the slog continues - on to Zagreb!

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29 June – Banja Luka to Zagreb

– had a late breakfast (fell asleep with light on and did not catch up with blogs). The hotel was rare one that had decent yellow corn bread as well as boring non-crisp crust white bread in the basket. Had 3 hours to kill and not a lot to see touristically. So ended up in the large market in the basement of this new building. This was full of curtained stalls selling kids clothes, T-shirts and jeans and lots of padded bras it seemed, not that I think that the girls here need em at all. Decided that I might convert my last remaining 15 Bosnian marks, other than train fare, into a T-shirt. The veges were all so cheap and local of course – an Aussie $ is worth about 1.44Km (Bosnian mark – pronounced kai-yem – hence Km abbreviation – not kilometers!) and everything seemed to be max. 2Km a kilo in the fruit and vege line. 3 apples cost me 1Km. Fresh trout seemed around 10Km and a lot of frozen fish (the place is landlocked after all – although some fish-farming seen in the rivers from the train). Up to the Orthodox cathedral and took a sly snap of what I took to be the Bosnian Parliament (Banja Luka is the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina) close by. Then to hotel, got them to ring station (40 mins late they said) then went anyway on the bus to station. I thought she was telling me train was cancelled for today (SRA style) but in fact rather that an hour or so late as someone told me. This mere delay was not going to stop me buying a ticket. The train did in fact arrive about 5.30pm (timetable 3.50pm) and would appear to be hurtling along now to make up some time to Zagreb!

Well it did not exactly save that much time – timetable arr. 8.09pm – actual arrival: 10.25pm. I was rather glad that the (pre-booked) Hotel Central in Sarajevo (71E) was about 50m. across the road a bit from the station. At that hour almost any price would do. Checked in there and thought any thought of dinner, apart from finding it at that hour, was a bit mad so went back to the station to check out trains to Vienna – and delighted to find that the bakery/sandwich stall still open so got a Slavonski roll with salami and salad and some drinking yoghurt. I still had some Croatian Kuna (about $60 worth before this repast) but will have to try and shift that in Vienna now as it is too much for souvenir money. I found some ticket counters open (plenty of night trains across the Continent etc) and found that the only direct train to Vienna was at 7.25am arr. at 2pm. Despite my hatred of getting up that early realised that this was the only sensible option. Still a 6 ½ train trip – hope they get a bit shorter from now on! Bit of a quick midnight stroll but no pix obviously (did not even take a camera actually – it was bedtime!).
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