Europeans, do you take the train to travel to other countries?
Europeans, do you take the train to travel to other countries?
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 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.
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!
Please avoid trains in Greece. Last year about 60 people were killed (most I think were uni students), because we don't have almost any safety mechanisms.. There were two trains, one with passengers who took the last train and one on the opposite direction on the same track for ~10 ehole minutes before the collided..
The other train seems to had been carring illegal flammable oil or sonething that caused an explosion upon collision.
The goverment tried to cover up everything once it happened (they even poured cement on the collision point and removed debris "to clean the space", thus removing evidence), there were some (unifished) joke trials that lead almost nowhere (there might still be investigations) and most importantly, the people working on the trains say that there have been nearly zero improvements to the system. And they blamed it ~all on the single guy who managed the tracks/routes of the trains.
Another symptom of capitalism (the company which operates the trains is private for some years)..
Check this wikipedia article if you want to learn more https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempi_train_crash (or search somewhere else).
It's sad because trains ~should be the future means of transportation, along with trams (only the capital city has tram I think)..
PS. On the other hand, I dont know how much less safe our trains are compared to boeing planes, hmm.
I dare you to find that train between Lisbon and Madrid
I did an interrail journey some years ago, so yeah I guess! (800 euro at the time for 15 days of unlimited train everywhere in Europe but the country you start at, it was a cool trip).
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.
I know flights are usually cheaper (unfortunately, when you look at the CO2 emissions), but I like to take the train from time to time. Last time I did Barcelona - Madrid in high-speed-train, that was quite nice.
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)
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...)
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.
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.
I did and will continue to do so... But I think I am still in a minority here. Most people probably just get on a plane. At least if they are going further than a neighbouring country.
I have done Berlin-Paris multiple times. My partner has traveled from Berlin to Manchester with a stop over in London. Berlin-Copenhagen as well. We like traveling by train
If the French will decide to fix the line connecting France to Italy that was damaged due to a landslide last August then yes otherwise it's difficult as travelling via Switzerland is crazy expensive.
Just got back from a two week train trip across Europe. Overall, found it very easy and accessible to move around.
Here’s the general itinerary:
- London to Brussels
- Brussels to Prague (night train)
- Prague to Vienna
- Vienna to Zurich (night train)
- Zurich to Bern
- Bern to Lyon
- Lyon to Nîmes
- Nîmes to Barcelona
The only train problem on the trip was our night train to Prague. The carriage was 28-30° C and very uncomfortable. Especially for a 16 hour trip.
The inconsistency of scheduling, signage and trip information was a challenge. Especially when you add in the language barriers.
My ranking of the train systems:
- Switzerland (obviously)
- Austria
- France
- Spain
- Czechia
Yes I just did, but the line I used isn't on your picture. I used the ÖBB Nightjet from Zürich over Innsbruck and Wien to Budapest.
The train left at 20:40 and arrived at 08:00 the next day. Was pretty chill. Though I wish there was more modern rolling stock for nighttains.
If it can be done in less than a full day, yes. Going between, say, Berlin and Stockholm or Munich and Venice, I’d take the sleeper train. Going from Stockholm to London or Madrid, though, I’d fly: as much as I’d prefer to take a train, a journey would take some 24 hours, with several connections (vulnerable to delays) and cost a lot more than a cheap flight.
Hopefully train connections will continue to improve, though.
The problem is that cross country trains are a hassle, because many eu countries have there own booking system, gauge width, traffic control infrastructure. Unless you take a popular route between mayor cities, you need to buy multiple tickets and change trains.
The reason the tracks are not standardized is because in the 1800s the military did not want neighboring countries to just roll into their country by train.
I've taken too many trips to count between London and Paris, Marseille, Lille and Brussels. Extremely convenient way to get to France, and SNCF trains are crazy fast. Oh, and I did a trip from Berlin to Paris a few years back. It was kind of interesting - as soon as you were on French track, the train accelerated fast enough to push you back on your seat!
I just travelled the Danube by bike. Wish there woulda been trains in Romania that allowed my bike, but I was forced to take a bus for 37 hours to get home.
I love trains and I wish it was easy to take it to other countries. I have bad motion sickness and stuff on rail is the only thing that I can comfortably travel on. Unfortunately getting the central or western Europe from Estonia is frigging impossible, like I have tried to figure out how to buy tickets and how expensive it would be but I found no answers. Now even if I did figure that out I would need to switch trains like 6 times to even get to western Europe. I wish the EU fixed and unified the rail network.
Southern German here, went to Austria, Prague, the Netherlands, Scotland, even northern Germany. Always worked fine except for northern Germany, that's a 50/50 chance of going wrong. Will keep doing that in the future, especially with the expanding night train services.
I've visited my native England a few times by train from the Netherlands and it's a breeze, but a bit dear if you don't plan it a thousand years in advance. A few months ago I took the sleeper to Vienna and back and it was very good indeed, better than the Caledonian Sleeper I might daresay. I have a medium-long and fairly good anecdote about getting the train to a village in Germany last winter if anyone's interested. I went to see Lightning Bolt in Paris a few years ago and that went swimmingly too. I'd like to go to Spain or Portugal at some point but it's something like 13 hours by train. Oh, and when I lived in the UK, I was working at a train station, so I'd use my staff discount to go quite far afield: I took the train from Liverpool to Lille once with my bike and cycled up to Amsterdam; I took the train once to Luxembourg, then Trier, then Bonn to visit a friend, with a little detour to the bit where Luxembourg, France, and Germany meet (Schengen). It's a nice way to spend a day if you just bring a book or something.
I just took a train from Mannheim DE to Lille FR. It required one swap and cost me about €250. I felt like that price was too high for that distance and speed (5.5 hours roughly) but that's comparable to a plane ticket in the US from one major city to the next so it's a better way of traveling in this instance because trains are more enjoyable than planes for me.
That being said I agree with other commenters that we need to continue to invest in our international rail systems and continue to improve speeds, reliability, and cost.
I'd like to take trains all over the EU in the future (rather new to DE). If someone could get me a single train from Frankfurt to Madrid in under 8 hours for €250 I'd be in love. Make planes obsolete for distances a high speed rail can achieve in under 8 hours. Get me into Italy and Portugal and Sweden and Turkiye and Ukraine (after they've defended their home successfully against the imperialists) via train. I want to see the world by train.
It's a youth rite to go to mainland Europe by air and then buy one Interrail ticket for the next x days and explore the countries
I personally don’t use trains, because there are no reasonable connections on the routes I frequently use. Also, trips by train (especially when it’s cross-border), are often more expensive than the corresponding flights.
I haven't yet, but I really wish to try.
Like every month, it's a 2 hour trip to go by train in two others counties. It's very convenient.
People should be more conscious of what the EU and Schengen bring us.
My next big trip will be Interrail across Scandinavia.
Yep, a lot. From Switzerland to Netherland, their is a lot of plain, that made train connections easier. It took some times; those connections where not that common because of borders.
Their is lot of short connections in those area. Furthermore, each year some big connections are improved. For exemple Paris -> Bruxelles has been reduced to 1h22 recently (270 km), which impact something like Paris -> Amsterdam (4h, 420 km).
Here we use short connections each week to go shopping, make some sports, or stuff like that. A friend took it every day to work. We use big connections to visit some places on week end, for Alpinism in Switzerland for example, or big cities (Bruxelles, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Copenhaguen, …)
For those long connections, the main issue is the cost; some times to times their is cheap tickets, but their usually cost hundreds euros.
I use trains to move around within my country, from a couple of hours to 4 or 5 for some long weekend trips.
I've been trying my best to stick to trains for longer trips but it's not easy: it takes a lot longer (and that's, well, expected and the least of the issues), it's less confortable (I took some night trains and the quality of my rest was very bad, so much so it impacts the quality of my first day abroad) but most of all, it's not less, not as mu ch as, but MORE expensive than planes.
I keep myself motivated by running this https://lowtrip.fr/ and keeping a lifelong count of the CO2 I've contributed to.
It's essentially a luxury though.
Yes, I take the train because I can afford to take longer trips (flexible and remote work).
Hell yeah. Shoutout to the Rail Planner app
@Servais I'd love to do this once, but this is not practical at all where I live in order to do it more often, because I live in one of the countries marked with a shade of red on this map (in S-E Europe). And that is not taking into account various incidents that can occur with the locomotive and/or other rolling stock.
Train travels inside the country are indeed doable, and many people take them, but the speed is so low that for longer distances it is rather more feasible to travel by plane in a couple of hours than take one full day for each trip.
From Netherlands I regularly take trains to:
- Belgium
- Germany
- Switzerland via Germany
- Poland via Germany
It can be a bit of a mess with different tickets and stuff I've heard
No. Taking the train for long distances is too much of a gamble when I'm on a schedule. More than half of my train rides end in delays, missed connections because of trains leaving too early, cancellations, missing wagons and being stranded at some rural station after closing. And most of the time the tickets are more expensive than what I'd spend on gas for the same distance.
I'd really love for it to be a viable alternative but the whole network and service need some major investments until then. The cost cutting over the last decades has been terrible.
I used to love going to london from brussels. Not much opportunities these days but I would with pleasure.
Not really. I take a bus though.
One of the coolest is from Copenhagen traveling. The train goes on to a ferry, then you get off the train, go grab a beer and enjoy the trip then. get back on the train and choo choo to Germany.
Did it once but probably not again unless I can’t drive for some reason, like old age. I just love the freedom to be spontaneous about routes and schedules.
