Zagreb to Budapest

This adventure deserves its own post.  

We left the hotel after we ate. We had zero issues driving mostly on the toll road.  Customs was super quick crossing back to Croatia. 

We arrived 215 pm to the airport and got an uber for our very first time in Europe. It shaved about 25 mins off the bus plus we would have had to walk a mile from the bus to the train station. 

Like children we learned from our mistakes in Rome and went to the ticket person to ask her to read our ticket since we didn’t know the language it was in and thought it was Czech but later when Jarrett had chat gpt read it, it’s Hungarian. I know I knew when I booked it a while back but I forgot. 

She explained that we had to get on the train then take a bus then get back on the train. Of course we both freaked out.  Our  jaws dropped and we both said BUS? I repeated it back to her, “Did you just say we had to get off of this train, get on a bus, get off the bus, then get in another train?” She said yes.  “Very organized.”  I asked her to write it down.  Then we stood In disbelief and wanted to ask her to repeat it  again but she literally ignored us, she started talking to a co worker and would not make eye contact l . Then we walked away and she smiled and waved goodbye.

We then gave ourselves a pep talk and checked Rome2rio and it said direct.  We agreed that clearly she made a mistake even though we both had two train tickets hahaha. 

We got on the train and asked again and sure enough, we had to get off and take a bus.We were on the train for about 15 minutes, the train stopped and everyone got off the train and trekked across the tracks and boarded buses.  Second time this trip to cross train tracks. Hahahaha. We made friends with two New Zealand blokes,  who were equally confused. We texted our boys and Jarrett was worried and had chat gpt confirm the ticket and warned us not go get on the wrong train but we assured him we asked many times.

The bus lasted almost two hours and we drove to a town called Koprivnica, which is super close to the Hungarian border. We boarded a second train at 630 pm. It was a cool private cabin with six seats and we didn’t  have any passengers next to us. 

My guess is that the train tracks are being worked on bc when I tried to book this a long time ago it mentioned that they were working on the tracks.  They must do this train-bus-train route every day! 

All in all our worries were for nothing. For the bus, that is.

It was honestly the slowest oldest train. The charging station did not work and we had no WiFi. About two hours away we started to have maintenance issues. After five suited men came on the train and a few men dressed with vests waved a flashlight, we started up again. 

The ticket man came by and I asked what the problem was and he said a lot of  words in English that made no sense then said 40 min delay. 

I did want to come back and see how long the train takes when it’s really direct but honestly I won’t take the Hungarian trains again. 

On a side note we did have fun playing cards. 

Fun day for sure !!!