★ Trains in Europe
• 372 words • 2 min • updated
A (small) index on how to travel by train in Europe.
Search 🔎 #
How to search for train routes?
Country & Provider agnostic #
These providers also include bus routes (e.g. via Flixbus).
Some of them also include ridesharing (e.g. via BlaBlaCar).
There’s no point in searching in all of them: pick one or two and call it a day.
Google Flights occasionally displays train routes but it’s imperfect, as it’s focused on flights.
Country-specific #
This list is intentionally non-exhaustive.
- Deutsche Bahn (DB) for Germany 🇩🇪
- MAV for Hungary 🇭🇺
- NS for the Netherlands 🇳🇱
- SBB for Switzerland 🇨🇭
- SNCF for France 🇫🇷
- ÖBB for Austria 🇦🇹
- ČD.cz for Czech Republic 🇨🇿
Sometimes a given train route is cheaper in a different provider. For example, the München – Praha route is generally cheaper on ČD than on DB.
Savings opportunities #
In Germany 🇩🇪, consider the Deutschland Ticket (DL-Ticket). A single monthly ticket allows you to travel by train throughout the entire country, so long as you don’t use express (ICE / EC) trains (i.e. only regional trains). It also allows you to use unlimited local transit (e.g. U-Bahn = subway / metro, S-Bahn = surface trains, Trams = Straßenbahnen = Street Cars, Buses) a.k.a. ÖPNV.
In Europe, Interrail / Eurail provides passes for multi-day journeys at a discount. There are several kinds of passes, some of them for travel within a single country, others for multiple countries. Trainline also sells them.
Timetables and Live Maps #
Germany 🇩🇪:
- S-Bahn München Live: only for S-Bahns in Munich — ⚠️ Construction changes
- Deutsche Bahn (DB)
- Bahn App: minimalist, with a superb design, better (easier to use and more reliable) than DB
World 🌎:
In-depth resources #
- The Man in Seat61 — The Man in Seat61: trains from Munich — Night / sleeper trains: A guide to travel by Nightjet
- Shipping with Deutsche Bahn (DB) in Germany: Gepäckservice für Reisegepäck
“Where can you go by train in 8h”? ChronoTrains could convince you to ride a train instead of flying:
This map shows you how far you can travel from each station in Europe in less than 8 hours.