Navigating trains and making mistakes

After living and traveling in Europe for two months, one would think that I would understand rail travel in Europe. I love traveling by train, and I've spent over 78 hours on various trains in Europe this summer. I've ridden on extremely fast InterCityExpress and the painfully slow local trains. I've ridden in an air-conditioned luxurious sleeping car from Vienna to Frankfurt and over-crowded unair-conditiioned leaky (it started raining mid trip) train from Bratislava to Prague (same for a night train as well). Even my worst train experiences were fun and I couldn't wait to ride the train again. This past weekend...I had some interesting lessons to learn about train tickets. For nearly all my train travel, I used a rail pass or a pass designated for a certain route. This past weekend, I decided to 'go native' and actually purchase point to point tickets.

Most of my travels were uneventful, but my return trips were rather exciting. On Monday, I had a fairly tight travel schedule. I started out in Krakow (southern poland) where I would catch an express train from Krakow to Warsaw around 2pm, then around 6pm catch a bus from Warsaw to the Warsaw airport to catch my flight to Frankfurt. After arriving in frankfurt, I would then have to catch the S-bahn (regional train) from the airport to Frankfurt Main Station, where I would have to catch a train to Marburg, hopefully arriving around 11:30pm at night.

Incident 1: For the Krakow to Warsaw train, Mike (CESRI scholar who lived in Poland for the summer) and I decided to catch the 2pm train. However, we had a slight miscommunication. I thought Mike would buy our tickets in the morning, and then I would meet him on the train station at 1:40pm. I arrived at what I though was the main hall of the train station at 1;35 and became confused when I received a text message from Mike saying that he was running late and needed some extra cash to purchase tickets. I sent Mike a message saying that I could help...and this is where breakdown occured. I assumed that I was waiting just outside the main hall, so I became worried when I still didn't see Mike at 1:50pm. It turns out the the main hall of the train station was 100 meters away from the actual train tracks, so what I thought was a main hall was actually an underground walkway. I race across the tracks, carrying my 30 lb backpack, a large bottle of water in one hand, and fragile souvenirs in another hand while getting smacked with every step by the Kelty compression sack attached to my backpack. I finally find Mike, who is rushing out the station clutching what appears to be two tickets for the express train. We meet, and we run 100 meters back towards the train tracks....arriving just as people began boarding the train. We get on the train, find a sparsely occupied car...and sit down to enjoy the lovely 3 hour train ride to Warsaw, confident in our ticket purchase. However, when the conductor walks by 1 hour later, he looks at Mike's ticket and asks for the real ticket. Mike looks bewildered. We look at the "ticket stubs" and realize that the attendant only gave Mike one ticket...and I was on board with out a ticket. Mike asks (in fluent Polish, btw) if we can buy a ticket...and the conductor assures us that we can. I thankfully have my credit card with me, so I buy ticket on the train...only charged 4 zlotys ($1.30) for the missed ticket. We then arrive in Warsaw without major incident, and even have time to enjoy authentic polish pancakes before I take off for Warsaw airport (which btw, is the most ineffeciently run airport I have encounted to date).

Incident 2: I arrive at Frankfurt airport without incident, board the S-bahn for town and then arrive at the main train station. I've transferred in the train station several times before, so I understand the layout quite well. I also know how to purchase train tickets at the kiosk.... My s-bahn arrives a few minutes late so instead of stopping at the kiosk, I walk straight to the train (taking care to board the car marked Marburg instead of the Dillenburg) and plan on buying my ticket on the train (which had been done previously in Poland and witnessed on several other train trips in Germany). When the conductor came by 30 minutes later, he told me that I couldn't buy my ticket on the train and I had two choices, give him my passport or I pay a 40 Euro fine. Thankfully I still had some Euros, so I could pay the 40 Euro fine...but it still hurt a bit. My actually train ticket was supposed to cost 12 Euro...so I actually only paid 28 Euros extra...but the embarassment of a "smackdown" from a conductor was quite painful. My lab mates then explained to me that you can buy a ticket on express trains...but you can't buy a ticket on regional trains...even though the regional train conductors use the exact same ticket issuing slips as the express train conductors.

So now I can say I've learned my lesson, always double check your ticket, before you board....and then check it again. I'll write more later about my trip to poland...once I edit some pictures.