We had anticipated leaving Lake Bled with our pre-paid tickets so that we could get back to look in a couple of churches in Ljubljana before going for an evening meal. We assumed that there might be a bus that we could catch…..
I’d add that I wasn’t initially planning to take many photos of this, so I was a little slow to capture the whole arrangement, although there’s a video in part two that gives a taste of things to come.
There was a relatively orderly queue at the bus stop, but it became apparent that some people had already been waiting for two hours. There was excitement when the bus to Ljubljana pulled up, but in an act of what generally felt like incompetence, the bus driver pulled up mid-way along the bus stop and opened the doors.
This led to the worst incident of bus rage that I’ve ever seen. A passenger hit another passenger and another was physically assaulted by being pushed. A rush of customers forced onto the bus and the driver lost control. Those waiting for two hours were visibly upset and none of those got on. Those that had just arrived were able to board, but the driver looked upset and confused, somehow as if he had managed not to realise that this was inevitable. There were numerous altercations with customers between themselves and some yelling at the driver. The driver started yelling back, closed the doors and drove off, although he didn’t have much choice by then as his bus was full.
One group of what appeared to be Portuguese tourists shouted at a local saying “we’ve visitors, we get priority” and this poor local lady said “we get priority, I’ve got to get to work, you could get a taxi” and I’m afraid I do feel that locals should get priority here as public transport should serve their needs. The aggressive passengers won here, but I’m pleased to say that the local lady did just board.
The next driver was very sensible and he stopped at the obvious location to allow passengers to board. But, the previous driver had made his life impossible, there was fear from passengers that they wouldn’t be getting home and a child’s throat was grabbed by another passenger as a rush started. There were two quite serious altercations between passengers and this frankly shamed Arriva Buses as this was entirely their fault.
At this stage, Susanna and Steve managed to board, but Bev and I didn’t. I’m quite relaxed about this, things happen for a reason, so we decided to wait for one more bus.
And this was the real problem bus.
The driver stopped there. Complete madness as now some people had been waiting for three hours and he boarded passengers who had just got there. But, in the next post I have a video of this, as it all became quite exciting.