Praha to Krakow

Once on the night train, we quickly made ourselves comfortable in the couchette we found empty. After making all the seats into a comfy bed and arranging all our things and even changing into our PJs the ticket lady finally made her way to our room. She checked our tickets and instructed us in broken English that this portion of the train was not headed to Krakow and that we would need to move up three cars. For those of you who don’t know, trains can apparently split into two and the front half can head to one destination while the back half goes somewhere completely different. Thankful for the information, we packed up our things and moved forward.

However, on our walk ahead, we found all the second class cabins to be reserved, one empty first class car before another locked door to the next second class car. We chose another couchette in the first class car and again settled in, making our beds and arranging our things.

Again, the ticket lady showed up and informed us that we had second class tickets and therefore couldn’t sit in this car (despite it being empty). We told her of the locked door and the reserved seats in either direction but she did not understand. After getting another official, they figured out what it was we were saying. They removed the reserved signs and instructed us to move back to second class. We did as told and were welcomed not by the cozy couchettes we had just been in but a small room with two small bench seats. We did our best to get comfortable despite the constant noise and stops where we had to hold on for dear life or else you’d fall to the dirty ground below.

At 3am, an angry looking ticket man (he may have just been German) woke us up and demanded to see our tickets. We complied and he left us with another 3 hours left for our journey. After a nearly sleepless night, we finally arrived in Krakow.