Happy ending after ticket farce: no punishment for women

“Unfortunately, the language barrier caused this misunderstanding,” says Eva Hackl, Head of Regional Management Upper Austria at ÖBB. “I’m glad we were able to get this out of the way together.”

As reported, the 21-year-old student Anastasiias, who has been living in Steyr since the beginning of November, was punished with a friend, two other women from Ukraine and a child on the train journey from Linz to Steyr at the end of March. In Haidershofen, shortly before the end of the journey, a train attendant noticed that the women were traveling with false tickets. They had bought four single tickets for adults and a children’s ticket from the ticket machine at the Linz train station, but without knowing it, they had bought the wrong ones. The train attendant then issued the Ukrainian women with a fare penalty including a penalty of 135 euros without any explanation. As a result, the young women, who are not yet so familiar with the customs in Austria, were even afraid of being deported because of the penalty notice.

Sylvia Heiserer, parish councilor of the Steyr parish, who takes care of Anastasiias and her husband Oleh, then campaigned for her protégés at ÖBB. With success. The Ukrainians now only have to pay the surcharge for the correct ticket, the penalty was waived for the women.

“We try to make the start of the journey and the ticket purchase as easy as possible,” says ÖBB regional manager Hackl, who also comes from Steyr. She now gave the Ukrainians a description of the ticket options and explained the options at the ticket machine: “All information about buying tickets and the tariffs is available at oebb.at or in English at oebb.at/en.”