Europe by Train: 5 Cities in 3 Weeks

Six minutes. That’s how long we had to change trains at an unfamiliar station, in a country where we didn’t speak the language. If we missed the connection, we were screwed. There was no other way to reach our destination.

Not only that, but our train was running late.

Two minutes late, five minutes late, ten minutes late. Our six-minute window had vanished completely. We were due to arrive after the second train had departed. My only hope rested on some quick internet research I’d done while planning the route. Some forum posters had said that ÖBB, the Austrian Federal Railway, wouldn’t let you book an impossible connection. If they said you could move from one train to another in six minutes, then it could be done.

Except now we had negative ten minutes to make the connection. We made our way to the door and hovered there in anticipation, glancing anxiously at our next train’s name on the list of connections that the ÖBB screens were projecting. If it left without us, the dot next to it would flash red.

It was yet another European train trip gone not wrong, but weird. Things hadn’t been the way the internet said they would. Despite inquiring at each and every station, we had yet to have to validate a ticket (except when taking the Eurostar or city metros). None of our trains had split horror-film style and left our car in the wrong country. No conductor had wanted to check our passports before boarding. And now our trains were not running with on-the-dot efficiency. The discrepancies were baffling.

It’s the modern search engine’s only flaw: while Google is my how-to book for everything, it ranks content by relevance, rather than timeliness. And the internet is old. Too old for a swiftly changing, high tech rail system. I’m already two months behind in writing this, and by the time you read it my experiences may be obsolete. But I feel like I’ve got to try to add some relatively recent advice to the search pool.

And that’s not to say that all of the advice online is outdated. Most of the actual routes are the same, and the Man in Seat 61 continues to be the best resource for international train travel. But the train experience is constantly changing. For example, I didn’t expect the helpful screens on the ÖBB trains. As we were whisked through the beautiful and slightly snowy Alps on our way from Zurich to Salzburg, the screen revealed our current location on a GPS-style map. Like an airplane info screen, it also gave us our current speed, the weather, and the name of our next stop — all in two languages. No need to worry about whether the conductor spoke English.

Language was another unexpectedly fascinating aspect of traveling by European rail. Once you cross a border in the European Union, the language on board changes. The announcements abruptly switch from French to German, German to Czech — as do the conversations around you. It’s jarring but also comfortingly logical. (Don’t expect announcements in English outside of the UK — even if they make them, you won’t be able to hear or understand them. Kind of like on the subway in NYC.)

In the case of the seemingly impossible ÖBB connection, the internet advice triumphed. The train finally arrived in Linz and we burst out, running for the stairs. Miraculously, we ran in the right direction and reached our platform. The train was there, but short. We put in one last sprint, catching up to another panting backpacker and the bored-looking conductor. We’d made it; we were going to Prague. The train waited another five minutes, and then took off for the hills.

We wanted to collapse, but we were immediately confused. Why did our train, another ÖBB, look like the Hogwarts Express? Everyone was sitting in closed compartments: the Victorian kind, with doors and curtains. I asked a conductor if we were in the correct (second) class. We were, so we bemusedly picked a compartment and sat down.

The good news is, no matter how different the ride is from what you were expecting, it’s easy to adapt. By the time we’d left Austria for the Czech Republic, we’d nabbed our own compartment and were busy accidentally making eye contact with the woman pushing the food trolley. As we watched the storybook landscape roll by, cars were added, long local stops were made, and police patrolled the corridor. Other passengers spilled into the corridor to open the windows and catch a breath of fresh air. Our research may not have prepared us, but learning to expect the unexpected had worked out perfectly.

Three-Week Itinerary

• Days 1-5: London (including trips to Oxford and Bath)
• Day 6: Train to Paris
• Days 7-10: Paris
• Day 11: Train to Zurich, then train to Salzburg
• Days 12-13: Salzburg
• Day 14: Train to Linz, then train to Prague
• Days 15-17: Prague
• Day 18: Train to Berlin
• Days 19-21: Berlin

General European Train Tips

• Travel during the week.
• There may be a few stations around the one you’re headed for that sound similar to it. Make sure the name matches exactly.
• If you reserve seats on a train where the locals don’t, someone will probably be sitting in them. You have to decide whether to kick them out, which is made harder if you don’t speak the same language. The conductor won’t care if you sit somewhere else.
• The earlier you buy, the cheaper the tickets. However, be aware that if you order tickets online in advance from the U.S. your credit card company will freak out. It might be a good idea to tell them about your trip, first.

Specific Route & Station Tips

Day trips from London to Bath & Oxford
You can catch these from Padding Station. Use the National Rail website to figure out when the train times are, but buy them in person on the day of departure. If you’re in a group of two or more people, you will get a group discount. This significantly reduces the ticket price. There’s no need to validate the ticket — just hop on. The bathrooms in the Bath and Oxford stations are free, but the one at Paddington isn’t.

London to Paris

• The Eurostar leaves from St. Pancras International and arrives at Paris Nord. The trip takes almost 2.5 hours (you lose an hour).
• Buying tickets: Use the Eurostar website. You reserve seats in advance. It was pretty crowded on a Sunday. We paid €216 / $285 for two people.
• Departure: Get there a couple of hours early if you’re planning to turn in your Oyster card, exchange money, pick up lunch, etc. You can forget taking a picture with the Harry Potter trolley on the same day — the line was huge (at least on the weekend). See the timetables for your check-in deadline; it’s at least half an hour earlier than the departure time. You’ll also need to find a working ticket machine, print your ticket, validate it, and head through airport-style security. There’s a passport stamp and everything.
• Arrival: If you haven’t yet picked up some Euros, there’s a currency exchange booth on the main floor. There’s an ATM / “guichet automatique de banque (GAB)” on one side of the booth. To leave by foot, walk out of the main entrance on Place De Napoleon, where a bunch of people are hanging out.

Paris to Zurich

• The TGV leaves from Paris Gare de Lyon and arrives at Zuerich HB. The trip takes about 4 hours.
• Buying tickets: If you’re from the USA, you’ll need to follow these tips (basically, don’t say you’re from the U.S. until check-out to avoid being redirected to a more expensive website, and always say you want to stay on tgv-europe.com if asked). The form is also a little tricky. I ended up putting my last name where my first name belonged and vice versa, but no one ever checked ID so it didn’t matter. You can choose your seats in advance and print the tickets at home. We paid €132 / $174 for two people.
• Departure: Use the signs to figure out which part of the station your train will be leaving from. Ours was a long trek from the metro. There are food stands open early, but we had stocked up at a supermarket the day before.
• Arrival: Zuerich HB is enormous. We took out 20 Swiss francs (ATM is one level down) and managed to get a decent lunch with snacks and drinks at a tiny grocery on the main level. If you keep going down you end up in a giant mall filled with chocolate stores and bakeries. The bathroom here was the most expensive station bathroom we saw (2 francs).

Zurich to Salzburg

• The ÖBB train leaves from Zuerich HB and arrives at Salzburg Hauptbahnhof. The trip takes about 5 hours (we did Paris to Salzburg in one day, and it was a lot of train travel.) This is one of the most scenic train journeys in the world because it goes through the Alps.
• Buying tickets: The ÖBB website was the hardest to use. First, search for available trains. Try to pick a faster RailJet train from the list of results and click “Tickets and Prices.” Non-flexible tickets are cheaper and marked with a four-leaf clover. When you click on a price, the site asks you to search again and reverts to German. Change back to English and continue the process. You’ll be given the option to print your tickets. You can also reserve seats, and when you get on the train a little screen above the seats says where you’re going. It’s extra, but comforting. Try to get a seat on the right side; we sat on the left and it was also beautiful, but the right looked positively dramatic. Of course, it could’ve just been a case of “the grass is always greener…” We paid €84 / $111 for two people.
• Departure: Know your platform number in advance; the distinction between regional trains and international trains was confusing to me. Our train was upstairs. There is an English-speaking information desk on the same level.
• Arrival: Salzburg Hbf is small, thankfully. It’s easy to find your way out. We got there in the dark, but somehow managed to stumble upon our nearby hotel.

Salzburg to Prague

• This is a tricky route because of all those big mountains in the way. You can either take a train to Linz and then a train to Prague, or head to Munich and get a bus to Prague. The train to Linz takes about an hour, and then the train from there to Prague takes about six hours.
• Buying tickets: Back to the fun ÖBB website. You can reserve seats on the first leg (not worth it), but not on the second part. I bought the tickets together, which led to the nerve-wracking situation I described above: you only get six minutes (if that!) to transfer. There was an earlier train from Salzburg to Linz, so maybe it’s possible to book them separately and gain more time in-between. We paid €137 / $181 for two people.
• Arrival: Get off at Praha hl.n if that’s your destination (you may pass through other Praha stations). The station is fairly large, with an ATM, currency exchange desk, bookstore, and other shops. The metro is a little difficult to find (look for Red Line C) and the machines look like this. Be sure to timestamp your ticket in one of the little yellow machines.

Prague to Berlin

• Leave from Praha hl.n and arrive at Berlin Hbf. Trip takes around 5 hours.
• Buying tickets: Buy at the DB Bahn website. You can reserve seats, but our train was a compartment train so it didn’t really matter. They insist on mailing your tickets to you, at your expense, so order well in advance of your departure date. We paid $92 for two people.
• Arrival: The main Berlin station may be an architectural feat, but I just found it huge and confusing. We had to go up a few floors to find an ATM, and we never did find a metro / S-Bahn ticket machine. We ended up going to the grudgingly helpful and very crowded ticket desk. Know your line, end stop, and U-Bahn transfer point in advance.