chocolatebuddha » Archives » Budapest to Krakow : Aboard the Cracovia

The sun has still not risen to greet us for the morning, as the view from our sleeper booth window remains dark except for the lights from railway stops that we ride by. As I write, the time is mere minutes away from 5am and it is our final hour of the 10 hours train journey from Budapest to Krakow on the aptly named Cracovia. We left Budapest’s Keleti station at 7:10pm yesterday evening.

Our train car is the only one with rooms and beds while the rests had booths for six seated passengers (similar to the one we sat on from Bratislava to Budapest). Paying 11000Fts extra, we had spent almost all the past nine hours asleep being soothed and swayed by the suspension of the train in our double-decked private room. If you sleep on the bed above, it will sway as the train glides or perhaps run over the tracks because a chain attaches it from the wall. On the bottom bed, which is probably 2 inches larger, you can feel the clear relationship between the wheels of the train and the anatomy of the tracks you are under. I am on the bottom bed.

With the boom of budget airlines, traveling overnight on a train may have lost its popularity. This train car had only 4 rooms occupied out of 12. Having learnt our lesson well on chasing time with trains in Bratislava, we were settled into our room much earlier this time. And we hope to keep our future train ride planned this way.

Arriving early does have its rewards. When we boarded, the train conductor took our tickets away after he checked that it was in order. Something did not seem right as we would have lost our only proof of payment to show our legal rights to be on this train. The rest who came up the train had their tickets taken away from them too.

In unity and being cautious (maybe seasoned) travelers, we confirmed the ticket confiscation with our neighbors, two other traveling couple. On our right was a burly man in his 50s from Miami with a Polish accent (he claimed, we wouldn’t have known) and his wife from Budapest. They are going to Krakow for the first time as well and recommended we stay in Holiday Inn. Maybe next time, on our second trip to Krakow. Maybe when we are old (and richer!) and still traveling together then.

Meanwhile, Kerem and Neave were on the left booth. They are from Galway, Ireland and have spent the past 2 weeks mostly in Poland. This train ride will take them back again to Krakow and they will fly back home from Lodz. Both have just graduated as civil engineers and did a trip before starting work in the next few weeks. Such a great idea, wonder why we did not had these traits of Magellan during our youths.

Not to complain, we both feel very fortunate being on this journey. I believe that traveling is not something to be done only at a particular point of life. Traveling as a university student would have given us a different experience from now and another different experience when we are much older. So we’ll never stop being on the road.

It’s time to go now. I would not want to miss catching the sunrise on Poland’s countryside.