Meine gute Freundin Ellis war letztes Wochenende mit dem Nachtzug (und meinem ebenfalls guten Freund Nils) in Prag und hat darüber (auf englisch) in ihrem Blog berichtet. Ich finde den Bericht ganz interessant, weil er mal nicht aus meinem Eisenbahnfreund-Blickwinkel geschrieben ist. Deswegen zitiere ich alle Passagen, in denen es ums Bahnfahren geht, mit freundlicher Genehmigung hier. Los geht’s mit der Hinfahrt:
Started at around quarter to 9 p.m. on Friday and took the bus to Münster Hbf, then went to Rheda-Wiedenbrück to change to Bielefeld. Waiting at Rheda-Wiedenbrück isn’t the nicest of things: I am not a big fan of big groups of drunk young men who shout. I just wanted to read my magazines and get to Bielefeld as soon as possible. Train stations aren’t really great at night: Most people taking trains at that time are drunk and really annoying. I guess it is better to take the train than drive, but I would prefer if they stayed at home.
At Bielefeld, my train to Prague was supposed to leave at around quarter to one. The train station got rather nice, they did a lot of work on it during the last couple of years. When I looked at the train times, I wasn’t so sure anymore whether this was the right train. The special thing about City Night Line trains is that you aren’t allowed to alight or get on board at each train station. This meant that people just were allowed to get on board, meaning that the train wasn’t present on the arrival sheet. As well as that, a train with the same name would have left at half past 11 that night. As I found out later on, there is one train which splits and then goes into different directions from Berlin. One part leaves for Copenhagen, one for Minsk, one for Warsaw and one for Prague. The other Prague parts of the one leaving earlier and taking the longer way are then attached to the train I took.
The train itself can hardly be called glamourous: My friend and I reserved opposite divan beds in one compartment for 4 people. The compartments themselves are really small and you only get a pillow, a clean bed sheet and a wool duvet. And it is rather smelly everywhere: A mixture of used air, sweat and alcohol. I wasn’t really relaxed to sleep there, as you can imagine. One can bolt the door of the compartment and there are curtains, too, but as the train conductor reappeared to wake people up, that wasn’t really practical.
However, our fellow travellers seemed to be pleasant, one of them got off at Berlin already, but later, WE got woken up by a German policeman, who asked the Chinese to show his passport. Behind the Czech border, the train stopped for about 3 quarters of an hour. It had been late at Bielefeld, but could make up some of the time because those trains tend to stop for very long periods of time at train stations according to plan. Apparently the locomotive was broken. That meant that we would arrive about one hour late at Prague Main Station, so we decided to get off earlier, one station before, where the maths faculty would be.