Trials through Slovakia

Dan and Erica:

This post is not to complain, but to illustrate to the full extent our journez last night. All components are necessary... :)

Erica:

Okay. Let´s establish first that night trains simply just suck. No sleep equals no energy, grumpiness and a lack of motivation for the following day/ new city. So, last night was our last true night train for the trip from Budapest through Slovakia to Prague. Now, we made our reservations for this train ride the last time we were in Munich because we are awesome and on top of things.

This night train ride began with discovery that we would be sleeping in a compartment the seeming size of a smart car with 7 other people... lets just say we weren§t ëxactly thrilled. Oh and the bathroom was a third world country. Night trains are by rule, as established, uncomfortable- this was simply laughable. However, despite this, we did find space for our backpacks and figured that if we both tried to stay awake for long enough we would eventually pass out from sheer exhaustion.

Eventually and inevitably the peanut-sized compartment fills up with a Slovak family, who has funnily enough brought a massive shopping bag FILLËD with beer that they seemed to just inhale and were very eager to share.

Time passes. About an hour into Slovakia, a little train conductor on a big power trip rips open the compartment door at nearly 11pm, waking everyone in the compartment and demanding (quite rudely might I add) that we show him our tickets. Something all of us had already done with a different conductor when we first boarded the train- I might add that at that point there was no problem.

Upon looking at our Eurail passes, the Slovak conductor requešsts that Dan step into the hallway with him, because there is a problem. Now, let me explain. Our Eurail pass covers our journeys to and from countries in Western Europe. Though Slovakia is not included in our pass, as stated in our Eurail instruction manual, this does not matter. It does not matter is¨if we travel THROUGH SLovakia as long as are embarkment country and destination are included in are pass. Because both Hungary and the Czech Republic are included, our journey and seat reservations (both which we had already paid for) SHOULD BE VALID.

Dan:

He called me out into the hallway to try and tell me that our passes were invalid in Slovakia and that we would either need to pay him more money for a ticket (which we had techincally already paid for). Erica, having come out of the compartment at this point, was having none of it, and demanded to speak to whoever was above him. After arguing with him (to no avail) for nearly five minutes, we were forced to give in and pay the man the extra money or be kick off the train and stranded in Bratislava in the middle of the night... To complicate matters further, as we had just come from Budapest, we did not have any Euros on us (the conductor seemed very proud to tell us that Slovakia only accepts the Euro... it was actually quite funny) I decided that i would just pay him with our debit card... something we had seen many people do in other countries numerous times throughout this trip. However, in Slovakia, they apparently only take cash, and when I asked if he would let us pay with US dollars, he nearly spit in my face!

He then told me that if we wanted to stay on the train, I would have to get off the train with him in Bratislava and he would escort me to an ATM so that I could pull out some cash. After ten minutes we finally arrived in Bratislava, and the conductor was nowhere to be found! Erica and I quickly coordinated that if I could not get back onto the train in time, that I would catch the next train to Prague and meet her by the lockers in the train station the following day. So I pulled my best Usain Bolt impression and sprinted through the Bratislava train station in search of the ATM myself, which i luckily found in time to be able to get back on the train before it pulled away (at this point, Erica was incredibly nervous that I would be left in Bratislava and she would be forced to travel the rest of the way to Prague by herself).

Before the train pulls away, the conductor, at this time on the platform, sees us both hanging our heads out the window just watching him. He rudely questions, "You have Euros now?" to which we nodded affirmatively with scowls on our faces. Finally after the train started moving again, i sought out the conductor and found him in his cushy little private compartment... no third world country there. I finally paid him at nearlÿ midnight, and everyone in our compartment finally tried to get to sleep for a couple of hours.

Erica:

The adventure continues. After about 45 minutes, at a routine small train stop in Breclav = middle of nowhere. We begin to curiously notice that we do not leave the station for over an hour and a half, but simply seem to travel back and forth at small intervals along the track beside the platform. Then suddenly, everyone in our train car was roused to the windows by a woman screaming her head off at a train conductor on the platform. To our surprise it was the woman who with her family had been in the compartment next door to ours. Now Dan and I, not speaking any Slovak whatsoever, only notice that everyone is getting frustrated and upset around us. I walked down the car and find the one woman who spoke both Slovak and English and she told me that the screaming woman was angry because when the trian car split (a common occurance- ours going half to Berlin and half to Prague) our train car and two others had been LEFT BEHIND BY THE TRAIN. The back and foward motions that we had been feeling was the station moving our three little stranded cars out of the way so that other trains could pass through the station. We were told to sit tight until the next train to Prague could come by and pick up our 3 train cars and consequently all of us. This would result in a 3 hour delay, which was going to apparently cause the enraged woman and her family to miss their flight out of Prague that day. At least it was not a boring night train, but it was so absurd that we thought you should all hear about it.

Dan: Long story short- Slovakia sucks.