The first trip between Belgrade and Subotica lasted eighty-two minutes. A free ticket was requested more. Our reporter recorded her impressions
At a speed that reaches 200 kilometers per hour on most of the railway, in one hour and 22 minutes, the first "Falcon" of Belgrade to Subotica. With numerous controversies that this railway follow, a higher ticket was required to ride it today, and many remained waiting for the next train.
On Wednesday, October 8, exactly at noon, according to the official schedule, the first "Soko" took off from Belgrade to Subotica.
A few days earlier Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić took a ride in it with some other representatives of the government, the Chinese who were building the high-speed railway and selected journalists. The train then arrived in Subotica in just 62 minutes.
There was great interest in the first regular ride. Those who remembered in time quickly downloaded the free online tickets after the publication of the timetable on Tuesday. Those who did not, had to be very early on Wednesday to be able to board.
Tickets could be downloaded via the app, website or live. In the online edition, they were already unavailable on Tuesday evening for the first two departures.
A large line greeted many at the ticket office on Wednesday. Mostly pensioners in it. A special number of tickets has been provided for them, Serbian Railways announced the day before.
The two pensioners did not expect such a crowd.
"There's a reason it's like this," says one of them. "It's free, I've never gone by 'Sokol' before, so I wanted to use the free ticket. I'm certainly not going to pay 2000 dinars to go and come back from Subotica."
It soon became clear to them that they would not board the first one voice. It was 11:20 a.m., there were 40 minutes left until the train's departure, and someone "let the flea" that there are no more tickets for today's departures from Belgrade - not one of the six scheduled daily departures.
The conductor says that there are more than 300 seats in the train. Although the tickets are free, he checks them, so that he knows the traffic of passengers.
Although there were no tickets from Belgrade before departure, there were empty seats in the wagons.
In the first run, some of the leaders of the Railway traveled with it.
Olga Baškota, her husband and a friend with a few other friends sat in the first "Sokol". Two other friends were supposed to go with them, but since they canceled, their tickets were given to people waiting in line.
"When they saw me with the tickets, people thought I was handing them out endlessly, so they crowded around me. I saw afterwards that they apparently let everyone go. I don't know why they didn't give more tickets when the train was empty," says one of the passengers from this group.
The train goes fast, it reached Petrovaradin in 29 minutes. It's clean, the seats are comfortable, and there's internet, but the coffee machines between the cars don't work, and the water and snack machines are empty. That's why there's everything in the bar.
Although the train is moving at high speed, Olga Baškota says that she does not feel it.
"It's comfortable, it's wonderful and it's good that tickets can be reserved, so that every seat is filled. Now I see that here it's not really, but it will be filled at other stations. It's nice that people can stop by Subotica for free," says Olgica.
Tickets are free until Sunday, and even a return ticket of 2.000 dinars is not high for such a ride.
A younger passenger is afraid of the speed and the news that came about the safety of the railway.
The brown-haired girl still decided to go for a ride. While the train roars and flies through the landscapes of Vojvodina, he says that the speed is not felt until you look out the window.
Two pensioners came from Vrnjačka Banja specially to drive to Subotica.
They talk about when they will return, how they will spend the day in Subotica. One of them was never there.
"Imagine sitting like this and going to Budapest to have fun and come back in the evening", fantasizes one of the two.
A team of girls with big backpacks on their backs is going right to Budapest. They are from Berlin, on an Interrail trip. They board in Petrovaradin and react with surprise when they learn that they are in the first "Falcon" to Subotica.
"Really? We had no idea," Maxi says with a smile.
Otherwise, their journey through Serbia would take much longer.
"We chose this particular train by chance. It is quite clean, cleaner than the others. We came from Bar to Belgrade and traveled on an old train for more than 12 hours. The very old one that still smokes," says Maxi.
And the author of these lines is traveled like them 10 years ago. The first stop was Berlin, and it took hours to get to Budapest. A lot of things were different a decade ago - you left from the old railway station in Belgrade, you went to Subotica on an equally old train that carried the spirit of another time, and for my Interrail team, the transfer to a high-speed European railway later from Hungary was the first such trip that you can travel half of the continent in two weeks.
But let's return to the present moment.
There are also those on the train who are working on their laptops.
Denis from Russia, who currently lives in Belgrade, decided to take a drive and drink coffee in the northernmost city of Serbia when he heard that the train to Subotica was leaving.
"I saw that the train was full, that's what it said on the website, but actually, now I'm shocked that it's not like that," says Dennis with his laptop.
It is possible to work from the train, he says, but the internet is not very good. His phone is charged on the train, as there are charging ports on the seats.
Miki Stojanović traveled from Vrbas without a ticket.
He says that the ride was fantastic, but he didn't know that he needed to have some kind of ticket for it. He lived in Europe for a long time, so he is used to the fast train.
Upon arrival in Subotica, there is also a queue of those who buy tickets at the kiosk for all directions.
Building Subotica Railway Station has been renovated, even its facade, but it is closed. There are signs in Serbian and English that entry is not allowed, and tickets can be bought at the kiosk.
The students of a Subotica secondary school are also going to Petrovaradin by high-speed train from Subotica, who today have practical classes, so the teachers decided that a high-speed train ride would also be part of it.
He left at exactly 2 pm for Belgrade and, according to the timetable, should be in the capital at 3:19 pm.
The high-speed railway from Belgrade to Subotica was supposed to be put into service last year.
This railway continues to cause numerous controversies, and the Subotica Railway Station, which is under lock and key, received a safety rating of one.
It is part of the reconstructed 108-kilometer long railway connecting Novi Sad and Subotica and the large state project of building a railway between Belgrade and Budapest. The modernization of that section of the road was financed by loans from China, and the main contractor was a consortium of Chinese companies China Railway International and China Communications Construction Company.
As part of that project, the ill-fated Railway Station building in Novi Sad, which is currently being demolished, was also reconstructed canopies On November 1 last year, 16 people died.
The load-bearing walls of the reconstructed railway station building in Subotica are badly damaged, the canopy towards the station square is damaged, while the condition of the roof structure on the building is assessed as unfavorable. The overall condition of the building was described as "very damaged" with a rating of "1 - unsatisfactory".
Passengers traveling by train from Subotica to Novi Sad from today (October 8) will not enter the station buildings between those two cities, because they are unsafe, according to the report of the Department for Inspection of the Ministry of Construction from July of this year.
"The fact that we cannot open three stations now is - although they will give you countless explanations - only because of what happened 11 months ago," said Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić.
Construction engineer Danijel Dašić, a member of the Commission of Inquiry that deals with the examination of responsibility for the fall of the canopy, for DW assesses that the president of Serbia "long ago said goodbye to expertise and rational and logical reasoning".
"According to the report of the Inspectorate, five out of six stations from Novi Sad to Subotica were declared unsafe. The only one that passed was Zmajevo-Vrbas. All the others were rated as one. Therefore, the level of insecurity is not small," says Dašić.
He emphasizes that there were warnings about the insufficient security of station buildings even before the report of the Inspection.
"Vučić was warned more than a year ago by the Chinese that all the station reconstructions they were doing as part of the commercial contract were not enough. They stated that those buildings could not be station buildings next to a railway line that travels 200 kilometers per hour, due to the vibration and age of the facilities, and that a thorough reconstruction of those facilities or the construction of new ones was needed. The president completely ignored this and about a month before the fall of the canopy, he had only one objection when opening the station in Subotica, and that was is that there are no inscriptions in the Hungarian language," reminds Dašić.
Now there are signs in Serbian, Hungarian and English, but that's why the station is locked.
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