Wednesday 11 June 2014
I promise not to make a habit of writing about train trips, but this one is worth a few words.
We arrived at Prague station to catch our train. The electronic display board showed our train, but not a platform. Given the train was to leave in 5 minutes, this seemed very odd. Suddenly the platform flashed up and a great mass of people instantaneously moved towards that platform. We reached the platform but there was no train, although one appeared within a minute or two.
We clambered on with the rest of the passengers and found our seats. Surprisingly, we were in a compartment, which was not what we had reserved.
The train moved off and the young man sitting next to us started a short conversation in Czech with a woman in our compartment. He didn't sound happy and the woman shrugged her shoulders. He then spoke to us in English, as he had heard us talking earlier. It turned out that this was not the usual train that travels to Ostrava - it was a much older and slower train. Further more, it did not have internet which he was relying on for his work. As he put it, we had all paid for a faster more modern train with internet and we were not getting what we had paid for. It seemed that the usual train had a problem and a replacement had to be found, hence the lateness of being advised of the platform number.
After a while an announcement came through that we would be around 10 minutes late arriving at Ostrava. That meant we would only wait for 20 minutes for our connecting train to Katowice - not a problem!
About 10 minutes later, the train came to a shuddering halt. After a few minutes, an announcement came through that there was a problem with one of the tracks and we had another short delay. Eventually the train slowly moved off and after a few minutes we could see traffic and police cars. A blanket covered a body next to the tracks, not far from a stationary train. The delay was to let trains through in either direction as one of the two lines was obviously blocked.
Soon enough, an announcement was made that we would be 25 minutes late. This was starting to get a little serious in terms of catching our connecting train. Sure enough, about half an hour later, another announcement was made - we were now 35 minutes behind schedule.
The young man in our compartment, who was a very nice young fellow, and with whom we had been conversing for most of the trip, suddenly stood up and left the compartment. He returned with the news that the connecting train was going to wait for our train. Apparently there were quite a few people on our train who were to catch that train.
They organised it well. When we arrived, our connecting train was on the other side of the platform. It was amusing to watch all these people leave one train in a wave and take a few steps and climb on the other train.
When all the passengers had boarded, the train moved off........for about two hundred metres, then stopped. We were in the very front carriage and could see the engine moving off, without the carriages attached to it. They had decided to change engines, even though we were 15 minutes late on this train by now. Eventually another engine arrived and we had an uneventful trip to Katowice.
It was from here that we had to catch our last train from Katowice to Krakow.
Long term Melbourne residents will remember the old red rattler trains. This train was the mother of the red rattlers, except that it had been refurbished with very hard red plastic seats. It is only 80 kilometres from Katowice to Krakow, but it is a 2 hour journey by train. It was so slow it was laughable. Still, we arrived when we were supposed to, so that was one positive.
Another word on scenery. Everything we saw of the Czech Republic from the train was superbly beautiful. Poland started off very nicely, but after a while it became more mundane with patches of great scenery here and there. Still, it was a memorable journey !
