Traveling from Budapest to Zagreb

Travelling to Croatia from Budapest:

Okay, so I came back from Croatia about a week ago, I would say it was by far one of the best trips I had ever taken. I could use up all the good adjectives in the English dictionary to describe this country and everything that it contains and it still wouldn’t be enough. I have never fell in love more with a place than I did with Croatia. I don’t want to hype this up too much though, because then you will create an unrealistic picture in your head which would not live up to your expectations. I'm going to keep the hype a little low, so I wouldn’t ruin your future trip. Anyhow, let’s begin discovering this diverse piece of land together.

So ever since I moved to Hungary, I had always wanted to visit Croatia, I mean they’re neighbors, and they share a border, so I thought why the hell not. That’s of course not considering Croatia’s mesmerizing beauty. So the trip began like this, I had this plan in mind to go to Croatia during the summer and that was what got me through my final exams for the first year of medical school. Yes it was as horrifying as it sounds. I started messaging a lot of my friends, telling them about my plan and asking them to join. I knew that majority of them wouldn’t, as they either already had plans or they weren’t as spontaneous; I didn’t care, I was like even if no one comes I’d still go by myself.

Two of my friends were super eager, and so they wanted to join. I came up with a plan and booked all the tickets and the rest is history; ). Jks the story only begins here.

So let’s check it out.

We decided to go to Zagreb for a day and then head down to split, which is the major coastal town in all of Croatia. And Zagreb of course because it is the capital city, so we were like we have to see it. I booked the bus tickets from the Flixbus application, I always had some sort of coupons but this time around I couldn’t use anything. The tickets were definitely not cheap given its peak season and all that but I didn’t mind. I had already made up my mind about Croatia. The total came to something less than a 100 Euros which is good since it's summer and all that.

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I think I wrote about the Budapest bus station when I was talking about going to Prague, but anyways here’s a recap. Budapest has a lot of bus stations but majority of Flixbus buses go from the Nepliget bus station. Nepliget is easily accessible via public transport; you can use the M3 metro line and get there straight ahead. Then you can walk out of the metro station and the bus station is connected via a railway to the metro station. Our bus was for 8 am, and so we could take the metro, except on weekends the metro line M3 doesn’t work. We left on a Monday but you should keep that in mind when you want to travel.

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The journey to Zagreb was about 4 hours, the seats of the bus were comfortable and the air conditioning was moderately good but what surprised me was that there were no plugs on the bus. I hadn’t charged my phone and left with the hope that I can charge it in the bus, only to see that wasn’t possible. None of our buses to and back from Croatia had plugs, and I was quite disappointed because the buses that we took to Prague were much more advanced.

Oh, the weird thing that happened was at the border. So ever since I moved to Europe, I have forgotten all about immigration lines and check-ups. I consider that such a blessing because I genuinely hate all those security checks and making sure you’ve got the visa and all. However that wasn’t the case when we were to enter Croatia. The reason which I only found out later was that Croatia is part of the EU (European Union) but it’s not part of the Schengen area. So basically they will check you at the border and sometimes they will stamp your passport, depending on your travel document. I didn’t know any of these and so the random border check was irritating to me. We had to wait about half an hour or more, so they would check everyone’s passports and process us. First they had to check that we were in Hungary legally, and then they had to process our passports at the Croatian border. It was cool though, one step you were in Croatia and the other step took you to Hungary. I get excited over small stuff like this.

(Don't forget about the border check)

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Yea so make sure you’ve got the right travel documents, if you’re not from the EU, you’ll definitely need your passport.

In regard to tips on Croatia, well their currency is Kuna, so you will need to convert your Euros to their currency. It’s not an expensive currency it's actually quite affordable. When we went there 1 Euro was about 7. 1 Kuna. A bottle of water costs 10 kunas, a one way tram ticket costs about 4 kunas. A cheap meal costs about 50 to 60 kunas. Like I said before, it is not too cheap but it ain’t bad.

(200 Kuna, about 28 euros)

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Croats are generally very friendly; I would confidently say that they are the friendliest people I have met in all of Eastern Europe. I mean who wouldn’t be happy in such a beautiful and breath taking country. They smile a lot, they communicate with tourists a lot, they tend be interesting and talkative. What I absolutely loved was that they spoke English very proficiently. I love Hungary but anyone that comes to Hungary can tell you that they don’t speak English here; whether they are shy or they genuinely can’t speak English, I still haven’t figured out but that’s a story for another day. Croats on the other hand, especially in such touristy places such as Zagreb and Split, spoke English skillfully. That was a very big plus point for me.

So there’s that, I don’t think there are any other pointers I need to give you in regard to the trip. If you are travelling and you are in need of a place to stay, consider airbnb!

I hope you enjoyed this introduction!

Cheers

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