Sometimes the busses don't come in Slovakia...

In comparison to The United States, I thought the the public transportation is wonderful here! All cities, and even small towns like mine, have regular and (sort of ) reliable bus and train routes. You can go virtually anywhere by bus or train and for not much money or time.

A photo of the lovely bus station seen all over Slovakia. 

I seemed to have weekend that completely contradicted this, however.

Actually my lack of faith in the bus system began about two weeks ago when the other American teachers in my school and I were hanging out in Banska Bystrica and tried to get back home. Our bus just didn't show up... We managed to take the next bus connections, but I remember thinking how bizzare that was.

Then, early last week I was headed to Bratislava for a Fulbright conference, and on my way I made a little stop-over to Nitra to visit some old friends. I had looked up bus times earlier on the Slovak transportation website and found a bus that would leave from Nitra to Bratislava at 8:00p.m. When I arrived there was no 8:00p.m. bus. With the help of my Slovak friends we concluded that the website either incorrectly said a Saturday-only the bus would also go on Tuesday, or I read a train departing at 8:00 as a bus. oops!

Well, unfortunately the next bus wasn't coming until 9:30p.m. which would put me in Bratislava around 11:00p.m. I was really hoping my bus would arrive early, because the last city bus in Bratislava to my hotel was taking off at 10:55 (or so it said). The 9:30 bus arrived. There were 4 more seats on the bus (as it was going to Pilzen, Czech Republic) and I was the third person to get on the bus (I'm really good at weaving my little body onto busses and trains, thank you Russia!) I arrived in Bratislava on time and everything worked out! phew!

Me and my friend Sonka having fun in Nitra. I'm completely unaware that I'm missing my bus connection! 

Cut to a few days later when the other Americans and I decided to go to Poprov to buy some sweet plaid pants and hiking boots. We arrived just fine, but on our way back the bus we needed at 5:00p.m. simply did not come! It turns out the bus was having some technical problems and wasn't going to come. Our next bus connection was going to get us back to Tisovec around 5a.m. Luckily, one of the other English teachers from our school happened to live very close to Poprov. She invited us to stay the night with her in her village! YAY! She told us which bus to take. When we were buying our ticket we were informed the bus wouldn't go to the village we wanted, but would take us to another village on the way... I think all of us Americans thought to ourselves "whatever!" at that moment. While on the bus there was an adorable older lady who helped us get form our stop to the next bus traveling to the small town where our friend lived.

We ate a lot of pizza, drank a bit of alcohol and we stayed the night at our friend's house.

In the morning we tried to catch the earliest bus to get back to Tisovec. The bus was supposed to leave at 8:30 am. 8:35 passed. 8:40 passed. We all walked over to the big connection board across the street to double check the times when a giant bus went flying by the bus station! Well, it was a good excuse to go to the grocery store. I bought muffins, lots of muffins, and chocolate and any other junk food I found. We did make the next bus and got home safely around 1:00pm, which perhaps isn't that bad.

This weekend I'm traveling to visit my host parents in Liptovsky Mikulas. The bus system can't fail me again, can it?