It was a hit-and-run, grand-slam European tour. Eight days, eight cities, eight nights spent sleeping on a train bulleting toward yet another city on an if-this-is-Tuesday-it-must-be-Belgium itinerary accelerated to maniac speed.
Except in this case, on Tuesday it was Warsaw. The other seven days it was Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Berlin, Budapest, Prague and Munich.
It isn’t a trip I’d recommend to anyone without tons of stamina and a total lack of common sense.
But it did have its advantages. First, traveling by night allowed me to cram as much touring into eight days as a secretary of state could manage in twice the time. It also saved money. A $498 Eurailpass, supplemented by a $185 European East Pass, accounted for almost all my land transportation costs.
Space in a couchette, a low-rent sleeper, cost an additional $24 a night-cheaper than many youth hostels, though a lot less private. Second-class couchettes are about the size of a walk-in closet and sleep six. If they were prison cells, Amnesty International would raise a ruckus.
As for the drawbacks: The slap-dash pace left me with hazy mental snapshots rather than sharp images of the places I visited. The niggling tasks of travel-getting oriented, negotiating the subway and changing money, for instance-took up a disproportionate chunk of time and effort, since I awoke each day to a different language, transportation system and currency.
Personal encounters rarely got beyond queries like “Where’s the baggage check/the bathroom/Track No. 3?” And after several days of having no place to roost, I began to feel homeless. I took to hanging out in the lobbies of good hotels when I needed a respite from the streets.
But all in all, this rogue’s rail tour of Europe enabled me to see a lot more.
And a lot less.
Don’t ask me about the Louvre, Tivoli Gardens or the Nieuwe Kerk. There was too little time to do justice to important places. So I mainly sought out inconsequential ones.
Thus, I can direct you to the world’s skinniest house (in Amsterdam), Europe’s busiest flea market (in Warsaw), Eastern Europe’s first coin-operated laundry (in Prague) and a popular tavern based on a toilet theme (in Berlin).
I also have become a connoisseur of train stations. I can direct you to some of the finer public showers and give you tips on sweet-talking the bathroom matrons (generally a formidable lot) even when you don’t speak the language.
As for European epicurean delights, I haven’t a clue. The determining factor when dining on the fly is, can the food be eaten while you’re in motion? I can heartily recommend the french fries in Amsterdam and the pizza in Paris, and I advise you to avoid, at all costs, the hot dogs in Warsaw.
The night before embarking on the Great Train Odyssey, I checked into a hotel. I gorged on MTV and CNN. I took two long, hot showers. I used up all the complimentary toiletries. Early the next morning I headed for the Gare du Nord in Paris.
The routine was similar in each city. The train would pull in between 6 and 8 in the morning, I’d disembark, locate the nearest currency exchange and change money to pay for a shower-a commodity that became as valuable to me as food. Then I’d find the luggage storage lockers, stash my bag and hit the streets.
Usually, I’d take a generic tour to get oriented and see the major landmarks, if only through the smudged windows of a tour bus. Then I’d seek out some offbeat spot that was peculiar to the city.
First stop: Paris and a mere 10 hours to see it. But first, I traveled 20 miles east to see if Euro Disney (recently renamed Disneyland Paris) was as sadly bereft of customers as I’d heard. It was.
Arriving back in the city at dusk, I took in the view from atop the Arc de Triomphe, then strolled around Montmartre, the 19th-Century artists’ haven. Montmartre is both lovely and cliche-ridden. Artists in berets (really) stake out the cobbled streets offering to paint your portrait. Live jazz seeps out of corner cafes.
At 11:22 p.m. Train No. 1289 pulled out of Paris, and I was on board. So was Jerry from Mammoth, Calif., a good-natured surfer boy with an edgy, almost manic energy.
“American?” he asked, edging into the compartment. “Good,” he continued without pause. “My Eurailpass is good for two months, but if I really have a killer time, I’ll stay longer.”
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He was not traveling light. A bulging duffel bag dangled from one hand. A skateboard was tucked under the other arm. Fortunately, we were the only two in the compartment, leaving plenty of space for his stuff. I took the top right bunk, he took the bottom left.
“Going to Amsterdam?” Jerry asked without waiting for an answer. “A lot of prostitution there. A guy I met told me not having sex in Amsterdam would be like not having a beer at Oktoberfest.”
I turned out the light.
Amsterdam was a blur of small container gardens, narrow streets crowded with bicyclists and women of negotiable virtue posing in storefront windows.
Across from the train station, I plunked down the equivalent of $6.50 for a boat tour. As we cruised the web of waterways that make Amsterdam only slightly more difficult to negotiate than Pittsburgh, a recorded voice repeated uninteresting facts in four languages.
Later, wandering through the weave of narrow streets that thread over Amsterdam’s canals (a better way to see the city than by boat), I came to Oude Kirksplein, site of the city’s oldest church. Ironically, it sits smack in the middle of Amsterdam’s red light district. An establishment called “Sexyland” was across the street from the church. The neighborhood was full of prostitutes posing lackadaisically in windows-full-color, in-the-flesh ads for themselves.
Back at the train station, graffiti scratched into a wall read, “Amsterdam is depraved. I’m leaving.”
At 7:06 p.m. I did just that, boarding the Hieronymus Bosch. With its big, plush seats and empty compartments, it was the poshest train I would see on this trip. Unfortunately, I had to leave the lovely Hieronymus in Duisburg, Germany, near midnight to change trains.
Happily, the train to Copenhagen was a sweet dream. Couchettes were sold out, and I was forced to pay $75 for a first-class sleeping compartment. It was the Ritz of rail travel. My compartment had seating for two, two upper bunks with crisp white sheets, a sink, mirror and shelves. But its greatest asset was what it lacked: other passengers. I slept undisturbed by the sounds and smells of strangers until 6 a.m., when the conductor pounded on the door.
On the Copenhagen city tour, Sven the Guide tried to be witty and interesting, but I dozed anyway. The city was what I’d expected-sleek and clean and expensive, but not overly engaging, at least when viewed from this haphazard angle.
The most underwhelming popular tourist attraction: the Little Mermaid statue.
The greatest revelation made by Sven: minimum wage for Danish workers over age 18 is $13 an hour. No wonder a Coke at McDonald’s costs $2.
The train from Copenhagen to Berlin was packed. A party crowd convened in the narrow passage outside the row of couchettes, talking and drinking late into the night. Gradually, my couchette filled with other passengers.
I was assigned a bottom bunk (reservations are random). Upon discovering she had a top bunk, a young Danish woman cursed and struggled up the ladder. Other couchette mates included three young men-from Italy, Iran and the United States. But quarters were too close for congeniality. The only thing I learned about the guy who slept above me is that he wore wingtips and argyle socks.
The guidebook said a week isn’t long enough to see Berlin, which sprawls over more area than all of New York City’s boroughs. I had 15 hours.
I took a city tour on a gem of a double-decker bus with an open-air upper deck. Jens the Guide didn’t need to point out the east-west sides of this formerly divided city. The clash of architectural styles, most notably the colorless, boxy buildings in the former East Berlin, make the old division obvious.
“Some people say it wasn’t World War II that destroyed this town, but the postwar city planning,” Jens said.
Most interesting tour tidbit: Berlin has more dogs and trees than any other city, though Jens didn’t say how he came by this fact.
At dusk, I headed for Klo, a popular pub I’d read about. “Klo” is German slang for toilet. As a theme bar, Klo is part fun house, part truck-stop bathroom, all tasteless.
“This place would make a million in Houston,” said a Texan guzzling beer from a liter bottle used for urine specimens.
My worst dreams came true on the night train from Berlin to Warsaw. The bunk above me was occupied by a 300-pounder wearing a skin-tight red T-shirt that read, “Live Oak Ranch Nudist Resort.” He had a snore more powerful than a locomotive.
The bad luck followed me out the door of the Warsaw station. I had arrived at 6:15 a.m. and within two hours was arguing with a public transit official whose only English consisted of “Police!”
Some other Americans and I had departed the train station and hopped on the first tram that came along, assuming we could buy tickets on board. Within minutes, the ticket checker approached and threw us off at the next stop.
Proclaiming the ignorance of newly arrived foreigners didn’t help. Arguing didn’t, either. We paid the 250,000-zlotych fine (not as bad as it sounds-about $10), and bought tickets for the next tram. Upon boarding, one of the Americans was promptly robbed of his wallet containing $650, an almost 15 million-zlotych windfall for the thief.
An American living in Warsaw who had witnessed the crime got off with us at the next stop. “This route is the worst,” he said, as the victim sprinted down the track in a vain attempt to spot the pickpocket.
Six wallets, minus the cash, of course, had been turned into the U.S. embassy that day alone. Some days, they get up to a dozen empty wallets, an employee said.
The mood turned as gray and ugly as Warsaw’s weather.
Between the cold rain and generally dismal surroundings-the predominant style is postwar parking garage-I saw little of Warsaw. After a cursory look around the city’s rehabbed old town, I retreated to the plush leather couches in the lobby of the Warsaw Marriott. Hardly a place for local color, but then, I’d had it with local color by then.
The compartment from Warsaw to Budapest was blessedly empty. The night would have been restful, had it not been for rail employees pounding on the door every hour or so asking for my passport.
In Budapest, I indulged in the obvious. I ate goulash, visited Zsa Zsa Gabor’s childhood home and went to a traditional Hungarian thermal bath, where sturdy female attendants scrub you raw. The goulash was tasty. Zsa’s Zsa’s old house was fabulous. Only the baths were disappointing.
Wrapped in a white sheet and feeling just a little foolish, I had been waiting an hour for my $3 soap-and-water massage, when I noticed that the staff had slipped out unannounced. With no more time to wait, I got dressed and exited the baths. I had a train to catch.
Despite sometimes-crowded conditions, the train accommodations were surprisingly comfortable-until the couchette from Budapest to Prague, which was like sleeping on a park bench. But the beauty of Prague, a treasure-trove of architectural styles that catalog 11 centuries, erased the misery of the night.
Before embarking on a see-it-all city tour, however, I took the metro out to a little bastion of Americana: Laundry Kings, which claims distinction as the first coin laundry in Eastern Europe.
“It’s a Prague institution,” said employee David Orso of Omaha, Neb.
Though a rather recent one. Grady Lloyd, an expatriate from Alabama, came up with the idea one day a few years ago while washing his clothes in his bathtub, “which annoyed the hell out of him,” Orso related.
In the early evening I took in an afternoon concert at Prague Castle, then went to the station at dusk and boarded a train for my first overnight trip without the benefit of a couchette (I’d failed to reserve one in time). Fortunately, the compartment was empty and I was able to stretch out across three seats for a fitful sleep.
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Munich was in the throes of Oktoberfest when I arrived in the Bavarian city. The early-morning scene at the station looked like a party in a morgue.
By midmorning the Oktoberfest grounds were a whirl of too much noise, too much beer, too much humanity. Too much.
Exhausted, I walked back to the train station, climbed aboard and fell into a peaceful sleep.
It felt good to be back on the train.
TRAIN RATES REDUCED
The winter weather might be iffy, but lower prices for off-season train travel in Europe are a sure bet.
For instance, a 15-day first-class Eurailpass is usually $498.
However, from now through March 31, that price drops 50 percent for one or more companions traveling with someone who has paid full fare for the pass.
The 50 percent discount also applies to 21-day and one-month continuous Eurailpasses.
There’s also a Flexipass, good for travel on a particular number of days within a specified period, and a fly/drive pass.
Rail Europe, which issues the passes in the U.S., says it will not increase its 1995 prices over 1994 rates.
Some sample costs: Eurail Flexipass for first-class travel on any five days within a two-month period is $348; 10 days within two months, $560; and 15 days within two months, $740.
Sleeping accommodations cost extra. For details, call Rail Europe at 800-438-7245.