Never Get Off the Trails in Slovenia
A story of train travel and a creepy train station.
After finishing our trip to Switzerland last August, where we hiked down from the Eiger and visited the Matterhorn in Zermatt, we planned another trip for the winter.
Just like on all of our trips, we prefer taking the train over any other transportation type. It’s relaxing to hop on a train and sit until you reach your destination. Sometimes it’s an hour, but we’ve had our trips where we’ve been sitting on trains for more than 10 hours.
I have always been curious about Prague and after my sister won a free Interrail Ticket from DiscoverEU, we decided to go. We booked some of the best hotels and I bought myself a ticket too.
We would visit: Prague, Graz, Ljubljana, and München.
Our trip kicked off in Deventer, the city she lives in, and from there, we caught the direct Intercity train to Berlin.
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These trains are operated by the German Railways or Deutsche Bahn (DB), and they have caused us a lot of trouble in the past. (See my story where we had 100+ minutes of delay). Or when we couldn’t visit Milan last March.
So traveling by train in Germany isn’t always great, but when the trains run, they’re fast and they have a great experience.
For our journey to Prague, we traveled from Deventer to Hamm (Westf) and then to Berlin using an ICE4 highspeed train that ran on time! We booked our seat reservations far ahead and could sit for the entire trip which is always a huge advantage compared to hoping to get a seat.
Do you always book seats?
Once arriving in Berlin there are plenty of establishments where you could sit and eat, get a drink, or just relax. But also be aware of pickpockets here, the Central Station of Berlin is really big and also very crowded.
If you’re not used to these big stations it can be a very overwhelming experience so make sure to have enough transfer time. We reserved 2 hours of changing time. Our train to Prague left from platform 1 which is in the basement of the station — a little bit of a struggle to find, but we managed and still had to wait for around 25 minutes before it left.
It was still February so we didn’t have any views as soon as we left the station around 5 p.m. That was a shame because I like looking out the window when I’m sitting on a train. 4 hours later we arrived at Praha Hlavnà NádražÃ, or Prague Central Station which was only 10 minutes of walking from our hotel.
We checked in and discovered the beautiful city of Prague the next day where we didn’t use any of the trams but I took some beautiful photos of them. I’ll display them below, they’re the classic Prague trams.
The day after Prague we got on the train to Vienna and Graz in the early morning. Between Prague and Graz runs a Railjet train which is a high-speed train in Austria and takes you from A to B within 6 hours — the perfect train if you ask me.
It had very pretty views and stopped for an hour in Vienna to stretch our legs and enjoy the good weather at the station, buy some groceries, and then move on again.
This once again shows the flexibility of the Interrail pass, you just add the train you’re taking and you’re good to go — no ticket buying, no ticket office needed, just add it to your rail planner.
Perfect if you're not sure which route you want to take.
The last moment before we departed we added something special to our itinerary. We didn’t have a clue what we’d be going to do in Slovenia besides visiting Ljubljana.
It’s not the biggest city around and we kind of wanted to squeeze in a little nature and landscapes. We aimed for Lake Bled which is a little far away if you don’t have much time.
But we found that if we took the train at 7.00 a.m. we’d be able to do Ljubljana and then catch a train to Lake Bled and be able to get back on the same day.
What we didn’t realize beforehand was that we had to wait for more than an hour at a creepy train station around sunset. That train station is Jesenice, it’s near the Austrian border and we departed from the central station of Ljubljana around 12 to this transfer station.
So in the daylight, there’s nothing to care about, it’s just a small station — but there is no train information and everything is in Slovenian (of course).
No staff around to help us with what train to get on.
We eventually found this old train. It didn’t seem very accessible at first, but it turned out to be the train to Bled Jezero, near the lake. We hopped on and hoped for the best.
Then we had a great time at the lake, it was beautiful.
After spending around 2 hours there, our train would bring us back to Jesenice and then we had to spend 1.5 hours there, waiting for our train to bring us back to Ljubljana.
First, the train didn't show up on time. That was a good thing at least, because we had such a long transfer. But it showed up after a couple of minutes and we boarded it. It wasn’t the old train but this one was fully modernized and had information screens.
There’s one thing I noticed once we got back to Jesenice, it was dark and creepy. Vague people walking near the tracks and it didn’t give any good vibes at all.
We had to stay there for another 50+ minutes.
This might have been very stupid of us, but we did it anyway. We decided to walk next to the tracks and look at some old trains that were there, I took some photos and then we wanted to go back to the station.
But then…
We saw some people come out of a tunnel so we figured that it might lead to the station again.
Well, we were very wrong.
Walking down the stairs I had this weird feeling. It didn’t lead to the station but my sister still wanted to look around in the tunnel. But then far at the end of the tunnel, 2–3 people (I think young men) were walking towards us and that immediately was the sign for me to head back, really fast.
Then they started screaming at us and running towards us.
Terrifying.
We started running upstairs really fast and towards the station again next to the road where cars were driving as well. It didn’t matter as long as we would get back to the station and near other people again.
It might have been one of the scariest things I’ve ever done on a trip.
So if you’re asking me, don’t ever get off the tracks in a creepy dark train station, and definitely not in Jesenice.
You would not have gotten me in the tunnel 😱 haha, I did a big road trip last year and visited Prague as part of it, it was a bit busy for me but we did take a little bus ride all round the city. I'd love to visit Austria, and the big caves in Slovenia 😊