{Changing trains in a hurry in Brezov, in a frozen fog. Eva}
29 November 1999
Our next planned stop was Bratislava, the capitol of the Slovak Republic, the other half of the former Czechoslovakia before the VELVET DIVORCE (the splitup) in 1992. Typically, the shitty guide books had almost no useful information about Bratislava at all, so we were kind of going in cold. The hostel we were in offered the 7th night free so we felt a bit odd leaving after six nights -- but it was more than time to leave Praha!
The friendly people who worked at the hostel in Prague were really quite helpful most of the time, and there was lots and lots of travel information lying around -- especially fliers for various hostels. There were fliers for hostels in Berlin, in Bucharest, Romania, in Dresden, and many for hostels in Budapest. So one evening I went to the desk after looking through the travel information and asked if they have a place that they recommend in Bratislava and the woman looked up at me with contept in her eyes and said, "It's another COUNTRY!" And went back to her paperwork. I was pretty taken aback. I went upstairs to the kitchen and told Cheryln about it and then I said, "Well, I guess it wasn't so velvet AFTER ALL!" There was a Canadian guy sitting at the table who I thought was going to choke on his beer he was laughing so hard!! The next time I asked at the counter about information on how to get to Bratislava the clerk said, "WHY would you want to go THERE!?"
So I gave up on trying to get help from them. The information center at the train station was very helpful in arranging our rather complicated ticket. We were going to use the same Vienna - Dresden return ticket to get to close and then just a quick jaunt over to Slovakia.
We walked across the center of Praha with our backpacks -- it was about 10 minutes to the train station (although everyone in our bunk room told us we should take a taxi!!). On our way to the station we stopped and mailed a few things -- Czeska has AMAZINGLY cheap postage! As we walked through the station to the train I decided to use up the rest of my Czech money by buying an International Herald Tribune -- an English Language paper published by the New York Times and Washington Post. We see it around often, but it tends to cost about $3, which I cannot afford. It was a bit cheaper in Praha. We were rather surprised to find well written, fairly unbiased stories (including one about the upcoming WTO convention and protests in Seattle)-- they must use different writers than for the US versions!
Again we started the search for a compartment that would be comfortable. All the compartments had people in them, but I found one with only one person, a friendly looking older woman, in it and we sat down. We exchanged a few Czech words and a few German words with her as we sat down and adjusted ourselves and her suitcase -- but a few minutes after the train started she spoke to us in English and we started a conversation that lasted several hours, until she got off at Brno. She is German, speaks French and English fluently. She taught English to French speakers in Africa for years as well. She was very interesting and pleasant and we exchanged travel tidbits about how to utilize email, debit cards and train tickets to the maximum. In the end we exchanged addresses and she invited us to come stay with her in Germany!!! It was very enjoyable and we look forward to visiting her! The countryside on this train ride was very pleasant, less industry, more nature. There had been a heavy freeze and some rain and snow overnight in the moutains that we crossed (out of the Bohemian basin) and the trees were all covered in ice -- it was stunningly beautiful. Also there was a frozen fog for part of the way that was really amazing.
When we got to Breclav, we had a very very tight connection and since our train was late, it turned out we only had about 2 minutes. We found out from the conductor that our train would be on platform 4, but when we got off the train, we found that the platforms were not numbered!! We set out running, off down platform two and down the stairs. Cheryln wanted to go right, but I tried to go left. We went left and went up to two platforms, but neither had a train on it. So we went back and to the right, but we still couldn't tell if that was our train, so eventually (we are running at top speed with our full packs on this whole time) we wound up back on the platform where our train had come in -- my watch said the train should've left 2 minutes ago, but we had not heard a train leave. I grabbed a guy in a train uniform, who turned out to not be a conductor but rather a maintence worker, and asked him where the train to Bratislava was. He pointed to the next platform, and then pointed us to the train that was next to us, suggesting that we just go through the train, out to the platform on the other side and then hop on our train. We jumped on the train, but there was another train employee blocking the doorway on the other side and she was NOT going to let us through. She pointed down to the tunnel.
So we RAN back down the tunnel to the platform that Cheryln had originally suggested and RAN to the first open door on the train where there was a police officer blocking the door. Sweating, I asked the nearby conductor if it was the train to Bratislava and he said yes, but then the Police officer asked for our passports. (The border is very close.) Exasperated, we rushed to pull out our passports, which were pretty well buried in our money belts where we keep them safely. We were going as fast as we could to get them out, the train should've left about 6 minutes ago, when the police officer, smiling waved us to slow down and said, "Time! Time!" And we realized that they were not going to leave us behind. Once we had done Czech passport control we got on the train and plopped into seats! A few minutes after we were underway the Slovak passport control came around, and once again it was this extremely sexy woman -- this is a pattern I have noticed in Eastern Europe!!
