Those Times I Tired to Farm...

I once cried for at least 40 minutes because I thought a fly had gotten trapped in my ear and I would die whilst it laid eggs in my brain and I became nothing more than a husk of my former self. Turns out it was just the wind and there was in fact nothing in my ear. I have been known, on occasion, to wash my hair as frequently as three times a day and as a child my brothers would mock my, often hysterical, reactions to moths getting too close to my face. Even as recently as living in Byron I left the cockroach maintenance solely in the hands of my housemate.
What I'm getting at, is that “outdoorsy” is not a word that I have ever been described as. I am not a wimp however, if a job needs doing, I'll do it. And it is with this mentality that I left Byron to start my farming adventure. For those of you who don't know, in order to secure a second year visa in Australia you must complete 88 days of “regional work”, which is more often than not on a farm. It's a very clever way to get the masses of agricultural land that Australia hosts farmed, without having to make residents complete the hours of essentially slave labour. Good move Straya.
After a brief stop in Sydney (Opera house. Bridge. Blue mountains. Done.) I headed to Adelaide with the prospect of work. After having spoken to the farmer on several occasions, it was agreed he would collect me from Adelaide airport where I would travel south to the wine regions and start harvesting grapes the following day. As my plane landed into South Australia I was informed by the captain that they were currently experiencing a heat wave and it was 45 degrees at present. I knew that this was hot, I understood that, but hearing the large number and actually being immersed in it are two very different things. I had until then assumed that everything past 37 degrees was the same, that your body reaches a point where it just says “bloody hell it’s hot” and you can't comprehend anything higher. I was wrong. It's hard to describe heat, but the most notable thing for me was breathing, as soon as I disembarked the plane my nostrils began to burn with every breath and my mouth was immediately dry. The lack of wind meant that you just inhale, stale hot air that heats your insides as well as burning your skin and sucks your body clean of any moisture. But I was still positive. I had a job and I would get my farm sorted and I could just chill out in Australia for a whole extra year if I wanted. I reclaimed my trusty backpack from the luggage carousel and phoned my farmer, no answer. Several unanswered phone calls, text messages, emails and hours later I began to realise that Derek wasn't going to appear and booked myself into the first hostel I could find. Bollocks. All together I ended up spending a week in Adelaide, which was actually quite delightful in a strange small town sort of way.
The good thing about the masses of land in Australia means that it's reasonably easy to find alternative farms to work on, and with gumtree posting new listings every ten minutes, I found myself heading across state lines once again, this time to Victoria. Putting my Adelaide experience down as a “learning curve” I was full of hope for my new job harvesting tomatoes in a small town called Rochester. A quick google revealed it to be a picturesque village from a time forgotten, where all the houses were ordained with porches and sprawling front lawns and you almost expected everyone speak with a southern drawl and wear bonnets. This time I was in fact collected from the train station by my new host as promised, so I got further than Adelaide at least, and this was a win for me. However it would be here that the winning would dwindle to an untimely halt once again. Now I'm not going to go into too much detail because I like to think of myself of having a reasonably sunny disposition and this just makes me sad and I don't want to be sad. If I could give only one piece of advise to anyone thinking of doing their farm work it would be to make sure you are paid per hour, rather than per bucket/bin/bag. To surmise my week of tomato farming into a couple of lines, I kneeled in the dirt for 9 hours a day filling a bottomless pit of a bucket with cherry tomatoes for $1.50 per bucket. For my week of back snapping physical labour under the harsh sun, I made a grand total of $95. That's about £50 for anyone back home, it's also so crappy that I quit immediately. Two farms down and a total of 5 days work completed. Only 83 left.
All is not lost however! I am writing this from the comfort of a lovely double bed (a luxury unknown to travellers) in a town west of Melbourne having completed my first week harvesting grapes for a lovely company which pays me per hour and pays taxes and makes me aware of health and safety and all other terribly boring but also fabulously refreshing and comforting protocols. I don't want to speak to soon, but they do say that the third times the charm.

Where I Lie Now.

Hello all, it's been a while, and for that I am sorry. It won't happen again… maybe. 

I'd love to tell you that I haven't been writing because I've been crazy busy doing constantly awe inspiring things, but that would be a lie. I haven't been writing because I thought I had nothing to write about, my life is pretty standard in terms of Byroners (Byronees? Byronians?) and I had forgotten that just because something is routine, it doesn't mean it isn't pretty spectacular. For me it took getting out of Byron for a couple of days over Christmas and explaining to other people what it is exactly I do with my days to appreciate its small beauty. Whilst I attempted to rush through the explaining of things as quickly as possible, fearing they would think me terribly mundane, I was bombarded with questions and grins and remarks about how lucky I am. 

And I am. 

It is only now that I find my time in the Bay nearing an end, can I fully appreciate just how special my own personal mundane is. The next series of posts are going to b solely dedicated to some of my favourite memories in this beautiful place, but for now we'll start with the beginning. 

The beginning. 

If we were to go back just a few short months, we'd see me living in the staff room of Aquarius Backpackers with 11 other fantastically insane work for accommodationers. 12 people in this tiny room was a squeeze, and it was gross, and you lost everything you owned, and there was a small maggot infestation and it was just the purest example of friendship. Being thrown into living and working and socialising with a group of people whom you've never met is beyond daunting, but it also creates some of the tightest social links I've ever known. In one short week I'd seen majority of them naked, swapped clothes with most of them and fallen in love with all of them. I mean don't get me wrong, they're all absolute freaks and misfits and if it were in any other situation non of us would have befriended one and other, but somehow that made it work all the more. 

For two months I lived in the squalid pockets of these people, and then one day Aquarius offered to pay me in money rather than room, and so I packed up my few remaining clothes and moved to the locally known “happy houses” with my fabulous Canadian friend, Ariya. Within three weeks there were 10 former AQ staff and guests living within three houses of each other. For me, I have what I deem to be the perfect set up, still working at AQ means I get to visit the one or two last remaining ones of our bunch who are still living there, but having my own studio means I no longer get woken up at 4am a host of hammered people, and I no longer find jars of pickled herring in the toilet. Bloody Swedes. 

A general day of cleaning at Aquarius sees me out of the house from 9.15am until around 2pm, and this is not English 2pm, it's Australian. That means it's still over 30 degrees and the beach is calling. I don't think I can stress just how close work and the beach are, so I've included a map for reference. Yeah. Be jealous. After lying down for several hours on a pristine beach, with the mountains to the left and the lighthouse to the left, I'll make the pilgrimage home, with my bike, Carol, it takes me just six minutes to get home. Evenings vary from crazy nights out to cuddle puddles and Disney films and to be honest, it's pretty beautiful what ever we choose. 

Where I lie now. 

Currently I am lying in my garden, the late afternoon sun is fighting through the large canopy of trees that protect me from the harsh rays, creating a kaleidoscope of  colours and patterns on the rug beneath me. I am also warmed to my core from the low beams, penetrating through my thin layer of skin and spreading it's heat and joy through my veins. A small breeze is quaffing my hair slightly and creating a peaceful rustling in the fallen, crisp leaves that reminds me of the English countryside thousands of miles away. The smell of our, now weekly, family BBQ tinges the air with the sweet scent of onions and evokes a sense of excitement at the prospect of a beautiful, long summer evening in this, my perfect home, stretching out in front of me.

This is where I lie now. And though it may be unremarkable, it is real, and it is mine and I could not be more contented. 

 

Byron Bae

“Hello, I'm from the UK and I'm backpacking around Australia and I love Byron Bay!” Said every tourist ever. Including me.

Well, I've been in Australia for two weeks now and I've made a decent dent in the list of touristy stereotypes. I've fed a kangaroo, cuddled a koala, drank copious amounts of goon and fallen a tiny bit in love with Byron. But let's not get ahead of ourselves shall we.

i. Jet lag
Good lord this was disgusting. Having never done a long haul flight before, I was filled with optimistic naivety, assuming that I wouldn't be effected simply on the basis that I was me and I'd told myself it wouldn't be an issue. As cramped and uncomfortable as spending 24 hours in ‘super economy’ was, the discomfort didn't come close to what I experienced over the next few days. Anyone who knows me would agree that sleepy and hungry were two reasonably accurate ways to describe me, so the shock of sleeping two hours a night and hardly consuming a single meal whilst in Brisbane was horrifying. As a result of this, Brisbane admittedly sort of passed me by in an irritable, confused haze. All I can tell you about the city is that there's free city wide wifi (21st century description of beauty right there) and that the South Bank was pretty decent. Sorry Brisbane, I'll try again when I feel more like an actual human person.

ii. Hot England
From Brizzy I moved slightly further south to the Gold Coast, Surfers Paradise to be exact. With my first full nights sleep proudly accomplished I headed off to the beach in an attempt to transform my very British milk bottle white legs, to something that more resembled a caramel shake. I will point out here that my knowledge of Australia is/was pretty limited, but I had made the assumption that there would be some Australians here. I was wrong. In my room alone there was eight of us Brits, delightful. Adding to my initial confusion was that Surfers appeared to resemble a sort of cleaner, hotter Blackpool. The iconic seaside tower rubbed out and replaced by great monstrous skyscrapers that loom over the beach ominously and donkey rides swapped for hoards of American Au Pairs trotting their gaggle of children up and down the beach. I would just like to point out that I did actually end up having a good time there, I met some really lovely people and it worked as quite a nice base to travel to further town and beaches (Burleigh Heads being a personal favourite). It was however a culture shock, in the sense that the culture was no different to my own.

iii. Barefoot, acoustic guitar playing hippies
Even before I got to Aus people were telling me to go to Byron, this intensified ten fold when I actually arrived. I would never in a million years describe myself as a ‘hipster’ yet we do share several traits, I like my fancy camera and drinking from mason jars, I have a blog and if someone tells me I'll love somewhere, I actively seek out reason to loath it. It was with an arrogant air and an already negative attitude that I went to Byron Bay. Stepping off the bus I was greeted by a barefoot man wearing tie die and playing an acoustic guitar, my eyes rolled so far back in my skull that I'm pretty sure I saw my corneas. “How stereotypical. I've been here 5 minutes and it's already far too mainstream for me.” It wasn't until a few days later when a group of us had gone to wash some music that it clicked. The dace floor was full of people, every sort of person, old, young, posh, bogan, hippy, traveller, local, all together, all happy. No judgment was passed from any group of people, everyone was there to listen to the music and that was all that really mattered.

So now I write this on the beach, after spending last night wearing a tie die jumpsuit and listening to reggae, and without a pair of shoes in sight.

You may call me Grace: Queen of the barefoot hipsters.

The Countdown Begins

I'm back! Well I never really went anywhere, and I suppose that's been my problem since I came back to England, but I'm back not being back…

Seeing as my last post was an unforgivable amount of time ago, I'll recap how things ended for myself and my European adventure. Through the genius that is Workaway, I managed to get myself a very lovely job working at a fabulous hostel in Bratislava, Wild Elephants. Responsibilities included checking guests in and getting them drunk. Which really was a dream, but as with most things, money gets in the way, and a lack of it more so. So with a pitiful 19p in my bank account, and the heaviest of hearts, I returned home.

I'll give you some context about my hometown, a recent article in The Guardian by Mike Carter on Brexit (don't even get me started on my rage/embarrassment about that whole façade) sums up Nuneaton in a description as accurate as it is depressing. “Nuneaton, the home town of George Eliot and Ken Loach, had more charity shops in its high street than anywhere I’ve ever seen. And some of those charity shops had closed down. What does it say about a town when even the charity shops are struggling?”

Now, I don't want to seem heartless here, it was so wonderful to give my parents a long anticipated cuddle, catch up with all the people who had made my life here complete and meet my lovely new god son. It really was. I adored the small things as well, having multiple pillows on my bed, being able to leave my shampoo in the bathroom without it getting pinched and the knowledge that I had more that two outfits, but inevitably things began to feel much the same as before I left.

I woke up, went to work, went to the gym, came home. Repeat. Maybe on a weekend I'd spend all the money I'd earned that week in the one, very questionable, night club our town has, but that's about the long and short of it.

Sometimes people would ask about travelling, and at first I was so keen to inspire others to travel, but even that wore very thin very quickly. Every time my stories of the magnificence of being really and truly free fell on deaf ears or were reciprocated with a bemused smile and an elongated silence, I lost another part of where I'd been, what I'd achieved. So in the end I stopped answering questions with anything more than a “yeah, it was good thanks” which seemed to satisfy. Then suddenly, I woke up. I mean properly woke up, and four months had passed. In this time I'd found myself both made redundant and promoted in a new job. The mundanity that made up my everyday life had seemed acceptable, however it promptly became an obscene elephant in every room I entered. So the frantic saving began.

At first I wasn't entirely sure what it was I was saving for, Australia floated around in the back of my mind like a hazy, unachievable, dream. I could (should) learn to drive, I could (shouldn't) get a flat, there were plenty of things I could/should/shouldn't do with this money. However, somewhere deep inside me, I knew what it was for, but the idea and the reality were two very different things, and the reality was overwhelmingly enormous.

And then it was August. Eight months had passed. I'd been back as long as I'd been away and that really was a horrific sensation.

Something inside me needed to go again, and needed to go quickly. The same primal sense of running free that I’d had last year came back and I hit me like a truck. It tore my world apart and threw me into a free fall, I simply could not go on living how I was.

 With a sense of déjà vu, I quit yet another job and booked yet another one way flight and rescued my lovely backpack from the attic. Somewhat further afield this time, Brisbane, Australia but I guess it's a similar premise to before though. Hostels and backpacks and long ass busses and washing my pants in sinks. And I can't wait!

Two weeks Aus! Be prepared, because I’m not.

The Unknown Family

In recent months it seems that every time I log onto a social networking site, be it Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, I have to scroll through page after page of anti-refugee posts. In light of all the negative connotations floating around at the minute, I thought I'd share something I wrote on the train from Serbia to Hungary when I was confronted with a young family of migrants for the first time.

Initially I wrote this only for myself, as a way of processing the scene that played out in front of me, but now I feel the need to share my personal experience. I know that some people will feel differently than I do, but for me, this trip helped me acknowledge the faces in the otherwise faceless media coverage.



"Friday 25th - Train to Budapest

Sitting in the four seats in front of me is a family. I can see the back of the Mother and Father's head, I can hear the constant wails of the baby in her arms, and I can see the two young boys and their even younger sister squashed contently into the two opposite seats. Their presence however is made apparent not through sight, but through the smell. The heavy scent of stale sweat and urine fills the entire cabin and initially makes me wretch. With them are several large plastic bags of 'stuff', I can just about make out that one contains some clothes, but the others are a mystery to me.

The Mother and Father are dirty, their clothes, their face, their hair. Much like her parents, the little girl is dirty, she also has a tendency to wander and sprints up and down the isle giggling as she goes. She is the one who intrigues me the most. I would say that she is no older than three years and still has a small amount puppy fat that gives her a cute little pot belly. Clothes wise, it's not great, I am guessing that her jumper is supposed to be white, but the colour is far closer to a shade of brown, whilst her purple corduroy trousers are black and muddy on the knees and bum. She has enormously wide deep brown eyes that stare with innocent enthusiasm at everything, including myself, surrounded by gloriously long black lashes. Her beauty is obvious, and somehow manages to be the first thing I notice about her face, but when I look for longer the sheer grubbiness of her skin shocks me. Dark circles encase her eyes and a clump of mud has dried behind one of her ears, her short hair is matted to the point of dreadlocks.

The eldest of the boys, probably 11, has clearly taken on the role of ring leader. He commands his sister to sit down, and rewards her with a kiss and a kit-kat when she does. He too is laughing the majority of the time, when he opens his mouth I can see that his front two teeth are badly chipped and the rest are discoloured. I think it is his optimism that saddens me the most. Somehow the innocence of the three of them makes the situation worse, the fact that for them this is just another day of their childhood. From what I can make out, I think the father has fallen asleep, and the son has taken on the responsibility of his siblings, consistently showering his sister and the baby in kisses, whilst he entertains his brother with a series of animated hand gestures that makes them both howl.

I have the strange feeling that this isn't a journey that I will forget. In years to come when people talk of the 'migrant crisis ' I know that this is what I will think of. This exact point. This family, these people, this smell. I wonder where they will be in ten years time, what their future is, where they will call home.

This I will never know.

I can of course pretend that they make it to prosperous Germany or England, that they are given some sort of social housing and the children are provided with a decent education. That in ten years the bright eyed, dirty girl is stressing about her GCSEs and boys, her face clean, her hair long and smooth. That her brother is finishing university and is an annoyance rather than a carer. I can imagine that she has forgotten all about this journey that she is having to make, about the anguish which her parents must be suffering, about the filthy white jumper.

I can see it.

Unfortunately I also know the probable outcome. I know that the Hungarian border is closed for them, that they are not wanted here or anywhere else. I know that even if by some miracle they do make it to the West the life that is waiting for them isn't going to be what they imagined. An unskilled, minimum wage job - if any - for the father. A flat too small for the six of them, no money and limited schooling. It is hard to imagine a situation where this is the better option, where the unknown is still more promising than staying where they were. I can imagine that we both share the same fantasy scenario, that this chance, however small, is what they cling to.

Still the baby cries."



After I finished writing this the family quickly disembarked the train at the last stop before the Hungarian border. I will never know what happened to this family, but it changed my somewhat shallow view immediately. It is easy to dehumanise a situation when you only see it through a screen, to remove the individual cases and lump them all together, I know I did, but in situations like these the reality hits home with a blunt force.

I hope I never forget the face of the adorable little girl with the beautiful wide eyes.

Budapest, Bratislava and a Birthday

What I've learnt since staying in hostels is that your experience in a place is entirely dependent on the people who your'e staying with. I've stayed in some really beautifully equipped places, with gorgeous clean kitchens and bathrooms, but horrifically dull roommates, and for me that overrides the otherwise good experience. I've also stayed in some total dives, with really fantastic people, that make you not care about the fact that there's no locks in the toilets or hot water in the showers. This is exactly what happened when I headed north from Novi Sad to Budapest.

Budapest

As usual I had booked the cheapest hostel on HostelWorld - The Hangover. As far as drinking is concerned I haven't actually indulged too much on this trip, it's expensive and travelling on my own, I like to have some sense of what's going on around me. However Budapest provided me with the perfect set up to have a fantastic time, drink, hardly spend any money and feel completely secure in doing so.

My 8 bed dorm consisted of a group of four Australian guys, a Canadian girl, a Finnish girl and myself. Luckily for all of us we got on phenomenally. Unlike a lot of groups who travel together, and tend to keep themselves to themselves, the Aussies were more than happy to have myself and the other girls tagging along for the entire weekend. Our five days there were spent doing the typical touristy things, visiting the stunning Parliament building and castle, whilst our nights were spent in some of the 100s of bars and clubs that Budapest has to offer.

The highlight of the entire weekend for myself has to be the Thermal Baths. Sunday afternoon, all feeling slightly 'tender', the executive decision to actually leave the room was made. Definitely not by myself, I was pretty adamant that being hungover and going swimming was a recipe for pure disaster, but we trudged on anyway. Even the idea of an outdoor pool in late September in Central Europe made me shiver, and as our group headed out into the cold kitted in our summer bikinis and shorts, pneumonia was all that was on my mind. Yet as I sunk into the 40° water it felt like pure heaven. We spent all day there, only leaving when they closed the pools.

The nights out also proved to come in useful when by pure chance I bumped into a guy I'd met on my first day travelling in Venice, who lives in Budapest and offered to give me a little tour around! I adore being shown around by people who actually live in the city, there are so many things that Lonely Planet miss off or simply don't know about, and I'll be honest, at this point I still hadn't seen as much of the city as I probably should have. It was also lovely to see a familiar face, the whole 'it's a small world' cliche has always made me cringe. Yet here I am, using it. Because let's be honest, what were the chances of me deciding to leave a particular bar, just as he decides to enter this particular bar, in a city of 1.7 million people. Seeing someone again, especially after all this time, reminds you that maybe all the constant goodbyes that you say aren't necessarily as permanent as they might feel, and that's a little bit beautiful.

Outside the parliament building.

Post Thermal Baths.

Brent, myself and Katriina on our
 last night.

View of Budapest from the Liberty Statue.

Team Baywatch.

Bratislava

After my very full-on few days in Budapest I traveled North to Bratislava to start my new Workaway position in A Wild Elephants Hostel.

I was told by a few people about how dull Bratislava is, and that scene in Eurotrip didn't give me much hope, yet on my second day I was being thrown from a bridge and on my third we broke into a black tie gala event... Not quite as dull as I'd been warned.

Again I got tremendously lucky with my first group of guests staying in the hostel, who were a dream, and the team that were already working there made me feel immediately welcome. Something which I was slightly nervous about however, was my impending birthday. The thought of being away from home for my birthday didn't bother me as much as I thought it would, I've been having such a fantastic time I really don't need one specific day to do wonderful things or relax. I did feel slightly guilty for also missing my older brother's birthday (coincidentally also on 5th October) but other than that I was quite happy to have a nice day and let it pass without too much of a note.

I was working my first night shift (9pm-7am) into my birthday, which generally consists of letting drunk guests in, and when one of these guests found out that it was my birthday, he went out and stole for me: a bouquet of flowers, a pepper mill and a dining room chair. Gift originality at it finest right there.

A fantastically unique start to my 21st. The rest of the day was spent in the most hipster-indie-chic coffee shop Bratislava has to offer, and eating a disgusting amount of Slovakian food. Slovakian cuisine is quite similar to the other Balkan states, heavy and filling and fattening and delicious. Potato dumplings covered in cheese covered in sour cream covered in bacon - bliss.

And then came the shots. Dear God the shots. As a general rule, alcohol in this part of the world is horrifically pure, strong and frequently consumed. Despite drinking litres of pure alcohol, a good night was had by all. I think. I don't remember. I'm sure they did. Well I did at least.

Team IT gala.

The Wild Elephant (and Monkey).

My lovely carrot cake and chocolate muffins.

'Take it sleazy' Mark, myself and Lorna.

Birthday gift from my boss, 15 year old palinka.

Lorna and myself.

Selfie time.

Pain in an image,

Meeting The Serbs

For those of you who don't know, my Grandfather was Serbian, Yugoslavian if we're getting technical. Hence me having the not-very-British surname, Malbasa. Seeing as I am currently ascending through Eastern Europe I figured I'd take a pilgrimage to the homeland if only for a couple of days.

On discovering that I planned to visit Belgrade, the capital, my Dad decided to get in touch with some rather distant relatives who live there to see if they wanted to meet me. To my surprise they did, and a lovely time was had by all.

Now I'm not sure if it's a British thing, or if it's because I come from a pathetically small family (I have one cousin) but anybody who I don't see on Christmas is considered distant to me and therefore a polite nod and small grin is an acceptable greeting. However this is not the Serbian way. My knowledge of this culture is somewhat stunted and comes purely from my Father's God Father and his wife. Visits to them typically consisted of my face being squeezed and kissed repeatedly upon entry, then I would be force fed buttery biscuits and Ocean Spray until I thought I would ruin their nice clean floor with my (by that point no doubt very pink) vomit. Whilst I was being told that I was too thin and should eat more (what a great thing to say), my brothers were being handed plates of salami and glass after glass of Slivovitz, a plum brandy with a percentage ranging between 50 and 70. These were people I had known my entire life and so it was alright to skip the 'nod and grin', but I had every intention to resume said protocol when meeting my new relatives. I would soon discover that British formality is not allowed in Serbia, my initial intention to the bring it to the east failed immediately and spectacularly when I first met Duska.

But lets not get ahead of ourselves, first I had to get from Thessaloniki in Greece (a really fabulous city, far better than Athens in my opinion) to Belgrade.

The Night Train

If for some bizarre reason you were unaware, there is currently a migrant crisis in the EU and hopping between borders isn't as easy as it once was. The former ethos of "It's Europe, if you've got a passport come and go as you please!" has been replaced with several large fences, tear gas and water cannons. As a result of this, the first leg of my train journey actually took place on a bus. I didn't really mind, having read all about the Macedonian border controls, I had that sort of sick inquisitiveness to see it all first hand, like when you can't not watch a car crash. I had envisioned a sea of distraught looking families all pleading to get through the border, thousands of police pushing back this tidal wave of mothers and children in a vain attempt to protect their country from the flood.

This is not what I saw. In the half an hour it took for my passport to be verified I probably saw around 15 cars trickle through. The enforcement was somewhat lapse also, three bored looking men waving all the cars through, bar one, who's boot they searched (it was an old Fiat Punto, you can barely fit a weekly shop in there let alone a family of Syrian refugees). After being processed and deemed not to be a threat, myself and the other 13 people on the bus were dropped at the Macedonia train station.

CUT TO:

EXT. MACEDONIAN TRAIN PLATFORM - NIGHT
Several confused people huddle around murmuring quietly in the pool of light from a solitary street lamp.

CONDUCTOR

There might be a train in 10 minutes. Then again there might not be.

PEOPLE

*Sequence of obscenities*

Oh f...abulous. By now it's around 11pm, I'm three hours into my 14 hour journey and I have moved about 10 yards. And then it appeared. My golden chariot to Serbia. My bed for the night. My God it looked like something that Soviet Russia would deem 'too depressing'. The loud grinding noise that it produced was accompanied by an exterior coated in graffiti and a conductor who looked like he might *definitely* want to kill me in my sleep. I did find myself in the fortunate situation of having my own cabin, I assumed that this would mean that at least I could get some sleep, and dream that I wasn't on a train that had a very distinct smell of sweat and urine, but you know what they say about assuming. The hourly torchlight-in-the-face, passport and ticket checks impeded the sleep idea to such an extent that at 3am I decided to just quit trying and become nocturnal.

This is when I encountered my first (and only) group of migrants, accompanied by two police men. With the vast increase in numbers I assumed that I would have cabin partners imminently, and I did, but not how I imagined. After asking one of the officers for the time it was made immediately apparent that he spoke no English and I no Serbian, however, this didn't deter the officer from deciding that we were in fact now pals. Through various drawings, graphs and several metaphors involving my handbag, he managed to explain to me the current financial situation in Serbia, politics, religion and Germany's role within the EU. At around 6am he told me (through the art of mime) that I should get some sleep and he would watch my bag for me.

For me this little 'conversation' and hospitality more than made up for the fact that the journey took three extra hours and that the toilet was a hole in the floor.

After that very tiring journey I was more than happy to meet my extended family. At this point I'll explain how relations work in Serbia through the people I met. My Grandfather's sister, Anka, should technically be my great Aunt, but she is just 'Aunty Anka'. That one isn't overly difficult. Her daughters, Dragana and Milena, my first cousins once removed, are also my Aunts. Their children, Borjan and Iva, my second cousins once removed, are my brothers and sisters. Their children, Lukas and Mia, some sort of third cousin once removed (perhaps), are my nieces and nephews. This took far too long to work out and only exacerbated my sleep deprivation.

In addition to this I also met my 'aunty' Duska and her sons, (also my brothers) Stefan and Nikola. As I mentioned earlier, the greeting was one of traditional Serb style, I was invited to their house, kissed, face squeezed and fed. It was quite nice I'll admit, but the Brit in me will never admit this again.

Having lost my grandfather at a very young age a lot of my memories of him consist more of memories of photographs, so seeing a whole new set of images was like seeing him again for the first time which is something really priceless. As well as learning more about my family history, having people there who wanted to show me all of the city meant that I saw Belgrade in a very different way to most people, which I greatly appreciated.

I have since left Belgrade, with a very full stomach and very fond memories, and am currently in Novi Sad in the north of Serbia before I head into Budapest tomorrow.

I understand that this post is a little long so here's a nice little summation for you;

• I am a bit Serbian.
• Thessaloniki is beautiful and full of life. Go there.
• Serbians like to feed you.
• Only accept Slivovitz if you are prepared to get real turnt up real quick. (The link is there purely for my mum. There you go mum, hope that helps.)
• See John, I did listen in my film script classes.
• The night train smells.
• You can have meaningful discussions with anyone if you have a pen and an appreciation of mime.
• Everyone in Serbia is somehow your aunt or brother.
• Even if you are only distantly related to a Serb they will give you everything they have because they put family in front of everything.
• Also the Serbian Dinar isn't worth a great deal so you can live like royalty for zero money.

Suck it Nuneaton.

Sunset over a secret nature reserve
in the centre of Belgrade.

Thessaloniki nights.

My new 'sister' Iva and I.

Duska and I.

My Great Aunt, Uncle and myself.