Train Time! Vienna to Bratislava

This is another mini travel entry. I like doing them, because the actual transportation is probably the most confusing part of travelling Europe. My case is reinforced by the fact that I am currently on the bus to Prague, after I almost boarded the wrong bus before mine arrived.  There were some language barriers. But then the travel attendant (like a flight attendent) was super nice, and could speak English, which is nice and she was very attentive, so it's all good now, just took a bit.

So about my Vienna-Bratislava trip. From what I could tell, you can travel between the two cities 3 ways; boat, bus and train. Well the boat was pretty much out of the question, it was actually pretty reasonably priced, for a boat at ~20 Euros. But boat travel is a bit too much for me. So it was between bus and train. The bus being 7.20 Euro and the train 14 Euro. However there is a catch, the train ticket included public transportation in Bratislava the day of arrival and all OBB trains within Vienna, which for me, translated into getting the transpo to the train station from my hostel. So that translated to the Bus and Train being a lot closer in cost. So I decided to take the train (that way I had more flexibility, and I like trains more)

So at about 3 o'clock I headed back to my hostel to get my bags, and then went to the Westbahnhof Train station to get the OBB S-bahn train to Melding and then Sud-Bahnhof. When I got to Westbahnhof, I discovered that the S-Bahn train I wanted to take only came every hour. :S. In Berlin I had taken the S-Bahn, and there, the most I needed to wait was 15 minutes. Whereas I had failed to realize that in Vienna the S-Bahn was much more of a Regional Railway then a city rail, hence less frequent trains.

So then I decided to do the unthinkable, take the subway, without a ticket. I guess the better option would have been to just buy a ticket, but my 48 hr pass had literally expired only 30 minutes earlier, so it would have been painful to spend another 3.60 Euro on a ticket.

So I rode two stops to Melding on the U-Bahn, instead of waiting 40-ish minutes for the S-Bahn that goes past there. At Melding there was more confusion that I won't get into, because there was construction going on at the Sudbahnhof Station (where I needed to catch the train to Bratislava). So I took a Regional Train from Melding to Sudbahnof, then walked around the Station (literally around it, thanks to the construction) to  another section of the station and caught the train to Bratislava with a couple minutes to spare!!