Olivera gave us a hot Serbian meat pie from the bakery for breakfast and came with us in a taxi to the station. She inquired at the bus station about buses to Istanbul but no luck there. Last night we reserved our seats for returning to Novi Sad from Budapest on Sunday, but we were unable to find sleeper cabins on the Belgrade to Sofia train. This morning we tried to book Istanbul to Bratislava at a window where a man was reading the paper. He told Olivera that he was too busy this time of day and we had plenty of time to do it later. He made Serbian service look very undisciplined. The taxi drivers have all been good here, but Olivera told us it depends on using the right companies. Overcharging tourists is common.
Our train arrived but there were no signs on the platform or the carriages that mentioned Budapest so we had to check with the guard. Our ticket said our destination was Ferencvaros. The first class carriage was clean and comfortable. Only a few others came in over the 7 hour trip. There were more staff and police that came through than passengers. There was a restaurant car run by two ladies but no menu on show and hardly any one using it. No concept of proactive service on the trains. We spread out and enjoyed the trip in comfort.
By reading the European Timetable book we found that our train was not stopping at the Keleti station that was closest to our hotel. We had tracked our route from Keleti to the hotel on Google maps and photoed it onto the phone.
The train changed locos and ticket checkers twice and we spent nearly an hour at the border with the the police on board. The Serbian policeman looked at the address of Olivia's place on our police card and told us he lived very close; he was friendly.
We asked around to find out when we should get off the train as we did not want to end up in Vienna tonight. Finally a guard with good English told us to go one stop further than our ticket and catch the Metro 4 to Keleti. We spent half an hour finding a cash machine at the station to get HUFs to buy Metro tickets. We also changed 40 euros so we may have enough money to last till Sunday. When we got to the M4 platform a lady told us in Hungarian that we had done the wrong thing; probably bought the wrong kind of ticket. Once again we cheated the ticket system perhaps.
At Keleti we had no problem finding the right streets to follow but it was a hot walk of 1.7 km to the Central Green Hotel. Our luggage was down to one case each as we left half of it in Novi Sad.
The reception at the hotel was excellent and we paid only AUD150 for three nights of room and breakfast. There was a level of slackness in the provision of standard facilities. There were no towels, so we had to ask for them; the TV aerial cable was broken and we had to mend it ourselves temporarily till the service man comes tomorrow; we plugged the fridge in but it has not worked yet. Once all is fixed we will be quite comfortable here.
The Lidl supermarket was 100 meters away so we stocked up on food and water there and went to a restaurant 100 meters in the opposite directions for a traditional Hungarian dinner which was up to the standard that Nada had set.
We ate enough for three people but there was still enough left over for a fourth person.
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