Croatia for Breakfast
Lauren really wanted to go ahead with our plan of 6 capitals in 6 days. Therefore, after our few enjoyable days in Sarajevo, we booked a night-train to leave that same evening. The train station was located right next to the Holiday Inn where journalists from around the world were holed up during the war. The buildings around the train station had not been renovated as well as those in the city center and Old Town. There were bullet holes and shell bursts visible all around. Night-trains, in our experience, have been really nice cabins with bungalows and you get caught up on a lot of sleep while you save money on accommodation traveling to your next destination. These night-t

Sarajevo Flourishes
Our bus ride was somewhat of a highlight as far as nigh transportation goes. We were on the top floor of a double-decker bus, in the very front seats. This gave us an amazing, panoramic view of Serbia as we departed. We were exhausted from sleeping on the train the night before, and walking around the entire day. Once on the bus we stretched out and fell promptly asleep. I don’t know what time it was when I heard a terrifying sound and awoke with such a start I slipped right out of my bus seat and onto the floor! I looked around but everyone else was sleeping soundly. Just as I climbed back into my seat I heard it again. It sounded like glass shattering, and when I looked up I r

In Belgrade’s Rain
We took the night train from Sofia, Bulgaria, to the Serbian capital, Belgrade. We arrived before the city had fully awakened at 6am and had to wait for the luggage storage room to open at the train station before we could stash our bags, change our Bulgarian currency into Serbian cash, and have a quaint, train station breakfast. It was raining when we arrived and, in Mike’s words, “this is exactly what I thought Eastern Europe would look like, rain and all!” Belgrade

Camping outside a Bulgarian Monastery
We spent a day in Plovdiv walking around and admired the Old Town. Luckily, we met a couple from Australia who were on a honeymoon-backpacking trip, which was interesting in itself, and they had a guidebook specifically on Bulgaria. Matt and Lauren perused through the “around Plovdiv” section and discovered several things that were not even in our guide. We decided to go to a Monastery that was only about a 40-minute bus ride away. Once we announced that we were going, we ended up with a whole group of people interested in seeing the Monastery. The next morning we got up late and left even later after gathering everyone together. We took the long way to the bus station an

The Night Train to Bulgaria
We decided to take the night train from Istanbul at 10:00pm across the western boards to Bulgaria. We planned to disembark before Sofia in Bulgaria’s most relaxed city, Plovdiv. The train pulled into the station in Istanbul an hour early and we began to panic a bit at the sight of the metal beast. It was covered from head to tail in graffiti and the conductor was hanging onto the outside of the train, with his right arm reaching into the train presumably to steer. We immediately had a flash back to the horror we experienced on the Kazakh trains that looked equally rusty. Nevertheless, we loaded ourselves into our compartment. We had spent a bit extra for a sleeper cabin for the t