Slovenia by www.born2travel.it

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08. 08. 2000 Ljubljana (SLOVENIA)

And so Rossho has abandoned us... From Ljubljana he took a train that will take him directly to Italy. What can I say about Ljubljana, perhaps a little too quiet for a capital. It's an alpine city: calm, no traffic, full of elderly people, surrounded by high mountains where you breathe the purest air, and with lots of bicycles around instead of cars. Still, I was upset seeing four gypsies who, in the big fountain of the main square, were splashing about in the water "stealing" all the coins tourists had thrown in as a custom, and nobody did anything to stop them. Meanwhile we leave; in about an hour we'll set off and travel for about nine hours across Austria without a ticket (at least we'll try!). Without a ticket because in that country we're not covered by our interrail. What will happen? You'll find out in the next episode.

Tomorrow evening Rossho will sleep peacefully in a comfortable bed, with a full stomach - and us?

09. 08. 2000 Bratislava (SLOVAKIA)

After leaving Rossho at the Ljubljana station we set off again for Willach, in Austria. We arrive at our destination around 23:00; the station is huge and populated only by drunks and petty thieves at that hour. All the ticket counters were closed and we were the only "tourists", as well as the only young people. We had to wait three hours there. I was a bit scared, and on top of that we didn't even have a ticket for the next train. At 1:21 we get on our train... But it's packed! We "camp out" along the corridor and stay there for about ten minutes when the inspectors arrive. They examine our interrail ticket in detail and immediately realise that Austria was not included in our itinerary... They order us to pay, we argue a bit but, shortly before they call the police, we pay the hefty fine of £77,000 each so that we're covered as far as Vienna.

Despite the high price of the ticket, our situation doesn't change. We're still sitting on our backpacks along the corridor and every two minutes we have to get up to let people going to the toilet pass... At 6:30 in the morning we're in the Austrian capital but only briefly, we set off at once for nearby Bratislava! Having arrived in Slovakia we wanted to continue to Prague to get closer to our final destination: the Baltic States, but we learn that perhaps another visa was needed for Lithuania. We need to find out more; we make a run on foot to the Italian embassy to learn more.... Nooooo! There's a mile-long queue of Slovaks asking for a visa for Italy, but fortunately there's a counter reserved just for us. They tell us that no visa is needed... but we don't trust them; anyway, we decide to try all the same... Meanwhile we head to Warsaw, in Poland.

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