Europe, Fall 2016: All aboard!*

*With Clancy, the traveling bear, and the intrepid abuelita

Welcome to the second installment in the Eurotrip series, in which I ramble on about train travel. Our point of entry and exit was the Netherlands, so we journeyed in a counterclockwise loop through Germany, to Austria and the Czech Republic before returning to Amsterdam.

Quite proud of myself for accomplishing this part of the planning perfectly (geography and map-reading skills helped, too), but all credit and gratitude must go to the holy grail of train guides without whose spot-on advice this would have been impossible: The Man in Seat Sixty-One.

Amsterdam to Cologne via ICE

The Deutschebahn site is English user-friendly and lets you save your (all-German language) tickets to print later; my big boss was nice enough to personally translate everything and told me to watch out for the signboards on each platform that tell you where your coach is going to be. Excellent tip.

From Schiphol we took the train to Centraal and found our platform with plenty of time to kill, helped along the way by some hospitable Dutchmen who were likely used to tourists huffing and puffing with their luggage. Where are the lifts? echoed in my head countless times.

An important realization here: train travel is romantic, and enjoyable, and a lovely way to see the continent, but you do need to factor in the amount of luggage you’ll be wheeling along (I had two, plus a backpack, and later on, an umbrella emblazoned with a Klimt print). It gets tiring after a while, and I’m not the best at dragging bags on and off trains or hefting them up onto overhead racks.

We didn’t reserve seats on the smart red-and-white train, which caused some consternation in the beginning since their system wasn’t showing which seat was taken or not, but other passengers without reservations assured us that was fine, so we found a spot and settled in. Second class is good enough- you get a nice big picture window (rather gloomy views that day, but still) and a table.

Another huge plus for ICE: Wi-Fi!

Cologne to Vienna via the EuroNight sleeper train

It isn’t a Euro trip if we don’t try the sleeper, my mother announced when I shared this option with her (see where I get my genes from), so we booked ourselves a compartment on the Austrian train.

The OEBB site is just as user-friendly as the DB one, and even more pleasant to look at. Same deal with the all-German, print-at-home tickets, and hurrah for sparschiene fares!

Being on the clean, civilized sleeper train was a lot like camping. The compartment was a snug fit and all our luggage meant there wasn’t much space to actually stand around, but it did come with power sockets, a wash basin, amenities, a little overnight kit and a stepladder for the upper bunk which I called dibs on.

A welcome parfait was served by the blond steward who also took our breakfast order for the following day.

The toilet was down the aisle and I padded there in my pajamas and EuroNight slippers, which lent the whole experience a very dorm slumber-party feel. You can’t take a shower but you can wash up, so my neat-freak Asian side was appeased.

It was a treat to stretch out flat on a bed  for the first time since arriving in Europe; I’m very particular about sheets but the Austrian railway knows its business – or I was just exhausted after a long day that started with breakfast in the skies over Russia, saw lunch in Cologne and now dinner somewhere – and I slept thoroughly, completely missing out on all the nighttime scenery.

Woke up to breakfast time in Austria! A condensed version of the usual morning ablutions and the continental tray that was served made me feel like a brand-new traveler again.

Vienna to Prague via RailJet

You mean you didn’t reserve seats? exclaimed my aunt at Wien Hauptbahnhof. You should. And so we did, right there at the station. Moral lesson: Reservations aren’t necessary, true, but they do make a four-hour  trip more comfortable.

Spacing out while on a bitter-lemon binge

The sleek red-and-black train (booked on the OEBB site) ferried us smoothly into the Czech Republic. It was a mostly uneventful journey except when it was interrupted by a young man who apparently had got on the wrong train and was trying to explain this to the conductor.

My friend, I did not bring my passport…

That’s a matter for the border police and I am not your friend, said the conductor coolly.

When the border police did come onboard, the young man was nowhere to be seen. I wonder what happened to him and hope he found a way to fix his situation.

Prague to Amsterdam…via KLM

All right, we wanted to take the train back too, but we were a bit short on time and KLM turned out the more cost-effective option compared to Czech Airlines. Took a window seat of course, the better to admire the approach to Amsterdam, though I still think Switzerland is the prettiest country I’ve ever seen from the air.

Lastly, so why didn’t we get a Eurail pass? 

1. We’d already planned our itinerary so didn’t really need the flexibility of the pass.
2. We only had a few, relatively short journeys.
3. Point-to-point tickets are cheap when purchased in advance and it’s not a problem to commit to specific trains and days.
4. We just crossed our fingers and hoped there wouldn’t be any rail strikes.

Hope this inspires more of us to go out there, see the world… and take it slow. 🙂