I got up earlier than I would've liked to catch a bus out at 9:45 from the eastern bus station. I was running late as usual, so it was tough to make it to the terminal on time, but I just barely did. When I got there, though, I found that all the buses there were going southbound and none were going to Serbia. I pulled up Google Maps and found no other bus terminals anywhere in the Sarajevo area, but then I plugged in the coordinates that were attached to my ticket. They pointed to a grocery store on the far opposite side of the city with two 1-star reviews and no mention whatsoever of busses. Looking at satellite showed a few busses in the parking lot, though, so I was forced to conclude that "East Sarajevo Bus Terminal" is really a grocery store parking lot on the western (???) edge of Sarajevo. Fortunately, there were plenty of bus options and I was able to rebook for 3 PM, but it was still annoying and cost me about 30 euro.

I went back to the hostel and killed time doing chores on my computer, including updating the blog. When the time came to head over, I used a landline for the first time in probably a decade and called a taxi service for the first time probably ever. The public transit in Sarajevo is poor enough that I decided not to bother fighting it for an hour and a half (as Google predicted I would be), especially with all my bags. They were remarkably prompt and it cost me about 20 marks. I've heard horror stories about taxis in the Balkans and was expecting to get into a couple accidents en route to the bus terminal, but was pleasantly surprised to find that my driver seemed to be sober and made no particularly reckless moves on the road. He did spend a considerable portion of the drive watching a soccer match on his phone while it was balanced in the cupholder, but beggars can't be choosers.

At the destination I came to appreciate that, despite what Google Maps might think, this really is a bus terminal. There's a little info kiosk inside where people were buying tickets and there was a rusty frame above all the parking spots with numbers and some peeling Cyrillic lettering. The Cyrillic ties into something that at least partially explains the puzzling naming scheme - the bus terminal is right over the border from Bosnia to Republika Srpska. Remember that Republika Srpska is still a part of Bosnia & Herzegovina, but it's basically the ethnically Serbian province. Apparently they don't run busses to Serbia from the province of Bosnia, which seems strange, but since Sarajevo is right on the border, they run them from the Republika Srpska side instead. Anyway, since we're now in an ethnically Serbian area, people use Serbian script to write the language. Bosnians and Croatians default to using latin characters for everything, and while Serbians do use latin characters sometimes, in official use it's all Cyrillic. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that East Sarajevo is actually a distinct city and is across the provincial line, much the same way that something like East St Louis is. Now, this still doesn't explain why they named the region over the western border east, but this is all messy enough that I suppose I won't question it any further.

The whole neighborhood was incredibly depressing. Everything looked run down and dirty, and the air was still hazy from all the pollution. The Cyrillic very much adds to the aesthetic of an unfortunate former communist state and it looked like a miserable place to live. If you got Sarajevo, stick to the old town. After the bus driver got mad that I didn't have a random amount of change to pay both his baggage fee and the station fee collector (there was no mention of either of these fees online and I'd shed all my marks), he begrudgingly allowed me onboard after paying about half the total in the remaining euros I had lying around. It wasn't a lot of money, but I didn't have any change with which to pay and they don't seem to have invented the credit card here yet.

The bus was actually very small, nothing like the huge Flixbusses that I'm used to. It was nice to be in a slightly smaller environment though I don't think it made too much of a difference. We stopped frequently at all these tiny little mountain villages which I suppose aren't served by any other means of transit. A few hours later, we crossed the border. It was a remarkably easy process - I thought that the Bosnians would be easier on an American than the Serbs, but apparently not. Two Turkish guys who were extremely unprepared ended up getting us stuck there for maybe 40 minutes while we waited for something to get sorted out. Other than that, smooth sailing.

We got into Belgrade a little after 10 PM. It didn't leave a great first impression, if I'm being honest. There's lots of industry and nothing I've seen looks very appealing. It's far bigger and more modern than any other Balkan city I've seen thus far, though that doesn't really translate to desirability. I checked into the hostel, went out for a burrito (this was harder than expected since it seemed like every restaurant in the area was some expensive sit down place), and hung out with the hostel cat in the common room for a little while.

I've got three nights here and then onto Montenegro. The train ride is 11 hours and overnight - I need a reservation to get a bed, but since this is the Balkans they haven't figured out how to do that online yet. Interrail told me to either go to the station in person, or to email some random woman and she'd hook me up with a reservation if possible. I've heard that the ride is incredibly beautiful so I'm a little disappointed to be doing it at night, but the sun rises so early that the last few hours might be in daylight anyway. Looking forward to the experience regardless.