seekingmygreaterperhaps

There are good times, and good stories, you can only choose one. While this is neither a good time, nor a good story, I’m going to share it anyways.

Let me start at the very beginning, it’s a very fine place to start. I met 2 awesome people at the hostel I was staying at: Jesse, and Rachel. They were going to watch me jump off a bridge, so we needed to catch the bus. We had never ridden the bus, and did not know how it works… also, everything is confusing in Slovakia. We purchase our ticket amongst a huge crowd of people and get cattle herded onto a bus. Apparently, at this point in the journey, we were supposed to stamp our bus tickets. *Note, this step did not happen, because we did not know*

Then a big scary Slovakian man approaches us and asks to see our tickets. We show him, and he yells at us for not stamping them. I thought, oh okay, we will stamp them and be fine. WRONG. He kicks us off the bus. And follows us. He then proceeds to tell us that we are in big big trouble. There is a tiny line on the back of the ticket that says “to be valid, ticket must be stamped immediately upon entering the bus.” It became a huge problem for us, that it was translated into English. *side note- who the hell reads the back of a ticket?*

For most mistakes in traveling, you can pretty much pull the “I’m a dumb tourist, let me fix my mistake and we can go on our merry way” card and get away with things. Because, in all honesty, we are dumb tourists and do not know we are doing wrong. For this instance, that was not going to fly.

We pulled that card. Again. And again. And again. He did not take it. He proceeded to tell us that we were going to have to pay a 50 euro fine, and if we couldn’t pay it, we would go to jail. Yes, jail. Then he asked for our passports, as if he were booking us into jail. At this point, my mind went numb. 50 euro is pretty much my eating allowance for a good chunk of time. And, I definitely did not want to do jail time. So then I got angry. Note to all travelers- trying to reason with Slovakian authorities is pointless. Getting angry at them is worse. Once I started raising my voice, he just called the police. Then I started to panic. I realized there was no way of getting out of this. Even after ripping up my ticket and throwing it away (the trashcan was far enough away, where I totally could have booked it and probably gotten away… but I didn’t want to abandon my new friends), this super nice Slovak did not see my message.

Unfortunately, we all realized that we were in trouble with no way of getting out of it. Thankfully we all had our passports and enough money. (As a sidenote, this was a miracle. I never carry my passport, but I was leaving that day, so happened to have it. Also, I don’t carry that much cash, God must have told me to go to the ATM “just in case”) Because I was bitter, I didn’t tell him my name or identity ever. He did not see the inside of my passport, or my debit card. This was my only victory of this exchange.

After we all reluctantly bit the bullet so we wouldn’t go to jail, he wrote us tickets, and left. Son. Of. A. Bitch. At this point, I may have started to cry in public. A few hot tears of anger, and then I pulled myself together. But that was definitely a morning ruiner.

I decided to continue with the bridge jump, because I had already been through hell so I was bound and determined to get there. Long story short, make sure you try and figure out the rules of the public transport you are using before you use it. Moral: don’t go to Slovakia.