Hi, I just arrived in Banja Luka a little while ago, after beta testing the connections from Zagreb airport. I of course wanted to make sure that this was a fair test, so:
- It was arranged that the plane escaped from London Heathrow an hour late after a long wait for a take-off slot following boarding, reducing my two hour connection time in Zagreb to one hour. - To make sure that I was tired out, I spent the flight reading a novel in Spanish while the child next to me distracted me by singing and trying to draw on my arm, and the baby two seats over cried loudly. On arrival at Zagreb, I as usual chose an appropriate standing location on the bus from plane to terminal so that I was towards the front of the queue for passport control, and was then lucky that my bag was one of the first onto the conveyor belt. These bits might seem like cheating, but, sorry, I did want to try to catch the first bus to Banja Luka. Reverting to non-cheating mode (and since I had some, but not much, Croatian money with me) I left the airport terminal and put my luggage in the bus directly outside and got on it, around 21.15, after being assured by the driver that yes it was going to the bus station and it would leave in "five minutes", instead of looking for a taxi to the bus station. After a while the driver came through the bus selling tickets (30 Kn each). I noticed that one couple didn't have local currency, and the driver appeared to accept €10 for the two of them instead. The bus left between 21.25 and 21.30 after it was almost full, and took 20-25 minutes to reach its terminus at the bus station, arriving about 21.50. It stopped a couple of times on the way, but these were fairly obviously just brief roadside halts. The bus stopped in an overspill car park outside the main bus station area, and the obvious pedestrian entrance/exit from this area was closed (perhaps just because it was the evening), so I left via the way we'd come in, crossing over to the main bus station. After checking the way with someone waiting for a bus, I then went upstairs (just taking any of the stairs going up from the bus 'platforms') and followed the "exit" signs along to the ticket desks. There was some complicated signage above these, but the guy at the first desk I tried was happy to sell me a ticket for the 22.00 bus to Banja Luka (108 Kn, as the wiki had said). He pointed out to me the platform number (marked "PERON" on the ticket). After going back along and down the stairs to the right place, I found the bus waiting, and put my bag in the hold. This time there was a 12 Kn fee for checking a bag, in return for which I got a receipt matching a tag put on the bag. (This is fairly standard on Balkan buses, but doesn't apply to the bus from the airport to the bus station.) The main ticket had something that may have been a seat number, but if it was then people were ignoring them to spread out -- the bus was about half full. We arrived at the Croatian border about 23.40, and left the Bosnian border about 00.20. At the Croatian border we all had to get off the bus, show our passports, then get back on one by one, while at the Bosnian border someone collected all the passports from us on the bus, and took them off to stamp, then someone from the bus company gave them back to us after we had started driving again. At about 00.40 we stopped at a cafe for people to smoke/use the toilets/stretch their legs, departing again about 1.05. We arrived at the Banja Luka bus station at about 1.35. Some time before this we'd passed a big sign for the city and a second sign with a long list of twinned towns; the bus station itself was mostly just an open-air car park, but they announced "Banja Luka" over the bus speakers as we drove in, and it was the first major stop of the journey. (A few people had got off immediately after the border earlier.) At this time of night it wasn't completely obvious which way to go from the bus, but while I was looking around, a taxi driver spotted me and offered his services. By the end of the ride to Hotel Bosna the meter was at about 8 KM. As I didn't have the right money for this, I told him to wait -- he didn't speak English, but mentioning 'bank' and leaving my bags in the car gave the right message -- and popped into the hotel lobby to use the ATM there. (If I hadn't known there was an ATM in the Hotel Bosna lobby, I'd have asked him to stop at a bank on the way, given that I hadn't waited around to look for a possible ATM around the bus terminal.) After paying the taxi-driver and collecting my bag, giving my passport (along with a greeting) was sufficient for the guy on the hotel check-in desk to find me on a list of DebConf people and give me a room key. I'm just writing this note from the hotel wireless while I remember details, and look forward to meeting up with everyone here in the morning. :) -- Moray _______________________________________________ Debconf-discuss mailing list Debconf-discuss@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-discuss
