Papers? I don't need no stinkin' papers!

Er, yes you do if you are trying to go to Croatia by Hungary.

Sounds fairly obvious, right? Leave one country, go to another neighboring country, bring your passport. Ok, so we used to be able to go to Canada and Mexico with a drivers license (can you still do that to Canadia?). But still. You think about the appropriate documentation one might need. Ticket? Bank card? Passport? So imagine my horror when I was on the train to Zagreb from Budapest only to realise about 30 minutes in to the 6 hour trip that I had indeed left my passport at home. But not 'left at home' as in shit it's on the kitchen counter next to the recycling I forgot to take out. But, oh my god the thought never even occurred to me to bring it. Seriously. Yes I CAN be that stupid sometimes.

It's actually quite remarkable that I didn't even think about it. I mean, from forint to kuna, what about that screams Euro?? On one hand, it's the casualness of the train trip. You pack sort of like a car trip, toss in the pbj fixings for the road, no thought about shampoo and toothpaste cos it's all just one big carry on. But the reality is that it's the downside of emigrating from a country so big you can sit on an airplane for 5 hours and only just make it from one end to the next (did I say emigrate?!). Six hours on a train and I'm in Boston from Philly - not exactly passing though rolling countryside and aggressive border police (unless you count the people in the quiet car). There is a joke that the trains are slow in Hungary not because of lack of governments investment in rail, but to make the Hungarians feel like their country is bigger than it is.

So I finally arrived 8 hours later to this small conference than I had planned to and was able to entertain the others as the resident town fool / silly American for leaving the country without her papers. Classic. And truly an accomplishment only American could pull off.

The best part of my folly is that I got to spend some quality time waiting for my return train back to Budapest on the Go get the Passport Express in a little town I like to call bumfuckhungary. Others call it Szekesfehervar. Any way you call it, it is a town with no cohesive plan for clarifying what track has which train to where. I take it they don't get much non-local action there. But even worse is that I asked a number of people for help and got a different answers each time. And it's not due to my lack of proper magyarol because the question is simple- look like a pathetic traveler with your modest suitcase and ask "Budapest?" It's sort of either yes or no. The question is in the question mark. The one train conductor guy said to me by way of response: "Eger". So I thought oh, ok, not my train, this one goes to Eger. But uon further reflexion I thought hmmm, isn't Eger on the other side of Budapest as in you pass through the capital to get there? So I ask someone else who gave me a long, complicated answer in Hungarian, not of which encouraged me to climb aboard this same alleged Eger train he was on. So I sit some more. Then a young, blond women is getting on and I ask her the controversial question: 'Budpest?' She simply smiles and nods her head. That's all I needed. And yes, it was the same train I had been staring at, the same Eger train and 'blah blah magyarol blah blah' train. The thing that was confounding me is that it's not like I was trying to go somewhere obscure. Or that I was very far away from. Budapest - ever heard of it?!

Anyhow, this began as well-eared self mockery for not understanding travel 101 and turned into a rant against my fellow travelers. Hungary 1, Kate 0. And the Croatian border? Priceless!

P.S. there does now exist safe passage (aka paperless travel) from Hungary to The West since Hungary has joined the Shengan Agreement. But er, seeing as Croatia is not EU, um yeah. Keep the passport handy!