I am fighting the train travel jihad, I take the train even if it’s more expensive and takes way longer.
There are dozens of us! Dozens!!!
Agreed, me too. Have been to all four corners of Europe and beyond by train. It’s fine, a bit expensive and time-consuming but with advantages too. And at least I’m not a hypocrite when I say I care about the climate.
As a French living in Germany, I often take the train to visit some friends/family. I would say it’s working well from Frankfurt to Lyon or Frankfurt to Paris and not too expensive if you have a Bahncard and you can plan your trip in advance. But IMO, it the least we should expect from 2 neighboring countries.
I’m very excited to see the resurgence of night trains though, I love this mean of transport in particular!
It is just too expensive compare to plane and that’s a shame. I’ve seen it is cheaper for scotisch and Londoners to meet in Spain than to take train.
If you fly, we all pay more.
I’m currently waiting for a train to go two countries over for a weekend, so… yes?
update: am on the train
What about now? I need updates man. Life of noodlejetski is a thriller!
still chuggin’ along, but in roaming
It’s been 15 hours, how’s life?
back on tracks, baby!
Amazing! Keep us updated!
just got off the train, and waiting for a bus home. the 45 minute delay during the journey was NOT fun, but oh well
I took a trip from the Netherlands to Romania, and amazingly only had a single transfer.
At least, that was the plan, but then a train went missing on the way there and we had an additional transfer. Pretty stressful. Way home was super smooth though.
The one thing I don’t get the EU doesn’t bring down the hammer on is getting directions and buying tickets. Feels like that should be a relatively easy fix, forcing all European rail companies to align from the top down. But I’m probably unaware of something that makes that harder than it seems.
Pretty much all train companies are vast old overcomolicated state-run monoliths that are very used to everyone working around them in their own country. Such organisations suddenly having to work together with others as equals requires a culture shift. Not to mention the technical challenges, the IT systems - if they even have any, or any from this century - are typically vastly different. They’d have to invest massively in modernisation and standardisation before they can even think of integration. This requires a multi-year effort and a lot of investment, which many states are not ready to make.
Sauce: the Swiss state-run train company SBB/CFF/FFS is and has been working hard to integrate the systems of just our neighbours, and it has been … interesting.
Oh yes, I’m not doubting it would be a multi-year effort, it’s more that I’m not aware of any such effort being in progress. Like, couldn’t the EU at least have set a goal of interoperability in
xyears?
No. For a destination where I am going this summer a train trip is 12h with a stopover and if I want a sleeper cabin, the whole trip is 300€. Plane takes 1.5h and costs 50€.
Also as I’m in the middle of one of those routes, if I were to return home by train, I’d need to get off at 3am.
Here’s my solution: tax the living hell out of aviation please, use this money to subsidize trains. There will be more supply and more demand on the rails. We will suddenly have frequent and convenient connections. And we all will be co2-neutral.
Your case is very clear cut, but for some journeys where travel times are closer together, e.g. 1 hour flight versus 4 hour train people do tend to forget that there is extra time wasted going to the airport, checking luggage, boarding, whereas the train is “just there”. Depending on your location going to the train station may also be faster than going to the airport, maybe even cheaper!
That said, the price of each journey most likely will always favour flying at the moment.
I have never had a train journey where something hasn’t gone horribly wrong like missed connections, cancelled trains, trains overcrowded with drunk football fans, etc.
Having to look for hotel at night in middle of nowhere or having to sleep in the station because the next train is going tomorrow can ruin the whole trip.
Planes can be cancelled too but it’s not a guaranteed thing like with trains.
The probability of a smooth plane journey feels like 90% while for trains its like 1%
Over many years I took my kids by train to see almost every country in europe (all except Moldova, Kosovo, and islands…). Mostly we used inter-rail tickets as kids up to 12 are free. Now they got older it’s more difficult, but a few weeks ago took my family from Wallonie to Catalonia - for 29€ each person, all the way from belgian border to spanish border (with some hours in Paris). Can also get good prices from DB crossing three countries (e.g. Belgium - Italy, or Poland ). It helps to know the routes (use openrailwaymap) and experiment with the options (add ‘via’, change stopover time etc.). Indeed it’s frustrating that every country system is different.
I traveled by train within Kosovo. A 2-hour trip cost 3 euros.
Ah, reminds me Nord-Rhein-Westphalia (at least they might have removed the map behind the screen !) Seems they have prioritised building new highways to connect to the SW.
To neighboring countries yes, if there is a good connection. If there is a night train even further. However, the price should not be much higher than a flight and I want to change train as little as possible. Buying tickets should not be too complicated either. Unfortunately, taking an airplane is often easier in my experience. We need a true high-speed railway network across Europe. Something like the Shinkanzen.
I’m a finn. The choices are the connection to Russia, or that long detour up north to get to Sweden. So not really.
Isn’t the border between Finland and putlerstan closed?
From Germany, I have been:
- to Switzerland (3 or 4 times)
- to Sweden via Denmark (twice)
- to Italy via Austria (one direction) and Switzerland (other direction)
- to Corsica, technically a part of France (don’t tell them) via Italy, also taking a ferry
- to the Czech Republic
- and some mixed hitchhiking & train to Belgium and France
And I will go to France (Bretagne) soon.
I hoped to take the sleeper some time, but all routes we looked for, they are so much more expensive than a day train + one night of hotel stay that we opted for the latter.
Out of the countries I have been to, France and Italy have the best connections between cities/regions, while Denmark has the worst.
As I’m living in the north of Germany I could probably easily go to Denmark and Sweden, haven’t tried that yet though. Been to Prague by train once, which was okay, as there was a direct connection by EC.
Actually I’m planning to go to Austria this summer, so I’ve recently looked it up. Plane tickets are more then twice as expensive compared to train for my route. The train takes 11-12 hours (depending on connection) though, which is absolute max for me. So yeah, wouldn’t go further than that. (Still looked up a connection to Croatia, that would’ve been an absolute pain in the a** by train…)
The Swedish sleeper trains between Berlin/Hamburg and Stockholm are pretty convenient, and I can highly recommend them. Apparently there’s one (run by Snälltåget) between Stockholm and Dresden now as well. When the Fehmarn tunnel opens in a few years, the trip will become a few hours shorter, hopefully opening up new routes.
The ÖBB has pretty good night trains
How long’s flying though? Considering I regularly do 1.5hr flights for work, but realistically the whole process takes about 4.5hrs to get from A to B (including the 20 mins drive from the airports). Feels like half my day is gone but I barely get two episodes of Scrubs in on the laptop before it has to shut for landing.
The flight itself is 1.5 h as well, but I would need 2 additional hours by train to actually get to my destination. So idk maybe 6 hrs in total? I have no idea if that’s realistic though, have never seen an airport from the inside.
A flying horn that’s never flown?
I am from Norway so…no. Just to make the point even more clear. That pink line up north. It’s mostly for shipping iron ore from Kiruna to the port in Narvik. It can take passengers but it’s not its main purpose. And the rest of the Norwegian rail system stops in Bodø. So from Narvik to Bodø you need a six hour+ bus drive. (This is an map of the EU system I think so Norway and the UK are left out)
The railway system in Sweden is trash. We have to and should have spent a lot more into maintenance and new tracks.
Interesting to hear that other countries have the same problem. Sweden wasn’t one I would have thought of tho.
It’s important to remember that everyone places that bar differently.
“Bad” in one country could mean the trains are 2 min late while it could mean 45 min late somewhere else.
It seems like anyone you ask will tell you how the trains there are worse than in other places. I guess there’s always a country that has it better. I don’t think there are many countries that give enough priority to trains to satisfy transit users.
I am in love with train travel but in the last years my local system has lost a step or two, to put it mildly. I’m seriously considering going back to more air travel, and I hate what the whole flying experience has become.
It used to be that one could spend three hours dealing with the airport experience plus an hour or two flying - or enjoy four or five relaxing hours on the train to somewhere, no garbage security checks, lines, etc. But nowadays on the train you’re almost guaranteed delays, cancellations, extra stopovers, etc., which means sometimes you’re not even sure on longer trips if you’ll make it home that day.
Obviously this cancels out any advantages of train travel aside from the environmental ones. And if you have someone like me, who like I said, absolutely loves traveling by train, considering going back to the airport - how are you going to convince the average person to ride instead of fly?
I’m sure it’s all the result of cost-cutting efforts but train companies desperately need to underderstand that what makes people more likely to ride are the things they’re choosing to sacrifice when they’re trying to cut costs.
I firmly believe train travel needs to be heavily subsidised and not run like a business. Leaders need to understand that it’s important infrastructure and enables business of all other sorts. Not unlike the highway system, which they do without batting an eye.
Yes. Took the sleeper train from the Netherlands to Italy last autumn.
How was it?
Amazing. Day walking around in Milan. Then onwards to Lecce. All trains were on time to the minute. We had cabins to ourselves (went with friends). Did it with Eurorail tickets.
