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The Man in Seat Sixty-One

seat61.com

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Re: The Man in Seat Sixty-One

#111

Post by ido »

detaro wrote: post #110
ido wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in Berlin & my wife's family being in Vienna, I'm really disappointed by the canceling of the sleeper train service between the cities - you used to be able get on at the evening on one end, get a good night's sleep in the (comfortable!) bunkbeds & wake up in the early morning in your destination. I've tried doing the same trip via bus and it was a nightmare, mostly due to me not being able to sleep on bus sea…

ÖBB restarted night trains between Berlin and Vienna last month.

Oh that's good to know! last I tried I was told this service no longer runs.

Re: The Man in Seat Sixty-One

#112

Post by isostatic »

MarsAscendant wrote: post #95
isostatic wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Quoting parent comment: > Has helped me travel from Bali to Jakarta, through Thailand, Namibia, and with the TransSib. "TransSib" here is the Trans-Siberian Railway, travelled via the eponymous train. You may know: Siberia is in Russia – as is most of the journey via the railway. And yes, there is support for travel data in Russia: https://www.seat61.com/Russia.htm

Hence the confusing comment

The site clearly has a link to rail travel in Russia on the first page, and clearly any international train site worth it's salt is going to have one of the most famous train journeys of all time on there (indeed it's got it's own page)

So clearly the parent wasn't talking about the site covering Russia as a subject.

Re: The Man in Seat Sixty-One

#113

Post by isostatic »

hrnnnnnn wrote: post #100
isostatic wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The normal case is far better than that. Smoother, faster, you can’t get up and stretch your legs, walk to a shop (or have the shop come to you in many cases), plug in your laptop, no bouncing up and down, no car sickness when you’re reading

> no car sickness when you’re reading It depends how sensitive you are. I get nauseous when reading even on relatively smooth inter-city trains.

Amazing, do you have issues on planes too?

Re: The Man in Seat Sixty-One

#114

Post by Plasmoid2000ad »

I used this site to Inter-rail around Europe back in 2009, and ever since anytime I get to mainland Europe I try to fly back from another city, and catch the interesting trains and sights.

So impressed that it's been kept not just running, but up-to-date and so well written (enjoyable to read)

Re: The Man in Seat Sixty-One

#115

Post by deathwarmedover »

MarsAscendant wrote: post #96
deathwarmedover wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See also: https://www.fieggen.com/ which I use every time I buy a new pair of shoes.

What do you use it for? I haven't noticed any information on shoe-wearing, but I did notice a whole section on knot-tying.

I use it to re-lace my new shoes. I typically use one of these:

- https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/overunderlacing.htm

- https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/straighteuropeanlacing.htm

- https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/quicktightlacing.htm

Re: The Man in Seat Sixty-One

#116

Post by on_and_off »

ambicapter wrote: post #88
on_and_off wrote: post #84

>Paris to Nice in 5h37 from €25: See the Paris to Nice page... The impressive TGV Duplex trains from Paris to Nice take just 5h36 centre to centre with fares from €25. A flight takes 4 disjointed and stressful hours of train, airport, flight, airport & bus, as well as pumping up to 10 times the CO2 emissions into the upper atmosphere. As an experience, there's no comparison... Absolutely right. The site also forgets…

From my recent experience TGV's are not that cheap any more.

I did not want to call it out but yeah it seemed cheap to me too. I just did a quick research and 35 euros was the minimum I could find for Nice -> Paris on a third party website.

Re: The Man in Seat Sixty-One

#117

Post by igrekel »

ambicapter wrote: post #88
on_and_off wrote: post #84

>Paris to Nice in 5h37 from €25: See the Paris to Nice page... The impressive TGV Duplex trains from Paris to Nice take just 5h36 centre to centre with fares from €25. A flight takes 4 disjointed and stressful hours of train, airport, flight, airport & bus, as well as pumping up to 10 times the CO2 emissions into the upper atmosphere. As an experience, there's no comparison... Absolutely right. The site also forgets…

From my recent experience TGV's are not that cheap any more.

Book early, check different departure times, or check Ouigo. It can quite cheap.

Re: The Man in Seat Sixty-One

#118

Post by igrekel »

Freak_NL wrote: post #43
Angostura wrote: post #40

Used this several years ago to take the family to Italy via sleeper service from the UK. Perfect. Sad that many of these international sleepers have recently shut down.

Doubly painful, now that people are once again more open to the use of a sleeper train to avoid flying (for environmental reasons, or just not having to deal with airports). ÖBB took over Deutsche Bahn's sleepers, which coincided with the retiring of the last sleeper train from/to the Netherlands (bugger me). But their service does seem to be working pretty well. I missed an opportunity to travel from Milan to Paris…

Yes, a sleeper train needs to be compared to a flight + a hotel room, not just a flight alone.

DB going out of sleeper service was so sad. At least ÖBB took over some of it with their NightJet service and are replacing the rolling stock with newer cars, so is Caledonian Sleepers in the UK. Hopefully Trans Metropolitan will begin service as well to take over some of what was abandoned by DB.

Re: The Man in Seat Sixty-One

#119

Post by rcarmo »

kiwijamo wrote: post #98
rcarmo wrote: post #71

Doesn't include Portugal, apparently. Edit: it does ( https://www.seat61.com/international-trains/trains-from-Lisb... ), just that the country's not listed where I expected it to be. I vastly prefer taking the train from Lisbon to Porto for business, since I can work and prepare during the trip, with the following caveats: - Mobile data coverage along that particular line is spottier than a cheetah, with more gaps th…

Interestingly I found mobile coverage to be excellent within France (Orange), Belgium (T-Mobile IIRC), Netherlands (T-Mobile), Germany (Telekom) and Czech Republic (T-Mobile) during my trip through these countries last October. As I had a EE UK SIM I seemed to roam on Telekom owned networks. Even rural areas seemed to have reasonable service. I also previously (a few years back) travelled through France, Switzerland,…

This route is notoriously bad, and almost legendarily so. I worked at Vodafone eleven years, and the challenges of providing decent mobile data to a train that cuts through a bunch of dips I radio coverage are... hard.

However, the train company bought hideously expensive 3G equipment to install on some cars that they never bothered to maintain. If they did and upgraded them, the on-board WiFi would be better than having the phone try to talk to a base station through the train car.

Regardless, mobile connectivity in Portugal is, by and large, pretty good, although ai can’t wait until I can stop using MEO and go back to Vodafone to get stable voice calls on urban streets (their dropped call ratio is through the roof, and me and my colleagues have trouble with voice calls every day).

Re: The Man in Seat Sixty-One

#120

Post by madcaptenor »

I found this site very useful in planning a couple of multi-city trips in Europe (flying from the US) a few years ago. (A useful tip I learned from this site: in Norway, for a long trip, buy the first-class ticket; it's about $12 extra but that paid for itself in free hot cocoa.) It's also useful for getting a quick overview of the train system in a country and therefore figuring out which multi-city trips are feasible.

My only complaint is that for most of Europe there's a lot of "how to get there from London", which is fine if you're coming from London or elsewhere in the UK, but I'm flying in from the USA. But this complaint is a bit American-centric.

I wish you hadn't posted it, though, I'm not going to get any work done this afternoon.

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