April 26 2005 page 11 |
2005 BALKANS TOURBen Oostdam |
Nis |
| Because of the heavy rainstorm, I woke up earlier than necessary. That allowed me to go to the reception and have my Canon camera battery charged using my 220-110V converter. In the meantime, I had breakfast in a basement cafeteria-saloon which was uglified with a large Coke machine. It was still raining when I walked to the station and found out that instead of taking a train straight from Beograd to Sofia, I would have to transfer to a bus at Nis because the rail segment between there and the bordertown of Dimitrovgrad was under repair. |
| The train left at 08:45 and I tried to keep track of the sequence of stations: Palanka, 10:15: fellow passenger eats giant cake wrapped in greasy newspaper. Scenery gently sloping, yellow flowers, red rooftiles, muddy and much garbage trapped in trees along banks of creeks. Lapovo, 10:40: sun gets through and makes field look yellow Cuprija, 11:00: my fellow passenger got off: he spoke some English, was recently married and is a salesmen of cleaning cloths making as much as 500 Euro per month while 200 is the average. Paracin, 11:25 conductor tries to explain the bus; 2 ladies get in and the older one starts smoking Stalac, 12:00 English speaking dentist student of 21 gets off; she has no boyfriend and no job, spends full-time on studying; now going home for Easter Vacation Aleksinac, 12:30 completed trip to toilet and kept door closed with my foot. Used footpedals to pump water and flush. Nis, 13:00 end of the line, everybody runs to the solitary bus where hell breaks loose and we are all squashed in like sardines! |
 I would have liked to spend more time in NIS, but promised myself to come back here EC Projects, 2000/2004 BLO fecit 20050622 go to: page 12 o r to: contents |
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 Championships born here |