Train Adventures

Normally, traveling by train isn’t a problem in Czech. You can typically count on the trains to be where they’re supposed to be when they’re supposed to be there. Such was not the case recently. I was taking (what should have been) a two and a half hour trip. Oh, how I wish it had been. It ended up being a ten and a half hour trip. Yeah, that’s right . . . ten and a half hours! I’ll tell you the story.

I left in the morning at 11:15, and I was supposed to get to my final destination at 1:55. I only had to switch trains one time and I had ten minutes to do so. (There have been times when I needed to do it in three minutes, so I was fine with only having ten.) I arrived where I was supposed to switch trains and literally ran to my next train to play it safe and get there on time. Apparently, I didn’t play it safe enough, because it had already left. So, I checked the schedule, and had 3 ½ hours until the next train left. Which meant, I had to find something to do for that time.

Now, one thing that’s interesting about traveling over here, is that not only do you have to make sure you get on the right train, but you have to make sure you get on the right part of the train. Sometimes, you might get on the back of the train, and they leave it somewhere and only the front continues on to the next town. This was my next mistake. Thankfully, I was able to get off the back in enough time to get onto the front before it left.

After that, we made a stop in a town a few stops away. After about ten or fifteen minutes, I realized that this was a longer stop than it should have been. About a half hour later, and with trying to communicate through my broken Czech, I finally found out that there were computer problems in the next town and they didn’t know when the train would be leaving. The total time of waiting . . . are you ready for this? Four and a half hours!

THEN, literally three stops later, the police came on the train to check everyone’s passports (border crossing) but this only held us up fifteen more minutes.

Can I just tell you . . . I’ve never been so thankful to get somewhere before. But hey, it makes a good story.