Sunday, November 10, 2013

Its time to leave Prague and head to Lausanne,Switzerland


My routing today to get from Prague, Czech Republic to Lausanne, Switzerland got  little crazy.  Originally, I had hope to take the overnite train, a direct train, stops but no train changes, but since today is Sunday, the busiest travel day for overnites, the entire train was booked, 2nd as well as 1st class. Could not even walk on. Needed a reservation because it was an overnite.

So I stopped off at a travel agency and after 30 minutes, they found that they could route me thru Munich to St. Gellen, Switzerland then on to Lausanne, only 3 train changes. OK, ready to test my german and swiss train skills.
But because of construction and weather issues (it might snow this week, it definitely is a cold rain) the schedule for these immaculately timed trains got out of whack. I'm not being facetious when I say immaculately timed. By the time I got finished, I had 2 train changes of not more that 6 minutes from arrival to departure, one 2 tracks away and one 16 tracks away. I only arrived at 21:58 for a 22:04 departure, the conductor thought 6 minutes was plenty.
This is not untypical and this is how precise the Swiss train system runs. You see people running from train to train all the time at each station. But the gods intervened and said, too easy. One of the trains was going to be delayed for construction (St. Gellen leg) which would push it all out to tomorrow and require a hotel night in probably Zurich. So the train agent changed my schedule and printed out a new itinerary, no ticket changes needed.
BY THE WAY, the great thing about a EURAIL pass is I can walk on any local train without worrying about buying or changing a ticket.
My routing end up being (with departure or arrival times):
Prague(0915) to Munich(1503)
Munich(1620) to Zurich(1958)
Zurich(2004) to Bern(2200)
Bern(2204) to Lausanne(2315)
Even getting to Lausanne 30 minutes earlier than the first schedule. Not only was it stressful for me, not being a stoic Swiss, but it is turning out to be a long day.
Now, I'm glad I decided to fly from Torino next week to Lisbon, instead of the train, which routes you thru Milano to Lyon and Paris, to get to Lisbon. Another Holiday for that trip. It is actually 38 clock hours on the train to get there.
More about Lausanne when I get rested up. I made it to the hotel and wanted to post this before i go to bed. It is now 12:35am and I'm ready to go to sleep. Minus any dinner. Just forgot to eat what with all the stress.

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