Train to Prague

The summer after my sophomore year in high school I had the opportunity to go to Romania with my aunt, Jennifer, on a Habitat for Humanity trip. At the end of the Habitat portion of the trip we decided to go to Prague for a couple of days. To get there from Romania we had the option of traveling by plane or train. Upon inquiry we were told that the train to Prague took eight hours. I made the decision to take the train because it would be a good experience and I thought that it would be fun. It was definitely an experience.

We arrived at the train station in plenty of time to buy our tickets and to find our way to the correct platform. While we were wandering around inside the train station two young men approached us and wanted to move our bags for us. They had a flat fee listed on their cart that amounted to around five dollars. We decided that five dollars was worth it to save ourselves the trouble of attempting to negotiate extra large bags down an exceptionally narrow corridor.

When we got to our compartment the men were waiting to collect their pay. It was then that they informed us that the fee listed was per bag, and we had given them the bags, purses, and backpacks. The total cost they informed us was twenty dollars, per person. They actually expected us to pay them forty dollars to move our luggage. Unfortunately, we did because they threatened to take off with our stuff if they didn’t receive the money. No amount of haggling, talking badly about their country, or pretending not to have any idea what they were saying could lower the price.

After finally sending the con men away and still having all the luggage my aunt and I settled down for the journey. It was at this time that we actually looked at our tickets and realized that the departure time from Romania and the arrival time in Prague were far more than eight hours apart. They were actually twenty-five hours apart. We couldn’t believe it. We were going to have to spend over a day on the train. My aunt went to find a conductor hoping that there was a misprint. She came back with a long face and informed me that the tickets were indeed correctly printed and that we were going to have a very long ride ahead of us.

We settled in for the long haul. Out came the pillows and books from our bags so that we could amuse ourselves. After several hours the train reached the first border that we were to cross and a conductor and police came around to check papers and tickets. When the conductor finished looking at our tickets he informed us that the car that we were in was going to be left in Hungary and that we needed to change cars immediately or be left behind.

We grabbed our bags from where they had been stowed and ran down the corridors between cars dragging our luggage down the too narrow hallway looking for a car that was going to continue on to Prague. We finally found a car and just as we were safely inside we felt the train start to move underneath us and we saw the cars that we had just gotten off of being left in the distance.

We managed to find another compartment and settled down again. For a while we were the only two people in the compartment and we were hoping that the remainder of our journey would be rather uneventful. That was not to be.

After a while a couple of young Frenchmen joined us in our compartment. They appeared to be a pair of brothers, one in his twenties the other in his teens. The two of them kept whispering to each other and eyeing our belongings. Jennifer and I were getting sleepy but we decided that it was best if one of would remain awake to ensure that our things were safe. The brothers took turns watching us while the other one would go into the hallway of the train to smoke. Finally, they disembarked from the train and Jennifer and I were able to rest easy for a while.

The next companions in that joined us in our compartment were a Grandfather with his two young grandchildren. Almost as soon as they sat down the children began bickering. The Grandfather, who was apparently very used to the incessant fighting of the children, dosed off leaving the children to their own means to entertain themselves. They fought the entire time they were on the train yelling, pushing, punching, and in general causing a ruckus.

After the children left we were hoping that we would not have any more visitors in our compartment. It was getting rather late in the night and we were thinking that very few people would be getting onto a train at this hour. Of course we were wrong.

A young gentleman fresh from hiking entered into the cabin. He proceeded to stash his gear, close the compartment door and then remove his hiking boots. The stench was overpowering and I started to gag. I immediately rolled down the window, claiming that I thought the compartment was rather warm. I curled up in the corner, as far away from the stinky feet as I could manage, with my blanket over my head to try and mute the smell.

From the position in the corner I was shaken awake by my aunt. I realized that I was soaking wet. During my nap it had started raining outside and the window was stuck open. The way the wind was blowing and the direction that the train was traveling combined so that all of the water that came in through the window landed on me. I crawled over to the other side of the cabin and went back to sleep.

When Jennifer woke me again she was in a panic. We were still in the train, but our watches were telling us that we should have been in Prague an hour ago. Jennifer went to find a conductor to see if we had passed Prague already. He said we had, giving us quite a scare. We set about frantically trying to figure out where we were when another passenger informed us that Prague was actually the last stop on the line and we had not yet passed it.

We settled back into our compartment and anxiously waited to see who would be right, the passenger or the conductor. The passenger was right and we arrived in Prague utterly exhausted. By this time though we no longer had two full days to spend exploring Prague; we had thirty-six hours.