Late 20s angst and a tour of the Balkans

The story behind my tour of the Balkans was an emotional one. Turning 29 was the start of weeks of angst for me. My next birthday will be 30, the start of a whole new decade and I couldn’t help compare the way I felt now with how optimistic I was nine years ago about the next decade.

Back then, in 1998, I was a student about to finish my second year of university. I was about to go to experience Eastern Europe for the very first time on a trip to teach English at a summer school in Moldova. I had such high hopes for the decade ahead. What would happen? I’d graduate, I’d get a job (I was hopeful of making a career in journalism). I wanted to work abroad, ideally in Eastern Europe, or I’d live in London. I’d have a boyfriend probably — maybe even a husband! I’d have a stylish flat and a sparkling social life.

Well, one year away from the end of the decade I’ve done some of these things. I graduated. I work in journalism, though I’m in the trade press, and still hoping to break out into something in my real area of love, Eastern Europe. I managed to live abroad in Kyrgyzstan for a year, but that ended badly when I ran out of money, fell out with my flatmate and ended a disastrous relationship. After that I slunk back to my old job and spent a year and a half just trying to stabilise my finances and get my career back on track again. I still haven’t been able to shift that stubborn £500 overdraft. I don’t have a boyfriend, let alone a husband. My messy zone 4 studio is nothing like the stylish apartment I once imagined. Still it eats up over half my salary, so my ‘glittering’ social life mostly consists of a beer or two after work.

Time to take action

Contemplating this after a tedious night out with old friends I no longer had anything in common with and that left me with a hangover and a feeling of desperation, I decided to take action. I couldn’t immediately go to work in Eastern Europe (though I’d definitely start looking actively!) but I could spend some time there on holiday. I didn’t have a boyfriend (or husband) but I was very confutable with the idea of travelling alone.

I’d take myself off to Southeast Europe, I decided, do a tour of the Balkans, revisit Bucharest — the first place I ever went to in Eastern Europe on my way to Moldova in the summer of 1998 — and travel northwest though the Balkans.

I still didn’t have much money, which is why I went for budget flights into Bucharest and out of Maribor, Slovenia. That effectively decided my itinerary. I’d get an InterRail pass, stay at youth hostels and be answerable to no one.

Girls’ tour of the Balkans

In fact, my best friend from school was so excited about the itinerary for my tour of the Balkans that she decided to come along. The solo voyage of discovery became a girls trip — and was much more fun for that. We laughed uproariously over everything from the inflatable model of a WizzAir plane (on sale on the actual plane when it eventually turned up) to pretentious fellow youth hostellers. Even the potentially holiday-ruining parts of the tour of the Balkans — the pervert-in-the-woods near Sofia and sleepless nights at the hostel in Zagreb — became comic instead.

Ou itinerary from Bucharest to Maribor took in a total of five capital cities — Bucharest, Sofia, Belgrade, Zager and Ljubljana — as well as a side trip to Kumrovec, Croatia. We did the entire journey by train, taking overnight sleepers on the Bucharest-Sofia, Sofia-Belgrade and Belgrade-Zagreb legs, and daytime trains for the shorter Zagreb-Ljubljana and Ljubljana-Maribor sections. We stayed in youth hostels most nights, booked via Hostel Bookers.