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  • 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.

  • 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 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.

  • 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.

  • 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 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.

  • 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 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.

  • 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.

138 comments