Category: journey
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Wot no Warsaw? Crossing the North of Poland Eastwards to Elk
Interrailing can easily get dominated by cities, particularly capital cities. But it doesn’t have to be. Railway Dog much prefers greener locations, so we skipped Warsaw and headed to the Mazury Lakes region in North East Poland, as recommended by a Polish hitch hiker back in Romania. From the Gdansk, Tczew, Malbork train, we had…
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Krakow to Gdansk, via Warsaw
Poland feels so modern and clean after Hungary and Romania. This is true on this spanking clean train. The trains are actually used by many locals. This was my first commuter train in 6 weeks, an early morning intercity. Every seat was booked, you can see Basbie is initially a bit concerned by the squashing…
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Cluj-Napoca, a little known gem of Romania
We chose Cluj-Napoca for our last overnight in Romania as it has a good train connections to Budapest and Vienna. There is a delightful sleeper train in which dogs can travel in the sleeping car if you book a whole compartment. See below. Cluj turns out to be a lovely gently European city full of…
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Romanian time warp
Traveling to Romania is time travel. From many young people smoking cigarettes, to hay stooks, to human train signals, to 3 ticket inspectors per 5/6ths empty train, to cash only small shops, to dilapidated brutalist architecture juxtaposed to 19th century ruins. My initial exposure to all this was in Baile Herculane, a spa town on…
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The intrepid Railway Dog goes to Romania, with some learning along the way
Budapest Kelati train station has a small number of long distance trains to Romania daily, to several main cities, particularly Timisoara, Arad and Cluj Napoca. Some go on as far as Bucharest. Several are sleepers (some described by the man at seat 61, as well as one from Cluj Napoca to Budapest not mentioned there).…
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Bratislava to Budapest with a happy doggy hike stop-off on the way
We took an early train to Budapest so we could get out in the incised meanders of the River Danube on the way there, for a hilly hike. The international train between the Slovakian and Hungarian capitals fortunately stopped at the little station of Nagymaros-Visigrad. The viewing tower at the top is said to have…
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Austria to Slovakia
Baspie the railway dog was again tucked under a table in his Nestbedz. I had a ticket for him from a platform machine, and my Interrail ticket sorted on the app for Graz to Bratislava. The change in Vienna was easy, with boards showing platforms and all on time. Austria seems a land made of…
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Slovenia to Austria for a hike
Getting a taxi for an early train from Maribor sure was pleasant, with Baspie dog getting a few extra zzz in on my ankle. The second time on a train to Vienna but again getting off sooner, this time in Graz. Use the on platform machines to buy dog tickets (with or without human tickets)…
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Croatia to Slovenia
From Zagreb we wanted a bit of countryside. Maribor was in the vague direction of Romania, which we have a deadline to get to. Also it is supposed to be nice and has a cute open campsite. A direct train, what could possibly go wrong? Then the back of the train detached and we were…
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The long short train journey from Split to Šibenik
By train it is a 1.5 hour journey from Split to Šibenik. However, after the first train, there was a daily scheduled 3.5 hours to wait in the one horse town of Perković. Rather than causing this place to perk up and provide a place to be, the vibe maybe is what stops anyone but…