Tom's adventures through eastern Europe with two friends for 3 weeks in the summer of 2007. This site is a collection of photos, diaries, notes and thoughts.
August 30, 2007 – Zagreb, Croatia
While in Bratislava, we met with a friend from home, Sarah and her boyfriend Gareth. They'd been there a day, so showed us into the town and found some much needed food.
Once we'd caught up on some sleep and filled our bellies, we explored. It's a very beautiful city, feels like most other vibrant modern European cities. The buildings are painted in many pastel colours and most of the city centre is pedestrianised. Trams and trolley buses make their way around the peaceful streets.
By the Danube one afternoon.
Sarah's birthday is in October, when none of us will be around. Although Rachel managed to leave her phone in the car, she did remember to bring a small cake, some candles (seven candles, times by 3, you get 21!) and matches. We celebrated on our last evening before heading out for dinner. After dinner we had generous 40p ice creams, with an acrobatic server, who held my ice cream behind the sneeze glass while I clawed at the air.
We headed up the UFO, an observation deck and restaurant, high above a bridge south of Bratislava. Shortly before closing time at 11, we were the only people up there with the whole of Bratislava and the surrounding area to take in. On the way back to the hostel, we finished our night with cocktails. I had a Zombie, lots of fruit with a punch of rum. Rachel had some kind of giant mint tree soaked in rum. It wasn't really a drink, more of a meal.
There's a train that leaves Prague early in the morning and winds its way around eastern Europe, down to Split in the south of Croatia, arriving the next morning. There's one train a day and it leaves Bratislava at 1341 and arrives in Zagreb, the capital city of Croatia, 8 hours later. This was our first leg of our trip.
Getting tickets required a bit of thought. We were turned away by one lady who pointed in the corner of the station and said something in Slovakian. We wrote down the date, time and train number from the timetable on a bit of paper and approached another ticket desk. Success! Three tickets to Zagreb.
The morning of the train we had a large brunch, stocked up with provisions, oranges, bread, ham, bananas, and headed to the station. A middle-aged couple were sharing our compartment with us. They were from the Czech Republic and were on the train for the entire length, all the way to Split. Their provisions were a six-pack of beer.
The train passes through two borders – Hungary and Croatia. The Hungarian border control was a halt in the middle of a railway yard, protected by large concrete walls. "Passport control!" The train continued on after two large men had checked everybody's passports. "Thank you" to us, 'thank you' in Czech to the couple. We passed small stations with only the station controller watching.
Passport control for Hungary
Each time I started on a meal, the Czech man would start a new beer. He wasn't the only one though. All down the train, people were drinking wine and beer. A man had a coffee making machine in one compartment and was selling more beer too.
The train sped through the country-side. Open fields, tractors, sunflowers. Night fell. We arrived in Zagreb, a city of 700,000, at about 9.30pm. Rather tired, we got the right ticket for the right tram and headed to our hostel on the edge of town. Deposited at the end of the tram line, "last stop" a passenger told us, we used Rachel's make-shift map to find our hostel down a little side-road in a residential area. We followed a couple of British/hostel looking guys, until they realised that they were being followed and asked if we were looking for a hostel.
We're going to spend the next day or two in Zagreb, finding the right bus routes for our next stop – a large national park towards the coast, with crystal-clear pools of water connected by waterfalls.