Today is a travel day and this post was going to be a little light but a certain chain of events occurred involving train tickets. We got to the train station about 45 min before departure, found the platform, and grabbed a bite to eat. The train tickets were digital PDF’s on my phone and Devin’s iPad. We verified with the DB authorities that this would suffice. We had reserved seats and a first class cabin that would end up containing just us the entire trip. Compared to our other trips this was riding in style.
Our train made it into Austria and the Alps were beautiful. There were extremely long tunnels that go under some of the mountains. We were in the dark for so long we might have come up in a Chinese version of Austria and I wouldn’t know it.
I need to punch your ticket
When we got to Slovenia the crew changed. Apparently they changed when we made it to Austria but I hadn’t noticed. When the ticket man came to our cabin I pulled out my phone to display my ticket as I had done for the previous ticket observing crew. He said something in a language we don’t speak, shook his head in the negative direction, and walked away. When abroad you never want to have an interaction with a person in authority where they shake their head after you present them a piece of paperwork.
He came back with another train attendant who spoke better than expected English. He explained that since they could not stamp the date on the ticket they could not validate it down the line when the crew changed again. I had a fleeting thought to ask him to stamp my phone. He was actually very helpful and even gave us instructions on how to game the system to get the cheapest ticket possible.
We had a couple of options:
- Buy new tickets for the journey.
- Get off at the next stop and purchase tickets.
We would have bought tickets right there but they needed cash and we had gotten rid of most of our cash because Croatia doesn’t use the Euro. Option 2 here we come. We were let off at Lesce Bled in Slovenia and did not see the automated ticket machines, personnel of authority, or ATM.
Hanging out in Slovenia
We did one lap around the station and just before mild panic set in Devin found that the small ticket office was open and accepted Visa! We purchased tickets to Zagreb on a train that would depart in 2 hours. Time to explore!!
We found a grocery store and an ATM! With our newly acquired euros we bought some beer, bread, apples, and chocolate. We took all this back to the train station and had a picnic.
The train showed up 25 minutes earlier than we were told by the ticket salesman. We had asked for a printed schedule of the train but he didn’t have that ability so he hand wrote us one. We hopped on and our paper tickets were stamped. Yay for paper tickets!
Ljubljana
We would ride this train to Ljubljana Slovenia and transfer to our train to Zagreb Croatia. Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia for all those who, like myself, had no idea. The quality of train had significantly decreased and we were now attempting to understand the Slovenian train announcer.
When we made it to Ljubljana we easily found our train. I’m pretty sure the train was from the 80’s and it didn’t have air conditioning. A little different from where we had started this morning. Devin reminded me that we paid extra for these niceties since this was two extra ticket costs than our first.
