I’m writing this blog over a year after my last train adventure in Europe. But, as I prepare to embark on a new journey now in 2025, I thought I would reflect on my past adventures. Obviously, since I’m doing it again, my experiences were great (spoiler alert). I have now, at this point, done two major train trips around Europe, which were very different, but each amazing in its own way. These two trips can be broken down into four shorter trips, starting with my ride across Northern Europe during August 2023.

Northern Europe, Summer 2023

This adventure started in London, United Kingdom, after spending around two days there. I was on the way to Sweden for my exchange term, but was interested in travelling a bit beforehand. The first stop was Iceland, then the United Kingdom, then France, which was where the first train ride came in. With Eurail passes on our phones, my Dad and I were able to ride from St. Pancras International Station in London all the way to Paris, France.

Note: The details about each of these locations (and all future stops that I mention) are covered in my other blogs, so go check those out for sure, but this will focus mostly on the train trips that allowed me to visit all these places.

Though the Eurail pass allows us onto most trains all across Europe, some of them required extra steps. This one in particular, being a busy route, required an additional seat reservation. It was, unfortunately, quite pricey, but we did need to get onto the mainland eventually.

Our next trip did not require any additional reservations, thankfully. From Paris, we took a long train to Copenhagen, with just a few stops in Germany along the way. This is a recurring theme with “free” rides, is that you have to transfer more often, and they often aren’t as quick. However, for my travels, that was definitely much preferably to costly reservations. Copenhagen, was of course great, and the last stop before crossing the bridge to Malmö, Sweden. There’s not much to say about that trip, but I do know that having a rail pass meant we didn’t have to pay the roughly $20 CAD to cross the bay.

Train times vary by company and by country. Some run all night, some don’t. Some run frequently, and others less so. After this Northern Europe trip, I still had a few travel days left on my pass. So, I decided to use them on two day trips: one to Germany, and another to Norway. Both of these trips were about 5-6 hours on trains each way, so waking up early and getting home late were a part of those adventures. Because of the long trips and the limited number of trains going to and from each place, these trips were to smaller cities that were closer to the border, namely, Flensburg and Schleswig in Germany, and Halden in Norway. Even so, I couldn’t stay for too long in these places. However, it was nonetheless worth the trip, and Flensburg in particular became a city that I became quite fond of. The nice thing about these trips on Eurail passes is that you can pretty much go wherever you like for as long as you like, even if it’s just a short visit to look around a bit. This would become a theme on the next leg of my European travels.

Central Europe

There’s probably someone out there who would get mad at me for calling this trip “Central Europe”, but I really don’t know what else to call it. It included travels in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, a brief stop in Austria, Luxembourg and Belgium, and was the first of three major stretches in my winter 2023 adventures. I bought a new Eurail pas that covered all three of these stretches, but involved insane amounts of travel within the 22-day limit of the pass. A home base in Malmö really helped out with this trip, because I had a place I could return to at the end of a long, tiring stretch.

The first of my stops was in Amsterdam, so a long distance from Malmö. I tried to plan well with overnight trains, but I did often get stuck at train stations for just a few hours in the very early morning. The same happened as I left the Netherlands. The nice thing about the Eurail pass though, which was most evident in this stretch, is the flexibility that it allows. I travelled with very little itinerary, and was able to take each city and country based on how I was feeling. In the Netherlands, I spent less time in Amsterdam than I was anticipating (it was a bit cold), so I took an earlier train and was able to stop by a couple other Dutch cities on my way out. A similar thing happened when I arrived in Bern, Switzerland the next morning. My parents still laugh with me about the text I sent them, saying that it was too cold in Switzerland and that I would be going to Italy instead that day. Such is the flexibility of the Eurail pass.

After an afternoon in Domodossola and an evening in Milan, I had one of my sketchiest experiences of the trip back in Switzerland. Because of train schedules, I ended up stranded in a small Swiss city I can’t even remember the name of overnight. It was dark, and it was cold, and I was just sat in a rail side cabin that offered little protection from the weather. After a little while, a man came into the cabin to join me, where he paced around and mumbled to himself for a couple of hours before he left. This was one situation that I remember very clearly, as I wasn’t really sure what to think of this stranger, or know what to expect. I always like to think the best of people and give them the benefit of the doubt, but there is a chance of running into some sketchy people as you travel. In this scenario, I was definitely making sure to be cautious, just in case. Fortunately, he seemed to just be a chill guy who was cold and enjoyed muttering to himself at 3am, I guess.

I realized at this point in the trip that I had been through four countries every day so far, even if I didn’t stop in all of them. Thanks to the flexibility of Eurail travel, I decided to keep this trend going, and make a stop in Bregenz, Austria after my morning in Vaduz, Liechtenstein the next day. It wasn’t a long stop, but I was still able to see some cool things and get some great photos. Continuing this trend to the next day, I took a train from Switzerland through Germany to Luxembourg, then later into Belgium for the second half of the day. At the end of the trip, I was pretty drained. It was my first leg of solo travel around Europe, and I was still adjusting to the travel style. It was mid-December, and I was travelling with nothing more than a hoodie for warmth. I didn’t book any accommodation, so sleep was very little, and the naps I did take were in train stations or on trains. Fortunately for future adventures, I would become more accustomed to this. But as for this leg of the trip, I was ready for the train ride back to Malmö, where I could shower and get a good night’s sleep in a real bed.

Germany

The second stretch of my trip focused only on Germany. There were just a couple major cities that I wanted to visit, and I think I wanted a shorter trip anyway. The first of these stops was Köln (Cologne), which I had wanted to visit for a while after seeing pictures of the impressive Kölner Dom. The second city was, of course, Berlin, the nation’s capital. I didn’t really do any research into either of the places before visiting, but to this day, I would still say that Germany is my favourite country that I visited.

My route to each city was as clueless as what I knew about the cities themselves. I don’t think I had even really decided which one I would be visiting first until I got on the train. Afterwards, moving to the second city, I took a night train that took me completely out of my way. The train looped downwards before coming back up to Berlin, essentially tracing the perimeter of the country. Though this was not the most efficient way to get from point A to point B by any means, it did allow me a full night of sleep (for once). Weighing these different factors when choosing trains became a bit of a case-by-case basis during the adventures. Sometimes you want a shorter train, sometimes you want a longer train, sometimes you want more stops, and sometimes you want a direct trip. In this case, maximizing my sleep by taking a longer train was most important.

On the way back from this trip, I stopped in Hamburg, which is a stop I made every time I ventured into mainland Europe. The city is pretty much the one big place that you have to go through between Germany and Denmark, so every time I came down or went up, I had a bit of a layover there. I never actually ended up getting too far out of the train station, unfortunately, since my layovers were almost always at night, and sometimes not long enough to venture too far. After Hamburg, there are only a few stops in Germany before you cross the Danish border, and in my case, eventually the Swedish border where I returned to my apartment in Malmö. Another shower, sleep in bed, and hot meal before my third stretch of the trip.

Eastern Europe

I think this title will also prompt some shaking heads, but this leg of the trip was the easternmost of my adventures, covering Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia, and Poland. This was the longest of my three stretches, covering just after Christmas to the new year. This was also partly due to the fact that the places I was visiting were further from my starting point. The first of these was Wien, which was pretty much a day’s journey from Malmö. This was, however, an excellent place to be, as it was close to both Budapest, Hungary, and Bratislava, Slovakia. It was also in Wien that I made great use of the fact that the Eurail pass covered local subway (U-Bahn) trips as well. I mostly walked around the city, but was able to take the municipal trains to an amusement park and to a cemetery where many famous composers were buried. The unfortunate thing about Wien, however, was that the train station was closed overnight. Since I was planning on visiting the Hunagrian and Slovakian capitals next, I couldn’t really take an overnight train as they were only a couple hours away, so I had to brave the night just outside the station doors. I did this the next night as well, after visiting Budapest and Bratislava.

The next stop was Prague, followed by Warsaw and Gdansk. This was the only part of the journey where I paid extra for a seat reservation. It was also around this time when I embarassingly fell asleep on the shoulder of the guy next to me on the train. Oops! After Gdansk, the trip back to Malmö was another roughly day-long trip. I celebrated New Years in a small Polish town right on the German border, where I had a layover before crossing the border and going the rest of the way to Malmö. Another cool thing about the Eurail pass here was that it was a bus that brought me across the border, but the rail pass still worked to let me ride. After arriving in Malmö, the end of my long journey around mainland Europe had come to an end.

As a bonus though, my Eurail pass still worked when I flew over to Ireland. Even though the country isn’t connected by train to any other place, the rail system within the island still accepted my pass as a fare. With one day left on the pass, I was able to do a day trip from my stay in Dublin to Galway on the other side of the land. I spent the day there, then returned to Dublin late at night.

Concluding Thoughts

It’s hard to sum everything up, and there are still a few things worth mentioning about my travel experience. The most important of these is probably food. I packed my bag full of food from the grocery store when I left Malmö to avoid paying for food out as I travelled. I’m not sure exactly how much this saved me, but I’m sure it contributed to the cheap budget that I was able to do this trip on. Was the food healthy? We don’t talk about that. Going back to cost, this trip was extremely affordable. The rail pass was bought on a Black Friday sale, so I got it for $450 CAD or less. Eating food from the grocery store also helped keep prices down, and from there, it was just souvenirs. Having a home base in Malmö helped a lot to keep me going, and I don’t know if trips like this, or at least long trips, are possible without proper rest every now and then. However, from my experience, this trip was an absolute success, and I look forward to doing it again!