Successfully completed the quest "ride Tito's blue train." Now I'm going to grab a pastry from the shelf.

In a hangar on the outskirts of Belgrade sits a blue train that Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito often traveled on. Since 2005, anyone can come and see the train from the inside and outside. But there are a couple of quirks.

The train is open for visits only on weekdays from 8 AM to 2 PM. You need to book in advance, at least two days before your visit (details about the process here; I emailed them, but they don't respond very quickly).

You need a ticket to enter. But they don't sell them on-site—you have to go to the central train station. And get this: they wouldn't sell it to me a day in advance, saying I had to come the day of the visit. When buying, the cashier called someone—I figured to verify my reservation (though I could be wrong; I don't understand Serbian well enough yet). I'm curious what they do if someone shows up at the ticket window at 6 AM when there's no one to check with? By the way, they took my ticket back after the visit. They could've let me keep it as a souvenir. It's pretty cool.

Finding the train wasn't easy. There are basically no signs or markers anywhere. Following local tips, I found the entrance to the hangar. There were some people sitting around smoking nearby. They helped me find the guy with the keys to the train and brought over the tour guide—an extremely taciturn young guy (partly because he doesn't really speak English, and I haven't learned Serbian yet). But now I know which part of the train Tito himself slept in, where his wife slept (spoiler: in a separate compartment), and where Charles de Gaulle stayed (spoiler: also in a separate compartment, but a different one). I read everything else on Wikipedia.

The train was actively used in the 1960s-1970s. After the dictator died in 1980, it's just been parked there. Even by today's standards, everything inside is built quite solidly. The interiors are pleasant, without gaudy luxury or gold toilets. Though Siemens did equip the cars with air conditioning back then. Maybe that was cooler than toilets at the time. But what surprised me most were the bathtubs on the train (I counted two). I hope they didn't flood the entire car all the time.

Plus, there are all sorts of amusing little details: in the conference room, Tito's chair is the widest one, and in his office sits a complete collection of Lenin's works (:

The place doesn't seem to attract many tourists at all (which isn't surprising given the whole process). After I left, they closed up the train and left, and it wasn't even 10 AM yet. I might have been the only visitor all day.