I open my eyes and for a few seconds wonder where I am. Only the sensory perception of my close environment brings me back to reality. An easily recognizable rhythmic rumble reminds me that I just woke up on a train. The gray blanket in which I am wrapped on the narrow padded bed also testifies that it is the sleeping compartment of an overnight train, which is confirmed by a glance from the other side of the aisle. , where I recognize the strange face of an unknown woman sleeping in the darkness of dawn. Loud humming from above (and quieter from below) tells me that several other people are in the compartment.
Behind the window, in the mist, green fields pass by and, a little later, a small station with an inscription in French. Everything then follows in my mind: yesterday afternoon, I boarded a train in Prague with the aim of reaching Barcelona. At this point, I’m about halfway there.
Have a sense of planning
At first glance, wanting to travel to Spain by taking the train in the Czech Republic may seem like a devoid of common sense idea. Who then, in the XXIe century, would like to cross half of Europe having to change trains several times when the same distance can be covered more quickly and more cheaply on a direct flight? Despite this logical skepticism, long-distance train travel is experiencing a new boom in Europe. So I wanted to know if reaching a seaside resort as popular as Barcelona by train was reasonable, or even only possible.
My experience shows that it requires a lot more planning and also more time than an extremely easy air transfer. Nevertheless, a long train journey offers the patient traveler something that the plane will never be able to offer: a slow crossing of the landscapes, the possibility of soaking up the atmosphere of several European cities at the same time and, above all, the feeling that the journey as such is already a life experience.
However, the beginning of the trip in question is not spectacular – on Monday at 1.30 p.m., I board the express train called “Jizni” (“from the South”) at Prague’s central station, pulled by an old locomotive and , at 1:49 p.m. precisely, we set off laboriously for Linz, Austria.
This start is all the more lazy as an inconvenience occurs less than an hour later: due to work on the track, all passengers must get off and travel a short section near Tabor (100 kilometers south of Prague) in substitute buses. But then, we return to the train and the crossing of the picturesque landscapes of South Bohemia makes us forget this start with shortness of breath.
The importance of departure
The departure is however crucial. By train, the entire subsequent course of the journey depends on the first connection. One train always follows another. I did not choose to travel to Barcelona via Austria by chance. It’s not the quickest or cheapest option, but it’s the route that personally works best for me. This is the special thing about long-distance train travel: there are always many routes, and it is up to you to decide which one to take.
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