Monday, September 15, 2008

Some Say it's the Journey and Not the Destination, But They've Never Spent the Night in a Croatian Border Patrol Station

For the weekend we decided we wanted to get out of the city and travel. We settled on the beaches of Croatia because we knew we wouldn't want to go there when it got cold. Also, when the tourist season is over, the country pretty much shuts down. First, let me just remind you that Croatia is the only country bordering Hungary that is not in the EU. Meaning, that they are pretty strict about their borders.

We chose to be adventurous for this trip. It's out first time 'traveling' so we bought train tickets that would force us to sleep overnight in the Zagreb train station. Our train left Budapest at 5pm. Chelsea and Danielle left their apartment at 4:15 putting us in the ticket line at 4:30. One lady took fooooreeeevvveeerrr so we finally got our tickets at 4:49. We then asked the ticket checker what train was ours, she said platform 12.. which is on the other side of the stations. We ran. We got on the train at 4:53. That same lady then finds us on the train to tell us that it's actually platform 6... on the other side of the station. We ran faster. We finally get onto the right train at 4:58. We made it. It would have been better had we missed it.

That's Chelsea above, look at how happy she is. We're passing Lake Balaton and it's beautiful. When we sat down on the train we were sitting next to another guy. She kept asking us if we should tell him that there's another seat open just right behind us so that he doesn't have to be crowded by a bunch of soon to be drunk American girls. Then I look over at what he's reading and look up at Chelsea. She mouths "Is that in English?" Yes. So she asks him "Where are you studying?" He answers in a delicious Irish accent that he's getting his post-doc in Nationalism at CEU. Figures that the one person we sit next to speaks English.

We finally reach the border of Hungary and they do their passport checking, etc. Chelsea and I give them ours. Then Danielle, oh sweet Danielle hands them a copy of her passport. At this point, our Irishman turns to us and says that Croatia is the one place where you need an actual passport since it's not in the EU, we should try Slovenia. Thanks Buddy for telling us that now. The Border Patrol then takes our Passports and kicks us off the train. We spent the night in the room pictured below.


It wasn't a total loss. We have a great story now about how we were stupid Americans once who thought a copy would pass. During the night, while I slept, Chelsea and Danielle came up with a great epic poem about our adventures which is where the title of this blog is excerpted from. Chelsea also got a kiss from a ridiculously drunk homeless man.


Before I took my nap in the waiting room we had all decided that we would not accept defeat and return to Budapest. But then we realized that we had to go back through the city because that's where all the trains went. The Border Patrol was also going to call us a cab so we could return to the city until we absolutely refused to take a cab for a distance of 4 hours and promised to take the morning train. The plan was to either refuel at my apartment or just get another ticket to Vienna (3 hours from Budapest) or Bratislava (2.5 hours). When I woke up Chelsea accepted defeat. The new plan was to sleep for eleventy thousand hours and get really drunk to forget all our troubles. The plan worked well. We ended up going to a club in Mammut Mall and went to bed after 4am, it was a good time.

This is our 5:13 morning train back to Budapest. I asked the girls to show me how they felt.

3 comments:

radio_suicida said...

the quotations are made only for those who can pay.
a greeting

MEDICAL said...

good bloger

Jasmine said...

well it seems like you had a DE-lightful time :) Good luck on any further adventures you have hehehe