On Saturday I headed for Brno on a day trip to go to a museum or two. In the past I've often taken the yellow Student Agency bus, which is a great option--very comfortable, with drinks and movies. On the other hand, if traffic slows to a crawl between Prague and Brno, there's nothing much the bus driver can do about it.
And, it looked like the museums I wanted to go to were a very simple walk from the Brno train station, so this time around I opted for the train. I looked up schedules on idos.cz, wrote down the most promising few, and set off for the station to buy my return ticket and go.
My day in Brno was pleasant, if a bit on the warm side. I saw some art, although the paintings I had gone especially to see were not on display, being removed for conservation or loan. (Right, the signs didn't specify which, so I have no idea whether these works are on display in some other city or secreted in a basement lab!) I also visited Brno's design museum, a gorgeous building inside, which turned out to be entirely taken over by a design biennale. I wanted to see that, but didn't find it as interesting as I had hoped.
I headed back to the train station, where my notes indicated I could catch the 5:09 back to Prague. The return ticket I had purchased was valid for trains going through a range of towns--there was only one town listed as not valid. Pardubice was on the valid list and the 5:09 train went via Pardubice, so I climbed aboard, saw a window seat that wasn't marked reserved, and planted myself. A young woman then sat next to me, the train started, and I began looking at the scenery.
A young man arrived with bottles of water and, to my mild surprise, asked for my ticket. (Conductors and refreshment purveyors are not, in my experience, the same person.) He informed me, pleasantly enough, that my ticket wasn't valid on this train because my ticket was from Ceske drahy whereas this was a Regiojet train.
Well, this was news to me because in my experience Ceske drahy sells the tickets for all train trips in the Czech Republic. Never mind whether the train originally comes from Germany or Hungary, if you buy your ticket in the Czech Republic, you're buying from Ceske drahy. But apparently Regiojet, which is part of the same company as Student Agency, has somehow obtained the right to run its own passenger trains that require purchase through that company.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, Student Agency and Regiojet are very good at what they do. Their buses and trains are new and comfortable and not particularly expensive. And despite my ticket not being valid, I was left in peace the whole way to Prague. (I was going to get off at Pardubice and change to the next Ceske drahy train, but when we got to Pardubice the woman next to me was sound asleep and didn't respond to my voice or nudges, and her tray table was down, so I figured it wasn't worth it to shake her awake.)
On the other hand, I really don't like the idea that now the traveler has to worry about multiple companies and whether the ticket is good for the next train. The UK broke up their train system into a gazillion different carriers, and while their trains are nice too, it can be difficult to figure out just how to get to your destination. It's my impression that in the UK, it's at least divided up by region, but none of the companies seem to be able to provide any information about anyone else's train and so when I wanted to take the night train from London to Arbroath, I was unable to determine whether it had couchettes or if so how I would reserve one. (Perhaps I was incompetent, but I did spend quite awhile once fruitlessly trying to find out more about the Caledonian and eventually just dozed in an ordinary seat.) In the case of Ceske drahy and Regiojet, the trains are in direct competition on the same tracks.
Just when you think you know (mostly) how something works, you learn you don't after all.
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