Blog

This morning I am joined again by Marianne, who is taking the same train as me to Zagreb (there’s only one daily). Finally, finally, I am reconnected to the European train network, that sprawl to every country in Europe except Republic of Ireland, Finland, Greece, North Macedonia, Albania, San Marino, Vatican City, Malta, Andorra and Iceland (and I guess rails to Russia and Belarus are closed too).

 At first, we didn’t follow our seats numbers, prefering the window on the left side of the train, as it’s where the view will be crazy.

However, thanks to a bunch of school kids, the train got quickly full, and we got kicked out the good seats, and ended up separated and on the wrong side. Quite why passengers and the controllers were adamant on being seated at their exact designated places was beyond me. The guy who was sitting beside me even asked for my ticket (WTF?) to check my seat number, instead of offering to exchange his seat… The controller came regularly to move people and luggage around, and an old lady was even standing up for a while. Looked like they sold too many seats.

Of course, as soon as we got away from the window, the scenery on the other side went crazy beautiful, as the train climbed up in the mountains, overlooking the entire bay of Split [Split, Croatia] and the red-roofed ancient cities of Trogir, Split and everything in between… Ah, you can’t win them all…

With less impressive (but still beautiful) scenery at my window, a grey sky, a headache and small leg room with all people around, I didn’t enjoy the ride too much, and tried to sleep a bit.

Seven hours later, we arrived in Zagreb. I started by buying painkillers. It’s the second time I buy medicine for headaches in Croatia, after that big retinal migraine that KO’d me in Osijek two years ago. We took a coffee while I was deep in thoughts wondering if the waitress wasn’t one of the French girls I had met in Galway in February. In the end, she didn’t have a French accent. That would have been such a cool story though!

We walked towards Zagreb towncenter, further than I did on my first two short visits here in 2022, then went to our respective hostels. Mine, the Bureau Hostel, is great! And I’m alone in my dorm tonight, which is nice.

Later I joinef back Marianne and Franck, another French guy from her hostel, and we had some delicious Indian food and a good chat.