Train Travel

My train travel experience this weekend was so interesting that I thought it deserved a separate blog from my actual visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Now, throughout my experience here in Europe, I've had the opportunity to become accustomed to train travel. I've taken trains all across Italy and within the Netherlands, on top of all forms of public transportation within cities. But nothing could quite prepare me for taking an overnight train through the wonderfully less developed countries of Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Poland. Wow, what fun.

First of all, the actual train conditions didn't seem that bad when I heard about them. In each train car there are approximately nine cabins, which each have six bunks and the bunks are stacked three and three. I guess it's nice because it provides an opportunity to fully lay down and sleep (if possible). When I got to station and got ready to board my train, I had to show both of my tickets to the attendant. I had a ticket for my reservation in the "Couchette" (sleeping) car and one that was my roundtrip ticket from Vienna to Oswiecim. The attendant took both of them and told me he would give them back in the morning. I was totally taken aback. I must've looked like an idiot because I asked him for assurance that this was true about five times. But I had paid a lot for that ticket and without it, there was no getting back from Oswiecim. I saw him take other people's tickets too, which reassured me a little bit that I wasn't getting scammed. You never know what people will do when you can't speak their language and you are an American.

When I boarded the train though, the first thing I noticed is that it was hotter than Hades. I slammed my stuff onto my bunk (one of the top bunks), took a couple pictures, and immediately got back off the train to cool down. I'm not sure if they have the heat running or if there is just too much heat emanating coming from outside the train. But it definitely wasn't because of the weather: it was a cool 70 or so degrees outside at the time. Here are the pictures:Well, I could only stay off the train for so long and had to hop on shortly before departure at 10:33pm. Luckily there was only one other person in my cabin, an older lady who had the bottom bunk on the opposite side. She was basically asleep when I got on the train. I couldn't sleep because it was too damn hot, so I just lay there sweating until the train departed. At least when the train was moving, cool air could come in through the window and cool off the cabin. So I cranked my iPod and tried as hard as I could to fall asleep.

Sometime about 45 minutes into the train ride though, I was jolted out of a near slumber. We had come to a dead stop...in the middle of nowhere. I peered out the window from my top bunk position and all I could see was tall grass and trees, no civilization. As I had read in a book that I shouldn't take night trains in Poland, I was convinced that we were being held up. I know, I know, this isn't the Old West, but I'm sure train robbers still exist in Europe. Nevertheless, we were stopped which meant that it was getting hot again and sleep was impossible. When stopped, the temperature in the cabin probably topped 95 degrees. Without a thermometer I can't be sure, but I was sweating profusely so it had to be hot. It was suffocating in fact.

After about 30 minutes being stopped, we finally got under way. While sitting there I felt several more jolts which means that they were changing cars or engines, or doing something else to the train. We were moving, the breeze was back, and I thought I'd finally get to fall asleep. I was gravely mistaken. After another 30 minutes or so of moving, we came to another stop, but this time at a station so I wasn't too worried. I should've been.

The station turns out to be some sort of central switching station. What does that mean? It means that attached to our original train were cars headed for Krakow (the final destination of my train, one stop after mine) and Warsaw, Poland, and Prague, Czech Republic. Attached to other trains that were to arriving at this station were cars headed to Krakow. Again, what does this all mean? We had to wait at that damned station until all other trains had arrived so that they could play musical chairs with the train cars to get them all to where they were supposed to go. I guess this wouldn't be so bad if all the trains were on time. But when you constantly hear the announcements (in four different languages) that the other trains are delayed by 30 and then 60 minutes, it's not good. We sat at that train station for approximatly an hour and a half, and again I was sweating the whole time.

Once we finally started moving again, it was around 2am. I had gotten no sleep and had less than 3 hours until the train was supposed to arrive at my stop. But with the cool breeze back, I was finally able to sleep. I awoke at around 4:30 to my phone alarm. I promptly turned it off and rolled over. I woke up again about 20 minutes later and worried that I might have missed my stop. So I hurried out of my top bunk and into the hall. There I encountered one of the train attendants, who handed me back my ticket and told me we were about 30 minutes from my stop. So I stood and stared out the window at the countryside, waiting for my stop to come. I guess the good news is that I got to see the sunrise. But I was going to have to make it through the day on less than 3 hours of sleep and this would prove to be tough. I did snap some pictures out of the train before arriving in Oswiecim; here are a couple.So I made it into Oswiecim around 5:30am, about an hour later than I was supposed to according to the train schedule. But I made it nonetheless and was happy to be off that damn train. Still, I had 2.5 hours to kill before the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum opened at 8. I wasn't really sure where the museum was, but I had a decent idea from looking at a map of the area that day before so I started walking. It took me about 20 minutes to walk there, but I did get there (with the help of some roadside signs).Like I said before, I will cover my trip to Auschwitz in a separate blog. For now I'm just going to skip to my train ride home. My original plan was to catch a series of trains home starting with a train out of Oswiecim around 3:15pm. I decided about half-way through my visit to the museum that I needed more time. I also figured that it would be much easier if I just had to take one train. So what did I do? I made reservations to take the sleeper train back to Vienna, which departed Oswiecim at 11:46pm. I know this meant that I would have more waiting around to do, but this way I wouldn't have to switch trains and wouldn't have to worry that I would sleep through my stop and end up in the middle of Russia (or somewhere else undesirable).

Well, it all worked out in the end, but it definitely wasn't a pleasant experience. First of all, I ran out of things to do and see at the Auschwitz museum around 6pm. I had already grabbed a late lunch, so I had pretty much nothing else to do. I had tried to find a Jewish heritage museum earlier in the morning, but had no such luck and wasn't about to look for it now that it was probably closed. Not wanting to wander around the run-down town of Oswiecim by myself, I decided to go back to the train station. Then I just had to try to kill nearly 6 hours before my train arrived. I was so exhausted from walking around all day in the sun, that all I wanted to do was sleep. It didn't help that it had been in the 90's all day. I was able to get an hour nap or so at the station, but then I woke up sweating and couldn't sleep anymore. I should've taken some pictures of the train station since I spent so many hours there, but I didn't want to draw any more attention to myself as an American tourist. If you want to know that the train station was like, think of what a Greyhound bus station might be like in the middle of a podunk town near you. I would guess that's a close approximation.

After spending about 3 hours in the station reading A Time to Kill, it was finally time for my train to arrive. Thank God it was there on time, I didn't want to spend another minute at that station. Ha, maybe I shouldn't have been so eager after all. I boarded the train and headed for my car. I didn't like what I found. First, I should tell you that this was the second stop of the night for this train; it had originated in Krakow, Poland. So a majority of the passengers had already boarded. There were about ten of us getting on at Oswiecim. When I opened the door to my cabin, I was greeted by pure unpleasant-ness. There were already five people in there asleep and it felt like it was about 100 degrees. On top of that it felt absolutely muggy and stunk to high heaven. My guess is that it was because it had rained earlier in the day and people had boarded in their wet clothes. Oh and then there's the kicker: they had the window closed. So it was absolutely miserable. I again threw my stuff onto my bunk and went into the hall to get fresh air.

Some 30 minutes later though I decided that I was so exhausted that surely I could sleep in that sauna, so I went back in. Wrong! No sleep for me. Just profuse sweating and listening to about three different people snoring. Ugh. I've rarely encountered girls who snore, but the lady on my first train out of Vienna snored and a girl on this train snored like a 500 pound man. It was terrible. Plus I think one of the people was farting because every once in a while there was a different putrid smell which permeated the cabin. I tried to reach down from my bunk (I was on the top again) and open the window, but one of the girls below rolled over and gave me a dirty look so I left it alone.

As if this wasn't bad enough, we still hadn't arrived at the world's most favorite train station. This time we had to wait almost two hours for the car shuffling to be completed. But this time there was plenty of teasing involved. The train would start moving forward and I would think that we were gathering speed and getting under way. Then we would stop and back up to attach to other cars. This happend about three times. Eventually I just got sick of being in the cabin and headed back out into the hall to watch the madness unfold.

After cooling off a little bit in the hall, I discovered that there were little seats that pulled down from the wall. So I decided that I would just grab my stuff and try to just endure the train ride from that seat. It worked out for a while as I just listed to my iPod and sat there. But then I started to get too tired and was almost falling onto the floor. Around 4:30am I decided that I would try to brave the sauna one last time. So I climbed back up to my bunk and laid down. Luckily I was so exhausted that sleep came relatively quickly, before I could sweat through all my clothes at least. I didn't wake up again until 7am when I was poked by someone leaving the train because we had arrived in Vienna. And I felt absolutely disgusting.

I was unbelievably happy to have arrived back in Vienna. Now I just needed to catch a tram back to my hotel. Despite falling asleep on the tram, this went off without a hitch. I woke up a couple seconds before my stop, looked out the window and saw my hotel, and got up to push the button to get the tram to stop just in time. I had already decided on a plan of attack for the day: shower, enjoy our breakfast buffet, and then go back to sleep. It felt so incredibly good to shower and rinse over 24 hours of sweat off my body. Sorry if that's gross, but that's exactly what had happened. I need to give you an accurate picture of my experience and this can't be done without imparting how absolutely filthy I felt. Anyway, after breakfast I went back to sleep and didn't wake up until 3:30pm. It felt so good to be clean and sleep in an actual bed, even if it is an uncomfortable Ibis bed. That pretty much wraps up my story about my train travel adventures. Now I'll get started on my blog about my actual visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Ciao!