Riding the (Virtual) Rails: Slovakia

 

photo credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAV6Ts8cKl4

Slovakia was the first former Easter Block country I visited virtually. I spent several months traveling the rail system of Slovakia, the southern half of the former Czechoslovakia. I found the differences between Slovakia and, say, France or Germany, quite stark. To begin with, Slovakia is a noticeably less prosperous country than the western countries I traveled through. The towns and cities, the sliver of which one can see from the cab of a train, I thought looked rather nondescript. Which is to say neither ancient or modern, seemingly no national architectural style. The stations do not seem to have large parking lots – the people leaving the train just followed a walkway or a dirt path into town. 

photo credit https://www.youtube.come/watch?v=5yHhHeY-Y7Q

This was the first country I traveled in that had “halts” along the branch lines – basically some concrete blocks alongside the rails to form a low embankment where the passengers would embark. They might have a three sided shelter, think of bus stops in the middle of the countryside, with any town that they were serving completely out of sight. This is another country where the station masters are out of their offices to see every train go by, and where, on the branch lines, there are those huts on either side of the station where the tracks converge and must be switched manually. All the main lines are electrified, though some of the branch lines run diesel engines and can be very twisty. Some of the trains just creep along, so here's a pro tip: you can speed up the train by viewing the video at up to 2X speed, a setting in the on screen setting icon. It helps on some of the very boring routes, if you happened to be a completest like myself.

photo credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcmPkQX4cDo

I don’t wish to be too harsh on Slovakia. It is a beautiful country, indeed all of Easter Europe seems to be. I don’t know how the political situation and tourist accommodations fare in these countries, but these countries are certainly worth visiting. One of the great things about Slovakia via Youtube trains is that you can travel on just about every route. See map below. The routes in yellow are the routes available from this Youtuber: SlovakiaVovlaku.sk: https://www.youtube.com/c/Vovlakusk/videos

 

All of the routes are identified with a number, which is the train route number. Using the map below, you can identify what routes you might want to take. It is a whole lot easier than looking up every city on Google Maps. (If you can read the numbers, that is. This is the best that I can do.

In your travels around Slovakia you will catch glimpses of ancient castles on the hills, and deer running across the tracks. There is a train that takes you up to a sky resort in winter. And it has plenty of hills, and farmland to travel through. As always, if you want to pick and choose the most scenic rides, consult a topographical map to see where the mountains are, and take a trip through them.

photo credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAV6Ts8cKl4