Leaving Hungary

Thursday morning, we packed up and headed to Budapest to catch a train to Zagreb.  Boo knew something was up since we were all packing our stuff together – but she would be in good hands for the next week or so.  Justin had agreed last minute to come over and check on her every now and again to make sure she survived while we were away.  It was a challenge to get all the luggage up and down the stairs and to Budapest again.  Thankfully, three of the suitcases were filled with stuff for me, so that load was dealt with- though I put some things to take home in one of them.  At any rate, the load was a bit smaller for our big trip.  I put mom in charge of making the sandwiches for the train – after all, what kind of semi-Hungarians would we be if we hadn’t packed sandwiches for our trip?  She decided that it would be a good idea to put the butter and cheese in the break, and then we could take the salami and ham with and decide which kind we wanted as we made our sandwich.  We packed beverages and other snacks to tide us over on the 6 hour train ride to Zagreb, Croatia.  Of course, later when we went to eat the sandwiches, we couldn’t find the meat or tomato that mom had “packed”.  I’ve never liked cheese sandwiches, and I still don’t – but it was all we had… cheese, butter and bread.  We were sad Hungarians.  When we got to the train station, the woman in Tata saw my Eurail pass and her first question was “what’s this?”  Oh jojj… we were in trouble.  You had to validate the pass before you started, and I wasn’t sure what to do.  To save the hassle, I just bought three tickets to Budapest and we were on our way.  On the first train, we ended up in first class – because it was right inside the door and a full train.  One of the girls from my school was in the car with us, so when we got scolded she was there to help us.  We arrived in Budapest about 20 minutes late, which was close to when our train was leaving.  We still had to have our passes validated and so we headed to wait in line.  When it was finally our turn (approximately 8 minutes before our train was to leave) a woman cut in front of me and said, “they already called my number and I missed it.”  Not about to miss our train, I replied with a firm “yes, but we waited in line- you’ll have to go after us” and pushed her out of the way.  We got to our train and settled in just in time for departure.