So
we were nervous about taking our tandem, fully assembled now, by train from
Budapest to Vienna. It turned out to be
remarkably simple, with only two minor glitches. The first was that the early train had no
bike places. However, there is a train
every two hours, and the next train was fine.
In fact, as you can see, we had the only bike on that train, and we had
a compartment on the train to ourselves.
The
second minor issue was that the Hungarian ticket-seller could sell us a ticket
to Bratislava, Slovakia, where we would have to change trains, but not the next
leg from there to Vienna, Austria. Again,
not a biggie, as there is a train every hour!
When we got there, we easily obtained passage for ourselves and the bike
on the next train. Once again, it was
lonely.
Three
days earlier, we had tried to book passage by hydrofoil boat from Budapest to
Vienna (3 times as expensive, €225 vs. €75 for two people and one bike, but guaranteed to take the
bike). To our surprise, the sailings had
been cancelled for the coming week because of high water. Half-way from Budapest to Bratislava, a
British couple got on our train with their bikes, and told a tale of high
water. They had been biking from
Budapest to Vienna but had just quit when high water covered a section of the
bike trail and forced them onto a busy road near the great cathedral of
Esztergom, which we had just photographed from the train.
Whoa! That was a trail we had ridden 5 days
earlier, with no problems. They then
told us that the flooding was more serious upriver. We looked again at another photo we took
fifteen minutes earlier, which (barely) shows a section of bike trail we had
been on, next to the thin black railing.
But look closely at the far shore of the river: there are trees standing in water. Little did we know it yet, but those trees
would be entirely under water a week later, and possibly the road next to our
train tracks!
Nor was
it just the Danube. Trains had either
stopped running or were close to stopping on the lines through Salzburg
(Salzach River), Innsbruck (the Inn), Prague (the Vlatava), and Dresden (the
Elbe). Going south to Italy sounded like
a plan, but trains from Vienna almost always go first to Innsbruck to take advantage
of the Donner Pass tunnel, so that was a non-starter as well.
It took
hours to come up with a plan: take the train northeasterly through the eastern
part of the Czech Republic and Katowice, Poland to Warsaw, then head due west
to Berlin, then to a place yet to be determined near the Dutch/German
border. We went with Cordelia to the
train station the next day, and were able to get tickets to Warsaw for us and
the bike. It would require two trains,
the first two of five we would board on our exodus.
Things
did not start auspiciously. We waited in
the middle of the platform, not knowing what sort of train would take us the
first hour to Breclav, Czech Republic.
It turned out to be a fairly crowded double-decker commuter train. There was a car with space for bikes, but it
was one car back from where we waited, and we didn't see it until later, when
we got off in Breclav. Not a lot of room
for a long tandem, but better than what we had to do: hold the tandem in a
vestibule area for the first 20 minutes, with Jeff repeatedly saying
"excuse me" in German, 'til we got past a stop where almost all
remaining passengers alighted and we could put the bike in the aisle.
We did have one tandem-related issue in Breclav -- dealing with stairs. We had to move from Platform 1 to Platform 2, but the elevator was too short (Vienna and Berlin had great elevators by contrast). So all the luggage had to come off, carried down a flight of stairs, jog back up to the bike and together carry the bike down the staircase, then repeat the dance step on the up staircase. Another reason to pack light!
The
through train to Warsaw was, by contrast, a breeze. Once again the tandem had the bike area to
itself, and we had a comfortable ride across the flat plains of Poland. It was a modern coach with a sign at the end
identical to ones in Chinese high speed trains, telling us our next destination
and our speed (we topped out at 159 kph/100 mph).
Because of our last-minute plans and need to find lodging near the Warsaw train station, we had to settle for a fairly expensive place that, at least, billed itself as a glitzy boutique hotel. It was glitzy -- but the bathroom sink didn't drain (and didn't get fixed after our call to the front desk), the bed was rock-hard, and we had no hot water for a morning shower. We cancelled our plan to do a day of sightseeing, checked out, and headed to the train station. The ticket agent spoke German, at least, so Jeff was able to buy us tickets straight to Berlin. Again, a train every two hours and, again, the first one was filled. As soon as we knew we had a train, we headed to a McDonald's in the train station to get on free wifi. Yes! The hotel we used a month ago, a block from the Berlin train station, had a room at an affordable price. We locked that in and waited for our train.
We
had reserved seats and a reserved bike spot in car 267. Down on the platform we found a diagram of
our train, clearly showing that car 267 is ways the car right behind the
locomotive. Bingo, another easy time of
it. At lunch time we went to the
restaurant car, which was fairly quiet, so we had a private compartment in
which to enjoy our pierogies, salad and soup.
That evening we walked along the Spree River, following the route of the
Berlin Wall for a ways as it zig-zaged across Berlin, and had another good meal at an outdoor cafe.
As soon
as we had arrived in Berlin, we had booked the final leg to Norden, Germany,
where we had found a country inn that sounded like a good place to recover at
from all this train travel. Having
hopped on five trains in four days with only one half-hour of awkwardness with
the tandem, we were feeling like it was not such a big deal to take a tandem by
train around Europe. We were about to be
re-educated.
There is
one direct train each day from Berlin to Norden, but it was fully booked
already. That should have been a warning
sign. The ticket agent got us a
two-step passage, changing trains in Hannover.
The train had booked more passengers than seats, but luckily fewer bikes
than bike hooks. By resting against
three bike-parking spots we were able to avoid blocking all passage with our
8-foot-long bike. We even managed to get
two fold-down jumper seats and chatted with a German couple who had a Beer
Bike: a bike with its own keg!
The last
leg was the hardest. Waaaay too many
bikes, waaaay too many passengers, about fifty of them pre-teens returning from
a school trip. Luckily we got our bike
on early so it sat against the window as others stacked up against it, and
luckier still we got two seats. It was
less than four hours but felt like twice that.
In short,
it's possible to travel by train with
a tandem, but sometimes awkward and always potentially unfair to other cyclists,
as bike hooks and bike spaces are mostly designed for single bikes. We were lucky because early June is not high
season, and three of our four travel days were weekdays. It may not be a coincidence that our hardest
leg was on a Friday, with many people on our train heading to resorts in Ost
Friesland. On many weekends and during
the entire months of July and August, a trip like ours could easily become a
nightmare.
We think we have now educated
ourselves enough on the possibilities and perils of taking a tandem by train across Europe. We hope we don't have to do it again.
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