Tales of European Transport

We thought it might make a good blog subject to discuss the myth that public transportation, and indeed traveling in general, within Europe is easy.

Here are a few things that have frustrated us.

We bought a Eurail pass, which cost a ton of money right up front. It theoretically allows us to travel within Europe endlessly. But there have been a ton of hidden fees and surprises.

Most trains are "mandatory reservation" trains, which means that your fare is covered by Eurail, but not necessarily the fee associated with the reserved seat. These fees have ranged from a few dollars to 90 Euro ($125) each for a sleeper train from Madrid to Lausanne, Switzerland (near Geneva). So that has really added up.

Then there's the issue of scope. The pass provided a map, which shows routes across Europe, but the countries where the pass isn't valid are shown in gray. Thinking this accurate, we got on the train in Budapest, changed in Vienna and headed north to Prague. When the Czech conductor came by to check our ticket, he said that our Eurail pass was not valid in the Czech Republic and that we either had to pay an upcharge or get off the train. Lacking local currency, we chose to get off in the next town, where we had to buy a ticket on the next one. It thankfully cost just a few dollars because it was a local train, but smelled of BO and took three hours longer than it should have.

So all our tickets in the Czech Republic and Poland we had to pay out of pocket. This little deception on Eurail's part has cost us a few hundred dollars.

And that doesn't even include the subway. After arriving in Prague four hours later than expected, we tried to buy a ticket on the metro. But at 8pm, all the ticket booths were closed, and the machines only took coins. This does not make sense in the country's biggest train station, where arriving passengers are mostly from other countries, and lucky to have local currency, let alone small coins. Luckily in Prague they don't actually take tickets when you get on the metro, so we had to risk it.

Sometimes, even when you do pay, they find nice little excuses to extort you. Arriving in Krakow this afternoon, we bought a ticket on the streetcar (2.50 Polish Zlotny, or about $.90) We got on the tram, and a man came by to check tickets. We produced ours, but we hadn't stamped the ticket in the appropriate box when we got on, resulting in a 150 zlotny fine ($56). Welcome to Krakow. This fine went in the guy's back pocket as well. This episode really ticked us off, because we were obviously tourists who had just arrived, bags and all, and it wasn't like we didn't buy a ticket.

Anyway, I apologize for the rant, but we are honestly getting a bit frustrated at European public transportation, which is supposedly so "easy" and "efficient."