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> Upon seeing this, the experienced visitor to this sceptred isle knows to smartly turn on their heel because B45 is right behind them, but we occasional travel

> Upon seeing this, the experienced visitor to this sceptred isle knows to smartly turn on their heel because B45 is right behind them, but we occasional travellers don't. Railways aren't much better. German railways are bad enough, but Eastern Europe... good luck even finding a realtime track schedule, and screw you if you don't speak the language. Last time in Rijeka there was construction going on but no indications anywhere, my fellow travellers were lucky I spoke Croatian and recognized that the attendant was shouting in Croatian for the people on what should have been a train...

lifestyleguru 2mo ago
You come to Croatia for cheap holidays and are surprised not all works as you're used to. German service providers absolutely don't care if you don't speak German and will take that extra step to make sure you get the message.
- mschuster91 2mo ago
  > You come to Croatia for cheap holidays and are surprised not all works as you're used to. I speak the language. The thing I'm annoyed is is that tourist destinations should be better prepared for, well, tourists showing up!
  - lifestyleguru 2mo ago
    Croatian tourism strategy is bumping prices of what they already have to Swiss level, and seeing who is still willing to show up.
    - mschuster91 2mo ago
      It's not like that strategy isn't working out lol. The issue at the root of it is that Croatia wants to diversify from tourism and agriculture, its main sources of income... but for that, it needs money. With Russia invading Ukraine, a ton of Russian tourists went missing (if you ask me: thank God), and so the remaining ones are getting fleeced for all they're worth. The side effect is that the locals are getting shafted. Supermarket prices are at German levels (on the islands it's even worse)... the only thing saving most locals is that Croats tend to outright own their homes and a lot of Croats have houses large enough for two families if not more. That makes high cost of living a lot more bearable. And the fact that the geography makes supplying the coastal areas very inefficient doesn't help either. Along the coast from Rijeka all the way down to Zadar there is only the one single-lane long magistrala with only a few passthroughs through the mountain and the recently constructed highways... but no train, it's only in Rijeka and Zadar again. And with the exception of Krk which is connected by bridge, all of the islands have to be supplied by ferry, but the trucks that haul all the goods have to wait sometimes for hours to get on the ferry, the only fast lane is for the public transit buses and authorities.
ghaff 2mo ago
Railways--and public transit generally--is optimized for people who speak the native language and use the system regularly and more or less ignore the jet-lagged person just off a flight who doesn't speak the language. In general, a lot of systems do a bad to terrible job of accommodating people who are unfamiliar with them. It also doesn't help when so many countries (and even cities) have totally different systems for paying, etc. Contactless payment is simplifying some of that. But you still, for example, have the need to tap out in some places but not others. And, no, having to scour guidebooks (of possibly outdated info), for all the right incantations for a given locale isn't really satisfactory.
- starky 2mo ago
  >Contactless payment is simplifying some of that. But you still, for example, have the need to tap out in some places but not others The tapping out thing can be so confusing, even as someone that uses transit a lot. I was traveling recently and encountered buses where you had to tap in only, ones you had to tap in and out on, and ones where you had to tell the driver where you were going before tapping in. None of which had clear signage on the bus itself. Even with my home system, at the airport I noticed they had installed extra stickers covering up the wrong way gates, and I had to tell someone where to tap their tickets when their entire family was blocking my way to the platform when trying to get home.
  - ghaff 2mo ago
    >Even with my home system, at the airport I noticed they had installed extra stickers covering up the wrong way gates, and I had to tell someone where to tap their tickets when their entire family was blocking my way to the platform when trying to get home. My observation is that's improved a lot in some cases. But I remember I was traveling somewhare on UK trains, and between receipts and tickets for trains after a change, I had this sheaf of cards that my friend and I were rifling through to get on a train (with a short connection) and it wasn't at all obvious what we needed to feed into the turnstyle with people getting annoyed behind us.

lifestyleguru 2mo ago

You come to Croatia for cheap holidays and are surprised not all works as you're used to. German service providers absolutely don't care if you don't speak German and will take that extra step to make sure you get the message.

mschuster91 2mo ago
> You come to Croatia for cheap holidays and are surprised not all works as you're used to. I speak the language. The thing I'm annoyed is is that tourist destinations should be better prepared for, well, tourists showing up!
- lifestyleguru 2mo ago
  Croatian tourism strategy is bumping prices of what they already have to Swiss level, and seeing who is still willing to show up.
  - mschuster91 2mo ago
    It's not like that strategy isn't working out lol. The issue at the root of it is that Croatia wants to diversify from tourism and agriculture, its main sources of income... but for that, it needs money. With Russia invading Ukraine, a ton of Russian tourists went missing (if you ask me: thank God), and so the remaining ones are getting fleeced for all they're worth. The side effect is that the locals are getting shafted. Supermarket prices are at German levels (on the islands it's even worse)... the only thing saving most locals is that Croats tend to outright own their homes and a lot of Croats have houses large enough for two families if not more. That makes high cost of living a lot more bearable. And the fact that the geography makes supplying the coastal areas very inefficient doesn't help either. Along the coast from Rijeka all the way down to Zadar there is only the one single-lane long magistrala with only a few passthroughs through the mountain and the recently constructed highways... but no train, it's only in Rijeka and Zadar again. And with the exception of Krk which is connected by bridge, all of the islands have to be supplied by ferry, but the trucks that haul all the goods have to wait sometimes for hours to get on the ferry, the only fast lane is for the public transit buses and authorities.

ghaff 2mo ago

Railways--and public transit generally--is optimized for people who speak the native language and use the system regularly and more or less ignore the jet-lagged person just off a flight who doesn't speak the language. In general, a lot of systems do a bad to terrible job of accommodating people who are unfamiliar with them. It also doesn't help when so many countries (and even cities) have totally different systems for paying, etc. Contactless payment is simplifying some of that. But you still, for example, have the need to tap out in some places but not others. And, no, having to scour guidebooks (of possibly outdated info), for all the right incantations for a given locale isn't really satisfactory.

starky 2mo ago
>Contactless payment is simplifying some of that. But you still, for example, have the need to tap out in some places but not others The tapping out thing can be so confusing, even as someone that uses transit a lot. I was traveling recently and encountered buses where you had to tap in only, ones you had to tap in and out on, and ones where you had to tell the driver where you were going before tapping in. None of which had clear signage on the bus itself. Even with my home system, at the airport I noticed they had installed extra stickers covering up the wrong way gates, and I had to tell someone where to tap their tickets when their entire family was blocking my way to the platform when trying to get home.
- ghaff 2mo ago
  >Even with my home system, at the airport I noticed they had installed extra stickers covering up the wrong way gates, and I had to tell someone where to tap their tickets when their entire family was blocking my way to the platform when trying to get home. My observation is that's improved a lot in some cases. But I remember I was traveling somewhare on UK trains, and between receipts and tickets for trains after a change, I had this sheaf of cards that my friend and I were rifling through to get on a train (with a short connection) and it wasn't at all obvious what we needed to feed into the turnstyle with people getting annoyed behind us.