How to buy a train ticket

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The time in Sarajevo was much too short but I hat to return. As I like traveling by train I went to the train station to buy a ticket for the trains back home. Astonishingly there were about 10 open counters but there are only 6 trains each day (sic!) from Sarajevo. I also wondered about that their PCs were all turned off and I was curious how the will sell me a ticket. I asked for a ticket directly to Munich because there was a special offer at their website. They tried to sell me a ticket only to Zagreb but as soon as I insisted for Munich nobody could speak some English or German anymore and they also attested that there is nobody in the train station who could speak with me. I was a bit shocked but did not go away from the counter so that the ticket seller called a boss. He explained me that they cannot sell tickets for any other location than Zagreb and that there must be a mistake on the website and that they don't have Internet in the train station.

The railway station.

What a contrast - 40 years old Tatra trams and a business center close the the railway station.

But paying for each train would cost about 150 € more and I don't like to loose until I tried to win. I still had some time and came to the idea to go to the government's department for transportation to ask there. At first I needed Internet access to find the address. Close to the railway station are big business centers so people there should have Internet. And indeed, almost everybody there was running around with a smartphone or a tablet - what a contrast to the rest of the town. Everybody could speak English but nobody wanted to let me have a look at the Internet and they also refused to have a look by themselves and telling me the address. Where the hell was I? Maybe I was too underdressed for this jet set because I had no tie. Slightly frustrated I went back towards the old town and asked some "normal" people on the street. They had no smartphone but they were very friendly and showed me an Internet café. It turns out that the transportation department was not too far away.

A typical building close to the Internet café.
The bullet holes in the walls of the buildings are there omnipresent.

The government buildings are imposing.
The department for transportation is the right one.

At the entrance sat a bored gatekeeper ignoring me completely. But I starred at him for some minutes until he got nervous and called somebody. It was one of the bosses there and once worked in the Netherlands during the war times. I explained him my difficulties and he said that they of course sell international train tickets, that this must have been a misunderstanding and that he will quickly call the railway station. He went back to the doorkeepers bureau so that I could not hear him speaking but see him through the window. His quick call lasts more than 5 minutes and it was great cinema to see him becoming more and more enraged. At the end he yelled something into the phone and threw the handset onto the phone. He needed a minute to calm down until he came out back explaining me very politely that this was all only a misunderstanding he apologizes for. When I go back to the station they will sell me a ticket.

Back there I only put one foot into the station and the personal immediately recognized me. I was "guided" to the counter and surprisingly all PCs were now turned on, they had Internet and I got my ticket to Munich without problems. Later in the train I had a very interesting talk with 2 students who explained me how I should have bought my ticket and how they "bought" it:

• I should have bribed the ticket seller. The reason they did not sell me an international ticket was most probably that such a ticket must be registered electronically so that the other railway companies can check that it is valid. But if it is registered it is impossible to put some money into the own pocket.
• The 2 students did not buy a ticket. When the conductor came he said they should pay each about 50 marks. As the official fee for fare evasion is only 20 marks this is a signal to start negotiations. In the end the students paid less than the normal price and the conductor earned some extra money.

Old rolling stock. This train from Novi Grad to Bihać has only this single car.

A typical railway station.

Corruption really sucks! It always leads to frustration and in the end things get worse. In this case the railway company looses money which is missing to update the infrastructure. The train to Zagreb can for example not ran faster than assumed 50 km/h and in the old wagons we had 45 °C because the ventilation did not work.
Fighting corruption is not easy because it costs a lot of power. In my example I could have bribed the ticket seller, but I decided to spend 2 hours running around until I got my ticket. But in the end it was worth it: In the train from Zagreb to Ljubljana I met an owner of a hostel in Sarajevo. It was the first time he took the train and he was surprised how easy it was to get a ticket directly to Ljubljana. He bought his ticket one day after I did. So I improved the situation (at least for some time).
The boss in the transportation department promised to revise their website after I showed him that the page was outdated, the timetables were different depending on the language version, the online ticket reservation does not work etc. Now that I am writing this post, some months after my visit, the page looks as fancy as before but nothing has been changed. Maybe he ordered the update again (he was surprised and told me that he already ordered an update) but probably the money was "lost" on the way to the webmaster.
By the way, Bosnia has 2 federation railway companies, one for each state. This is stupid because there are only 4 railway lines in the whole country and on each one there are only a few trains per day. But OK, the whole system of 2 entities (states) within a federation that are not willing to work together is stupid. But this is another story.