Bratislava to Dresden

I'm writing this on Intercity Train Number 172, the "Hungaria", on its way from Budapest to Hamburg. Our destination for today is Dresden. We're in the front coach, in First Class seats, just having crossed the Austrian-Slovak border once again (starting in Bratislava, we re-entered Austria briefly travelling towards Wien at the start of the journey, but are now heading north). It's going to be a ride through flat landscapes for most of the way *, as we could see when we flew south from Hannover to Wien, last Thursday. An Australian couple sitting behind me is going from Budapest to Prague (Praha). The coach is empty enough for us to choose where to sit, even though we had reservations in Seats 53 and 55. Each seat has a small table and electrical sockets, which is nice, and best of all, there's air-conditioning. Outside, another scorching day in the mid-30s C. We have just had to get used to this weather, lately. Ever since Sweden, in fact, two months ago.

* This prediction turned out to be wrong.

First stop, Kúty. Never heard of it. The new passengers are boarding the train from the rail level, as in mid-20th century Europe. The driver has turned off the engine, lights and air-conditioning (they came on again after a few minutes, after the driver announced something incomprehensible). The Slovak Republic, so we now realise, is bordered by Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine and Hungary: all those influences upon one little country. Its history is complex in the extreme. Chris learned a lot of it, yesterday, from Marina's brother-in-law, a lifelong inhabitant of Bratislava. My diplomat friend Marina, from Macedonia, posted in Ottawa about 10 years ago and at that time a member of my German conversation group, has been following our Facebook posts and knew she'd be able to meet me in Bratislava, where she happened to be visiting her sister here. As she is currently resident in Moscow (after a stint in New Delhi), this was a wonderful, unforeseen opportunity to get together. Chris and I met her at the fountain in the long central square called Hviezdoslavovo Namestie, at the National Theatre (opera house) end. Actually it was her twin sister I greeted first, thinking it was her, they look so alike. I had been deliberately teased. The three of them treated us to a wonderful evening sitting out of doors in a quiet side street at a traditional Slovak restaurant, with checked red and white tablecloths over long tables inside, and the waitresses in traditionally embroidered aprons. I had vegetarian pierogies (pirohy) with a mushroom sauce, and beer (pivo); Chris ordered a Viennese Schnitzel since most of the Slovak dishes seemed to contain cheese, which he won't touch. He did have a slice of cheesecake for dessert around the corner, at a different restaurant, but that's sweet, therefore different. This evening was a sort of celebration of our 45th wedding anniversary!

We're now approaching Břeclav in the Czech Republic, and as we meander back and forth across the border, across the Dyje River, the Internet connection on the train comes and goes. The ticket man has just distributed bottles of water to all the 1st Class passengers. Water is voda in all the local languages, an important word to know in this climate. I'm glad I paid the extra 10 euros each (not much extra!) to travel 1st Class on this nearly 7 hour journey. We're now riding through sunflower fields with a steep hill on the horizon.

Nearly midday, and we are pulling into Brno. Brno considers itself the capital of Moravia, originally (a very long time ago) settled by Celts, so that some of the local language apparently ressembles Welsh (c.f. bryn)! It has a two-spired cathedral perched on a rock near its rather ornate, neo-Baroque central railway station (hlavni nadrazi), and a castle on a hill besides.

I have just received a Facebook message from our friend Vladimir in Prague, who'd like to have to seen us and taken us flying in his plane; there just wasn't time. He was in Brno yesterday! ... An hour later, my Facebook update posted between Brno and Prague was immediately "liked" by a friend in Australia. How interconnected we all are!

And now we have had a satisfying cooked lunch in the Bordrestaurant coach, with a glass of Hungarian Chardonnay for me. The land becomes more hilly from time to time, with little towns or villages including churches with onion domes. We are only about 20 km from the Polish border.

"Ladies and gentlemen, our train is now about 20 minutes delayed." No worries, from my point of view, I am enjoying this ride so much. Now stopping at Kolín, getting closer to Praha, Prague.

With several miles of outskirts, Praha looks like a big city, with extensive marshalling yards for the trains. Most other passengers are preparing to leave the train here. Chris and I are starting on the box of chocolates Marina gave us, a gift from Moscow! They're very sweet marshmallows coated with chocolate, so I had better not eat too many. A cleaning lady has come on board to tidy up the train. On the next leg, between here and Dresden, we shall be re-entering Germany. We're pulling out of the station in the opposite direction, having lost the engine at our end of the train. The ticket collector (a different man, this time) is preparing to come round again to check our tickets and distribute the water bottles. Prague looks hot, hazy and hilly, out there. I caught a glimpse of the Vltava, with barges on it, as we crossed it just now.

We followed the Vltava downstream for about an hour, the scenery increasingly interesting. We're now beyond Usti nad Labem, on the Elbe, which is still in the Czech Republic, but approaching the German border, with strange rock formations around us. At Děčín, further down, about to enter a steeper sided valley, the hills covered with trees, we had a longer stop ... and here I had to break off writing my blogpost because we were suddenly told, "This train ends here!" The Hungaria had broken down, or its computer had (I noticed repeated vain attempts to reset the seat number displays), therefore we were obliged to grab our luggage and get out onto the platform, where chaos reigned, nobody knowing what to do next or where to go. I thought I'd heard a garbled announcement that a train to Bad Schönau was waiting on Platform 1 which would connect with an S-Bahn to Dresden, but when we hurried there, down and up all the steps, there was no such train, or it had already left. The departure boards in the concourse were in German and Czech, listing places we'd never heard of, no mention of Bad Schönau. All other notices were only in Czech. Back to Platform 3 to try asking an official, except that Platform 3 turned out to be Platform 2 and we had to repeat the luggage lifting exercise on the steps. The helpless passengers, using various foreign languages, were still milling around getting nowhere. We decided to go back to the concourse, I now literally dripping with sweat because of the heat. Chris told me to stop panicking, so I joined a queue at the information centre, wondering if we'd need new tickets. Apparently not, but we would need to wait a couple of hours. I was given a timetable printout giving the time of our next train to Dresden as 18:05. It was the Berlin train, 30 minutes delayed, so we actually boarded it at 18:40 after waiting on the concourse with the crowd of backpacker students, Chinese families seeing the world and other unfortunates. The little snack shop accepted Visa cards, so that helped (we only had euros in cash, which was not the right currency). I went outside the station to take pictures, during our wait, and we found somewhere to sit.

Wikipedia photo

Děčín, had we had the opportunity to get rid of our luggage and stay the night there, would have been worth exploring, an attractive town in splendid scenery on a curve of the Elbe: the posters calling it České Švýcarsko, the Czech Switzerland. Only 6 km downstream, beyond the German border, the countryside is known as die Sächsische Schweiz (of which I'd already heard). My daughter Emma did this journey with two friends in 1994 when she was a backpacker and tells me these were the most beautiful views from a train she has ever had.

Our 1st Class tickets allowed us into a comfortable part of the Berlin train; the remainder of the journey was only a 45 minute ride, with the splendid views Emma promised us. Our hotel in Dresden is visible from the station so we were checked in by 8 pm, and then set out for supper in the Altmarkt and for a sunset walk around the city centre.