Slovakia, Apparently

It was dark on the morning of September 14^th for two reasons. For starters, the lights in the halls of our creepy apartment building only stayed on for about 30 seconds. So as I tried to lock the door to our apartment in Budapest one last time, I cut my hand on something that I am sure was less than sanitary. More importantly, it was dark because we were leaving our apartment at 4:30am. So, sleepy and freshly wounded, I ran down four floors of stairs in the dark to meet Reed and our Hungarian cab driver. I am sure that I was in a great mood.

Most of you know that it’s not terribly unusual for me to be awake at 4:30 at night. But this was 4:30 in the morning, and that’s entirely different. To Reed’s credit, he is excited as always no matter what time of day it is. Just get him some coffee, and he’s ready to go. My strategy was the opposite; I try not to perk up. On these early mornings (and this was our earliest) I would try to stay as drowsy as possible until I am happily seated on the train and ready to fall back asleep. So there were several mornings on train platforms where a chipper Reed tried futilely to make small talk with me as I sat there with my backpack in silence. I’m sure I taught him a lesson or two in grumpy. But soon enough we were on our seven hour train, and I was happily asleep again…

…Until I was suddenly awakened by the usual ticket taker. On this train, my exchange with the ticket taker was a little bit different. For starters, he was the second ticket taker on this train; I had already dealt with one of them. So I wasn’t that excited to be woken again. But he was clearly annoyed, too. This was probably because he scared me half to death when he woke me, and I wound up kicking him in the leg. He looked at me with a look of irritation that usually only my family members can achieve as he wiped off his official ticket-taker pants. Well, fine. Now we’re both annoyed. He said something in a language that I could not understand which I took to mean he wanted my ticket. So I dug out my ragged rail pass and handed it to him. (Remember that this conversation reads a lot smoother than how it actually took place because we were dealing with a serious language barrier here, and we were both pretty irritated.)

“This no good here,” he said.

“What do you mean it’s no good here? They sold me the ticket, and the last ticket-taker didn’t say anything.”

“Not valid in this country.”

“It doesn’t work in the Czech Republic?”

“You are not in Czech Republic.”

“We’re still in Hungary?”

“You are not in Hungary.”

Well, this is a stupid game. Looking around and wondering how long I slept, “Where are we?”

“Slovakia.”

“Well, that rail pass must work or they wouldn’t have sold me a ticket.”

He opens my rail pass and shows me the list of countries to which it applies. Tired and irritated, I scan the list, point to it and say, “Look. Right there.”

“That is Slovenia.”

Crap. Now, he’s really mad. And that made me look like a stupid American.

“Well, I am travelling from Hungary to the Czech Republic. Here is my ticket. They sold it to me with this pass.”

“Give me map.”

“A map?”

“Give me map.”

“Map of what?”

“Give me Europe map.”

“What? I don’t have a map of all of Europe.”

He digs out his own map of Europe as I wonder angrily why he didn’t just do that in the first place. He shows me our path. Apparently, to get from Budapest to Prague, you travel through of Slovakia.

“You don’t have valid ticket.”

“This is a ticket from Budapest to Prague – the whole way. They didn’t sell me a ticket for two-thirds of the trip, I promise you.”

“Not valid.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Your ticket is not valid.”

“WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?!”

By this point, we are both annoyed and barely understanding each other, and I am wondering if he is going to stop the train and leave me in Slovakia. A nervous Reed comes up to check on us from a few rows back.

“What’s going on?”

“Apparently, we don’t have valid tickets to be in Slovakia.”

“What?!”

“I know, but clearly this is not up for debate.”

“What does he want us to do?”

“Who knows what he wants? He wants to shout.”

Eventually, he revealed that he would accept € 15 or something to “buy” a ticket for the middle part of a trip for which I clearly already bought a ticket. Whatever. At least I wasn’t kicked off of a train in a developing Eastern European country. I would have paid € 15 to go back to sleep ten minutes ago. The next time I would wake up, we would be in Prague. Well, technically, the next time I would wake up would be to deal with the third ticket-taker, for the Czech Republic. But the time after that, we would be in Prague.