Europeans, do you take the train to travel to other countries?
Europeans, do you take the train to travel to other countries?
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%
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.
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 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?
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!
One of my dream vacations is to get my wife and kid Eurail Global Passes for a few weeks or a month, and just backpack everywhere constantly staying in hostels and seeing everything. It'd probably be kind of stressful and tiring, but memorable.
I've never done that, exactly, but I've done several trips of that length around Europe and South America.
My (general) sanity rules have become these: never stop for less than two nights, always spend four nights in the same place after 2-3 shorter stops, and spend a full week somewhere during the trip.
While this may feel limiting, I've found that anything more strenuous has always overwhelmed someone in the group.
Edit: minor schedule adjustments
I'd say: do the opposite! Don't plan anything, stay no more than two nights at the same place, jump on a train and see where you end up. Then, if you don't like, just take the next train somewhere else.
I did this twice in my early twenties and it was amazing. I mean, it was absolutely horrible. I slept on bark benches, in Cafés, in train stations, before train stations (until they turned on the sprinklers)... I was picked up by the police because we got lost in a field and more than once I was convinced I'd die. But it was absolutely worth it and both trips became core memories / PTSD trigger.
But seriously, don't follow this advice if you have a kid and are not an immortal twenty-something.
Thank you for the sane guidelines. My latent hubris would no doubt have me blurring about the continent like the subject of an international manhunt. Having spent 48 hours on a cross country Amtrak once, I should be less keen to recreate the experience in European terms.
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.
So you're saying the train company needs to be nationalised and the capitalist pigs running it into the ground while extracting profits for themselves tried & jailed?
Because that's what I am saying.
The governments need to be tried too (especially the current one, those people should probably be jailed for many many things they've done), but there are laws protecting them..
Taking a plane instead of a train because of lower accident risk seems pretty unethical given how incredibly polluting short-haul flights are. On any train, even in Greece, your chances of injury from accident are vanishingly small. Certainly far smaller than any kind of road transport, such as a bus.
Apart from safety reasons, it's a way of protesting against their actions (I know, there are other ways of protesting too, I took part in some of those as well).
Btw, I think it's more popular (and cheaper) to just get the bus than the plane, Greece isn't a big coutry.
Generally speaking they are probably safe since this may be the only deadly train accident I know of in Greece, but I can't trust my life to their ~unregulated-unmaintained systems and I don't want to support them financially, at least as long as they don't change and just try to cover up a mass murder.
I dare you to find that train between Lisbon and Madrid
The railway system in Sweden is trash. We have to and should have spent a lot more into maintenance and new tracks.
I have been to Sweden (Stockholm) by train from Germany and found it better than the German and Danish trains.
Sweden is a long country and it is worse up north.
Having just returned from Stockholm to the UK I have to say it was seriously impressive in comparison, atleast in Stockholm greater area I had nothing but good experiences with public transport. The cost of travelling within Stockholm unlimited for a week (£35) on busses and trains is around the price to take 1-2 trains in the UK. And they're so frequent and run for better hours. Not saying this to detract from your message tho, just interesting to see a different perspective ... it's likely theres valid case to improve funding for maintenance and lay new tracks
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 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)
I remember when this image was forst posred some brits were pissed that they were jot included.
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 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.
Sweden is so bloody long. I've gone to Norway and Denmark by train. Denmark by train was roughly the same time as flying, including transfer etc. Too far for any other country really
The trick is to catch a sleeper train. Have a full day of work/leisure, board the train, sleep, and wake up at your destination in the morning.
The Stockholm-Copenhagen journey is short enough that they park the train somewhere in the middle of southern Sweden for an hour or two to make the timing more convenient.
Yeah, did that to Norway. Denmark was like six hours, with one switch in Lund.
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.
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.
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.
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 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
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'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?
It is, I couldn't go even if I for some reason wanted to.
Would love to have those Tallinn and Stockholm tunnels.
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.
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.
To neighboring countries yes, but not across multiple borders.
The only exception from that was taking a train from Germany via Belgium to Luxembourg, but that hardly counts.
Else I've done Germany -> Austria, Luxembourg, Netherlands, France, Czech Republic on individual trips, and also did Denmark -> Sweden, Sweden -> Norway and Czech Republic -> Austria (in a sleeper)
Germany -> Austria can cross multiple borders. There is a direct train from Berlin to Vienna via Prague. I also traveled an indirect one and had a nice lunch brake in Prague.
Between other countries yes, from my country no. I'm at the edge of Europe and our trains are bad so planes usually make more sense.
Finland? Portugal?
Greece, a comment above pretty much covered it.
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.
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.
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'd like to hear your medium-long fairly good anecdote!
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.
From Estonia, currently it's probably easiest to take a ferry to Stockholm, thence a night train direct to Hamburg or Berlin. Continue from Hamburg to Köln and change there to go further west. Of course you can go via Kaunas - Bialystok but it's slow now, when rail Baltica is complete there will be fast trains Tallinn - Warsaw.
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.
You can get to Constantinople from Vienna, but I think it's more than 24 hours because the tracks in the Balkans aren't very good. There's even a portion that runs on diesel. Hopefully when they join the EU it will improve
Yes. (I'm Swiss.)
Same here. I often travel by train but only to neighboring country, so France, Germany and Italy (never been to Austria).
Il y a des trains de nuit à Zagreb, Vienne, Amsterdam et Prague, si jamais. En plus, je pense qu'ils veulent commencer un à Barcelone, mais il n'est pas encore realisé.
Going to coppenhagen from sweden is really easy... except for the swedish rail network which has a horrible layout.
A Swede going to Denmark, voluntarily? I don't believe you.
Its closer than stockholm and i needed the airport...
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.
You exaggerate somewhat - there are only track-gauge changes at the border of Spain, former Soviet-Union (Moldova, Ukraine, Lithuania) and Finland (way up north...) Also some narrow-gauge mountain railways. Often you do have to change train at the border due to differing electricity systems (openrailwaymap.org shows both). Anyway many borders are in pretty places in the hills or by the sea, good to see the view and get some fresh air. For a really comprehensive exploration of border crossings check out Jon Worth's site
Also, in Iberia it's just the slow trains on their gauge, the fast ones are on standard gauge.
Also who goes to the former Soviet Union anyways - the only country worth visiting is being invaded.
So yeah not a problem in practice
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
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.
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.
I haven't yet, but I really wish to try.
Not from Italy, transalpine connections are few and not very convenient.
I did take an Eurostar from Brussels to Amsterdam, but that's like catching a regional train here lol
There are three tunnels into Switzerland, two into France and one into Austria. I think that's quite good no?
For example, Rome to Bern is less than 7 hours. It would take ~12 hours by car.
It can be a bit of a mess with different tickets and stuff I've heard
From Netherlands I regularly take trains to:
- Belgium
- Germany
- Switzerland via Germany
- Poland via Germany
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 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.
Just a Canadian over here who cant even come close to affording to ride the train in country, being judgy of all the "airplane is easier people".
Yes, I take the train because I can afford to take longer trips (flexible and remote work).
my mom travels between Ukraine and Poland by train regularly, but i guess that doesn't really count as Europe
it counts as Europe, just not as European Union
Hell yeah. Shoutout to the Rail Planner app
I drive or fly. Mostly drive.
Not really. I take a bus though.
They have built a trainline across the baltic sea?
When did that happen?
You probably missed the /s but for the people wondering what the map means I think it's a ferry from Stockholm to Turku
Helsinki-Tallinn is the proposed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki–Tallinn_Tunnel, which is currently a ferry (?)
Similar with the direct way from Copenhagen to Hamburg. There was a ferry route where they loaded trains onto the ferry. Now they are building a tunnel.
I used to love going to london from brussels. Not much opportunities these days but I would with pleasure.
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.
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.