One thing that led to some confusion on our last trip was the absence of signs. The metro in Budapest often didn’t have posted signs saying which direction the subway went, so we took our best guess and jumped on, hoping we were going the right way. In one instance while we were leaving the Széchenyi thermal baths we jumped on the metro and one stop later came to the end of the line, so we obviously had gone the wrong way. We ran to the other track, and as we were coming down the stairs we saw three ticket checkers standing there. We tried to explain we just made a mistake and jumped on the wrong way and had only gone one stop, but they just kept pointing to the ticket machine and shaking their heads. There was no ticket counter open to buy an additional ticket so we were screwed. Then out of nowhere, an agitated young Hungarian woman stood up for us and started to yell at the ticket checkers saying (in heavy accented English) that this is not our fault and that “the rules are stupid!” She took out her purse, shuffled through her wallet, and pulled out two new tickets that she then gave to us–while rolling her eyes at the ticket checkers. We kept telling her it wasn’t necessary but she insisted.
Zagreb had their fair share of sign issues too. Let me just start off by saying our first few hours in Zagreb were horribly frustrating because for some godforsaken reason we hadn’t written down the address of the apartment we were staying in. Obviously this is a huge mistake when you are in a foreign country without a city map and have little chance of meeting anyone who speaks English to help you. I will also add that it was raining and a lady from the train station gave us directions which led us in the exact opposite direction of where we needed to be. So I thought maybe I’d call someone at home to see if they could go online and look it up for me, but then all I heard was an error message in Hungarian. Then I stepped in a huge puddle of water which filled my shoe.
Eventually an old man must have taken pity on us because he ran over to us and handed us a pocket map of Zagreb. Things were turning around after all! The only problem with the map was that every street was spelled differently from the actual street signs by at least 3 or 4 different letters. (which we didn’t realize until we were walking in circles). How were we supposed to know that Gava ut = Gajeva ulica? Anyways, we finally found an internet cafe after a few hours of walking in the rain with water filled shoes and soaking giant backpacks…just before ripping each other’s hair out.
