An Executive Decision

Train ride from Hungary to Slovenia

When I found out how much time it took to get to Bulgaria from Hungary and how much it costed to get there I knew it did not make much sense for me to embark on that trip. Specially because I wanted to visit 3 cities in Bulgaria, it was Tuesday and I needed to be in Croatia on Friday/Saturday. I turned to my loyal trip companion (the Lonely Planet guide) to get some information about potential countries and cities I could visit in those 4 days which would not move me too far away from Croatia. My first choice was Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia...but doing a little more reading and doing a small logistical analysis by the end of the day I had changed my mind and had decided to go to Slovenia instead. Ljubljiana (Slovenia´s capital) was on the route from Hungary to Croatia, and the city of Bled, with its castle nestled on a mountain cliff and its church on an island in a lake, sounded as the perfect spot to go on a day trip. The idea of going somewhere totally outside of my plans was also very appealing. This is what these trips are all about: improvising as you go along, adjusting your plan when needed and going with the flow. But let me tell you that I´m so glad to have gone to Slovenia. I got there with zero expectations and was taken by surprise by a very welcoming country with beautiful landscapes, lots of things to do and where you feel very safe. Since I only made up my mind by the end of the day I waited until Wednesday to go buy a train ticket leaving in the late afternoon or night. I got up early on Wednesday, left my bags in the storage place at the hostel and got to the main train station just before 11 o´clock. I was helped sometime around 11:30 only to find out there was a special offer to Ljubljana for about 13 USD leaving at 12:50PM from another train station. I decided to take that train and had to literally run to the hostel to pick up my bag, run back to the main train station to catch the metro to the other station where this train was departing from. I got to the train station at around 12:30 and just had time to purchase something to eat for lunch in the train as there was no food service on it and the trip was about 8 hours long. The long ride to Slovenia came at the perfect time. It gave me the chance to rest and recharge my batteries. These types of trips where you are visiting so many places and walking so much everyday, where you sleep in a different place almost every night, where you are constantly dragging a bag and when you have many nights where you only sleep a couple of hours can get to you and you do need to stop and take some time to rest and recharge your batteries. And that is exactly what I did: I slept on the train, I listened to music, I read and I enjoyed the views. Because everything happened so fast I did not have a chance to go to an Internet cafe and book a hostel and was therefore counting on the recommendations from the Lonely Planet guide to find a place to sleep that night.