It’s approximate 345 km from Zagreb to Budapest. Despite some horror stories about FlixBus online, I had a perfectly pleasant experience with their staff and service. The passengers on the other hand all reeked of last minute cigarettes huffed before boarding at each stop along the way
I had gotten to the bus depot early, worried I’d have to track down the bus driver and stick with him like a supervillain’s overzealous toady sycophant. But my fears of the bus departing without passengers or at weird times were internet review “fake news.” The depot told me the bus world leave from gate 305 at 8 am.
The bus arrived at 7:45, we loaded our bags, the driver scanned tickets and quickly checked passports and we left at 8:02 am.
It was a foggy, misty morning. It would clear now and again, the sun shining, only to have misty fog roll back in for several miles, and then sunshine breaking through once more.
I dozed and read and tried not to breathe the second hand smoke embedded in the couple’s fibers and skin who sat down in front of me at the last minute. My internal quiet was constantly interrupted by this guy’s mobile phone’s notification trill sound effect that sounded like the opening bars of a lame local newscast theme song. And it was cued to his text messages too. I don’t know who or what this guy is but he gets A LOT of texts.
At the Hungary border, we stopped and turned over all of our passports for verification. The whole process took about half an hour and at the end of it, we all got off the bus so the border agent could call us by our passports and make sure all were accounted for.
Not too long after, we took a 15 minute break at a petrol station. There was no ATM for me to get Hungarian forint (roughly 260 HFT to a US dollar). As a result, I charged my 500 HFT Coke Zero.
Back on the bus and riding to Budapest, the sun is shining brightly. I’m debating what sights to try and take in tonight after checking into my AirBNB. There’s cultural and then there’s pop cultural. I’d bet a couple thousand forint that I just might hit the Hungarian Pinball Museum.
And the wheels on the bus keep going round and round…
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If it’s good enough for James T. Kirk, it’s good enough for me. Tomorrow I’ll do a runner’s blog – supplemental. For now, I’ll cliffhang with the notations that some misspent youth was revisited… and a Danube was blue.
