90. Smokin Helga

That is the name my father came up with for the girl we followed to get to Ljubljana. Sidenote: who came up with that spelling, come on. The day started off nice and easy. The most convenient train to take from Munich to Ljubljana was in the afternoon, so we took some time to walk around Marienplatz again. Which included the chocolate shop where most things were on sale! I ate an entire full sized bar of "Brezel Time" (Pretzel time) chocolate in about 10 minutes.

We came home to a note that had been slid under the door requesting us to call Rudolph as soon as possible. I guess we will never know who Rudolph is, or what he wanted, because he didn't pick up the phone. We made it to the train station an hour early and saw that we could catch the earlier train to Villach where we could transfer to Ljubljana! That beat hanging out in the station for an hour. We found a nice 6 person cart with no air conditioning or plugs. When the ticket man walked by, he let us know that the exact cart we were sitting in would travel all the way to Ljubljana! No transfer? Awesome!

With nothing to stress about, I immediately fell asleep. Only to wake up to another, angry, German telling us to get off the train. It was quite a frightening thing to wake up to. There was no explanation as to why we had to get off the train, just that it "ended here." Okay what type of train ends it route 4 hours early with no explanation? We aren't ones to pry, but our new friend Smokin' Helga was. She was a few compartments down from us, and she was angry. She must not have received an adequate answer because she stomped off the train soon after us using some choice words. That part of the conversation was in English.

The train had spit us out in Salzburg. It had to be fate. I have been collecting postcards in every city we visit, and somehow missed Salzburg! Now my collection is complete, and all is right in my world.

Luckily, we had taken the early train back in Munich so we could still catch the later one to our transfer station. Which we did, and again thought we were on the right track. Until the next ticket man came bearing bad news. The line was broken - would have been nice to know - and everyone had to get off. I was out of plans. Everything that happened after this point was pure chance , with no way to plan or prepare for any of it. This time, instead of being kicked out at a nice well known town, we were dumped in some podunk industrial wasteland and people with neon shirts directed us toward a bus.

I could read the station sign to look up where we were on my eurail map, and carefully typed in the longest city name ever to the app, and all it gave me were the train routs that we had been kicked off of. I guess no one updates the eurail app when things are shut down. Stranded somewhere in Austria, with no internet, and no eurail app, on a bus full of strangers who produced a lot of body heat, we were at a loss.

Then Smokin' Helga arrived. And Helga spoke English! Helga was trying to get to Zagreb, Ljubljana was on the way there! We now had a traveling partner.

Somehow by another twist of fate, we made it to Villach where we could switch to another train headed straight to Ljubljana. There was a lot of anticipation in this switch because our bus arrived 20 minutes after the last train was scheduled to take off. Some how the train was still there. This is why I'll never ever be fully confident in a train schedule.

This last leg to Ljuljana was very scenic so I stayed awake to watch the sunset over the mountains. Also because I were too nervous about another disaster happening to fall asleep. Our host in Ljubljaja offered to drive us straight to the apartment too! So we didn't have to worry about wondering the streets of a foreign country with all of our belongings at night. Around 10:30 we sat down for a nice family dinner. Our usual travel day meal of Spaghetti. My personal favorite. We must be adjusting to the European eating schedule. It seems like our dinners get later and later with each stop.