Hey Adam, What's your opinion on the following: If NATO (or let's say US & EU) would have reacted faster and more decisive against Russia's occupation of Ukraine (2014 or 2022), we wouldn't have the mess we have in Ukraine, would have stabilized Russia and made an example out of it (to China x Taiwan)? The point being, that if NATO would have found pretext to get involved as it did with Yugoslavia, overall the world would have agreed to this and Putin would have been thrown out of the government. Hope you will make an analysis of this in a future video (unless I missed it)
I once booked a sleeper train from Florence to Vienna for my girlfriend and me, of course using the Italian booking site. I don't really speak Italian. Turns out I booked us the honeymoon suite, private shower, massive window at foot of bed. Best. Trip. Ever.
@@Rockden probably ÖBB Nightjet. But assuming it was Italian it could also be a Trenitalia Intercity notte Edit: wait a second Trenitalia does not offer international sleeper trains, must be the ÖBB
I love this man's channel. He had one unpleasant train journey between two countries. He went ahead and strip the entire European rail system naked and presented it in front of us.
Great video! This needed to be said. I shelved my video on this topic when you mentioned you wanted to make this video, and you covered most of what I wanted to talk about anyway. It is SO frustrating not to be able to book international trains on one website. It drives me crazy. The other thing I hate, that you didn't get a chance to mention, is that sometimes there are huge discounts available if you buy some national rail card or buy the ticket in some obscure way that's not entirely obvious to foreigners. I hate finding out I could've travelled for 45% less if I just understood which off-peak travel card I was supposed to enter when booking. 🙄
I would love to see another video on this topic, though. The more awareness, the better. Just awareness won't get us very far, but it is the start for speeding things up. :)
1st You need to understand that European Union is not Canada or the US. This is not "one country" and if not, then there are different interests in every country. 2nd Most of the railways are national and are highly subsidized. And that means there is no political way to make changes. No politic will risk losing the votes of a few hundred thousand people working in the rail companies only to open the tracks for operators from the other country. If you want to know how radical the situation is, then I can tell you that a few years ago French gov. decided that French Rails need tu buy new trains which they didn't need only because the national train producer had financial problems. In this atmosphere of interventionism, you can't think about "open rails" at all. 3rd Switching the gauge it is too expensive. It will be cheaper and more cost effective to buy a hydrogen plane fleet than to remake the gauge of the tracks in a few countries. 4rd The multisystem locomotives which can switch from 3kVDC into 25kV AC in the blink of eye are on the tracks already, but the problem is that it is too expensive for rail companies to put them on the rails in other countries. For example, there is a lack of drivers who fave the certificates to run the train in a different country because of safety regulations which are different in each country.
Unfortunately nobody involved in decision making gives a fuck about "urban policy" TH-cam, but kudos to you for resisting the opportunity to make the ad revenue bucks off of this I guess...
Also I'm aware that Wendover put out a similar video a few days ago. It's interesting, but rather surface-level and comes to the wrong conclusions. I've been working on this video for a few weeks now, similarities to Wendover are in this case coincidence.
No, they're conclusions (Wendovers) are pretty spot on. Eurorail is general good. But integration is less than ideal, might have something to do with being separate countries, but hey, given that, works well. In my experience. Of course one could judge world air travel by one airport experience over the last crazy couple of weeks. But one would never do that. But I'm carping. Good summary.
My wife and I traveled from Italy, to Paris, to Istanbul, and then back to Rotterdam back in 2011. I remember smooth everything was. I guess to an American any rail system is just amazing.
Orient express is well connected with a lot of capital cities along the way to Istanbul. But when you try to travel not in ancient main route it becomes a nightmare
My sister and I traveled around Europe on Eurail passes the past few weeks. The Rail Planner app actually does a good job at telling you what your options are, warning you if connections are tight, and warning you if you need to buy separate tickets. That said, as soon as you try to actually buy tickets it becomes useless, and you're at the mercy of the local providers.
Yeaaahh interrail has the problem of Seat reservations tho. Would love if these shitty western European countries would get their fucking act together and NOT CHARGE 30 EUROS FOR A "SEAT RESERVATION" WHEN ITS INCLUDED FOR FUCKING FREE IN A REGULAR TICKET.... I'M TALKING TO YOU ITALY, SPAIN, FRANCE AND ESPECIALLY YOU, *BELGIUM*! Greedy ass motherfuckers, WE PAID FUCKIN 300 FUCKING EUROS FOR THESE SHITTY TRIPS
As a student who has recently traveled through Europe with Interrail , it's pretty easy to go from one capital to another as long ad they are very close, but the moment you want to stop by a small village you need to take at least 3 different trains with in some cases 5 minutes to hop from one to another. It was a great experience for the most part but this video detailed exactly what went wrong in it. Amazing insight into the rail system
But that's not a surprise. Trains are focused on the major hubs, connecting them. Regional trains are for outer areas. If trains serve every village, they'll become unbearable.
@@Sullian_dF oh as long as you have a decently organized friend going with you you've got nothing to worry about. btw just so you know, eating kebab every day is the best way to stay on budget. good luck with the journey
I live in Aarhus, Denmark, and I wanted to visit a friend in Vilnius. So I thought, "why not go by train?". The Danish rail operator could only take me as far as Hamburg, so I had to book separate tickets from there to Warsaw and then from there to Vilnius. On parts of the route there weren't any train departures available, so I had to navigate a Polish website to find bus tickets. The quickest route would take 30 hours and cost hundreds of Euros, so at that point I said screw it and booked a 1.5 hour flight for like 20 Euros... Europe really needs to do better on international rail. Like I do not expect to be there as quickly as with a plane, but at least make the tickets affordable and convenient to book. It would be awesome if there was just one EU Rail website where you could book a ticket from between any two connected train stations in the union. We don't need highly publicized PR stunts to make people want to take the train over planes, we need to make rail actually competitive with flight.
I personally don't even need the affordable part right away. Just being able to plan a trip properly would be a great thing to have. Price and speed is something that can come later.
This won't happen! Corruption will block every project for better rail connections. Every good connection between two cities will reduce the necessity for a big comfy car with long range. And as you know, every country loves their car industry... The real fight is between rail vs road.
For 1700km train is hardly ever a good option. If at all, I had considered sleeping on a ferry from Sweden. And these are all low populated countries. There are not much people traveling this direction.
to be fair this is PKP problem (polish national rail). They stucked 20-30 years in past. Seriously. Last time i was in poland i feared for my life with this old wood (literally, it was wooden. It was making very scary sounds) trains. Buying tickets online? You wish. Punctuality? Well... you will be lucky if next one will arive but you still cant take it because tickets are locked on previous train which didnt arrive. Their train cars are very old and was purchased from czechs when they started inovating their old train cars. Even their PKP logo looks like something from 90s. Its pain to ride train in poland. Which is paradox because poland is one nice flat of country.... At least this is my experience from... 2 years ago? Things may change but knowing poland i seriously doubt it. They are too busy pushing conservative catholic laws to deal with down to earth problems like fixing their public transportation.
That "Time spent: 6 hours, Tabs open: 30" hit way too close to home, the fact that there isn't a unified European scheduling and booking website is a colossal policy failure
@@huginug "I'd rather drive 3000 km than go through the hassle" lol. Well 3000 km, Americans would fly. Basically if it's over about 200 miles (321 km) we would fly. 200-300. Less than that is when you take a bus or train or drive it. :) Believe it or not 3000 km is a typical distance over here in North America. For example from San Francisco Bay Area to Dallas, Texas is 2838 km. Going east from SF, Dallas is the next major city. Well ok there's Las Vegas. That's still 915 km though. But both of those are trips for aviation. Even a French TGV would take 10 hours to get to Dallas, and it's only three hours to fly! Las Vegas would be three hours on TGV (well, not using the route the California HSR management chose to get to LA...if you had to use that, 4 hours just to LA...) but the flight is just over an hour (1.5 hrs by the official timetable...in practice it's usually a little faster than the official prediction. If the pilot gets up to cruising altitude and there's not much traffic, looks like there won't be much turbulence, they'll open the throttle a little more. :) ) I don't know Ug Ne, I am still shocked that Adam Something was willing to waste 10+ hours of his life taking a train when he could have flown in 1.5 hours. The only time I have taken a long distance slow train was with my ride home from the Navy (after doing 4 years), Seattle to San Jose. The train took 24 hours. It was a very nice ride, and the train filled up with passengers, but it's definitely not a replacement for aviation. Normally if I want to go to Seattle I'll hop on an airplane and get there in 2 hours. :) btw as far as planning, have you tried "rail europe" (type it in as all one word.) It seems to be the Expedia of European train travel. :)
"...Berlin to Prague trains every two hours..." We can't even get two trains a *day* between Auckland and Wellington here in New Zealand - in fact, you have a single Auckland to Wellington service one day, then the next day the train returns from Wellington to Auckland. And this domestic trip is over *ten hours* one way. I would *love* to see the current Berlin-Prague train frequency between Wellington and Auckland! 🙂
And I thought Amtrak was bad, holy shit. At least trains from San Francisco to LA (roughly the same distance) are daily instead of every other day, and the West Coast is the worst part of the network (although the trip time is 12 hours. We need CAHSR to be finished soon).
@@sygneg7348 There are places outside of the US that are terrible with trains too, it's just that they usually have the excuse of being poor with corrupt governments, being sparsely populated, or having difficult terrain. The US is none of these things, we just stupidly decided that Amtrak needs to make a profit despite that not being possible.
As an American, I consider it great when Canadians come into the United States to cross the continent on the Interstate system. At least I have heard that happens a lot, I do not know if that is true.
It's pretty common for passenger trains in the US and Canada to be held up by cargo trains, due to a mix of factors. We've got the unified rail services thanks to government action in the 1970s. They aren't as good as they could have been, and this video shows that there are some problems with countries that have a good rail network. Both Canada and the US chose to prioritize road travel, and we're stuck on them. Europe's hodgepodge of systems isn't really an issue here. Almost all of our railroad is standard gauge, and operates without electrification. We've got a long way to go.
@@jessebrook1688 Well ofc. Cargo is what makes money. So it's important. While people ... well end of the day it was their choice to travel like this so ... who cares?
@@bigstar66 I would love to travell with a bullet train on semi regular basis, and keep both of my kidneys intact. But the reality, at least at this moment, is I'm probably going to have to sell at least one.
As an Italian living in the Netherlands, I would LOVE to have an alternative to flying. I was just discussing this horrifying user experience a few days ago. Of course Adam went 10 times deeper.
Bro… there is a nightjet between Amsterdam and Innsbruck and an Eurocity between Innsbruck and Rimini. 1 or 2 changes in Italy and you should be able to travel everywhere
In September I'll go from Northern Germany to Sicily by train. Wish me luck. It's only one day on the interrail ticket, since I'll leave early in the morning and the night train to Palermo starts before midnight.
As a university student living in Europe, I am happy we have so many trains. It is the way I travel and explores Europe. The trains are usually reasonably cheap, yes there are big delays and it is not the fastest way of transport, but while on the train I can study, read and do a lot of other things, I don't have to drive or wait in line for some kind of security check. Also, the cities are so interconnected that it's possible to go everywhere. Also, almost every company has discounts for students. All of that has allowed me to visit every European county by the age of 23, what a time to be alive :)
As a Rumburk citizen studying in Prague i am so glad that you explained to me why it takes so unreasonably long to get to Prague. It didnt make any sense to me why the train takes double the time of a car ride. Also, the direct bus to Prague was cancelled because it passes trough three different regions (Kraje) and the region officials didnt like it for some reason. So the connection problem is not only international, but sometimes also inter-regional :D
In Spain, old tracks were made with the Iberian Gauge, so Talgo had to invent a train which changed gauge, and they did it (without the need to reduce speed too much), and that’s what Renfe operates in routes where tracks change in order to avoid train change. These trains by the way are high speed, the new ones very high speed actually (Talgo Avril S106).
@@aurelspecker6740 and for that reason the spaniards are actually considering re-gauging to European Standard in the long run. The only real solution is to harmonize rail systems to one gauge, one current standard and one rail block safety system.
@@daszieher We don't actually plan to convert our rail network to international gauge. What is being done is to build the international gauge high-speed lines and leave the Iberian gauge lines for freight trains, suburban trains and medium-distance trains.
One of my longest projects in my masters degree in engineering was precisely about this subject. It sucks that things are this way because with medium-high speed rail a lot of european flights could be serviced by train, cutting emissions for those trips with reductions up to 85%, creating a way bigger environmental impact than any number of bike lanes or other trendy projects could ever hope to.
Yes, degrees. Billions upon billions issued and yet the world is as fucked up as it ever was. In most majors at most schools, degrees are about as important as male nipples in that besides making yourself feel good......I have two STEM degrees out of my three degrees and none were instrumental to acquiring and mastering my previous STEM occupation, which I got with only a high school diploma and some electronics knowledge retained from a Boy Scouts ham radio class. Degrees remind me of some wisdom a high school physics teacher told us about an architect, an engineer and a mathematician all staying in separate rooms in the same hotel. A faulty model coffee pot was in each room and thus at the same time in the middle of the night, they all woke up to nearly identical electrical fires across their rooms. The architect grabbed a fire extinguisher, but being an architect made a bunch of calculations as to how to perfectly arc the extinguishing agent across the room and onto the coffee pot. The architect followed the mathematics and in one perfect squirt, put out the fire and went back to bed. Then the engineer did all the same calculations as the architect, made the same shot on the coffee pot, but being an engineer, sprayed the whole table, the closet, the bathroom, the bed, the floor, the hallway and the stair well, to make sure the fire was truly out and then the engineer went back to bed. Next, the mathematician discovered the fire and made the identical mathematical calculations as the architect and the engineer and then went back to bed.
@@mirensummers7633 oh, i wasn’t bashing on bike lanes, just pointing out the hypocrisy in governments pushing so much for them just because they get to say “oh we installed X km of bike lanes” at the end of their term. Rail improvement is a long term project so no government wants to do it since they know they won’t be able to take credit for it so they just don’t care.
@@_JotaroKujo_ it is also super expensive and lets be honst, even if it is a super smooth experience, most people would still fly instead of spending 9h in a train.
Me and my dad have been traveling from Denmark to southern Italy on trains 3 times, and I didn't noticed any mental issues from me or my dad, cuz it was very fun. Some of the most fun I've ever had in my life.
Probably because apart from the headache that is the Copenhagen to Hamburg train, its usually a pretty straight shot. Hamburg is already one of the biggest hubs in Europe for long distance trains, so its super easy to arrive there in the early evening, hop on a night train to Zurich, hop on a Swiss express train from there to Milan, and then from there onwards with high speed rail further south. And though the 3 trains with the middle one being a night train is managable, having multiple day connections can be troubling. I mean one could say take the night train from Hamburg to Vienna, spend a day there, and then hop on a night train to Rome, but even then that's not exactly viable for people who aren't holiday goers in that sense or who mostly wanna get from here to there efficiently.
@@jackthomas1191 Well DSB's service is notoriously unreliable, infrequent, and overcrowded due to a shortage of rolling stock. They're trying to fix this by getting more reliable trains starting next spring. But even still the indirect trips especially were also problematic as DSB is quite infamous for delays which often leaves passengers seeing the train they need to be on leaving the station right as they pull in. Oh yeah and the tickets are pricey and there's no service at all. Only a single vending machine with cola and bottled water for a train journey that takes close to 5 hours. They're trying to improve on all fronts but even then a lot of it isn't enough to make a major difference. But they're trying.
@@drdewott9154 Fault! Europeans are already happy to be able to ride the train! Why does everyone have to chew the softness of the USA in their mouths?
@@drdewott9154 FFS, I have no idea to whom you have responded because apparently TH-cam knows which comments are not worth looking at. Whoever came up with hidings normal comments is a freaking moron. Had my comments get removed too (for no reason, thank crap AI). Ok, on topic: Never knew that Danish trains are so unrealiable.
From those countries, if you have taken any trains such as the TGV (so by passing France), it's pretty good. But as soon as you want to go through Germany, it's hell. That's because France TGV can run on 3 different voltages because they have bulkier transformer systems.
Well, to be fair, we know that this is not fully true. The sun will turn into a Red Giant, not a Supernova. Aside this the statement likely is correct.
@@justanotherguy2824 Supernova stage would come after red giant / supergiant stage if it happens. Instead of going supernova, the Sun will collapse into a white dwarf with much less drama.
@@Alpostpone thing is, in the red giant phase, most likely the sun will swallow Earth (as it'll grow in size to slightly beyond Earth's current orbit), so the planet won't survive to see the supernova
@@Kram1032 Probably, but supernova will never happen. Also is probable that Germans will continue using their outdated electrification system on other planets, and that their bureaucratic stubbornness survives any cataclysm.
Dang, I’ve only ever taken an international rail trip in Europe once and just assumed all trips were that easy. Didn’t realize that I had accidentally lucked into a good trip. Thanks for such an informative video!
It can be similarly inside a country too. In Poland there are at least 4 passenger railway companies which don't sell tickets online. I guess they don't want to turn profit.
@@nickonerd i often take the train between Osijek and Zagreb in Croatia, it's a 270 km journey that takes 5 hours partly because the track most of the way hasn't been properly maintained since austria-hungary, partly because the train stops at every single village along the route and partly because 2/3 of the way there the train switches locomotives. Oh and those trains only run twice a day per direction.
4:00 these chairs actually convert into a bed. Just hold onto the seat cushion from underneath and pull. You can do it to 2 opposing chairs just for yourself, or you can do it for all six, which creates a king size bed. The cushions of each opposing seats meet in the middle and the head rests also move into an almost horizontal position. I used these trains all the time between Austria and Switzerland. Sometimes, all 6 seats were full but when everyone agreed, we converted them into a full bed. The only issue was that you always ended up with somebody's feet in your face 😄 But if you get lucky and there aren't more than 3 people in the compartment then it's actually quite okay.
Yes I used to travel a lot between Rome and Munich and usually took the night train and we'd always convert the seats into a big bed. I've also slept there with 5 other people I had never seen before. The best ride was when I was in the compartment with a family from Naples and their little girl hugged me while sleeping 🥰
@@Discounted It's honestly tragic how many people see any form of human touch as dirty when humans literally evolved to be touchy. Not being touchy is a more recent development.
I took a DB train this week for the first time in like 10 years. This was the experience: - 45 minutes delay because of „unforseen construction work“ - no food service because of a broken cooling system in the kitchen - train on the way back got completely cancelled because of missing personnel - needed to change to new route including changing the train six times - somewhere on the way we caught another ICE again, because this one had 90 minutes delay - this train had no food service again - I arrived one hour earlier than originally planned for some reason DB really needs to get their shit together. When I look up the ICE 610, it had on average (!) 50 minutes delay the last 30 days with only 3 of them arriving punctual.
That's Deutsche Bahn for you... 😂 I seriously always thought that these things with DB is merely just an internet joke. Until I experienced it myself literally everytime I use DB's train. Every Germans is punctual, except for Deutsche Bahn
@@FauzulRizal I think germans got time travelling or step on the train like 2 hours before time for an hour trip because the way DB works makes it IMPOSSIBLE for people to be punctual, and it's not only the trains, all their transport systems suck!
@@justsomeguywithamustache3188 my German friends telling me that the only acceptable reason for being late in German is if you have an accident or if you travelled there by train 😂
As a web developer, I can't wait for, when that cross-EU ticketing platform is finally rolled out, all the security hole discoveries from outside security investigators to roll in because the most "price/performance-efficient" set of companies was picked to implement it instead of the most competent ones.
Or something funny like when Czech Republic wanted to install a highway vignette checking system that turned out to be so expensive, that volunteer programmers decided to do it for them and kinda found out that the system was also supposed to check the identity of all drivers *and* passengers and send the data to local counterintelligence.
Oh man have you ever heard of the great czech online service for buying highway passes? The ministry had this genius idea of spending millions to buy hardware just so the system can obviously collapse the first day while a few months later there'd be no traffic at all... And that was two years ago. Any sensible person would deploy this on any cloud kubernetes like aks with fraction of cost and better performance.
@@8bitorgy I work in security and let’s just say you get what you pay for. “Competent companies” is a nebulous term because it depends on what the application is and what your criteria are, but at least in security we find that organizations that outsource to shit third party contractors get shit work while those who outsource to professionals with good reputations get, on average, a much better product. Neoliberal governments love when companies promise them they can do the same job at a better price though. Especially with government contracts we constantly lose out to cheaper firms who do subpar work because all these types of governments care about is paying as little as possible without regard for quality.
Don't forget too that for an EU Cross platform website, the development firm will have to jump through endless woke hoops to get the contract. So until your firm's staff is comprised of 19% non gender specific members from uncontacted Indian Ocean tribes, you don't get the contract. The firm that achieves this will have the one qualified developer on its staff just recycle his broken freshman year webpage for the 2 billion Euro contract and voila, an integrated EU rail website that Amazon will buy out in a few years EDIT: and then charge the EU 25 billion EU a year to lease or else the trains get halted. That's social justice's final destination!
this is basically what happened when I tried to find a train route from Austria to Amsterdam. Longer, more expensive, less flexible and less convenient than either car or plane, really insentivising climate concious travel! Edit: Thanks to everyone pointing out the quite affordable NJ connection! I don't really know why it didn't show up for me anywhere, maybe I used the wrong websites/cause I didn't start from Vienna etc. Still would be nice to have an official app that brings all of the different services together so dumb bitches like me can be climate friendly too.
I am just past the introduction and I want to invite Adam to Australia. I remember my first longer rail trip that was supposed to take 32 hours. I ended up at my destination 54 hours after departure. And the train didn't even cross any border.
Where did you find a rail trip that is supposed to take 32 hours? Do you mean the Ghan or the Indian Pacific, because those are more like cruise ships then long distance trains, and if you instead booked a trip from Melbourne to Cairns, well, generally the Spirit of Queensland is quite reliable, but the XPT is a different storey, caused mainly by a lack of a will power and the fact that next to no one cares about it.
@@pwhnckexstflajizdryvombqug9042 Brisbane-Cairns (1681km)... This was certainly no cruise ... Well sometime later I did the trip in a sleeper ... and that "only" took 32 hours.
Just stumbled over your videos, I love the subtle realistic sarcasm you have for them. As a frequent train traveler I have to say there is at least one train booking site that works across Europe: trainline. Also even though technically a carry on ticket is only valid for the specified connection train - if you can prove that the initial train was running late and is the cause for you taking another one on the same route, you do not have to buy another ticket - happened to me just recently. Also proving that is super easy.
Hi just came looking for a comment mentionning Trainline. All of the countries (western europe) mentionned in the video are included in their search function. Whare it really becomes tricky is when you want to book trains in eastern Europe and the Balkans. Now that's a real challenge.
I have never taken a train outside the UK, but I only ever book through trainline. It's just, by far, the easiest and most headache-free way to get where you need to.
I recently came back from a vacation to Berlin. On my way back to Brussels I had the worst railway experience ever. Apparently two previous trains to Brussels had been cancelled before the one I had to take, which meant that this train, which would already be potentially full on a normal day, now has to carry three times as many people. When the train arrives two hours late, we were completely packed full and the train conductors had to ask all passengers without a reserved seat to leave. This is when people discovered that the people whose reserved seat numbers were meant for previously scrapped trains were overlapping with others' reserved seats on this train, leading to further complications and a delayed leave. Eventually the train conductor called the police to escort random people out of the train without reserved seats until we could leave, accidentally leading to a number of people being seperated from their friends of family who were still in the train when it departed. Luckily when I arrived in Brussels I was able to catch a train home in time before 11PM, which is when the NMBS stops service in most smaller towns, however I knew many of the people who were escorted off the train would not be able to catch a train by the time they arrived with the next one, meaning they would possibly be stuck in Brussels with no place to sleep for the night. It was such a huge contrast to the typical DB experience I had in Germany, where trains typically come in time and I felt like there was much better organization.
I think you are talking about the ICE to Brussels and yep, it's an absolute mess because of bad maintenance on the ICE 3M rolling stock. Went on interrail few weeks ago and avoided at every possibility to get on ICE 3M.
this. I recently moved from Cologne to Leuven and the Performance of the ICEs running from Frankfurt to Brussels is astonishingly terrible. Earlier this year, on the way to leuven i'd miss my connection in Liège, which is around 15 Minutes, so frequently that i started taking the delay reimbursement into account for my price calculations. And the last train of the day, with which i would arrive at midnight, i always board with the fear of being stuck there after missing the last train. Since then it's gotten... much worse, but Tickets are now 40€ instead of 30€. Thalys seems a little more reliable, but the lack of through tickets as mentioned in the video make them very unappealing - you can't even use them in place of a cancelled ICE, they're an ecosystem on their own entirely and it fucking sucks. It should be less than 2h by train with just one change, but the 4h Flixbus ride or the 3h/2 changes ride with regional trains is in reality often about the same speed and much, much cheaper.
What are you talking about, that is the typical DB experience? It's not an ICE if it's not at least 15-30 min late and if it snows in the alps then they start hitting 2h late in Cologne. The damned DB app didn't know that our central station was shut down, mind we aren't a small town, this is the former capital of the BRD, so it happily routed people through a station where all the trains were stuck. Had the same happen on an intercity to Munich, stood in place for 9h, cause we were packed tight standing in the bike compartment. Frankly it takes longer but the regional carriers are more reliable, RE10 to/from Krefeld not withstanding, of which a DB rep at Krefeld once said that they only find out if it is coming at all a few minutes before arriving.
Last weekend I was at San Diego Comic-con and I was planning to head home Sunday on the 1510 train. I opened up my Amtrak app, used the Status feature and found the 1510 train was going to be 30+ minutes late and the next one at 1610 was 90 minutes late, so I hustled to the station and was the last one on the 1410. And yes, those later trains would be packed with tire, angry people. So, if Amtrak here in the US has an app that shows things like the status of trains (either by route or train number) don't the European lines have the same?
hack for the nightjet (and almost every regular night train in europe): in case you didn’t know, you can pull out the seats, so that two seats opposite each other form one continous „bed“ where you can lay down, more or less. way comfier then sitting. and if you hit the jackpot and are alone in the compartment, you can pull out all six seats and pull up the armrests, so that you have one giant area to sleep
That's how it was in the old trains up to the 90s in Germany, too. Travelling with a few friends was awesome, the compartment felt like a big couch! Only drawback was that on night trains: sometimes 2 or 3 people would already block a whole compartment sleeping when you got in, leading to a shortage o free seats...
There probably was an option to convert the seats into a sleeping arrangement and he couldn't figure it out. And the Czech guy replying is just telling him they don't sell BEDS, a misunderstanding due to language. Perhaps thought it was a joke.
I was gonna say I’m glad I’m in the states and don’t have to deal with horrible rail systems. But I guess having one is better then nothing so you got me there. And our planes suck, so got me double
I can attest that a bad US rail system is better than not having one. I live along the surf liner route in California, and while the tickets are expensive, frequency sucks, travel times are long, and I wish it connected to some in land locations…..it’s still awesome not having to drive my car in order to see my sister. Instead I get to grab a beer, put on a movie, and just chill!
How do our planes suck? What am I missing, I fly alot in the US and never noticed anything overly annoying. Navigating the terminal is like the most annoying thing right behind the 1.5 hour drive to the airport.
This Austrian night train seating car actually is the best cheap option to travel during (off peak season) the night. Given you shared your opinion about these wonderful compartments is effectively proof that you just haven't pulled hard enough so the three seats at either side allow to convert themselves into a couch landscape covering the ENTIRE compartment!!! Book the entire thing with 2 friends and its guaranteed that no-one will disturb you
Yeah, I'm so jealous, I sat together with four people instead of three while other compartments were less full or even completely empty but closed off. He's travelling like a king there with so much space and privacy!
A few months ago I took a direct 6 hour train from Utrecht to Basel, crossing borders between Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland (sorry, not Austria). The train didn't stop crossing borders, the only drawback is that in the Dutch part the train is not high speed, taking up 30% of the total traveling time for 10% of the distance. Booking is easy via the NS international app. The ticket is a QR code.
Yeah. As much as I like adams videos sometimes, this one is really bad. Like: HOW BOUT INFORMING YOURSELF IN ADVANCE ABOUT WHICH TRAIN TICKET TO BUY??? ITS THE SAME AS BOOKING A ECONOMY FLIGHT, THINKING ITS BUSINESS AND THE COMPLAINING THAT THE ECONOMY FLIGHT WASNT BUSINESS😂😂😂
@@jimi272 Airline tickets are still not that easy if you want more than trivial bookings, but the train world is worse, in my opinion. Both worlds are real bad in believing that the customer comes last and is an inconvenience. What both worlds miss is proper regulation of service standards, and if someone could unify train and airplane services that would be a very nice utopia.
@@jimi272 Everyone who has ever tried to book an international train ticket knows this is simply not true. It's _extremely_ hard to get proper information. There are examples like this when cooperation between countries and operators makes it easier, but that is not the norm, it's an exception.
Thank you again for making THE definitive video on the subject. It still shocks me how nationalistic rail companies are considering they aren't competing with each other. They are competing with cars and airplanes and yet they feel free to self sabotage? C-R-A-Z-Y! Also the fact that pricing is all over the map doesn't help. That's like walking into a grocery store and expecting the price of a bottle of Coke to vary between $1.00 and $8.99 depending on demand, time of day, etc. I really hope the DB $9 Euro experiment becomes permanent and internationalized... I.e. every nation picks up on the idea and charges the bill to polluters via carbon taxes...
I guess you mean the "9€ ticket" currently sold in Germany for three months only and valid for local transit (but in all of Germany). It will certainly NOT become permanent as it was (my interpretation) a somewhat greenish and populist add-on to the populist petrol price subventions agreed on by the federal government. It has already been found out that it just created additional traffic without actually convincing people to permanently switch from car-centric to public transport. What a surprise.
hello, and welcome to the inevitable effects of increased socialism in a market environment. it is because the firms are free from competition, and they make money even if nobody uses them, (because if nobody used them, the tax payers would be forced on pain of imprisonment, or death if they resist, to bail out the nationalized/ effectively nationalized a la regulation industries) that they are in no hurry to improve. if there was the potential for competition, they would have to improve to be able to continue having their jobs. socialism is bad. government is bad. hoch die anarchie
When travelling by rail internationally, I typically use an Interrail/Eurail pass. Makes things cheaper and more convenient, but still has its drawbacks: - Mandatory, expensive, limited and complicated reservations on high speed lines in France, Spain and Italy, among others. - Meant for tourism, since it's a pass valid for several days (you need to travel by rail on many segments for it to be worth it). - Doesn't fix the connectivity problem (your delayed/cancelled train can still fuck you up badly). - Transiting in some big cities (Paris and London) is a hassle since they have several main stations which are far apart from each other. National rail companies do in fact share their train schedules with each other (I can use the DB app to look up for connections throughout Europe), though not the live information such as cancellations and delays.
@@murphy7801 In theory, yes, but dealing with (potentially several) local transit systems' timetables is certainly going to make transfers more difficult.
@@murphy7801 From Gare de Lyon to Gare de l'Est. I needed to take 2 metros and it took 20 minutes. Not as easy and quick as just changing platforms. Experience a delay in your previous train and you're done for.
Adam hasn’t considered this, but you can go from Los Angeles to Miami entirely on Amtrak. You just have to pass through Chicago and DC and the trip takes four days.
There's a minor inaccuracy here at 7:17 The Sun is too small to turn into a supernova, it will transition to a red giant and then overtime leave a planetary nebula and a white dwarf.
So we need to wait until the gas from the nebula, formed after the Sun dies, becomes a part of a larger star which eventually goes supernova, for the German side to convert to 25kV AC? :C
I was JUST talking about this - my friend is trying to visit from NL to Slovenia and it would honestly be simpler for him to invent teleportation. We spent hours looking at train options, even with transfers, it's a maze of several national websites and horrible transfers. In the end, after hours of looking at connections and inexplicably disappearing trains and terrible local websites, he decided to just fly. The flight was something you could find after 10 minutes of googling. And consider this is even amidst a massive air travel crisis in the EU. P.S.: Check Slovenia during all those compatibility maps in the video. We're literally shoebox-sized and there's some kind of incompatibility with each of our neighbors.
perspective from a neighbouring country - Croatian railways are considered a joke among the general public. Common train delays of 7+ hours, lines which inexpliciably stop and the passengers are transported the rest of the way on buses, the fact that you could travel via train from Zagreb to Belgrade faster in the 70s-80s than you can today, the fact that many railways haven't been upgraded since they were built 50+ years ago, the fact that Istria and Pula aren't connected to the rest of the country directly but to go there by train you have to go via Ljubljana or take the bus, it's just such a clusterfuck that even though we got new, modern trains what use are those when the infrastructure is shit...
@@Nightraven26 you have some things right, but most are misconceptions, first of all 7+ hours delays are not common, they can happen but not "common". Second, yes the train journey between bg and zg last longer but only in comparison with some express trains back then that served only couple of big cities along the route, same as today, but they did not have a border crossing and the passport check on each side and loco change, also the serbian side of the line is much worse, although our isn't that great either and speeds aren't too great, barely over 100 on a track that is constructed for 160. For the infrastructure, it is not true that that it is not upgraded at all, it was, especially that main line along the sava river, but our railway lines are not 50+ years old, they are way older, as a matter of fact not a single kilometer of a new line has been built here or in slovenia during yugoslavian times, only closed down, all we have is mostly austrian times built, they did build new lines but in the eastern part of the country. I remember before the war, that podravka express run from zagreb to here, virovitica, in 1 hour and 59, only ever train to go below two hrs, but back then it was that french dmu that looked like an airplane inside together with a stewardess with coffee and magazines, the train was relocated to international routes after the war started as that and mimara were only two decent train sets we had, and there was that shelling by the serbs in slavonia ofc. But back then podravka was a business class train, not sure we have that at all now, and stopped only in đurđevac, koprivnica, križevci and vrbovec between vtc and zg, so ofc it was faster, now it has at least two more stops, pitomača and dugo selo, and loco exchange in kc and so on. But yeah our railways are sad, but not true we invest nothing, we upkeep all the time in fact just not enough of it, but you should watch some cab vids to see the state of the railroads in serbia, bosnia or montenegro and macedonia or albania that lost the railways all together to see a decay, we were stil way better, but kept on status quo instead of improving, hope it gets better as they announced it. For the record, the western slavonian line that connects this podravina line and the main posavina line thru the papuk range (for darovar, pakrac etc) has been reconstructed in the past decade, busses were starting from here for years until it was finished, the zagorje line has been electrified just recently, last year electric haulage started there, now for a few years already the double track for koprivnica and hungarian border is under construction, so it is factually not true that nothing is done, just as i said it, not nearly enough.
Also why do I have to go to Deutsche Bahn website to see international schedule. Like I’m just trying to get to Belgrade, what does Germany have to do with any of this?
@@dannyboy_vtc8980 It’s not true that Yugoslavia didn’t build any railways. Divača-Koper opened in 1968, 7 years after the port and now it is arguably one of the most important pieces of infrastructure in our country.
@@justsamoo3480 well that info i've gotten from a slovene maybe a year ago on another railways video, he was maybe wrong, but i do know that they closed much more lines than they oppened the new ones, for instance here bjelovar kloštar line has been colsed down in yugoslavian times, and was reconstructed again in the 90s, my comment was that it was better then than now, but it wasn't, we didn't improve much, or not as much as we should, but we at least kept it in status quo with several times less resources and people at the railways, and at the moment things are improving somewhat and are better than during the yu times even in cro, not to mention slovenia, we also converted our 3kv dc in the south to 25 kv ac to have one system across the country, it's not that nothing is done, just not enough or not quick enough, we also have a new rail terminal in rijeka port that was extended, but they are saying that the big works are only yet to come, i for sure hope they mean it, they did announce the other day a start of the work on double track for karlovac as the first part of the lowland line for rijeka, so we'll see, i just don't like bashing wuthout a lot of insight into the matter, the railways here have a lot to be desired, but it also can be soo much worse, but i do think we should measure ourself with the better than us, not the worse so the criticism is due, but not in a way people that have no clue depict it.
Finland's rail gauge will probably still stay 1,524 mm for the next century or so simply because the country is too geographically isolated from the rest of Europe. Even with Rail Baltica and the FinEst undersea tunnel link, it would only require standard gauge to Helsinki/the Helsinki airport. There's a not a strong economic incentive to completely overhaul Finland's rail system to match the rest of Europe as most passengers would likely have to change trains in Helsinki anyway. While taking a sleeper train from Berlin to Rovaniemi is fun to imagine, that's nothing more than a pipe dream at the moment. Let's see if Europe can handle through tickets first.
I highly doubt that the tunnel will ever get built but if people want to reach Lapland from western/central Europe it might even be a better idea to build a new railway that connects Haparanda/Tornio to Rovaniemi.
That's fine though, as long as the connections to national rail services aren't too overbearing. Be a bit of an issue if the international station was a half hour drive away from the nearest national line, but hopefully whoever designs things won't be that silly. Trouble with the more geographically central regions is that they're kind of crisscrossed all over the place with international rail, often running through the same cities and towns as their regional lines, so it makes a lot more sense to standardize rather than running a bunch of parallel lines and systems.
I love Germany and Austria: no mandatory seat reservations! I did my whole Interrail trip off-season there and had a blast. The freedom of not being locked into a schedule and being able to visit multiple cities in a day, staying in each one as long as you like is unmatched by any other mode of travel.
Regarding user experience, something happened to me two weeks ago. I booked a german train ticket on SNCF (french railways) to go from Germany to France. After the transaction was complete, I found out the ticket was not available as a QR code, but had to be printed... in a French station, where I wanted to go in the first place. In the end I managed to change the ticket to a Deutsche Bahn equivalent and got a refund but I definitely agree that even a simple international trip can turn into a nightmare because there is no european platform to buy tickeets
Same hapened to me and a French friend when we traveled to eachother's countries (I'm Swiss). I'm sure the DB and the SBB/CFF/SFF have their share of responsibility but the fact you need to physically go to a SNCF station to physically print your ticket in 2022 feels like a frustrating retrograde thing on the part of the SNCF resulting in the absurd "To go to France, you need to go to France first"
And imagine you are a tourist from another continent trying to book tickets from home before your trip to Europe... you end up spending hours trying to find the proper website from the proper train operator and crossing your fingers it's gonna work out!
I live in Austria, and every summer, I try to plan my holiday travels by train because "save the planet". And every time I end up with one big "fuck this shit" and just book a flight or go by car. It's not like I'm not *trying* to cultivate a low carbon footprint lifestyle, but my frustration tolerance level has limits (and so does the depth of my pockets and the extent of my holidays).
Me too from southern Germany. I tried to book the sleeper train from Munich to Rome. Every date at the weekend from mid September to mid November is fully booked. You literally cannot book it. It's insane. Of course there are multiple flights a day available. It's just sad.
I live in north Italy. I understand your frustration... I can just cross the fingers they will finish the Brenner Base Tunnel by year 2030 ... just a little of patience *ironic*
Also, got to love how Spain specifically vetoed the idea of integrated passenger experience and passenger rights.... despite having spent an absolute fortune on tunnelling high speed rail through the frikkin Pyrenees to link into the French network. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
They are afraid of the competition to their state owned railway companies. With a centralized open booking system private railway could much easier cherry pick the most profitable routes.
@@Psi-Storm The spanish rail network has already been liberalized, French SNCF on the other hand keep making up excuses to avoid competition with Renfe 🤨 in France.
There isn't any HSR train line through the Pyrenees and no plans to do any. You made all that up! Stop lying. The link is made at the coastlines, both mediterranean (currently in operation) and atlantic (expected by 2029, maybe earlier)
@@marcvandyck8052 Yes, that's the Mediterranian link he's referring to (Eastern part of the border) The other one is on Irún/Bayonne (Western part of the border) But there is no plan to cross the Pyrenees in the "middle" through Jaca/Pau.
Its worth pointing out that, while certainly behind in speed and service frequency, the US is ahead of Europe with respect to the problems of interoperability and end-user experience. For instance, the tracks north of NY to Boston run at a different electrification standard than the tracks south to Washington, but there's a series of locomotive types capable of running on both standards which run express and high speed services the whole way without changing. There are even places which have dual-mode locomotives that can run on electrification where its available and switch to diesel power where it isn't. For the most part intercity services are run by Amtrak and so there is a single unified booking experience. Other operators exist but they are virtually always commuter lines into suburbs rather than intercity travel. These commuter services are almost always structured as "board whenever, sit wherever" tickets rather than a bookings for particular departure time in a particular seat. So even if you did have to use two operators at some point, there's no such thing as missing a connection. The problem with US rail aren't the problems you mentioned. The problem with US rail is that it tends to take 4x longer than flying.
I would like a follow-up video with a deeper look on how far along we are to making international rail as easy as domestic rail. Because it's not just track gauge on the infra side, it's also loading gauge (Nordic trains are wider than mainland European ones, for example, and British are narrower), standard platform height, etc. It's not just safety systems on the train side, it's safety systems on the track side as well, and standards on operating and constructing lines that aren't integrated.
@@TheIIIJulianIII EU has the standards and they are good. But the countries are fighting back because they usually cost money. Politically new highway sells better than switching your trains from 3 kV to 25 kV, unfortunately.
6:48 Small correction to the map, the "Indusi" System in Austria is cross-compatible with Germany's PZB-90 System, if not even a carbon copy of it! So no train change required of any sort, just a train equipped with PZB-90 is necessary
Correct and if you set up a virtual railfan camera at Asschaffenburg Hbf the Nightjet ÖBB Baureihe 1116 1016 1216 runs through it it started at Köln Hbf or Aachen Hbf for Brussels
Yesterday I had a conversation with my gf to visit Prague. 700 km, its ~7 hours by car from door to door and I dont have to check any schedule and can stop when/whereever I want. By train its 11 hours and need to change trains 3 times (or go by bus for hours) 700 km between 2 big european cities should be 4 hours not half a day. It should take a movie and a nice nap …
Europe's old issues of having to find a common standard for systems that were developed and implemented independently from each other over centuries - in some case even millennia... It's the EU's biggest hindrance because it's not as easy as agreeing to objectively improve things. For each of these systems, there are a couple dozen aspects they depend on or depending on them, each again interconnected with several peripheral industries, standards, regulations and administrative structures - all of which need to be reworked on some level for each participating country, making it an absolute headache to try and get anywhere. Honestly, we're lucky to have as much willingness to adapt historically grown structures as we do. That's an unprecedented level of cooperation for Europe.
@@mareksicinski3726 Some of the major road systems and city layout concepts date back to the ancient era. Same goes for cultural views, values and specialties that played a role in all later developments. Sure, you won't find concrete systems that have remained completely the same for thousands of years, but several aspects that affect them result from extremely old roots. Like industrial centers and their sphere of influence, or cultural identity and subsequent uniformity/distinction from "others".
The hotel thing is shocking to me. When I took Amtrak and missed my connection for the daily long-haul train, they gave me a free hotel room and meal ticket. It ended up being awesome because I got to spend a whole day in Portland, Oregon!
If you got a ticket and there's no more train available and it's the fault of the train carrier they are of course obligated to get you to your destination OR a hotel. If you organize this yourself, you can get your expenses refunded (though not sure how that works if you book a 5-star hotel or go hundreds of kilometers via taxi). The "trick" here is that it's only true if you got a single ticket for that specific trip (but I bet that's the same in the US). If for example you book Paris to Munich, and then Munich to Rome, but as a separate ticket, and you get delayed in Munich, well, that's your problem now*. If on the other hand you got a single ticket that has Paris - Rome (via Munich) on it, it's the problem of the train companies (or of course if you got to switch trains anywhere between Paris - Munich or Munich - Rome). -> never book your train tickets "in pieces" (if it can be avoided, which it can't always). Again, I think that's the same for flight tickets too. You want a connecting ticket there over two single-journey tickets as well. *you'll still get compensation for the train being late if it's more than 60 minutes I think but nothing else
Exactly. If I book easyJet Rome - Berlin and ryanair Berlin - Dublin and I miss my connection I have a problem. Same with two train tickets from two operatiors. If the whole journey is in a single ticket (say Lufthansa Rome-Frankfurt, Frankfurt-Dublin) a missed connection is (mostly) the operator's problem (hotel) and I do get compensation (cash). At the counter you can (often) book single tickets from anywhere to anywhere else but that is often a lot more expensive than two special fares.
@@user-jk2zm7uq5s I just think the person who made this video is so in love with planes and has no clue how Europe's rail system works. It's not even that difficult, just book your tickets and go 😂
Oddly enough, going from Germany to Amsterdam (and vice versa) via DB and Nightjet just a few days ago was easier than traveling anywhere domestically in Germany via DB. I'm assuming the 9 Euro pass has something to do with that though. Best public rail system I've experienced thus far was in Japan, mainly because it's more tolerant of sudden capacity/demand surges, unlike a lot of the DB trains/lines.
Japan is also an island and has a dedicated track network for the shinkansen with a wider gauge. imho the best solution would be to have a dedicated high speed rail network between all major European cities separate from the national/regional trains.
@@Bioshyn agreed. Though the demand/capacity thing still stands, the regional trains, atleast DB ones, aren’t well equipped for demand surges. They have small standing areas, and don’t handle bike traffic well.
@@danielstoffel4815 and it will only get worse since Germany is in a world of pain due to the silly government you voted in which sanctions Russia which you need for cheap energy. Say bye bye to German wealth.
trying to plan a travel from Finland to Italy by train.... a nightmare. I've been thinking about how wonderful that international booking site for train tickets would be
The wild thing about through tickets is that WE USED TO HAVE THEM! 10 years ago, if you took an international train trip, you'd get one ticket from your national railway operator that all other operators on the way would accept. You often couldn't book them online and you'd often need to get a paper ticket, but the system exists! (To be fair it's getting better again. With Germany to London, we went from once being able to get a through ticket from DB, to not being able to get through tickets at all for a while, to being able to get separate ICE and Eurostar tickets in a single booking from DB, which comes with transfer guarantee / the other passenger rights)
also my brother bought some kind of european ticket this summer, which allows you to use for a few weeks ALL trains in europe (I think also ICEs...) and he bought it via db. So some system has to exist.
@@MusiXificati0n It's called EuroRail (for non-europeans) and InterRail (for Europeans). They've got good deals. You can get all trains in most European countries, as long as booking a seat on said train isn't required. So basically al sleeper and high speed trains are excluded.
@@wraldpyk6698 You can then specifically book those high-speed or sleeper trains. I once went from Bologna to Lecce via night train and the reservation was 6 EUR only on top of the Interrail (two-person independant sleeper aka wagon lit)
@@alphanet72 Yeah that is true, though when I traveled with it there was only a certain amount of tickets for InterRail per day, and I had to buy the full ticket unfortunately. So it's not always possible.
@@wraldpyk6698 Yes. Although remember that before, Interrail was only for young people. I used Interrail the first time of my life being 40! Let's hope it gets better :)
I was at a train ticket office in Austria a few weeks ago. At the counter next to me there was a man who had waited in line for about half an hour. He wanted a train ticket to Portugal. They told him they just could not sell him one. And if I remember correctly they told him to buy a plane ticket instead. The poor man was really frustrated. Edit: It was not some small rural outlet. It was THE ticket office at vienna main station.
well, that would mean you have to pass through 5 different countries...that's just like going to the train station in washington D.C. and asking for a train ticket to nicaragua....would that work? I highly doubt it
@@johnjohannesjuan I hope you realize that the countries in europe are exactly that: countries; not "european states" inside of one country like in the u.s. - so my comparison is correct - 5 countries to go in europe (austria, italy, france, spain, portugal) and 5 to go in america (u.s., mexico, guatemala, honduras, nicaragua); and both trips start in the capital, so where is the mistake?
Went all the way from Lyon (FR) to Positano (IT) and then back passing through Venice last year, almost 30 days on the road. I basically only took buses to cross the borders. Inside of France the train availability was superb. In Italy the same. Now try crossing the borders
i was inter railng in this year. from Poznań--berlin--amsterdam--brussels---paris --lyon-----milano---budaest---poznań. the route is very very and efficient. on paper it looks confusing, but in fact everything runs smoothly.Remember that Europe is not one country but many. it is normal for different countries to use different train systems
I think it depends on wiche countrys you are travelling becaus in switzerland, germani, france, italz and england, sweden, norway, denmark, bekgium, netherlands the trains are really good compared to the rest of the world.
To get an idea about how bad the user experience is. I wanted to book a ticket from the Netherlands to Germany. Because I have a dog I needed to get a dog pass, or so I thought. In actuality I need a dog pass for the dutch leg of the journey and then for the German part I need a child ticket because big dogs traveling on trains is apparently an alien concept. This dog/child ticket needs to be sent BY POST or printed at a station. To top it off this information is only available on the DB website in German and very easy to miss.
I have been travelling on European international rail lines since 1992, and I swear getting tickets to your destination has become HARDER since then. Before the internet, you only had one option: the international ticketing office in one or two major cities. Stand in line for three hours or so, get a clerk who doesn't seem to understand WHY you want to travel from Amsterdam to Luxembourg by train, and then finally leave with a ticket that's way too expensive but at least it got you where you wanted to go and it was valid for TWO MONTHS. Like, you could literally get on at any day and any time you wanted during those two months. Which to me was the absolute number one benefit of trains over airplanes. Nowadays, I don't even know what website to use to get a ticket to go through three different countries. Dutch railways international always shows a price that's at least two times higher than what you need to pay, and you can never get information on actual timetables. Deutsche Bahn has the best timetables, but the booking process is a disaster for anyone who doesn't have a DB discount card. Let's not even talk about English railways, I still have nightmares from trying to book a ticket from Amsterdam to Edinburgh. I ended up taking a BUS. These days, I usually buy my tickets separately for every part of my journey. One ticket for Amsterdam to Berlin, then buy a ticket in Berlin to Dresden, then buy a ticket in Dresden to Decin, then in Decin I buy a ticket to Prague. It's a hassle but at least that way I know what trains I'm ending up on and what prices I can get. A unified ticketing system would seriously make me be totally okay with not getting compensation or guarantees on through-tickets or terrible connections or once-every-two-hours departures. It's my number one frustration in all my travelling through Europe by train for the past 30 years.
For Amsterdam to Edinburgh, book the Amsterdam to London leg from Eurostar. Book the London to Edinburgh leg from LNER or any other UK train operator. LNER will most likely be the one providing your service.
Well....before the internet (2000 and below), the borders within the EU were closed, so it was more complicated. And: We have 13 different countries (on the "main part" of Europa) with almost different languages/mentalities. Do you know what kind of a trouble this is? (But on the other hand, its quite interesting!)
@@lunamariahawke9320 the open borders are part of the EU membership and the EU has existed since 1993. I don't know which country you're from and when you joined, but open borders have existed before the Internet. That being said, even if we take 2000 as the start of European integration, we've had 22 years to fix this mess and not only is it not getting fixed, the EU parliament is trying to fix it and getting completely shut down by other member states. And that's the other problem if the EU: governance. We have way too many EU governing bodies and besides the Parliament nothing else is directly elected by all European citizens (such as the EU Council and the Commission) so it's very undemocratic. We should have one body, the EU Parliament, that gets elected directly by all EU citizens and that should be the only one that makes EU wide decisions.
@@lunamariahawke9320 Borders were FAR from closed. The first Schengen agreement dates back to 1985, and the Amsterdam agreement that opened ALL internal borders in the EU was signed in 1997. Online booking sites didn't start taking off until 2002 or so. I've had my passport checked on trains maybe a total of three times. The actual border crossing is not the issue in international train travel, it's the different systems in place and the lack of open ticketing, like the video explains.
Since European international rail has so many issues, are there any examples of better international rail networks with similar numbers of member-countries?
No, but China has a larger network that has been able to be built because it was centrally planned. Hint, maybe European countries need to look at a central EU planning body for rail infrastructure - As a planning body only, then independently countries can choose to ratify the plan which both enables countries to keep control over their own infrastructure, but also gives everyone a plan of what everyone else is working to.
Adding to Ben Harris' point, India has a great interconnected railway network where you can book tickets from anywhere to anywhere in minutes, though I don't think we have through tickets here. Only possible because the railways operates under the union government, and Indian states are basically less autonomous EU countries, so all railway planning can be planned without competition and sabotage.
I travelled from paris to Interlaken(Switzerland) and didn’t find any problems. The trip was easy and the crew were very helpful. The train from paris to Geneva changed its course which made me miss my connection train (which was from a different company). But they immediately moved my tickets to a different train for free. I did travel to other places too and i found it to be eazy
As an Englishman who has spent their whole life living in London, I get enough of a headache trying to work out which London station trains to other parts of the country leave from whilst booking from the comfort of one singular app. Learning how the European "system" works made me physically ill, and my heart goes out to all of you who have to deal with it.
As a German, I had English in school. Lets just say instead of actually learning English, I ended up knowing the entire public transport system of London at the time. (In case you ask, I learned proper English when I spend time abroad)
‘National Rail Enquiries’ The worlds most annoying but amazing app, only ppl from the Uk can relate Also there’s trainline but that’s actually competent
@@petitkruger2175 my £3.50 train was cancelled so I got a notification saying I was due a refund, happy days, logged on and found I needed to pay a £10 admin fee to get the money back....
I was just in Europe for seven weeks using a Eurail pass. I can attest to this video. I can say that Renfe in Spain feels like an Amish ticket booth. You can’t reserve with a Eurail pass except at the station. Getting to Paris was enough of a pain, even with only one train. Getting from Amsterdam to Berlin was a bit messy as well, with being told I could switch trains or stay on, but then a German lad told me the intercom said I had to switch, thank you random guy, but overall not too bad. THEN, later from Munich to Luzern holy hell. Me and 30 or so people got kicked off because the train was apparently too full (just moved the issue elsewhere). My easy ride was destroyed and my train trip doubled in time and involved trains running behind, missing connections, 4-5 changes, cramped standing between cars, and honestly, a surprising amount of fun figuring out this puzzle with some cool guys from Utah. Then I barely made my connection from Frankfurt to Amsterdam later because of a late train. This was after a man from the UK said he’d never had a Deutsche Ban trip go smoothly. Anyways, it was still fun but quite messy. Domestic rail is badass and at least there are still decent trains there unlike in the US.
Getting to Paris was a pain because of french putting to many stations for fast speed trains, rendering them useless. Renfe website is a mess, but Spanish trains are top of Europe as far as I know from the trains that I have tested in other European countries, especially when it comes to short distance trains (Cercanias) and fast speed trains (AVE, AVANT)
@@aad6632 > anish trains are top of Europe as far as I know from the trains that I have tested in other European countries, especially when it comes to short distance trains (Cercanias I STRONGLY disagree. All local train in Catalunya is a disaster of under investment. The Catalan government is just full of puppets that do whatever orders they receive from Madrid (bastard liars), they only have authority to change the schedule and the train colors (literally); yet are unable to fix the ancient tracks because... well, because only the Spanish government can, and they don't want to. The Spanish government deliberately executes fewer than 15% of the budgeted spending on Catalan railway (yes, 15% of the budget approved in the Spanish parliament, few years ago it was as low as 11-12%). Of course, in Madrid and other areas, they get to implement 120% of the allocated rail budget yearly, because, well, all Spanish citizens benefit from that. Of course the official justification is due to the crisis. Except that it has been like that for... well, forever! Manresa-Barcelona 62km / 39mi -> 1:24 (In early 2000s was 1:07. The track is in dire disrepair so trains must go slower. It has already caused 2 deaths in the last few years) If you have to link with bus in Manresa and metro in Barcelona, well, this is close to 2:20. Politicians want us to use public transportation instead of car, but the only alternative they provide is shit. Manresa-Barcelona 0:55 by car (traffic jams are avoided by arriving and leaving early) Renfe timetable: www.renfe.com/es/en/suburban/rodalies-catalunya/timetables
Spaniard here. What's going on in Spain is that we have our short (Cercanías), medium (Regional, TALGO, etc) and long range (AVE, AVANT for high speed or EUROMED and others for slower, long range trains) rail networks being run by different companies (mostly RENFE and ADIF) for the pettiest, greediest and most corrupt of political reasons. The one that's most commonly encountered by tourists is the long range network, which is operated by RENFE and it's perfectly functional... unless you're a foreigner trying to link up with a high speed train xD. Domestically, shit's honestly pretty ok; the short and mid range networks have plenty of trains in every line and the whole country is pretty well connected except for two mind-boggling issues. The first one is that there's a handfull of provinces that don't have their mid range networks connected to ANYWHERE ELSE in the peninsula, leading to absurdities like having to get off the train and ride a bus to literally the next village over in order to catch your next train. The second one is that we have these autonomic rail networks (like the Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya) that were originally meant to ease congestion in short range lines but aren't compatible with our middle range networks so you can end up seeing two parallell lines with one of them empty while the other one's trains look like rush hour somewhere in Japan. Sadly, with so much privatisation I can't see any of this improving any time soon.
@@KirillTheBeast sorry if I offended in any way! It was not my intention at all! It was mostly just hard to reserve high speed rail with a Eurail pass. Perfectly aligns with your explanation xD. Eurail could honestly probably help with this I would think. Spain was incredible to visit! Spent two weeks on the Camino and had such a great time. And thank you for the explanation!
@@KirillTheBeast Another spaniard here working in the Rail industry. Everything here that has been said by Marcel is on point. Then we have projects like the "High Speed" Rail in Extremadura that was ment to connect Madrid and Lisboa but the Portuguese pulled out when we had half the track built and now refuse to push the project because of political reasons and the local politicians here in Spain meddle with everything and we have suboptimal routes. Adam was making fun of the power lines between countries. Well, funny thing that for that High Speed project the part of Extremadura was fully built but with no OCS for now, the connection with Madrid is yet to even be projected and will of course not have OCS by the time the original track has been supplied with electric traction. So for the "high speed" we have to use the old Iberian gauge for now, therefore we are forced to use Alvias and create a gauge changing station for the line. So for a line that is supposed to connect Lisboa and Madrid: 1- The Portuguese part is on dead waters with no prospects of being finished for a long time. 2- The part through Extremadura will have electrical traction with international gauge. 3- The part of the track to connect to Madrid is yet to even be projected and won't have electrical traction for a time, and right now has to use the Iberian gauge, also without electrical traction. So to circulate for that line we need a train capable of using diesel, electrical traction and changing gauges. Amazing
I was surprised to see this video as I just had a great time traveling between Switzerland and Italy last month. Using the Eu rail pass, I was able to change tickets multiple times on the rail planner app. The one time that a delayed Italian train resulted in missing the connecting train, the local office in Milan changed the tickets for free. The local apps Sbb and Trenitalia gave the up to date timings for their respective trains
Switzerland is afaik constantly pressuring the Italians to get their shit together and cooperate in order to reduce cross Alps road traffic (both people and freight). It's even less sustainable to build "just one more line" if you've got protected villages, a national image and a god damn mountain range in the way than it already is.
There's been a great interview a few months back with the COO of RegioJet, one of Europe's true open access rail operators. They're currently planning a major expansion outside of the CZ/SK/AT region and hitting roadblocks every step of the way. While many people in Europe understand "interoperability" as ERTMS, in fact it's often the bureaucracy that kills many cross-border projects. Yes, you're licensed for EU-wide operation, but you still need staff that speaks every local language (unlike aviation), they need to be certified for local regulations (unlike aviation), there's different paperwork, regulatory approval just to get your timetable in, and at the end the local national carrier will still boycott you in every single aspect. Oh and don't get me started on ridiculous details, like Swiss and Slovenian pantographs being a different pressure/contact shoe shape, so in addition to your train having to support 4 power systems and multiple ATC packages, it also has several pantographs with zero redundancy.
The fact that in Germany, DB still has control of the tracks is just insane. Though they're obliged to let other companies use their tracks, they can just still neglect those tracks that are mostly used by others, and build tracks for themselves. Fair competition!
@@randoomday1520 DB is a whole dumpster fire in itself. They leave rail lines for decay so they can go up to the German government and beg them to pay for it.
@@randoomday1520 Most good rail networks are monopolies. If anything the issue is this halfway inbetween thing. Competition but not actually. Owned by the state but run for profit. DB is pretty stupid. Transport should be seen as an essential service and run by the state. It simply makes no sense to run rail for profit when things like roads are state funded. As long as we do it like this rail will never take over from cars but we really need it to and quickly.
One of the very few benefits of the rail network being privatised in the UK is the ticketing is open. You can buy them from multiple places and there are apps like TrainPal that will even work out split ticketing to get the cheapest possible price for your journey. Nothing is really stopping this kind of thing on a publicly owned system, it's just a political decision.
I was wondering why our system was surprisingly functional compared to all this. While also not being particularly functional, but hey, comes with the privatised territory.
As Private Eye has been pointing out at length for years, the ticketing system in the UK is an absolute mess. You've got many different types of tickets that you can use at some times but not others, with some operators but not others, get off at some stations in some towns but not others (because they're the "home" station of a different operator), can't alight from earlier despite the fact that the ticket you bought is the only one that will have you stopping at the earlier station you want to actually get off on, and god forbid if you are even one train off from the one you bought the ticket for, you're goosed. All this is, of course, completely unexplained catching out even experienced train travellers. And then the fines, oh my the fines, expect to be out a thousand pounds or more for even the teensiest mistake (by contrast under the Irish system, unless you're a known fare dodger, the penalty is usually the revenue officer making sure you buy a ticket at the destination station, or if you accidentally went too far, getting you sorted at the next station. You'll be an hour late in the latter case, but no poorer). And don't even get me started on the antiquated, barely held together trains that operate the UK system. Yeah, the UK train system is an absolute mess unless you never use it at all.
@@BrianS1981 It's a mess, but somebody already wrote the computer code to unpick all that. Certainly shouldn't need a 3rd party service to make it make sense, but it does. From experience, Southeastern doesn't really give a shit about having people on the right train, but then southeastern doesn't give a shit about a lot of things so it evens out.
The video is concerning the international rail network, not domestic ones. Basically every EU national rail network is waaay better than ours, and for a fraction of the price. In Belgium you can just get a 10 journey punch card for like 50 euros... That's 5 euros for ANY journey as long as it stays in Belgium
Obviously, the UK has made it so it's less complex to travel by train within UK than within EU. However, from my experience, even if it has largely improved over the years, it's still more complex than travelling within an EU country such as Germany or Italy.
Tried to plan a route from Stockholm to Prague a couple of weeks ago. The process was exactly as you described. Spent 5 hours and achieved nothing. It was not just inconvenient, but almost impossible. Most convenient options (Stockholm-Hamburg night train for example) are fully booked months ahead. While using a plane I don't even need to plan a route, there is a direct flight. I can just suddenly decide to go and the same day be in Prague.
Take planes for international trips trains are for domestic routes planes for international trips. And soon maglev from Poland would solve the international problem
@@lowskillcamper not really that's between denmark and sweden, getting from kopenhagen to hamburg takes forever because you travel all the way through mainland denmark, even worse to berlin
@@Bioshyn ah yes, yes I know which you mean then, yes, it would help. But the issue in my case was not speed, but ticket availability in addition to all the issues described in the video.
If you use Nightjet, always, always check for (signs of) bedbugs! I had a few truly miserable weeks because of a bedbug infested carriage. Austrian Railways were very courteous about it and refunded me the ticket and other associated costs, but it also took them two or three days after my first message until they inspected and cleaned that train.
I remember when a few years back I travelled from Austria to Romania by train. I tried to book it online, but no matter where I tried, it was simply impossible to book the last bit of the journey. In the end I resorted to only buy the ticket from Austria to Czechia online, before buying tickets at each station. To be fair: This saved me quite a bit of money. If I had gone with the ticket offered in Austria it would have been 92€ + the last connecting bit. By buying train tickets at the stations I only paid 58€ in total - but I had a traveltime of 26h. Spending 5 hours on the main station of Budapest.
How does that route work? From Austria to Czechia to Hungary? Why couldn't you take a train directly to Hungary? I know there was a direct train from Vienna to Budapest in the past(18years ago now).
@@FauzulRizal yeah it's kind of new, maybe 6-7 years only. It's bookable directly on the Austrian website too if memory serves. Still even if this train wasn't there when OP was looking for it, it's nice that there's progress!
Just a note on the ICE 4, the reason it is only 15kv AC is because it's NOT hypermodernized - it's actually designed to be cheaper to produce than the ICE 3, which is significantly more interoperable. In fact, the ICE 4 is slower, and even has worse seats (they're still pretty comfortable though). So I think mentioning the ICE 4 is just a bad comparison. ICE 3 is still used all the time, because ICE 4 is simply not supposed to be a replacement.
My sister and I wanted to go from Upper Austria to Strasbourg (France). Going by train would have been too expensive and with transfer times (and potential delays from Deutsche Bahn) we decided it's not worth it and so we went there with Flixbus. Cost us only 60 € per person but took a 10 hour bus drive. That was an okay experience. 9/10 easy booking, 6/10 experience of the drive itself (depends a lot on the people who are with you on the bus; we had a guy snoring the whole night in front of us and a woman who thought it was a good idea to have a phone call on speaker at 23:00 when it was obvious people were trying to sleep). Also, going by train is expensive, even domestically. From Upper Austria to Vienna for example (ca. 250 km) the ticket is like 40-45€ for a 1-1,5 hour travel plus a ticket for Vienna metros and such which is around 10 € i think. Thank god we have the Klimaticket now lol
I had a similar experience to go from Amsterdam to Rostock, Germany. It could be done by rail, with about 4-5 transfers, or by bus with one change in Hanover, Germany. Bus won, no problems.
I went interrailing last month from France to Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Austria again and Slovenia. The only delay we had at a border crossing was from Austria into Hungary and Hungary into Austria again where they changed locomotives
German trains are always late :D But Italian bullet trains are absolutely amazing. From Florence to Bologna it's a straight line through the mountains with 250 km/h!
Were you in Czech Republic ? ČD (national carrier) had record 565 min delay but past year private carrier RegioJet overcome that a get 640 min delay on train from Croatia to Prague.
Travel on that Line too yesterday. And after Bologna to Milan they even do 300kph! There's no better feeling than sitting a train and watching the highway and just fly past cars.
Remember that the novel Dracula starts with a lawyer travelling from London to Romania (then Austria-Hungary) by train in the 1890s. If you'd try that now it would be: "Vampires I can deal with; international train travel, that's the true horror." It's not just international travel though. Travelling by train from Amsterdam to Groningen in the Netherlands is a few minutes slower now than it was by steam train at the start of the 20th century. Before the rise of the car and airplane, the train network was extremely well developed.
It doesn't help that certain places have neglected infrastructure improvements to maximize profit margins, this is pretty common no matter where on Earth you go. I'm also curious to see whether priority is given to passenger or freight traffic in Europe, as in the US most rail lines are privately owned and so freight trains are prioritized not just because they're run on company tracks, but also simply due to the fact that they're so damn long there's no sidings that can hold them in totality anymore.
@@hyperiongm330 At least over here in the Netherlands freight trains are quite rare, and when we do see(or more accurately, hear) them it's mostly between 2 and 6 in the night when there's no passenger rail.
WHAT? The steam train was faster? Nani the actual fakku? I love NS (I am kaaskop), but seriously, how? Has the track in Groningen been damaged by the terrible 2.5 or something MAASSSSIVE earthquakes?? X'D
When it comes to rolling stock it seems like Deutsche Bahn will continue to differentiate between domestic and international trains. For international connections they have class 406, 407 and 408 ("ICE 3") which are multi-system and capable of using international high speed lines. Class 412 ("ICE 4") is partly equipped/approved to go to Switzerland, and the tilting class 411 ("ICE T") can go to Austria. Class 401 ("ICE 1") used to go to Switzerland and Austria but is now only used inside Germany, class 402 ("ICE 2") has only ever been used on inland lines. Currently they are looking for a new type of ICE for domestic lines with wide carbodies like ICE 1 and 2, that exceed the international loading gauge and can only go as far as Basel and Salzburg. They say there are enough trains never going further that it's worth to buy series of single-voltage trains, and have complicated multi-voltage equipment only on part of their fleet. Living in Austria I'm skeptical of railjets. While these can go slightly faster than conventional trains (230 km/h) they combine the disadvantages of those and unit trains, being of inflexible length/capacity and having a heavy locomotive taking up space on the platform and putting more strain on the tracks with its high axle load. Distributed traction, with a greater number of powered axles, is superior in many ways, offers better traction on wet rails (occasionally German class 101 had trouble pushing its train up the hill near Bischofshofen and turned the wheels in place, grinding down the rail ...) and allows to use more regenerative braking which is beneficial to save energy and have less wear and brake dust. I fully agree that booking systems must be harmonized. Thanks for naming the obstacles here. When I travel internationally I take an hour to compare the offers of different booking sites. I wish I would get it all in a few clicks; I know people aren't as enthusiastic about me. But ... international travel has always been complicated. I remember the 1980s when stations had separate counters for international travel and those were equipped with a multitude of timetable books from different countries, phone calls had to be made, it was always an adventure.
A big advantage of the push-pull concept is a smoother and quieter ride. It is also more resilient towards engine failures as the carriages can still be used with another locomotive and since ÖBB use the Taurus widely, a replacement loco is always at hand (as long as you don't need a DC-compatible 1216)
I somewhat regularly travel between Budapest and Zürich by train, mostly during the day, sometimes during the night. I buy my tickets online, it is a direct connection and is normally punctual to the minute. I also fairly regularly go Zurich-Munchen with the same results. So, not doubting someone else's experiences, this is completely not my experience and is certainly not a generic European experience.
Ahh, thank you for this. I am just planning a train trip through Europe and it is just nerve-wrecking to the extreme. You are perfectly on point with all of this
Just book Al connections from and to Switzerland via SBB And all connections touching Germany via DB And you will be all good. It’s not so horrible as his propaganda mouth tells
@@jimi272 Yes it is. I will be using Interrail and the reservations alone make it painful. Like, if I want to go on a High-Speed Train in Italy, I have to reserve seats and I simply cannot do that on Trenitalia's Website if I already have the Interrail Pass and therefore the best Option is to do it on the ÖBB (Austrian Railways) Website!?! Also, they charge me on top (of course differently in different countrys and under different conditions) Then, for some reason, perfectly good Transit Trains like the ECE from Milano to Frankfurt does not do its Job for a time from late August onward. Furthermore, there are mutiple private Operators to consider, which are not displayed in the Interrail App. (That App is trash btw., leaves out lumps of important information and they charge an extra fee on reservations). The whole Ticketing System in Europe is bloody awful. Like, you can have at least a bazillion different prices for the same journey - and you are not even safe with Interrail as you still have to do the reservations. I could go on, but I think, you get the idea...
I took Thalys from Paris to Aachen a couple of weeks ago, and apart from issues caused by excessive heat, the ride was incredible smooth even though we went through 3 countries on a direct train (there were few stops, but we didn't change trains). But looking for a train from Madrid to Paris was a nightmare, so he is not completely wrong.
Yeah, there are no direct Paris-Madrid trains at this moment. Your best shot is to buy Paris-Barcelona with French TGV high speed, and then Barcelona-Madrid with spanish AVE high speed. And pray that the TGV won't be delayed because the AVE won't wait for you haha.
FYI: The Austrian railways (ÖBB) have upgraded their ticketing system in the last years, which would enable them to let anyone integrate with their systems. I have built an integration accessing their API and allowing users to book tickets for a sub company of them, which worked (surprisingly) easy for the most part. Aside from that i recently heard about plans from the EU to invest big into the international train system, but that's still in planning from what i could gather. We will see, but I'm hopeful.
Us North Americans often idealize Europe's transport system, as it is much more developed than ours and is more accessible, but most of us who rave about how easy it is to get across Europe only spent holiday time there and have never lived there long enough to see how inconvenient things can actually be.
True. It seems that what happens is that unless you are a massive railfan, you often find many flaws over time in a system that might have appeared as flawless once you’ve lived in that place for long enough
Adam got it mostly right. From a Viennese perspective I have to say though, that, given the existing track speeds, the international service network is actually quite complete. The railjets also operate without funny locomotive changes even though trains operate in Austria, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland. Those destinations where train journeys simply take too long for being competitive, there is a network of Nightjets or eastwards alternative night train services. There were major holes in the network westwards, with no night train conneciton to Brussels, Amsterdam or Paris, however those lines have been reopened recently, even if in an isufficient frequency (as the ÖBB is waiting for new rolling stock). If only all capaitals had such a service density, the video had a lot less merit ... except for the user experience during booking. That's indeed stone age.
@@stekra3159 The ÖBB had already interoperable locomotives before those but you may have a point that others don't. But maybe they should. As can be seen it is perfectly feasible to operate trains with them.
It sounds more of an exception rather than rule. I had to frequently take an international Intercity-train between Amsterdam and Brussels, and it can be agonizingly unreliable at times. Frequently there are issues when crossing the border, sometimes fully canceling a train, and it is often announced very late and poorly, so you won't have alternative transport (so you have to wait an hour, hoping the issue is resolved with the next one). And good luck getting reimbursed for an international train delay. It has improved over the years, but these issues still pop up often. At least there is a train, unlike the Fyra it was supposed to be originally. And it's a fairly clean one, I'll give that. Besides, it still beats the car in going from one airport to another, as the Brussels highway ring is a long and unpleasant experience.
Lessons to take from this video: European countries have excellent domestic rail networks Europe actually has international rail European politicians actually care about intercity rail transit DB, SNCF, and Renfe actually have turfs to defend Sorry.
Ah yes, like EU commissioner for transport Adina Vălean who would fly between Connecting Europe Express events instead of... well... taking the Connecting Europe Express 🙄
Germany, France, Poland, Netherlands and Spain have solid, extensive networks. Some others have decent ones like Italy. A lot of the EU does not though.
This is very true! Domestic trains are fantastic especially Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Italy but crossing borders usually results in a train swop, connections and even sometimes moving from one section of a train to another...you'd better understand the announcement or you may find yourself sitting on an train in a border town alone wondering why after half an hour your train still hasn't pulled out only for the train to start moving in the direction you came.
"Domestic trains are fantastic especially [...] Germany [...]" - Wait a minute... *Pulls up reasons brought up from DB, why the 9€ ticket should not be continued* - I dont think "fantastic" is a fitting term xD
@@samuelfreitag6989 Well as a tourist who has visited Germany a lot of times I've never had any issues with DB though admittedly I haven't been there since 2019. Considering I'm from the UK and our rail system is an absolute shambles and ridiculously expensive trains in Germany ARE fantastic. I am travelling today on a return ticket 310 miles at the cost of 186 euros not 100% sure my advance booked seat will still be available and if the train is going to run on time due to recent train driver strikes.
@@RealmsOfThePossible Interesting, Germans would say the same about DB, expensive and in shambles. It is also very common to joke about DB and how unreliable they are.
@@samuelfreitag6989 I would swop our multitude of individually owned rail network operators for DB any day. Think of what adam pointed out about DB, SNCF, OBB, SBB and so on and put them into the UK as a microcosm.
@@RealmsOfThePossible True. Despite large portions being owned by individual companies too, they tend to work together quite good. In comparison it is actually great, but still far from the best. Thats propably one point most germans hate about DB.
8:52 the trainline does allow booking train tickets over at least much of Europe. I've not tried it everywhere, but I know that it works in France, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and ofc the UK, where it originated, as well as for Eurostar tickets
This goes even deeper, for example in Germany, if you enter from one city's public transport system into another, you need 2 tickets and at least 2-5 apps. There is no website, you can only use the train if buy the ticket physically or dox your phone.
Interesting, I went from the Netherlands to southern France and back by train a few weeks ago and my experience was very different. I just went to the international website of the Dutch Railways, put in the departure and destination location and the date, selected one of the available journeys as well as class and even whether I preferred a window or aisle seat, and after payment I got all the tickets I needed, despite being across multiple operators (NS/NMBS, Thalys, TGV). The one exception was a subway ticket I needed in Paris and even for that there were detailed instructions how to get it on the website. The available journey listing also displayed what was sold out, so there was clearly ticket sales information being shared and they also offered partial or full refunds (depending on the circumstances) for delays, regardless of where it happened (though they take a long time to process). Are things just particularly well set up between the Netherlands, Belgium and France?
I'm not sure. Because yes, you get the ticket alright and that part seems pretty smooth, but how the pricing is accomplished is still a mystery to me, I've had prices change between going back and forth once, and I've also seen 'sold out' on journeys that were very unlikely to be actually sold out. I just don't know. As for the smoothness of the connection... I'm not sure if getting on a metro to change to an entirely different station across town is that smooth. It's doable, I've had no actual problems with it, but it is a limitation. When carrying luggage, or when travelling with children, or when you're not that confident in travelling on your own, or not being able to walk that far, it's still a layer of added complexity that isn't that easy or appealing to navigate.
Yeah same from the Netherlands to Berlin and their recent night trains to Vienna. It all went smoothly and everything is collected and explained on their app with QR codes for every ticket (in case of multiple trains). They are certainly getting better and better.
As the video stated, between neigboring countries its not that bad. For example between Budapest and Vienna trains run every hour, the carriages are modern and comfortable and they only cost 13€, and its even minimally faster than driving. On the other hand recently i had the idea of going to Italy with train… No thanks.
Since Prague has an excellent metro system, I decided to go there by train. I am not fond of driving for 6-8 hours. The train takes 12h, I need to change trains twice and it will cost almost twice what my diesel tank would be. So by car it is.
Car is faster, but when I go from Prague to other big city in neighbor countries, I prefer to sit in restaurant wagon and have a nice coffee or dinner instead of sweating my ass in car. But this works only when you travel from Prague to big cities like Berlin, Vienna, Warsaw, Munich.....
@@Pidalin I'd preffer to just ride, have coffee and take a nap, but Ljubljana to Prague for double the time and cost just seems to much. Shame really, I hate driving and buses, airplanes feel like a sardine can. Trains are lovely but inconvenient ATM
@@anzebeton1869 You have to nuke some straight corridor thru Austria to make it faster. 🙂 Or you can go thru Milano, Paris, Berlin, Dresden and then Prague. 🙂
12:30 the double decker belongs to Westbahn in Austria - I rode with it last month from Munich (DE) to Vienna (AT) and it was a great experience : ) Thank you Adam for the vide and brilliant comments xD
@5:35 You forgot Loading Gauge, which is the maximum height, width and other general dimensions of the actual trains, important for being able to fit trough tunnels, under bridges, next to station platforms, not to stick to far out in curves, and not hit any surrounding infrastructure in general. Luckily most of mainland Europe accepted the Berne convention gauge back in the early 20th century so this is rarely an issue, and most countries that deviate from it tend to have their loading gauges actually be larger, worst case there would be a gap between the platforms and the international trains. Notable exception being the UK who's got an incredibly tiny loading gauge, but since international rail transport to the British isles wasn't exactly a thing back then It makes sense why they didn't adopt it back then. On that note, my travels trough Europe by rail have been mostly without any real issues, but I've stuck mostly to western Europe and the old TEE destinations, I guess once you go to central/eastern Europe, a la the old East-bloc countries, the quality of the service and international cooperation drops like a rock.
This shows such prejudice. Most Central and Eastern European countries have very decent international rail connections with intercity and regional trains, while in Western Europe (mostly France) these were often scrapped in favour of High-speed rail, which is more expensive and often less frequent...
Most of the continental Europe have built their infrastructure in accordance to the UIC loading gauge, or even larger than that. Several Polish lines are compliant with WM-1 loading gauge of the former Soviet Railways so these large, old Soviet sleepers could run through without any problems.
Britain couldn’t realistically have adopted the European loading gauge anyway back then, most of our tunnels had already been built to great expense and we couldn’t have afforded to rebuild them. It makes sense that Europeans didn’t adopt the British dimensions, which are very small, because until very very recently there was no international rail from the continent to the U.K. anyway, and even now the Eurostar isn’t really a through service.
4:40 we had a similar situation where we didn't cath our connection due to border controls at the Austrian-German border. We asked DB staff and they turned our train-bound ticket into a universally valid one withouth any hesitation. So while the system is pretty fucked indeed, the people behind it are often very understanding and willing to help.
Interestingly, a few days ago, Wendover Productions released their own take on the issue (which I discovered as being the next on TH-cam's Autoplay list), using budget airlines as a model for improvement...
this is one of the reasons we fly instead here in the USA (also Canada and Australia). You don't have to build anything out between A and B. If it has an airport, you can fly there.
@@neutrino78x I prefer trains anytime. More comfortable, closer to city centers, much better for the environment, and I don't have to wait hours at an airport and be groped by security.
@@guerreiro943 "I prefer trains anytime. " More power to you my friend. However you don't get to push your preferences on everyone else. At least, not in the USA. Due to the distances involved, it's simply not possible for us to ban aircraft and expect to function as we do now. It would be huge step backward in standard of living. For example, LAX to NYC takes five or six hours on an airplane. And yes, it is a common trip and would be required of a nationwide transportation system. It's the most congested air corridor in the USA. Doing that on a French TGV would take 16 hours. Even a Japanese SCMaglev would still take eight hours, longer than a jet aircraft. And soon we will have supersonic over land again, because NASA and Lockheed have created an airplane shape that lets you fly at supersonic speeds with a barely audible sonic boom, so it will be a three hour flight. Three hours vs eight, I'll take three any time. "More comfortable, " Who cares when you're only on it for an hour as opposed to 10 hours for the train in the video, when he could have flown in 1.5 hours!!! I would never even consider such a train ride! I mean, if you're on vacation and a long train ride is intended as part of the experience sure. But if you have the weekend off and you're trying to go somewhere it's not reasonable. Or if you have a business purpose for your travel. The USA has trains like that, but they're mainly used, like I said, for people who are taking a few weeks of vacation and therefore have time to take the scenic route. They're not considered "the normal vehicle to use if you have to get somewhere in a reasonable period of time". "much better for the environment" This isn't true anymore and hasn't been for decades. You're stuck in the 70s man. For a modern 737 aircraft, it burns less fuel moving any given person than does a Toyota Corolla. I can't put links here but if you Google "cans vs. planes: which emits more carbon? (which sins worse?)" you'll find a good article on it. "I don't have to wait hours at an airport" You don't have to anyway. I have been there as late as ten minutes before boarding started and had no issue. I've even arrived at the airport AFTER boarding started and still had no issue. Of course, I'm an experienced traveler. So I have my backpack packed such that I can pull out my laptop and noise cancelling headphones easily, and I also subscribe to "CLEAR" (capitalization theirs) which lets you bypass the snaking security line. If you have clear, and have your backup set up well, you can go through security in five minutes.
@@neutrino78x I think it would be wonderful for Europe and the US to have a unified, quick and cheap international and national rail connections respectively. If the price was in the same range, I would gladly take the train. Having said that, I don't think anyone would chose to take a train from LA to NY. That's like, what, Lisbon to Moscow? LA - Seattle or NYC - Miami are probably the limit in terms of distances, and even that is stretching it a bit
@@neutrino78x Planes are not more environmentally friendly than trains as far as I can see. Planes are significantly more environmentally friendly than driving, but they don't beat trains. Since moving through air takes exponentially more energy as you get faster you're always going to find that extremely fast transport takes a lot of energy. That's just a trade you have to make for extremely high speeds.
I usually travel from Austria to Italy and sometimes France. And while it's true that buying tickets can be difficult, I never had any other major problem (never traveled to Spain or the Czech Republic). To fix the power problem back in the days they used to change locomotive at the borders, now most of the locomotives are dual-voltage.
to be honest, you also live in Austria, which is one of the most pro rail nations in all of Europe, as well as a hub for long distance night trains, thanks to ÖBB's vast network. That alone makes it super easy to go long distances.
Funny that you mentioned the clusterfuck around Děčín as i was recently travelling from Chomutov to Dresden and I had 2 options: express train to Ústí and than from there the Berliner to Dresden (travel time 2 and half hours and price around 35 euros, seems simple) but as a student I went for the other one: The regional ticket (3 euros) And german 9 euro ticket. Everything went well until I reached Ústí. Then I realized that the german 9 euro ticket can not be used in the Eurocity trains And there is no other direct connection to Dresden. So i had to travel from Ústí to Děčín. From Děčín to Schona and from Schona to Dresden. This crossborder experience was by far the worst i could imagine as it took entire day to get there and back. Or I could just spent less than 2 hours driving. Now I see why people dont take trains
These cheap special actions always have negatives, it's like that even with cheap airplane tickets, it's always without checked baggage and it mostly takes you to airport like 50 km from your destination city.
I remember the bad old days of the early 1990s when you could turn up at almost any large (and several not-so-large) station and buy a travel ticket to practically anywhere in Europe. The various countries' reservation systems were all linked, too, so the stations could make seat/couchette/sleeper reservations across the continent. It all seems laughably primitive now.
Netherlands - Germany and Netherlands - France are generally pretty doable in my experience. Going further though... that's where the real issues start. So my guess is that local railways only make agreement with neighboring countries, but don't look at the bigger picture. And to be honest, even that 'pretty doable' is far below the level of local trains. So yea... it's not great. Buying tickets online has improved quite a bit as recently though. Because I remember a few years ago it was pretty much exactly as you mention in the video. It was a true nightmare. Lately it has been getting better though, so at least there is an upward trajectory.
You probably were not traveling with Thalys recently. They tend to get stuck for 4 hours without airco or sufficient water on board. People had to break the window for fresh air.
A few months ago I went to Madrid for vacation, departing from Lisbon. The flights were very expensive and I wanted to travel during the night so I remember there was a sleeper train direct from Lisbon to Madrid. To my surprise that train was suppressed at the beginning of the pandemic with no plans for return so now it takes more than 10h to do it by train with at least one switch, maybe two. I ended up going by car, 6h drive divided by two drivers and even at current diesel prices, the cost divided by the 4 person traveling was much lower than any alternatives. Not the solution I wanted but…
Some regular domestic train services in France, Italy and Switzerland have lines that start in one country and end in the other. These are normal train lines that you don’t book online, you either buy the ticket on the day or use your local train pass. Nice has a service that begins in Nice and ends in Ventimiglia, and there are trains from around Como that end in Locarno. Those are still all relatively short distance journeys even though they traverse borders. Still, when I Travelled cross country on a recent trip I took the blabla or flexi buses and they were way cheaper.
Traveling through Europe by rail atm and I can confirm. I had to book a hotel last minute because my connection in Regensburg had a 1h delay and I wouldn't been able to go to Brussels in the same day (but luckily my train to Brussels was also too late, so in the end I made it to my destination)
One small note, the Nightjet isn't simply a Railjet with sleeper carriages, especially the seated carriages are a random mix of old wagons the ÖBB still has. And they are terrible. I never took a Nightjet, but once I had to get from Vienna to Graz in the evening, and of course they don't run the fancy Railjets at that time. So I took an "EC" (Eurocity), which is apparently code for "Random old carriages we still had lying around somewhere". I'm pretty sure I had the same type of car as you travelled on, and it was really loud. The best thing was that in the toilet one of the walls was half removed and you could see exposed wires and electronics in there. Right next to the sink. Really a shame, considering normally I'm really happy with the ÖBB, and the few old carriages still in use are typically properly maintained and look nice.
Okay, storytime: I usually take Railjets. Generally punctual and reliable, except when they get stuck at some border again (topical). Now, I missed the last one due to such a delay. So the ÖBB website generously recommend a Nightjet. However, my journey was domestic and around 2h, ending at 11pm, so I just assumed some part of the train just operates like a regular RJ or Cityjet. Well, it was a rude awakening when I learned that people could not only reserve these 6 seat compartments for sleeping but there was exactly zero extra wagon or even just two reserve compartments for short distance travellers. In other words, I'd have had to stand around with my luggage on the narrow corridor for 2h straight inside a half empty train with 2/3 of passengers distinctly not sleeping yet if I hadn't found someone who had mercy for my soul and let me sit in theirs till 23. Did the website warn me in any way? Nope.
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Thoughts on the Saudi Line City?
Woh... two videos about european rail from two of my favorite youtubers, (Wendover Productions & Adam Something). Nice!
I'm really impressed that a man like you who endlessly praises trains actually criticizes them for a change. Excellent content as always Adam.
thanks so much for making this, really looked forward!
Hey Adam,
What's your opinion on the following:
If NATO (or let's say US & EU) would have reacted faster and more decisive against Russia's occupation of Ukraine (2014 or 2022), we wouldn't have the mess we have in Ukraine, would have stabilized Russia and made an example out of it (to China x Taiwan)?
The point being, that if NATO would have found pretext to get involved as it did with Yugoslavia, overall the world would have agreed to this and Putin would have been thrown out of the government.
Hope you will make an analysis of this in a future video (unless I missed it)
Has Europe considered allowing Teslas to drive through narrow tunnels?
Sorry, I am confused, how does this have to do with rail service?
@@theunknown4834 boring company
@@alexmoberg8943 ya... but this is about trains service so I didn't get it at first lol
@@theunknown4834 It's the 'solution to traffic'.
London has fixed that ages ago.
They just made them very long and put them on rails.
I once booked a sleeper train from Florence to Vienna for my girlfriend and me, of course using the Italian booking site. I don't really speak Italian. Turns out I booked us the honeymoon suite, private shower, massive window at foot of bed. Best. Trip. Ever.
Rolled a natural 20
Wow, I did not know that exists
What kind of train was it?
And that, my son, is how you were created
@@Rockden probably ÖBB Nightjet. But assuming it was Italian it could also be a Trenitalia Intercity notte
Edit: wait a second Trenitalia does not offer international sleeper trains, must be the ÖBB
I love this man's channel. He had one unpleasant train journey between two countries. He went ahead and strip the entire European rail system naked and presented it in front of us.
Somebody had to! It might as well be the sharpest tongue/mind on the internet!
Guess he had some time to kill on a 9 hour train journey in which he almost certainly wasn't going to get any sleep. 😜
But the community posts are so naaah.
Yeah, bashing would title the video better. This man is talking so much shit, it’s crazy😂
Trust me, I've taken more than 40 international train journeys throughout Europe, and he's spot on.
Great video! This needed to be said. I shelved my video on this topic when you mentioned you wanted to make this video, and you covered most of what I wanted to talk about anyway.
It is SO frustrating not to be able to book international trains on one website. It drives me crazy.
The other thing I hate, that you didn't get a chance to mention, is that sometimes there are huge discounts available if you buy some national rail card or buy the ticket in some obscure way that's not entirely obvious to foreigners. I hate finding out I could've travelled for 45% less if I just understood which off-peak travel card I was supposed to enter when booking. 🙄
I would love to see another video on this topic, though. The more awareness, the better. Just awareness won't get us very far, but it is the start for speeding things up. :)
"I hate that when I don't do my research the results are worse" Dimwit detected, opinion rejected
Can't you do a collaboration together?
1st
You need to understand that European Union is not Canada or the US.
This is not "one country" and if not, then there are different interests in every country.
2nd
Most of the railways are national and are highly subsidized.
And that means there is no political way to make changes.
No politic will risk losing the votes of a few hundred thousand people working in the rail companies only to open the tracks for operators from the other country.
If you want to know how radical the situation is, then I can tell you that a few years ago French gov. decided that French Rails need tu buy new trains which they didn't need only because the national train producer had financial problems.
In this atmosphere of interventionism, you can't think about "open rails" at all.
3rd
Switching the gauge it is too expensive.
It will be cheaper and more cost effective to buy a hydrogen plane fleet than to remake the gauge of the tracks in a few countries.
4rd
The multisystem locomotives which can switch from 3kVDC into 25kV AC in the blink of eye are on the tracks already, but the problem is that it is too expensive for rail companies to put them on the rails in other countries.
For example, there is a lack of drivers who fave the certificates to run the train in a different country because of safety regulations which are different in each country.
Unfortunately nobody involved in decision making gives a fuck about "urban policy" TH-cam, but kudos to you for resisting the opportunity to make the ad revenue bucks off of this I guess...
Bad rail connection isnt as bad as no rail
Facts
@@ThatWolfArrow money
@@ThatWolfArrow I don't know, maybe because... THE FREAKING PLANET IS ON FIRE
@@ThatWolfArrow but fixing bad rail connection is easier than building from scratch
@@ThatWolfArrow money 🤏
Also I'm aware that Wendover put out a similar video a few days ago. It's interesting, but rather surface-level and comes to the wrong conclusions. I've been working on this video for a few weeks now, similarities to Wendover are in this case coincidence.
pin this comment dude
No, they're conclusions (Wendovers) are pretty spot on. Eurorail is general good. But integration is less than ideal, might have something to do with being separate countries, but hey, given that, works well. In my experience.
Of course one could judge world air travel by one airport experience over the last crazy couple of weeks. But one would never do that.
But I'm carping. Good summary.
I would be ok even if you were inspired by them because your video is much deeper
Yep, I though that too
@@LilliD3 they both have clearly not been inspired from each other because obviously videos like that take weeks to produce
My wife and I traveled from Italy, to Paris, to Istanbul, and then back to Rotterdam back in 2011. I remember smooth everything was. I guess to an American any rail system is just amazing.
Orient express is well connected with a lot of capital cities along the way to Istanbul. But when you try to travel not in ancient main route it becomes a nightmare
My sister and I traveled around Europe on Eurail passes the past few weeks. The Rail Planner app actually does a good job at telling you what your options are, warning you if connections are tight, and warning you if you need to buy separate tickets. That said, as soon as you try to actually buy tickets it becomes useless, and you're at the mercy of the local providers.
Yeaaahh interrail has the problem of Seat reservations tho. Would love if these shitty western European countries would get their fucking act together and NOT CHARGE 30 EUROS FOR A "SEAT RESERVATION" WHEN ITS INCLUDED FOR FUCKING FREE IN A REGULAR TICKET.... I'M TALKING TO YOU ITALY, SPAIN, FRANCE AND ESPECIALLY YOU, *BELGIUM*!
Greedy ass motherfuckers, WE PAID FUCKIN 300 FUCKING EUROS FOR THESE SHITTY TRIPS
I used an Interrail pass (Eurail but for Europeans), it was great not having to buy tickets for most trains, and it skips most of the ticketing mess.
Can there be some All-trains?
As a student who has recently traveled through Europe with Interrail , it's pretty easy to go from one capital to another as long ad they are very close, but the moment you want to stop by a small village you need to take at least 3 different trains with in some cases 5 minutes to hop from one to another.
It was a great experience for the most part but this video detailed exactly what went wrong in it. Amazing insight into the rail system
But that's not a surprise. Trains are focused on the major hubs, connecting them. Regional trains are for outer areas. If trains serve every village, they'll become unbearable.
I interrailed in the early 90s. Good to see it’s still going
If those high speed trains would stop in every village, they wouldn't be high speed any more .-.
Interrailing literally tomorrow morning, glad to hear that, that video got me scared shitless
@@Sullian_dF oh as long as you have a decently organized friend going with you you've got nothing to worry about. btw just so you know, eating kebab every day is the best way to stay on budget. good luck with the journey
I live in Aarhus, Denmark, and I wanted to visit a friend in Vilnius. So I thought, "why not go by train?". The Danish rail operator could only take me as far as Hamburg, so I had to book separate tickets from there to Warsaw and then from there to Vilnius. On parts of the route there weren't any train departures available, so I had to navigate a Polish website to find bus tickets. The quickest route would take 30 hours and cost hundreds of Euros, so at that point I said screw it and booked a 1.5 hour flight for like 20 Euros...
Europe really needs to do better on international rail. Like I do not expect to be there as quickly as with a plane, but at least make the tickets affordable and convenient to book. It would be awesome if there was just one EU Rail website where you could book a ticket from between any two connected train stations in the union. We don't need highly publicized PR stunts to make people want to take the train over planes, we need to make rail actually competitive with flight.
Admit it, you went all the way to vilnius to fuck
I personally don't even need the affordable part right away. Just being able to plan a trip properly would be a great thing to have.
Price and speed is something that can come later.
This won't happen! Corruption will block every project for better rail connections. Every good connection between two cities will reduce the necessity for a big comfy car with long range. And as you know, every country loves their car industry...
The real fight is between rail vs road.
For 1700km train is hardly ever a good option. If at all, I had considered sleeping on a ferry from Sweden.
And these are all low populated countries. There are not much people traveling this direction.
to be fair this is PKP problem (polish national rail). They stucked 20-30 years in past. Seriously. Last time i was in poland i feared for my life with this old wood (literally, it was wooden. It was making very scary sounds) trains. Buying tickets online? You wish. Punctuality? Well... you will be lucky if next one will arive but you still cant take it because tickets are locked on previous train which didnt arrive. Their train cars are very old and was purchased from czechs when they started inovating their old train cars. Even their PKP logo looks like something from 90s. Its pain to ride train in poland. Which is paradox because poland is one nice flat of country.... At least this is my experience from... 2 years ago? Things may change but knowing poland i seriously doubt it. They are too busy pushing conservative catholic laws to deal with down to earth problems like fixing their public transportation.
That "Time spent: 6 hours, Tabs open: 30" hit way too close to home, the fact that there isn't a unified European scheduling and booking website is a colossal policy failure
what about "rail europe" (if I post the URL youtube will eat my comment, not sure when that started.)
@Sega-16 Summer time is a nonsense that ought to be abolished, no need to give yourself jetlag twice a year without even travelling
I gave up one day after trying to plan a trip by rail, bought a car, I'd rather drive 3000 km than go through the hassle
@@huginug
"I'd rather drive 3000 km than go through the hassle"
lol. Well 3000 km, Americans would fly. Basically if it's over about 200 miles (321 km) we would fly. 200-300. Less than that is when you take a bus or train or drive it. :)
Believe it or not 3000 km is a typical distance over here in North America. For example from San Francisco Bay Area to Dallas, Texas is 2838 km. Going east from SF, Dallas is the next major city. Well ok there's Las Vegas. That's still 915 km though.
But both of those are trips for aviation. Even a French TGV would take 10 hours to get to Dallas, and it's only three hours to fly!
Las Vegas would be three hours on TGV (well, not using the route the California HSR management chose to get to LA...if you had to use that, 4 hours just to LA...) but the flight is just over an hour (1.5 hrs by the official timetable...in practice it's usually a little faster than the official prediction. If the pilot gets up to cruising altitude and there's not much traffic, looks like there won't be much turbulence, they'll open the throttle a little more. :) )
I don't know Ug Ne, I am still shocked that Adam Something was willing to waste 10+ hours of his life taking a train when he could have flown in 1.5 hours. The only time I have taken a long distance slow train was with my ride home from the Navy (after doing 4 years), Seattle to San Jose. The train took 24 hours. It was a very nice ride, and the train filled up with passengers, but it's definitely not a replacement for aviation. Normally if I want to go to Seattle I'll hop on an airplane and get there in 2 hours. :)
btw as far as planning, have you tried "rail europe" (type it in as all one word.) It seems to be the Expedia of European train travel. :)
@@huginug This channel doesn't have any content
"...Berlin to Prague trains every two hours..."
We can't even get two trains a *day* between Auckland and Wellington here in New Zealand - in fact, you have a single Auckland to Wellington service one day, then the next day the train returns from Wellington to Auckland. And this domestic trip is over *ten hours* one way.
I would *love* to see the current Berlin-Prague train frequency between Wellington and Auckland! 🙂
And I thought Amtrak was bad, holy shit. At least trains from San Francisco to LA (roughly the same distance) are daily instead of every other day, and the West Coast is the worst part of the network (although the trip time is 12 hours. We need CAHSR to be finished soon).
How long is that journey by car and plane?
@@FlorianHWave About seven hours driving, or an hour and a half by air (depending if you fly a jet or a turboprop).
Holy fucking shit, it's New Zealand and not the US?
@@sygneg7348 There are places outside of the US that are terrible with trains too, it's just that they usually have the excuse of being poor with corrupt governments, being sparsely populated, or having difficult terrain. The US is none of these things, we just stupidly decided that Amtrak needs to make a profit despite that not being possible.
4:10 Nightjet Lifehack: You can pull out the seats who are opostie to each other to form a more or less comfortable lying area.
True, already used that
Yup. Great feature. Though it sucks that you can't get them to be completely flat.
or if you are alone on your side of coupe you can lie on seats
I once saw guy use them on a trip from Wien to Münich. It was like revelation that magic pretty much exist for me 😅
I remember as a kid we used to pull out all six of the seats to have a king sized, full compartmend bed area. Good times
As a Canadian, I consider it great when our trains arrive on the day scheduled.
As an American, I consider it great when Canadians come into the United States to cross the continent on the Interstate system.
At least I have heard that happens a lot, I do not know if that is true.
It's pretty common for passenger trains in the US and Canada to be held up by cargo trains, due to a mix of factors. We've got the unified rail services thanks to government action in the 1970s. They aren't as good as they could have been, and this video shows that there are some problems with countries that have a good rail network. Both Canada and the US chose to prioritize road travel, and we're stuck on them. Europe's hodgepodge of systems isn't really an issue here. Almost all of our railroad is standard gauge, and operates without electrification. We've got a long way to go.
@@jessebrook1688 Well ofc. Cargo is what makes money. So it's important. While people ... well end of the day it was their choice to travel like this so ... who cares?
@@Member_zero let's give them better choices then. Bullet trains.
@@bigstar66 I would love to travell with a bullet train on semi regular basis, and keep both of my kidneys intact.
But the reality, at least at this moment, is I'm probably going to have to sell at least one.
As an Italian living in the Netherlands, I would LOVE to have an alternative to flying. I was just discussing this horrifying user experience a few days ago. Of course Adam went 10 times deeper.
Bro… there is a nightjet between Amsterdam and Innsbruck and an Eurocity between Innsbruck and Rimini. 1 or 2 changes in Italy and you should be able to travel everywhere
Actually, in the 80 ies we had great trains from brusselx to milan every night!
In September I'll go from Northern Germany to Sicily by train. Wish me luck.
It's only one day on the interrail ticket, since I'll leave early in the morning and the night train to Palermo starts before midnight.
Depending where you are from in IT you can take the NJ420 to Innsbruck from Amsterdam and than continue into Italy with an EC
You do have an alternative to flying. You just choose not to use it.
As a university student living in Europe, I am happy we have so many trains. It is the way I travel and explores Europe. The trains are usually reasonably cheap, yes there are big delays and it is not the fastest way of transport, but while on the train I can study, read and do a lot of other things, I don't have to drive or wait in line for some kind of security check. Also, the cities are so interconnected that it's possible to go everywhere. Also, almost every company has discounts for students. All of that has allowed me to visit every European county by the age of 23, what a time to be alive :)
As a Rumburk citizen studying in Prague i am so glad that you explained to me why it takes so unreasonably long to get to Prague. It didnt make any sense to me why the train takes double the time of a car ride. Also, the direct bus to Prague was cancelled because it passes trough three different regions (Kraje) and the region officials didnt like it for some reason. So the connection problem is not only international, but sometimes also inter-regional :D
Yeah, this explains the horror story I saw the one and only time I tried to plan a trip by train/bus from my place of work to my home country.
In Spain, old tracks were made with the Iberian Gauge, so Talgo had to invent a train which changed gauge, and they did it (without the need to reduce speed too much), and that’s what Renfe operates in routes where tracks change in order to avoid train change. These trains by the way are high speed, the new ones very high speed actually (Talgo Avril S106).
But you still lose about 10 mins at the gauge change. Still impressive to make it work though. Expensive in the long run, but well...
@@aurelspecker6740 and for that reason the spaniards are actually considering re-gauging to European Standard in the long run.
The only real solution is to harmonize rail systems to one gauge, one current standard and one rail block safety system.
That's very cool.
@@daszieher Not considering, but actually doing (albeit very slowly)
@@daszieher We don't actually plan to convert our rail network to international gauge. What is being done is to build the international gauge high-speed lines and leave the Iberian gauge lines for freight trains, suburban trains and medium-distance trains.
One of my longest projects in my masters degree in engineering was precisely about this subject. It sucks that things are this way because with medium-high speed rail a lot of european flights could be serviced by train, cutting emissions for those trips with reductions up to 85%, creating a way bigger environmental impact than any number of bike lanes or other trendy projects could ever hope to.
hey don't bash bike lanes! But it probably would have a bigger impact, yes
And your Ph.D. was about starfish, right?
Yes, degrees. Billions upon billions issued and yet the world is as fucked up as it ever was. In most majors at most schools, degrees are about as important as male nipples in that besides making yourself feel good......I have two STEM degrees out of my three degrees and none were instrumental to acquiring and mastering my previous STEM occupation, which I got with only a high school diploma and some electronics knowledge retained from a Boy Scouts ham radio class.
Degrees remind me of some wisdom a high school physics teacher told us about an architect, an engineer and a mathematician all staying in separate rooms in the same hotel. A faulty model coffee pot was in each room and thus at the same time in the middle of the night, they all woke up to nearly identical electrical fires across their rooms.
The architect grabbed a fire extinguisher, but being an architect made a bunch of calculations as to how to perfectly arc the extinguishing agent across the room and onto the coffee pot. The architect followed the mathematics and in one perfect squirt, put out the fire and went back to bed.
Then the engineer did all the same calculations as the architect, made the same shot on the coffee pot, but being an engineer, sprayed the whole table, the closet, the bathroom, the bed, the floor, the hallway and the stair well, to make sure the fire was truly out and then the engineer went back to bed.
Next, the mathematician discovered the fire and made the identical mathematical calculations as the architect and the engineer and then went back to bed.
@@mirensummers7633 oh, i wasn’t bashing on bike lanes, just pointing out the hypocrisy in governments pushing so much for them just because they get to say “oh we installed X km of bike lanes” at the end of their term. Rail improvement is a long term project so no government wants to do it since they know they won’t be able to take credit for it so they just don’t care.
@@_JotaroKujo_ it is also super expensive and lets be honst, even if it is a super smooth experience, most people would still fly instead of spending 9h in a train.
Me and my dad have been traveling from Denmark to southern Italy on trains 3 times, and I didn't noticed any mental issues from me or my dad, cuz it was very fun. Some of the most fun I've ever had in my life.
Probably because apart from the headache that is the Copenhagen to Hamburg train, its usually a pretty straight shot. Hamburg is already one of the biggest hubs in Europe for long distance trains, so its super easy to arrive there in the early evening, hop on a night train to Zurich, hop on a Swiss express train from there to Milan, and then from there onwards with high speed rail further south. And though the 3 trains with the middle one being a night train is managable, having multiple day connections can be troubling. I mean one could say take the night train from Hamburg to Vienna, spend a day there, and then hop on a night train to Rome, but even then that's not exactly viable for people who aren't holiday goers in that sense or who mostly wanna get from here to there efficiently.
@@jackthomas1191 Well DSB's service is notoriously unreliable, infrequent, and overcrowded due to a shortage of rolling stock. They're trying to fix this by getting more reliable trains starting next spring. But even still the indirect trips especially were also problematic as DSB is quite infamous for delays which often leaves passengers seeing the train they need to be on leaving the station right as they pull in.
Oh yeah and the tickets are pricey and there's no service at all. Only a single vending machine with cola and bottled water for a train journey that takes close to 5 hours.
They're trying to improve on all fronts but even then a lot of it isn't enough to make a major difference. But they're trying.
@@drdewott9154 Fault! Europeans are already happy to be able to ride the train! Why does everyone have to chew the softness of the USA in their mouths?
@@drdewott9154 FFS, I have no idea to whom you have responded because apparently TH-cam knows which comments are not worth looking at. Whoever came up with hidings normal comments is a freaking moron. Had my comments get removed too (for no reason, thank crap AI).
Ok, on topic: Never knew that Danish trains are so unrealiable.
From those countries, if you have taken any trains such as the TGV (so by passing France), it's pretty good. But as soon as you want to go through Germany, it's hell. That's because France TGV can run on 3 different voltages because they have bulkier transformer systems.
When you said "the German side will be converted a few years before the sun turns into a supernova" I felt that.
Well, to be fair, we know that this is not fully true. The sun will turn into a Red Giant, not a Supernova. Aside this the statement likely is correct.
@@justanotherguy2824 Supernova stage would come after red giant / supergiant stage if it happens.
Instead of going supernova, the Sun will collapse into a white dwarf with much less drama.
@@justanotherguy2824 well if it's never going to happen, that's even better, isn't it?
@@Alpostpone thing is, in the red giant phase, most likely the sun will swallow Earth (as it'll grow in size to slightly beyond Earth's current orbit), so the planet won't survive to see the supernova
@@Kram1032 Probably, but supernova will never happen.
Also is probable that Germans will continue using their outdated electrification system on other planets, and that their bureaucratic stubbornness survives any cataclysm.
Dang, I’ve only ever taken an international rail trip in Europe once and just assumed all trips were that easy. Didn’t realize that I had accidentally lucked into a good trip.
Thanks for such an informative video!
It can be similarly inside a country too. In Poland there are at least 4 passenger railway companies which don't sell tickets online. I guess they don't want to turn profit.
Sounds like you also got lucky on the fact it wasn't slow, in Denmark the trains are so bad...
@@nickonerd i often take the train between Osijek and Zagreb in Croatia, it's a 270 km journey that takes 5 hours partly because the track most of the way hasn't been properly maintained since austria-hungary, partly because the train stops at every single village along the route and partly because 2/3 of the way there the train switches locomotives. Oh and those trains only run twice a day per direction.
You took a ride between amsterdam and paris. Or amsterdam and berlin
@@GTAmaniac1 Oh! I see there's another HŽ Putnički prijevoz connoisseur here. Pazi na zdravlje i um, sretno!
4:00 these chairs actually convert into a bed. Just hold onto the seat cushion from underneath and pull. You can do it to 2 opposing chairs just for yourself, or you can do it for all six, which creates a king size bed. The cushions of each opposing seats meet in the middle and the head rests also move into an almost horizontal position. I used these trains all the time between Austria and Switzerland. Sometimes, all 6 seats were full but when everyone agreed, we converted them into a full bed. The only issue was that you always ended up with somebody's feet in your face 😄 But if you get lucky and there aren't more than 3 people in the compartment then it's actually quite okay.
Yes I used to travel a lot between Rome and Munich and usually took the night train and we'd always convert the seats into a big bed. I've also slept there with 5 other people I had never seen before. The best ride was when I was in the compartment with a family from Naples and their little girl hugged me while sleeping 🥰
@@helgaioannidis9365 sus
@@Discounted Not really, you just have a rotten mind. Not all human contact is abuse, perversion or something like that.
@@Discounted It's honestly tragic how many people see any form of human touch as dirty when humans literally evolved to be touchy. Not being touchy is a more recent development.
@@helgaioannidis9365 That's really cute!
I took a DB train this week for the first time in like 10 years. This was the experience:
- 45 minutes delay because of „unforseen construction work“
- no food service because of a broken cooling system in the kitchen
- train on the way back got completely cancelled because of missing personnel
- needed to change to new route including changing the train six times
- somewhere on the way we caught another ICE again, because this one had 90 minutes delay
- this train had no food service again
- I arrived one hour earlier than originally planned for some reason
DB really needs to get their shit together. When I look up the ICE 610, it had on average (!) 50 minutes delay the last 30 days with only 3 of them arriving punctual.
Shit, Im glad I have never taken one of their trains.
Where do you even look up the arrival punctuality? I haven't even found that. (Also - similar experience except I got stranded.)
That's Deutsche Bahn for you... 😂
I seriously always thought that these things with DB is merely just an internet joke. Until I experienced it myself literally everytime I use DB's train. Every Germans is punctual, except for Deutsche Bahn
@@FauzulRizal I think germans got time travelling or step on the train like 2 hours before time for an hour trip because the way DB works makes it IMPOSSIBLE for people to be punctual, and it's not only the trains, all their transport systems suck!
@@justsomeguywithamustache3188 my German friends telling me that the only acceptable reason for being late in German is if you have an accident or if you travelled there by train 😂
As a web developer, I can't wait for, when that cross-EU ticketing platform is finally rolled out, all the security hole discoveries from outside security investigators to roll in because the most "price/performance-efficient" set of companies was picked to implement it instead of the most competent ones.
So what are some examples of competent companies?
Or something funny like when Czech Republic wanted to install a highway vignette checking system that turned out to be so expensive, that volunteer programmers decided to do it for them and kinda found out that the system was also supposed to check the identity of all drivers *and* passengers and send the data to local counterintelligence.
Oh man have you ever heard of the great czech online service for buying highway passes? The ministry had this genius idea of spending millions to buy hardware just so the system can obviously collapse the first day while a few months later there'd be no traffic at all... And that was two years ago. Any sensible person would deploy this on any cloud kubernetes like aks with fraction of cost and better performance.
@@8bitorgy I work in security and let’s just say you get what you pay for. “Competent companies” is a nebulous term because it depends on what the application is and what your criteria are, but at least in security we find that organizations that outsource to shit third party contractors get shit work while those who outsource to professionals with good reputations get, on average, a much better product.
Neoliberal governments love when companies promise them they can do the same job at a better price though. Especially with government contracts we constantly lose out to cheaper firms who do subpar work because all these types of governments care about is paying as little as possible without regard for quality.
Don't forget too that for an EU Cross platform website, the development firm will have to jump through endless woke hoops to get the contract. So until your firm's staff is comprised of 19% non gender specific members from uncontacted Indian Ocean tribes, you don't get the contract. The firm that achieves this will have the one qualified developer on its staff just recycle his broken freshman year webpage for the 2 billion Euro contract and voila, an integrated EU rail website that Amazon will buy out in a few years EDIT: and then charge the EU 25 billion EU a year to lease or else the trains get halted. That's social justice's final destination!
this is basically what happened when I tried to find a train route from Austria to Amsterdam. Longer, more expensive, less flexible and less convenient than either car or plane, really insentivising climate concious travel!
Edit:
Thanks to everyone pointing out the quite affordable NJ connection! I don't really know why it didn't show up for me anywhere, maybe I used the wrong websites/cause I didn't start from Vienna etc.
Still would be nice to have an official app that brings all of the different services together so dumb bitches like me can be climate friendly too.
That is because trains are convenient up to 500km
@@jackjoyce1744 trains could be convenient for every distance
@@jackjoyce1744 railways can go up to 200km an hour, A car can do an average of only 80 km. Planes are very expensive
@@Killroy007 yes they certainly could but there will become a point where is still quicker to fly
@@delgermuruntsagaankhuu6951 trains are a superior way to travel but here in uk it’s far cheaper to fly than take a train which I know is sad
I am just past the introduction and I want to invite Adam to Australia. I remember my first longer rail trip that was supposed to take 32 hours. I ended up at my destination 54 hours after departure. And the train didn't even cross any border.
Where did you find a rail trip that is supposed to take 32 hours? Do you mean the Ghan or the Indian Pacific, because those are more like cruise ships then long distance trains, and if you instead booked a trip from Melbourne to Cairns, well, generally the Spirit of Queensland is quite reliable, but the XPT is a different storey, caused mainly by a lack of a will power and the fact that next to no one cares about it.
@@pwhnckexstflajizdryvombqug9042 Brisbane-Cairns (1681km)... This was certainly no cruise ... Well sometime later I did the trip in a sleeper ... and that "only" took 32 hours.
@@pwhnckexstflajizdryvombqug9042 indeed sounds farcical. Not as farcical as our lack of high speed rail though.
MELBSYD is one of the busiest flight routes in the world
High Speed Rail would be a huge boost to livability and sustainability
that's why we fly in USA, Canada and Australia. You could fly that in like two hours or less.
Just stumbled over your videos, I love the subtle realistic sarcasm you have for them. As a frequent train traveler I have to say there is at least one train booking site that works across Europe: trainline. Also even though technically a carry on ticket is only valid for the specified connection train - if you can prove that the initial train was running late and is the cause for you taking another one on the same route, you do not have to buy another ticket - happened to me just recently. Also proving that is super easy.
Hi just came looking for a comment mentionning Trainline. All of the countries (western europe) mentionned in the video are included in their search function. Whare it really becomes tricky is when you want to book trains in eastern Europe and the Balkans. Now that's a real challenge.
I have never taken a train outside the UK, but I only ever book through trainline. It's just, by far, the easiest and most headache-free way to get where you need to.
I recently came back from a vacation to Berlin.
On my way back to Brussels I had the worst railway experience ever. Apparently two previous trains to Brussels had been cancelled before the one I had to take, which meant that this train, which would already be potentially full on a normal day, now has to carry three times as many people. When the train arrives two hours late, we were completely packed full and the train conductors had to ask all passengers without a reserved seat to leave.
This is when people discovered that the people whose reserved seat numbers were meant for previously scrapped trains were overlapping with others' reserved seats on this train, leading to further complications and a delayed leave. Eventually the train conductor called the police to escort random people out of the train without reserved seats until we could leave, accidentally leading to a number of people being seperated from their friends of family who were still in the train when it departed.
Luckily when I arrived in Brussels I was able to catch a train home in time before 11PM, which is when the NMBS stops service in most smaller towns, however I knew many of the people who were escorted off the train would not be able to catch a train by the time they arrived with the next one, meaning they would possibly be stuck in Brussels with no place to sleep for the night. It was such a huge contrast to the typical DB experience I had in Germany, where trains typically come in time and I felt like there was much better organization.
lmao yeah thalys is having a stroke rn
I think you are talking about the ICE to Brussels and yep, it's an absolute mess because of bad maintenance on the ICE 3M rolling stock. Went on interrail few weeks ago and avoided at every possibility to get on ICE 3M.
this. I recently moved from Cologne to Leuven and the Performance of the ICEs running from Frankfurt to Brussels is astonishingly terrible. Earlier this year, on the way to leuven i'd miss my connection in Liège, which is around 15 Minutes, so frequently that i started taking the delay reimbursement into account for my price calculations. And the last train of the day, with which i would arrive at midnight, i always board with the fear of being stuck there after missing the last train. Since then it's gotten... much worse, but Tickets are now 40€ instead of 30€.
Thalys seems a little more reliable, but the lack of through tickets as mentioned in the video make them very unappealing - you can't even use them in place of a cancelled ICE, they're an ecosystem on their own entirely and it fucking sucks. It should be less than 2h by train with just one change, but the 4h Flixbus ride or the 3h/2 changes ride with regional trains is in reality often about the same speed and much, much cheaper.
What are you talking about, that is the typical DB experience? It's not an ICE if it's not at least 15-30 min late and if it snows in the alps then they start hitting 2h late in Cologne. The damned DB app didn't know that our central station was shut down, mind we aren't a small town, this is the former capital of the BRD, so it happily routed people through a station where all the trains were stuck. Had the same happen on an intercity to Munich, stood in place for 9h, cause we were packed tight standing in the bike compartment. Frankly it takes longer but the regional carriers are more reliable, RE10 to/from Krefeld not withstanding, of which a DB rep at Krefeld once said that they only find out if it is coming at all a few minutes before arriving.
Last weekend I was at San Diego Comic-con and I was planning to head home Sunday on the 1510 train. I opened up my Amtrak app, used the Status feature and found the 1510 train was going to be 30+ minutes late and the next one at 1610 was 90 minutes late, so I hustled to the station and was the last one on the 1410. And yes, those later trains would be packed with tire, angry people. So, if Amtrak here in the US has an app that shows things like the status of trains (either by route or train number) don't the European lines have the same?
hack for the nightjet (and almost every regular night train in europe): in case you didn’t know, you can pull out the seats, so that two seats opposite each other form one continous „bed“ where you can lay down, more or less. way comfier then sitting. and if you hit the jackpot and are alone in the compartment, you can pull out all six seats and pull up the armrests, so that you have one giant area to sleep
That's how it was in the old trains up to the 90s in Germany, too. Travelling with a few friends was awesome, the compartment felt like a big couch!
Only drawback was that on night trains: sometimes 2 or 3 people would already block a whole compartment sleeping when you got in, leading to a shortage o free seats...
There probably was an option to convert the seats into a sleeping arrangement and he couldn't figure it out. And the Czech guy replying is just telling him they don't sell BEDS, a misunderstanding due to language. Perhaps thought it was a joke.
I was gonna say I’m glad I’m in the states and don’t have to deal with horrible rail systems. But I guess having one is better then nothing so you got me there. And our planes suck, so got me double
lol ur glad to live in a country that have gun violence like daily lmao
I can attest that a bad US rail system is better than not having one. I live along the surf liner route in California, and while the tickets are expensive, frequency sucks, travel times are long, and I wish it connected to some in land locations…..it’s still awesome not having to drive my car in order to see my sister.
Instead I get to grab a beer, put on a movie, and just chill!
After spending 7 weeks using this stuff in Europe I can say they that it’s unreal compared to the US. We are missing out.
How do our planes suck? What am I missing, I fly alot in the US and never noticed anything overly annoying.
Navigating the terminal is like the most annoying thing right behind the 1.5 hour drive to the airport.
@@Valkires1 tsa sucks
This Austrian night train seating car actually is the best cheap option to travel during (off peak season) the night. Given you shared your opinion about these wonderful compartments is effectively proof that you just haven't pulled hard enough so the three seats at either side allow to convert themselves into a couch landscape covering the ENTIRE compartment!!! Book the entire thing with 2 friends and its guaranteed that no-one will disturb you
Yeah, I'm so jealous, I sat together with four people instead of three while other compartments were less full or even completely empty but closed off. He's travelling like a king there with so much space and privacy!
A few months ago I took a direct 6 hour train from Utrecht to Basel, crossing borders between Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland (sorry, not Austria). The train didn't stop crossing borders, the only drawback is that in the Dutch part the train is not high speed, taking up 30% of the total traveling time for 10% of the distance. Booking is easy via the NS international app. The ticket is a QR code.
As much as I like European rail, how you got to cross the Austrian border on Utrech-Basel baffles me. :)
Yeah. As much as I like adams videos sometimes, this one is really bad.
Like: HOW BOUT INFORMING YOURSELF IN ADVANCE ABOUT WHICH TRAIN TICKET TO BUY???
ITS THE SAME AS BOOKING A ECONOMY FLIGHT, THINKING ITS BUSINESS AND THE COMPLAINING THAT THE ECONOMY FLIGHT WASNT BUSINESS😂😂😂
@@jimi272 Airline tickets are still not that easy if you want more than trivial bookings, but the train world is worse, in my opinion. Both worlds are real bad in believing that the customer comes last and is an inconvenience.
What both worlds miss is proper regulation of service standards, and if someone could unify train and airplane services that would be a very nice utopia.
@@jimi272 Everyone who has ever tried to book an international train ticket knows this is simply not true. It's _extremely_ hard to get proper information. There are examples like this when cooperation between countries and operators makes it easier, but that is not the norm, it's an exception.
@@ahooogerhuis I think he mistook Switzerland with Austria. At least it wasn't Australia.
Thank you again for making THE definitive video on the subject. It still shocks me how nationalistic rail companies are considering they aren't competing with each other. They are competing with cars and airplanes and yet they feel free to self sabotage? C-R-A-Z-Y! Also the fact that pricing is all over the map doesn't help. That's like walking into a grocery store and expecting the price of a bottle of Coke to vary between $1.00 and $8.99 depending on demand, time of day, etc. I really hope the DB $9 Euro experiment becomes permanent and internationalized... I.e. every nation picks up on the idea and charges the bill to polluters via carbon taxes...
I guess you mean the "9€ ticket" currently sold in Germany for three months only and valid for local transit (but in all of Germany). It will certainly NOT become permanent as it was (my interpretation) a somewhat greenish and populist add-on to the populist petrol price subventions agreed on by the federal government. It has already been found out that it just created additional traffic without actually convincing people to permanently switch from car-centric to public transport. What a surprise.
Tbh national rail companies *would* be competing with each other in a truly integrated system, at least on some lines.
hello, and welcome to the inevitable effects of increased socialism in a market environment.
it is because the firms are free from competition, and they make money even if nobody uses them, (because if nobody used them, the tax payers would be forced on pain of imprisonment, or death if they resist, to bail out the nationalized/ effectively nationalized a la regulation industries) that they are in no hurry to improve. if there was the potential for competition, they would have to improve to be able to continue having their jobs.
socialism is bad. government is bad. hoch die anarchie
National train companies are doing the best job not to be competition to individual traffic
8:40 Bureaucrats: "Nein"... "Non"... "No"
When travelling by rail internationally, I typically use an Interrail/Eurail pass. Makes things cheaper and more convenient, but still has its drawbacks:
- Mandatory, expensive, limited and complicated reservations on high speed lines in France, Spain and Italy, among others.
- Meant for tourism, since it's a pass valid for several days (you need to travel by rail on many segments for it to be worth it).
- Doesn't fix the connectivity problem (your delayed/cancelled train can still fuck you up badly).
- Transiting in some big cities (Paris and London) is a hassle since they have several main stations which are far apart from each other.
National rail companies do in fact share their train schedules with each other (I can use the DB app to look up for connections throughout Europe), though not the live information such as cancellations and delays.
Are talking about getting from say Paris Gare du Nord to Paris Gare de Lyon? Because that's pretty easy in my opinion
@@murphy7801 In theory, yes, but dealing with (potentially several) local transit systems' timetables is certainly going to make transfers more difficult.
@@murphy7801 From Gare de Lyon to Gare de l'Est. I needed to take 2 metros and it took 20 minutes. Not as easy and quick as just changing platforms. Experience a delay in your previous train and you're done for.
Adam hasn’t considered this, but you can go from Los Angeles to Miami entirely on Amtrak. You just have to pass through Chicago and DC and the trip takes four days.
There's a minor inaccuracy here at 7:17
The Sun is too small to turn into a supernova, it will transition to a red giant and then overtime leave a planetary nebula and a white dwarf.
Good, now I won't have to leave that comment :)
So we need to wait until the gas from the nebula, formed after the Sun dies, becomes a part of a larger star which eventually goes supernova, for the German side to convert to 25kV AC? :C
@@piotrrywczak Exactly.
Germany will change a few days before sun blows in a supernova. So if the sun will never, Germany will never. 😅
One can also interpret it as meaning that it will never happen
I was JUST talking about this - my friend is trying to visit from NL to Slovenia and it would honestly be simpler for him to invent teleportation. We spent hours looking at train options, even with transfers, it's a maze of several national websites and horrible transfers. In the end, after hours of looking at connections and inexplicably disappearing trains and terrible local websites, he decided to just fly. The flight was something you could find after 10 minutes of googling. And consider this is even amidst a massive air travel crisis in the EU.
P.S.: Check Slovenia during all those compatibility maps in the video. We're literally shoebox-sized and there's some kind of incompatibility with each of our neighbors.
perspective from a neighbouring country - Croatian railways are considered a joke among the general public. Common train delays of 7+ hours, lines which inexpliciably stop and the passengers are transported the rest of the way on buses, the fact that you could travel via train from Zagreb to Belgrade faster in the 70s-80s than you can today, the fact that many railways haven't been upgraded since they were built 50+ years ago, the fact that Istria and Pula aren't connected to the rest of the country directly but to go there by train you have to go via Ljubljana or take the bus, it's just such a clusterfuck that even though we got new, modern trains what use are those when the infrastructure is shit...
@@Nightraven26 you have some things right, but most are misconceptions, first of all 7+ hours delays are not common, they can happen but not "common".
Second, yes the train journey between bg and zg last longer but only in comparison with some express trains back then that served only couple of big cities along the route, same as today, but they did not have a border crossing and the passport check on each side and loco change, also the serbian side of the line is much worse, although our isn't that great either and speeds aren't too great, barely over 100 on a track that is constructed for 160.
For the infrastructure, it is not true that that it is not upgraded at all, it was, especially that main line along the sava river, but our railway lines are not 50+ years old, they are way older, as a matter of fact not a single kilometer of a new line has been built here or in slovenia during yugoslavian times, only closed down, all we have is mostly austrian times built, they did build new lines but in the eastern part of the country.
I remember before the war, that podravka express run from zagreb to here, virovitica, in 1 hour and 59, only ever train to go below two hrs, but back then it was that french dmu that looked like an airplane inside together with a stewardess with coffee and magazines, the train was relocated to international routes after the war started as that and mimara were only two decent train sets we had, and there was that shelling by the serbs in slavonia ofc.
But back then podravka was a business class train, not sure we have that at all now, and stopped only in đurđevac, koprivnica, križevci and vrbovec between vtc and zg, so ofc it was faster, now it has at least two more stops, pitomača and dugo selo, and loco exchange in kc and so on.
But yeah our railways are sad, but not true we invest nothing, we upkeep all the time in fact just not enough of it, but you should watch some cab vids to see the state of the railroads in serbia, bosnia or montenegro and macedonia or albania that lost the railways all together to see a decay, we were stil way better, but kept on status quo instead of improving, hope it gets better as they announced it.
For the record, the western slavonian line that connects this podravina line and the main posavina line thru the papuk range (for darovar, pakrac etc) has been reconstructed in the past decade, busses were starting from here for years until it was finished, the zagorje line has been electrified just recently, last year electric haulage started there, now for a few years already the double track for koprivnica and hungarian border is under construction, so it is factually not true that nothing is done, just as i said it, not nearly enough.
Also why do I have to go to Deutsche Bahn website to see international schedule. Like I’m just trying to get to Belgrade, what does Germany have to do with any of this?
@@dannyboy_vtc8980 It’s not true that Yugoslavia didn’t build any railways. Divača-Koper opened in 1968, 7 years after the port and now it is arguably one of the most important pieces of infrastructure in our country.
@@justsamoo3480 well that info i've gotten from a slovene maybe a year ago on another railways video, he was maybe wrong, but i do know that they closed much more lines than they oppened the new ones, for instance here bjelovar kloštar line has been colsed down in yugoslavian times, and was reconstructed again in the 90s, my comment was that it was better then than now, but it wasn't, we didn't improve much, or not as much as we should, but we at least kept it in status quo with several times less resources and people at the railways, and at the moment things are improving somewhat and are better than during the yu times even in cro, not to mention slovenia, we also converted our 3kv dc in the south to 25 kv ac to have one system across the country, it's not that nothing is done, just not enough or not quick enough, we also have a new rail terminal in rijeka port that was extended, but they are saying that the big works are only yet to come, i for sure hope they mean it, they did announce the other day a start of the work on double track for karlovac as the first part of the lowland line for rijeka, so we'll see, i just don't like bashing wuthout a lot of insight into the matter, the railways here have a lot to be desired, but it also can be soo much worse, but i do think we should measure ourself with the better than us, not the worse so the criticism is due, but not in a way people that have no clue depict it.
Finland's rail gauge will probably still stay 1,524 mm for the next century or so simply because the country is too geographically isolated from the rest of Europe. Even with Rail Baltica and the FinEst undersea tunnel link, it would only require standard gauge to Helsinki/the Helsinki airport. There's a not a strong economic incentive to completely overhaul Finland's rail system to match the rest of Europe as most passengers would likely have to change trains in Helsinki anyway. While taking a sleeper train from Berlin to Rovaniemi is fun to imagine, that's nothing more than a pipe dream at the moment. Let's see if Europe can handle through tickets first.
I highly doubt that the tunnel will ever get built but if people want to reach Lapland from western/central Europe it might even be a better idea to build a new railway that connects Haparanda/Tornio to Rovaniemi.
That's fine though, as long as the connections to national rail services aren't too overbearing. Be a bit of an issue if the international station was a half hour drive away from the nearest national line, but hopefully whoever designs things won't be that silly.
Trouble with the more geographically central regions is that they're kind of crisscrossed all over the place with international rail, often running through the same cities and towns as their regional lines, so it makes a lot more sense to standardize rather than running a bunch of parallel lines and systems.
I love Germany and Austria: no mandatory seat reservations! I did my whole Interrail trip off-season there and had a blast. The freedom of not being locked into a schedule and being able to visit multiple cities in a day, staying in each one as long as you like is unmatched by any other mode of travel.
Regarding user experience, something happened to me two weeks ago. I booked a german train ticket on SNCF (french railways) to go from Germany to France. After the transaction was complete, I found out the ticket was not available as a QR code, but had to be printed... in a French station, where I wanted to go in the first place. In the end I managed to change the ticket to a Deutsche Bahn equivalent and got a refund but I definitely agree that even a simple international trip can turn into a nightmare because there is no european platform to buy tickeets
Same hapened to me and a French friend when we traveled to eachother's countries (I'm Swiss). I'm sure the DB and the SBB/CFF/SFF have their share of responsibility but the fact you need to physically go to a SNCF station to physically print your ticket in 2022 feels like a frustrating retrograde thing on the part of the SNCF resulting in the absurd "To go to France, you need to go to France first"
Well at least it is possible. Like everywhere Else in the world it is not easier to travel via train internationally
And imagine you are a tourist from another continent trying to book tickets from home before your trip to Europe... you end up spending hours trying to find the proper website from the proper train operator and crossing your fingers it's gonna work out!
There's trainline which would work between Germany and France. Doesn't cover all of Europe but most of Western Europe is.
The irony of all this is within france you don't really have to print any ticket ever. I haven't needed to print a ticket in years here.
I live in Austria, and every summer, I try to plan my holiday travels by train because "save the planet". And every time I end up with one big "fuck this shit" and just book a flight or go by car. It's not like I'm not *trying* to cultivate a low carbon footprint lifestyle, but my frustration tolerance level has limits (and so does the depth of my pockets and the extent of my holidays).
Me too from southern Germany. I tried to book the sleeper train from Munich to Rome. Every date at the weekend from mid September to mid November is fully booked. You literally cannot book it. It's insane. Of course there are multiple flights a day available. It's just sad.
I live in north Italy. I understand your frustration...
I can just cross the fingers they will finish the Brenner Base Tunnel by year 2030 ... just a little of patience *ironic*
Also, got to love how Spain specifically vetoed the idea of integrated passenger experience and passenger rights.... despite having spent an absolute fortune on tunnelling high speed rail through the frikkin Pyrenees to link into the French network. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
They are afraid of the competition to their state owned railway companies. With a centralized open booking system private railway could much easier cherry pick the most profitable routes.
@@Psi-Storm The spanish rail network has already been liberalized, French SNCF on the other hand keep making up excuses to avoid competition with Renfe 🤨 in France.
There isn't any HSR train line through the Pyrenees and no plans to do any. You made all that up! Stop lying.
The link is made at the coastlines, both mediterranean (currently in operation) and atlantic (expected by 2029, maybe earlier)
@@BlackHoleSpain See fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligne_de_Perpignan_%C3%A0_Figueras .
@@marcvandyck8052 Yes, that's the Mediterranian link he's referring to (Eastern part of the border) The other one is on Irún/Bayonne (Western part of the border) But there is no plan to cross the Pyrenees in the "middle" through Jaca/Pau.
Its worth pointing out that, while certainly behind in speed and service frequency, the US is ahead of Europe with respect to the problems of interoperability and end-user experience. For instance, the tracks north of NY to Boston run at a different electrification standard than the tracks south to Washington, but there's a series of locomotive types capable of running on both standards which run express and high speed services the whole way without changing. There are even places which have dual-mode locomotives that can run on electrification where its available and switch to diesel power where it isn't. For the most part intercity services are run by Amtrak and so there is a single unified booking experience. Other operators exist but they are virtually always commuter lines into suburbs rather than intercity travel. These commuter services are almost always structured as "board whenever, sit wherever" tickets rather than a bookings for particular departure time in a particular seat. So even if you did have to use two operators at some point, there's no such thing as missing a connection. The problem with US rail aren't the problems you mentioned. The problem with US rail is that it tends to take 4x longer than flying.
I would like a follow-up video with a deeper look on how far along we are to making international rail as easy as domestic rail. Because it's not just track gauge on the infra side, it's also loading gauge (Nordic trains are wider than mainland European ones, for example, and British are narrower), standard platform height, etc. It's not just safety systems on the train side, it's safety systems on the track side as well, and standards on operating and constructing lines that aren't integrated.
I feel like this is the point of the EU to fix stuff like this.
It is. Very slowly.
Thats what I thought. You would think that the EU, which absoutely loves making laws for all of Europe, would have a standard for rails, trains etc.
To give some credit to the NWO conspiracy theorists, thats what they are afraid of. Giving away autonomy for very little gain.
@@TheIIIJulianIII EU has the standards and they are good. But the countries are fighting back because they usually cost money. Politically new highway sells better than switching your trains from 3 kV to 25 kV, unfortunately.
@@TheIIIJulianIII The standards are there. its the countries that dont implement it.
6:48
Small correction to the map, the "Indusi" System in Austria is cross-compatible with Germany's PZB-90 System, if not even a carbon copy of it! So no train change required of any sort, just a train equipped with PZB-90 is necessary
Correct and if you set up a virtual railfan camera at Asschaffenburg Hbf the Nightjet ÖBB Baureihe 1116 1016 1216 runs through it it started at Köln Hbf or Aachen Hbf for Brussels
Yesterday I had a conversation with my gf to visit Prague. 700 km, its ~7 hours by car from door to door and I dont have to check any schedule and can stop when/whereever I want.
By train its 11 hours and need to change trains 3 times (or go by bus for hours)
700 km between 2 big european cities should be 4 hours not half a day.
It should take a movie and a nice nap …
Europe's old issues of having to find a common standard for systems that were developed and implemented independently from each other over centuries - in some case even millennia... It's the EU's biggest hindrance because it's not as easy as agreeing to objectively improve things. For each of these systems, there are a couple dozen aspects they depend on or depending on them, each again interconnected with several peripheral industries, standards, regulations and administrative structures - all of which need to be reworked on some level for each participating country, making it an absolute headache to try and get anywhere.
Honestly, we're lucky to have as much willingness to adapt historically grown structures as we do. That's an unprecedented level of cooperation for Europe.
well no tmillennia
@@mareksicinski3726 Some of the major road systems and city layout concepts date back to the ancient era. Same goes for cultural views, values and specialties that played a role in all later developments. Sure, you won't find concrete systems that have remained completely the same for thousands of years, but several aspects that affect them result from extremely old roots. Like industrial centers and their sphere of influence, or cultural identity and subsequent uniformity/distinction from "others".
The hotel thing is shocking to me. When I took Amtrak and missed my connection for the daily long-haul train, they gave me a free hotel room and meal ticket. It ended up being awesome because I got to spend a whole day in Portland, Oregon!
If you got a ticket and there's no more train available and it's the fault of the train carrier they are of course obligated to get you to your destination OR a hotel. If you organize this yourself, you can get your expenses refunded (though not sure how that works if you book a 5-star hotel or go hundreds of kilometers via taxi).
The "trick" here is that it's only true if you got a single ticket for that specific trip (but I bet that's the same in the US). If for example you book Paris to Munich, and then Munich to Rome, but as a separate ticket, and you get delayed in Munich, well, that's your problem now*. If on the other hand you got a single ticket that has Paris - Rome (via Munich) on it, it's the problem of the train companies (or of course if you got to switch trains anywhere between Paris - Munich or Munich - Rome).
-> never book your train tickets "in pieces" (if it can be avoided, which it can't always). Again, I think that's the same for flight tickets too. You want a connecting ticket there over two single-journey tickets as well.
*you'll still get compensation for the train being late if it's more than 60 minutes I think but nothing else
What?! Please don't say anything positive about the USA. It is a garbage country
Exactly. If I book easyJet Rome - Berlin and ryanair Berlin - Dublin and I miss my connection I have a problem. Same with two train tickets from two operatiors.
If the whole journey is in a single ticket (say Lufthansa Rome-Frankfurt, Frankfurt-Dublin) a missed connection is (mostly) the operator's problem (hotel) and I do get compensation (cash).
At the counter you can (often) book single tickets from anywhere to anywhere else but that is often a lot more expensive than two special fares.
@@user-jk2zm7uq5s I just think the person who made this video is so in love with planes and has no clue how Europe's rail system works. It's not even that difficult, just book your tickets and go 😂
New Amtrak management has been really neat. They're even planning to expand the network across the country which is awesome.
Oddly enough, going from Germany to Amsterdam (and vice versa) via DB and Nightjet just a few days ago was easier than traveling anywhere domestically in Germany via DB. I'm assuming the 9 Euro pass has something to do with that though. Best public rail system I've experienced thus far was in Japan, mainly because it's more tolerant of sudden capacity/demand surges, unlike a lot of the DB trains/lines.
Japan is also an island and has a dedicated track network for the shinkansen with a wider gauge.
imho the best solution would be to have a dedicated high speed rail network between all major European cities separate from the national/regional trains.
@@Bioshyn agreed. Though the demand/capacity thing still stands, the regional trains, atleast DB ones, aren’t well equipped for demand surges. They have small standing areas, and don’t handle bike traffic well.
@@danielstoffel4815 The DB is kinda underfunded while they have the money to do changes the money just goes somewhere
@@danielstoffel4815 and it will only get worse since Germany is in a world of pain due to the silly government you voted in which sanctions Russia which you need for cheap energy. Say bye bye to German wealth.
trying to plan a travel from Finland to Italy by train.... a nightmare. I've been thinking about how wonderful that international booking site for train tickets would be
The wild thing about through tickets is that WE USED TO HAVE THEM! 10 years ago, if you took an international train trip, you'd get one ticket from your national railway operator that all other operators on the way would accept. You often couldn't book them online and you'd often need to get a paper ticket, but the system exists!
(To be fair it's getting better again. With Germany to London, we went from once being able to get a through ticket from DB, to not being able to get through tickets at all for a while, to being able to get separate ICE and Eurostar tickets in a single booking from DB, which comes with transfer guarantee / the other passenger rights)
also my brother bought some kind of european ticket this summer, which allows you to use for a few weeks ALL trains in europe (I think also ICEs...) and he bought it via db. So some system has to exist.
@@MusiXificati0n It's called EuroRail (for non-europeans) and InterRail (for Europeans). They've got good deals. You can get all trains in most European countries, as long as booking a seat on said train isn't required. So basically al sleeper and high speed trains are excluded.
@@wraldpyk6698 You can then specifically book those high-speed or sleeper trains. I once went from Bologna to Lecce via night train and the reservation was 6 EUR only on top of the Interrail (two-person independant sleeper aka wagon lit)
@@alphanet72 Yeah that is true, though when I traveled with it there was only a certain amount of tickets for InterRail per day, and I had to buy the full ticket unfortunately. So it's not always possible.
@@wraldpyk6698 Yes. Although remember that before, Interrail was only for young people. I used Interrail the first time of my life being 40! Let's hope it gets better :)
I was at a train ticket office in Austria a few weeks ago. At the counter next to me there was a man who had waited in line for about half an hour. He wanted a train ticket to Portugal. They told him they just could not sell him one. And if I remember correctly they told him to buy a plane ticket instead. The poor man was really frustrated.
Edit: It was not some small rural outlet. It was THE ticket office at vienna main station.
well, that would mean you have to pass through 5 different countries...that's just like going to the train station in washington D.C. and asking for a train ticket to nicaragua....would that work? I highly doubt it
@@mechsikaner What a weird comparison. Just... no. Everything is different for your example.
@@johnjohannesjuan I hope you realize that the countries in europe are exactly that: countries; not "european states" inside of one country like in the u.s. - so my comparison is correct - 5 countries to go in europe (austria, italy, france, spain, portugal) and 5 to go in america (u.s., mexico, guatemala, honduras, nicaragua); and both trips start in the capital, so where is the mistake?
To be fair, that is quite an insane thing to ask for.
A multiple day journey (where are you going to sleep?) with a dozen or so trains.
Interrail could be an option there
Went all the way from Lyon (FR) to Positano (IT) and then back passing through Venice last year, almost 30 days on the road. I basically only took buses to cross the borders. Inside of France the train availability was superb. In Italy the same. Now try crossing the borders
i was inter railng in this year. from Poznań--berlin--amsterdam--brussels---paris --lyon-----milano---budaest---poznań.
the route is very very and efficient. on paper it looks confusing, but in fact everything runs smoothly.Remember that Europe is not one country but many. it is normal for different countries to use different train systems
I think it depends on wiche countrys you are travelling becaus in switzerland, germani, france, italz and england, sweden, norway, denmark, bekgium, netherlands the trains are really good compared to the rest of the world.
Many countries, but also an union, we should do better.
To get an idea about how bad the user experience is. I wanted to book a ticket from the Netherlands to Germany. Because I have a dog I needed to get a dog pass, or so I thought. In actuality I need a dog pass for the dutch leg of the journey and then for the German part I need a child ticket because big dogs traveling on trains is apparently an alien concept. This dog/child ticket needs to be sent BY POST or printed at a station. To top it off this information is only available on the DB website in German and very easy to miss.
wtf. One would figure that a ticket to show on one's phone with a QR code would do.
I have been travelling on European international rail lines since 1992, and I swear getting tickets to your destination has become HARDER since then.
Before the internet, you only had one option: the international ticketing office in one or two major cities. Stand in line for three hours or so, get a clerk who doesn't seem to understand WHY you want to travel from Amsterdam to Luxembourg by train, and then finally leave with a ticket that's way too expensive but at least it got you where you wanted to go and it was valid for TWO MONTHS. Like, you could literally get on at any day and any time you wanted during those two months. Which to me was the absolute number one benefit of trains over airplanes.
Nowadays, I don't even know what website to use to get a ticket to go through three different countries. Dutch railways international always shows a price that's at least two times higher than what you need to pay, and you can never get information on actual timetables. Deutsche Bahn has the best timetables, but the booking process is a disaster for anyone who doesn't have a DB discount card. Let's not even talk about English railways, I still have nightmares from trying to book a ticket from Amsterdam to Edinburgh. I ended up taking a BUS.
These days, I usually buy my tickets separately for every part of my journey. One ticket for Amsterdam to Berlin, then buy a ticket in Berlin to Dresden, then buy a ticket in Dresden to Decin, then in Decin I buy a ticket to Prague. It's a hassle but at least that way I know what trains I'm ending up on and what prices I can get.
A unified ticketing system would seriously make me be totally okay with not getting compensation or guarantees on through-tickets or terrible connections or once-every-two-hours departures. It's my number one frustration in all my travelling through Europe by train for the past 30 years.
For Amsterdam to Edinburgh, book the Amsterdam to London leg from Eurostar. Book the London to Edinburgh leg from LNER or any other UK train operator. LNER will most likely be the one providing your service.
In my country (in the EU) the first (outdated) option is still pretty much the only option.
The only difference is it doesn't last 2 months.
Well....before the internet (2000 and below), the borders within the EU were closed, so it was more complicated.
And: We have 13 different countries (on the "main part" of Europa) with almost different languages/mentalities.
Do you know what kind of a trouble this is? (But on the other hand, its quite interesting!)
@@lunamariahawke9320 the open borders are part of the EU membership and the EU has existed since 1993. I don't know which country you're from and when you joined, but open borders have existed before the Internet.
That being said, even if we take 2000 as the start of European integration, we've had 22 years to fix this mess and not only is it not getting fixed, the EU parliament is trying to fix it and getting completely shut down by other member states. And that's the other problem if the EU: governance. We have way too many EU governing bodies and besides the Parliament nothing else is directly elected by all European citizens (such as the EU Council and the Commission) so it's very undemocratic. We should have one body, the EU Parliament, that gets elected directly by all EU citizens and that should be the only one that makes EU wide decisions.
@@lunamariahawke9320 Borders were FAR from closed. The first Schengen agreement dates back to 1985, and the Amsterdam agreement that opened ALL internal borders in the EU was signed in 1997. Online booking sites didn't start taking off until 2002 or so. I've had my passport checked on trains maybe a total of three times. The actual border crossing is not the issue in international train travel, it's the different systems in place and the lack of open ticketing, like the video explains.
Since European international rail has so many issues, are there any examples of better international rail networks with similar numbers of member-countries?
No, but China has a larger network that has been able to be built because it was centrally planned. Hint, maybe European countries need to look at a central EU planning body for rail infrastructure - As a planning body only, then independently countries can choose to ratify the plan which both enables countries to keep control over their own infrastructure, but also gives everyone a plan of what everyone else is working to.
Adding to Ben Harris' point, India has a great interconnected railway network where you can book tickets from anywhere to anywhere in minutes, though I don't think we have through tickets here. Only possible because the railways operates under the union government, and Indian states are basically less autonomous EU countries, so all railway planning can be planned without competition and sabotage.
@@benharris7358 Difference is that China is a single country, Europe is not a single country
@@mr.memmer8097, yeah obviously. But the EU gives a mechanism to use central rail planning
@@mr.memmer8097 That there is literally the problem, BORDERS
I travelled from paris to Interlaken(Switzerland) and didn’t find any problems. The trip was easy and the crew were very helpful.
The train from paris to Geneva changed its course which made me miss my connection train (which was from a different company). But they immediately moved my tickets to a different train for free.
I did travel to other places too and i found it to be eazy
As he said: connections between neighbouring countries are usually pretty smooth. If you want to cross one tho...
As an Englishman who has spent their whole life living in London, I get enough of a headache trying to work out which London station trains to other parts of the country leave from whilst booking from the comfort of one singular app. Learning how the European "system" works made me physically ill, and my heart goes out to all of you who have to deal with it.
as a train enthusiast and knowledge of compass directions, i know which london terminus to get a train from to go to a specific area in england
As a German, I had English in school. Lets just say instead of actually learning English, I ended up knowing the entire public transport system of London at the time. (In case you ask, I learned proper English when I spend time abroad)
‘National Rail Enquiries’
The worlds most annoying but amazing app, only ppl from the Uk can relate
Also there’s trainline but that’s actually competent
@@petitkruger2175 my £3.50 train was cancelled so I got a notification saying I was due a refund, happy days, logged on and found I needed to pay a £10 admin fee to get the money back....
I was just in Europe for seven weeks using a Eurail pass. I can attest to this video. I can say that Renfe in Spain feels like an Amish ticket booth. You can’t reserve with a Eurail pass except at the station. Getting to Paris was enough of a pain, even with only one train. Getting from Amsterdam to Berlin was a bit messy as well, with being told I could switch trains or stay on, but then a German lad told me the intercom said I had to switch, thank you random guy, but overall not too bad. THEN, later from Munich to Luzern holy hell. Me and 30 or so people got kicked off because the train was apparently too full (just moved the issue elsewhere). My easy ride was destroyed and my train trip doubled in time and involved trains running behind, missing connections, 4-5 changes, cramped standing between cars, and honestly, a surprising amount of fun figuring out this puzzle with some cool guys from Utah. Then I barely made my connection from Frankfurt to Amsterdam later because of a late train. This was after a man from the UK said he’d never had a Deutsche Ban trip go smoothly. Anyways, it was still fun but quite messy. Domestic rail is badass and at least there are still decent trains there unlike in the US.
Getting to Paris was a pain because of french putting to many stations for fast speed trains, rendering them useless. Renfe website is a mess, but Spanish trains are top of Europe as far as I know from the trains that I have tested in other European countries, especially when it comes to short distance trains (Cercanias) and fast speed trains (AVE, AVANT)
@@aad6632
> anish trains are top of Europe as far as I know from the trains that I
have tested in other European countries, especially when it comes to
short distance trains (Cercanias
I STRONGLY disagree.
All local train in Catalunya is a disaster of under investment. The Catalan government is just full of puppets that do whatever orders they receive from Madrid (bastard liars), they only have authority to change the schedule and the train colors (literally); yet are unable to fix the ancient tracks because... well, because only the Spanish government can, and they don't want to.
The Spanish government deliberately executes fewer than 15% of the budgeted spending on Catalan railway (yes, 15% of the budget approved in the Spanish parliament, few years ago it was as low as 11-12%). Of course, in Madrid and other areas, they get to implement 120% of the allocated rail budget yearly, because, well, all Spanish citizens benefit from that.
Of course the official justification is due to the crisis. Except that it has been like that for... well, forever!
Manresa-Barcelona 62km / 39mi -> 1:24 (In early 2000s was 1:07. The track is in dire disrepair so trains must go slower. It has already caused 2 deaths in the last few years) If you have to link with bus in Manresa and metro in Barcelona, well, this is close to 2:20. Politicians want us to use public transportation instead of car, but the only alternative they provide is shit.
Manresa-Barcelona 0:55 by car (traffic jams are avoided by arriving and leaving early)
Renfe timetable:
www.renfe.com/es/en/suburban/rodalies-catalunya/timetables
Spaniard here.
What's going on in Spain is that we have our short (Cercanías), medium (Regional, TALGO, etc) and long range (AVE, AVANT for high speed or EUROMED and others for slower, long range trains) rail networks being run by different companies (mostly RENFE and ADIF) for the pettiest, greediest and most corrupt of political reasons. The one that's most commonly encountered by tourists is the long range network, which is operated by RENFE and it's perfectly functional... unless you're a foreigner trying to link up with a high speed train xD. Domestically, shit's honestly pretty ok; the short and mid range networks have plenty of trains in every line and the whole country is pretty well connected except for two mind-boggling issues.
The first one is that there's a handfull of provinces that don't have their mid range networks connected to ANYWHERE ELSE in the peninsula, leading to absurdities like having to get off the train and ride a bus to literally the next village over in order to catch your next train.
The second one is that we have these autonomic rail networks (like the Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya) that were originally meant to ease congestion in short range lines but aren't compatible with our middle range networks so you can end up seeing two parallell lines with one of them empty while the other one's trains look like rush hour somewhere in Japan.
Sadly, with so much privatisation I can't see any of this improving any time soon.
@@KirillTheBeast sorry if I offended in any way! It was not my intention at all! It was mostly just hard to reserve high speed rail with a Eurail pass. Perfectly aligns with your explanation xD. Eurail could honestly probably help with this I would think.
Spain was incredible to visit! Spent two weeks on the Camino and had such a great time. And thank you for the explanation!
@@KirillTheBeast Another spaniard here working in the Rail industry. Everything here that has been said by Marcel is on point. Then we have projects like the "High Speed" Rail in Extremadura that was ment to connect Madrid and Lisboa but the Portuguese pulled out when we had half the track built and now refuse to push the project because of political reasons and the local politicians here in Spain meddle with everything and we have suboptimal routes.
Adam was making fun of the power lines between countries. Well, funny thing that for that High Speed project the part of Extremadura was fully built but with no OCS for now, the connection with Madrid is yet to even be projected and will of course not have OCS by the time the original track has been supplied with electric traction.
So for the "high speed" we have to use the old Iberian gauge for now, therefore we are forced to use Alvias and create a gauge changing station for the line.
So for a line that is supposed to connect Lisboa and Madrid: 1- The Portuguese part is on dead waters with no prospects of being finished for a long time.
2- The part through Extremadura will have electrical traction with international gauge.
3- The part of the track to connect to Madrid is yet to even be projected and won't have electrical traction for a time, and right now has to use the Iberian gauge, also without electrical traction.
So to circulate for that line we need a train capable of using diesel, electrical traction and changing gauges. Amazing
From Germany to Austria and switzerland, it works perfectly.
I myself never had problems with crossing the border to austria by train
I was surprised to see this video as I just had a great time traveling between Switzerland and Italy last month. Using the Eu rail pass, I was able to change tickets multiple times on the rail planner app. The one time that a delayed Italian train resulted in missing the connecting train, the local office in Milan changed the tickets for free. The local apps Sbb and Trenitalia gave the up to date timings for their respective trains
Yes because SBB and Trenitalia work together closely, that's not the case for most rail operators who only do it on certain routes.
Switzerland is afaik constantly pressuring the Italians to get their shit together and cooperate in order to reduce cross Alps road traffic (both people and freight). It's even less sustainable to build "just one more line" if you've got protected villages, a national image and a god damn mountain range in the way than it already is.
There's been a great interview a few months back with the COO of RegioJet, one of Europe's true open access rail operators. They're currently planning a major expansion outside of the CZ/SK/AT region and hitting roadblocks every step of the way.
While many people in Europe understand "interoperability" as ERTMS, in fact it's often the bureaucracy that kills many cross-border projects. Yes, you're licensed for EU-wide operation, but you still need staff that speaks every local language (unlike aviation), they need to be certified for local regulations (unlike aviation), there's different paperwork, regulatory approval just to get your timetable in, and at the end the local national carrier will still boycott you in every single aspect.
Oh and don't get me started on ridiculous details, like Swiss and Slovenian pantographs being a different pressure/contact shoe shape, so in addition to your train having to support 4 power systems and multiple ATC packages, it also has several pantographs with zero redundancy.
The fact that in Germany, DB still has control of the tracks is just insane. Though they're obliged to let other companies use their tracks, they can just still neglect those tracks that are mostly used by others, and build tracks for themselves. Fair competition!
@@randoomday1520 DB is a whole dumpster fire in itself. They leave rail lines for decay so they can go up to the German government and beg them to pay for it.
@@randoomday1520 Most good rail networks are monopolies. If anything the issue is this halfway inbetween thing. Competition but not actually. Owned by the state but run for profit. DB is pretty stupid.
Transport should be seen as an essential service and run by the state. It simply makes no sense to run rail for profit when things like roads are state funded. As long as we do it like this rail will never take over from cars but we really need it to and quickly.
One of the very few benefits of the rail network being privatised in the UK is the ticketing is open. You can buy them from multiple places and there are apps like TrainPal that will even work out split ticketing to get the cheapest possible price for your journey. Nothing is really stopping this kind of thing on a publicly owned system, it's just a political decision.
I was wondering why our system was surprisingly functional compared to all this.
While also not being particularly functional, but hey, comes with the privatised territory.
As Private Eye has been pointing out at length for years, the ticketing system in the UK is an absolute mess. You've got many different types of tickets that you can use at some times but not others, with some operators but not others, get off at some stations in some towns but not others (because they're the "home" station of a different operator), can't alight from earlier despite the fact that the ticket you bought is the only one that will have you stopping at the earlier station you want to actually get off on, and god forbid if you are even one train off from the one you bought the ticket for, you're goosed. All this is, of course, completely unexplained catching out even experienced train travellers. And then the fines, oh my the fines, expect to be out a thousand pounds or more for even the teensiest mistake (by contrast under the Irish system, unless you're a known fare dodger, the penalty is usually the revenue officer making sure you buy a ticket at the destination station, or if you accidentally went too far, getting you sorted at the next station. You'll be an hour late in the latter case, but no poorer). And don't even get me started on the antiquated, barely held together trains that operate the UK system.
Yeah, the UK train system is an absolute mess unless you never use it at all.
@@BrianS1981 It's a mess, but somebody already wrote the computer code to unpick all that. Certainly shouldn't need a 3rd party service to make it make sense, but it does.
From experience, Southeastern doesn't really give a shit about having people on the right train, but then southeastern doesn't give a shit about a lot of things so it evens out.
The video is concerning the international rail network, not domestic ones. Basically every EU national rail network is waaay better than ours, and for a fraction of the price. In Belgium you can just get a 10 journey punch card for like 50 euros... That's 5 euros for ANY journey as long as it stays in Belgium
Obviously, the UK has made it so it's less complex to travel by train within UK than within EU. However, from my experience, even if it has largely improved over the years, it's still more complex than travelling within an EU country such as Germany or Italy.
Tried to plan a route from Stockholm to Prague a couple of weeks ago. The process was exactly as you described. Spent 5 hours and achieved nothing. It was not just inconvenient, but almost impossible. Most convenient options (Stockholm-Hamburg night train for example) are fully booked months ahead. While using a plane I don't even need to plan a route, there is a direct flight. I can just suddenly decide to go and the same day be in Prague.
fehmahrn tunnel will hopefully help with that
@@Bioshyn well, there is a perfectly working Öresund bridge there already.
Take planes for international trips trains are for domestic routes planes for international trips. And soon maglev from Poland would solve the international problem
@@lowskillcamper not really that's between denmark and sweden, getting from kopenhagen to hamburg takes forever because you travel all the way through mainland denmark, even worse to berlin
@@Bioshyn ah yes, yes I know which you mean then, yes, it would help. But the issue in my case was not speed, but ticket availability in addition to all the issues described in the video.
If you use Nightjet, always, always check for (signs of) bedbugs!
I had a few truly miserable weeks because of a bedbug infested carriage.
Austrian Railways were very courteous about it and refunded me the ticket and other associated costs, but it also took them two or three days after my first message until they inspected and cleaned that train.
I remember when a few years back I travelled from Austria to Romania by train. I tried to book it online, but no matter where I tried, it was simply impossible to book the last bit of the journey. In the end I resorted to only buy the ticket from Austria to Czechia online, before buying tickets at each station. To be fair: This saved me quite a bit of money. If I had gone with the ticket offered in Austria it would have been 92€ + the last connecting bit. By buying train tickets at the stations I only paid 58€ in total - but I had a traveltime of 26h. Spending 5 hours on the main station of Budapest.
How does that route work? From Austria to Czechia to Hungary? Why couldn't you take a train directly to Hungary? I know there was a direct train from Vienna to Budapest in the past(18years ago now).
@@JorgenKremer there's lots of direct trains now too, some of them kinda fast too (too lazy to google what speed)
There's the direct Dacia Train Wien Hbf to Bucharest. That's what you should have done
There's a direct train from Vienna (Wien Hbf) to Bucharest (Buchuresti-Nord) via Budapest (Budapest-Keleti).
@@FauzulRizal yeah it's kind of new, maybe 6-7 years only. It's bookable directly on the Austrian website too if memory serves. Still even if this train wasn't there when OP was looking for it, it's nice that there's progress!
Just a note on the ICE 4, the reason it is only 15kv AC is because it's NOT hypermodernized - it's actually designed to be cheaper to produce than the ICE 3, which is significantly more interoperable. In fact, the ICE 4 is slower, and even has worse seats (they're still pretty comfortable though). So I think mentioning the ICE 4 is just a bad comparison. ICE 3 is still used all the time, because ICE 4 is simply not supposed to be a replacement.
My sister and I wanted to go from Upper Austria to Strasbourg (France). Going by train would have been too expensive and with transfer times (and potential delays from Deutsche Bahn) we decided it's not worth it and so we went there with Flixbus. Cost us only 60 € per person but took a 10 hour bus drive. That was an okay experience. 9/10 easy booking, 6/10 experience of the drive itself (depends a lot on the people who are with you on the bus; we had a guy snoring the whole night in front of us and a woman who thought it was a good idea to have a phone call on speaker at 23:00 when it was obvious people were trying to sleep).
Also, going by train is expensive, even domestically. From Upper Austria to Vienna for example (ca. 250 km) the ticket is like 40-45€ for a 1-1,5 hour travel plus a ticket for Vienna metros and such which is around 10 € i think. Thank god we have the Klimaticket now lol
If you think that's expensive, try Amtrak. Over $100 for a trip from NY-Boston (and it's over $150 if you want Acela, which is "high-speed" rail).
I had a similar experience to go from Amsterdam to Rostock, Germany. It could be done by rail, with about 4-5 transfers, or by bus with one change in Hanover, Germany. Bus won, no problems.
and nobody had the cojones to tell that lady to use her phone without speakers?
@@Dutch_Uncle It can be done by Train with only one transfer too.
@@wta1518 in USA THERE ARE NOT HIGH SPEED BUT ONLY...HIGH OBESITY AHAH. USA THEY ARE RESPONSABLE OF GENOCIDE S ,SHIT S CODARD ,ONLY WAR S VS 3RT WORLD
I went interrailing last month from France to Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Austria again and Slovenia. The only delay we had at a border crossing was from Austria into Hungary and Hungary into Austria again where they changed locomotives
German trains are always late :D
But Italian bullet trains are absolutely amazing. From Florence to Bologna it's a straight line through the mountains with 250 km/h!
Were you in Czech Republic ? ČD (national carrier) had record 565 min delay but past year private carrier RegioJet overcome that a get 640 min delay on train from Croatia to Prague.
@@regmount4734 The most ironic thing about the horror train from Prague to Croatia is despite being so awful, it's always sold out
Travel on that Line too yesterday. And after Bologna to Milan they even do 300kph! There's no better feeling than sitting a train and watching the highway and just fly past cars.
@@hhvhhvcz It's cheap and Croatia is a traditional tourist destination for people from Czechia and Slovakia
Remember that the novel Dracula starts with a lawyer travelling from London to Romania (then Austria-Hungary) by train in the 1890s. If you'd try that now it would be: "Vampires I can deal with; international train travel, that's the true horror."
It's not just international travel though. Travelling by train from Amsterdam to Groningen in the Netherlands is a few minutes slower now than it was by steam train at the start of the 20th century. Before the rise of the car and airplane, the train network was extremely well developed.
It doesn't help that certain places have neglected infrastructure improvements to maximize profit margins, this is pretty common no matter where on Earth you go. I'm also curious to see whether priority is given to passenger or freight traffic in Europe, as in the US most rail lines are privately owned and so freight trains are prioritized not just because they're run on company tracks, but also simply due to the fact that they're so damn long there's no sidings that can hold them in totality anymore.
@@hyperiongm330 At least over here in the Netherlands freight trains are quite rare, and when we do see(or more accurately, hear) them it's mostly between 2 and 6 in the night when there's no passenger rail.
WHAT? The steam train was faster? Nani the actual fakku?
I love NS (I am kaaskop), but seriously, how? Has the track in Groningen been damaged by the terrible 2.5 or something MAASSSSIVE earthquakes?? X'D
When it comes to rolling stock it seems like Deutsche Bahn will continue to differentiate between domestic and international trains.
For international connections they have class 406, 407 and 408 ("ICE 3") which are multi-system and capable of using international high speed lines.
Class 412 ("ICE 4") is partly equipped/approved to go to Switzerland, and the tilting class 411 ("ICE T") can go to Austria.
Class 401 ("ICE 1") used to go to Switzerland and Austria but is now only used inside Germany, class 402 ("ICE 2") has only ever been used on inland lines.
Currently they are looking for a new type of ICE for domestic lines with wide carbodies like ICE 1 and 2, that exceed the international loading gauge and can only go as far as Basel and Salzburg. They say there are enough trains never going further that it's worth to buy series of single-voltage trains, and have complicated multi-voltage equipment only on part of their fleet.
Living in Austria I'm skeptical of railjets. While these can go slightly faster than conventional trains (230 km/h) they combine the disadvantages of those and unit trains, being of inflexible length/capacity and having a heavy locomotive taking up space on the platform and putting more strain on the tracks with its high axle load. Distributed traction, with a greater number of powered axles, is superior in many ways, offers better traction on wet rails (occasionally German class 101 had trouble pushing its train up the hill near Bischofshofen and turned the wheels in place, grinding down the rail ...) and allows to use more regenerative braking which is beneficial to save energy and have less wear and brake dust.
I fully agree that booking systems must be harmonized. Thanks for naming the obstacles here. When I travel internationally I take an hour to compare the offers of different booking sites. I wish I would get it all in a few clicks; I know people aren't as enthusiastic about me. But ... international travel has always been complicated. I remember the 1980s when stations had separate counters for international travel and those were equipped with a multitude of timetable books from different countries, phone calls had to be made, it was always an adventure.
A big advantage of the push-pull concept is a smoother and quieter ride. It is also more resilient towards engine failures as the carriages can still be used with another locomotive and since ÖBB use the Taurus widely, a replacement loco is always at hand (as long as you don't need a DC-compatible 1216)
I somewhat regularly travel between Budapest and Zürich by train, mostly during the day, sometimes during the night. I buy my tickets online, it is a direct connection and is normally punctual to the minute. I also fairly regularly go Zurich-Munchen with the same results. So, not doubting someone else's experiences, this is completely not my experience and is certainly not a generic European experience.
Ahh, thank you for this. I am just planning a train trip through Europe and it is just nerve-wrecking to the extreme. You are perfectly on point with all of this
Just book Al connections from and to Switzerland via SBB
And all connections touching Germany via DB
And you will be all good. It’s not so horrible as his propaganda mouth tells
@@jimi272 Yes it is. I will be using Interrail and the reservations alone make it painful. Like, if I want to go on a High-Speed Train in Italy, I have to reserve seats and I simply cannot do that on Trenitalia's Website if I already have the Interrail Pass and therefore the best Option is to do it on the ÖBB (Austrian Railways) Website!?! Also, they charge me on top (of course differently in different countrys and under different conditions) Then, for some reason, perfectly good Transit Trains like the ECE from Milano to Frankfurt does not do its Job for a time from late August onward. Furthermore, there are mutiple private Operators to consider, which are not displayed in the Interrail App. (That App is trash btw., leaves out lumps of important information and they charge an extra fee on reservations). The whole Ticketing System in Europe is bloody awful. Like, you can have at least a bazillion different prices for the same journey - and you are not even safe with Interrail as you still have to do the reservations. I could go on, but I think, you get the idea...
I took Thalys from Paris to Aachen a couple of weeks ago, and apart from issues caused by excessive heat, the ride was incredible smooth even though we went through 3 countries on a direct train (there were few stops, but we didn't change trains). But looking for a train from Madrid to Paris was a nightmare, so he is not completely wrong.
Yeah, there are no direct Paris-Madrid trains at this moment. Your best shot is to buy Paris-Barcelona with French TGV high speed, and then Barcelona-Madrid with spanish AVE high speed. And pray that the TGV won't be delayed because the AVE won't wait for you haha.
FYI: The Austrian railways (ÖBB) have upgraded their ticketing system in the last years, which would enable them to let anyone integrate with their systems. I have built an integration accessing their API and allowing users to book tickets for a sub company of them, which worked (surprisingly) easy for the most part.
Aside from that i recently heard about plans from the EU to invest big into the international train system, but that's still in planning from what i could gather. We will see, but I'm hopeful.
Us North Americans often idealize Europe's transport system, as it is much more developed than ours and is more accessible, but most of us who rave about how easy it is to get across Europe only spent holiday time there and have never lived there long enough to see how inconvenient things can actually be.
True. It seems that what happens is that unless you are a massive railfan, you often find many flaws over time in a system that might have appeared as flawless once you’ve lived in that place for long enough
Adam got it mostly right. From a Viennese perspective I have to say though, that, given the existing track speeds, the international service network is actually quite complete. The railjets also operate without funny locomotive changes even though trains operate in Austria, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland. Those destinations where train journeys simply take too long for being competitive, there is a network of Nightjets or eastwards alternative night train services. There were major holes in the network westwards, with no night train conneciton to Brussels, Amsterdam or Paris, however those lines have been reopened recently, even if in an isufficient frequency (as the ÖBB is waiting for new rolling stock).
If only all capaitals had such a service density, the video had a lot less merit ... except for the user experience during booking. That's indeed stone age.
I mean yes but ÖBB is on of the only operaters have about the Inoperabal Taustus and Vectrons.
@@stekra3159 The ÖBB had already interoperable locomotives before those but you may have a point that others don't. But maybe they should. As can be seen it is perfectly feasible to operate trains with them.
It sounds more of an exception rather than rule. I had to frequently take an international Intercity-train between Amsterdam and Brussels, and it can be agonizingly unreliable at times. Frequently there are issues when crossing the border, sometimes fully canceling a train, and it is often announced very late and poorly, so you won't have alternative transport (so you have to wait an hour, hoping the issue is resolved with the next one). And good luck getting reimbursed for an international train delay.
It has improved over the years, but these issues still pop up often.
At least there is a train, unlike the Fyra it was supposed to be originally. And it's a fairly clean one, I'll give that. Besides, it still beats the car in going from one airport to another, as the Brussels highway ring is a long and unpleasant experience.
Lessons to take from this video: European countries have excellent domestic rail networks
Europe actually has international rail
European politicians actually care about intercity rail transit
DB, SNCF, and Renfe actually have turfs to defend
Sorry.
Why sorry
Ah yes, like EU commissioner for transport Adina Vălean who would fly between Connecting Europe Express events instead of... well... taking the Connecting Europe Express 🙄
Not all European countries have excellent domestic rail networks. And I'm unfortunate enough to live in one which doesn't.
@@TheGrejp True, Romania's national rail network/service (CFR) is a good example of a very bad railway system.
Germany, France, Poland, Netherlands and Spain have solid, extensive networks. Some others have decent ones like Italy. A lot of the EU does not though.
This is very true! Domestic trains are fantastic especially Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Italy but crossing borders usually results in a train swop, connections and even sometimes moving from one section of a train to another...you'd better understand the announcement or you may find yourself sitting on an train in a border town alone wondering why after half an hour your train still hasn't pulled out only for the train to start moving in the direction you came.
"Domestic trains are fantastic especially [...] Germany [...]"
- Wait a minute... *Pulls up reasons brought up from DB, why the 9€ ticket should not be continued*
- I dont think "fantastic" is a fitting term xD
@@samuelfreitag6989 Well as a tourist who has visited Germany a lot of times I've never had any issues with DB though admittedly I haven't been there since 2019. Considering I'm from the UK and our rail system is an absolute shambles and ridiculously expensive trains in Germany ARE fantastic.
I am travelling today on a return ticket 310 miles at the cost of 186 euros not 100% sure my advance booked seat will still be available and if the train is going to run on time due to recent train driver strikes.
@@RealmsOfThePossible Interesting, Germans would say the same about DB, expensive and in shambles. It is also very common to joke about DB and how unreliable they are.
@@samuelfreitag6989 I would swop our multitude of individually owned rail network operators for DB any day. Think of what adam pointed out about DB, SNCF, OBB, SBB and so on and put them into the UK as a microcosm.
@@RealmsOfThePossible True. Despite large portions being owned by individual companies too, they tend to work together quite good. In comparison it is actually great, but still far from the best. Thats propably one point most germans hate about DB.
8:52 the trainline does allow booking train tickets over at least much of Europe. I've not tried it everywhere, but I know that it works in France, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and ofc the UK, where it originated, as well as for Eurostar tickets
This goes even deeper, for example in Germany, if you enter from one city's public transport system into another, you need 2 tickets and at least 2-5 apps. There is no website, you can only use the train if buy the ticket physically or dox your phone.
Interesting, I went from the Netherlands to southern France and back by train a few weeks ago and my experience was very different. I just went to the international website of the Dutch Railways, put in the departure and destination location and the date, selected one of the available journeys as well as class and even whether I preferred a window or aisle seat, and after payment I got all the tickets I needed, despite being across multiple operators (NS/NMBS, Thalys, TGV). The one exception was a subway ticket I needed in Paris and even for that there were detailed instructions how to get it on the website. The available journey listing also displayed what was sold out, so there was clearly ticket sales information being shared and they also offered partial or full refunds (depending on the circumstances) for delays, regardless of where it happened (though they take a long time to process).
Are things just particularly well set up between the Netherlands, Belgium and France?
I'm not sure. Because yes, you get the ticket alright and that part seems pretty smooth, but how the pricing is accomplished is still a mystery to me, I've had prices change between going back and forth once, and I've also seen 'sold out' on journeys that were very unlikely to be actually sold out. I just don't know.
As for the smoothness of the connection... I'm not sure if getting on a metro to change to an entirely different station across town is that smooth. It's doable, I've had no actual problems with it, but it is a limitation. When carrying luggage, or when travelling with children, or when you're not that confident in travelling on your own, or not being able to walk that far, it's still a layer of added complexity that isn't that easy or appealing to navigate.
Yeah same from the Netherlands to Berlin and their recent night trains to Vienna. It all went smoothly and everything is collected and explained on their app with QR codes for every ticket (in case of multiple trains).
They are certainly getting better and better.
As the video stated, between neigboring countries its not that bad.
For example between Budapest and Vienna trains run every hour, the carriages are modern and comfortable and they only cost 13€, and its even minimally faster than driving.
On the other hand recently i had the idea of going to Italy with train… No thanks.
@@davidkovacs5432 I went from Belgium to Spain, no problem at all 🤷🏻♀️
Since Prague has an excellent metro system, I decided to go there by train. I am not fond of driving for 6-8 hours. The train takes 12h, I need to change trains twice and it will cost almost twice what my diesel tank would be. So by car it is.
Car is faster, but when I go from Prague to other big city in neighbor countries, I prefer to sit in restaurant wagon and have a nice coffee or dinner instead of sweating my ass in car. But this works only when you travel from Prague to big cities like Berlin, Vienna, Warsaw, Munich.....
@@Pidalin I'd preffer to just ride, have coffee and take a nap, but Ljubljana to Prague for double the time and cost just seems to much. Shame really, I hate driving and buses, airplanes feel like a sardine can. Trains are lovely but inconvenient ATM
@@anzebeton1869 You have to nuke some straight corridor thru Austria to make it faster. 🙂 Or you can go thru Milano, Paris, Berlin, Dresden and then Prague. 🙂
12:30 the double decker belongs to Westbahn in Austria - I rode with it last month from Munich (DE) to Vienna (AT) and it was a great experience : ) Thank you Adam for the vide and brilliant comments xD
@5:35
You forgot Loading Gauge, which is the maximum height, width and other general dimensions of the actual trains, important for being able to fit trough tunnels, under bridges, next to station platforms, not to stick to far out in curves, and not hit any surrounding infrastructure in general.
Luckily most of mainland Europe accepted the Berne convention gauge back in the early 20th century so this is rarely an issue, and most countries that deviate from it tend to have their loading gauges actually be larger, worst case there would be a gap between the platforms and the international trains.
Notable exception being the UK who's got an incredibly tiny loading gauge, but since international rail transport to the British isles wasn't exactly a thing back then It makes sense why they didn't adopt it back then.
On that note, my travels trough Europe by rail have been mostly without any real issues, but I've stuck mostly to western Europe and the old TEE destinations, I guess once you go to central/eastern Europe, a la the old East-bloc countries, the quality of the service and international cooperation drops like a rock.
This shows such prejudice.
Most Central and Eastern European countries have very decent international rail connections with intercity and regional trains, while in Western Europe (mostly France) these were often scrapped in favour of High-speed rail, which is more expensive and often less frequent...
Certainly not Romania. Don't come here for the trains.
Most of the continental Europe have built their infrastructure in accordance to the UIC loading gauge, or even larger than that. Several Polish lines are compliant with WM-1 loading gauge of the former Soviet Railways so these large, old Soviet sleepers could run through without any problems.
Britain couldn’t realistically have adopted the European loading gauge anyway back then, most of our tunnels had already been built to great expense and we couldn’t have afforded to rebuild them. It makes sense that Europeans didn’t adopt the British dimensions, which are very small, because until very very recently there was no international rail from the continent to the U.K. anyway, and even now the Eurostar isn’t really a through service.
4:40 we had a similar situation where we didn't cath our connection due to border controls at the Austrian-German border. We asked DB staff and they turned our train-bound ticket into a universally valid one withouth any hesitation. So while the system is pretty fucked indeed, the people behind it are often very understanding and willing to help.
Interestingly, a few days ago, Wendover Productions released their own take on the issue (which I discovered as being the next on TH-cam's Autoplay list), using budget airlines as a model for improvement...
this is one of the reasons we fly instead here in the USA (also Canada and Australia). You don't have to build anything out between A and B. If it has an airport, you can fly there.
@@neutrino78x I prefer trains anytime. More comfortable, closer to city centers, much better for the environment, and I don't have to wait hours at an airport and be groped by security.
@@guerreiro943
"I prefer trains anytime. "
More power to you my friend. However you don't get to push your preferences on everyone else. At least, not in the USA. Due to the distances involved, it's simply not possible for us to ban aircraft and expect to function as we do now. It would be huge step backward in standard of living. For example, LAX to NYC takes five or six hours on an airplane. And yes, it is a common trip and would be required of a nationwide transportation system. It's the most congested air corridor in the USA. Doing that on a French TGV would take 16 hours. Even a Japanese SCMaglev would still take eight hours, longer than a jet aircraft. And soon we will have supersonic over land again, because NASA and Lockheed have created an airplane shape that lets you fly at supersonic speeds with a barely audible sonic boom, so it will be a three hour flight. Three hours vs eight, I'll take three any time.
"More comfortable, "
Who cares when you're only on it for an hour as opposed to 10 hours for the train in the video, when he could have flown in 1.5 hours!!! I would never even consider such a train ride! I mean, if you're on vacation and a long train ride is intended as part of the experience sure. But if you have the weekend off and you're trying to go somewhere it's not reasonable. Or if you have a business purpose for your travel. The USA has trains like that, but they're mainly used, like I said, for people who are taking a few weeks of vacation and therefore have time to take the scenic route. They're not considered "the normal vehicle to use if you have to get somewhere in a reasonable period of time".
"much better for the environment"
This isn't true anymore and hasn't been for decades. You're stuck in the 70s man. For a modern 737 aircraft, it burns less fuel moving any given person than does a Toyota Corolla. I can't put links here but if you Google "cans vs. planes: which emits more carbon? (which sins worse?)" you'll find a good article on it.
"I don't have to wait hours at an airport"
You don't have to anyway. I have been there as late as ten minutes before boarding started and had no issue. I've even arrived at the airport AFTER boarding started and still had no issue. Of course, I'm an experienced traveler. So I have my backpack packed such that I can pull out my laptop and noise cancelling headphones easily, and I also subscribe to "CLEAR" (capitalization theirs) which lets you bypass the snaking security line. If you have clear, and have your backup set up well, you can go through security in five minutes.
@@neutrino78x I think it would be wonderful for Europe and the US to have a unified, quick and cheap international and national rail connections respectively. If the price was in the same range, I would gladly take the train.
Having said that, I don't think anyone would chose to take a train from LA to NY. That's like, what, Lisbon to Moscow? LA - Seattle or NYC - Miami are probably the limit in terms of distances, and even that is stretching it a bit
@@neutrino78x Planes are not more environmentally friendly than trains as far as I can see. Planes are significantly more environmentally friendly than driving, but they don't beat trains. Since moving through air takes exponentially more energy as you get faster you're always going to find that extremely fast transport takes a lot of energy. That's just a trade you have to make for extremely high speeds.
I usually travel from Austria to Italy and sometimes France. And while it's true that buying tickets can be difficult, I never had any other major problem (never traveled to Spain or the Czech Republic). To fix the power problem back in the days they used to change locomotive at the borders, now most of the locomotives are dual-voltage.
to be honest, you also live in Austria, which is one of the most pro rail nations in all of Europe, as well as a hub for long distance night trains, thanks to ÖBB's vast network. That alone makes it super easy to go long distances.
I recently took the Eurostar direct from London to Amsterdam going through the UK, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands with no problem.
Funny that you mentioned the clusterfuck around Děčín as i was recently travelling from Chomutov to Dresden and I had 2 options: express train to Ústí and than from there the Berliner to Dresden (travel time 2 and half hours and price around 35 euros, seems simple) but as a student I went for the other one: The regional ticket (3 euros) And german 9 euro ticket. Everything went well until I reached Ústí. Then I realized that the german 9 euro ticket can not be used in the Eurocity trains And there is no other direct connection to Dresden. So i had to travel from Ústí to Děčín. From Děčín to Schona and from Schona to Dresden. This crossborder experience was by far the worst i could imagine as it took entire day to get there and back. Or I could just spent less than 2 hours driving. Now I see why people dont take trains
And don't forget the Ustecky Region has one of the best integrated transport systems in the country, so it could've been way worse
These cheap special actions always have negatives, it's like that even with cheap airplane tickets, it's always without checked baggage and it mostly takes you to airport like 50 km from your destination city.
I remember the bad old days of the early 1990s when you could turn up at almost any large (and several not-so-large) station and buy a travel ticket to practically anywhere in Europe. The various countries' reservation systems were all linked, too, so the stations could make seat/couchette/sleeper reservations across the continent.
It all seems laughably primitive now.
It was just a person with books and a phone. If only 2-3 people per day coming in for such a ticket, of cause they have to close down such offices.
@@holger_p They have to when they turn their national railway companies into for-profit companies.
Netherlands - Germany and Netherlands - France are generally pretty doable in my experience. Going further though... that's where the real issues start.
So my guess is that local railways only make agreement with neighboring countries, but don't look at the bigger picture. And to be honest, even that 'pretty doable' is far below the level of local trains. So yea... it's not great.
Buying tickets online has improved quite a bit as recently though. Because I remember a few years ago it was pretty much exactly as you mention in the video. It was a true nightmare. Lately it has been getting better though, so at least there is an upward trajectory.
Took me 13 hours to get from Amsterdam to Disneyland once.
You probably were not traveling with Thalys recently. They tend to get stuck for 4 hours without airco or sufficient water on board. People had to break the window for fresh air.
Munich has some good connections too, Milano Strasbourg Venezia Paris Wien
A few months ago I went to Madrid for vacation, departing from Lisbon.
The flights were very expensive and I wanted to travel during the night so I remember there was a sleeper train direct from Lisbon to Madrid. To my surprise that train was suppressed at the beginning of the pandemic with no plans for return so now it takes more than 10h to do it by train with at least one switch, maybe two.
I ended up going by car, 6h drive divided by two drivers and even at current diesel prices, the cost divided by the 4 person traveling was much lower than any alternatives.
Not the solution I wanted but…
Some regular domestic train services in France, Italy and Switzerland have lines that start in one country and end in the other. These are normal train lines that you don’t book online, you either buy the ticket on the day or use your local train pass. Nice has a service that begins in Nice and ends in Ventimiglia, and there are trains from around Como that end in Locarno. Those are still all relatively short distance journeys even though they traverse borders. Still, when I Travelled cross country on a recent trip I took the blabla or flexi buses and they were way cheaper.
excatly in north italy wihting 5/6 hours we can be at paris
Traveling through Europe by rail atm and I can confirm. I had to book a hotel last minute because my connection in Regensburg had a 1h delay and I wouldn't been able to go to Brussels in the same day (but luckily my train to Brussels was also too late, so in the end I made it to my destination)
One small note, the Nightjet isn't simply a Railjet with sleeper carriages, especially the seated carriages are a random mix of old wagons the ÖBB still has. And they are terrible. I never took a Nightjet, but once I had to get from Vienna to Graz in the evening, and of course they don't run the fancy Railjets at that time. So I took an "EC" (Eurocity), which is apparently code for "Random old carriages we still had lying around somewhere". I'm pretty sure I had the same type of car as you travelled on, and it was really loud. The best thing was that in the toilet one of the walls was half removed and you could see exposed wires and electronics in there. Right next to the sink.
Really a shame, considering normally I'm really happy with the ÖBB, and the few old carriages still in use are typically properly maintained and look nice.
Okay, storytime: I usually take Railjets. Generally punctual and reliable, except when they get stuck at some border again (topical). Now, I missed the last one due to such a delay. So the ÖBB website generously recommend a Nightjet. However, my journey was domestic and around 2h, ending at 11pm, so I just assumed some part of the train just operates like a regular RJ or Cityjet. Well, it was a rude awakening when I learned that people could not only reserve these 6 seat compartments for sleeping but there was exactly zero extra wagon or even just two reserve compartments for short distance travellers. In other words, I'd have had to stand around with my luggage on the narrow corridor for 2h straight inside a half empty train with 2/3 of passengers distinctly not sleeping yet if I hadn't found someone who had mercy for my soul and let me sit in theirs till 23.
Did the website warn me in any way? Nope.