Danube Capitals – Day 1, 2 – Journey to Hungary

For this little mid-term winter break, I chose to explore Central Europe a bit more. The plan is to go to Budapest for a few days, then Bratislava, and finish with Vienna.

The idea didn't exactly come out of nowhere, though. I was chatting with my friend Jekk, who lives in Vienna, and looked at train ticket prices to get to Vienna.

To my surprise, there's a regular connection between Paris and Vienna by sleeper train, operated by ÖBB, the Austrian train company. Even more surprisingly, the ticket prices were only around €150 for a round trip to Vienna with a bed only on the way out. This was about 2 months ahead.

To nobody's surprise, I waited too long to book the tickets and paid just over €200 a little over a month before. Still not too bad if you ask me; it is a 15-hour train journey after all. I feel I'm probably going to regret not taking a bed on the way back, but hey that's life.

I left Rennes on the Wednesday afternoon to catch a train for Paris, to catch the sleeper train to Vienna, after a station change.

The train left Paris at 19:12, pretty much on time. I was in a compartment with 2 other guys, a French guy called Lucas and a Slovak called Michal. We chatted for a bit as the train was leaving, and Michal gave me some very nice pointers for places to go to in Bratislava, like hikes and nature spots!

Soon after departure, the not-so-friendly conductor came by to check our tickets, take our breakfast orders, and give us a little bottle of sparkling wine each! I felt so luxurious.

The ETA for Vienna was 10.13, but we got woken up at 8 for breakfast. The 3 of us were so confused, half asleep, and mildly annoyed but still managed to get ourselves out of bed for the conductor to put the tiny compartment into seating position. Oh yeah, the compartment was absolutely tiny; there was literally no room to walk to the window when the beds were out.

It wasn't a huge breakfast, so from 8.30 I just had to keep myself busy until arrival at 10. There was no way I could get back to sleep comfortably with that (basically non-existent) legroom. The bed was quite comfortable though, once I found a good position.

Apparently, not all compartments were as small as ours. Lucas’s girlfriend had much more room in hers. So unfair 🙄

Once I got to Vienna, I had 3 hours to kill until my train to Budapest. I chose to wait because it was by far the cheapest.

I had plenty of time to roam around in Vienna, ended up at the Maria-Theresien Platz, where the Natural History Museum and the Art History Museum are.

I then hopped on a tram, making sure to have the correct valid ticket to avoid paying another 110€ fine like last time.

I got to the station with plenty of time to spare, so I sat down for another 10 minutes before getting to the platform and on the train to Budapest.