Today was our last stamp day of the trip, and I’m oddly sad about it. Honestly, I should have realized it’d be when we crossed into Hungary, but I just wasn’t thinking about it.
What’s a stamp day? It’s any day I get a new stamp in my passport. Technically, this isn’t even a NEW stamp, since I already have one from Hungary from three summers ago. But it’s new to my passport, and a new port of entry, anyway.
Why no more stamps, you’re wondering? Don’t we have several more countries to visit still? Yeah, we do. But most of continental Europe, including everywhere we’ll be from here on out, is party to what’s called the Schengen Agreement, which abolishes border controls (and therefore the need for passports) within the member countries. All of the countries we’ll visit from here on out (Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, and Belgium) are all Schengen countries. So no more stamps. Sigh. It’s a tough life, I know.
Today is also a bit bittersweet because my paycheck went into my bank account, and that means that now I have to buy my plane ticket home. I haven’t bought it yet, but it’s a pretty sure bet that, barring volcanoes and other unforeseen circumstances, we’ll be flying home on USAir on Wednesday, June 28th. In other words, we passed the halfway point of this trip without realizing it. Wow. It doesn’t seem like it at all. We’ll have been gone for 54 days total–sounds like a long time, doesn’t it? Maybe I’ll be ready to head home by then (especially since the last few stops on our itinerary are short ones relative to the beginning of the trip.) But I’m not ready now, and so it’s kind of a depressing thought for me.
In any case, I’m happy to be here, and I’m enjoying it now and I’m not going to think about things like heading home or the fact that my next stamp will be a re-entry one to the US. This trip is too much fun to dwell on its inevitable end. :-) And I am, for some odd reason, SO HAPPY to be back in Hungary!! I really really loved it last time I was here three years ago, and I’m excited to have more time here!
Today was, as many of these days have been, a bit of a learning experience. When I looked online at the Rail Europe website (with which I have a love-hate relationship) there were two trains that would take us from Zagreb, Croatia to Pecs, Hungary (where we are now.) One train left at 9AM, the other one left at 10AM. As the 9AM train had only one connection and got into Pecs an hour earlier, I opted for that one. Only I didn’t write the route and connection information down. Stupid me.
We got to the train station, which took longer than I’d planned, and so we only had 15 minutes to activate our passes (this is our first day traveling on them, and they have to be activated the first time they’re used) and make our train. I left John with the backpacks, went to activate the passes, went back to the waiting room to look at the departures board, and realized I had no clue which train we needed, since I didn’t know where the connection was. So I went back to the ticket window. The guy behind the counter looked at me like I had two heads and told me there was no 9AM train, that there was only one and it left at 10. I KNEW there was a 9AM one and I wanted to catch it, but he wouldn’t even check his computer, and he was the only one at the international ticket window.
Now, there was only one train at 9AM that was heading north, so I guess we could have taken it, but as I would have had no idea where to disembark, that seemed like a bad idea at the time.
Now, if you’ve traveled with me before, you know that being rushed close to a departure time stresses me out just a bit. John and Joel!, quit laughing. Ok, so “a bit” might be an understatement. Whenever I fly, I’m ALWAYS at the airport at least a hour before boarding (not departure, boarding) and for trains I prefer to be at least a half hour early. At this point, the train was supposed to leave in about 8 minutes, and I didn’t know which one it was, and the ticket guy was totally unhelpful. Fortunately, we knew there was free wifi about two blocks away outside a hotel, so we headed over to check. Alas, it wasn’t enough time — by the time we got connected and on the Rail Europe site and found the 9AM route, it was 9AM exactly. No way we’d make it back and onto the train in time. Oh well.
As it turned out, the reason the guy may have said that there was no 9AM train was that I went to the international window, since my destination was international. The first train’s connection was within Croatia, so I should have gone to the domestic window. But the guy could have at least checked his computer. Oh well, lesson learned — always write down your train numbers and connections when looking up routes!!
Ok, here are some pics from the train ride (since that’s really what we did all day — riding the local train? Really kind of a bummer!)
This is a pretty typical lunch for us--trail mix, bread rolls with mustard and cheese, and chocolate pudding. We don't alway shave dessert, and we generally have fruit (there are dried cherries in the trail mix, so I counted that this time) but it's generally some variation of the above. Yum!
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I'm still trying to figure out what this sign means. I was thinking it was "no throwing trash out the window", but there's no / through the circle to make it "no". Weird.
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Reading while we're at a stop. After we made our first train transfer, the train was almost entirely empty, so we got the entire back of the car to ourselves. SWEET. :-)
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OH! Something else I learned today… or rather, John learned and shared with me, since he’s nice like that. Apparently the train toilets (or at least the ones on the local second class train we took today) empty right onto the tracks. I’ve heard of that, of course, but I had no idea that any modern European trains still did this. Crazy!! And ummm, kinda gross!
(I was going to make a joke about how European in Hungarian train bathrooms, but I decided not to. Feel free to thank me.)
ANYWAY. Here in Pecs we’re staying someplace a bit different than we have thus far — a college dorm. When school is out for the summer, a lot of universities in Europe open their dorms for travelers like us — excellent! We get a private room and bathroom with two twin beds, sheets and blankets (no towels, though) and a fridge, laundry facilities, internet access, and access to the school’s swimming pool. And it’s about $20/night cheaper than the cheapest hostel we found. Sweet. :-) It’s not in the center of town, but who cares? Not like we’re adverse to walking!
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Where we are now:
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