The Wild East

"We talked a lot about different subjects...she learned about the inner workings of a British State School"

Tuesday 30-7. Ljubljana, Slovenia

The day starts early with breakfast at 0700, and we arrive in plenty of time for the train. We start a conversation with a Slovenian girl, who is travelling to Zagreb, Croatia to meet her father.

A lot of people have close relatives (i.e. parents, uncles) who are now different nationalities to themselves- a product of the old Yugoslavia when (supposedly) all nationalities were equal- and inter-ethnic marriages were common. Like a lot of the young people she speaks very good English. I don't think we ever exchanged names, although I estimate she was about 20-24. She had long black hair, quite attractive, with a stereotypical mediterranean husky voice, probably not helped by the fact that she smoked quite heavily as well.

As with the British Consulate she didn't seem overly concerned that we were heading to Bosnia, or Yugoslavia, which was reassuring, but warned us not to go to Macedonia. Even the other woman in the carriage who never spoke said " Nie. Nie Makedonia". We talked a lot about different subjects, often school, and she learned about the inner workings of a British State School, where she was amused by tales of BHS.

Then we talked a bit about travel, and she related a story of 4 huge men, friends of hers, going to Amsterdam and getting mugged(!!), and the only one that avoided having everything stolen was the one who had his money in his underwear! She seemed to find the tale amusing, but it put me off going to Amsterdam, not that I had a particular desire to go anyway.

Zagreb

When we got to Zagreb at 11.30 we had to dive off the train to get a taxi so we could get to the Yugoslav embassy before it shut at 12. We picked one, and attempted to ask the price beforehand, but the driver kept motioning us into the car, and said nothing. The car had a meter, but we were still ripped-off, being charged about £10 for a journey of less than 2 miles, although he did show us where the embassy was, and how to get back into the town centre. He drove like a lunatic (i.e. a normal driver) attempting to overtake on 2 blind corners, and at traffic lights.

When we got to the Yug embassy there was a flag outside, and an armed guard standing next to a locked gate. There was a microphone buzzer that grants access to the locked entrance gate, and Taylor wasted no time in pressing it and demanding to be let in! An angry voice in Serbian shouted something back, and MT pressed it again, explaining that he was " anglisky- english". This continues for a good two minutes with both parties getting increasingly irritated, until finally Taylor is pressing the buzzer almost continually...even angrier Serbian is screamed back through the speaker.

At this point the guard stepped in and pointed to a crowd of people on the other side of the road. I was confused, assuming they were waiting for a bus, even though there wasn't a stop there. We were marched across the road in disgrace. I felt a right plonker!
It turned out that the people were standing in a queue waiting until 12 when they would go into the embassy. The man in front helped us fill in the form, since it was all in cyrillics. We were allowed in, in groups of 4. The people in there were very helpful, suprisingly, explining that we could get visas on the border for 12DM.

On the way back I nearly got run over when attempting to cross the road. Mark turned round to laugh and yell a jovial derogatory remark, but when his back was turned, I had to warn him of an overtaking BMW doing 90mph on the wrong side of the road heading straight for him.. He narrowly avoided being hit.

The very hot day was spent wandering around the market stalls, and parks of Zagreb. At 22.30 that night we intended to get the train to Split. It was packed out. So was the next one. This was a real problem, and we had to spend the night in the Omladinski hostel, and change our plans. We were in a dorm of 6 that night, with 4 other English guys, although we never spoke to them.

Wednesday

At 9am we caught the Sarajevo train, which we had to by tickets for. The southern parts of Croatia are still badly damaged from shelling in 1992-96. Croatia and Bosnia have only just opened a new railway (June 2001) to Sarajevo (the old one was destroyed in the war). We crossed the border into Bosnia-Hercegovina, I was a little nervous of what I would find...

Back to Main Page