niš Express, but after a few conversations with a few dour Angelica Hustons, I discovered they call themselves something else and are in a different rabbit's warren.

They go by the name Muktul over here, which is, like, the name of the chief orc in Serbia. So, I made my way over there, got one of those little plastic dixie cups of coffee and bought a ticket. It was, like, no money. I've spent nothing on this trip.

 A drunk man behind me was buying cigarettes and saying, "Ah ah-ah! Ah ah-ah!" to the cashier. It was some kind of folk rhythm. I think he was trying to say he had been up dancing all night. Found my seat on the bus and settled in.

Time runs so differently when you're where you want to be. The hour leading up to this felt like ten minutes and the three minutes waiting for the driver to turn the ignition felt like twenty minutes. It was sweet to read about the marriageable daughters of Middlemarch in that dark place.

    

Spark spark, vroom vroom,we were off. Then it was hills and tunnels and streams and mountains and endless red-roofed houses.

I packed a bunch of physical books because I wasn't sure I'd be able to keep the Kindle charged, but the Kindle has worked just fine, so next time (Croatia? Latvia? Scotland?) I'll save the weight. Figured I'd start lightening the load and picked up John Wyndham's The Chrysalids. Ripped through 200 pages in no time. Cool old classic sci-fi thing. Absorbing enough to read in that one sitting.

I read it in line for customs at the Serbian border. My passport didn't scan on their machine, and the agent was like, "Si-moon, Si-moon, what will we do with you. What will we do with Si-moon?" but after looking at me and the picture back and forth a dozen times, she stamped it and I was through.

Will that happen again tomorrow in Kosovo and Macedonia? Who can say?

A huge bailiff-looking dude came on and searched the bathroom and luggage compartments to make sure no stowaways had sneaked on.

We passed some closed little restaurants and souvenir stands. Abandoned places are sad. I want every web to be full of flies and all the flies to be happy too.

Suddenly, a sign saying "Skull Tower!" told me we were already in Niš. I thought it was a five-hour trip, but here it was three hours, and here we were. Turns out it's a different time zone, so the arrival time was listed as... who knows? I was here.

Got out, pulled out the instructions to the hostel I'd written down and I was in the streets. Dismal place on a grey day. But they can't help the weather. Twenty minute walk through a shopping district and across some train tracks.

The room was in a cool, colorful building that looks like a set for a children's show inside. Big pink beanbags, orange and yellow stripes on the walls. You can easily imagine a bunch of teenage Australians fucking a bunch of French teachers here.

Everyone would be playing foosball and making tea and writing letters home with their hair pulled back and their tongues sticking out of the corners of their mouths. To show they are concentrating.

I'm pretty much the only one here, though.

The hosts told me the Skull Tower was closed today. That had been the whole reason for coming here. How do you close the Skull Tower? Alas, but when de good load closes a skull tower, he open up a fortress park.

So, I got a map. dumped off my bags, and I was right back out.

Wet little walk around the city. Not much to recommend. Maybe in spring, it's beautiful. There are many parks, and the river is a real river, not like that sad little trickle in Sofia. Broad and strong. Wide and mighty. Hail to thee, Nišava!

In Sofia every park was a skate park, but here they're large, beautifully planned rambles with benches and nooks and hills and statues. Everything was dotted with bright yellow leaves and quite charming.

I made the most of a little kick-around in the main areas and found an enormous old cemetery on the outskirts.

Snails crawled on the crumbling crosses.

Found a cobblestoned street with six restaurants all with those giant green umbrellas and awnings advertising Tuborg and Carlsberg Beer. Those logos and the red Illy coffee signs are as Eastern European as it gets. When I see them back in the states, I am instantly transported back here.

None of these places had food, though. A little purple pizza place serviced all of them, so I went in for a Serbian slice. No English, so lots of pointing.

Cheese slice with ham chunks. The server held up those red and yellow ketchup and mustard containers, and let them hover over my slice. She raised an eyebrow meaning: "Should I squirt?"

"No thanks!" I said. No ketchup or mustard on my pizza, thanks.

The yellow one was mayonnaise, though. They eat mayo on their pizza here. I saw the white squiggles on everyone else's. You Hellman's for this one,Niš.

I half-formed some kind of religious Miracle Whip thing as the reason for it, but abandoned the joke.

Slice was good. Washed it down with another dixie cup of coffee.

There was some sort of student protest in the main square. About two hundred kids. Peaceful. Two bored cops half-watched them. Lots of tv cameras. Not sure what it was about.

In Cluj, Romania, I saw an awesome protest against a gold mine, but this had less interesting signs and less potential for violence, so I left.

A few stray dogs kept that theme going. I wish some giant neutering spray could rain from the sky and end all of us. Wouldn't that be nice? I think it would.

That was it. I had a half-formed idea of taking a nap and maybe having a quick drink somewhere. You know, just one. Just wet my mustache for a few minutes. But... I slept a long time, and now there's no chance I'll see the three fist statues in Bubanj Park.

I'm a little hungry, but I don't think anything's open this late, so I'll get some crusty bread in the morning and take the bus to Priština, Kosovo where they've got lots of food!

Niš gets a C. Look, pal, you want a higher grade, you make sure the Skull Tower never closes. Got me?