Loved reading Vitali's account of his numerous train journeys in the online version of E&T Magazine. A little bit different than my own fraught journeys in the UK...! (I have a love/hate relationship with a particular train company but I won't go into that here...)
I'll go along with Roger Bryant's take on Swiss railways. Their punctuality, at least up until recently, was exemplary but some passengers are now starting to think that the network has become saturated and it only takes a little incident to throw a whole region out of joint. Punctuality is extremely important in Switzerland because of the numbers of times one often has to change trains. At least the platform numbers are known in advance so you don't waste time looking for this information.
Last year I had a two hour ride from Brig to Zürich so I prepared lots of work to get done during the journey. None of it got done! The mountains, streams, villages, forests etc etc were just too beautiful to open my laptop.(and use the special Swiss 220V adapter)
A very different journey last year was Prague to Debrecin and having to change station in Budapest using a rip off taxi. Following the Danube valley was certainly picturesque but the ensuing trek across the plains to Debrecen was frankly boring and not helped by a ticket inspector who didn't want to speak anything other then Hungarian and was only half satisfied with my reservation printed in German and Czech. Did I do him out of the possibility to impose a fine?
I'll go along with Roger Bryant's take on Swiss railways. Their punctuality, at least up until recently, was exemplary but some passengers are now starting to think that the network has become saturated and it only takes a little incident to throw a whole region out of joint. Punctuality is extremely important in Switzerland because of the numbers of times one often has to change trains. At least the platform numbers are known in advance so you don't waste time looking for this information.
Last year I had a two hour ride from Brig to Zürich so I prepared lots of work to get done during the journey. None of it got done! The mountains, streams, villages, forests etc etc were just too beautiful to open my laptop.(and use the special Swiss 220V adapter)
A very different journey last year was Prague to Debrecin and having to change station in Budapest using a rip off taxi. Following the Danube valley was certainly picturesque but the ensuing trek across the plains to Debrecen was frankly boring and not helped by a ticket inspector who didn't want to speak anything other then Hungarian and was only half satisfied with my reservation printed in German and Czech. Did I do him out of the possibility to impose a fine?
