Classic Oriënt Express 2009: Day 3

I recently found my old travel diary again and started reading it.  Seems that I made 2 very nice trips in the past, which I think may be very interesting for my blog.  Thus I decided to copy what I wrote about these train journeys through Europe on my blog.

This is the third day of my Oriënt Express Journey.

Last night my colleague of the Slovenian railways woke me up in the middle of the night to pay a supplement of 8 euro, without even trying to explain me why.  He gave me a receipt after payment, so I guess I'll check it out when I get back home.  The night on the train started out very cold, as the heating of the Serbian sleeper coach was not working.  As these coaches resemble the old Belgian international coaches a lot, I offered my help to the steward to try to get it all up and running again.  He opened the technical cupboard and let me push some buttons... and tadah, the heating was up and running again.  By the time I woke up the next morning, it was very cold again in the coach and the steward explained me that the heating failed again after crossing the border.  I guess it had something to do with changing the power cars at the border station, but I didn't offer my help anymore to get it up and running again.  Thus when the train got to Vinkovci, I decided to warm up a bit in one of the Croatian sitting coaches.  At noon the train finally arrived in Belgrade, with a delay of only 10 minutes.

As my last meal was my pasta in Venice, I was really hungry and started looking for a suitable restaurant to fill my empty stomach.  Despite my hunger, I was very picky, maybe even too picky, while searching for a restaurant.  It took me 2 hours before I was sitting at a table.  I entered this typical Serbian 'restoran', which looked like it came right out of Tito's days.  I ordered some soup, a nice coleslaw, cevapcici (of course) and some chips on the side.  The fresh home-made bread they gave with the food was so delicious that I ate 2 full baskets of it.  I drank 2 Cokes with my dinner, to be sure to have some sugar in my body and all of this only costed me 12 euros.

After my delicious meal (though I was a bit bothered by the people smoking in the restaurant - there was no law against smoking in restaurants in Serbia yet), I started my visit of the city in the Bohemian quarter 'Skadarlja'.  I then continued to the Kalemegdan-fortress, where I had a beautiful view on the confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers.  Downhill I visited a very nice orthodox cathedral and passed by the Konak of princess Ljubica.  Near to that place the shopping street starts, which brought me to the houses of parliament and the Saint Marcochurch.  The most beautiful sight, though, was kept to the end for me, which was the Holy Savabasilica, which is apparently still under construction.

On my way back to the station, I passed the main offices of the Serbian Railways, which is a totally different and more beautiful building compared to the main offices of the Belgian Railways.  The night train which was going to bring me to Sofia in Bulgaria, was almost empty.  In my entire coach there was nobody at all (except me of course).