Inertia, or Why Go Anywhere

Last weekend was American Independence Day, on July 4th, so I had a day off from work on Friday the third.  This gave me a 3-day weekend to play with, and I planned to take in some regional travel, which I hadn't done yet since arriving in Serbia.

So the next step was to select a destination.  A lot of places seem like they take a really long time to reach considering how close they are to Belgrade, especially by bus and train.  One thought I had was Romania, because it's next door, and it's one of those places I've always wanted to go, and not only because of Dracula.  I don't know that much about it, just one of those places that vaguely interests me.  Bucharest is a cool name for a city.  Then I discovered that there aren't buses from Belgrade to Romania, for whatever reason--just trains that take a long time.  So the only option for that was to go to a town near the Serbian border, like Timisoara, and maybe continue on from there (to Transylvania?!).  Option 1.

Another option was Macedonia.  My colleague/once-and-future-roommate Nathan is in Skopje right now, so I would've had a bit of a guide, and maybe a place to stay.  Also, the other week I watched this really sweet movie called Shutka Book of Records about one of the largest Roma communities in the world, which is right nearby Skopje.  However, I learned from Nathan that he was planning a trip to Greece over the weekend, which didn't rule out the option per se, though.  And Skopje isn't that far away fromBelgrade either.

 Then I came to another consideration: the weather.  It's been raining off-and-on almost every day in Belgrade, so I looked at an extended weather forecast for the region.  It was still mostly rain everywhere throughout the weekend, but at least on Saturday, Budapest was displayed assunny, in the high 20s.  Check!  And I've definitely wanted to go to Budapest.  It sounds like a supercool place, like lots of castles and Nobel laureates and stuff like that.  And the trains to Budapest took awhile, but there was an overnight option, which I liked the sound of.  Hungary was looking good.

However, when I got to the weekend, I didn't get around to it.  One reason, I wasn't that organized around travel (I didn't want to be: I wanted to go with a backpack and without reservations, right?).  Also, Universiade (this international sports competition thing of University kids)  is going on in Belgrade right now, and local news outlet Studio B had asked if I'd be willing to lend my charming American accent to some short English-language news bits, and I had canceled on them once or twice so felt a little guilty.  However, in the end, they didn't schedule me for anything over the weekend either, eliminating that obstacle, in hindsight.

So I could've gone somewhere, but I didn't.  I was even thinking of trying to take a day trip by bus to somewhere nearby, where I could just hike or whatever.  The problem is, when you sleep in and you're not organized till 2 or 3 at the very earliest, day trips are kind of difficult.  I still had a good time though, chilling in the Magic Garden, rokkin out on Povetarac barge, plenty of fun.  And most valuable, I managed to catch up on sleep a bit, because next weekend is...EXIT Festival!  Really excited.  Not gonna sleep then, very much.  Hope it doesn't rain, very much.