On My Island

In these days my main mean of transport is a plane. I travel also by car – if it is not too far – or by ship – when I am suppose to get from one port to the other.

But my first trips, years ago, were by train: to the countryside of my homeland, to the seaside, and then to other countries. And there was something special in those trips. Maybe even romantic...

By train over three countries

We met even those old ones

...and bit more modern

It was comfortable trip

TGV was the fastest

That's how we got to Champagne

Nowadays It is like on a plane

And almost as fast as a plane

It was cheaper, quicker and more reliable. No traffic jams and I was still on the ground. One could watch views, walk a bit or play cards, visit restaurant, socialize with fellow travellers or just sleep. Very convenient. It used to take some time, although today trains are quite fast and on some medium distance routes it is quicker to travel just by train not by plane – if we count the time we have to spend in the airport and to get to the airport.

I carried out my longest train travel due to false believe in hitch-hiking. It was from old Polish city of Krakow, to Epernaise, France. As a poor student, I was planning with my friend to go to Champagne, to pick up grapes. We hadn't too much money – actually we planned to work and earn – so we chose hitch-hiking.

One thing was certain – no hitch-hiking in Poland, as train was relatively cheap, so it seemed to be senseless to loose time on waiting by the road. Same in Czech. So we chose to start our hitch-hiking from German border.

Our first part of travel was from Krakow to Kotlina Klodzka, a place in Sudety Mountains on Polish-Czech border. We spent the night in a second class carriage without compartments, but quite comfortable. For that pleasure we paid several pounds. Today Polish trains are more expensive, but not as much as British.

We crossed the border on foot. In that way we didn't have to be charged for international ticket and on the other side of the frontier we could catch local train to Prague. Well, actually there was some temporary problem with tracks and part of the trip was arranged by coach. Finally, we got to Prague when we spent several hours drinking good and cheap beer. However, Prague on its own is a place worth spending longer time.

But we were heading towards German border. So we caught another night train and on early morning we were 2,5 miles from Bavaria. That was the point where we were suppose to start our hitch-hiking. First of truck drivers dropped us to a bypass of Regensburg. And that was the end of easy travel. We waited for 8 hours, until somebody stopped and took us further, but only to the downtown. Here, we decided to take another train. After a night spent at Regensburg railway station, we bought tickets to Nurnberg. The cashier accepted our students' ID's and sold us cheaper tickets.

German trains appeared to be very comfortable and clean (“ordnung muss sein”). A carriage comprised of various types of compartments. Ours contained five seats for adults and one for a child. Of course the train came exactly on time.

In Nurnberg, very quickly, we decided to give up hitch-hiking again. Instead, we did a short sightseeing tour and bought tickets to Karlsruhe. We hoped to get to another border this way and count on French drivers, who should be more friendly then their German colleagues.

When we got there, we began to walk towards France then. Finally someone took us to the other side of the border. Again we found ourselves at the railway station – this time in Wissembourg. We left the village and tried to stop cars with hope that one of them would take us to Champagne. And again, after hours of fruitless waving hands, we came back to the station and bought railway tickets. It was local train to Strasbourg, where we waited for few hours and decided to catch another train going to Paris – however we had money only for a ticket to Toul. We travelled to Toul then, in a very comfortable and modern express train. On the morning we saw another city during our quite a long trip and again repeated whole procedure, it means gave up hitch-hiking and turned back to railway. However this time we had no money so travelled only until railway officials removed us from the train in Bar le Duc. It was our last stop, before we finally reached Epernay, using a night train.

And it was my longest and most crazy travel by train. In happened in times when I was travelling like a tramp, without family, without responsibility, without money... But during that trip I managed to recognize railways of four countries and confirmed that railway can be the most reliable and convenient mean of transport.

Train to France