Traveling by train
After we landed in Frankfurt, our main mode of transportation around Europe was the extensive rail system that crisscrosses the continent. It was cheaper than flying all of us around and usually more comfortable as well. As someone who prefers to drive herself, I have to admit the ability to get up and walk around, get a drink or use the restroom whenever I wanted and still be moving was definitely a plus over driving.
Some days we rode trains for most of the day, like when we left Paris for Czech Republic. We boarded at Paris East for a Frankfurt-bound train. At Frankfurt we changed trains for Dresden and upon reaching Dresden we changed one last time for Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic. We left Paris in the morning and reached Ústí at almost dark.
Sometimes we were in first class, other times in second class, and a few times we had no class, er, I mean we had tickets on open seating trains that occasionally meant standing. Most of the time we had reserved seats, a few times we had reserved seats that no other passengers cared about, and there were times we were without guaranteed seats. After two and a half weeks of this, it would seem that we would have amassed enough experience to understand how the whole European train-riding experience worked.
But we still don't.
More after the jump
The night before we left I printed out plans for our train travel with some variations. It was easy to look up online the rail schedule. I wanted to make sure that in what I believed to be the likelihood of not having an English-speaking ticket agent, we would still be able to get where we needed to be.
We did not want to be stuck with unusable tickets in case of a change of plans, so we usually bought our tickets to leave a city when we arrived at the city. For instance, when we arrived at Bordeaux, we bought tickets for the train to Hendaye the next day. And even though I had possible itineraries printed out with me, a few times the ticket agents were able to help us with better routes than the websites, like when we needed to get from Zürich to Trieste. The online itinerary indicated we needed to go from Zürich to Milano, change stations in Milano in under twenty minutes, and then continue on to Trieste. He was able to see our route and send us through the Swiss city of Bellinzona where we would change trains for Italy without having the pressure of changing stations. That was not on any of my prepared print-outs.
Where everything went smoothest was in German-speaking places. Travelling by train in Germany was for us so easy. We bought tickets with reserved seats, and once we got to the correct track we could find on a color-coded chart where to stand for our car number and which door we should enter based on our seat numbers. Our first few trains were inside and leaving Germany. We developed a false sense of confidence in Germany.
The times it was clear we really had no idea what we were doing was when we were on a train or trying to buy tickets for a train in Italian-speaking parts of Europe (Randy would add French-speaking places as well, but I wouldn't necessarily as there were other forces at play there than our cluelessness). It started when we changed trains in Bellinzona. We located our car with some difficulty, walking up and down the track until by process of elimination we we picked our coach. We loaded ourselves and luggage onto the train. There were people already in our reserved seats. We looked at them, they glanced at us, and no one moved. A young twenty-ish girl with thick, light brown dreadlocks spoke to us in Italian-accented English (which, yes, softened the blow).
"They're not going to move, you know," she told us.
"But we have reserved seats!"
"Everyone does," she motioned around the car, "But you just have to take what you can get on this train."
An elderly man pointed to an empty booth of seats just behind us and yelled at her and us in Italian.
"He says you're lucky. There are four seats right there! You can sit together."
So for the rest of that ride into Italy, at almost every other stop, we had to motion to the person whose seats we were now in that our own seats were just on the other side of us and occupied.
When it came time to buy tickets in Trieste to leave, though, we were completely flummoxed. As I mentioned before, nearly every other time we arrived in a city, we rushed to the ticket counter to buy tickets for the next leg of our journey. When we arrived in Trieste, our last train-arrival-and-departure city, we forgot to go to the counter. The excitement of being in Italy swept us away, I think. The next night, after a long day in Slovenia with distant cousins, we went back to the train station, only to find we missed the counter's closing by half an hour.
The next morning, which was the day we needed to leave Trieste, the day before we were scheduled to fly out of Frankfurt, we arrived at the train station with our luggage. I stood in line for what felt like an eternity to get our tickets to Frankfurt by whatever class we could take. When it was my turn, I told him our destination. He started to type it in, but then exhaled in that way that told me something was wrong.
"I don't think..." he started, but then he added, "Let me try..."
He printed up an itinerary for us, one that had us taking an overnight train from Milan to Frankfurt. One that secretly made me happy because that meant we could have on more day in Trieste. But very quickly he exhaled through puffed-out cheeks again.
"I cannot get you tickets for that train. I cannot get you tickets for any train to Frankfurt. What you need to do is go to Verona and get on the Austrian train there, buy the tickets on board, and then when you get to the end of that line find train to Frankfurt."
When I repeated this information to Randy, neither of us could really believe it was how this process had to work that day, but it was all we had to go on. We guessed what we really needed to do was get to Verona and buy tickets for Germany when we got there.
When we arrived in Verona, we could see on the departures board there was a train leaving in about two hours for München. I took my place in line, and at the window I asked for tickets for München, and the man responded back to me in German, "Go to the Information Counter. They speak German."
Instead I found a woman at Information that spoke enough English to repeat the instructions everyone else had given us, "Get on the train! Pay on the train!"
Randy and I were still convinced this was a "go-away" answer, even though it had been given to us by employees of the Italian railroad. After years of living in China, we had difficulty believing that these uniformed railway agents were telling us the whole truth, that they weren't just trying to get us out of their station.
But that was the whole truth. We boarded the train and paid the conductor for our tickets on the spot. He also confirmed it was open seating. Most of the other passengers in our car also bought their tickets right there on the train, too. And that was it.
Of course later that night, after oohing and ahhing our way through South Tyrol and part of Austria until it grew dark, we would arrive in München around midnight without a definite plan of getting to Frankfurt. We did eventually make it there, at 7:30 am the next morning, with still twelve hours before our flight. We checked into our hotel for five hours, allowing the kids to eat one last German breakfast and nap after sleeping poorly on trains and in train stations all night.
Some days we rode trains for most of the day, like when we left Paris for Czech Republic. We boarded at Paris East for a Frankfurt-bound train. At Frankfurt we changed trains for Dresden and upon reaching Dresden we changed one last time for Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic. We left Paris in the morning and reached Ústí at almost dark.
Sometimes we were in first class, other times in second class, and a few times we had no class, er, I mean we had tickets on open seating trains that occasionally meant standing. Most of the time we had reserved seats, a few times we had reserved seats that no other passengers cared about, and there were times we were without guaranteed seats. After two and a half weeks of this, it would seem that we would have amassed enough experience to understand how the whole European train-riding experience worked.
But we still don't.
More after the jump
The night before we left I printed out plans for our train travel with some variations. It was easy to look up online the rail schedule. I wanted to make sure that in what I believed to be the likelihood of not having an English-speaking ticket agent, we would still be able to get where we needed to be.
We did not want to be stuck with unusable tickets in case of a change of plans, so we usually bought our tickets to leave a city when we arrived at the city. For instance, when we arrived at Bordeaux, we bought tickets for the train to Hendaye the next day. And even though I had possible itineraries printed out with me, a few times the ticket agents were able to help us with better routes than the websites, like when we needed to get from Zürich to Trieste. The online itinerary indicated we needed to go from Zürich to Milano, change stations in Milano in under twenty minutes, and then continue on to Trieste. He was able to see our route and send us through the Swiss city of Bellinzona where we would change trains for Italy without having the pressure of changing stations. That was not on any of my prepared print-outs.
Where everything went smoothest was in German-speaking places. Travelling by train in Germany was for us so easy. We bought tickets with reserved seats, and once we got to the correct track we could find on a color-coded chart where to stand for our car number and which door we should enter based on our seat numbers. Our first few trains were inside and leaving Germany. We developed a false sense of confidence in Germany.
The times it was clear we really had no idea what we were doing was when we were on a train or trying to buy tickets for a train in Italian-speaking parts of Europe (Randy would add French-speaking places as well, but I wouldn't necessarily as there were other forces at play there than our cluelessness). It started when we changed trains in Bellinzona. We located our car with some difficulty, walking up and down the track until by process of elimination we we picked our coach. We loaded ourselves and luggage onto the train. There were people already in our reserved seats. We looked at them, they glanced at us, and no one moved. A young twenty-ish girl with thick, light brown dreadlocks spoke to us in Italian-accented English (which, yes, softened the blow).
"They're not going to move, you know," she told us.
"But we have reserved seats!"
"Everyone does," she motioned around the car, "But you just have to take what you can get on this train."
An elderly man pointed to an empty booth of seats just behind us and yelled at her and us in Italian.
"He says you're lucky. There are four seats right there! You can sit together."
So for the rest of that ride into Italy, at almost every other stop, we had to motion to the person whose seats we were now in that our own seats were just on the other side of us and occupied.
When it came time to buy tickets in Trieste to leave, though, we were completely flummoxed. As I mentioned before, nearly every other time we arrived in a city, we rushed to the ticket counter to buy tickets for the next leg of our journey. When we arrived in Trieste, our last train-arrival-and-departure city, we forgot to go to the counter. The excitement of being in Italy swept us away, I think. The next night, after a long day in Slovenia with distant cousins, we went back to the train station, only to find we missed the counter's closing by half an hour.
The next morning, which was the day we needed to leave Trieste, the day before we were scheduled to fly out of Frankfurt, we arrived at the train station with our luggage. I stood in line for what felt like an eternity to get our tickets to Frankfurt by whatever class we could take. When it was my turn, I told him our destination. He started to type it in, but then exhaled in that way that told me something was wrong.
"I don't think..." he started, but then he added, "Let me try..."
He printed up an itinerary for us, one that had us taking an overnight train from Milan to Frankfurt. One that secretly made me happy because that meant we could have on more day in Trieste. But very quickly he exhaled through puffed-out cheeks again.
"I cannot get you tickets for that train. I cannot get you tickets for any train to Frankfurt. What you need to do is go to Verona and get on the Austrian train there, buy the tickets on board, and then when you get to the end of that line find train to Frankfurt."
When I repeated this information to Randy, neither of us could really believe it was how this process had to work that day, but it was all we had to go on. We guessed what we really needed to do was get to Verona and buy tickets for Germany when we got there.
When we arrived in Verona, we could see on the departures board there was a train leaving in about two hours for München. I took my place in line, and at the window I asked for tickets for München, and the man responded back to me in German, "Go to the Information Counter. They speak German."
Instead I found a woman at Information that spoke enough English to repeat the instructions everyone else had given us, "Get on the train! Pay on the train!"
Randy and I were still convinced this was a "go-away" answer, even though it had been given to us by employees of the Italian railroad. After years of living in China, we had difficulty believing that these uniformed railway agents were telling us the whole truth, that they weren't just trying to get us out of their station.
But that was the whole truth. We boarded the train and paid the conductor for our tickets on the spot. He also confirmed it was open seating. Most of the other passengers in our car also bought their tickets right there on the train, too. And that was it.
Of course later that night, after oohing and ahhing our way through South Tyrol and part of Austria until it grew dark, we would arrive in München around midnight without a definite plan of getting to Frankfurt. We did eventually make it there, at 7:30 am the next morning, with still twelve hours before our flight. We checked into our hotel for five hours, allowing the kids to eat one last German breakfast and nap after sleeping poorly on trains and in train stations all night.
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