Day 0 . The Portuguese train company

Buying a InterRail ticket in Sta. Apolonia train station took more then 50 minutes :). First everything is being rebuilt, dusty and noisy. Signs saying electronic or credit card payment is broken fill all the empty window space. The normal ticket office does not sell international tickets and no information is given about where is the international ticket office for the time being. If you start asking everyone that seems to work to the Caminhos de Ferro Portugueses Company you may find it :P. I did it !

Buying the ticket itself took less then 10 minutes but....

... they sold me the interrail ticket and the reservation to leave portugual but not the 50% reduction ticket for the train while in Portuguese territory (InterRail is not valid in your home country). For that you have to buy it in the normal ticket office. Problem rise in the national ticket office since they tell you that its not possible to buy such a ticket there. I have to return to the international ticket office (10 minutes walk). After pressing them with the argument that I'm buying a ticket for a trip inside Portugal they get rude. I'm forced to tell them that I'm not their internal mail and that she should phone the international ticket office before I go there. She does it... and in front of me... starts a fight, at the phone, with her colleague. In the end she calls her boss... and her boss talks on the phone, too :) he he. I wait... wait... and wait. After many internal negotiations they reach a decision that I should go back and really buy the ticket at the international ticket office. Not sure if this happened because its the right way of doing it or because of my presence there. Well.. I did it... and got a manual filled ticket and manual filled reservation when now everything is computerized.


Not, too bad. Only 50 minutes... 3 ticket offices. 15 minutes waiting watching a free phone fight with 3 persons. Nice. I left Sta. Apolonia with a large smile. I just regret not having more time to fill a complain. It was a good decision to buy all the tickets with one day in advance.



There is something new with the InterRail Ticket ! They finally decided that it would be interesting to know where do people travel to. They are offering a 256Mb (268in the Portuguese translation :P) USB key to all that return their InterRail ticket in the end. Nice !!