Rail route of the month: from Bohemia towards the Baltic coast

On a bargain €9 one-month rail pass, our slow travel expert goes border-hopping on the historic Oder-Neisse line from the Czech Republic to Germany

The station at Hrádek nad Nisou has seen better days. There’s a hint of former Habsburg style, but the ticket office is closed and the buffet is barred and shuttered. Breakfast must wait. Happily, I already have a ticket. A bargain ticket indeed, a rover valid for an entire month that allows second-class travel throughout Germany, and even to and from selected places in each of the nine countries bordering Germany. Including Hrádek nad Nisou. And the price? Just €9 for an entire month’s travel. It’s a time-limited summer offer, subsidised by the German government, which remains valid throughout July and August.

On the platform at that remote Czech station, I ponder the possibilities. Switzerland in a day? Luxembourg or Denmark perhaps? I opt for something tamer: a journey by train through a region known historically as Lusatia, following the Oder-Neisse line from Bohemia towards the Baltic. The Oder-Neisse line is not a railway, but rather an artefact of 20th-century politics. This line on the map, hammered out at the Potsdam Conference in 1945, defined Germany’s new postwar eastern border. It split communities straddling the new frontier and played havoc with the railways.