From Eurail to Croatiarail (Warning! Contains frequent coarse language!)

Getting to Osijek from Salzburg turned out to be much more difficult than anticipated!  We were woken by the train conductor just in time to get some instructions: Go to the bathroom now if you need to, there will not be another chance. Do you want tea?  No milk but plenty of sugar.  Slovenian Police will be here for border control, have your passport ready!

So bleary eyed and disoriented we sat on the edge of our bed and waited for the Police to come and do their checks.

One officer simply walked the length of the carriage, banged on every door and said “Polici!” while the ones that followed stopped at each cabin and did the passport checks.  Ours was quite simple, quick flick through, a stamp and they were gone.

A few minutes later a repeat, this time it was customs: Do you have anything to declare?  No. What is that? pointing to the skis (fucking skis). Just skis…and she walked on.  Whoever was in the last cabin was not so lucky, they stayed with them until the border, searching for I don’t know what.  I think I would have been scared though!  Then when we thought it was over a second passport check and stamp.

Finally we pulled into Zagreb and I felt relieved to have finally made it!  One more train and we would be in Osijek!  Or as Nathan says “maybe not” :/

The first hurdle was figuring out which platform.  We found our train on the board and found the platform it was due to leave from, the problem was there was also another train scheduled for the same time and platform but going to Budapest!  No one seemed to be able to tell us why there were two and how we could make sure we caught the right one.  So we stood on the platform with our tickets in hand and waited.  Luckily the first train to pull up had a carriage number that matched our tickets so we jumped on…only to find there was not a single seat!!  We were crammed in like sardines with our luggage, the backpack and of course those freaking skis!!  To make things worse we were near the end of the corridor where the toilet was and it seems that people in Croatia have the smallest bladders in the world as there was a constant procession of people squeezing past to go to the toilet.  No one else seemed to be bothered by this but I was trashed after another terrible nights sleep and the last thing I wanted to do was stand on a swaying train with all my luggage.  Every other train we had caught up til now had included reserved seats so I suppose it came as a shock when that didn’t happen in Croatia.

When the conductor came along it got even worse!!  He began telling us what sounded like a long story and of course we couldn’t understand a word!  English?  No.  German?  A little….little enough to confuse us more!  He gave up, handed back our tickets and went on his way.

A few minutes later the guy standing next to Nathan asked if we had understood what the conductor was trying to say and then explained that we would need to get off the train, get a bus and then get another train….WTF????  no one had told us that!!  We had a train ticket from Zagreb to Osijek!  He said he was also going to Osijek and we could follow him so we breathed a sigh of relief until we lost him as soon as he stepped off the train :/

It turned out that EVERYONE had to get off the train, maybe the line had been damaged or something….so everyone piled onto one of 5 buses and you guessed it….no fucking seats!  We are now up to about 3 hours of standing in a swaying vehicle with a tonne of luggage :(

By now we had the drill, as soon as the bus stops, grab everything and RUN for the train!!!  Fuck!  Missed out on a seat again!!  By now I was delirious so it all just seemed funny and at the first stop about half an hour later some people got off and told us to take their seats so for the last couple of hours of travel we got to do it sitting down!  We were starving as we hadn’t eaten all day and pulled out the lovely fruit and chocolates we had bought for the trip.

When we finally pulled into Osijek I felt a little better with a full stomach and a small nap behind me and there was Nena, waiting to drive us to Ernestinovo :)