Go to Alexanderplatz if you are in Berlin this summer. There is a free, multi-media outdoor exhibition about the Fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago.

The exhibit does a good job of capturing the political and cultural impact of the Wall’s formation and demise. (On-going until November 9th, the anniversary of the Fall of the Wall.)

Alongside the exhibition, interestingly, arose a makeshift memorial to Michael Jackson, on the weekend of his death.

I met a middle-aged German couple who reminisinced about their youth in East Berlin, and remembered the allure of Jackson and his music in the 1980s. Jackson, they said, embodied what was sorely lacking in their East Berlin lives: the unbounded world of possibilities.

Their favorite Jackson song? Man in the Mirror.

“Yesterday, you were on the train, standing up, taking pictures, having fun.” Where her tone was between approving and disapproving, I couldn’t quite decipher. It struck me as an odd statement, and I wasn’t sure how to respond.


“Yeah, but how did you..?” “A townsperson stopped by and she told me about the American on the train.”

I had gotten so lost in Frontierland, that I forgot that this is still post-Communist Czech. Just because the Iron Curtain came down twenty years, the behaviors, the suspicions, haven’t entirely changed. They were too pervasive to change just because a wall came down: Everyone is expected to walk in lock-step, there are no swings of emotion from joy to outrage, grey is the color of the sunrise and sunset. Anything outside these norms is “watched,” or “reported on” by locals. And so had happened to me.

I had enjoyed myself trying to take pictures of cows in fields earlier in the day, opening windows and asking my fellow riders for advice about which fields around the bend may produce four-legged creatures. They seemed to enjoy the opportunity for conversation and interaction as well, rather than their normal ride, staring motionlessly, silently, outside the grey dirtied windows. It’s a ride they have been taking for decades, and many, especially the young, seem ready for a new route.

Leaving the cities (or the CITY, in the case of Czech), train culture changes dramatically. It feels a bit like journeying into Frontierland.

Train stations in the Czech Republic can be tiny home-like outposts. The attendants appear from the outposts to wave a hand-placard, signaling the train can depart.

The trains are often one car, perhaps two, that remind me of coal trains. They brush along trees as they snake through forests. And perhaps the most surprising, some teenagers tell me, is that these local trains serve as their transport for school. No school buses; they have school trains, taking the village children to the larger towns for class. Watch the trains fill-up in the morning and afternoon with children carrying backpacks.

At any station in Frontierland, you walk across tracks, looking for the white placard telling you the destination of your chug-chug train. (Confirm your destination; the placards can be placed haphazardly.) I see men in knee high boots with bait and poles and tackle take the train one stop to their favorite fishing hole. I see sheep herders pacing through fields with their loyal friends. I see children disappear down mud paths, and overall-ed men emerge from factories. I see women tending garden, carefully nurturing each plant as daylight allows. I see deer dart closer to the train in circumspect, then dart away. It does feel like Frontier land, and it’s worth the ride.

In Prague, I visited the Plavecky complex, on the outskirts of the city, and reachable by tram. One common feature of these former Communist complexes is the water slide. And another common feature: these water slides scrape people’s backs, as the connecting parts of the slides are not entirely smooth. It’s explained to me that in years past, it was meant to slide down on a mat. But the mats were abandoned (damaged or stolen more likely), a long time ago. So while I would usually enjoy an afternoon on the water slides, the skin on my back asks me to enjoy it only once.

He gladly shares. It’s his Austrian brass band, and they had performed last week in Budapest.

Train Tip: If traveling in Central Europe, check your itinerary to see if you’ll be crossing into Slovakia. Slovakia is the missing link in terms of the Eurail Pass.
Czech to the North, Austria to the West and Hungary to the South are all covered by the Global Pass, but Slovakia is not. The fastest way to travel between Budapest and Prague is through Slovakia. You can easily buy a supplemental ticket that covers you in Slovakia, but I recommend buying it at any train ticket window, rather than on-board the train, where the price will increase.
There’s a train each morning at 5:28 from Budapest Keleti to Prague, en route to Berlin, that crosses through Slovakia. I was worried that 5 AM may be too early to buy the supplemental Slovakian ticket at Keleti station, but sure enough, ticket counters were open. The supplemental Slovakian ticket cost me 7750 Hungarian Forints, or about $35, and this is the ticket that I presented to the Slovakian train attendant on-board.

The train meanders up close to farmlands and cows, proving a great trip for at least two senses (sight and smell), and sometimes for a third (hearing), as an occasional ‘MOO’ can be heard.

Both the lakefront and Hauptbahnhof are the nerve center of Zurich, revealing two things: the people of Zurich appreciate nature, and appreciate their rail system.

In the main train station, she was armed with a water bottle. And he clinked his gun. These two sights marked my arrival to and departure from Zurich.

People fill their water bottles in ornate public drinking fountains, and young soldiers board trains with firearms strapped to their backs.

I’ve developed a habit of drinking only bottled water while traveling – part hypochondria, part craziness. But I swear that this habit has kept me from getting ill – as I don’t ask my body to re-adjust to different water quality in each place I visit. Or I should be collecting dividends from the bottled-water industry.

The gun-slinging soldiers cause some winces. The 19th century law that allows (encourages?) soldiers to bandy about their weapons is now up for review in Switzerland.

Train Tip: Consider NOT buying a bed reservation in advance. In the summer season, on weekends, and holidays, it’s a MUST if you want to be sure to get a bed. But one of the joys of traveling off-season, during the week, is that you can hop on and off trains, including night trains, more freely. During these non-peak times, I have found it’s more comfortable to walk on and buy the bed reservation on the train, because the conductor will often put you into an un-occupied sleeping cabin, whereas the computers at the train station will often automatically place you into free beds without consideration of how many people may already be in the sleeping cabin.

Train Tip: Buy your seat reservation BEFORE boarding the Italian Eurostar, to save money. On board, a seat reservation costs 22 Euros. But at the station, the seat reservation will cost only 15 Euros.