…and then there were cigarettes…
“We want to escape the cigarette smugglers”, the young Norwegian girl says to me, worriedly. Her friend, a Polish girl, says that they study together in Italy and explains that she can understand about 30% of what the people in her compartment are saying because Serbian and Polish are similar.
“They are worried about getting caught”, she says, “very worried. And I don’t want to be in there if they do”.
I’m on the train from Belgrade to Sofia, which has been running slowly and stopping for the whole day with no apparent reason, and is now something like two hours late. It’s looking like I’m going to miss the last bus to Etropole, the small town in the Bulgarian mountains where my cousin is getting married in two days’ time, and might end up staying the night in Sofia or doing the two hour journey in a taxi.
I’d seen the dodgy looking men with rather too many bags with rather too many right angles protruding from them, but it hadn’t occurred to me that anyone would want to smuggle cigarettes from Serbia into Bulgaria. I can’t imagine them being anything but incredibly cheap in both countries, but they must be doing it for some reason. The train staff and even the Serbian police appeared at one stage to get in on the deal, and the dodgy looking bags were spirited away as we approached the border; presumably to be hidden somewhere discreet in the depths of the train.
As we trundle across the frontier towards the Bulgarian customs post the train is clearly home to a number of highly agitated people. The men in uniform board, check passports and poke around suspiciously in various bags. They know something is going on but can’t seem to find anything. When the train eventually pulls away the relief is apparent; beers are opened and celebrations ensue. Pity I’m still not going to make that bus.
