minow@decvax.UUCP (06/22/83)
Deak-Perera (a money exchange company) has a give-away booklet for travellers with a variety of helpful hints. Readers of net.railroad might appreciate the following: "One improvement Americans quickly note in Europe is the abundance and quality of public transportation. Bus and train service between cities is frequent and relatively inexpensive.... One cautionary note: Don't count on trains being late since maintaining schedules is a point of pride for the operators." When I was in Europe two years ago, I made one marathon trip from Granada (Southern Spain) to Interlaken, Switzerland. Several of the connections had 3-4 minutes leeway (in the published time-table). No trouble making them, either. If you're going to railroad (Eurail or Interrail pass) in Europe, you'd be well-advised to find a copy of the Thomas Cook Time-table. It has pretty-much every railroad schedule in Europe. Martin Minow decvax!minow
tom@rlgvax.UUCP (06/24/83)
From my experiences I agree that the trains in Europe are generally
punctual and that Italian trains are certainly the exception. Italian
trains are almost always crowded, too, much more so than in the rest
of Europe. The Italians also have a funny habit (watch for it when
you go over there): whenever the train pulls into a station, everybody
sitting down in the compartments feels obligated to get up, go out and
stand in the hall!!! This makes for a very difficult time getting on or
off and even finding a seat (which of these empty seats are occupied?).
I also found that one had to be cautious when travelling in Italy by train on
a Friday. At least that summer, the railroad workers had the most curious
habit of going on strike Friday afternoon and then resolving their
differences and coming back to work Monday afternoon!
But by no means let this discourage you from Italian trains. Trains in
general, and Italian ones in particular, are probably the greatest place
to meet the natives in a genuine and friendly atmosphere. They'll share
their food with you (EVERYONE brown-bags it on the trains) and be very
sociable. Also, the fact that you have time to kill makes people more
patient in overcoming the language barrier.
BTW, the only time I had a problem with the trains was Switzerland, who
pride themselves on their punctuality and accuracy. We had reservations
for the train and for a sleeping compartment (couchette). Well, when
we got to the station, we found TWO trains on adjacent tracks, leaving
for our destination 3 minutes apart. We checked with the conductors and
found that our train reservations were for train A and the couchette
reservations were for train B! Apparently, at a later stop the two trains
swapped some cars with each other and only one went on to the destination.
I'm still not sure how it was resolved.
Vive la difference!
Tom Beres, CCI Office Systems Group {nee RLG Corp}
{seismo, allegra, mcnc, brl-bmd, we13}!rlgvax!tommsm@syteka.UUCP (06/29/83)
Regarding decvax!minow's comments about 3-4 minute connections between
European trains:
When I was last in Europe (1977), this was reasonable except in Italy.
Italian trains are notoriously late! The only trains that run on time are the
TEE (Trans Europe Express) luxury trains. I recall Italians saying that
the one good thing that Mussolini did was to make the trains run on
time (he had the train crews of late trains executed!).
In Switzerland, trains try to be exactly (to the SECOND!) on time; the train
platforms had clocks with sweep second hands. I noticed that the
engineer usually tried to stop the train when the second hand exactly
reached 12!
Michael S. Maiten
Silicon Gulch, California
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