Content

To Sweden by train → Pardubice - Falun 👉 go to
Pardubice - Berlin/Hamburg 👉 go to
Playing jerky train 👉 go to
Break in Hamburg 👉 go to
Hamburg - Copenhagen 👉 go to
Copenhagen - Lund 👉 go to
Lund - Falun 👉 go to
Sala - Falun 👉 go to
Train journey from Sweden to Czech Republic: Stockholm - Pardubice 👉 go to
Morgongåva - Stockholm 👉 go to
Express Stockholm - Berlin 👉 go to
Berlin - Pardubice 👉 go to
Statistics 👉 go to
Prices 👉 go to

To Sweden by train → Pardubice - Falun

Dream on. You'll get to Prague, transfer to a train to Berlin, transfer once more to the Berlin - Stockholm express, take a fifteen-hour sleeper (bed reservation costs a grand) and the next day you're in Sweden. The train stops in Copenhagen or Malmö along the way, so you can transfer and head towards Gothenburg. Or even further: all the way to Oslo, which opens up Norway for you.

Well, that's the ideal scenario. Can't be done three days before departure. The express is already full. Back to reality.

Pardubice - (unplanned) Berlin

You'll have it a bit more fun. Woow, you're looking forward to it. Very much. At half past four you're walking through sleeping Dukla, getting used to your new huaraches. Four minutes before five you're sitting on the train to Prague.

The train is over-air-conditioned. But that's fine. You have that feeling that Werich talked about when returning from Italy (where he drove by car on vacation) to Prague. He would drive through Prague, meet acquaintances and they would wave at him and say: "From the cottage?" And Werich would smile and nod his head.

You're again on the train to Prague. Routine, when you live in San Piego. Yet you're heading fifteen hundred kilometers away, somewhere above Stockholm.

You catch the Prague - Hamburg train comfortably. You have a seat reservation, so six hours of comfort await you, during which you write a new episode of Tasty Newsletter.

You stop in Berlin. The train jerks strangely.

Playing jerky train

That's how trains pull up to platforms. The one that jerks so much when starting that it doesn't even start, that's a jerky train.

And you're sitting in one jerky train right now.

An announcement sounds in German. You're in Berlin, but English? Pah. Everyone starts packing, collecting luggage and disappearing. You pack too. You disappear a bit later. After all, you got a bit scattered: you have an open laptop, charging phone, notebooks on the table, headphones, a water bottle...

Of course you connected those death throes with the ensuing rush. Moreover, you heard something in the announcement that sounds like transfer to IC. You check outside: That's right.

You go with the crowd. You get into a fast train that will cover the Berlin - Hamburg distance much faster than you would have covered it in the jerky train (assuming it would have gone). You sit on a pipe under the dining table, so you appreciate every ten minutes you save.

You're not sitting like this alone, others are sitting around you. But you still have it good, others are standing. It looks like although the jerky train didn't depart, the delay will ultimately be only an hour. Which you have time for anyway. You observe people. And nothing else.

Reports come from Czech Republic that Prague was hit by a blackout and whether it affects your journey. No, you're sitting somewhere between Berlin and Hamburg on a pipe, you reply. Immediately you add, like, on a train.

Milena also writes to you, the girl whose cat you'll be watching in Falun. Finally you have her contact on WhatsApp. The one from the pet-sitting platform is slow and you can't call if needed. You're relieved. She hadn't written all day. But you believed she would write.

Break in Hamburg

You planned your journey to have enough time for the night train to Copenhagen. It departs from Hamburg at midnight, you'll sleep on the train.

Now you have the whole day for Hamburg. You tell yourself you'll go to some coworking space and work or write. Depending on what you feel like. You have no expectations from the city.

And it immediately surprises you with how beautiful a city it is! The coworking plan falls through.

You start in a park, where you just hang out for a few hours. You read, look into tree crowns, observe locals.

You're alone again. You have THAT feeling again. You know it from ERASMUS and both scooter trips. A mix of anticipation, excitement, uncertainty and a bit of fear. But that's probably the point, to experience that, to be a foreigner, everything is just up to you.

But you're on a journey to fulfill another of your dreams. And that's always divine. You could have chickened out, made excuses with something sufficiently believable (it's expensive; no one wanted to watch the cat for a month; it was in the city; ...) and no one would have blamed you. But you'd also be home now. You're on the road. And that's not little. Not little at all.

San Piego lies on the Elbe. So does Hamburg. The same river. And yet completely different. Rivers are important to you. And seeing "your" river in Hamburg is an incredible experience. The Elbe splits into northern and southern branches before Hamburg and creates dozens of canals in the city. You stand by the Northern Elbe and stare at that width. It gives you chills and brings tears to your eyes.

The brick buildings in Speicherstadt remind you of Automatic Mills, the wooden bridges over roads and canals remind you of the bridge you crossed as a child over the railway in Moravany. You don't know the city, yet it's like being home.

Hamburg - Copenhagen

Before eleven you return to the station. You refill water, look for the right platform, then the car. You have a seat reservation, which you quickly find. You put on a sweatshirt, settle in and wait for the train to start moving.

It's 30 minutes delayed. But you're sitting alone on a double seat. You hope it stays that way. You could spread out more.

No one comes. You lie down, legs bent and thrown to the side so they don't stick out into the aisle. You listen to music and fall asleep.

In Padborg, customs officers rush through the train, but they don't ask anyone for anything in your car. You fall asleep again. The sleeping isn't comfortable, but you don't mind. You're on the road!

You arrive in Copenhagen on time. The original thirty minutes melted away.

Copenhagen - Lund

On the train, the conductor announces that whoever is quick will catch the train to Sweden from platform six. Those who aren't rushing can take the one from platform seven. You planned to take the one from seven, but why not try your luck? A cascade of transfers awaits you, arriving somewhere a train earlier could come in handy.

So you have five minutes for the transfer. You arrive at a platform from which you just cross to the opposite parked train. You throw your backpack overhead, sit down and the train starts moving.

You're looking forward to the bridge over the sea. It only takes a moment and you're driving onto it. You remember how this place fascinated you in elementary school during geography lessons. Not just this, all of Europe. But Scandinavia... always. You never really believed you'd see it. You heard these were expensive countries. With your parents you only went to Croatia and the surrounding world seemed distant, dreamy, unreachable.

You smile at little Tomík and show him to look out the window. He has to see this. It's drizzling lightly, the sea reflects gray clouds. In the distance, like a mirage, Malmö shimmers.

When the train stops in Malmö, three of you remain in it. You don't let yourself get worried. You continue sitting. On the screen you see that the final destination is Lund.

And Lund comes. You have fifty minutes for transfer here. You go to see what's in front of the station. You repeat to yourself again how great train travel is, that stations are (usually) in city centers. But it's raining. So you immediately forget about the center. In front of the station you withdraw Swedish crowns. You look at bike stands, of which there are more than in San Piego. And you wait for the connection to Linköping.

Lund - Sala

The Lund - Linköping route shows you the first forests, meadows and especially stones that are randomly scattered around the edges. But it's not yet what you imagined.

You turn on your laptop and finish writing the Tasty Newsletter, read through it one last time, set it to send the next day. You have a good feeling - you gave it enough time again, selected interesting things for subscribers that caught your attention in the last fourteen days, condensed them to the maximum and wrote a great opener about it. About fulfilling dreams. The newsletter goes to a thousand mailboxes. Sure, about a third to half open it, about ten people reply to it. Each time a bit different ones. You're happy it entertains them. You enjoy writing, they enjoy reading. You're mutually beneficial. And that's nice. A tear drops from your eyes again.

You smile again at little Tomík, who suddenly shifts in his seat and tries to be invisible. Don't worry, you tell him, no one will laugh at you now. And even if they did, you feel good and that's the only thing that matters. Back then you didn't know it was okay, just like the world back then didn't know. The nineties and people in them had other worries. It's okay to squeeze emotions out of yourself. Come on, let's go look at the world that's changing outside the train windows. And the train goes on.

In Linköping you have enough time for transfer. In another three hours you get off in Sala.

Sala - Falun

Train journey from Sweden to Czech Republic: Stockholm - Pardubice

After ten days in Falun you travel by three trains to Morgongåva. You transfer in Gävle and Uppsala. You're in Morgongåva for four nights. And on Sunday, July 20th, you begin the journey back.

Originally you thought you could spend the whole day in Uppsala and then just move to Stockholm for the night train. When you looked at Stockholm on Google maps, you immediately threw that plan away. Stockholm is evidently a dense city, with lots of islands. It would be a shame not to walk around and hang out there. Maybe even write.

Morgongåva - Stockholm

You go to Stockholm via Uppsala. You have six hours until the express departure. You walk around the islands, try to find a tea house. You find one, it's permanently closed. You reach a second one - they just closed it. There won't be tea, Tom. You'll have to endure it. You swallow the exclamation about the coffee lobby...

Time goes quickly, you return to the station. It's beautiful. Benches everywhere, even for lying down. Why doesn't this work in Prague?

Express Stockholm - Berlin

But the Swede refuses to give up. He stops the conductor. He has a smile on his face that's something like: "Well yeah, mommy or wifey makes your bed at home, right?" He starts fumbling with the bedding and looking for a hole. The smile slowly fades from his face. It's not working for him either. Finally he leaves and returns after five minutes with the right piece. Me and the black men were relieved that we're not as hopeless as we were already afraid.

The journey is so cool. You lie down, the train clatters, you listen to music, observe the landscape from the window. When your eyes start to droop, you throw the sheet over yourself.

In Malmö the light wakes you up. Two more passengers board. It's midnight. One has crutches and tape on his knee. You don't really understand why he reserved the highest bed. Maybe he doesn't either, but he eventually climbs up. In Hamburg they get off, same as the black guys.

There you fold down the beds and get to know the last guy who also boarded in Malmö. He slept downstairs. A guy who absolutely loves interrail. He travels every year. Last year he went through all of Italy like this. The Swede listens to this and then asks a question with a pitiful expression that we don't understand: Don't we have buses in Europe? Train travel seems terribly uncomfortable to me.

We shake our heads. Well, not everyone is a train person. 😄

Berlin - Pardubice

The express arrives at Berlin Gesundbrunnen station one hour late. From there a train to Hbf (main) runs about every ten minutes.

You didn't want to plan the connection from Berlin to Prague. Just because anything can happen on a fifteen-hour journey. Including the train turning into a jerky train, you know.

Now you see that the train leaving in an hour to Prague has mandatory reservations. No problem, it costs 75 CZK. But they're sold out. The next train to Prague leaves in three hours, there would be seats available. You don't want to wait. You look at options.

One of them is to postpone the decision to future Tom: you jump on the train to Dresden. On the train you figure out that the one from Berlin has one seat from Dresden to Ústí nad Labem. You take that. And then in the app you find that from Ústí to Prague you can buy another seat reservation right across the aisle. That one isn't mandatory, but the train is evidently packed, judging by the sold-out seat reservations. You buy both.

In Dresden you have tea in a café, start writing México mágico, vole and continue with it on the Dresden - Prague train.

In Prague the last transfer and at five you're in San Piego. Stockholm - Pardubice in 24 hours. Woow. You're happy as a flea. It was divine.

And it fulfilled its Sabbatical purpose. But about that next time (in those 14 days).

Statistics

Above you can see the screenshot from the interrail app. Interesting summary:

• 4287 km by train in 20 trains during 5 days.
• Total travel time 2 days and five hours.

Prices

Interrail cost 8000 CZK - version 5 days of travel anytime within one month. Additionally I paid these reservations:

• Pardubice - Prague: 35 CZK
• Prague - Hamburg - 75 CZK
• Hamburg - Copenhagen - 75 CZK
• two trains in Sweden on the way there: 500 CZK
• bed in Stockholm - Berlin express: between 900 - 1000 CZK
• Dresden - Ústí nad Labem: 75 CZK
• Ústí nad Labem - Prague: 35 CZK
• Prague - Pardubice: 35 CZK

Total therefore 8000 CZK + reservations 1830 CZK = 9,830 CZK.

Does train travel tempt you more to the south than north? What about by train to Spain? or by train to Italy?