Lessons learned

We learned the hard way that seat reservations are important.

On boarding in Vienna, we had scoured our tickets for seat assignments but didn't see any. This had happened before and we lucked into seats together so we weren't too concerned. 

When we scrambled onto the train when it arrived we grabbed a couple seats in the first compartment, stashed our luggage and started to settle in. Another passenger arrived, then another, and then two who had reserved the seats we were in. They explained that reservations for seats were typically needed on this route. 

They pointed out that one seat in the cabin was unreserved so I had my mom settle there and went to look for another option. Outside the compartment I noticed small slips of paper in plastic holders for each seat number indicating their status, and I was able to get another seat two compartments away. I settled in with my book. Krakow was the last stop, so I knew I'd be able to collect my mom later.

The conductor scanned my ticket and said all was good.

A while after that a seat opened up in my mom's car so I moved up. After some distance there was an announcement that said something about Krakow but we couldn't really hear it. 

And a little later the conductor scanned our tickets - again - and again indicated they were good. 

As we started to pull in to the final stop a woman in the car asked us if we were ending our journey in Wroclaw and we told her we were carrying on to Krakow. She looked distressed and asked to see the information about our train. It turned out that the train had split back at the Czech-Polish border, and we were on the wrong half.

Something the conductor should have noticed.

 She flagged down another staff  member who apologised and advised us to buy a ticket to Krakow in the station. He must have sent the conductor back to find out what went wrong. He gave the same advice. And as we were leaving the train he asked - with quite a bit of attitude - why I didn't read the piece of paper stuck in the train window that said Wroclaw. Many of the trains we have been on have the final destination on signage so that wouldn't have meant anything if I had seen it. I wanted to ask why he didn't read my ticket since he'd scanned it twice.

So we ended up stuck in Wroclaw for almost 4 hours, and now we are on a train to Krakow and should arrive around 5:30 am rather than 9:30 in the evening.

We have tours booked for tomorrow (today!). We are hoping to get a few hours sleep beforehand.


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