Und hier Ellis‘ Bericht von der Rückfahrt:

Spent some time at KFC to get rid of the currency and have a nice place to wait for the time to go, which was a good idea. The train station there is a nightmare. In Germany, there are two kinds of train stations: The really creepy and deserted small ones with one newsagent and one bakery (if there is something at all), and then there are bigger ones which could actually tempt people to stay a little longer. I know, I am not counting the really little ones – they call them „Haltepunkte“ here, meaning something like „stop station“ rather than „train station“. But Prague is different: First of all, everything is „in the cellar“. You won’t see trains or rails from outside. So you have to find an entrance. When walking there, WE had to use some pedestrian underpass with no light, and although it was even before 7 p.m., that was creepy enough. When we stood in front of the building where the train station was supposed to be, there was a sign that said „Aufgang zu den Zügen“, another creepy underpass. We tried finding another entrance, but there was only some café. Didn’t want to risk getting lost, so we finally went through the underpass.

Then, we were in the cellar. It looked like a underground parking spot from one of those horror movies. There were some people, and that isn’t just my paranoia talking, who looked ready to mug us. It is interesting that whenever one goes to a supermarket anywhere (at least those in the inner city in bigger cities), you always end up seeing a large number of people, who are either drunk or mentally disturbed. Same for public transport. I don’t think I am too much of a sissy, but I just don’t expect that amount of strange people at a train station in the inner city in the late afternoon. When we finally went down, there was a big hall with very low ceiling. A couple of policemen kept walking around, there were some other strange figures and I was surprised to see some decent looking people actually taking a nap on one of those few benches around. I wouldn’t risk that. There was some oldfashioned display for the trains, but there was only information on train times, not platforms. Which meant that everybody kept staring at the display, waiting for information. There were a lot of announcements (I got better at understanding what they said) and finally, our train was up. We tried to make time pass quicker by visiting the newsagent, who had a fair percentage of international newspapers. We only had Euros, then, so we didn’t buy anything. Some of the Kronen before were spent on beer (the Krusovice, which looks like pils, not black and some other beer). I had bought a ticket for a compartment with 6 seats, where you are supposed to sit to sleep, but don’t have a divan bed to lie down.

However, I was the only one who had reserved a place there, which meant that there were 6 seats, 3 on each side, enough to lie down. My friend decided, after some person had started drinking beer in his compartment, that it might be nicer to join me rather than lie awake in the compartment, while the drunk was snoring. Some Czech got on and left before the border and had kendo equipment with him, which I noticed later on.
We got a little sleep, although the seats weren’t deep enough and it was rather noisy and arrived at Fulda shortly after 4. The train was supposed to leave there ten to 5, so we decided to stay there until we had to leave as cold train stations are rather boring in the morning. However, when we looked around, we were pleasantly surprised: The Newsagent had already opened half past 4 and the café/coffeeshop was about to open at around 5. So, we had some posh coffee (they even sold oreo milk shake) and some nice bakery goods (they offered breakfast meals) and waited for the train to Hanover. The ICE was nice and I got educated by listening to Annett Louisan (?), which is not really my taste (high-pitched voice and strange musical arrangement), but I really enjoyed the lyrics, so I will buy another CD, which will enlarge the number of CDs I got from female artists by a big percentage.
Had to wait at Bielefeld for a long time and finally got home at around 11:30. Didn’t do much all day except for tidying up and was really tired.

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.