Enjoy your (much revised) journey.
I think you will find Linz to Prague enjoyable, even if you have to wait for your lunch/beer at CD prices
. The contrast between the winding Linz-C Budejovice section (partly following the original horse-drawn railway) and the newly rebuilt sections thence to Prague is striking.
Thank you for the well wishes, I agree that this would be a nice journey if the trip was somewhat normal. Maybe the service we experienced is normal now, but I hope not!
I wanted to give a recap for those thinking of doing a train oriented trip like us, as we won't do that again and will instead choose flying or driving if we want to do a similar trip again. The services are just too unreliable and not service friendly IMO for our tolerance level any longer. I've never experienced anything near the number of disruptions followed up by lack of service from the train companies. I love trains and have travelled by train in many countries with much enjoyment, but this was absolutely horrible and primarily due to the utter disregard by austrians we dealt with. The Czech, Slovakians, Hungarians and especially Polish people were so much better to deal with. There were no positive moments dealing with austrian people in any situation except for the nice lady at a cafe, who was from Ukraine. Lol.
Train 1 - Vienna Airport to Salzburg: I knew going in that the HSL was down and would be down for some time, yet when I bought our ticket from the OBB ticket desk at the airport they said oh no, it's a direct train, there's no transfer. I questioned them and the lady said, nope, there is no transfer. This is what the people at the desk told everyone. So we thought they had done some re-routing magic. Not the case. The train from the airport went to Vienna Central and stopped. The app, the board on the train both said it was continuing to Salzburg and people on the train were talking amongst eachother as the train sat for some time and then just before the train returned to the airport the app changed to the train terminating at Vienna HBF and that's it. No announcement, no help from surrounding train employees. This is the theme of nowadays train service. We ran to the next train which was actually saying it was already departed, but we could see it at the platform. My wife fell hard when someone shoved her on the escalator, didn't apologize and luckily she didn't break anything, just badly bruised. This was also normal for our interactions with austrians.
Train 2 - This was our night train to Krakow that was cancelled due to the flood. Understandable, but again, very poor communication by OBB.
Train 3 - Salzburg to Linz with OBB. Our train wasn't showing up, but was listed on the board. The people I asked at OBB just said they didn't know. We luckily saw a Westbahn train and took that instead because of the flood situation we were able to use our OBB ticket. The Westbahn employees were helpful, confirmed we could use the ticket and maybe we were lucky, but the train we took was clean and the staff was friendly. Totally opposite from OBB.
Train 4 - Linz to Prague. It was supposed to be a direct train, but changed shortly after booking to train bus train. This trip ended up taking over 2 hours longer and I've made a claim. OBB hired bus drivers who apparently don't speak any language as they offered no help when I asked them to confirm these were the replacement busses. Just shrugged their shoulders. There was no OBB staff to help or guide before over after getting off the train. People were mad. The bus didn't have any storage for luggage. We travel light so no problem for us, but a nightmare for those travelling with check in luggage etc. The bus was delayed as they inexplicably made a stop in the country side for over 30 minutes. People were getting upset as it was getting hot in the bus, so the bus driver did the one thing they did for us, which was leave the doors open while they smoked and talked outside. Then we were delayed by construction for about 20 minutes when they decided to end their break. We finally got to the train station and got on the train. We were happy to see we could still use our reserved seats. Then the train stopped after one station and said final stop, due to us being so late we had to take a different train. Thec now Czech crew as helpful and told us which train to take etc. No seat reservations and way over 2 hours delaryed we finally arrived after train bus train train.
Train 5 - Prague to Kosice night train, was the only train we took which had no issues. It was an ok experience, but I wouldn't take a night train like that again for the comfort. The Czech crewman was nice and it was great to finally get someone who delivered service as you'd expect.
Train 6 - Kosice to Budapest. Everything seemed fine until the MAV train stopped in the middle of the country side. We were told nothing but to get off. Luckily there was a helpful youn German man who had knew what to do and he led us to our next train where we now had no seat reservations again. The train was only 30 minutes late, but was a very uncomfortable train with no room in it.
Train 7 - Budapest to Vienna. OBB kept sending me emails that the train had changed and I needed to take alternate service, but the train schedule etc all looked fine. Once I got on the train I found out what had happened. For whatever reason they had over booked, so someone was sitting in our reserved seats and would not move. I complained to the train driver, he said he didn't care and just sit somewhere else. I asked for my reservation fee back and he walked away. I found another OBB employee, they told me just sit wherever. I again asked for our fee back then and they told me they didn't have time to talk with me, just sit wherever. That was the last OBB employee I saw on this train. We sat somewhere else and watched the chaos as many, many people also had people sitting in their reserved seats. By the first station OBB had reset the seat signs to show all seats as not reserved, but someone came to us and told us to move because we were in their reserved seats. I explained why and told them we were not moving. They insulted us and started screaming at us, but a nice lady across the aisle told them in Hungarian to leave us alone and go sit somewhere else, that everyone was in this situation. I thanked her because after that they stopped screaming at us and left. No announcement from OBB, no OBB employee walking around explaining whatever was going on. Just people fighting with each other because of OBB.
Train 8 - Vienna HBF to Airport is the only OBB train we took that left and arrived on time with no major issues. The number had changed, so the train I had booked didn't match, but the departure time and route to the airport was the same, so whatever.
So I don't know if that's what to expect from trains in Europe now, especially from OBB. We are used to dealing with issues with travelling, but we are not used to there being issues with nearly every train. We are also not used to dealing with staff that does not care at all and a company which takes your money, but doesn't provide any follow up service. Believe it or not I tried to keep my comments brief. There was other annoying dealings related just to the trains and after this experience we're done with trains in europe unless they are absolutely necessary. Based on our experiences with all the Austrian people as well, we've cancelled our planned trip to Germany as this was the only trip we have ever done where we wanted to leave and come home before it was over, but we were not able to get Austrian air to change our tickets without a huge penalty.
