I left from Thessaloniki Friday at 00:09 26th to Bucharest and I arrived there at 19:30. Despite my intention to travel at 27th to Istanbul I changed my mind yesterday to go to Belgrade. I got the train from Gare du Nord at 21:40 to Belgrade. The Wagon was full of passengers and this impressed me. The half of these got off to Timisoara ( we arrived to Timisoara 04:35 next day 27th) and the others to Belgrade (10:40 next day). After thought, I explained to myself that yesterday it was Friday night and these passengers were students and employees got to their homes. Romanians got off the train to Timisoara. Serbians to Belgrade that work to Bucharest. Romania from 2007 is in European Union and many Serbians go there for business which is connected to EU.Now from Belgrade I will end my 3rd attempt "crossing the Balkans countries by train" to Thessaloniki, Greece ( 22:20).
As I said in my last report Romania is the new leader on the Balkan Flexipass train ticket. Romania tries to have a European profile but needs more effort for it. Concerning this, Greece is in EU 27 years but the European profile of Greece is not so obvious. Firstly, for political reasons (corruption) and secondly because Greece didn't has borders with the EU, except from sea.(From 2007 there is land connections with Bulgaria and in extent with Romania and the rest Europe). Therefore I realized that there are common things in many tasks between Greeks and Balkans (Serbians, Bulgarians, Romanians, Turkish) for example the way of leaving. Despite the Balkan peninsula is a part of Europe, it is different from the rest Europe and in this period wants to make a modern "European profile".
Finally, I could say that The Balkan area is "an old" part of Europe very important to Europe and in nowadays tries to become the "new part" of Europe.
Belgrade 270908
PS. The map on the title link is:
Map from "Stanford's Compendium of Geography and Travel: Europe" Volume 1, 1899.
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