June 19,
2017 Lancut Castle and the “Sleeper”
Train to Vienna
I’ve
added posts for the 16th, 17th ,18th and 19th
Monday
morning we checked out of the hotel and stored our luggage at the train
station. The ride to Lancut was about 2
hours. The train station in Lancut is
about 1.2 miles (2.0 km) from the Castle where the painting is located. Our T-Mobile phones work in Europe. I called the taxi company I had emailed to
arrange a ride. The guy who answered
apparently didn’t understand what I wanted and asked me to send him a
message. So I sent him a text. The message didn’t go through. I’m guessing I was calling a land line and
they don’t get text messages. So I tried
taxi company number 2 and got a recorded message in Polish that didn’t give me
the option of leaving a message. So plan
B was implemented, we would walk. It was
warm, but the walk was level for the first five or six blocks, but then the
road was uphill all the way to the Castle.
I should have known that a castle might be built on high ground. We eventually made it, and we picked a good
day, entry to the Castle was free AND you did not have to pay for a guided
tour. The path through the castle is
through rooms and hallways that are decorated with paintings, statues, and the
usual stuff. Most of the paintings are
portraits that the tour would tell you about.
Our painting was at the end of the walk, but I wasn’t getting nervous,
no, not me.
After we
got our painting we had lunch at the restaurant in the Castle. Then we visited the Stable Room because
Michal told us about the collection of carriages and that one of them was the
composer Chopin’s carriage. We had
several hours before our train back to Krakow so we went for ice cream and then
walked back, downhill to the station. We
still had to wait about an hour for our train and the 2 hour ride back to
Krakow, we arrived around 20:00. The
overnight “Sleeper” train to Vienna didn’t leave until 22:02. It would arrive in Vienna at 6:55 the next
morning. We picked up our luggage and
sat down to wait for the train. I went
to get something for us to drink. When I
got back to Sue she said that people were going up to the platform, so that is
where we went. The train was there and
we could board. We had reserved a two
person compartment. The compartments can
sleep up to four. There is a sink, with
signs telling you not to drink the water.
There is space to hang some cloths and put your suit cases. The beds are bunk beds. Sue took the bottom bunk and I got the
upper. If there were four bunks the distance
between beds would have been perhaps a foot.
It would have been like sleeping in a WW II submarine. It was a very hot night so we opened the
window to get a breeze when the train started moving. My head and feet touched both ends of the
compartment when I lay down, eventually my calves cramped a bit because I
couldn’t bend my ankles. The train left
right on time. The conductor came around
and asked what time you wanted to be awakened in the morning, we said
6:15. The train makes several stops to
pick up cars along the route, so sometimes the train is going left to right and
other times right to left, and in the process the train may be stopped for a
significant time. We kept the window
open most of the night for the breeze.
You also notice when the train is going around a curve, or when you go
through a lighted area. I think we both
got some sleep at times, but nothing that I would call rest, but we had to try
it. The ride wasn’t ALL bad. I’ll end the journey with the June 20th
post.
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