As im writing this ive just had a run in with a train conductor, my second for the day. The first one, mum and I accidently sat in first class. We were rushing to get on the train with all our stuff and find a free box, yep there are still the old dog boxes running in eastern Europe. We got in and realized there was a lot of room. Wow these international trains are great. Then mum said lets hope it isn’t first class and we both realized it actually was. I had forgotten to look for the second class carriage. Mum was all for sitting there till the conductor kicked us out. I was scared he would charge us… it has been known to happen to uni students on Geelong bound trains..personal experience.
Our luxury train trip lasted a whole 15 min, before the conductor not only kicked us out but also followed us to make sure we were out of first class zone. The walk of shame back to second class. With all our stuff.
My second run in for the day was a little worse than that. We had brought our tickets to Romania in Slovakia from the main train station in Bratislava. It was an overnight train. The lady was being rushed to pack up by her boss and quickly printed us our tickets. No sleeper car apparently, turns out there is sleeper cars on this train but we are giving her the benefit of them all being sold out and not the fact she didn’t want to redo our tickets. What she didn’t do for us was sell us a seat reservation. This did not go down well with the conductor and he left his little lacky with us to sell us a seat reservation.
We had boarded the train in Bratislava, arrived at Budapest and switched trains. We have no Hungarian whatevers and have spent all our remaining euro in Slovakia because we are travelling to Romania which is also on its own currency.
Are you beginning to see my problem? Im beginning to see my problem is that I need to travel with a lot more euro, its replaced the US dollar in its usability.
Anyway this lackey wanted 3 euro each for a seat reservation. Luckily we hadn’t spent the money we were going to in Budapest on food, which we could have seeing as the train was 40 min late. But this still only left us with 4 euro. We tried to explain the lady hadn’t sold us one, or told us we needed one, but all he kept saying was seat reservation 3 euro, his only English I suspect. We gave him the 4 we had, which he could see we had pooled together, but then he asked me for my 3 euro! I offered him US and Pounds but he was having none of it. Who has heard of US being rejected? (Then again at is current rate…) Id opened my suitcase, and day bag looking for more, he could see we had none but he kept insisting. He was obviously under orders and could not imagine another solution. He then disappeared with our tickets and money. We were a just little worried, though we had to laugh at the situation, it was so unbelievable.
He came back with one seat reservation and our tickets. He gave mum the change, insisting it was only one reservation but looking like he couldn’t handle it, he obviously wanted to kick me off the train. Mum thought he was saying we only had to buy one and thanked him. He finally gave me one last look and fled. Wow what a start to our overnight journey.
We are a little unsure of what is going to happen when we meet the Romanian Ticket inspector but all we can do now is wait and see.
2 comments:
CLIFFHANGER!!!
I knew I shouldn't of let you 2 out on your own
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