Polish Trains

Although I have spent a good deal of time in Poland, this year was my first time navigating the unbelievably complicated wonder that is the Polish railways system on my own. While most counties have one national service provider, Poland has two. The first , PKP, is a subsidiary of the national railways, while the other Przywozy Regionalne, is a private company and often the cheaper of the two. PKP sells tickets for both companies. There are also PR offices, which only sell PR tickets. To further complicate matters, there are multiple kinds of tickets for each company. From my travels this year here are some of the things I have learned the hard way about the Polish train tickets:
• Even if the signage says otherwise, PKP always sells ‘Regio’ tickets.
• If you buy a ticket from one company for the other it will still be printed on in the boarding card of the company you bought it from. Don’t let this fool you. The actual company and kind of ticket is denoted by unintelligible codes printed on the ticket.
• ‘Osobowy’( train with no seat reservations) tickets are cheaper. However, because all PR tickets are Osobowy, simply asking for one implies that you want a PR ticket. If you want a non inter-city PKP train, you need to specify this. In general it is a good idea to clearly specify the exact kind of ticket you want. If you are not picky about price, it is often just easiest to ask for a ticket on the next train to you destination.
• When you screw things up, you will be made to pay a fine and buy a new ticket. the conductor from the other company can stamp the old ticket so that this other company will redeem a percentage of its value. If you speak Polish, the conductors will be more then happy to explain what you did wrong and will usually take the time to explain the company codes to you.
• Many people just buy the ticket once they get on the train. When I tried this one conductor warned me that you have to pay a 10 zlotych fine if the ticket counter in the station you left from is open. I don’t know how they know if it is, but apparently they do.
• Just paying the 10 zl fine is better then getting caught with the wrong ticket.
On the day I was traveling from Poznan to Wroclaw, PR employees decided to go on strike. Instead of negatively affected, I found myself grateful that I only had to deal with one company. When I got to Wroclaw, I noticed that there is yet a third train company which operates in the Wroclaw area. To make matters worse this company sometimes runs combined trains with PR. There were so many kinds of trains that the lateness colum on the arrival/departure board, had to be co-opted in order to delineate all the different kinds of trains. If the train is late, as in Poland they often are, it reverts to showing arrival times, and you just have to guess what kind of train it is.