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I found my berth in the Bulgarian car, stepping over a pile of coal in the passageway and trying to ignore the stench from the toilet. The sleeping-car conductor, a friendly Bulgarian with a degree in international trade, told me wryly that his biggest dilemma each trip was deciding when to "fire up" the coal furnace. Too early and passengers sweated; too late and they froze. We shared a warm beer and he flicked cigarette ash on my bunk while inquiring about work on the North American rails. For a moment he evinced a Balkan longing for past glories, pointing out that Macedonia and southern Serbia were in fact Bulgarian. After a chilly, more or less sleepless night, I arrived at the Bulgarian border and climbed off in a cold morning mist.
The international crossing at the small textile town of Svelingrad, still fortified with crumbling cold war concrete, is now one of the busiest gateways to Europe. More than 250 trucks pass through each day. I watched as an avid team of customs officers pulled nondescript bundles from a suspicious-looking Turkish van. In the past year, these agents have seized two tons of drugs, including more heroin than was intercepted in all the rest of Europe. "There is no greater feeling than getting heroin in your hands," said the top drug officer, who asked to remain anonymous. "This is good for Bulgaria, and it is good for all of Europe." It is also good for the agents, who get a premium for each seizure and who, I later discovered, hold the most coveted civil service job in a sadly derelict economy.
A day's train ride zigzagging my way across a beautiful but impoverished countryside took me to Bulgaria's western border with Serbia and a tiny town called Tran. During the nato campaign against Serbia, a missile lost its way and landed just off the town square and the place still feels as if a bomb just hit it. We arrived after dark, and the only establishment open was a small vegetable stand where a handful of residents were drinking plum brandy and singing off-key. A nurse, Nicolina Chiflichka, 54, recently laid off from her job of 35 years, said that things had not been this bad in Bulgaria since the 1950s. The town used to be a focal point for smugglers bypassing the international embargo on Serbia, she said. Today, they bring goods from Serbia into Bulgaria. "Democracy," she scoffed. "I can't feel it. It's a misery."
Serbia, Bulgaria's neighbor to the west, was even less hopeful, at least until this September. But then Slobodan Milosevic was ousted from power and for the first time in decades the country seems ready to open up to the world. My route followed the old Roman via militaris from Istanbul to the Alps via Nis. The road is still empty these days but it is showing a few early signs of life. When I visited, Bulgarians could get a visa for Serbia in less time than they could get one for Greece, and businessmen were cautiously hopeful. Over a delicious dinner of fresh red peppers and grilled meat at a derelict spa, Braca Blagojevic, a local tourist agency manager, spoke of increased traffic and a scheme to peddle plastic busts of Emperor Constantine, thought to be born in Nis, to passing tourists.
The road is not completely open yet. The most direct route from Nis to my ultimate destination, Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, sliced through the province of Kosovo. But entering the Albanian-dominated province with Serb license plates is unwise. Our route instead jogged north and through a series of depressing communist-era industrial towns beginning with K — Knjazevac, Krusevac, Kraljevo — before heading south again into the mountains.
Montenegro's Alpine passes are extraordinary and have been the subject of travelers' tales for centuries. I stopped in the town of Kolasin, where Panto Pekovic, a local politician, told me about the bloody history of the place — from Ottoman Turks extracting tributes to Austrians setting up the town's first gallows. Fighting between rival rebel factions during World War II was particularly ruthless. "It was the worst fratricide you can get," he said. "We hope those times do not return."
From the beginning of this Balkan journey, nationalism was never far from the surface. Serbs warned of Bulgarians, Bulgarians of Albanians; Greeks told horror stories about barbaric Turks, and Turks lamented the hostility of Greeks. I met a Kurd picking cotton by the side of the road who said he prayed that Turkey would never join the E.U. because he would not be able to compete with the growing pool of cheap labor. On the other hand, the 10 a.m. Turkish Airlines flight from Athens to Istanbul, empty a year ago, is now fully booked days in advance.
Empires have fallen, then the Iron Curtain and now finally the retrograde regime of Slobodan Milosevic. When I ended my trip in Podgorica, it occurred to me that for the first time in roughly a century a Westerner can travel more or less unimpeded from the Black Sea into the heart of Europe. The differences along the way may still be more numerous than the similarities, but gradually, it seemed to me, they are being worn away.
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Wandering Borders
Squalor on the Balkan Express through lands where old atrocities linger in the memory but the borders are blurring
Photo Gallery
Check out the photos from this leg of TIME's Fast Forward Europe voyage
Crossing the Line
Joint efforts to find bone marrow donors for children with leukemia bring the two halves of Cyprus closer
Paper Curtain
East European countries moving toward E.U. membership are cut off from their neighbors
Points to Ponder
Slovene philosopher Slavoj Zizek on globalization and life's big questions
Good Riddance
Slobodan Milosevic's home town was a private playground for his delinquent son — until recently
Looking Forward, Looking Back
The artwork and lives of Christo and Jeanne-Claude are as historical as they are avant-garde
People To Watch: Radu Georgescu | Slavi Trifonov
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