Due to changed plans by a princess, a train that could somehow split in two, and an angry ticket man who spoke no English, Jessica Kutz, Emma Lawler, Brooke Olsen, and I are now on a train in the middle of Slovenia, en route to our third connection. Final destination: Zagreb, Croatia!! However, Zagreb is only a brief pit stop before we must catch a theoretical bus to Plitvice Falls National Park. The next three days will be ideally spent hiking through waterfalls and lakes ranked as some of the most beautiful in the world. Amazing?
The road to this random moment began with an anonymous man waking me from a fitful sleep on a miniature couch in the Dublin International Airport. Apparently my alarm had been blaring for a few minutes before someone had the decency to jostle us. Who knows how Jessica and I managed to fall asleep at all because I can assure you that they must have been doing construction all night in our section. Despite the fact that we slept in the airport, we nearly missed our RyanAir flight and had to catch our breath after sprinting manically through three different terminals and begging people to let us through security faster. In the early afternoon we landed in Bratislava, Slovakia- a city I am sure must be lovely however after an hour of waiting for our train at a cafe, Jessica and I began to notice we were in the center of a 10 man gypsy thief gang who were following hurried travelers waiting for opportune moments to pick a pocket or two. Thankful to finally board our train to Budapest, Hungary, we placed ourselves in a compartment with an attractive older Hungarian man who was eager to converse in English for the entire three hours. I think he was so tickled to be speaking English that every sentence was finished with a little giggle. At some point I fell asleep to his endless chuckling and dozed the remaining two hours. Arriving in Budapest our next mission was to find Judit- a Hungarian door women who had the keys to the princess's flat where we would be sleeping for free for four nights. This lucky twist of fate was thanks to my grandmother. She is friends with Suzanne's (the princess) sister and through her we were trusted enough to stay in the apartment. I don't know how these things happen to me. After calling twice, realizing that Judit doesn't speak English, and navigating our way through Budapest with a simple map, we show up at our elegant abode situated a stones throw from the Danube River and right next door to Parliament. Success? Judit was magically there to deliver the keys and we entered into an ornate, aristocratic wonderland, dressed appropriately in our grungy T-shirts and hauling in our huge backpacks. Welcome notes had been left for us, liquor was placed fancily on end tables, and Jessica and I immediately put on a CD of Hungarian classical music we found in the sitting room. We frolicked around for a bit, realizing how lucky we were, and then set out to the streets to see the city. Budapest was completely unexpected- it was very modern, clean, tranquil, livable, bike-able, walkable, explorable- a watered down, Eastern European version of Barcelona maybe? Every building looked like a palace and the Danube River bisected the city into two parts- Buda and Pest. The ancestor of the princess was the one who helped unite the two parts of the city long ago. He had a bridge, several streets, and a Turkish bath named after him- we were staying at his heir's flat. My mind doesn't comprehend the enormity of that statement. I guess you could liken it to staying with George Washington's relatives? But like times 10 considering her family were leaders in the Austro-Hungary Empire and fled to Geneva when she was twelve due to the severe persecution of aristocrats by the Soviet Union's communist regime- intense. We met her for tea Friday night before leaving Budapest. Jessica and I, once again in our backpacker gowns, walked to her flat with nervous butterflies, thinking of all the great stories to tell her about Ireland, Spain, and all our budget travel adventures. Suzanne and her old English-out of a movie- aristocratic girlfriend served us wine, red peppers, and sausage. And surprise, Jessica and I managed to giggle our way through an hour with this worldly, elegant royalty somehow finding herself sitting in front of two dirty, silly American girls. She mentioned how she had sold a meadow to purchase this flat in Budapest, how Russian girls are so educated and beautiful, how we should start reading the Wall Street Journal, and how Hungarian banks are corrupt. She asked us how many languages we speak, why we had traveled to Budapest, what we wanted to do with our degrees, and what kind of experience working we had gotten on the trip. Somehow I don't think our three weeks making beds at the hostel and adventure center in Ireland really impressed her. The hour passed with her and her friend discussing world affairs and politely answering our questions about the country. It was slightly traumatic haha, Jess and I ran out of there, had a brief life crisis, vowed to spend the rest of our lives studying politics and reading up on history and economics, bumped into a pair of cute Italian boys, and proceeded to drink beers at a bar with them and denying their attempts to woo us in Italian haha. Besides boys and bourgeoisie, the rest of our adventures in the city were phenomenal. We walked and walked and walked every day and saw a great deal of Budapest. Notable memories- swimming in thermal baths, visiting the House of Terror, attending a performance of Othello at the Budapest Opera House, taking a Hungarian tour of Parliament, eating dinner on the castle wall in Buda, crepes and water fountains on Margaret Island, eating ghoulash, thrift store shopping, and being the best little tourists we could possibly be!
On Saturday morning we got a late start, went to a train station to buy tickets for a train leaving from another station for Vienna, Austria! My mom's best friend from college is living in Vienna right now working for the UN, testing nuclear weapons, and other wonderfully intellectual duties and she invited us to come stay with her for free at her apartment. Debbie was in Salzburg for the weekend so we were sent on another scavenger hunt to find another anonymous person with a key for us. This time her name was Elisa. As Jess and I strolled along the street where she lived after not reaching her by phone, I imagined how grand it would be if someone would just come up to us on the street and say "I've been looking for you!". Sure enough, if by some magical travel energy, a young woman only a few minutes later stopped us and handed us the key to Debbie's apartment! That night was the Danube Island Music Festival, an enormous festival with well over 15 stages that stretched for several miles along the island in the river. Because we had to change our plans due to a scheduling error by the princess, we were in Vienna a week later than planned and thus by chance we were able to meet up with Emma Lawler and Brooke Olsen, friends from Boulder, who were also on a backpacking trip and had gotten on a wrong train and ended up in Vienna. After searching high and low for a public phone we got in touch with them, made a pit stop to dance at a techno rave party stage, and walked at least over a mile to the last area where we found our two blond friends and their Austrian couchsurfer host. Music, large pretzels, cheese-filled sausages, hot Austrian boys, and the militant sound of the German language- a wonderful introduction to our fourth stop on the trip. Debbie's apartment for three days was a nice comfortable recovery zone for Jess and I. We slept in, got sick and then got better, ate pizza with her husband Don, and didn't pressure ourselves to do such intense sightseeing like we did in Budapest. The second day the four of us girls went to some beautiful gardens at Schonbrunn Palace and the third day Jess and I just wandered by ourselves while Emma and Brooke took a day trip to Budapest. The last night was great because Debbie took Jess and I to trivia night at a Scottish pub! We would have avoided last place had the questions been in English, but alas- the "Vienna's Girls Choir" (our team name) managed to only rack up 5 points.
All of that leads me to this morning when Jess and I met Em and Brooke for our early 7am 50 Euro direct train to Zagreb, Croatia. All was going fine until about an hour outside of Vienna, a ticket checker informed is that basically the train had split in two shortly after departure- the front side was going to Zagreb, the back side to Graz, Austria. And of course to our dismay, we had unfortunately gotten on the back side of the train- grrrreeeeattttttt! She told us the solution was simple and all we needed to do was get off the train at Graz, transfer to one headed to Ljubjuana (the capital of SLOVENIA), and then catch another train from there to Zagreb- we could do it free of charge but we would be getting in four hours late- phenomenal. We transferred easily in Graz and were cruising along just fine until sometime after crossing the border into Slovenia a huge, mustached man busted into our cart and demanded for tickets. Calmly handing the tickets over, we were promptly SCREAMED at for having the incorrect tickets in awfully broken English. "THIS IS SLOVENIA! YOU HAVE NO TICKET FOR SLOVENIA! NO TICKET- MUST PAY! NO TICKET- MUST PAY!" We argued for several minutes- nearly getting thrown off, when finally he granted our wish of speaking to someone with a higher level of English to explain our peculiar situation. A nice, innocent woman with the face of someone who looks perpetually guilty appeared in the doorway and managed to spit out that the four of us would need to exit the train at the next station to get our tickets readjusted. And so it was. We departed in Maribor, Slovenia- paid 16 extra Euros, and sat in the grass of a park in some small town waiting an hour for our train which would take us only as far as Zurni (sp?) Most, Slovenia where of course we were required to transfer... again. The train ride was beautiful and once arriving in Zurni Most we got off the train to a lovely view of a river with a mountainous backdrop. From there a train conductor told us that in fact we could get back ON the train and travel one more half hour to Dobova and catch the train from there. Cool. Back on the train. Get off in Dobova, Slovenia, see warnings for human trafficking, board another train within an hour, get our passports scrutinized by police, and now I am HERE. Still on a train in Slovenia.
Today has been a wild adventure, and soon enough, I hope, we will be in CROATIA!!!
