We got up early, finished packing the last few things, and took the tram for one stop and the M2 metro for two stops to Budapest Déli station.
The train was already waiting at the platform even though we were 40 minutes early. Hugo tried to spend the last of our forints, but managed to buy only three cooldrinks, so we now have some rather expensive scrapbook money.
We found our compartment and seats. They were not the best we had seen, and we soon heard other passengers complaining about the compartments too. The conductor explained that Slovenia had sent the wrong rolling stock. The reserved seat numbers did not even exist in some of the carriages, so everyone was told simply to find somewhere to sit.
We eventually got moving, but there was no air conditioning and the train kept getting hotter.
We ate both breakfast and lunch on the train: sandwiches Caro had packed, along with a few snacks.
At one point the locomotive was changed. Shortly afterwards we stopped again, close to the Slovenian border. We assumed it was for a passport check, but then someone announced that everyone had to get off. There were engineering works on the railway and replacement buses would take us onwards.
We all waited outside in the heat for the buses to arrive. Luckily they were a little cooler than the train. We spent just over an hour on the bus before reaching Ormož, near the Croatian border.
A more modern train was waiting for us there. We climbed aboard, only to wait another 40 minutes for a bus that had apparently got lost somewhere along the way.
The train’s route display showed a delay of 70 minutes. We eventually reached Ljubljana at 18:13, nine hours after leaving Budapest.
Ljubljana station was a construction site, but we found a ticket machine and bought tickets to Radovljica. Our scheduled departure was 40 minutes away, yet there was already a train at the platform which appeared to be going there, with its doors closed. Luckily a conductor was still standing outside. We showed her our tickets, she nodded, and we climbed aboard.
Another hour later we were in Radovljica. A steep uphill walk awaited us, but eventually we reached our pension and checked in with the friendly uncle in charge.
It was Sunday and almost everything seemed to be closed, but there was a pizza place a few hundred metres away.
We walked there through what felt like a ghost town, only to find the restaurant packed. We ordered the Gialla, topped with tomato sauce, Fior di Latte mozzarella, cooked prosciutto, fresh mushrooms, basil, extra virgin olive oil and Grana Padano. The wait was worth it: it was one of the best pizzas we had ever had, made with house sourdough fermented for 24 to 36 hours and excellent ingredients in exactly the right proportions.
Afterwards we went straight to bed, exhausted despite having spent almost the entire day sitting down.
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