After fighting with various travel agents to get tickets, the suspense was immense; we had bludgeoned off hordes of summer-hungry Serbians to get on this train. Travel lady guaranteed us an experience not to be forgotten and thus, we steeled across underwhelming Belgrade, city of Cyrillic. Jen and I conjured images of steam blowing forward, caressing our tired souls; our sleeper car was decked in purple velvet, we had our own little bellhop to alert us of our stop. We were ready!
We got to the train station.
We were no longer ready.
The train stretched endlessly on across the horizon. Its corridors were narrow, dimly lit and covered in looping graffiti. We were let into our ten-foot-high by six-feet-across tinder sleeping box. 
The train company disguised six red pleather fold-into-the-wall benches as our beds. Slowly our four fellow inmates made their way into tinder box F24—one Serbian grandmother who spoke only Serbian; one Serbian grandfather, not related to Serbian grandmother, who immediately took off his shoes; one blonde Serbian girlfriend who seemed innocuous enough; and one rather rotund, rather common Serbian boyfriend who impressed his girlfriend with his succession of loud to louder farts.
The train company disguised six red pleather fold-into-the-wall benches as our beds. Slowly our four fellow inmates made their way into tinder box F24—one Serbian grandmother who spoke only Serbian; one Serbian grandfather, not related to Serbian grandmother, who immediately took off his shoes; one blonde Serbian girlfriend who seemed innocuous enough; and one rather rotund, rather common Serbian boyfriend who impressed his girlfriend with his succession of loud to louder farts. SG (Serbian Girlfriend) and SB (you get the point) started their journey by cracking open the window and chain-smoking a packet of Marlboros between them, flicking the dying embers and ends onto the tracks. For the main course, they took out bottles of beer, slugged them down and then tossed them out the window to join their counterparts. It seemed the rest of the train’s denizens were following suit. Hoots and hollers echoed down the train.
At 22:00, our scheduled departure time, people were still struggling on with luggage. At 22:24, still more. By 23:00, drunks on the train were serenading their sober friends on the platform. At 23:09, they all waved goodbye and we chugged our way into the future. At 23:11, the wheels of the train ground to a halt somewhere between a communist-era council block and a field. The inmates responded by throwing more bottles onto the tracks.
For some reason, this amused me immensely.
An hour later, moving again, our train compartment decided it was bedtime. I was easily lulled to sleep by the grating sound of wheels screeching against iron, doors fluttering then slamming open and the plaintive snores of a drunk, Serbian thug.
But Jen’s a light sleeper, and she spent the ensuing hours composing her suicide note to me, via text message.
She slept not a wink but instead began mentally listing ways to kill a man. From her view, SB’s chest heaved as if he were undergoing intense interrogation. Under the glow of the little reading light he’d forgotten to switch off, sweat trickled and glistened down his spotty forehead and into his flapping mouth.
Jen got up and went to the toilet.
The toilet ‘flushed’ onto the tracks.
She came back, utterly defeated and attempted sleep. In the absence of sleep, she read an entire crime novel. This did not help the Rage.
I slept fitfully, headphones in ears, through much of this, refusing to use the toilet or go into the corridors in fear that I would be hauled away into the savages of my machinations of Soviet Europe. I awoke cornered into a crack, folded up into the wall, red pleather surrounding me.
The crunch of boots broke the monotony of hour nine when two large men wearing blue, carrying pistols and shining industrial-size Maglites into our eyes, demanded our passports. We complied. Border crossing.
Hours ten through thirteen mimicked the first eight hours of the trip. As daylight broke, the natives again grew restless and the train started crawling through tunnels, stopping at small platforms and letting a few passengers off. Finally, the train stopped and the hordes hobbled off en-masse. SG and SB farted their goodbyes. We followed.
We should not have followed.
It took us three minutes to realise we’d gotten off at the penultimate stop, further into the Montenegrin wilds than we wanted to be. Jen and I dashed across the platform to hear the whistle blow. The train began churning and chugging, and we sprinted to the high, high stairs vaulting ourselves back into hell just in time.
Fifteen minutes later, we arrived into Bar, Montenegro.
We didn’t speak until our final destination of Budva, two hours later.
Yet somehow, through all of this, all I could do was laugh and laugh and laugh. I was tired, probably delusional. But I waited to see what would happen next because, as I’ve often noticed, reality is stranger than fiction
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