Barciur
OBS Chief
This year again I have travelled back to my home country, Poland, where I travelled extensively by rail. All told, I have clocked 3230 miles on the rails. In this trip report, I want to share with you my longest and most exciting trip.
I had a friend visit me in my hometown Lublin from a small town close to Szczecin. After watching the World Cup Final together, we spent a day in the city and then had a trip booked in a sleeping berth to Kołobrzeg, which is located on the coast of the Baltic Sea. It is one of the more popular resort cities at the Baltic.
Of course being a rail forum, the most important thing is the sleeper car! Sleepers in Poland are very different from what you experience in the United States. Part of it has to do with the fact that the longest trains take 12-13 hours, as opposed to 50-odd hours in the US! Most of the trains containing the sleeper cars and the couchette cars are seasonal trains which only run during the summer months. The sleeping cars have private rooms, but they do not have to be. You book a bed, rather than a room. Standard berths have 3 beds, then there are some that have 2 beds and there are very few that have just 1 bed. If you just book one bed and the rest are bought by strangers, those people will have to be of the same gender. You can only mix genders if you are buying a compartment together and filling up all of the beds.
Inside the compartment you will find a sink, a toilet set, a croissant and water. The prices for the sleeper cars are set regardless of the distance: 81 PLN ($25) for a bed in a 3-person room, 140 PLN ($44) for a bed in a 2-person bedroom and a single costs 273 PLN ($87) plus you have to buy a business class ticket, whereas for the 2-person and 3-person rooms you just need a standard coach fare. For this distance, the fare is
So, the trip to Kołobrzeg on this train is 879 km long (546 miles) and it takes 12 hours and 36 minutes to complete for this particular train. The daily version of the train goes a bit quicker, because it takes a slightly different route: 710 km in 10 hours and 11 minutes. The standard fare is 80 PLN ($25). So myself and my friend had a 2-person berth, all to ourselves. Here are the pictures!
Route description with a map
Here's the first view of our train parked about an hour before departure:
We walked to the front of the train, which carries 15 cars. The front four or so cars are going to Hel (Hel peninsula) and they will separate in Gdynia, whereas the rest of the train will go to Kołobrzeg. The locomotive carrying us to Kołobrzeg is an electric EP07, a later modification of an older EU07. Its top speed is 125 km/h (78 mph).
And the view at the rest of the train from the very front:
I had a friend visit me in my hometown Lublin from a small town close to Szczecin. After watching the World Cup Final together, we spent a day in the city and then had a trip booked in a sleeping berth to Kołobrzeg, which is located on the coast of the Baltic Sea. It is one of the more popular resort cities at the Baltic.
Of course being a rail forum, the most important thing is the sleeper car! Sleepers in Poland are very different from what you experience in the United States. Part of it has to do with the fact that the longest trains take 12-13 hours, as opposed to 50-odd hours in the US! Most of the trains containing the sleeper cars and the couchette cars are seasonal trains which only run during the summer months. The sleeping cars have private rooms, but they do not have to be. You book a bed, rather than a room. Standard berths have 3 beds, then there are some that have 2 beds and there are very few that have just 1 bed. If you just book one bed and the rest are bought by strangers, those people will have to be of the same gender. You can only mix genders if you are buying a compartment together and filling up all of the beds.
Inside the compartment you will find a sink, a toilet set, a croissant and water. The prices for the sleeper cars are set regardless of the distance: 81 PLN ($25) for a bed in a 3-person room, 140 PLN ($44) for a bed in a 2-person bedroom and a single costs 273 PLN ($87) plus you have to buy a business class ticket, whereas for the 2-person and 3-person rooms you just need a standard coach fare. For this distance, the fare is
So, the trip to Kołobrzeg on this train is 879 km long (546 miles) and it takes 12 hours and 36 minutes to complete for this particular train. The daily version of the train goes a bit quicker, because it takes a slightly different route: 710 km in 10 hours and 11 minutes. The standard fare is 80 PLN ($25). So myself and my friend had a 2-person berth, all to ourselves. Here are the pictures!
Route description with a map
Here's the first view of our train parked about an hour before departure:
We walked to the front of the train, which carries 15 cars. The front four or so cars are going to Hel (Hel peninsula) and they will separate in Gdynia, whereas the rest of the train will go to Kołobrzeg. The locomotive carrying us to Kołobrzeg is an electric EP07, a later modification of an older EU07. Its top speed is 125 km/h (78 mph).
And the view at the rest of the train from the very front:
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