Trains, Warsaw

Via the website of the Polish train company (PKP), it was very easy to make a planning.

You can easily find al the connections and the time schedules.

Mostly I used IC trains, because these trains do not stop so often, so travelling time is shorter.

Via the website of the Polish Intercity company: www.intercity.com.pl/en/main, you should be able to make a reservation. But unfortunately it did not work from abroad.

But like in my case a friendly Polish girl (thank you Anna) made these reservations for me, and then did send me the reservation forms.

And the system works. Once you have your reservation, you have a wagon number and a seat number, you just have to present this reservation form at the conductor and pay the money to him.

So no problems standing in line to get a ticket, no language problems at the ticket office.

So at the end of my Poland trip I travelled from Poznan towards Warsaw.

I had booked an early train towards Warsaw (7h40), like this I still had two days to discover Warsaw before my flight back home left.

Train trip from Poznan to Warsaw:
- Poznan Glowny - Warszawa Centralna
- travelling time : 2h56
- travelling distance : 306 km
- price : 77 zl.

My Hotel in Warsaw (Hotel Metropol) was on walking distance from the station (400 metres)

Even on the train there was a good service, as shortly after the train left the station, a man passed by with drinks.

First I thought, he was selling drinks.

No no, he was bringing free drinks, you could get coffee, tea, orange juice or water. With this drink he also gave a snack (a chocolate waffle).

But this was only the case on the IC-trains, like from Poznan to Warsaw, it was an EC-train and there you needed to pay for your drink.

Unless you ride the " Inter City " train where standard conditions are more then acceptable, It is advisable to choose the first class ticket, if you travel in Poland using the standard train. Less crowded and more chance to get free seat.
For route planner (timetable) in English see here: http://rozklad.pkp.pl/bin/query.exe/en?
Or http://www.intercity.pl for realy express/direct high standart trains.

And keep your luggage close and supervised.

We arrived in Warsaw by train, traveling from Krakow. Before traveling, I searched the Polish Rail website for info about timetable and prices. There are several trains a day between Warsaw and Krakow, the journey takes about 3h (no stopping train). However, I noticed there were different prices for the journey, and we decided to take the cheapest train, which is also direct (about 3 hours) and costs 43.5 zl (about 11 euro, March 2011). The difference for the more expensive tickets (more than 100 zl) is that there is no reserved seating and trains are not as modern. But they are fairly reasonable for a 3hour trip and much cheaper, so on or way back from Warsaw we choose to travel, once again, on the cheapest trains.

My advise would be to arrive early at the train station and decide fast when your enter the train. We we weren't aware of this, we took our time to enter the train in Krakow (our first trip) and we had a hard time finding 3 seatings with space for the luggage. The train seems to be packed with both tourists and young people (students?) - we travelled to Warsaw on a Friday and returned to Krakow on a Sunday. On our way back to Krakow, conscious of the lack of space, we were amongst the first to enter the train and we managed to sit on a small, quiet and more comfortable cabin (former 1st class, nowadays the train is only 2nd class, eventhoug some carriages still hold the old the 1 sign).

Both Warsaw and Krakow Central Stations are within walking distance of city centre and near other transportation such as buses and underground/ tram. Sometimes signs are only in Polish and platform is Peron.

An advice concerning buying your tickets: in Krakow there seemed to be some queuing at ticket offices, so arrive early and don't miss the train!

Taking a train to Krakow wasn't part of our original plan but after our flight from Chicago arrived late and LOT didn't hold our connecting flight for us or the other dozen or so passengers on our flight, our options were to take a train and get into Krakow at 9pm or wait for the next available flight and get in around midnight, missing night one of the VT meeting. We arrived at the Central Station with about 7 minutes to spare, we knew we'd never get through the ticket line so we headed to the train where we confirmed with station staff that we could purchase a ticket on board. We also didn't have any Polish currency so a helpful American passenger traded us some USD for some Polish zloty and we hopped on the train. Turns out we didn't need it as the ticket agent carries around a portable credit card machine. For the two of us it was 227zl one way for a fast IC train.

Be sure to check the travel time, trains to Krakow take anywhere from 2 1/2 hours to about 5 hours, we almost got on the wrong train as two trains to Krakow were arriving on the same platform at the same time.

The IC trains are comfortable, the 2nd class compartment we were in didn't appear to have any required reservations and sat 6 to a compartment

Warszawa Centralna is a major European station, and the hub of the Polish network. It has direct connections to all over Poland, and to many Eastern European capitals. There are direct connections to Budapest (12 hours), Prague (9 hours), Vienna (7 hours) and Berlin (7 hours). There are also overnight trains to Moscow via Belarus.

The main station is bang in the centre of town, right underneath the Palace of Culture and Science.

Hi there,

last autumn I took the night train to Lvov. This time I have been checking: db.de, pkp.com.pl and uz.gov.ua

These web services don't sell tickets to Lvov.

Does anyone know a nice travel agency in Warsaw, which could get these tickets before us arriving to Poland.

thanx,
yours akis