Windows 10 or 11 in Zagreb sell tickets to BiH. We showed the lady our written request for train tickets and she in return, gave us hand-written tickets for Saturday, September 1st in exchange for ~$38/pp. There was no option for first class reserved seats.
On a rainy day, we arrived early to secure our seats on this open seating train. There were only 2 cars attached to the engine and there weren't too many people so we easily found a couple of seats. The entire train is suppose to be non-smoking, but alas, people are chain smokers in this part of the world, and they had no qualms lighting up throughout the trip. The train itself looked like an old hand-me-down from a more advanced European nation that upgraded to high-speed trains years ago. Not quite a steam locomotive, but just as slow and clunky. Probably why the trip took 10-hours to go about 200 miles! Although, a comparable bus ride also stated a 9-hour ride.
We also heard that there would be no dining car or food vending onboard. This was very true. Everyone had some snacks and drinks packed, including us. Although towards the end around 4 pm, a guy came around with a small shopping cart selling beverages. We didn't have any Bosnian currency on us, but he took what we had left of our Croatian Kuna. Since he couldn't give us change in Kuna for our beers, we got a bottle of Croatian brandy as change instead!
At around 11 am, we stopped at Volinja station for 15-minutes while the Croatian police came on board to do passport checks. Just across the border, we stopped again for 20 more minutes at Dobrljin on the BiH side, for passport control, customs check, and ticket verification. Around 11:40 am, we started our journey through the countryside of BiH.
Indeed the train ride was picturesque. If the train was going any faster, we would've missed all the lazy flowing rivers, small towns built of brick and terra cotta roofs, rolling hills, autumn leaves, sun-burnt cornfields, haystacks, honey bee boxes, pigs in pig pens, and all the mosques peppered throughout the hillside in every little town. There is nothing more serene than meandering through the countryside, lulled by the train, lost in our own quiet thoughts for hours on end. Believe it or not, time flew by quickly.
After making countless stops at every conceivable train depot along the way, we finally rolled into Sarajevo around 6:50 pm. Our first priority was to obtain some Bosnian currency so we could pay a cab driver to take us to our hostel. One would logically expect a large train station such as Sarajevo, to have at least one ATM machine, but no. We weren't even expecting a currency exchange...just an ATM. We have relied on Lonely Planet guidebooks for years with all of our vacations and travels, so we knew from experience that it does pay off to actually read their advice! Had it not been for Lonely Planet Bosnia Hercegovina, we wouldn't have known to walk the 5 minutes around the corner to the main bus terminal where they DO have an ATM machine! This one sentence advice saved us a lot of time and frustration. From there, we were able to hail a taxi quickly and we arrived at our basic hostel "Home Sweet Home" on Muvekita Street, which happens to be the most crowded bar street in Sarajevo! Well, we made it to our Sarajevo "home", at least for the next couple of nights anyway.