Emerging serenely from the Budapest metro after a Hungarian bath, we confidently proffered our tickets to the looming ticket inspectors (who bore a striking resemblance to communist-era Olympic weightlifters). Citing a dodgy argument about the invalidity of our tickets (which we had purchased from a ticket office), the inspectors demanded a fine that increased exponentially the more we disputed it, requested our passports, snatched money from our wallets and threatened to frogmarch us to the nearest ATM for the rest of the fine.
‘Vamos!’ I muttered to my travelling companion, hoping the inspectors' grasp of Spanish was weaker than their grasp of our arms. We exchanged a furtive glance and broke away in one sharp gesture, hotfooting it up the stairs. The crowd parted sympathetically like the Red Sea and cheered us on as we bolted (losing shoes and coins in the process), inspectors in hot pursuit.
Finally we lost the inspectors and made it to our train to Split, Croatia with one minute to spare, looking forward to finally being able to relax. No such luck. ‘Lock your doors’ warned the train conductor, gesturing towards the three ominous locks on our cabin door ‘The Zagreb mafia are very dangerous’…
