Green travels: Helsinki-London-Budapest by train (and ferry)

In early October, Vivien and I embarked on quite the rail journey. I'll tell you why we went to London in the next newsletter, but I also wanted to write a travel log, because it was quite epic, with some highs and lows, and a lot of learning that could be useful for those interested in long-distance train travel in Europe.

The main reason we chose train over plane was CO2 emissions. We already fly a lot to Central Europe to visit our family, so we wanted to do this one better. We also don't like the stress and constraints of plane travel, the airlines' greed and cynicism, and actually quite enjoy being on a train. Finally, we were hoping to do a bit of sightseeing on the way.
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We bought an Interrail pass for our trip, and while understanding it and setting it up could be the topic of an entire article, in the end it worked fairly well and saved us a lot of money. It's worth noting that we needed a lot of research and comparing to reach that conclusion! Yeah, if you have to remember one thing from this article, it's that nothing is easy with train travel (and the second thing: everything is better in Finland).

Trip 1: overnight ferry Helsinki-Stockholm

We travelled with Viking Line, leaving around 17.00 and arriving around 10.00. The Interrail app couldn't register this trip, but we showed passport, Interrail pass and our reservation at check-in, and all was well. In hindsight, we shouldn't have used Interrail for this leg, because the amount we saved on the ferry ticket with Interrail was lower than the price of an extra Interrail ticket. We checked a lot of things before the trip, and yet it's obvious we still missed a lot!
We had booked a sauna-spa session onboard, and went right after departure, at the opening. That was a good call, it was empty at that time!
We took a salad with us for dinner, and had breakfast at the buffet restaurant.

Arriving in Stockholm

​Day break: Stockholm

The arrival to Stockholm through the archipelago, in beautiful weather, was stunning. We had from 10.00 to 17.00 in the city: we visited Fotografiska, the museum of contemporary photography (amazing!) that's conveniently located between the Viking Line terminal and the city centre, the City Museum located a little further on the way, then took a metro to the central train station to put our luggage in a locker (expensive), had a little walk in the Old Town and lunch in an Italian restaurant, did a bit of shopping at the station (we created our own salad in the Coop supermarket, which turned out to be a great idea), then boarded our night train.

Because I wanted to do some photography in Hungary, I was carrying a lot of luggage... and that wasn't fun. Maybe we should have gone straight to the lockers with public transport, dropped everything there and then set off with minimal cargo on our back.

Stockholm...

... Old Town

Our room for the night

​Trip 2: night train Stockholm-Hamburg

The sleeper cabin was really small, with limited space for luggage. The thing with night trains in Europe is that many of them have old sleeper cars that are just not very practical by modern standards. After an hour of playing Tetris, packing and unpacking things, we managed to find a comfortable arrangement. Unfortunately, we didn't half enough water with us, so I had to spend 5€ on half a litre of it at the onboard café... not fun.

Because of some track work, we spent 5 hours in Malmö: that was great for sleeping, not so much for making progress on our journey.

Hamburg Station

​Trip 3: train Hamburg-Köln

We arrived on time in Hamburg, but that was around 11 (because of the aforementioned track work) and not the usual 8.30. There was nowehere to sit at the station, apart from benches on the quays themselves. We waited 1.5h for the ICE train on which we had seat reservations. In Germany, you can travel on such trains without one, and many people did so that day. We constantly had people standing in the aisle next to us, speaking loudly, complaining... it's a good thing I don't understand German! There were so many people onboard, the conductors even asked for people to leave the train... I'm sure no one did, and on we went at a snail's pace.

We arrived 1h late in Köln, around 17.00 I think. We wanted to do some sightseeing in Köln, but with that and the late arrival in Hamburg, we had very little time left. That made us sad, though the cathedral looked absolutely incredible by day and by night. We had Asian food near the Urban Loft Hotel where we stayed (much recommended), and slept well in an excessively wide bed :D

Köln

​Trip 4: train Köln-Aachen

Breakfast at our hotel was luxurious. While we enjoyed pancakes, mysli and yoghurt, I opened my emails... and spotted a notice that our first train would be late. Damnation, here we go again! We gulped down the rest of our food, and rushed to the station (conveniently located just nearby) to catch an earlier one. It's good we got up early!

While waiting for the regional train, we noticed that the intercity train that we were supposed to board in Aachen to go to Brussels was also announced there in Köln... even though the reason we chose the regional train, when planning and booking our itinerary, was that the intercity train only stopped in Köln on the other side of the river, and not at the central station. With track work going on all the time, schedules and itineray seem to be rather fluid... which might be good if you are flexible, but can also throw you off if, like us, you like having a plan and sticking to it. With little time to make a decision, we took the regional train. It was filled with pupils on a school trip, but it took us to Aachen on time.

Trip 4: train Aachen-Brussels

Because we came on an earlier train, we had a tiny bit of time for a walk outside the station. Then we boarded an ICE train than was on time and not overfull. It was a surprisingly peaceful journey.

Aachen Station

​Trip 5: Eurostar Brussels-London

You like the ease with which you can board a train, compared to a plane? Forget all that with the Eurostar! You've got to be there 1.5h early, you go through security checks, passport control, then you walk through a disgusting tax-free shopping carnival before being stashed in a waiting room that doesn't have enough seats for everyone... just like at the airport!

At least the train was on time.

Trip 6: Eurostar London-Paris

Not much more to say about this one, it was exactly the same experience as the previous Eurostar trip.

Eurostar embracing air travel vibes...

London Saint-Pancras

​Day break: Paris

We had 3 hours in Paris. We started by walking from Gare du Nord to Gare de l'Est to drop our luggage in the lockers there, then we found a little restaurant nearby to have lunch. After that, we walked around a little, and ended up at Canal Saint-Martin, which was very pretty! We spotted a Grey wagtail (Motacilla cinerea) and a bridge that turned to let a barge go into the canal lock. Awesome! (yes, we are easily entertained)

Gare de l'Est

Canal Saint-Martin

​Trip 7: TGV Paris-Stuttgart

That's where the shitshow started. We left with a delay of 1 hour, due to some fire somewhere. Of course, when a train is late, it keeps getting later and later along the way, as its new schedule collides with those of other trains' schedules. We arrived in Stuttgart 1.5h behind schedule, which was approximately the time we had to change trains there.

On the way, I went to the conductor to ask about our next train, a sleeper from Stuttgart to Budapest. She said she would check and make an announcement, as many people wanted to catch it. We were reassured, but as time passed, she only talked about the trains to Venice and Zagreb, which were waiting for passenger on the opposite platform. When we arrived, there had been no announcement for the train to Budapest. We rushed out, found a departure board... of course our train wasn't there.

Trip 8: night train Stuttgart-Budapest

At the travel centre, we were given an alternate itinerary, but with no beds: we would spend the night on normal seats. I had done that once before, it's a nightmare. We asked if we could take another train to ctach up with the night train in Augsburg or Munich, but were told no. Looking at schedules, we thought we could, so we jumped on the next ICE train bound for Munich.

On the way, we realised that the Zagreb-Venice train had most likely been our train! One section was headed to Venice, another to Zagreb and the last to Budapest... except no one spoke about the Budapest part. The next problem was that, when looking at departure boards in the next stations, there was again no mention of a train leaving for Budapest. We asked the conductor, and he couldn't see our train in his information either, so he told us it had probably been cancelled because of a storm. We didn't buy that, because we had received an email from ÖBB (Austrian railways, from whom we bought the night train ticket) about cancelled trains (not ours) and a new schedule for our train. Our guess, to this day, is that our train disappeared from information systems, probably somewhere on the way from ÖBB to DB (German railways), but that it indeed ran as expected.

At that stage, we had great hopes of catching the slow night train in Augsburg or Munich... sadly, someone fainted on the ICE train we were on, so we spent a long time stopped in the middle of nowhere while they resuscitated them and took them to the ambulance.
The night train was (supposedly) long gone when we arrived in Munich. The remainder of our journey was a long procession of discomfort and pain: a cold wait in Munich, a neverending trip to Vienna (trying to sleep on seat with lights on and someone snoring right behind us, the conductor asking for our ticket just after we had found sleep), a mad rush to catch the next train and a hazy ride to Budapest around sunrise (it was pretty). Obviously we slept through the next day, at Vivien's parents'.

Stuck...

Right now, I'm talking with ÖBB to get a refund for our troubles. We got a voucher for the night train, but the extra train we had to pay for because it fell out of our Interrail pass (Vienna-Budapest) still needs to be addressed.

Conclusion

In short: train travel sucks, it's stressful... but we want to do it again.

If we were to plan this again, we would do it over more days, so we can spread out train departures more and avoid tight connections that bring stress and sometimes disaster AND see more of the places we go through. Obviously, the problem with this is that we don't have unlimited holidays.

Lots of things need to change for train travel to become competitive with places. Among them: prices, first (this was about twice as expensive as if we had flown), and then better reliability and cooperation between operators. Much depends on political will, but if politicians cared about giving a better life to the people, we'd know about it, right?