Not wanting to miss out on the overnight-train experience in the Balkan, we decided to take the one from Belgrade to Thessaloniki, taking just over 15 hours and passing through Macedonia. Being the correct Swiss citizens we aspire to be, we reserved to “couchettes” in a six-couchette compartment. Upon walking in, we found every last inch of storage space occupied with random cardboard boxes of the elderly (assumingly) Macedonian couple who was already in there. We decided to deal with that issue later on, and set our focus on the other two guys in there.

Now, they were interesting. One German, one Austrian, and they are – the Raildudes. Technically speaking, Peter (the German) is the Raildude, and Flo (the Austrian) his Chief of Staff – or something like that. Turns out they run the website www.raildude.com, which Peter started almost 20 years ago out of his passion for railroad travel. What started as a hobby now actually has grown into the largest railroad community of Europe, and his association with various railroad companies enables him to actually run that website full time. Why is that cool? Well, first of all because he managed to turn his hobby/passion into his job. Kudos for that. And second, because he gets to travel around Europe full time – as his job! Way cool. Two very nice guys, we couldn’t have wished for better companionship on that trip. We had some interesting discussions – and a serious round of UNO.

(I apologize for the shaky hand/blurry picture. I was quite nervous for I was not dominating the game the way I planned to do.)

They made the train ride seem a lot shorter than it was, and had some great tips for rides like that. For example that it’s nice to buy coffee/snacks from the “chief of wagon”, since they usually sell that to make some additional money (they get paid very little, it seems).

Yeah, the trip actually went by very quick. We had our passports checked four times, each time took about half an hour (they actually collect all the passports, run them through their checks in the office, and then hand them out again). And at some point, I think shortly before entering Greece, we picked up 20 or so Pakistani refugees, after them arguing with the authorities for about an hour. No clue what went down there, but they eventually got on the train and into Greece with us.

All in all a quite memorable experience. Hope to run into you again, Raildudes!