well if ever i had an ordeaal getting from one city to the next it was perhaps budapest to ljubljana... sit back and get comfortable for the story... i book a bus ticket from buda to ljubljana (only two leave per week) and wake up late, in a scramble getting to the bus station on the other side of town two minutes before it is supposed to leave at 6am, but am told when boarding it will go via croatia (which is not ok forme because on my german working holiday visa i am supposed to exit the eu on a flight ex germany, and i can confirm croatia is not part of the eu just yet) so i decide on the spot not to board the bus, which in hindsight was the correct decision from a visa compliance point of view
which left me with the problem of how to get from one city to the next. at the budapest central railway staation i am told there is no direct train and that to get by train i must go via austria at the cost of hundreds of euros. sucking it up and paying the money is sometimes necessary, however i would hate myself if i simply changed platforms in cities such as sopron and graz, so decided to try to find a hack where i could get a regional train from budapest to west hungary, somehow cross the border into slovenia whether by bus or taxi or hitchhiking, then get a regional train to maribor in east slovenia (which is a city with a great soccer club by the way) and then by train from maribor to ljubljana in central-east slovenia
off i trotted to the local mcdonalds, bought a cuppa and sat with my mobile and the free wifi for the next few hours, searching trains and calling hostels to see if they're open in the off season, should i get stuck in for example eastern slovenia for the night. there i was in maccas skype calling these places speaking in slow, loud english, for hours!!! and not getting anywhere!!! eventually i find a couple of promising trains and a hostel, so got moving...
when i go to buy my ticket, the man at the ticket register says to my shock that there's a direct train from budapest to ljubljana that afternoon. i insist there is not, as i have spoken to the international ticket office and searched at all the trains online. he claims there is, even though his colleagues then chip in to say there is not. he scribbles some words on some scrap paper, says 'there's your ticket', and sure enough 43 euros and 2 hours later i am sitting on the train which is full of hungarians who know about this train, and almost devoid of tourists who of course do not know about it11
the direct train turns out to have 2 or 3 changes due to track work which leave immediately, so there's no time to buy any food/drink from a platform shop, and there's no food to buy on board the train itself. eventuaally i get to ljubljana at 10pm and all was well, albeit 17 hungry hours to move a few hundred kilometers
at least i got there in the end... and the hostel has a bar downstairs, and a beer was of course called for after such a long journey... gotta love travel!!!!