Today didn’t turn out as expected!

Travel day from Vienna to Bratislava. Expected train time 1 hour plus taxi to hotel.

Used our 48 hour ticket to get 2 trams to the Hautbanhoff without any problem. As anyone who has travelled with Phillip knows, we were there with plenty of time to spare and as Alison predicted got there early enough to catch an earlier train.

All went well for 3 stops and then we all had to get off the train as there has been an incident on the line and trains couldn’t get through. There will be a bus they said. Well one very crowded bus eventually left to take people to the next station. It took ages to come back, crowded with people trying to go the other way. Expected delay until about 6 pm (our train left Vienna at 11.45).

We managed to squeeze onto the bus only to stand uncomfortably for about half an hour during which we learned that the next station didn’t have power and was in the same dilemma. The bus driver was on the phone trying to get things worked out. Eventually we decided to get off and see whether we could make other arrangements or find somewhere more comfortable to wait.

Well problems can often be solved by throwing money at them so we booked an Uber to go to the next stop, on the assumption that we would be able to go to the large shopping centre and get a local bus to Bratislava from there. Teamed up with a nice Vietnamese chap and went to the next station to find that there was another station one further with a similar name that we should have gone to as there were many people who had been where we were that were still there, but it wouldn’t have helped anyway.

To cut it shorter we again teamed up with our Vietnamese friend and got an Uber and rode in air conditioned comfort if a large Mercedes to Bratislava. Got to our hotel at about 4.30.

Thoroughly exhausted and a bit poorer, we checked in and got a map to work out where to go tomorrow and had a beer before wandering around a little bit and having dinner at a Slovakian restaurant (one of many). Met an Austrian chap who said he had been to Melbourne many times to play in the Oz Open and got to the 1/4 final in 2002. Will have to look him up.