My ugly American moment in Vienna

To start, we had a wonderful time in Vienna July 2008 and made good use of Europe’s rail system.  Earlier during our stay in Vienna, we took the train from Vienna to Salzburg and back without incident.  It was efficient and comfortable.

Now, my ugly American moment.  A couple of days later, we were traveling by rail from Vienna to Prague and had a direct train, which, of course, would make periodic stops.  We were supposed to depart Vienna at 10:04 am and arrive in Prague later that afternoon.  We were getting to Prague in plenty of time for our 5:30 walking tour of Prague Castle.

Well, my excellent planning, did not pan out so well … we missed our train, probably by minutes and here’s why.  The previous night, I packed all our bags (3), leaving out only toiletries.  We get up a little late and have breakfast, a little longer than we should have.  Then we take a walk around the block to help digest breakfast, probably shouldn’t have.  We go back to our room and get ready.  I’m getting concerned about time now, since we had planned to take the metro and the tram to the train station.  We finally leave the hotel around 9:20.  I’m debating should we take a taxi.  We finally reach the metro station with our 3 bags.  It’s the weekend, so trains run slower, but not slow.  We reach the end of the metro line and I have to ask directions for taking the tram, which is right across from the Opera House … not too far from the metro line.  We now have about 15 minutes before 10:04.  So, I am thinking we are not going to make it.  We reach the train station and didn’t know where to go.  There were no escalators, so, we had to drag heavy bags up steps.  We finally reach the correct platform.  I’m thinking we have missed our train.  And, we had!

I explode and throw my bags on the ground … and may have used an expletive or too and may have given an old lady looking at me the evil eye.  Of course, missing our train was no one’s fault, but ours.  I am still fuming mad!  I ask staff at the station how we would get to Prague now that we missed our train.  We could take a direct train much later and miss our Prague tour or we could change trains 2 times and get to Prague by 4 or 4:30.  We took option two.  I was also irritated because we had paid for first class tickets and had reserved seats for the long journey, but the first couple of trains had no first class compartment.

We finally arrive at the border station, Breclav, where we would take a train direct to Prague.  This train had a first class coach.  Of course, we boarded in the middle and walked all the way to the opposite end of train looking for first class.  We had to trace all the way through the second class coaches before finding first class, but we finally did.

In closing, we eventually reached Prague, checked into our hotel, and enjoyed our walking tour.  The lesson in this story, European trains run on time, so get to the station on time.