Day 71 - I Got A Bad Feeling About This

Today was the last day to decide how I'm getting to Athens. I could have tried flying, but between the reservation web sites that seemed to be broken and prices that seemed completely illogical (over five hundred dollars from the "budget" airlines), I decided against it. I could have tried Eurail, but I know how that would go, and three solid days of train and ferry travel is out! So what did I decide? I'm forging across the great unknown, in other words Serbia and Macedonia. I arrive tomorrow in Belgrade. I'll spend the night at Three Black Catz hostel and probably head out for Skopje the next day. I'd like to make the whole crossing in three nights. Belgrade, Skopje, Thessaloniki. That'll give me almost a week in or near Athens. Bye bye free trains, hello places I never heard of. Every trip should feature at least one place you've never heard of, right?

Bang! Bang! Bang!

• Decisions. Other than make my train reservations, I didn't really have an agenda today. Since I do believe the Palace of Miracles is just a myth spread by the tourist board, I decided to head to the
• Zoo. Part of me hates zoos because the animals are so restricted. The giant parks where they have room are okay, but some of the animals in any zoo are so restricted it's just criminal. The cow was tied up in a way that just made me sick. It couldn't do anything but stand there. Admittedly, cows don't usually do anything but stand there, but the fact that it was on a three foot leash tied around its horns was just wrong. The bald eagle in the enclosure that gave it no room to fly was another notable crime against nature. Reservations aside, I love seeing these animals. They're amazing. Just the size is impossible in some cases. The silverback was incredible. The grizzly bears were intimidating even with a huge moat hemming them in. I took a movie of them that will hopefully convey their size better than the pictures.
• Veggie Restaurant. Having spent the better part of the day walking to and photographing the zoo, I headed to a vegetarian restaurant. It was more costly than the other vegetarian restaurant, but they had more variety, as well. I tried the chef's special and got breaded tofu with sour cream. It was pretty good. Lunch was actually a better value. I had hungarian macaroni, by which I mean the macaroni noodles were six inches long. At first I thought they were just really fat spaghetti until I tried to slurp one up and found myself sucking air through the noodle.

That's pretty much it for today. The train to Belgrade doesn't leave until 13:35 tomorrow, so I'll take a leisurely shower and shave in the morning, burn a CD, and make sure I'm properly provisioned for the train.