Travel Blog

I knew before our whole trip started that today would be interesting. And spoiler alert…I don’t have much for photos to share from our long day of traveling from Prague to Luxembourg, since we spent most of the time with the countryside flying by, trying to rearrange travel plans, and making backup plans of backup plans. Our Eurail passes were only good through today and we have separate train tickets from Luxembourg to Paris, so we really needed to get to Luxembourg today or the next day at the latest to keep our plans on track.

To start off our early morning, we walked almost 2 miles back to the Prague train station with all our gear (as when we arrived), getting there with what should have been plenty of time to catch our first train to Germany.

But when we didn’t see the train number on the board, I looked closer at the paper reservation sent by mail to us from Eurail (the rest of our reservations I was thankfully able to make online) – and I saw the reservation was actually for a bus, not a train. Um, well, we’d arrived from Germany by train so I just assumed we went back by train.

Okay, then, so where did we need to catch the bus? Should be a simple answer, right?

Nope. We must’ve walked the entire station (except where we needed to be) at least 3 times before deciding to ask the information desk for assistance. We only did that because the departure time was quickly approaching and we needed to get to Luxembourg.

That’s when we discovered the folks who work in the Prague train station are less than entirely unhelpful, quite unlike our experience asking for help in Paris.

And I can confidently make that generalization, because before we finally left we’d asked two different people who were staffing two different desks in different areas of the station…each of whom had banners right above them, advertising “information” about trains, trams, and buses.

All we wanted to know was where the buses picked up passengers – neither person would tell us.

Thankfully I finally located a kiosk set off to the side while Marc waited to talk to the second unhelpful person. While the front side was an advertisement, the back side was – YES!! – a station map! It was not in English, but lo and behold, it made the use of icons and I can recognize the icon of a bus.

We raced as well as one can race carrying all our gear, and found the bus stop! Just in time, too – we arrived with only 2 minutes to the departure time.

And just wow, all the buses stop in the same area to pickup passengers, proving it really wasn’t that difficult of a question for the “information” people to answer. Maybe they were expecting a bribe?? I assume they were getting paid to sit there to “help” people all day long…and sadly they fit into the picture our truffle guide painted for us yesterday when she warned us about hailing ANY taxi in Prague (especially from the airport), being careful about which ATMs to use (we’d already noticed a lot of unmarked ATMs in the area), and various other similar things to watch out for.

But we managed to get ourselves on the bus in time, so we were happy and still on track to meet our reserved train from Nuremberg (where we were currently headed) to Frankfurt.

We arrived in Nuremberg with 20 minutes before our next train. We felt like we were getting the hang of the train system – we confidently found the platform number for our train and headed up. When we arrived there was a different train at the platform which was also headed to Frankfurt…but it was an earlier time than our train (this train was running late), and not the one we had reservations on. Our train was still listed as coming up so we waited.

I’d heard rumblings about trains (plural) running late, so I wasn’t surprised when the time for our train changed to 30 minutes later. What did surprise me was when it completely dropped off the board 5 minutes after that! Thinking the platform must’ve changed, our girl and I hurried downstairs to check the departure board. But our train had completely vanished into thin air!!

While I was digesting this and trying to use the Eurail app to help us figure out an alternate route, an older woman approached and started asking me questions about her train because it wasn’t on the board either. However, she only spoke German, and I do not know any German. But I pulled up the Eurail app and between the two of us we managed to get her train info…turned out it wasn’t on the board yet only because it was far enough out from the departure time. She was so happy and grateful though, and I was glad I could help even in the midst of our predicament. And I think that gave us a load of good karma, which we sure needed later!

We waited for the next 2+ hr train to Frankfurt, hoping to keep on our original path, even without our reservation. Everyone from our “ghost” train apparently had the same idea.

When we first climbed on board, there were no seats available so we camped out between the cars. That’s when our good karma started to pay off – there were two seats open in one of the “quiet” rooms, and instead of taking one, a kind gentleman let us know and offered them to us. Our girl and I went in and sat down, and our train continued on for about 45 min.

Then we pulled into a train station and the conductor started speaking loudly and harshly over the loudspeaker, repeating the same thing over and over – but only in German. And the train stayed still. One of the German gentlemen in the room turned out to be nice and very helpful. He figured we didn’t understand or know what was going on, so he told us the conductor had stopped the train and was refusing to move until everyone exited who did not have seat reservations…something about getting ready to go through tunnels, and there being too many people on board.

Of course I was worried since we technically didn’t have reservations for this specific train (just the “ghost” train) and the boys had so far only managed to grab one seat between them. But the gentleman seemed confident we’d be fine if we just waited, and so we did.

We waited……..and waited……..and occasionally the conductor would repeat his terse statement in German………and we waited……..people gradually left the train, but still we waited……..and eventually our compartment-mates started talking about jumping off and hopping onto the regional train to Frankfurt that pulled up on the opposite track. Thank goodness enough people decided to act on that impulse and our train finally started moving again! We must’ve sat stalled on that track for at least an hour, but at last we were continuing on our way.

I’d been using the Eurail app during our travels to this point, knowing that it had regular schedules and not current updates, but we’d been limping along with it until now. I previously tried finding out how to get up-to-date information about the trains, but it wasn’t until this trip that I finally found out how – our new German friend gave me the name of the app that he used, called DB Navigator, and I discovered it also has platform departure information! If only we’d known about this sooner!

Our new friend helped us look at how we might make the rest of our way to Luxembourg, and ended up saying he thought we must have bad train karma that day…a later train we needed to connect from had been cancelled, and no others scheduled after.

Au contrere! Without his help getting us the app with live info we wouldn’t have know that particular leg was cancelled and would’ve been stuck for sure until the next day.

Finally we got to Frankfurt.

Here is the one photo I took today, which I *think* was inside the Frankfurt station (but don’t hold me to it):

Next step, we caught a train from Frankfurt to Mannheim. There we found a DB counter and grabbed a number for a place in line…I’d found a way to get us to Luxembourg, but the only path left that day included a reservation on a bus after completing one more train leg from Mannheim. After our experience and hearing that the entire train system was going haywire that day (hence our “ghost” train – I’m just glad we weren’t aboard when it disappeared!), I was hesitant to make future reservations dependent on train arrival time.

Armed with the new app showing that our next train appeared on time, we went for broke and booked the bus. We barely made our connecting train because the lady at the counter accidentally booked us on another bus and had to refund/rebook. Happily we then made it via train from Mannheim to Saarbrucken, Germany!

Now so close to the end of our travels, we came face-to-face with the problem that started our day – where did the buses pick up passengers?

After a few attempts at figuring it out ourselves, I blindly focused on any remaining karma we might have from earlier today, and asked a group of what appeared to be college students. One of them felt some sympathy despite the language barrier, and once she realized where we were headed, told us exactly where to catch our bus.

I can’t tell you how relieved we were to board that final bus. Despite all the craziness, we only got into Luxembourg about 1.5 hrs later than anticipated, and with ~13 hrs travel overall. Without our new German friend, I think we would’ve still made it, but it would’ve taken longer and been more stressful. We also received great tips on places to visit in Germany, along with other pleasant conversation.

Tomorrow, we see Luxembourg and recover from our long, tough day…