An American Rogue in Europe: Chapter Ten

Planes, Trains and Czechoslovakian Buses

We had a lot scheduled for our time in Europe. Our itinerary was full but not stuffed. In fact, one day aside, it might seem almost leisurely. That "day aside" had come. On Monday, May 14th, we awoke in Prague. By that evening we needed to make it to Rome. The rest of our trip hinged on this day. Our original plan was to take trains the whole way (we spent hundreds on Eurail passes after all). This would have taken more than 20 hours of travel (with untold layovers in out-of-the-way train stations), so we passed. Thanks to the beauty of discount airlines and intercontinental travel we found we could fly to Rome for less than 40 Euro a piece. The catch was we had to fly from Frankfurt which is a considerable distance from Prague. Still, about six hours on a train and then two on a plane and we'd be enjoying an "evening in Roma." Not bad, by anyone's standards. Except it's not that easy. Ryan Air (the cheap European airline of choice) likes to cut corners. One of the ways it does that is by flying out of smaller airports. So when you say you are flying from Frankfurt to Rome with Ryan Air what you mean is you are flying from Hahn to Rome.

Hahn is two hours from Frankfurt. You cannot reach Hahn by train. The only way (barring car rental) we could get there was by bus (12 Euro a piece) from Frankfurt's main train station. So, Plan C: A train to Frankfurt, bus to Hahn, plane to Rome. But our train (scheduled to leave Prague at about 9:30am) didn't arrive in Frankfurt until about five minutes after the last shuttle for Hahn had left. We needed an earlier train. And so we found ourselves, six Americans, hustling our luggage from the Czech Inn to the Metro to the train station in the wee hours of that Monday morning.

Leading up to this trip I had often contemplated the advantages of the European train system and bemoaned the lack of an American equivalent. That Monday morning, one of the disadvantages of such a system, presented itself. Or original train left just after 9am. It got us to our destination about 10 minutes too late. The next earliest train left Prague at 6:15am, but only arrived forty-five minutes early. The later train would have been largely non-stop, with only one or two train changes. The early train would get us to our plain on time but it would make roughly a million stops in between with half that many changeovers. The downside to this itinerary seems obvious. The upside is a little harder to perceive.

On the Monday of hellish travel from Eastern Europe to the cradle of Western Civilization, I rode on roughly a fourth of all the trains in Europe. Fast trains and slow trains. Air conditioned trains and open-air cars. Regional and High-speed. Trains that filled the station and seemed to stretch for miles and (crossing the German border from the Czech Republic) a little one car one engine train that looked like a fifties diner that had lost its waiters. We rode on all of them. Infuriating, exciting, comfortable, excruciating and everything in between, the one thing rail travel in Europe isn't is boring.

If our day had just been filled with train travel, I think we'd look back fondly on this day. As it currently stands, we remember it as one of the most hellish (and hilariously funny) days of our trip. After riding three or four different trains toward the Czech Republic border we stopped at a train station where everyone started to get off. This wasn't our stop so we stayed put. Shortly we were joined by an engineer.

"Kwachzinky nuff no putzin Kaput!" he said, or seemed to since none of us spoke Czech. He stared at us for a minute pointing to the exit and then finally realized, "English," he asked. "Ya!" Richard replied. The engineer thought for a minute about the best way to get his message across and then said simply, "Train kaput." He then turned his back to us and waived us toward the exit. (We later learned that there had been a fairly serious problem with the tracks ahead of us and we were to be routed around them on buses).


I have nothing against buses (in principle) but our current problem was we were up against a deadline. We had a limited amount of time to make it to our next connection and since a bus is generally slower (and more circuitous) than a train, there was a real possibility that we were gonna be late. While Richard, Allie and I worried about our schedule, Ella was thrilled at the prospect of seeing some Czech countryside. She snapped pictures through the windows of that bus until we were deposited at the next train station (apparently past the Kaput train tracks). Back on the rails we swiftly made it to the German border (surprising considering what we were riding on at times). There we took our first high speed train.

The Germans call them ICE trains or Inter-City Express. These look like luxury vehicles when compared to the local trains we had ridden that morning. For these trains we needed reservations (an added expense) but that meant we were guaranteed seats. And what seats they were. Two captain's chairs side by side, facing two more with a fold-away table in between is what awaited us. This setup was perfect for playing cards and we used it in our several hours on the train.

Anytime you spend more than an hour or two in one place, it's likely that the bathroom might be needed. I'm sure most of you (there is the occasional germaphobe that only uses his own hermetically sealed facilities) have used a public bathroom before. Other than its mobile nature, the toilets on European trains are not drastically different from those ordinary public bathrooms. Smaller than the stalls at the mall, larger than an airplane bathroom, and magically fascinating to those interested in the question of "Where does the poop go?" The short answer is "It hits the road...or at least the track."

Comfortable bathrooms and seats aside, the ICE train did have one large drawback. It was significantly higher off the tracks (the passenger car anyway, the wheels, I'm sure, went all the way down) than the smaller local trains. This might have enabled them to travel at much higher speeds and provide a less bumpy ride, but it also meant that you spent your time on the ICE swaying back and forth like you were at sea. If you've spent most of your life as a sailor that might be welcome but for little-old-landlocked Rogue, I didn't care for it.

The entire time we had been in Europe (and even before we arrived) Richard had been praising the beauty of German beer, in particular the Hefe-weizen or wheat beer. Hefe-weizen (or Hefe for short) is a thick beer. The wheat (I assume it's the wheat, I'm not a chemist) can actually be seen floating around in the bottle. This makes the beer opaque (like Guinness) even though it's a light color beer. It also makes the beer sit very heavy on your stomach. Richard later went on to tell me that for tax purposes, Germans classify their beer as food. This is good information to have before following up a big meal of wiener and schnitzel (whatever the hell that is) with a couple of half liters of Hefe.

As soon as we got on board the ICE, Richard said "A train this nice should probably has a diner car. We could go get a Hefe." It took a little convincing (I hated to leave the comfort of our seats after our morning escapades) but he and I eventually made the trek through the train in search of beer. Remember how I told you earlier that the ICE rocked back and forth like a boat? Well, if you've ever seen a film where sailors fight their way across the ships deck during a bad storm, that's what Richard and I looked like as we made our way to the diner car. Looking back, it probably wasn't worth it. The beer (and everything else in the diner car for that matter) was terrifically overpriced and not high quality to begin with. Richard told me that the beer almost didn't even taste like a Hefe-weizen. He waited to tell me that of course until after I had spent 5 Euro on it.

A little peeved by the gouging we took in the diner car, and a little sea-sick from tossing about, we finally arrived in Frankfurt. But of course, not at the right station in Frankfurt. We would need to switch trains one more time (we wouldn't have it any other way) before we would finally reach our destination (the bus that would take us to Hahn and the airplane that would take us to Rome), but we were so happy to be close we didn't even mind.