IT was plain contrariness. That's my only explanation for taking the train from Belgrade, Serbia, to Bar in Montenegro on the Adriatic coast.
I wanted to see the Serbian countryside, all but off the tourist map since the recent Balkan wars, and to follow the wild gorge of the Tara River into Montenegro. My trip coincided with the potentially explosive May 21 election deciding whether Montenegrins would vote for independence from Serbia. (They did.)
Everyone warned me that it would be an uncomfortable, dirty, crowded ride, that trains on the Belgrade-Bar line are usually late and that the state-run railway system hasn't been improved since the 19th century. Even the Serbian Railways website issued warnings about the dilapidated state of its equipment and tracks.
Many Serbs travel to the sunny coast by plane or bus, a Belgrade travel agent told me. He politely and efficiently arranged the two-day trip, adding a night's layover at Zlatibor in the Dinaric Alps, but clearly thought I was crazy.
In Belgrade before the trip, I visited the city's small Railway Museum on Sava Square near the main train station. The museum is small and hardly state of the art, but it has old equipment, photos and maps of interest to train buffs, and descriptive panels in English as well as Serbian. From these I learned that trouble has dogged the country's trains.
The French company engaged to build a link for the Orient Express from Belgrade to Istanbul, Turkey, in 1880 went bankrupt, delaying the project 15 months. Unlike other European countries, Serbia invested little in its train system, ultimately laying only about 2,000 miles of tracks. Both world wars interrupted service and damaged railway infrastructure, as did NATO bombings in the 1990s.
But there were other, positive signs. The Belgrade train station turned out to be a handsome yellow Baroque edifice built in 1884, then rebuilt after it was demolished in the first and second world wars. Outside, travelers can admire the vintage locomotive that pulled the "Blue Train," used by President Josip Tito on cross-country tours. Tito's luxurious cars can be rented for special occasions, and the railway offers sightseeing excursions on lines such as the "Sargan Eight," which passes through 20 tunnels and over 10 bridges in about eight miles near the country's mountainous southwestern border.
