What on earth am I doing?

Good question. I thought about this very question in Belgrade and then in Sofia, dodging storms, scouring tourist guides and feeling stuck, isolated and - rather uncharacteristically - a long way from home. Not understanding a word anyone said for days on end exacerbated this situation. There must - I thought - be a nice, easy description of what I was up to. As it happens, there is - “past sell-by/post InterRail” city-hopping. Running round trying to “find” myself when, even though, to some extent, I’m already lost. (Either lost, or so expertly, thoroughly found, that the whole venture is a self-absorbed nonsense). A pre-midlife midlife-crisis, and not my first either. Was I traveling? Or merely moving from one city to the next?

Age and traveling solo aside, there are a number of key differences between ‘proper’ InterRailing, and my mildewed ‘Generations’ version:

I did not tear up with the natives
Most of what I got up to in Montenegro, Belgrade and Sofia could comfortably have been accomplished with a one day travelcard and an iPod. But then again, I enjoyed much better scenery and a markedly different atmosphere. Most of the natives I encountered were ‘impatient’, though you can hardly blame them. And, it’s important to add, they didn’t tend towards rudeness. And there were plenty of mitigating factors too; some of them, after all, may have seen cockerney bovver boys on telly, or have flown into or out of Stansted, or come across Little Englishers hamming up ‘harmless’ quasi political racism, much of which is directed towards Eastern Europe.

I did not jabber with a crazed shyster poetic Buddhist travelling companion
Rather, I occasionally smiled at witty snippets from pre-recorded radio shows. This, and loudly ‘la-la-la’-ing along to jazz or jazzy tunes has always been my best defence against attack, and are activities which, I’m happy to say, come quite naturally to me.

Booze?
Yes. Though often as not, a small amount guiltily and confusedly consumed in hotel rooms. And more often than not, this booze was ‘dubious’, although Montenegrin “Sick Nick” was far more palatable than some purportedly Belgian tin-fizz I bought in Sofia which had the undeniable tang of rubber.


After deciding to visit the Balkans, I wondered about sleeping. ‘How’ was easy. In a bed? Yes. Eyes? Closed. Naturally. Booking a trans-American journey the year before had been a doddle. The choice was more limited in Belgrade and Sofia, and especially more so in Bar. That said, booking rooms wasn’t a problem and on paper (or at least online) and the Sofia hotel looked appealingly, kitschy Communist. Belgrade looked happily perfunctory; Bar vaguely interesting.