4th January 2018 - Bobbing around Brno (again)Thursday 4th January 2018 One problem we have found travelling on ZSSK trains is that the conductors use a rather large stamp instead of the more usual ticket “grippers” to cancel tickets; not an issue with single tickets but it can cause problems when using a ticket for multiple journeys such as an Interrail or FIP (staff) pass as many conductors insist on stamping the ticket for every single journey. In the case of an Interrail, it is the journey planner rather than the actual ticket that is meant to be stamped but that particular point is often not understood, it is easy to imagine such a ticket lasting a whole month rapidly becoming unreadable if it was stamped every time. The FIP ticket contains four boxes which, when dated, covers travel for two days, a point which is also widely misunderstood though an official note explaining the rules is now issued in all relevant languages along with the ticket. So far, we had managed to keep the Interrail in pristine condition (not totally without argument!) but the FIP ticket had fared less well with yesterday’s date being rendered almost unreadable. We didn’t fancy spending the whole day trying to prevent it being plastered with even more stamps or trying to explain that it was actually still valid, even with the official piece of paper with the “two day rule” in Slovakian highlighted, so we decided to spend the day across the border in the Czech Republic. We had planned to have a day round Brno at some stage during our stay in Bratislava so this seemed to be the ideal opportunity, especially as the most useful Czech spreadsheets indicated that there should be a winning class 380 on the EC to take us there. 380 002 at Bratislava hl.st.4th January 2018. On EC173 6:36 Hamburg-Altona to Budapest-Nyugati. The spreadsheet “gen” was spot on and 380 002 whisked us to Brno where the first objective was easily achieved, the purchase of a jízdní řád (timetable), a picture of which was prominently displayed in the ticket office window. That little job done and it was off to make a large dent in our class 242 requirements, a task which proved quite easy as almost every loco we saw was required for haulage and there were plenty working between Břeclav, Vranovice and Tišnov. 242 272 at Brno-Královo Pole4th January 2018. On Os4615 10:30 Tišnov to Břeclav. After filling our books with several class 242s as well as a 263 and a 362, we paused for a cup of tea and attempted to work out where the couple of locos were that we hadn’t caught up with were until our deliberations were interrupted by the sight of standard red liveried 1216 239 on a Railjet service from Prague. Not wishing to shun the proverbial plate that this had been handed to us on, we took it to Břeclav with the thought of having an early dinner in the Eiscafe there but 263 006 on one of the comparatively few cross-border local trains was just too tempting. Once on board we decided to stay on the slow train to Bratislava and eat in Divný Janko again, the total bill still being rather less than €20 for both of us. 1216 239 at Břeclav4th January 2018. On RJ79 12:51 Praha hl.n. to Graz Hbf.
Keywords:
Czech Republic,
Slovakia
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4th January 2018 - Bobbing around Brno (again)
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