Right now I’m sitting on a train supposed to be heading for Bucharest, but there’s a great deal of confusion in the atmosphere due to several contributing factors.

Firstly, none of the staff speak English. A few different people have come round checking tickets but they aren’t wearing any kind of uniform. There’s a short man with thinning grey hair, a youngish woman and another large bloke carrying a stick. I’ve also been passed by a couple of uniformed police officers and noticed one guy in green trousers with a gun strapped around his waste, clearly visible to anyone nearby.

Secondly, there’s the fact that I didn’t sleep at all last night. After missing the train I wanted to take at 7.30pm by one minute because of a late taxi, I had nowhere to sleep and spent around eight hours at the cheapest internet café in Sofia (under £5 for the whole stay). It was a surreal experience and surprisingly I wasn’t the only person there: several gaming freaks were online until the early hours.

Spending a day in the train rather than a night is very annoying. Now I’ll only have one day in Bucharest, when I’d wanted to have two like I’ve been doing with all the other places. It’s not the end of the world though and hopefully this train will be OK…

But what about Sofia? The busy capital of Bulgaria was definitely a fascinating place and I had great guidance from my host Dejan, one of the kindest guys I’ve ever met. He’s a friend of someone I know from the German course last year, who unfortunately wasn’t around himself this week. It was Dejan’s suggestion to visit the internet place: his brother was coming home that night so there was no space for me there anymore and nearly all his friends were out of town.

On the first day I saw just about everything there is to see. Sofia has many beautiful churches, due to the Bulgarian people’s enslavement by the Ottoman Empire for 800 years. Many of the Orthodox or Catholic ones are build underground because the Turkish rulers decreed that their churches had to be the tallest. The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, a main landmark, was grand and impressive, but what wasn’t so impressive was the swarm of beggars clamouring for loose change all around it. One woman even had the nerve to follow us down the street for a couple hundred metres and only went away when given money. It’s such a shame that people need to behave this way simply in order to survive.

Another point of interest was Sloveikov Square, an area of market stalls with an infamous reputation. Apparently you can find any book, film or computer software programme among the low tables, even if it means pirate copies of unreleased movies. From that perspective it’s similar to London, where shady vendors carrying rucksacks of dodgy DVDs make their living from selling under the table in pubs or other places they can escape the eye of the law.

Someone told me there had been snow at home and there also was in Sofia a couple of days before I arrived. Temperatures were sub-zero and the white stuff everywhere, although increasingly degenerated to a dangerous icy slush in many places. Not wanting my travel insurance premium to increase, I had to tread carefully to avoid slipping – and it was especially risky when hurrying around before missing that train last night.

Bulgaria must have the best currency name in all Europe, if not the world: Lev and Stotinki. A popular joke is to imagine the Bulgarian version of rapper 50 Cent, who would be called 50 Stotinki – a much better name in my opinion.

A minor culture shock I had came from Bulgarian head gesturing. I’m used to a nod signifying ‘yes’ and a shake meaning ‘no’, but they don’t use nodding here. Instead they have two slightly different ways of shaking the head from side to side. It seemed strange to me when, for example, a waitress shook her head after we asked to pay at a restaurant – I thought she was refusing. But I got used to it eventually and there’s an interesting story about how this mannerism developed historically.

During the Turkish rule, when many innocent civilians were being cruelly slaughtered for the reason of religion, it was common for Ottoman soldiers to ask the question “are you Catholic?” They would do so while holding a knife, sword or spear to the victim’s throat, so when they nodded their head in affirmative they met an untimely end. So to avoid this the current system of shakes for both yes and no was adopted.

Enforcement of tyrannical laws such as this during the slavery period were common, but today the situation is apparently very different regarding police. They are often brutal in their methods, but that’s only when they’re actually doing their jobs. Most of the time they are moaning about bad pay and not upholding the law in the ways they should. This seems to be a bad situation of two extremes: they either do absolutely nothing or go too far. And, similar to London, there’s also a lot of unfair discrimination towards young people.

As well as seeing Sofia’s historical heritage, I also visited what is very much a symbol of the modern age. ‘Sofialand’, a large entertainment complex just outside the city, has arcades, bowling, food, drink and a small fairground at the disposal of visitors. It seemed to be quite a popular place; there were lots of people around even though much of the outdoor area was closed and this is a time of year when many are on holiday.

My train had a couple more stops, including quite a long one we only just left. Outside I can see endless countryside, which is fairly pleasant as these things go, and bright sunshine is giving a summary look to the scenery. Haven’t crossed the border yet and I think there’s at least another three hours to go before reaching Bucharest, but it’s hard to be sure because of the language barrier problems.

My first impression of Belgrade was the recognition that this would probably be very different to everything else I’d previously seen. The passport control officer on the train gave me a few nervous moments when she said my name into a walkie-talkie and had a brief discussion in Serbian with a man at the other end. Thankfully it was OK though.

As we approached the main station, I noticed what looked like a shanty town out of the window; its existence was later confirmed. There had been no ‘cardboard city’ in any of the other places I’ve visited recently. It was quite a shock to see something like this blatant symbol of abject poverty, definitely the worst living conditions yet on my journey through Europe.

After meeting my friend’s friend at the station and getting all that stuff sorted, we headed out to meet a few other people at a club in town. It was an underground location, apparently one of three similar venues, and that created an interesting atmosphere. It was quite small and the fact it was full of people further enhanced that effect. Very different to anything I’ve seen in London or anywhere else, but all in all I’d say it was definitely a good place for Saturday night.

The next day, Christmas for me, I ventured out into the unknown, slightly intimidated by the city and its people. A lot of the signs were in Cyrillic, which is the country’s official alphabet – so this included all street names. I’m so glad I decided to learn it a few weeks ago, otherwise I’d have been completely lost and confused. The map I borrowed was all in Latin text, so it took me a while to make the translations, but in the end I found my way to the city centre.

Before reaching this, I deliberately took a walk in the opposite direction in order to avoid the commercialisation and modern environment I expected. On the streets I saw many sellers of multicoloured pet fish and even a couple with rabbits and dogs. I also stumbled upon a bustling marketplace; it was one of the ones where you can find absolutely anything if you look hard enough or know where to go. All kinds of food, electrical goods, clothes and household items were available and, although there was some basic layout, things weren’t brilliantly arranged. You could find a stall with kitchen and bathroom taps located next to a fish booth, with live specimens on display in a tank.

The streets around this phenomenal area were all very poor. Outside lots of them were parked old, dirty, dusty cars, some of which looked like they hadn’t been used for years. One of the most common models is the ‘Yugo’, which is not equipped with safety belts in the back seats. People I spoke with told me Serbia is where the “East” begins – Zagreb is a lot more prosperous than Belgrade, which was bombed by NATO in 1999. The Serbian currency, the Dinar, is exchangeable at around 125 for a pound, which made everything seem very expensive although it really wasn’t.

After leaving this part of the city and heading back towards the centre, things steadily became a lot more developed. There’s a large pedestrian area of shops and entertainment near the Republic Square and everything you’d ever see in London, Rome or New York with regards to technology can be found. The same mobile phone culture seems to be everywhere: people just can’t live without one anymore, wherever they are, and wouldn’t want to think about what life was like before the items became widely available. Internet cafes were a lot more uncommon than in, for example, Rome – I had to ask in several shops and luckily a few employees could speak good English so told me where to go.

When telling people about my trip through Europe they became greatly envious. It’s a lot harder for them to travel anywhere, with a visa process involving dozens of documents and lengthy amounts of time and effort. Only now have I learnt to fully appreciate being part of the EU and the freedom of movement this entails. Our brothers and sisters in Belgrade and throughout the Eastern bloc have very limited possibilities to leave, even if they want to study, and many must harbour dreams of being able to get out and live somewhere else.

So, this was a Christmas very different to anything else I’d ever experienced. No celebrations, no presents, no realisation of the occasion for me. I spent the day wandering around a new city, in the same non-festive state of mind which has been going for a few weeks now. It’s strange to have “missed out” on it for 2005, but this pays testament to the crazy year I’ve had and is also, I suppose, a consequence of travelling around so much and wanting to explore. Interestingly, they celebrate New Year twice: both on December 31 and a few days after their own Xmas on January 7. A couple of my friends from Hungary are planning to be in Belgrade for NYE and I may well return and celebrate with them, then move on to Budapest after that. Hopefully the weather will clear up a bit from how it was today – torrential rains reminded my of being back in England.

As I write I am sitting on a sparsely occupied night train to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. It’s been a very uneventful journey so far, with not even a visit from the ticket inspector, and I have used the luxury of a compartment all to myself to unpack and repack my bags, which were getting quite disorganised and messy. I don’t really want to go to sleep yet, although I’m feeling quite tired, because I’m not sure when we’re scheduled to cross the border and don’t want to be woken up by passport controllers. I’ve just discovered there’s no working sink facility in this carriage, which probably means no toilet as well – not the best thing to find out with over six hours left til we reach the destination. The terminus of this service is Skopje, Macedonia, so I have to be careful not to miss my stop and end up there by accident. I do plan to visit, just not on this excursion.

The train at Ljubljana station was about 45 minutes late – I at least could understand the basic message of PA announcements as I sat on the freezing platform, my breath creating metre-long steam trails as I exhaled.

And if that wasn’t annoying enough, there was a big commotion getting on because hardly any space remained in nearly all its six-seated compartments. I formed an alliance of desperation with the nearest person and we searched through the train to no avail. Luckily he was a talented negotiator and managed to persuade the ticket inspector to let us into his dark, empty compartment.

It turned out my companion was a disillusioned Croatian artist who spoke good English as well as several other languages. He was returning to Zagreb for a family Xmas from his home in Ljubljana and talked about the fascinating travel experiences of his life so far.

His father had been a diplomat (perhaps that’s where the negotiating skills came from) and as a result he’d lived in a few different countries during childhood. But apparently all this travelling had caused fractious relationships with the family – just imagine a complete change of setting when moving countries, then as soon as you’re nearly settled down there it’s time to leave again. Although I love travelling, I wouldn’t want it to happen like this.

It’s true that time can pass quickly when speaking to other people during journeys – before I knew it we had arrived. I had two new stamps in the passport, after the artist (whose name I never knew) kindly asked the inspectors to put them in. My friend from Zagreb, who I met at a German summer school in 2004, was there on the platform and first we went back to his place so I could leave my backpack there.

The 23rd had been his last day of school before the Christmas holidays and he planned to celebrate with a few people at a bar in the centre. It had pool tables and we played a few games, but apparently the main nightlife happens only on Saturdays. Unlike at home, Croatian culture is that Friday is usually a quiet one, even if it’s the end of term for so many people.

I wasn’t really sure what plans would be for the next day – originally I had intended to take a train to Belgrade at 11:10 and arrive around 17:00. But I wanted to see more of Zagreb and meet up with someone else from the even in Vilnius, so the second option was to leave at 16:45, arriving about 23:00.

In the end that was the choice I made; we were going to wake up early and see the city, but that didn’t really work so we needed more time. Also, I discovered the person I’d be visiting in Belgrade wasn’t actually the there, so alternative arrangements needed to be made. Spending most of Saturday evening – also Christmas eve – on a train wasn’t going to be exciting, but it was the best option available.

The weather in Zagreb was wonderful. I awoke and opened the blinds to be greeted by bright sunshine, which promised a great day. It’s so unusual for me to have such a luxury in December, I think this is another factor in my non-Christmassy frame of mind. Rome also had unseasonable sun and if at home I’m pretty sure it would be the usual grim, grey English scenario.

One thing I didn’t realise was that war in Croatia only ended in 1995. We don’t get taught much about the Balkan conflicts, perhaps because so many effects still remain and the events can’t yet be consigned to history.

But although these may remain in the hearts and minds of many alive during the time, Zagreb city centre doesn’t give any clues at all. The new Mayor has apparently been doing a good job since his recent election, but even without this I doubt I’d be able to tell Zagreb was part of a nation in conflict only ten years ago.

It’s a very modern place, with lots of shops and entertainment possibilities and a good transport system consisting of buses and trams. Many of the main streets were alive with last-minute Christmas shoppers, including my friend Filip who bought eight boxes of chocolates. Traditional music was playing in the city square and there was a really nice atmosphere.

We walked to the appropriately-named ‘upper town’ so I could see the historical side of Zagreb. One church with an amazing roof design instantly caught my eye, colourfully displaying national symbols. The whole compound had been a fortress in medieval times and they had done all the usual witch-burning antics common of the era.

After a visit to the city museum where, surprisingly, most of the information was only in Croatian, we walked around a bit more before meeting my other friend. He’s actually from another (unpronounceable) city quite nearby, but studies in Zagreb and goes there a lot on weekends.

Seeing him again so soon after we’d met in Vilnius was pretty crazy; it was strange to realise how quickly the time has gone since then. That was the week of November 28. Now it’s nearly a month later, I’ve been to a few more countries and conferences and time is running out on 2005.

The train, where I am right now, is incredibly cold. For some reason the heating system is failing us, maybe it froze. Passport inspectors have just come round, as we’re about to leave Croatia, and the vehicle is not moving. Two other people are sitting silently with me in the compartment and another man was here earlier; we have been communicating in German, they don’t speak any English. There’s longer than two hours before we reach Belgrade...

As a native if of the United Kingdom, I’m not really used to the concept of being able to just hop into a car and be in another country. But that’s what we did and in under half an hour were in Slovenia – the small industrial town of Sežana from where our train to Ljubljana would depart.

Its driver curiously chose to keep the glass door to his cockpit wide open (something which would never happen in London), but compared to some of my previous rail journeys this wasn’t such a long one: we arrived a little after 11.30. Unfortunately this was too late to meet someone I knew from the conference in Vilnius – she was waiting at 11, but then had to rush off and do other things. Two people is still a good number to explore a city though, so we ventured out into the cold – it had clearly snowed very recently and lots of it was piled up at roadsides.

Despite the fact it’s the capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana is a very small city and it has that atmosphere. At this time of year, so close to Christmas, the streets are decorated with glowing lights and there is a market in full swing.

One of the main landmarks is the castle, situated at the top of quite a large hill – it was a good thing I left my backpack in a locker at the station. From the top we had what would have been a spectacular view, had it not been for the cloudy and foggy weather conditions. On the way up we passed through a residential area, but it must be a real pest hiking to and fro every day.

Currency and language in Slovenia were both sources of great confusion for me. There is some kind of complicated equation to convert Slovenian “Tolarjev” into Euros and I then had to make another conversion into pounds to fully understand prices. And if my understanding of French is bad and Italian worse, Slovenian has to be the new rock bottom – somewhere down with Czech and Arabic.

Even though we can count the hours to Christmas day, for some reason I’m just not in the spirit of the occasion. Actually, I think it’s a combination of factors…

Furst, there’s the fact I won’t be really celebrating it anyway. Since the planning stages of this trip I’ve known about the differences in calendar between the UK and Serbia – their Christmas isn’t until January 7 because they use the Orthodox system.

Secondly, there was the conference in Campobasso. If at home during that time I wouldn’t have been working nearly as intensely. Xmas has just snuck up in all the busyness and now it’s just around the corner.

Finally, I still have the feeling there’s a lot more of 2005 yet to come. Everything has happened so quickly in the last few months and life has been hard to keep up with at times. I can’t quite believe this crazy year is about to end.

Maybe this will change in the next couple of days when I’ll be visiting another friend in Zagreb. The thing with Ljubljana was that I didn’t have enough time to form distinct impressions of the city. It doesn’t just “hit” you in the same way as Rome or Venice and I’d need longer to construct my views.

I should have this in Zagreb though, that will be another European capital crossed off the list. I’ve heard the weather can be quite random and unpredictable there, especially at this time of year, so am prepared for the worst. But surely it can’t be colder than Ljubljana…?

After an amazing few days in Rome I was looking forward to exploring the renaissance wonderland of Florence. Unfortunately there were several factors which combined to greatly restrict this possibility.

First of all there was the lateness of my train. Although I had anticipated this to happen, in accordance with my other experiences of Italian timekeeping, it was nevertheless disappointing when I arrived at the main station around 9pm – nearly one-and-a-half hours later than scheduled. Once I’d found my hostel of choice, the Archi Rossi, selected because of its inexpensiveness, and sorted the accommodation arrangements (€19 for one night, perfectly acceptable), the streets were dark and deserted with little possibility for sightseeing.

I still went out though and had quite a nice walk around. Even at night some of the landmarks are stunning – although probably not as good as in daylight. Surprisingly, I heard a lot of American (or Canadian) voices in the ancient streets, which mere more crowded than the modern city centre.

This area was largely unspectacular compared to the famous architecture and well-preserved monuments. Litter was scattered around the pavements and the only possibility for eating was a fast food place where I had one of the worst tasting pizza slices ever, all plasticky and horrible.

Since there had been no time for proper exploration that evening, I planned to rise at the crack of dawn to look around some more. My train to Venice was due to leave at 8.39 and, despite the fact it was blatantly going to be late, this still left hardly any time in the morning. And it was restricted even further when the presence of a loudly-snoring fellow traveller in my shared hostel bedroom meant I couldn’t sleep til the small hours and was resultedly incapable of waking again at 6am.

So it was in a frenzied hurry that I jumped out at 8, silently scurrying around in the darkness with a torch in my mouth trying to prepare for imminent departure (and wishing I’d selected the other possible accommodation option, a single room for only a few more Euros). Only just caught the train, but at least managed to catch up on sleep for a while during the three-hour journey.

When I woke we were nearly at Venice and I was very excited. After seeing numerous pictures of and TV shows about the city at home, I couldn’t wait to discover it for myself. I was also meeting a friend here and looking forward to that as well.

And what a perfect day it was for going around. Beautiful reflections shimmered in the waters and the tourist hotspots were relatively quiet and peaceful. The concept of having a town build with canals instead of roads took a while to set in: public transport and ambulance services were boats. There was even a kind of traffic system in place with mirrors and signs dotted around.

As well as a breathtaking waterway structure, Venice also has a good road system for pedestrians with lots of charming bridges and narrow streets. I really enjoyed the non-presence of cars and other motor vehicles, especially after the chaos of Rome’s dangerous drivers. Lots of shops selling artistic, but slightly monotonous and boring, glass products from one of Venice’s islands were everywhere; these were interesting at first but then it was like you couldn’t escape them.

Venice is a city renowned for expensiveness, but it was funny comparing this reputation to some of the merchandise we found in one marketplace. If Rome is capital city of the fake garment trade, Venice is equivalent for fragrances. A few of the best were ‘Lacostimento’, ‘Lugo Ross’ and ‘Jommy Girl’. How can the vendors of such products maintain any shred of dignity in the sales industry? The answer is: they don’t, shamelessly pedalling their wares and targeting short-sighted people in particular. But I wasn’t surprised to see largely untouched piles of these boxes of blatant imitation.

My day in Venice was truly excellent and it was also very nice to have an Italian speaker with me. No more five-minute confusions trying to order pizza in Spanish with an Icelander (don’t ask, that’s another story – and not really too interesting).

We caught an evening train to Trieste, where I would be staying a couple of nights with the same friend, and I was warned this town would be a bit of a humbling experience after the glorious beauty of Venice.

But I wouldn’t say Trieste was a bad place, it’s just that nowhere in the world can possibly compete with Venice. Apparently the former has the oldest population in Italy, but also the best quality of life rating. As I wandered around the next day, both of these seemed to be true. Everyone was looking satisfied and contented with their existence and there were quite a few elderly citizens on the rampage with their lethal wheely trollies – how I’ve missed that from my local highstreet back in London.

When it came to young people, I encountered a large group letting off small fireworks outside what must have been a school, or somewhere nearby to one. It was their last day of term, so why not celebrate with a few purple-smoke-emitting tubes and showers of bright sparks, both of which had diminished effects during daytime? I was actually quite worried: these kids clearly hadn’t read the safety handbook, as they were standing in close proximity to the literally money-burning initiators of spontaneous combustion.

Even after I’d left this scenario behind, the air was occasionally shattered by loud bangs – and I feared each one might bring a collapsing pensioner.

The industrial territory of Trieste has actually had a very interesting history, cycling through different owners in quite a short space of time. One of the largest minority groups is Slovenians; the country’s borders are very close and this was to be my next destination.

I’ve never gone as far into the east of Europe was I will on this trip and it should be interesting to observe the cultural differences. Trieste has some nice history, but can’t really compete with the sheer grandeur of Rome, Florence or Venice. It’s just a “normal” place I suppose, but there’s nothing wrong with that and it gave me a taste of typical life in Italy.

It’s been great to see the country properly, although with Italy there’s always more waiting to be explored. In future I hope to visit Milan, Torino, Sicily and others, as well as having a lot more time to see Florence.