Trainquil Travel

What method of transportation is your favorite? Is it by car, airplane, metro, scooter perhaps? I would like to tell you about my personal favorite mode of transportation that I fell in love with in Europe: train travel. It makes me quite sad that train travel is not as common and far less accessible in the United States as it is in Europe. If it was, I would hardly even need a car. I could just hop on a train and kick my feet up as I would embark to Phoenix to see my friend Alex or Tennessee to visit my beautiful sister, nieces, and nephew. But alas, I will just have to look back on my trip to Europe and bask in glories of train travel over there.

Confession time. I am slightly embarrassed to admit that whenever I heard people talk about "backpacking Europe" I literally thought that meant hiking with a backpack country to country, using no mode of transportation but your legs. Though this would be quite legit to say the least (and I'm sure there are hardcore backpackers who do this), I quite appreciate the fact I learned that "backpacking Europe" simply means carrying a backpack instead of another form of luggage. Or may simply imply the fact that you are trekking from country to country. In either case, I am so happy that I was able to carry my backpack ONTO a train and travel that way ;).

To begin thinking about traveling by train, first and foremost, you have to figure out what type of train travel you want to do while you are over there. You can either buy tickets as you go or buy a Eurail pass and go that route. After much debating and price checking, I decided to go with the Eurail pass. The Eurail pass is a travel pass that allows you to travel from country to country (depending on the pass you choose) by train. You can find the link to their website here. Eurail gives you many different options to choose from. You can go with passes that let you pick a certain number of specific countries you are traveling to or you can go with the global pass that allows you to travel by train in any country in Europe. The global pass sounded like a pretty sweet deal to me. I came to find out there are a quite number of drawbacks to the whole Eurail pass system, but so is life. One such drawback was the fact that you needed to choose the number of days you would be traveling. I bought my pass a couple months before I went to Europe so it was difficult to know how many travel days I needed. On a travel day, you can travel as many times as you want, but once you use a day, it's done (the train conductors are very strict on making sure you only travel the number of days your pass allows). I decided to go with the 7 day pass and because it was a special they gave me 1 travel day free. So I ended up getting 8 travel days for $400 (and $25 for insurance). It was a bit spendy but all in all I would call it a good deal. If I would have added up all my train trips I took, I probably would have spent more money on individual tickets.

Here is my Eurail pass which came with a handy-dandy map of all the train routes in Europe. The picture on the right shows all the trips I took using my 8 travel days. I sure got around!

So let me tell you all the things I LOVE about train travel.

1. It is so easy! All you have to do is look on your Eurail app to see when train times are, show up to the train station, and off you go!

2. You don't have to wait in line for security or anything else! When the train is ready to board, you are able to board.

3. You can show up to the train station whenever you like. Forget about arriving two hours early like you do for the airport. You can show up three minutes before the train leaves and still get on.

--There were a couple times when Brayton and I had to sprint to catch our train, but we made it both times! That's gotta happen at least once while you're in Europe :).

4. Trains are so comfortable! Forget those tiny, uncomfortable, cramped spaces like on an airplane. Most train seats are very comfy and offer a lot of room. Most times Brayton and I got a section of four seats and a table to ourselves. This was great for spreading out and taking a nap!

5. You don't have to worry about size limits for luggage. You can bring however much as you darn please onto the train.

6. You can get up and move around whenever you want. There are no "Fasten Seat-belts" signs on a train. If you get tired of seating, get up and move around! Most trains offer a little cafe where you can order food and beverages.

7. Most of the time you can pick whatever seat you want. The option is yours! As long as you don't have to make a reservation.

8. The scenery is stupendous. I never got bored on my train rides. Even on the longer 6 hour rides, I always had beautiful landscapes to gaze at.

9. Most trains take you to the city center which is where the hub of activity is in every city. Forget hour long commutes to get to the airport.

*Photo cred goes to my good friend Jirada Ch.-AKA Moo. She is a spectacular photographer and a great travel buddy :)

This is a train I took to the top of the Alps in Switzerland. As you can see, the view wasn't too bad ;).

Here's a few tips for train travel:

1. Your Eurail App and Google Maps are your best friends. Use them to look up train times! Technology is such a blessing for this reason.

2. Make sure to check whether your train needs a reservation or not. Some countries like Italy and Spain require a reservation. You can find this out by looking at your Eurail App.

3. Some trains don't announce your stop or it may be announced in a different language, so there are two things you can do. The first is to look outside and you should almost always be able to see a sign with the name of your stop. The second is to look at the time you are supposed to arrive. The trains in Europe run on a very prompt schedule so when it says you will arrive at 7:52, you will arrive at 7:52.

4. Make sure you have your tickets ready to show the conductor. The conductor can come at any time to check your ticket and it is very important you have it completely filled out. And with that, it is very important you BRING A PEN, so you can fill out your ticket before each train ride!

5. Make sure to check multiple times and possibly even different days of departure if you are trying to find the shortest train route. I would recommend finding a time that offers the least amount of connections, because switching trains is just a pain in the behind.

6. Something the Eurail App does not do, is tell you what terminal your train leaves from. In this case, find a posting of departure times. It can either be electronic or in most cases a yellow transportation timetable. Get to know Army Time. It'll help ya :).

The one thing I wished I would have figured out, but never did was finding a way to make a train reservation online. Every single time we needed to make a reservation we ended up having to go to the train station to do it. Now this wouldn't be a big deal, expect for the fact often times we didn't get over to the train station until we were just about to depart. So we took the risk of making the reservation only a few hours (at most) before we departed. This worked fine except for one time when I needed to make a reservation from Paris to Barcelona. I ended up having to wait in the train station for several hours to get on the next available train and even then I didn't have a seat on the train, but had to sit uncomfortably between train cars, smashed between my suitcase and another guy. Not the most fun experience. But I don't know how to avoid this issue with a spontaneous trip like mine. You can make reservations online at Eurail.com but can only make reservations three weeks ahead of time or something like that. Which is ridiculous when sometimes I didn't even know exactly where I was going the next day :b. So if anyone knows of a better way to handle this, shoot me a message or comment below.

*Photo Cred: Jirada Ch.

All in all train travel is wonderful. I wish I could do it more often. But I guess that just means I will have to take another trip to Europe :). Until next time.