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Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains

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Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains

#251

Post by atomwaffel »

Symbiote wrote: post #238
mrweasel wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The airlines have basically put trains out of business in Western Europe. Currently you cannot get from one end of Denmark to the other for a morning meeting by train. Last time I checked the only way to have a 9:00 meeting in the center of Copenhagen, leaving from Aalborg (400km away) is by leaving at 23:00 the day before. It's a 6.5 hour train ride. Flying is 20 minutes and you have multiple departures and airlines…

> When people talk about how great trains are in Europe When people generalize across Europe, which you've just done, it should often be ignored. They tend to pick the best or worst examples. Denmark (and Greece) have the least favourable geography for land transport. That favours flying, but doesn't mean flying from Nuremburg to Berlin is necessarily the best option.

> Denmark (and Greece) have the least favourable geography for land transport.

Norway would like a word with you there. Denmark’s got a lot of annoying coastline but at least it’s flat, small and relatively densely populated. One of the things I miss most here on the Norwegian west coast is the lack of useful rail connections.

Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains

#252

Post by seanmcdirmid »

atomwaffel wrote: post #248
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overnight sleeper ferries are a thing in China, I took one from Shanghai to an island in zhejiang once. If you take a ferry up from Washington state to Alaska, they have sleeper cabins of course for the rich but you are also allowed to pitch a tent on top in a designated area.

A tent on a ship? Knowing how windy it can get at sea, that sounds terrifying, how do you secure it? Or are we talking indoors?

http://www.alaskaferrycamping.com

Tents all go on deck, looks like duct tape is used.

Since the ferries travel mostly between the coast and islands, it isn’t anywhere as windy as the open sea.

Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains

#253

Post by kaybe »

2T1Qka0rEiPr wrote: post #249
kaybe wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a BahnCard? How much in advance did you book? Currently you can go to most places with 30-50€ if you play it right.

I don't have a BahnCard, just looking at the site I'm really not sure I'd use it enough to justify it. Booked a couple of months in advance, and compared flight prices on that day to the train. Flights were significantly cheaper.

The test offer can be pretty useful:

https://www.bahn.de/p/view/bahncard/ueberblick/probebahncard...

(It's important to cancel immediately though.)

Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains

#254

Post by random878 »

smcl wrote: post #204
random878 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Warsaw on a warm summer evening. The sun is setting and there is a beautiful sky above the equally beautiful city. You relax into you sleeper cabin, and gaze out of the window waiting for the train to depart. 'Such a friendly city. Beautiful country.' you think to yourself. The train pulls out of the station. You watch the countryside pass as the night turns dark. You go to sleep. - You wake up at Gare du Nord. At le…

Downvoted - your Romanian stereotype is unacceptable and you need to know this

+1 Internet offended point to you.

Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains

#255

Post by mongol »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #125
Symbiote wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You write "_ferry_" like it's something weird, but it's a completely normal transport option for a huge number of Europeans -- usually for longer journeys, but sometimes to cover a short distance in 20-30 minutes. There are many ferry connections across the Irish, North, Baltic and Mediterranean seas. Ignoring the price, I'd choose an overnight ferry over an overnight train. The worst room on a ferry is probably as l…

I took DFDS overnight from Sweden to Lithuania last summer and found it quite enjoyable. The tickets, including transport for your car, are reasonably priced (about the same price as plane tickets), we got to take the dog in the room with us and had a private shower. There's also a nice community of people to chat with out on deck during the night, everyone else is stuck on the ferry with you so you can have nice lit…

Remember getting Finnish reception on the Swedish shore opposite Åland.

Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains

#256

Post by pimeys »

matwood wrote: post #229
elamje wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ferry isn't too bad, I've taken it between Stockholm, Tallinn, Helsinki, and St. Petersburg. It's not like an all inclusive, nice experience like American cruises, but more minimalist (taking people, cars, and trucks). It's extremely cheap in the baltic sea and way cheaper than flight + hotel. It's a good experience all in all. Prices on board for food and shopping weren't bad at all. The ferries are also known a…

> The ferries are also known as booze cruises since Scandanavia has such high alcohol tax/gov. monopoly on alcohol, people buy a ton of it from the duty free store on board. I've been on a few of these ferries and remember what looked like locals buying suitcase carts full of beer and liquor. On the ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn I met a nice couple who explained how it was cheaper to take a day trip to Tallinn to sh…

It is such a phenomenon in Finland there is a great TV-series called M/S Romantic made out of the people going to the cruises.

If you get the cheapest tickets, some fights, noise, sex and/or vomit is something you'd expect... Of course you need to be very drunk to do that.

Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains

#257

Post by andrewshadura »

nicolaslem wrote: post #11

I was disappointed when I checked if it was possible to do Paris-Warsaw by night train. I imagined entering the train at 5pm, eating something, watching a movie and waking up in Paris in the morning. It sounded much better to me than spending an actual day commuting to/from far away airports and waiting in queues. Unfortunately such train does not exist, but neither does the platform that would allow searching and bo…

Try cp.sk for searching.

Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains

#258

Post by vram22 »

Symbiote wrote: post #195
vram22 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The Denmark-Germany ferries on that route are ~150 m long, and fit a train of up to 100 m length (or something in that ballpark). Whew! > https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:2017-08-22-ICE_TD_Puttga... . High-tech. >Larger ferries on other routes have multiple rails next to each other, and long trains are split up across those. Great idea.

Or low-tech -- the first train ferries like this ran in 1842. As the Wikipedia article says, there are very few routes left in Europe, although there used to be a lot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_ferry

Interesting, didn't know. It felt like high-tech to me, anyway, since I had not seen or heard of train ferries before, although I did know about ferries that can take cars (automobiles) on board. Been on one such ferry in Goa, and my parents had been on some while visiting the US and Canada, I forget in which city.

Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains

#259

Post by Tepix »

I welcome this idea. I look for an opportunity to take an overnight sleeping train occasionally but usually it fails because there is no connection between the cities I am interested in. Last time I used an overnight train I arrived after a good nights sleep in Genoa. Even if the train is slower than a plane, the fact that you travel while sleeping means you save time.

Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains

#260

Post by igrekel »

jbverschoor wrote: post #209
PaulHoule wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a year in Germany circa 1999 and then overnight trains were all the rage. For instance, Dresden to Amsterdam was an easy and inexpensive trip. Going east you could get to Budapest, going south to Innsbruck, etc. At that point an American in Europe would ride the train as much as he could, but the Europeans I knew thought taking a plane was cooler and it was a good experience because the plane had competition…

Train tickets are simply too expensive compared to flights. Sometimes over 3-4 times.

If you time your travels right, it often makes more sense to compare prices of sleeper trains to the price of a flight + one night at a hotel instead of the flight alone. Also trains often get you to city centres while most low cost airlines will take you to an off-center airport which is also worth something.
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