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In Which I Spend All Day on a Train: Croatia to Bosnia

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Over the river and through the woods, to Bosnia & Herzegovina we go!!!
     One early morning, after enjoying a few days in Zagreb, I embarked on a pretty crazy day-long train journey to Bosnia. It felt important for me to spend quality time in Bosnia since for so much of my life all I knew about it was that Cher Horowitz thought it was in the Middle East. 
     I knew going in, from reading online accounts from other travelers, that the bus to Sarajevo was faster, had air conditioning, and prohibited smoking. But, it had no onboard bathroom and only made 2-3 stops during the 8-9 hour ride. Not ok! I had to take the train: Even if the bathroom onboard was a disgusting hole of %@*$, I needed it.
    I felt pretty prepared for delays, the low comfort level, the disgusting bathroom, and most horribly the cigarette smoke. The ride wasn’t as awful as I prepared myself for, so I advise you to expect the worst and be rewarded with just pretty bad.

PictureZagreb’s train station

     
     The train journey actually began with an hour-long bus to Sisak train station, which was delayed about 40 minutes because we waited for a train from Germany to arrive. (This is a good thing – those aboard the train would have otherwise missed their only ride to Sarajevo.)

PictureSmokers’ Alley

     Bosnian trains have carriages that are mostly little rooms off of the main aisles, and the little rooms have cushioned benches that seat about 3 comfortably (for a total of 6 comfortably in each room…though we had 8 for one portion). Thank goodness the little rooms have a window and sliding doors you can close, because the aisle is Smokers’ Alley, nonstop for the whole ride. It was horrible! 

     We stopped about 4 times, for at least 30 minutes each, for border crossing and passport checks. NB: It was frightening as hell when one patrol officer took our passports and left our carriage. Luckily, it was just to get them stamped in the little office off the side of the tracks, but before he returned them to us I had already imagined the train leaving, the renegade Bosnian selling two American passports, 


PictureThis is where my passport went

someone taking over my identity, getting me on a government watch list and the no-fly list, and my name being sullied forevermore. I imagined arriving in Sarajevo, finding an English speaker, getting to the nearest U.S. embassy, explaining what happened, and being berated for being stupid enough to let your passport out of your hands. It didn’t come to that. Hooray! 
     If punctuality is important for your journey, I recommend taking the bus. The train stops not only for the border and passport control stops, but for stray cows or workers crossing or I don’t know a barrel of hay blowing by. Overall, we arrived about two hours late.

PictureMy train picnic!

     Thankfully, I made a fantastic little travel picnic, seen at right. 
     Oh, Zagreb cherries! Seriously, they are incredible. And of course I had bread for the soy pate (which you can find in groceries in Zagreb), I’m not a savage. Also, ginger chews are my #1 recommended snack for travel of any sort. It helps with nausea. And I always travel with pouched baby food. I love baby food and this just makes it great for travel. It’s not weird.
     For the final third of the trip, it became standing room only, with people stuffing the corridors and squeezing extra people onto our bench. So, if you don’t have to pee all the time, you are probably thinking of definitely taking the bus. However, the train has better views – like insanely better:


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Entering Bosnia & spotting our first minaret
    If I can stand the delay and the smoke, you can too. It’s going to be a long journey anyway; you might as well see the best views of this region by taking the train!
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