Trains in Europe
Thursday, January 23, 2003
Travelling by train is quite new to us. As most people know, the passenger train system in Europe is much more advanced than what we have in the U.S. It takes a little while to figure it out, but overall it is quite convenient and pretty economical.
Perhaps the first thing we noticed about taking the train is that it is much more simple than flying. There are no security checks and no checking in. You don't have to arrive at the train station 1-2 hours before you leave; 5-10 minutes will do (actually, as long as you can get on the train before it leaves you don't have to be early at all). On the other hand, this can actually make it a bit more stressful. For "normal" stations, the train will stop for only about 2 minutes before heading on to its next destination. At some of the big stations it may be more like 5-8 minutes. When you transfer from one train to another you may have as little as 5-10 minutes. This doesn't leave much time to figure out what you are doing.
Luggage is also less of a hassle (mostly). You just carry it on with you. There is much more room overhead than there is on an airplane, so even our fairly large suitcase fit (although sometimes it was almost too heavy for me to lift it up there). In many of the cars there is also extra room for luggage at one end of the car. So there is no dealing with checking in your luggage, and no problem with it getting lost somewhere along the way (unless you forget about it and get off without it -- I did that once in Stockholm, but fortunately the train was staying for a few minutes and I had time to go back on and get it).
Tickets
When you buy a train ticket you can use it at any time (within a certain period of validity). So you can change which day or time you travel and still use the same ticket. This meant it wasn't a big deal when we got on the wrong train to Frankfurt because our ticket was still valid for the other train. Some of the special high speed trains and night trains have an extra supplementary charge on top of the normal fare.
You can also pay a little bit extra to get a reservation -- this gives you a specific seat on a specific train at a specific time. This makes it much easier because you don't have to go searching for a seat and you're much more likely to get a good seat. Some trains require reservations, while on other trains you can't get reservations.
When you read the travel books you learn that you can get passes which will work for all of the trains for a specific period of time. These passes serve as the tickets -- you still have to pay extra for reservations and any supplementary charges. If you are doing a lot of travelling this can save you money. Unfortunately, the rules for getting these passes aren't written very well for our circumstances -- the passes which are usually referred to in the travel books can only be used by non-European residents. We are currently considered to be residents of Sweden, so they won't work for us. There are other passes which can only be used by European residents, but in order to buy one of them you have to have lived in Europe for at least six months. So those don't work for us either.
Fortunately the ticket lady was able to give us a pass that was specific to Germany that we apparently qualified for, so we ended up getting a decent deal. In the end, I think we paid about $800-1000 for all of the tickets for the two of us for the entire trip. Not exactly cheap, but not bad considering the amount that we travelled over a 2 week period.
Seats
Riding the trains is a bit like pot luck -- you never know quite what you are going to get. Some of the trains are quite nice. And some of them aren't. The fast intercity trains tend to be nicer than the slower regional ones, but even those vary. One of the big differences from one train to another is the seating arrangement. In general, the seats are a bit larger and have more leg room than the seats on a plane. Frequently (especially the trains we've been on in Sweden) each row will have two seats on each side of an aisle. Usually there are some seats facing the front of the train and some facing the back. In many cases there will be some seats in the car where there are two pairs of seats facing each other with a table in the middle.
In some cars there are separate little rooms of seats. In theory, these should have more space than the normal seats, because each row has only three seats (the room has two rows for a total of six seats) with an aisle outside of the room. However, since the rows are facing each other there is less leg room than you would usually have (or rather, you have more leg room but more legs sharing it -- which is okay if your wife is sitting across from you, but not so good if it is a stranger). Also, since its an enclosed room it feels a bit tighter even if there is more space. We think it would probably be rather nice if you were with friends, but it feels a bit cramped when you are with strangers.
On some of our trips the train wasn't at all crowded. On other trips there weren't enough seats for everybody and some people were forced to stand. For one trip we had to sit on the floor in the bicycle car (which has a fair amount of open space and a bike rack).
Most of the trains have a car where you can buy food, and some of the long ones even have a restaurant. We didn't end up using these -- we just brought some food with us.
In general, taking the train is a bit more comfortable than flying. It's more open, and there aren't many restrictions on what you can do. It's usually no problem to get up and walk around. There are no restrictions on using electronics. You don't have to listen to safety instructions at the beginning of the trip.
Smoking
In Sweden the trains are usually nonsmoking, but that's not the case in Germany. There they have some cars that allow smoking and some that don't. In some cases the smoking and nonsmoking sections are just divided by a plastic divider -- sometimes with a door and sometimes with just an open doorway. One "nonsmoking" car we passed through was filled with smoke from the smoking side of the car. So we learned to try to find a car that was entirely nonsmoking, or at least try to be at the very end of the car as far away from the smoking side as possible.
In many of the regional trains where we didn't have reservations, the nonsmoking cars filled up fast, so we had no choice but to sit in the smoking section. Not where we wanted to be, especially since Sara is pregnant. In another case, we were in a nonsmoking car, but some people decided it would be okay to smoke if they stood right next to an open window -- that helped, but we could still smell it.