Sick of smoke

Being sick on a three country, week-long tour of Eastern Europe is bad enough, but adding second-hand smoke to the equation when you have a sinus headache, clogged ears and a sore throat can make it even more miserable.
While non-smoking policies are catching on in restaurants and public places (Slovenia just passed the ban) they still have a ways to go.

To my sensitive schnoz its seems as if smoke is carried in the air like pollen in the springtime wind.
For instance, on a five hour train ride between Zagreb and Split, I felt like I unwittingly smoked a cigarette an hour. Obviously I don't smoke, (quit that when I was 20) and I was sitting in a non-smoking section.

It wasn’t an indifferent passenger lighting up. It was, of all people, the female train conductor who between duties of checking tickets and handing out sandwiches would slip into her “office” at the very end of the train, and sneak a smoke. Not a problem if it wasn’t connected to the last car which carried one of the designated non-smoking compartments where I was seated. There are first class and second class smoking cars on the train, but she chose to ignore those. Perhaps, in the face of public scrutiny, like many disgruntled smokers, she feels compelled to resort to covert measures to carry on her unhealthy habit.

Then later, upon arrival in Split, the owner of the restaurant where we ate dinner dangled a cigarette from his lips speaking at our table about the merits of the smoking ban that will take effect in Croatia in September. When pressed for details he flippantly said he didn't care about it and didn't know how he was expected to enforce it.
When he wasn't spewing carcinogens in his customers' faces, he blows smoke as the head of the Split tourism bureau.