The Foreigner's Guide to Living in Slovakia

This blog post is no longer relevant because the cp.sk Website has been updated.
See my updated blog on travel scheduling.

A lot of people who end up on this Slovakia site are looking for information on train schedules (mostly between any of the following cities: Vienna, Prague, Bratislava, Budapest) and also, how much tickets cost. From my own personal experience traveling through Europe I know that having this information ahead of time can be crucial to travel plans, or sometimes more importantly, for peace of mind.

So, if you too are looking for this information, you’ve come to the right place. What’s the best way to find information about travel schedules and costs? You can get all from one website: www.cp.sk Here’s how you find public transportation schedules (train and bus) to destinations in and out of Slovakia.

First of all, I’ll pretend that I want to travel from Bratislava on September 27 (a Saturday) to Poprad.

Now, to find schedules and costs, follow these steps:

1. Go to www.cp.sk. The home page for Cestovné poriadky-Travel Schedule displays.

2. Click the British flag located on the bottom right-hand side of the page to change the language from Slovak to English.

3. Select Trains from the left-hand navigation menu. A fill-out form appears.

4. Type in the appropriate locations in the From and To fields. The Via field can be left blank. In my case, I’m typing in Bratislava as my departure and Poprad as my destination.

Leave the Category fields as is.

5. Type in the correct departure date and approximate time you plan to travel. My date is 27.9.2008 and for time, I’ll say 08:00 since I want to see all departure times after 8am.
Note: Time is displayed in 24-hour numbering.

6. Select the direct button to exclude transferring options.

7. Click Search to get your results.

A list of results will display in order by time. From left to right, the data displays as follows:

• From/Via/To – The departure and arrival locations are listed as well as the names of the train stations. This can be important if there is more than one train station in either of your locations (for example, Bratislava has more than one train station).

Additionally displayed is the length of time the journey takes, the distance in kilometers, and the cost of the ticket (not including reservation).

• Arr and Dep – Here are your arrival and departure times. Scroll down the page to see more results.
  Click Next -> at the bottom of the page to see additional results.

• Rides – This is the name of the train that is scheduled for that particular journey. It’s an interactive link and if you click it, it will show you the entire schedule for that train. For example, it could be that your train originally began in Berlin and is continuing on to Budapest but you are only getting on and off from Prague to Bratislava. Sometimes it’s nice to print out the train’s itinerary so you know when the scheduled stops are along the way.
  
  

You may want to do another search for travel times to Bratislava, this time looking at the bus schedule. Buses go often between Vienna and Bratislava and the travel times and/or locations of the bus stations may be more convenient for you. Also, to many destinations within Slovakia, the bus travels where the train does not. Buses reach more destinations in Slovakia than trains do.

To do a bus search, begin from the cp.sk home page and select Buses in the left-hand navigation menu.

Ticket Costs

Now, another way to check the cost of a ticket without looking up a schedule, go back to the cp.sk home page and follow these steps:

1. In the center-bottom of the page, click on Tariff Calculator. An illustration of a train ticket displays in Slovak.
Note: Everything from this point onward will be displayed only in Slovak

2. After the “Z” (from) is displayed, type in your departure location. Here I’ve typed in Nitra.
Note1: Departure and arrival locations can be in Slovakia only
Note 2: Letters are not case sensitive

3. After the “Do” (to), type in your destination. I chose Levice. Leave “Cez” (through) blank.

4. Below the “Počet osôb” (number of people), select the number of travelers from the drop down list.

5. Double click on the red numeral of the “Trieda” (class) to change from 2nd class to 1st class, or vice versa.

The price automatically tallys at the bottom of the ticket.

That’s it. I hope that helps you in figuring out your itinerary and gives you a general idea of how much ticket prices are. I can image this program will need to be updated once the euro currency is adopted in January.

One more note, fellow blogger, Captain Oddsocks who writes about living in Czechia, wrote an excellent blog called All you need to know about Czech trains. It is so crammed full of helpful information and specific details about trains, schedules, and tickets, it’s must reading for anyone who will be traveling in Czechia. I need to write something similarly helpful about Slovak train travel but that’s a big job requiring a lot of time. Hopefully soon.

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