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@wrongteous

Жыл бұрын

Thoughts on the Saudi Line City?

@zyansheep

Жыл бұрын

Woh... two videos about european rail from two of my favorite youtubers, (Wendover Productions & Adam Something). Nice!

@rubbegameing5370

Жыл бұрын

I'm really impressed that a man like you who endlessly praises trains actually criticizes them for a change. Excellent content as always Adam.

@enjybenjy3317

Жыл бұрын

thanks so much for making this, really looked forward!

@HellexTV

Жыл бұрын

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?

@theunknown4834

Жыл бұрын

Sorry, I am confused, how does this have to do with rail service?

@nicolasiguaran

Жыл бұрын

@@theunknown4834 boring company

@theunknown4834

Жыл бұрын

@@alexmoberg8943 ya... but this is about trains service so I didn't get it at first lol

@alphastratus6623

Жыл бұрын

@@theunknown4834 It's the 'solution to traffic'.

@davidty2006

Жыл бұрын

London has fixed that ages ago. They just made them very long and put them on rails.

Bad rail connection isnt as bad as no rail

@thekevinfoster

Жыл бұрын

Facts

@_HONK

Жыл бұрын

@@ThatWolfArrow money

@genericjoe4082

Жыл бұрын

@@ThatWolfArrow I don't know, maybe because... THE FREAKING PLANET IS ON FIRE

@kennethkho7165

Жыл бұрын

@@ThatWolfArrow but fixing bad rail connection is easier than building from scratch

@Mr-Chick

Жыл бұрын

@@ThatWolfArrow money 🤏

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. 🙄

@incoplanje7392

Жыл бұрын

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. :)

@lukasrytina7502

Жыл бұрын

"I hate that when I don't do my research the results are worse" Dimwit detected, opinion rejected

@cheatmagnet

Жыл бұрын

Can't you do a collaboration together?

@Wiez4

Жыл бұрын

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.

@MelGibsonFan

Жыл бұрын

Unfortunately nobody involved in decision making gives a fuck about "urban policy" KZread, but kudos to you for resisting the opportunity to make the ad revenue bucks off of this I guess...

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.

@glntv5217

Жыл бұрын

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

@peter_smyth

Жыл бұрын

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.

@fanlixia5d113

11 ай бұрын

Can there be some All-trains?

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.

@stickynorth

Жыл бұрын

Somebody had to! It might as well be the sharpest tongue/mind on the internet!

@jdjphotographynl

Жыл бұрын

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. 😜

@mr.haiwan

Жыл бұрын

But the community posts are so naaah.

@jimi272

Жыл бұрын

Yeah, bashing would title the video better. This man is talking so much shit, it’s crazy😂

@inelouw

Жыл бұрын

Trust me, I've taken more than 40 international train journeys throughout Europe, and he's spot on.

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.

@magic8ball237

Жыл бұрын

Rolled a natural 20

@kkon5ti

Жыл бұрын

Wow, I did not know that exists

@Rockden

Жыл бұрын

What kind of train was it?

@OperationDarkside

Жыл бұрын

And that, my son, is how you were created

@Gusfezio

Жыл бұрын

@@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

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.

@ggoddkkiller1342

Жыл бұрын

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

"...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! 🙂

@wta1518

Жыл бұрын

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).

@FlorianHWave

Жыл бұрын

How long is that journey by car and plane?

@mayfurrnz

Жыл бұрын

@@FlorianHWave About seven hours driving, or an hour and a half by air (depending if you fly a jet or a turboprop).

@sygneg7348

Жыл бұрын

Holy fucking shit, it's New Zealand and not the US?

@wta1518

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

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

@neutrino78x

Жыл бұрын

what about "rail europe" (if I post the URL youtube will eat my comment, not sure when that started.)

@michalsoukup1021

Жыл бұрын

@Sega-16 Summer time is a nonsense that ought to be abolished, no need to give yourself jetlag twice a year without even travelling

@huginug

Жыл бұрын

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

@neutrino78x

Жыл бұрын

@@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. :)

@papalaz4444244

Жыл бұрын

@@huginug This channel doesn't have any content

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.

@ciupenhauer

Жыл бұрын

Admit it, you went all the way to vilnius to fuck

@codex4046

Жыл бұрын

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.

@karols9660

Жыл бұрын

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.

@holger_p

Жыл бұрын

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.

@stadoblech

Жыл бұрын

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.

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.

@drdewott9154

Жыл бұрын

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.

@drdewott9154

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

@foxboiii96

Жыл бұрын

@@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?

@daveogfans413

Жыл бұрын

@@drdewott9154 FFS, I have no idea to whom you have responded because apparently KZread 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.

@vizender

11 ай бұрын

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.

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 :)

When you said "the German side will be converted a few years before the sun turns into a supernova" I felt that.

@justanotherguy2824

Жыл бұрын

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.

@Alpostpone

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

@blakksheep736

Жыл бұрын

@@justanotherguy2824 well if it's never going to happen, that's even better, isn't it?

@Kram1032

Жыл бұрын

@@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

@Alpostpone

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

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.

@paulgruber8820

Жыл бұрын

True, already used that

@g.f.martianshipyards9328

Жыл бұрын

Yup. Great feature. Though it sucks that you can't get them to be completely flat.

@michalvalko248

Жыл бұрын

or if you are alone on your side of coupe you can lie on seats

@Fabrissable

Жыл бұрын

I once saw guy use them on a trip from Wien to Münich. It was like revelation that magic pretty much exist for me 😅

@IngTomT

Жыл бұрын

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

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.

@Hansulf

Жыл бұрын

Shit, Im glad I have never taken one of their trains.

@incalescent9378

Жыл бұрын

Where do you even look up the arrival punctuality? I haven't even found that. (Also - similar experience except I got stranded.)

@FauzulRizal

Жыл бұрын

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

@justsomeguywithamustache3188

Жыл бұрын

@@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!

@FauzulRizal

Жыл бұрын

@@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 😂

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.

@TheoKoutsaftis

Жыл бұрын

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.

@user-ed7et3pb4o

Жыл бұрын

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.

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

@LS-Moto

Жыл бұрын

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.

@cptrelentless80085

Жыл бұрын

I interrailed in the early 90s. Good to see it’s still going

@Avero_

Жыл бұрын

If those high speed trains would stop in every village, they wouldn't be high speed any more .-.

@Sullian_dF

Жыл бұрын

Interrailing literally tomorrow morning, glad to hear that, that video got me scared shitless

@tomaso0

Жыл бұрын

@@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

As a Canadian, I consider it great when our trains arrive on the day scheduled.

@dannypipewrench533

Жыл бұрын

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.

@jessebrook1688

Жыл бұрын

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.

@Member_zero

Жыл бұрын

@@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

Жыл бұрын

@@Member_zero let's give them better choices then. Bullet trains.

@Member_zero

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

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

@Maxime_K-G

Жыл бұрын

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!

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

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.

@tonic4497

Жыл бұрын

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

@georgegalileo

Жыл бұрын

Actually, in the 80 ies we had great trains from brusselx to milan every night!

@forkeke

Жыл бұрын

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.

@SF-eo6xf

Жыл бұрын

Depending where you are from in IT you can take the NJ420 to Innsbruck from Amsterdam and than continue into Italy with an EC

@givepeaceachance940

Жыл бұрын

You do have an alternative to flying. You just choose not to use it.

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.

@8bitorgy

Жыл бұрын

So what are some examples of competent companies?

@R421Excelsior

Жыл бұрын

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.

@jirisuster6165

Жыл бұрын

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.

@themariokartlick

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

@christopherhoyt7195

Жыл бұрын

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!

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

@juliuscaesar5270

Жыл бұрын

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.

@steveneiffel8227

Жыл бұрын

Many countries, but also an union, we should do better.

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.

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.

@parzival9983

Жыл бұрын

pin this comment dude

@GaryJohnWalker1

Жыл бұрын

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.

@doraspoljar697

Жыл бұрын

I would be ok even if you were inspired by them because your video is much deeper

@ahtheh

Жыл бұрын

Yep, I though that too

@loleder

Жыл бұрын

@@doraspoljar697 they both have clearly not been inspired from each other because obviously videos like that take weeks to produce

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!

@faolitaruna

Жыл бұрын

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

Жыл бұрын

Sounds like you also got lucky on the fact it wasn't slow, in Denmark the trains are so bad...

@GTAmaniac1

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

@owenernst7768

Жыл бұрын

You took a ride between amsterdam and paris. Or amsterdam and berlin

@TheGrejp

Жыл бұрын

@@GTAmaniac1 Oh! I see there's another HŽ Putnički prijevoz connoisseur here. Pazi na zdravlje i um, sretno!

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 …

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

@mstrmren

Жыл бұрын

Yes because SBB and Trenitalia work together closely, that's not the case for most rail operators who only do it on certain routes.

@Kenionatus

Жыл бұрын

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.

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.

@mirensummers7633

Жыл бұрын

hey don't bash bike lanes! But it probably would have a bigger impact, yes

@Tealice1

Жыл бұрын

And your Ph.D. was about starfish, right?

@christopherhoyt7195

Жыл бұрын

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.

@_JotaroKujo_

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

@vanivari359

Жыл бұрын

@@_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.

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.

@jackjoyce1744

Жыл бұрын

That is because trains are convenient up to 500km

@Killroy007

Жыл бұрын

@@jackjoyce1744 trains could be convenient for every distance

@delgermuruntsagaankhuu6951

Жыл бұрын

@@jackjoyce1744 railways can go up to 200km an hour, A car can do an average of only 80 km. Planes are very expensive

@jackjoyce1744

Жыл бұрын

@@Killroy007 yes they certainly could but there will become a point where is still quicker to fly

@jackjoyce1744

Жыл бұрын

@@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 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.

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.

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

Жыл бұрын

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...

@daszieher

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

@cow_tools_

Жыл бұрын

That's very cool.

@pepbobmc

Жыл бұрын

@@daszieher Not considering, but actually doing (albeit very slowly)

@Albergarri788

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

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

@Kenionatus

Жыл бұрын

As he said: connections between neighbouring countries are usually pretty smooth. If you want to cross one tho...

I love watching your videos. Learning new words, understanding the important of standardization and more.

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

@vilena5308

Жыл бұрын

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.

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.

@pwhnckexstflajizdryvombqug9042

Жыл бұрын

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.

@KarlDMarx

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

@voidranger137

Жыл бұрын

@@pwhnckexstflajizdryvombqug9042 indeed sounds farcical. Not as farcical as our lack of high speed rail though.

@voidranger137

Жыл бұрын

MELBSYD is one of the busiest flight routes in the world High Speed Rail would be a huge boost to livability and sustainability

@neutrino78x

Жыл бұрын

that's why we fly in USA, Canada and Australia. You could fly that in like two hours or less.

I had a fabulous experience taking the Thalys high speed train between Amsterdam and Paris in 2019. That, however, seems to be the result of special partnerships and projects to connect those cities with Brussels and Cologne.

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

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.

@isdattomatojuice9897

Жыл бұрын

lmao yeah thalys is having a stroke rn

@DjDaan111

Жыл бұрын

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.

@Fluffian

Жыл бұрын

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.

@willowarkan2263

Жыл бұрын

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.

@carlfromtheoc1788

Жыл бұрын

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?

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.

@g.f.martianshipyards9328

Жыл бұрын

Good, now I won't have to leave that comment :)

@piotrrywczak7971

Жыл бұрын

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

@g.f.martianshipyards9328

Жыл бұрын

@@piotrrywczak7971 Exactly.

@sarthakmunda3914

Жыл бұрын

Germany will change a few days before sun blows in a supernova. So if the sun will never, Germany will never. 😅

@saul7407

Жыл бұрын

One can also interpret it as meaning that it will never happen

I like your channel a lot. Your simple solutions present beautifully why it is in fact not that simple. You know, sometimes trying to fix something par force actually makes it worse, case in point: past decade on Earth and the last two years in particular.

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

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

@axios7603

Жыл бұрын

lol ur glad to live in a country that have gun violence like daily lmao

@SaveMoneySavethePlanet

Жыл бұрын

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!

@thekevinfoster

Жыл бұрын

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.

@Valkires1

Жыл бұрын

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.

@excederal9092

Жыл бұрын

@@Valkires1 tsa sucks

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.

@Nightraven26

Жыл бұрын

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...

@dannyboy_vtc8980

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

@justsamoo3480

Жыл бұрын

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?

@justsamoo3480

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

@dannyboy_vtc8980

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

yet another very eye opening video from Adam Something. keep up the good work!

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…

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.

@ahooogerhuis

Жыл бұрын

As much as I like European rail, how you got to cross the Austrian border on Utrech-Basel baffles me. :)

@jimi272

Жыл бұрын

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😂😂😂

@ahooogerhuis

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

@TheGrejp

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

@brokkrep

Жыл бұрын

@@ahooogerhuis I think he mistook Switzerland with Austria. At least it wasn't Australia.

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

@sachacendra3187

Жыл бұрын

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"

@stillx1211

Жыл бұрын

Well at least it is possible. Like everywhere Else in the world it is not easier to travel via train internationally

@sebastienlemay6120

Жыл бұрын

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!

@shirou9790

Жыл бұрын

There's trainline which would work between Germany and France. Doesn't cover all of Europe but most of Western Europe is.

@Bluepancho

Жыл бұрын

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.

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

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.

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.

@Psi-Storm

Жыл бұрын

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.

@alfrredd

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

@BlackHoleSpain

Жыл бұрын

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

Жыл бұрын

@@BlackHoleSpain See fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligne_de_Perpignan_%C3%A0_Figueras .

@alfrredd

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

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.

@staropramen478

Жыл бұрын

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.

@altrag

Жыл бұрын

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 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.

@drdewott9154

Жыл бұрын

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.

@stevencipriano3962

Жыл бұрын

I recently took the Eurostar direct from London to Amsterdam going through the UK, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands with no problem.

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.

@metrofilmer8894

Жыл бұрын

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

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).

@powwowowo

Жыл бұрын

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.

@fabioferronato571

Жыл бұрын

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*

I feel like this is the point of the EU to fix stuff like this.

@g.f.martianshipyards9328

Жыл бұрын

It is. Very slowly.

@TheIIIJulianIII

Жыл бұрын

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.

@skeetsmcgrew3282

Жыл бұрын

To give some credit to the NWO conspiracy theorists, thats what they are afraid of. Giving away autonomy for very little gain.

@petrhajduk9955

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

@Ginkoman2

Жыл бұрын

@@TheIIIJulianIII The standards are there. its the countries that dont implement it.

nice sum-up! thank you.

You can win a bit of flexibility by using an Interrail ticket (and for those not resident in participating countries, there is Eurail). I find that for many journeys, it is cheaper. Trains with seat reservations need you to reserve separately with your ticket, however those trains also usually carry coaches that are for non-reserving passengers.

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

@paddyboy207

Жыл бұрын

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...

@ardabasar

Жыл бұрын

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.

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...

@mynung7008

Жыл бұрын

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.

@loxodoncyclotis1823

Жыл бұрын

Tbh national rail companies *would* be competing with each other in a truly integrated system, at least on some lines.

@johncounts2182

Жыл бұрын

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

@janaspengler4169

Жыл бұрын

National train companies are doing the best job not to be competition to individual traffic

@jonathantan2469

Жыл бұрын

8:40 Bureaucrats: "Nein"... "Non"... "No"

European trains: fast and reliable Germany: laughts in Deutsche Bahn

so much info, and also so much fun to listen :)

Since European international rail has so many issues, are there any examples of better international rail networks with similar numbers of member-countries?

@benharris7358

Жыл бұрын

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.

@sekharapramod7819

Жыл бұрын

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.

@mr.memmer8097

Жыл бұрын

@@benharris7358 Difference is that China is a single country, Europe is not a single country

@benharris7358

Жыл бұрын

@@mr.memmer8097, yeah obviously. But the EU gives a mechanism to use central rail planning

@n1thmusic229

Жыл бұрын

@@mr.memmer8097 That there is literally the problem, BORDERS

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!

@_SpamMe

Жыл бұрын

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

@chaosXP3RT

Жыл бұрын

What?! Please don't say anything positive about the USA. It is a garbage country

@user-jk2zm7uq5s

Жыл бұрын

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.

@myra0224

Жыл бұрын

@@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 😂

@joshuadelafuent3

Жыл бұрын

New Amtrak management has been really neat. They're even planning to expand the network across the country which is awesome.

Great video on an important topic! You could have also mentioned the Interrail ticket, which at least makes the booking process a bit easier / more flexible

The whole video I was thinking "is he gonna touch on this?", and I'm happy to say you did. I went interrailing this summer, and my stance from that experience is that so long as railway companies are not held accountable for delays and resulting missed connections, it's simply not a viable mode of transport for international travel. The sheer fact that these (often at least partially state owned) railway companies are not being held accountable for delays is basically them admitting that they are severely inadequate and cannot be relied on. Aside from the technical challenges (excellent information btw), this is the main issue that needs to be addressed.

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

Жыл бұрын

Are talking about getting from say Paris Gare du Nord to Paris Gare de Lyon? Because that's pretty easy in my opinion

@RAFMnBgaming

Жыл бұрын

@@murphy7801 In theory, yes, but dealing with (potentially several) local transit systems' timetables is certainly going to make transfers more difficult.

@natewp

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

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

Жыл бұрын

well no tmillennia

@SKy_the_Thunder

Жыл бұрын

@@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".

As a person who travelled a few times by train across a few countries, it’s not that bad. I took a direct train across 5 countries in Europe. And just go to the station to buy the ticket

Just spent a month interrailing, I felt everything you said :) Pro tip: the ticket ladies at the train stations have much better access to routes than any app or website. We got booked on a night train from Warsaw to Budapest that wouldn't show up at all on hungarian or polish railway websites. It might have been a ghost train, but we survived the journey.

@TheExileFox

Жыл бұрын

This is with one caveat though. If you come to Sweden, you can often book a bus ticket usually using the "SJ" website. This is probably possible in a couple of other countries as well.

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.

@mechsikaner

Жыл бұрын

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

@supaschwamal

Жыл бұрын

@@mechsikaner What a weird comparison. Just... no. Everything is different for your example.

@mechsikaner

Жыл бұрын

@@supaschwamal 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?

@matthiasm4299

Жыл бұрын

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.

@marcodiepold8620

Жыл бұрын

Interrail could be an option there

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

@EpicThe112

Жыл бұрын

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

I tried to go from Amsterdam to Italy in train. The police stopped our train from Mannheim to Stuttgart. I managed to get on the next train to München and literally as the door of the train opened at München I saw the train I was supposed to get on to go to Italy leave right in front of me.

I love trains. But if I need to cross more than one or two borders to get there, it's such a pain to find a connection and the tickets. And it's usually so expensive that it is hard to say no to a flight which takes a fraction of the time at a fraction of the price.

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.

@Bioshyn

Жыл бұрын

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.

@danielstoffel4815

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

@Glory_to_Arstotzka

Жыл бұрын

@@danielstoffel4815 The DB is kinda underfunded while they have the money to do changes the money just goes somewhere

@Fjodor.Tabularasa

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

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)

@MusiXificati0n

Жыл бұрын

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.

@wraldpyk6698

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

@alphanet72

Жыл бұрын

@@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)

@wraldpyk6698

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

@alphanet72

Жыл бұрын

@@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 :)

Dude, you coul've just booked the train via DB to get a bed (although these are frequently sold out on the Nightjet), and traveled all the way to Vienna to catch a full night, which has good connections with Prague!

This man should be the president of the EU ngl

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.

@katbryce

Жыл бұрын

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.

@TheGrejp

Жыл бұрын

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.

@lunamariahawke9320

Жыл бұрын

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!)

@InTimeTraveller

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

@inelouw

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

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.

@kalle911

Жыл бұрын

wtf. One would figure that a ticket to show on one's phone with a QR code would do.

I just travelled across Europe this summer and had none of these problems. The voltage issue is not really an issue with the correct rolling stock. The Italian Frecciarosa ETR 1000, this train travels the Paris to Milan route, can handle four different types of voltages, and we had a seem less journey and arrived on time. This is just a problem with the train companies cheaping out and not buying the proper trains or having the equipment on board the trains to convert the voltages. Trenitalia have prooved this is not a problem. If you book early enough and plan ahead, I think you won't have any problems. The only slow train journey we had was from London to Paris on the Eurostar. But that was because of passport control in London due to the whole Brexit issue. But as soon as we got onboard it was 320kph all the way. I know I would rather spend 10 hours on a comfortable train than 2 hours in the featle position on an airplane. I am 6 foot 2 btw, so comfort is a huge factor for me as my legs don't fit in a 30 inch seat pitch.

International railway travel also depens on the line you are traveling, for example Paris - Munchen line is great it takes only 5h 31 min to 6h 21 min (depending on a train you take), meanwhile car time travel is from 8h 34 min to 9h 9min.

To be absolutely fair, TheTrainline extended itself to Europe recently and might be able to sort you some tickets easier, but I've not used it much. Great video!

@edwardtonkin8387

Жыл бұрын

Not really, I recently found it completely impossible to book trains through France and Germany (Trainline kept accepting the payment and failing to book a reservation and refunding the amount). Rail Europe was worse. Comparatively, trains through Switzerland and Italy were much easier.

@mattc9998

Жыл бұрын

Omio and NS International do the same.

@airingcupboard

Жыл бұрын

Used it in Italy this summer. Worked fine.

@LightbulbTedbear2

Жыл бұрын

I've tried to use Trainline to plan cross-Europe trips, it just tells me "no trains available" every time

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.

@aad6632

Жыл бұрын

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)

@georgH

Жыл бұрын

@@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

@KirillTheBeast

Жыл бұрын

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.

@thekevinfoster

Жыл бұрын

@@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!

@bfedezl2018

Жыл бұрын

@@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

Germany, Italy and the lowland countries have very good international train network. As a beginner with train travel. I managed to get between many places in the netherlands and Belgium for very easy.

@leonpaelinck

11 ай бұрын

That's because the low countries's international trains are glorified IC trains due to the short distances

For our trip to a friends family home, we had Easyjet cancel twice, and we eventually decided on driving to this village in the center of Bohemia and sleeping on the Belgium-Deutch Border. We are currently sleeping in a cramped hotel room in Waterloo but we got to see Prague :’)

As an American who doesn’t have a single passenger train within a thousand miles of me, this rail system looks brilliant.

@stephenjenkins7971

Жыл бұрын

The idea that Arizona should have a passenger train is hilarious to me.

@gentlemanvontweed7147

Жыл бұрын

@@stephenjenkins7971 No mein Führer, I'm from Arizona.

@gingerqueer22

Жыл бұрын

just because a system is "better" doesn't make it without fault. criticism is necessary for improvement, even if this system is better than amtrak's.

@aztronomy7457

Жыл бұрын

@@stephenjenkins7971 maybe one day you’ll visit another country and leave your suburb.

@aztronomy7457

Жыл бұрын

@@gingerqueer22 I have yet to experience a better rail system. Maybe in Japan but I haven’t been there yet. China is getting there too.

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.

There is one application I know where you can buy international tickets quite easily: the Trainline. I could buy a ticket from a small town in Burgundy up to Amsterdam. It was actually 2 separate tickets but the app takes care of the different segments so you buy “one” ticket.

@ericofantastico

Жыл бұрын

And what's the name of the site?

Well for the "validity of the ticket issue" I would recommend using an interrail ticket. Spontaneous booking, lots of money saved AND also valid when you miss your train.

@Bstingnl

Жыл бұрын

Sure, if you're not planning on using any high speed rail lines, which require you to book in advance and cost extra. Don't get me wrong, I love Interrail, but it requires a more laid back, vacation vibe approach to train travel. Getting there "eventually". Most people who are not on vacation would like to know when they arrive however.

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.

@hyperiongm330

Жыл бұрын

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.

@Landrassa1

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

@ukeyaoitrash2618

Жыл бұрын

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

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.

basicly with all the complications you should be happy there is even a train going from one country to another. the EU isn't that old. you can't expect all these countries that were literely fighting a massive world war mearly 80 years ago to suddenly have perfect railway system that all works perfectly. in the first place EU was created to have peace and trade. balancing all the systems so they match in each country isn't an easy task, specially with something so old and massive as railway systems

@fokus5097

Жыл бұрын

Your statement is entirely true, it is still better having this, then nothing. But we can not settle with "meh it is okay" mindset, and should always criticize bad system. And never settle for less then perfect.

@Kenionatus

Жыл бұрын

The booking issue is one that could be solved within like... two years if enough politicians would care about and want it.

Informative and funny, thanks.

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.

@choppership465

Жыл бұрын

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

@LS-Moto

Жыл бұрын

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)

@petitkruger2175

Жыл бұрын

‘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

@domskill

Жыл бұрын

@@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....

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 tried to book a train from Hamburg to Rotterdam (with a bike). I gave up trying to book online, so went the DB ticket office in Hamburg HBF. The person at the counter spend about 20 min searching the computer system(s) to find only two options. I then got my ticket(s) as a stack of large tickets and A4 printed pages for the different sections. The train across the German-Dutch border was cancelled after part of the journey, and we were left on a platform somewhere for a Dutch train to pick us up for the rest of the journey.

4:13 info: in the nightjet you can actually pull out the seats you showed and you basically make the whole compartment into a huge mattress.