Czech castles. A novel in five parts with a prologue and an epilogue.
Prologue: trains, platforms, trains.
On the eve of my birthday, the question arose: “Where to rush? ” Nostalgic for the beer and Prague of last year's celebration (for those who haven't read it, I give the link /praga/blog-231097.html), it was decided to "rush" back to the Czech Republic. To be honest, I have looked at the castles of South Bohemia and Moravia several times already. The fact that the tour operators offered me absolutely did not appeal. I wanted only on my own, and given the number and remoteness, the option clearly loomed by car (airplane to Prague + car rental). Looking for plane tickets to Prague, and not finding anything worthy of attention, I asked myself: “how else can I get to this very Moravia. ”
Own car - "did not pass the tender" for many reasons.
Bus - same.
Train - oh.... but this is interesting.
After surfing the Internet, I came up with the following route:
Vinnitsa (Ukraine) - Chop (Ukraine) - Zahony (Hungary) - Budapest (1 night) - Brno (Czech Republic). We rent a car in Brno. Trebic (2 nights) – Ceske Budejovice (3 nights) – Breclav (2 nights) – Brno – Budapest (1 night) – Zahony – Chop – Vinnitsa.
A small digression: there is a trailer car Lviv - Budapest, but you can buy tickets only at the box office at the station, and I don’t know the price for it.
Some tickets were purchased online (Vinnytsia-Chop-Vinnytsia, Budapest-Brno-Budapest, Budapest-Zahony), and some decided to buy on the spot. Accommodation booked through Booking. com. And the car in Brno was also booked online in advance.
See the train schedule in the direction of Zakhon-Chop here: https://www. uz. gov. ua/passengers/timetable/? station=20115&by_station=1
I bought tickets for Hungary here: http://elvira. mav-start. hu/elvira. dll/
Night train No. 13 - Kyiv - Solotvyno - convenient, in the evening we boarded the train and arrived in Chop in the morning. According to the estimated timetable between the arrival in Chop and the departure of the train to Zahony, we should have a whole hour, but..... the train was late for 40 minutes. In the vestibule we were the first to exit. The building of the international station in Chop is located to the left of the suburban one (the suburban one looks prettier). We quickly run to the ticket office to buy a ticket, and get in line to go through customs control. The ticket looks like this.
The ticket price is UAH 91 (3E). During these 20 minutes, everyone who stood in line managed to get tickets and go through customs. The train consists of a locomotive and one carriage, and travels across the border in 15 minutes. Our next train Zahony - Budapest departed 20 minutes after arrival in Zahony. But at this moment we were not particularly worried that we would not be in time, we did not have tickets. The next train was scheduled to leave in an hour. There were no queues for tickets on the Hungarian side. The girl standing in front spoke Hungarian and helped us quickly communicate with the cashier. (English is not in use here). But just in case, I had a piece of paper in Hungarian prepared from home, where and what kind of tickets I need. They gave us such tickets.
Cost 5870 Ft (19 E). First, it was necessary to get to Nyí regyhá za (Nyí regyhá za) , and then transfer to the "intercity" to Budapest. The gap between these trains is 10 minutes. Stops on the Hungarian train are not announced, so I had to keep track of the time of arrival (I wrote down when we should change) and the names of the stations. The transfer consists in the fact that you need to go along the platform to the desired train. Time, if not to yawn, is quite enough to get into your car. On the doors there are signs with the name of the train and the number of the car. Hooray. Now you can relax on the train for four hours, charge your gadgets, sleep, look out the window.
Small explanation on the specifics of Hungarian railways. Tickets for local trains (including intercity) are sold without seats and are valid for three days from the date of sale. But on the intercity, you still need to separately buy a seat reservation (the ticket shows 300 Ft + the ticket office fee 410 per person and the ticket itself is 5160 separately in the photo) At the box office, it (reservation) was sold to us immediately. A seat reservation is valid only for this particular train. And if you missed it, buy a seat reservation again.
And for international destinations, you can buy a ticket on the Internet, but again there is a nuance. The code of this ticket is sent to the mail, and the piece of paper itself must be printed out in a special machine. You cannot use this code. On their website, they warn about this with “red letters”. I honestly studied on the English version of the site, the whole process of buying Budapest-Brno tickets. Bought. It remains just a little, upon arrival at the station in Budapest, to print them. The site has a diagram of where these same printing machines are located, and a photo of how they look. Well, everything seems to be simple. : ))) Well, yes, of course : ))) We arrived. Immediately went to look for these machines. Found. Photos of these machines.
And tickets are not printed. Writes - look for another machine. We think it might be broken. We twirled around the station, there is no other like it. Then we decided to look for local workers of the station. We got on the road uncle in uniform. We to him: “Do you speak English? ” A - no. We are on our fingers (I printed out a piece of paper with a code and a description of the tickets at home) trying to explain what we need. Thank God, he understood us, took us by the hand and led us to such an inconspicuous, to put it mildly, shabby door - They will help you here.
Come in. Then they understood us faster and sent us to these machines.
Hurrah!!! ! The menu is in English, everything is clear. They entered the code, the machine hummed, and spat out two tickets for us. We stand and read. One ticket is the right Budapest-Brno for the right train.
And here is the second one. . . We are standing, dumbfounded, reading again. It is not clear - from where and where, for one person (and there were four of us) and for the month of August. Again they tried to “rape” the machine and entered the code again. And he writes: "Shit to you - I printed all the tickets, you won't get any more. " The eternal question: "What to do? " We don't know where to turn except through the shabby door. They came. Well, we know English, and how did it help us? Again on the fingers and a few words in English, they explained what the problem was. We must pay tribute to local workers, the field of achieving mutual understanding, the girl called on the phone, explained something into the phone for a long time (apparently she ran into the system administrator), and the man brought us a printed ticket - already correct.
Tickets sold 28 E round trip per person.
Let's go to our apartments and relax. I picked up accommodation right next to the Budapest-Nyugati train station, a convenient transport interchange, and we had the same poisoning from it, and it took 10 minutes to walk to the Parliament.
We walked around the center, ate and went for a night swim in the Rudash thermal baths. There was no time left to sleep.
Morning train to Brno. That's where we slept : ). Drive to Brno for four hours.
Continuation https://www.turpravda.ua/cz/blog-325037.html
