Best Western

Stamped: July 25th, 2008
Tagged: , , ,

Written by: NickS

After leaving Serbia with a fistful of dinars, we caught an efficient German train heading to Salzburg, via Zagreb.  This piece of wealthy engineering had air-conditioning and odourless compartments.  If that wasn’t an indication that we were heading West from here, I don’t know what else would have been.

Dozing on the train, ever fearful that we might end up somewhere we’d rather not go to (yeah, we’re still smarting from the Slovakia incident…), we pulled up at Zagreb’s main station.  Helpfully, the directions from the main station, where there was a rather large advert for our chosen hostel, included a rather cryptic instruction to get a tram to Slavonska and “follow the yellow feet”.

As it turns out, these yellow feet were a Wizard of Oz-style path to follow to our accommodation.  With a huge Croatian flag draped over the exterior, we were welcomed by a buxom Croat lass who instructed us to hold tight for a bit while her elderly workman friend welded some railings together.    The usual routine of paying and handing over passports took second place in our minds while we were contemplating what the huge signs saying “FREE BEER” meant, while totally ignoring what seemed like an endless list of “Rules” displayed on an adjacent board.  As students, we have to get our priorities straight.  Actually, it was exactly as described – turn up between 6.30 and 9.30 in reception and get a free beer.  Ice cold.  Awesome.

So it was a little cramped, there was no kitchen, and we met some girls from Streatham (I’ll leave you to decide on where that fits in), but it was clean and there was free beer.

Suitably sated, we headed into downtown via another tram we didnt pay for.  Of note, Budapest has been the only city not to operate a trust-based punch-in-punch-out ticketing system.  Simply put, it means that apart from Hungary, we haven’t paid a penny (or bani, or lei…) for public transport.

Finding a very well-recommended Italian restaurant, we settled in to some posh nosh, failed to find an exciting bar (as is our custom) and came home, where our sixth dorm member was asleep.

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