When you go to the battlefield you should appear in a dungeon. You will see many rifts all around you. If you go through the door to the southeast and enter the rift just to the east of the door you will get the loading screen for a fairly long time while the battlefield is created. Then you will be at the vendors.
One thing you might try if you are having some problems is to immediately save the game when you enter the battlefield dungeon for the first time. If you look in your saved game folder you will see that no saved game exists for the after game battlefields. Save the game then immediately re-load the save. It might not help your particular problem, but it does cure the CTD problem so might be worth a try.
