Gypsies - or ‘Roma’, as Anna and Danka called them - have always been outsiders in Eastern Europe, and since the Balkan Wars they have become even more marginalised. For these people life is very difficult: they’ve been shunted from pillar to post, nobody wanting anything to do with them. Finally, they ended up here. It was supposed to have been temporary but this place was fifteen minutes from just about anywhere and it looked to me as though they’d been forgotten. They’re very poor and their traditional way of life is pretty much over. In Eastern Europe they’ve always had a reputation for being untrustworthy, and once you’re the subject of that kind of prejudice life can become a downward spiral. Danka was clearly passionate about them, though, and she works tirelessly for their welfare.
I couldn’t think of a worse place to live. There was rubbish everywhere; old fridges, chest freezers, beds. It was mad: a lot of stuff looked as though it had been brought back from trips to the city and just left where it was unloaded. But Danka believed that despite the seemingly hopeless squalor, these settlements - and the people who lived in them - had possibilities. It was just that the government couldn’t see it.
She introduced us to a middle-aged man called Tomas, who collected scrap in Novi Sad in a homemade cart pulled by a mangy horse, which he kept in a makeshift stable. He hooked the animal into a harness he’d made from bits of old leather and wooden poles he’d cut straight from the tree. He made the seat comfortable and we drove into the city. Tomas didn’t say much, but he seemed troubled - his family were in court in Novi Sad that day, for a reason I couldn’t quite get to the bottom of.
Danka was determined to do her best to represent the people living in the camp. ‘Serbia is a young democracy,’ she said. ‘We think we’re strong but we’re not. We don’t really know how to deal with this.’
Once we got to the main road we said goodbye to Tomas and headed off to catch a bus from Novi Sad to Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. We’d originally planned to take the train but Anna told us the bus was much quicker, and we thought we would see more of the countryside. We showed our tickets to the driver, who tore them in two and handed the bigger halves back to me. Bad idea. Somewhere between there and the back seats I managed to lose them - something we only realised when we got closer to Belgrade and the conductor wanted to see them. We hunted high and low but there was no sign. There was a hole in the floor under my seat where you could see the road going by and it was more than possible the tickets were long gone. The girl sitting in front vouched for us and when we stopped the driver acknowledged we’d paid. With these two testimonies the conductor was finally satisfied. I decided I’d leave ‘logistics’ to Russ in future . . .
This mini crisis over, we were off the bus and back in a big city, the streets clogged with traffic, people hurrying about their business. It was a far cry from the shanty town we’d visited earlier.
We arrived just in time for lunch, and soon found a cafe with a pavement veranda, separated from passers-by with a knee-high glass panel, the tables sheltered by massive red parasols. It was good to sit outside and watch the world go by. It was a warm, close day, and I could smell a hint of rain in the air.
‘What do we want to eat, then?’ Russ asked as Mungo and I grabbed a seat.
We didn’t get a chance to answer. A waiter came hurrying over and told us we had better come inside.
‘Inside?’ I looked up a little puzzled.
Nodding sharply, the waiter pointed. ‘The storm is coming.’
Before we even had time to move, a gust of wind howled down the length of the street, billowing in like a hurricane and almost tearing the trees from their roots. I could feel my hair being dragged across my scalp. The table tipped over and, dashing for the restaurant door, we looked back to see parasols picked up and hurled across the street, blown around like skittles on their concrete bases.
I’ve never experienced anything like it - so powerful or so fast. It was almost like an explosion; one minute everything was calm and the next the street was chaos. The cafe’s glass panel smashed into pieces, the metal frame buckled and the tables went flying. One parasol crashed into a nearby bus stop, another hurtled towards the road where the side of an empty bus only narrowly stopped it smashing into passing cars.
When the storm eased a little we rushed outside again and helped the waiters grab what they could. The wind was still incredibly strong: it whipped at us, tearing our hair and stinging our eyes as we hung on to one parasol, the canvas ballooning so fiercely it was all we could do to drag it closed. Once we’d got it folded we went for the one jammed in the bus shelter. There was glass everywhere; we were in danger of slipping over and cutting ourselves to ribbons.
Finally the wind seemed to blow itself out, leaving a heavy rain behind it. Hands on my hips I surveyed the damage. Miraculously, it seemed that no one had been hurt. Finally we sat down to some food (inside this time), and when the rain had lessened a little, we headed off to explore.
We soon found the tram that circumnavigated the city - a great way to get our bearings and experience this historic city. The Danube joins the Sava at Belgrade, making it an ideal trading centre and one of the oldest cities in Europe. Archaeologists have discovered earthworks dating back to Celtic and Roman times, the Slavs settling here in the seventh century. The city’s prime strategic and political position led to a series of bloody sieges, occupations and street battles over the centuries, and we could only hope these days were now passed for good.
At seven-forty-five the next morning Mungo and I arrived at the train station: a large, sprawling building with a single arch door. We were on our way to Istanbul. Russ joined us - he had gone ahead to find Mr Popovic, the man with our tickets. ‘I couldn’t find him,’ Russ explained, ‘but I did find a friendly official. He really wanted to help but he kept taking me to all the wrong places.’
Remembering my experience with the tickets yesterday, I decided it was best to leave Russ to it. Mungo and I sat down at a coffee shop on the platform and ten minutes later Russ was back, tickets in hand.
‘That’s our train,’ he said, pointing to a blue carriage tacked on to a couple of grubby-looking red ones. The green engine looked rusty and the track was overgrown with weeds. ‘The blue carriage is the sleeping car. We’ve got a bed for the night but we stop maybe eighteen times.’ He smiled. ‘I love this. We’re really on the move now, aren’t we?’
‘It’s easier to get around Europe, though,’ I said. ‘Don’t forget, after Turkey there’s Georgia, then Azerbaijan.’
‘Not to mention Iran,’ Mungo added. ‘That’ll be an adventure in itself. We’ve heard nothing positive about the place in years.’
I thought about the countries to come: Iran, India, Nepal - all challenging in different ways. After that we had China to negotiate. ‘I’m trying not to think much beyond Turkey,’ I said. ‘Though I must say, I’m really looking forward to riding through Georgia on a motorbike and sidecar. I love all the boats and trains, but that’ll be
really
mad.’
Russ gazed around the station. ‘There’s a real charm to this,’ he said. ‘The whole place is worn down, but it feels exotic and evocative. Just the name - “the
Balkan Express
” - conjures up all kinds of images and feelings, doesn’t it?’
‘I can’t believe we’ve only been on the road twelve days,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘It’s only the twenty-third of April.’
‘Twelve days since we left your dad’s place,’ Mungo said. ‘We’ll have travelled through eight countries by the time we reach Turkey. And it must be, what, twenty different forms of transport at least. A real whistle-stop tour of Europe.’
The cabins on the
Balkan Express
may have been evocative but they were also very small and functional. As well as the bed there was a table with a wash basin hidden underneath, a shaving mirror/cabinet and a window that didn’t stay open. I propped mine ajar with a roll-on deodorant.
This was a good way to travel with a hangover, I decided. We’d tied a small one on last night, celebrating our arrival in Belgrade, and we were all feeling just a little bleh. The mood in camp couldn’t have been better though: we were hanging out the windows like grubby schoolboys. Russ couldn’t get the smile off his face. ‘I love this train, Charley. It’s got a faded charm.’
‘Shabby,’ I said, looking about. ‘It’s shabby, Russ.’
‘But it’s more real than the
Orient Express
.’ Mungo was in the corridor. ‘You can wear jeans and there’s—’
‘No piano, no champagne, nowhere to buy food.’
‘We’ll get food tonight,’ Russ assured me. ‘We stop for a while in Sofia to change engines and we’ll pick up something there.’
We spent the day rattling through villages with wooden huts and larger towns where brick buildings had windows boarded up and grey apartment blocks dwarfed the railway line. We followed the river through sheer-sided cuttings and into deciduous forests; we climbed mountains where low cliffs punctuated huge grassy plateaus that reminded me of Mongolia.
Bulgaria’s landscape seemed gentler and was very beautiful. Mungo said it reminded him of northern England, like the edges of the Lake District. Sadly, Sofia itself seemed shabby and rundown by comparison; the area around the station dominated by square, featureless flats; the kind of faceless blocks they built in the Soviet era. The train stopped for an hour while the engine was uncoupled and I dashed about changing money and buying bread and salami.
I could get used to this kind of travelling; it was so different from being on the bike where you really have to concentrate on the riding. Here we were jumping from one form of transport to the next; short hops and then long hauls like this one. Turkey was on my mind now, and the closer we got, the larger the Black Sea loomed. We still had no passage across. With nothing on the horizon we’d discussed the idea of a smaller boat instead of a container ship; one that stayed closer to the shore. That might be a lot of fun, especially if it stopped now and then: we might even get to see a few coastal towns. Settling down for a night’s sleep, rocked by the motion of the train, I really didn’t mind. That was the beauty of the expedition: everything was fluid. We’d figure it out when we got to Istanbul.
I was awake when we crossed into Turkey at two in the morning; a beautiful, clear moon hanging in the sky above. I’d dreamed of visiting Istanbul for maybe twenty years; in just a few more hours we’d be rolling into town. I couldn’t wait - this was the city that had once been called Byzantium, then Constantinople . . . just those names alone conjured up a sense of romance and ancient history. At six o’clock, unable to sleep with excitement, I got up and hung out of the window, watching the world flash by.
We arrived three hours later. From my window, Istanbul looked modern, wealthy; low-lying suburbs with wide, sparklingly clean streets and small trees that looked like green lollipops.
Lucy was flying in to meet up with us to pick up the rushes for the television show. The team in London had spent three months trying to arrange a ship for us for the next stretch of our journey, but it seemed that for our purposes, they were all going the wrong way. Istanbul is divided by the Bosporus, a kilometre-wide strait that connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara. Most ships were travelling from the Med beyond Gallipoli and into the Marmara. From there they cut through the Bosporus Strait to the Black Sea and on to the Ukraine and Russia.
‘We’ve got a big day ahead of us,’ Russ said when I bumped into him in the corridor. ‘We’re meeting a couple of guys who I hope will be able to help us get that elusive ship.’
‘Hope being the operative word,’ I muttered.
From the window we could see dozens of ships lying at anchor off the coast: surely one of them would be going east instead of north.
At the station we were met by Cenk and Jarus, two local guys we’d been in touch with in the hope of sorting out our transport problems. But the news on the ground wasn’t any better. The first thing Jarus said was that our chances of getting a boat were pretty hopeless. ‘We’ve tried seven hundred and forty different ships,’ he said, ‘and none of them will take you.’
Lucy met us at a hotel where we sat down with some thick Turkish coffee and tried to figure out what we could do. I’d been looking forward to seeing Istanbul more than anything, but as Russ pointed out it was in danger of becoming our nemesis. The expedition would grind to a halt right here unless we could find some form of transport to get us across to Georgia.
Jarus made a helpless gesture. ‘I’ve been working on it all week, and the chances are very slim. Ships are sailing daily but the Turkish regulations and the international regulations say you cannot go unless you are the crew.’
Russ sat back. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘At the moment we don’t have any way forward with a ship, but, Jarus - you did mention we could take a lorry east, at least as far as the tea plantations.’
Cenk, the younger of the two Turks, spoke up. ‘You know in Turkey there are buses called
dolmus
. The driver writes the destination on the front and drives around picking up people until the bus is full. Then he takes them to wherever he decided the bus was going. He has cologne on board so they can wash their hands and freshen up, and sometimes he has sweets which he . . .’
‘That’s it, then!’ I interrupted. ‘We’ll buy an old bus, write “Georgia” on the front, buy some Turkish Delight and drive the thousand miles east, picking people up on the way. We’ll just go for it, why not? We can call it the Love Bus.’
Cenk nodded, serious. ‘You could,’ he said. ‘You know, it is possible.’
Ignoring us both, Russ continued: ‘There’s a ferry along the Bosporus, Jarus, isn’t there?’
Jarus nodded. ‘It’s twenty miles.’
‘And we could pick up the lorry from there to take us to the tea plantation?’