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> especially in small Europe What's small about the scale of Europe in this context? Even taking the extremely conservative measurement of Madrid to Berlin, th

• bluGill 3y ago
  Europe mostly speaks a different language in every country, so the actual scale of Europe isn't the whole continent (or whole EU), but a single country. Sure you can travel to other countries, but there is a language barrier (though English is common enough to get by most places). Note that GP was talking about Germany with seeming no awareness that the situation is different in Switzerland, France, England and Spain. (of the 5 countries I named there are significant differences that are unique to each - Swiss trains run ontime, French trains are fast...) God help you if you are trying to cross a border by train in Europe - it is possible, but often much harder than it should be.
  • erk__ 3y ago
    There is daily trains between all the countries you named (at least those that share a border) most of them are no different than any other border crossing with exception of the trains going to and from England as you have to go through security for that one. I don't remember ever having a bad experience crossing a border when I was on InterRail some years back.
    • Freak_NL 3y ago
      Really. Crossing borders within the Schengen-zone is trivial and goes unnoticed for most travellers. You can even cross multiple borders in your sleep on the night trains.
      • scott_w 3y ago
        It's so seamless that I was racing someone through Belgium and only realised I'd entered the Netherlands when I got a text telling me I was on a Dutch phone network!
        • Freak_NL 3y ago
          By car you'd notice, but that's mostly because suddenly the car goes quiet upon crossing over onto the smooth asphalt of the Dutch snelwegen. (Despite being neighbouring countries, the contrasts are often interesting.)
          • scott_w 3y ago
            I noticed the massive reduction in cobbled roads on leaving Belgium!
      • bluGill 3y ago
        The problems crossing the border in Europe have nothing to do with the physical crossing. the Schengen zone is nice for that, but only solves one problem. Often there is no border crossing at all where there should be one. Often nobody knows how to sell you a ticket for a trip that should be possible (or they will only do it with stupid restrictions). If you can find a train it may be a slow speed train despite this being trips where high speed is most useful. The trains may not be on time and you miss a connection. there is a lot to improve about trains in Europe.
        • panick21_ 3y ago
          This is true. And sadly the big state monopolies have been lobbying against the airline like system of bookings. They don't want to be responsable for connection like airlines are. And they don't want to compete on a level bases either. They don't want open ticketing information. The EU approach to rail improvement is incredibly flawed. And all the different monopolies have their own dumb as opinion about things. French system is run by a bunch of airline manager idiots. German can't make their IT work for shit. And so on.
    • hannob 3y ago
      I don't have experience with InterRail, but the bad experience often starts with buying a ticket. The amount of "we cannot sell you that ticket, we can't even tell you the price" I have gotten when checking international connections is wild. It is slowly improving (I just checked a particularly absurd example where Deutsche Bahn was unable to sell a ticket to switzerland through if it wasn't bought a long time in advance - seems at least they fixed that), but still... it's absurd if your train trip starts with "figure out how to get a ticket, because the train company won't tell you."
      • hnaccount_rng 3y ago
        Oh that's nothing. 5 years ago DB couldn't sell you all tickets within Germany (if you didn't cross a Verkehrsverbund boundary the local train company could refuse to license that right to DB). So yeah. Improving ;)
        • hannob 3y ago
          I am pretty sure that is still the case in some areas. DB Navigator never covered all local tariffs.
    • bluGill 3y ago
      The trains exist, but they are not as useful as in country trains. Just getting a ticket can be tricky as not everyone will sell them. Most train systems assume you are going to the major city in their country, (Paris) and so the routes do not always make sense for other trips. One train per day (or less) is not good service. Cross border makes it much more likely you have to transfer to a different train and the poor on-time performance of some nations becomes a problem. There are not border controls which is nice. However there are a lot of other things that can go wrong. Some routes work much better than others. Europe is a big place with lots of different trains systems if you only went on the good routes you won't have a problem, but there are a lot of routes that are not as good - and many more routes that should exist but do not at all.
  • RHSman2 3y ago
    French trains are fast if they aren’t striking.
    • Scoundreller 3y ago
      French train speed is fast but velocity can be slow if you’re not going toward or away from Paris. If you’re going from the northwest to the southwest, it can be faster to drive than the high speed train that will dogleg through Paris. (It’s getting better though)
  • timthelion 3y ago
    As a Czech person I have never npticed language barriers reducing travel (or business), if anything they increase it by making it more exciting.
  • thrance 3y ago
    I had zero trouble visiting my german friends by train last november, departing from Paris. I didn't even have to leave my seat. I have no idea what you are trying to say.
  • umpalumpaaa 3y ago
    This is not really true. There are high speed trains operated by Italy that start in the center of Germany (Frankfurt) and end in Milano – crossing Switzerland. There are also trains that start in Germany end end in south France (Mannheim - Marseille). Super easy to purchase tickets.
  • superjan 3y ago
    It is a mixed bag, but definitely improving. Some experiences: From Holland, It was impossible to do an online booking a ticket to Italy. Only possible via phone, or as separate legs. For long journeys with changeovers watch out that you don’t get stuck halfway due to a missed connection. From NL, London, France, Germany is easily reachable, as well as Barcelona. I took a sleeper train to Stockholm last Christmas, we had delays, but made it in time. In general if you have a long distance leg, it’s best to have it at the start of your journey so you don’t miss it. Railways do have single points of failure. A single disruption on a key piece of track can disrupt service for hours, even days. This is less of an issue with air travel, there’s usually other airlines, and alternative routes.
  • EEBio 3y ago
    Not only does English get you by in most big cities, a fair amount of European citizens are multilingual and often it’s the neighbouring countries that people speak the language of.
    • dukeyukey 3y ago
      You'll bet by in English as a tourist, but you probably aren't getting a job with just English, and you're definitely not holding down a full social life either. Despite the EU's efforts at integration, Europe is still effectively separated by languages and cultures way beyond anything in North America.
• muspimerol 3y ago
  The scale of the country is an excuse in many cases. There are densely populated areas in many parts of the USA, but nearly all of Europe is densely populated. The EU has an average density of 112 people per square km compared to 36 in the USA. The USA still can and should do better, but there are important geographical differences to the EU. And as an aside, I don't think many Europeans are taking the train from Madrid to Berlin ;-) most people still prefer to fly rather than take a multi-day journey on the train. Maybe that will change if more sleeper carriages are introduced.
  • scott_w 3y ago
    > The EU has an average density of 112 people per square km compared to 36 in the USA. Isn't that a misleading statistic, though? It's not like the USA is an evenly spread wasteland in comparison to Continental Europe. It's more like pockets of high population density throughout, which trains can handle perfectly well. Russia and Ukraine are similar in that they're pockets of cities separated by miles of steppe. Both are known for heavily using rail travel. Hell, wasn't the USA built on the back of continental rail travel during its industrial revolution?
    • ericmay 3y ago
      Yep, it's misleading. The America is big argument fails to hold water once you actually take a look at a map. Take Columbus for example where we're within just a couple hours by train (could be less if we had any sort of seriousness about our country) away from: Chicago Detroit Cleveland Cincinnati Indianapolis Pittsburgh and maybe just a few hours away from other cities like Toronto, Buffalo, Louisville, and more.
      • deburo 3y ago
        There are other factors to trains not being viable in the states: cost to build. Every project they try, it’s almost always a financial disaster.
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