Transit Hell Day

If only I'd taken a ferry, too. London Hotel -> Underground -> Stanstead Express train -> Ryanair Flight -> Bus to Brno train station.

So, Brno train station. Feeling good -- I have 45 minutes until my train leaves. Not too long, not too short. I don't even freak out when I see that there are only 3 tickets windows open and about 30 people in line for each of them.

I'm not even freaking out about my first real time I'm going to need to interact to actually get something. (On the bus from the airport, one could merely grunt and hand the driver 100 Kč and get change.) I put on my iPod and listen over and over and over again to my "Airplane Czech" book on tape (Note to iTunes users: not worth $8.99!) to the section on saying "I don't speak Czech, do you speak English?" I'll say it in my head a few times, think I remember it, switch to music, realize I've forgotten it, and go back and listen again. This must have happened at least 5 times.

Needless to say, the line was slow. Very slow. At about 5 minutes before the train left, I was quite sure I wasn't going to make it. Then, at the head of one of the lines I hadn't chosen, the ticket salesgirl swept a curtain closed and ended that line. The roughly 30 people took it with a kind of ci la vie attitude. I was shocked. I bet several decades of Communism would probably help Americans with thier patience, too. (Of course, several decades of Communism would make going to the post office something you tried to do only once a year.)

Anyways, time clicks down and it's pretty obvious that even if I get my ticket, I won't make the train because I know they run like clockwork and I don't even know where the track is. (Which word with lotsa accents and no vowels means "track"? Beats me.) So, I get there, and the girl informs me that there is no next train to Olomouc -- if I want to do three transfers, I can get there in twice the time. I say fine and she prints me a ticket.

As I'm walking away, resigned to waiting around an hour for the slow train, the big board clicks on my original Olomouc train - "5:00 late". Could this be? A train that doesn't leave precisely on the second? I should be so lucky. I rush down and make it on with seconds to spare. Yippie.