Day Trip!

I had one more day left before heading north to London for a few days so decided to squeeze in one more day trip and one more country to my trip count total. Slovenia is north of Croatia with the capital city, Ljubljana, just a 3 hour train ride from Zagreb. Sounds perfect right? WRONG! I had such good intensions: got up at 7am, packed a lunch, bought my return train ticket, had a whole compartment to myself....

Waiting on the train in Zagreb, Croatia.

Whole campartment to myself!... 2 of the 6 seats in the cpmpartment... excited to be back riding German/Austrian trains.

After a lovely 30min train ride, the train stopped at the Croatian boarder where the robo-cops acted very important and stamped our passports. Business as usual. Next stop was the Slovenian boarder where I was questioned then taken off the train by a Slovenian boarder control robo-cop who was trying to explain to me why I was not allowed into Slovenia or the EU for that matter. Yicks! What is going on here??!!

Thankfully Robo-cop's supervisor spoke very good english and explained that I had over stayed my alotted 90 day visit in the Schengen countries within a 6 month period so I can not return to the majority of the EU countries for another 6 months. Oh boy. Turns out I had spent 102 days in the Schengen countries which isn't enough to get a fine (250 euros apparently), but means I had to get on the next train back to Zagreb and abandon my day trip to Ljubljana. 

This is the lovely poster that was in the `holding room` where I was kept until the train arrived. I thought it was a joke at first. If you can`t see, it is depicting how to identify different races of people. Its written in Croatian so I can`t read it but certainly understand it.... looks like what a certain insane, controlling, evil, and sadistic group of people used during a certain major world war... starts with an N and ends with an I....

I was only held for 45 mins or so but was extensively questioned as to my reason for travel, reason for wanting to visit Ljubljana, where my luggage was, why was I alone, why would I want to go to Slovenia, where was my luggage, why was I alone.... repeat... I had to explain multiple times that I was only going for the day and my luggage was in Zagreb. I don`t think they understood until they searched my day bag and found my packed lunch....`Oh! You were only going for the day`... BINGO robo-cop. 

Lucky for me, the paper work was signed by the robo-cops and myself in time for the next train otherwise I would have been sitting in the holding room for another 4 hours until the next train arrived. I now have a bold DENIED ENTRY INTO THE EU stamp in my passport which will cause me some trouble when I arrive in London the next day, but thats a different story altogether. 

I did acheive my goal for the day however, I made it into one more country and got one more stamp in my passport! Thank you Dobva, Slovenia!

After that adventure, I could not wait to get to London! That post next....

Kylie