NIGHTMARES AND SLEEPING CARS

We interrupt this travelogue for a bit of commentary on the European Sleeper Train Cars.  In one word:  Don't.

However, being that I am not a one-word kind of a gal, here are a few more words justifying that single word.

Bob thought taking a night train from Prague to Vienna would kill two birds with one stone: For about the cost of a hotel we would have a place to sleep, AND when we woke up we would be at our destination, therefore not wasting precious time traveling.  Kind of like a "Cruise on Tracks."

We followed the hotel concierge's recommendation and arrived at the train station with only a half hour to spare.  Our train was leaving around midnight, and since this was the first time we were using our Eurail passes, we were supposed to get them stamped in some office at the station.  No problem, except we were the only people in the entire station:

 It was downright creepy, like the Twilight Zone.  There was no one to stamp our passes, and even worse, there was no one to tell us where to go.  There were no boards that said "Vienna" with a flashing arrow telling us which hallway to go down, no friendly helpers to look at our tickets, nothing.

After about 20 minutes of frantic searching, we did see a sign at the very end of a long hallway that said "Wien" and seemed to point up a flight of stairs.  We lugged our suitcases up those stairs (They were all the size of Chris's in the picture above) and arrived on a train platform.  Alone.  Completely alone.

Since there was no indication that we were in the right place and it was five minutes until our train arrived, Bob and Stan took off in different directions trying to find someone, anyone, who might be able to verify we were in the right spot.  One of them, both of them, I can't remember which, discovered that we were almost in the right place.

The right place was on the other side of the tracks.  We had only a couple of minutes. We really had no choice but to cross.

I think our station looked somewhat like this (which is a photo of one of the Prague train stations, but not ours), but the drop from the walkway to the tracks seemed more like three feet and I'm pretty sure there were 100 sets of rails.  At least that's what it seemed like as we hauled our bulky suitcases across the tracks in the Twilight Zone at midnight in Prague.

I'm also pretty sure it was seconds before we heard the rumble of the train and maybe a minute before it arrived in the station.  Still somewhat uncertain, we boarded.  We were relieved to discover we were on the correct train.

After some confusion, we found our "suite."  It was two rooms, each the size of my hall closet, joined by a door.  Each room had a bunk bed on one wall and about 3" of space for our suitcases.  For this to be enough space, pretty much you couldn't be traveling with more than a change of underwear.  Still, we were on the train!  It was ever so much better than missing our train and sleeping on the cold, hard concrete of the station floor.

Very happy campers.

Wow, a congratulatory bottle of bubbly for each of us!

Enough water to wash down our Tylenol PM!

Stan . . . Stan!  Remember who you are!

Perhaps GIDDY is a better word to describe how we felt.

 Of course, we weren't done.  The porter came by to check our tickets and discovered that *gasp* WE HAD NOT HAD THEM STAMPED BY THE PROPER AUTHORITIES!!!  He left with our passports and tickets, and for just a few minutes, we were worried that when he came back we were going to be tossed off the train, along with our luggage, as we rounded the next bend.

Forty euros (about $52) took care of it.  Yep.  It didn't change our circumstances at all, but he asked for it, we paid it, and in the morning he gave us our passports and our tickets back and gave us a stern warning that we had better get that stamp when we got off the train.

We did as commanded and had a few unevental Eurail day trips to Bratislava and Budapest after that.

Our second experience with a sleeper car started off a little better than our first.  It helped that we had my nieces Julie and Alex to get us on the right train in Budapest, the one bound for Zurich, Switzerland.  It was also much earlier in the evening, which was nice.

The problems started when we were actually ON the train.  This time we were booked in a dorm-style room of six bunks.  Dumb, I know, but it was really expensive, and to get a more private room would be really, really, REALLY expensive.  It looked like this, except there were SIX beds instead of four.  Do you see a place for four large suitcases?  No? Neither did we.

There were already two very cute, very friendly college-age girls sitting on the lower bunk on the left. They had been on holiday in Budapest and were returning home to Basel.  There was a suitcase on the lower bunk on the right that did not belong to them, and it certainly didn't belong to us.  A few of us crowded into the room, and it was obvious that there was no way this was going to work. It got even worse when the owner of the abandoned suitcase showed up.  It was a crying young woman who had just said good-bye to her boyfriend.  Now we were seven people in a room hardly big enough for two.

We hailed the porter and tried to explain that they had overbooked our room and we weren't going to fit.  He wasn't sympathetic.  What did he want us to do?  Pay more money, of course!  For a small additional fee of six euro each (about $9), he put the four of us in an empty six-person closet.  We put our suitcases on the top bunk (a challenge, let me tell you), and bedded down for the night.  

Let's just say we've had better nights of sleep.

It helped--a little--that we "woke up" to this kind of scenery as we approached Zurich:

 

We got off in Zurich and had only twenty minutes to board the next train to Basel.  All went well, and we arrived safely in Basel, where we were picked up at the station by Dave and Pete.  How wonderful it was to see them come walking down the platform!

Some day I'm going back to beautiful Zurich, but I'm absolutely NOT getting there--or anywhere else--by sleeper train.

PRAGUE, Part 5: Day Trip to Kutna Hora

One of our days in Prague was actually spent an hour or so outside of Prague in a very old silver mining town called Kutna Hora. We went with a tour group booked through Sandeman's New Europe tours.  Our excellent guide, Christian, was half Czech and half Swede. There he is in the picture below wearing a red shirt and a white hat with a black band. I'll get back to him later.

The first thing we saw was a memorial to the Black Death, which hit Kutna Hora in the mid-14th Century and killed 13,000 local residents--only half of the population, which is why I guess they were grateful enough to erect this monument. 

It was next to the Chapel of All Saints, a small, unassuming structure . . .

. . .with a rather unusual graveyard attached to it.  In the 13th Century, the abbott of the nearby monastery went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  He brought back some dirt he'd collected from Golgotha and sprinkled it over the ground here.  Word spread around the area, and suddenly everyone wanted to be buried in Kutna Hora.  Apparently they still do, because many of the stones look pretty modern.

I have to assume the guy buried in the grave with a steering wheel on the stone is . . . a race car driver? a car lover? a traveling salesman?

A few other headstones I really liked:

 Hmmm, I'm sensing a theme here:

After the Black Death, a small chapel was built on the site.  During excavation, workmen discovered thousands of bones of plague victims.  The bones were stacked in piles until 1870, when a man named Frantisek Rint was hired by the Schwarzenberg Family, local benefactors, to "organize" the bones.  The result is the Sedlec Ossuary, a downstairs "chapel" decorated with bones from almost 40,000 human skeletons.

The artist's signature--written in bones:

Wouldn't this chandelier look lovely in YOUR living room? It supposedly contains at least one of every bone in the body:

Or perhaps this etagere:

I especially like the coat of arms of the Schwarzenberg Family and would like something similar done for the Cannon crest:

AMAZING detail!

This church made me happy to have some flesh still on my bones. In fact, it think it's time for more gelato.

While we were waiting for the bus to take us to our next destination in Kutna Hora, Chris and I started chatting with the guide.  When we told him we were sisters, he looked right at me and said, "And you're the evil one."

I kid you not.  Remember how I said he was an excellent guide?  Scratch that.  I'm pretty sure someone paid him to say that.  Chris? Stan? DAVE?

The next stop was St. Barbara's Cathedral, the second largest church in the Czech Republic behind St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague.  It is not really a cathedral as it is not the headquarters of a bishop or archbishop, but it is often called a cathedral just because of its immensity.

Construction on this Gothic-style church began in 1388.  Its flying buttresses, pointed arches, and long, slender pillars were engineering revolutions, and inside it is light and airy compared to the earlier-style Romanesque churches, and even compared to other Gothic churches we've seen.  However, it is not really about God, according to our guide (but who would believe him???), but about the wealth and power of the mining families who built it.

It had a great ceiling, but right above the altar were a few dozen coats of arms of the richest families in the city:

Just a bit tacky if you ask me.

This church wasn't actually completed until 1908. That's 620 years of construction (and I thought the two years of freeway construction by our house was bad.)  As a result, while the basic structure is Gothic, many of the embellishments are from much later eras, such as this beautiful Baroque organ:

I'm not sure what time period this painting is from, but it was just about my favorite thing in the church.  Take a close look.  See anything unusual?

Like maybe a flying lobster?  It has something to do with the zodiac sign for Cancer, but I was still fuming at the guide and can't remember what he said.

While there were religious paintings and sculptures, there were also tributes to the saintly miners themselves that I quite enjoyed.  Not your usual cathedral fare:

Check out this carved bench end.  Awesome!

The stained glass is actually painted glass and was added in the 1900s. The third one below has a real Art Nouveau feel to it:

In contrast to those bold colors and intricate scenes, I really loved this simple window with very old frescoes surrounding it depicting not only angels, but ordinary working folk as well:

Quite the altar, again more Baroque than Gothic:

We walked from the cathedral to a restaurant for lunch down this statue-bordered walkway:

Kutna Hora is a beautiful and unusual city, one I had never even heard of prior to this trip, but one I would recommend visiting if you are ever in Prague. (Just don't get Christian as your tour guide. But don't tell him I said that. He might think I'm evil.)

The large church left of center is St. James Church, and after the first tower was built, the authorities realized that it was leaning to the right, so they opted not to add a second tower.

 

Dacicky Restaurant, where we had lunch, was also very unique, with interesting lighting and bathroom doors:

  

Clockwise from top left: dumplings, cabbage, goose breast, and fat-laden potatoes

. . .and wonderful traditional Czech cuisine--heavy, rich, and meaty, which is everything fat-free vegan Bob was trying to avoid.  But hey, I sure enjoyed it!  (Oops, more of my evil side coming out.)

Bob with his rice and vegetables.

Next: Nightmares and Sleeping Cars