The overnight train to Budapest was luxury compared to the ageing Silesia Sleeper from Prague to Krakow. Our compartment in the brand-new carriage featured hotel-quality sheets, real pillows and ample duvets, a hand-basin, coat hangers, a power socket and complimentary bottled water. Even so, we struggled to get much sleep with the train roaring and lurching south through Slovakia into Hungary.
Some puzzling changes occurred during the night. As we pulled out of Krakow station, our carriage was at the back of the train and we could look straight out at the tracks disappearing into a snowy vanishing point behind us. A bathroom visit in the small hours revealed an engine car attached and us travelling the other way. In the morning, we were going in the original direction again and there was a passenger carriage attached to ours.
Breakfast in Budapest and then a daytime train to Belgrade. A day off from our holiday bringing the welcome chance to relax in our spacious and cosy six-person compartment occupied only by us for most of the journey, and to watch the white plains pass by out the window. By the time we reached a small town called Kiskoros, the snow had turned to rain and high-trained vineyards became the dominant feature of the bleak flat landscape. There are no platforms in the small towns the train stopped at, so the boarding passengers have to throw their bags up into the carriage and scramble aboard from the tarmac beside the tracks. A woman and her grandson joined us in our compartment for a 15-minute stretch. The train paused in a field outside a small village and they jumped off and hurried across the wet grass through the rain.
So here I am writing, reading and watching the wet, featureless landscape pass by. Even though it's raining there is a hoar frost that hasn't melted, so the grass, scrub and trees are coated in shiny silver. We'll arrive in Belgrade at around 6pm, in good time for dinner and drinks in the renowned party town.
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