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Published: August 14th 2019
Our day started at 4.30am, hotel kindly organised a breakfast bag for us, taxi was early and took us to the train station for our trip to Zagreb on the 6.40am train, for a six hour journey. He dropped us at what we thought was a dilapidated building in need of pulling down. No, this is the train station! We went into the waiting room, which stunk! Oh, that’s why - a bunch of deros were sleeping on the seats and a few using the outside grounds for...well, you know!
A man indicated we move down some stairs and we kept an eye on the signage until finally our platform number came up. We boarded, and luckily for us our compartment had three young adults and we chatted to them for a while. After some hours an announcement was made there were some technical issues but the train kept going. At about 11.30 we were at the border of Hungary and Croatia and two lots of border patrols came through and checked passports. No worries!
We were then told, after sitting there for about half an hour or so that we’d have to change trains, which we did after a short journey, everyone scrambling off this train, crossing tracks and onto a different train - all the while hauling our luggage. After about 20 minutes we were then told we would have to get off this train and get on a local bus - and five or so buses were waiting when we got off, again everyone hauling luggage and finding somewhere to stow it all in the bus compartment - this bus complete with locals getting on and off at their stops.
This bus then wound its way through backroads of country Croatia for over half an hour to a train station where we then got off the bus, retrieved our luggage and boarded this train for the half hour or so journey into Zagreb.
What an absolute shambles this was. Nobody was happy, of course, and it was all I could do to keep myself together. We had no food and drink and John and I hadn’t been to ‘you know where‘ since we had got up at 4.30!
Our taxi driver whisked us to our hotel and he told us that his favourite Aussie actor is Russell Crowe and he has seen all his movies. He was also aware that Australia has had some snowfall!
So our three trains trips through Eastern Europe, allegedly first class, have not been pleasant experiences and certainly ones which we will never contemplate again.
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Rosie Wyness
non-member comment
How did you cope with it
I could manage the grime and inconvenience I think! But not the lack of facilities!!