Monday, January 16, 2012

Night train- To Sofia with love

Sofia was not exactly on the list of places that I really required to visit but in order to get to Greece we had to catch a night train from Croatia. This train trip had turned out to be a nightmare and a realisation that both Justine and I are both very young and very vulnerable to be travelling alone with no male accompaniment on a scary night train. It was time to say goodbye to Croatia and move on to the next destination, so ready to start our onward journey we travel to Zagreb to catch the train. Not looking our freshest we jump on the unclearly marked train and try to communicate with some of the non English speaking passengers to see if we are on the correct train. We automatically had a bad feeling about this train and it had nothing to do with the pee stained floors or the stench that was lingering in the corridors. We stuck out like a sore thumb, they knew that we were foreigners; they knew that we were alone and they certainly knew they could take us for a ride!
By the time we find our carriage after several men trying to push us into their compartment we settle for a carriage with a less crazy looking man who was muttering Slavic jargon under his breath. If you saw this man on the street you would most likely hold onto your bag, but compared to the other passengers he was our best pick! We take our seat and try to get some rest. I for one wasn’t feeling safe enough to fall into a deep slumber but nature took its course and soon enough the both of us were snoozing. I woke several times throughout the night to check if my bags were safe and to check if Justine was ok. The last time I awoke there was a man standing over Justine trying to get to her bag, I screamed and Justine jumped up and automatically started to chase the young man. Luckily enough he didn’t take anything, but the frustration we both felt when we were trying to explain what had happened to the train staff. They were looking at us like we were the ones making all the trouble! To top it off we had some gypsy looking man trying to offer us a ‘happy cigarette’ as he dubbed it (a joint). We probably should have taken him up on his offer as from the bag snatching incident we didn’t get a wink of sleep for the next 6 hours!
Anyway with that bad experience behind us we were positively ready to make our way to Greece!


(No photos for this post..... there was nothing that really caught my eye!)

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