Last Train to Vienna
My son, Rich, and I spent only three full days in Prague, one day of which was spent on our day long bike trip up the Vltava River to the summer castle (look at my blog entry about that trip), so we still hadn't gotten around to seeing all the sights we'd planned on. We got up early on Saturday morning fully intending to take the 10 a.m. train to Vienna, but there the Prague Castle was right outside our hotel window (which was no surprise since we were staying in the Prague Castle Hotel) looking awesome and imposing in the morning sun. We decided that we would take a quick look at the castle and the adjacent St. Vitus Cathedral. Rich's friend, Jennifer, had told him that the stained glass windows of St. Vitus were a must see since they were the most beautiful she'd ever seen anywhere.
The journey to the castle took longer than we planned because it goes uphill and you have to climb about a zillion steps to get there. In fact, half way up there, I told Rich to go on without me and I'd just wait for the ambulance and oxygen. When we got to the cathedral, I surmised that the reason the stained glass windows look all sparkly and amazing to people is because they are seeing pinpoints of light from oxygen depravation from scaling that hill. Anyhow, we saw the castle and cathedral and missed our direct train to Vienna by about 20 minutes.
So, after milling around the train station and asking about a dozen people for information, we ended up getting help from a customer service guy (we think) who told us we that our best bet was to take the next train toward Budapest and to get off at Breclav where we could catch the train to Vienna. He assured us that we would be in Vienna in time for dinner. We spent our last karunas on coffee and a sandwich to split and were off on the next leg of our adventure.
Two and a half hours later, we were pulling into Breclav. We hustled off the train because we'd learned in the last couple of hours that the train stops at the small stations for three minutes tops. So, the train took off and there we were standing with very little in sight except a little shack sitting there between the two sets of tracks and a few houses in the distance. Rich knocked on the shack door and, after a while, an older man with an official looking hat opened the door and looked startled to see and hear two English speaking tourists.
Rich and he found they could communicate a little in German (which Rich hadn't spoke since his high school language classes) and after about ten minutes, Rich turned to me and said, "He keeps saying, 'No train to Vienna.' ". That was unsettling. Ten minutes after that, he said, "I wish I could buy a vowel, but I believe he's telling me that the train we are booked to take to Vienna doesn't run on Saturday but there is another one in about two hours." Much better news! So, only two hours to kill and we could fill it by getting some food. We were starved so we headed into town. A guy who was working on a new building down the tracks told Rich that there was good chicken up the road (we think that's what he said). After a few blocks, we saw an open restaurant and went inside. As we sat down, it dawned on us that we didn't have any karunas. Rich asked the waitress, "Do you take Euros?" " No." "Do you take American money?" "No." "How about credit cards?" "No." "Is there a cash machine nearby?" "No." We left. We went to another restaurant which smelled, amazingly, like pizza. Same answers. We went up a flight of stairs (with our luggage) to a third restaurant. Same answers. We dragged our luggage down the stairs to the street and stood in the midst of our luggage. We were hot, hungry and irritated.
Then Rich, the consummate problem solver, said, "You stay here with the bags. I will go and find money or a restaurant that will give us food." That's when our first real disagreement of the trip occurred. I thought of all of the movies I'd ever seen when two people split up in a foreign land (or a zombie infested village) and never saw each other again. I said, "NO!" He tried to reason with me but I won the argument. I trumped him with the mother card combined with his fear that I'd start crying. We trudged back toward the train together, defeated.
As we approached the train tracks and the shack where he'd had his first enlightening conversation, we looked more closely at the building to the right of the tracks that was new construction. We decided to look inside. It was the new train station complete with a cash machine, a Coke machine, an electronic schedule of all the trains, an information booth and, thank you God, a bar that served beer and burgers.
A half hour later we were safely on our way to Vienna with no danger of hunger or zombies.
What I learned from this trip was:
1. Get a full train schedule, put it in your wise pack, and read it carefully. If you are traveling on holidays or weekends, ask specifically if there are differences.
2. Carry at least some of the currency of the country you are leaving in your Wise Pack travel purse.
3. Take along language guides or translation devices for the countries you are traveling through.
4. Take food and beverages on the train because they only offer them on less than 50% of the trains and you never know which ones.
5. When you get to a place, take time to really look around. Don't go plunging off without 'casing' the surroundings.
6. Laugh at yourself when you are acting like an idiot. Apologize if you go off the deep end.
