I was, apparently, up far too early for my travel companion who made it abundantly clear at about 6am that my pointing at the window while excitedly shouting “Mountain!” was not an acceptable reveillon.
Thankfully, our jovial Croatian guard provided sufficient coffee and opportunities for her to get off the train and have cigarettes that this didn’t pose too much of a problem for too long.
Although we were on the train until mid-morning, our beds weren’t folded away so we ended up sitting on the bottom bunk eating our breakfast and watching the world go by. When we went to sleep, there had been a locomotive attached to the end of our coach, but it was gone this morning which gave ample opportunity to take photos of tracks and scenery.
The scenery is out of this world, and as our train worked its way through Austria and Slovenia, clinging to riverbanks, I spent most of my time stuck either to the window in the cabin or at the back of the coach, being thrilled that we’d got it together and not missed our train yesterday morning. I also resolved that I am never flying again, though this resolution will be broken in December when I visit my parents for my mother’s birthday.
We arrived more-or-less on time in Zagreb after a little delay in Dobova, where stern Croatian border officials boarded the train and checked our passports which, sadly, weren’t stamped.
Upon arrival, I confidently announced that we were to take a tram to our Airbnb, something which proved a little more difficult than I’d expected. Nonetheless, Zagreb afforded plenty of opportunity to look at exciting new things while I found my bearings and tried to convince my travel companion that I knew exactly where we were going.
The problem, it seems, is that while Zagreb has a comprehensive public transport network – there are plenty of trams and buses – it provides no instruction on how to use it. Directly outside the station, Glavni Kolovdor, are stops for all lines, but no maps and no locals able to explain how to get to where you want to go. Or ticket machines.
Eventually, I discovered that tickets of many different denominations are bought from little Tisak booths, and a nice woman in the tourist information office in the station gave us a map and the wrong line number, but nonetheless got us close enough to our Airbnb that a short, but long, walk in the sun got us there in time to collapse and have a siesta.
In fact, it transpired that we were right next to a tram stop but that this information had been kept from us by our host who seems to think we’d prefer Übers instead. We are in a tiny little house with a little patch of garden with enough shade from the sun.
Sufficient sleep led us on a mission to find a supermarket and buy some supplies, which by chance also took us on a walk through the surrounding leafy area and into a bar where a large gin and tonic was about 2€, and an Espresso Martini you could swim in not much more than that.
We stayed there for a while before wandering home, eating, and flopping.
