The longest train ride in the world (2019) | Hacker News Reader

The longest train ride in the world (2019)

basementgeographer.com

178 pointsadmp104 comments

I've ridden trains in all the Western European countries listed, and taken a lot of the listed routes at least partially. If you actually want to do this, you can make that confusing list much simpler: Lisbon-Hendaye with an overnight sleeper, then TGV Hendaye-Paris (a beautiful route), then the sleeper train Paris-Moscow, then Moscow-Beijing sleeper, Beijing-Hanoi sleeper, Hanoi-Ho Chi Minh.

Also, you definitely don't want to get a Eurail pass for this trip. In general a Eurail pass isn't a good deal at all, with a few narrow exceptions. The specific country level passes, as well as buying discounted tickets, will nearly always be cheaper. This case is even worse, because even with an unlimited Eurail pass, you pay additional fees for almost every train on that list - Thalys, high speed, sleeper...

> Also, you definitely don't want to get a Eurail pass for this trip.

Eurail passes are sold only to persons with a residence outside of Europe. For Europeans there are Interrail passes. I believe prices and conditions were similar many years ago, but I'm not sure and certainly not nowadays after Interrail has seen several changes.

For Interrail you almost never need the pass if you want to go from A to B and can book somewhat in advance. The pass can be good if you have no fixed plans and just like to travel a lot, deciding more or less spontaneously where you go next. Although in some countries like France this doesn't work well anymore because you need reservations and there are no (reasonably priced) seats for pass holders during peak travel times.

I travelled like this between Scandinavia and Portugal just 2 weeks before Covid-19 was a thing in Europe. Certainly off-season, so it was OK.

They really screwed up interrail, I'm not sure why. When I was 18 I got the 1-month interrail ticket, I think it was either all zones, or most of them, together with a friend, at 350 euro per ticket. We went from Leeuwarden (north of NL) to munich, to milano, to bari, then the boat to greece, to athens, thessaloniki, istanbul, back to thessaloniki, then north to sofia, bucharest, brasov, budapest, vienna, munich, back to leeuwarden. We both had a budget of 1000 euro, we skipped quickly through the rich countries, staying longer in the poor countries.

If you've got kids coming of age looking for something cool to do, I highly recommend this, I think it was formative and really filled in some blanks in my head, growing up in a super rich country obviously doesn't give you a particularly complete view of the world. On the way we met kids from the states and canada as well that I suppose were on eurail passes.

This was 15 years ago, I've been told it's no longer attractive to do the 1-month pass. I worked a simple data entry job after high school to save up for it. I'd recommend sponsoring the ticket for your kid if you can! I think restricting the budget was also a good idea, for us it was all we could afford, but it forced us to look for cheap spots, we only camped maybe 4 days in the whole month, in countries like hungary and romania it turned out the difference between camping and staying in a cabin was like 2 euro per night.

edit: they actually reintroduced the 1 month free travel pass, it's 500 euro so not that much more expensive.

> They really screwed up interrail, I'm not sure why.

Railways were a public service in Europe. Profit was not a goal. Trains were not that full often, so carrying a few youth did not make a difference.

Nowadays they all have some kind of business thinking (how successfully is a different story). Long distance trains in France and Germany at least have lots of business travellers. So they don't want backpackers travelling a lot and paying little.

Maybe we should lobby for subsidies in EU context. They even had some free tickets for 18 year olds some years ago, so they might understand the usefulness. Doesn't need to be free, but at least better prices and conditions than currently.

> They even had some free tickets for 18 year olds some years ago

They still do: https://europa.eu/youth/discovereu_en

Yeah, the current price on the Interrail site for under-28 is 503 euros for a month. That'd be great for unlimited rail travel through Europe, but then you realize you have to pay extra for many of the trains you'll want to take. For example, you want to take a night train? In Spain you'll pay a €35 surcharge for a bed, in France 19-25€, for any international OBB Nightjet 34€ [0]. You want to take a high speed train? The TGV will set you back either a 10€ or 20€ fee (the 10€ seats sell out earlier.) In some countries you can travel mostly freely within the country (e.x. the Netherlands, no registration or fees or anything required, just scan the pass and get on the train) but in those countries there are almost always cheaper unlimited passes of various length, or excellent deals available if you're slightly flexible.

I think a lot of people have the fantasy that they'd turn up in a train station somewhere and just jump on the train to Paris, or Amsterdam, or Berlin, or Barcelona or what have you. The reality is that all of those trains are high speed and require reservations, and those reservations sell out or increase in price if you want to get them last minute. If you do want to live that experience you'll be better served by a truly unlimited national pass, or something like France's Carte Jeune, which is a discount card currently available for 25€, and provides solid discounts on French and some international trains.

Now, if you don't care about exactly how you get somewhere, or how fast you're going, and you'll be visiting 20 countries and you don't want to mess with 20 different discount cards and train websites in different languages, then Interrail/Eurail is perfect for you. You'll pay a moderate premium over what you'd pay with a pile of discount cards or subscriptions, but it'll save you a world of complexity. You won't be able to just step onto the train Amsterdam to Paris, but you can step on the train to Antwerp, from there to Lille, Lille to Amiens, Amiens to Paris. In a way, that's also more true to the style of old Interrail many remember from the 70s-80s, before high speed international trains even existed.

That will cost time, though. Some routes are the same speed or similar with regional or high speed trains (41 minutes vs 1:10 for Amsterdam-Rotterdam, 1:58 vs 2:14 for Antwerp-Lille etc), some routes are short enough it doesn't matter much, but a lot of the longer distances will take a while to cross. Crossing the 1000km of France will take you at least an entire full day of slower train travel, while the TGV will take you from Paris to Marseille in 3 hours, 4:30 from Lille to Marseille.

If you want to see how much you'd spend in reservation fees with an Interrail/Eurail pass, this is the page: https://www.interrail.eu/en/plan-your-trip/reservations/rese...

[0] https://www.interrail.eu/en/plan-your-trip/reservations/rese...

The trick to Interrail is that you avoid Spain, France, and Italy - reservations are generally free or cheap outside of those countries. It's also handy if you need to get from somewhere aside from London in the UK into Europe - UK trains have no fees, and the Eurostar is 38 euros each way (it's extortionately priced otherwise), so even just hopping over to Berlin via Brussels becomes cheaper with Interrail most of the time.

Well, if you avoid those countries then you're only left with places where buying trains as you go (or a national pass) is more effective. In the Netherlands, easily available discount tickets will get you around far cheaper than Interrail (or a short unlimited subscription, also cheaper if you do really want that freedom.) In Germany, Interrail is really only cheaper if you want a last minute non-crowded ICE. A last minute crowded ICE won't have Interrail spaces available, and non last minute ICEs will work out cheaper to just book on your own. Non ICEs, you have plenty of options to travel cheaper, including the Quer-durchs-Land-Ticket, which gives you unlimited non-high-speed trains for a day after 9am.

If you do want a last minute ICE, then your best bet is the German Rail Pass, which has the unique ability to let you take any German train at any time, including ICEs, with zero reservations. A powerful pass, a bit pricey though (cheapest pass is 3 consecutive days for 1 youth, 139 eur, up to 15 nonconsecutive days in 1 month for 1 youth, 369 eur)

So, I'm not sure about the situation north(west) of the Netherlands, but for anything south or east of the Netherlands Interrail isn't super cost effective.

Thanks a bunch for the tip about non-London places in the UK! That's a golden tip, because train prices inside the UK are really extortionate. I'm trying to figure out if that only applies to the global pass, it looks like the Eurostar discount applies to other passes also, but presumably not the free booking on through the UK:

"Please note that journeys with Eurostar require a compulsory seat reservation and must be booked in advance. If you hold an Interrail Global or Interrail One Country - France, Great Britain or Benelux Pass you are entited to a special Passholder Rate. Simply contact Eurostar directly on 01233 617 575 to reserve (...and when booking, remember to tell them you have an Interrail Pass so you are given the Passholder rate!)"

I wonder if it applies to the Britrail pass? Britrail seems to be far cheaper than Interrail, 57 eur for a youth pass for consecutive 2 days...

Otherwise, the plain Interrail Great Britain pass starts at €166 for 3 days, and the Interrail Global pass €185 for 4 days within 1 month.

Also Interail is way cheaper if you are under 26. Don't think it's worth at all if you aren't.

The over-26 ones are still worth comparing, but it really depends on your trip then. (i.e. if you plan on using a bunch of not-highspeed trains, but want to be flexible and thus not book fixed low-price tickets early)

Yes, I did it 20 years ago in the pre-smartphone era and it was fantastic. The big advantage for that case was not having to plan, at all; you could simply wake up and decide where you want to go that day.

Amusingly when interrailing many years ago we managed to get on the wrong train at Ljubljana - we intended to go to Vienna but ended up on the overnight train to Belgrade.

The nice thing about an Interrail ticket being that even when you do make such a mistake your ticket is generally still valid!

It's not cheap if you are over 26. But if you want to travel a lot and not plan ahead it gives you peace of mind and most likely some moderate saving compared to buying tickets on the spot.

>"Lisbon-Hendaye with an overnight sleeper .." Is this the coastal route once it crosses into Spain? I've heard the coastal route is my slower which is fine by me as I would imagine its quite scenic. If not could you recommend which one that would be?

>"The specific country level passes, as well as buying discounted tickets, will nearly always be cheaper."

Whats the discount are you referring to here? Is this just the booking far in advance discounted rate or something else?

There's only one sleeper train between Hendaye and Lisbon, and it's this one [0]. It stays pretty close to the coast for the short distance from Hendaye to San Sebastián, and then turns inland. Due to the mountain Jaizkibel (which is beautiful up closer, but less impressive from a distance), you won't be seeing the Atlantic for long at all, unfortunately. You do get a view of the Tagus (river, and then it turns into a bay) for a little while as you come into Lisbon.

If you're looking for spectacular views, I'd probably recommend another sleeper train, to be honest.

Booking a good bit in advance is usually one good strategy for a lot of European trains if you want to save money. But there are plenty of other options. Slower trains, off peak times, budget brands like Ouigo etc. can make train travel very cheap. If you want the flexibility afforded by a Eurail pass, there are country-specific options that not only give more flexibility than Eurail, but are also cheaper and don't require a supplemental charge for most trains. Discount cards are another big one: you can easily get 20-50% off the "normal" price with some sort of discount card, like the Carte Jeune in France.

Good luck with whatever your train travels might be, and feel free to ask me whatever!

[0] https://www.seat61.com/trains-and-routes/sud-express-from-ir...

You can go from Porto to Vigo and then with a slow intercity through northern Spain to Irun/Hendaye, very scenic and recommended. Probably need to stay the night in Vigo as those trains go only once or twice per day.

I'm not sure why the article says you can take a normal train from Coimbra to Hendaye, there is only a night train, though it does have seats (not recommended, take at least a couchette or bed). Currently suspended due to corona afaik.

Thanks both of you for the tips. Looking forward to train travel again sometime in the future. I've gone as far as Porto by train and looking forward to a Porto to San Sebastian rail journey(with many stops in between) as it becomes possible. Cheers.

France doesn't even honor / agree with the Eurail pass. So then you have to pay twice.

A 2008 trip from Vienna to Pyongyang: http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/

This featured, for part of the way, a ride in the North Korean sleeper car from Moscow to Pyongyang, as far as I know still the world's longest single continuous rail trip without changing trains.

Something like this could pretty well never be done again, though. The Khasan-Tumangang border crossing is really only open to North Koreans and Russians, and they managed to get in only on the technicality that Tumangang was listed on their visas as a valid port of entry. They were lucky they didn't end up in a North Korean jail - or a Russian one.

I did a similar journey in 2009, and bought my ticket from Helmut Uttenthaler - the guy who wrote that blog!

My trip into North Korea got postponed until 2010, but the rest of the Trans-Siberian (including checking out a purported North Korean labour camp in Chegdomyn) continued as planned.

The route was basically: Geneva-Beijing-Xian-Beijing-Dandong-Beijing-What do I do with my double-entry Chinese visa and a week-Hong Kong-fly to Taipei-fly to Beijing-Harbin-Vladivostok-Khabarovsk-Chegdomyn-Khabarovsk-Irkutsk (first CouchSurfing experience!)-Moscow-Ukraine-Slovakia-Austria-Switzerland-fly to UK for university.

I liked Taiwan so much I went back the next summer for 2 months at an iPhone app startup, and enjoyed that so much I went back again from 2014-2018 and made many good memories (microSD, USB, DRAM factory).

About the long train journey though: the scenery is beautiful, and being offline for a while is very refreshing "Sorry I didn't answer your email, I was in Siberia". Worth doing every decade or so; it's about time I have another holiday like that. Maybe further south along the ancient Silk Road route.

That sounds like a fantastic trip!

> Irkutsk (first CouchSurfing experience!)

If you are going to do it again, would you still use CouchSurfing? We had a great experience surfing on all of our stops from Warsaw to Vladivostok in 2013, but I'm not sure if that's still a thing, or if it is all Airbnb now. I wonder if it still has the same vibe.

Asking because I'd also love to take the Transsiberian again. Vladivostok was great, but I'd love to see Mongolia this time.

I stayed active on CouchSurfing from then on, and was also able to host in Japan and Taiwan! It's a great community, with meetups as well if you're not travelling but still want to hang out with interesting people.

In May 2020 though, CouchSurfing started charging subscription fees. The community is outraged, and most people are moving to BeWelcome.org and Trustroots. BeWelcome has some online meetups as well, if you feel like coming and chatting.

So yes - I am still doing hospitality exchange, and would certainly try to do so on a trip like this.

This incredible travelogue rarely pops up, which is surprising considering that they were in North Korea without a guide. That's one hell of a "gaijin smash" they did there.

As far as I remember, he did NOT go into nk without a guide. He travelled through a non-tourist-approved border crossing without a booked guide, but the border guards let him through after arranging for a guide to meet him at pyongyang station.

The guide was booked - the assumption was they were arriving on the normal train from Beijing. They didn't, and that meant they had unescorted time alone in North Korean villages on the way from the border. I'm not even sure that the secret police managed to monitor them. They benefited from bureaucrats not knowing what to do and waiting for instructions from up high.

Wow, thanks for sharing this link! I took the train to Pyongyang in 2009 (from Wuhan via Beijing), so the photos of the North Korean train bring back some memories, I even have a copy of a propaganda magazine in this photo I took off the train on the way back.

Which tour company did you go in with? I guess Koryo. I went in with CYTS in 2010, and didn't understand a word because it was all in Chinese XD. But it was only 1000€ instead of 3000€!

These days Young Pioneer Tours are much cheaper, somewhere around the $500 mark depending on the number of days.

I went with some Dutch Company called VNC Asia, I have no recollection of how I found them and their website doesn't even offer an English option anymore. It was 1235 Euros, which honestly was pretty good, although at the time I'd been living in China for a year so it was crazy expensive to me.

The tour was a great deal, my buddy and I got a private car with two guides and a driver dedicated specifically to us, so they spoke great English. I was hoping to see them in the blog linked above, but the only person I recognized was a woman in a military uniform at the museum - she showed us around the USS Pueblo.

It's crazy you can go there for 500 dollars nowadays, I wonder how travel has changed.

Thanks for an incredible story. Sadly if you'd been an American wandering around Pyongyang without a guide for a couple of days you'd probably still be in one Marshall Kim's prisons.

IIRC they did arrange a tour company/guide, but didn't actually tell the company that they were arriving via that border crossing.

There is something magical about train travel for me. I find boarding and riding trains extremely soothing.

Flying has the exact opposite effect.

It's not entirely rational but that's how it is for me.

I'm not sure what part of that wouldn't be rational. Between the lack of TSA security theater (although I did in fact encounter a TSA checkpoint boarding Amtrak in Chicago about 7 years ago), the freedom to move around while riding, the much more open seating, the scenic views even without a window seat...

Were it not for the slow speeds, inconvenient routes, and generally abysmal state of train service in the U.S., I'd never fly again.

Well, I have to say, with TSA Precheck, security lines have tended to be less of an issue in recent years. When I was still traveling, I would get through security lines at O'Hare in under 10 minutes.

(that said, O'Hare ranks #1 in the country for fastest TSA lines, so there's that)

But travel on high speed trains (in Europe and Asia) is definitely a much more pleasant experience.

Yeah, luckily in Europe the all cavity search hasn't (yet?) caught on as a ritual of the train station experience.

I feel the same way. Something about the mode of transport makes it so much more reassuring to me. Accidents even when they do happen seem to rarely impact passengers. Its usually things in the way of the train that meet unfortunate outcomes.

The Shinkansen has a perfect safety record and has been in operation for 53 years, carrying over 10 billion passengers. This is a train I could sleep on. It's probably safer than being in my house.

Per wiki looks like just over 200 deaths involving Amtrak since 1971 - not including most grade crossing accidents and trespasser strikes.

This might be pedantic, but there have been fatalities closely involving the Shinkansen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen#Safety_record, though, no fatalities from derailments or other issues directly caused by the trains themselves.

Just one factor: Trains usually have large space overhead, this separates them from planes and even buses. In a train, you feel like you are sitting free in an airy room. (Even though it can be crowded laterally).

I think there are many that share your view. I like settling in for a nice long ride with nothing else to do but read, think and look at the world passing by out the window. I can recall so many wonderful train journeys but very few if any memorable plane rides.

Memorable plane rides for me tend to be exclusively in the negative. Like that oaf of a steward who dumped a bucket of ice on my lap over the Gobi desert on the way to Japan, or the 12-hour intercontinental flight to London where my seat's entertainment screen was broken and no other seat was available¹. And of course the abject misery of every single flight due to being 200cm tall.

Give me a train any day. Plenty of leg space, plenty of room to stretch your legs, better scenery, low noise (!), and no turbulence. Reading a book is not just possible, it is positively comfortable to do so.

1: They did compensate me by offering a bottle of champagne from the first class upon disembarking, only to discover that they couldn't give me that, because I was transferring to another flight, so customs wouldn't have it, so uhm, sorry (they were British). I did get a free meal out of it on Heathrow via a coupon, which is about as much fun as it sounds.

After couple of delays, cancellations from deutsche bahn in Germany and Getting stranded in Rural France due to SNCF strikes I am very appreciative of convenience of Air travel in continental Europe.

Even getting refund when they cancelled the train is a PITA in Germany.

It offers the quintessential road trip without the stress of driving or traffic.

Pretty easy to see why it's romanticized.

I'm guessing flying at close to 1000km/h, cramped up in a small space with hundreds of people, no possibility to open window or see normal sunshine, bad food (unless first class?), and the trouble of landing and getting in and out of the airport?

What did I miss?

Presumably you take trains rarely?

Earlier this decade I'd take 100 planes a year, but (day) trains only a few times. Trains had a similar feeling.

Now (well pre covid) I take planes maybe 10 times a year and trains 100 times a year, and the feeling reversed.

Once the Kunming-Singapore link opens, you'll be able to ride to rails to the southernmost point in continental Asia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunming%E2%80%93Singapore_rail...

Despite the name it's actually a series of different routes, and while all of them still have gaps, the Boten-Vientiane link connecting China to Thailand (and hence Singapore) via Laos is scheduled to open in late 2021:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vientiane%E2%80%93Boten_railwa...

Although the corresponding line on the Chinese side also needs to open (ETA 2022):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuxi%E2%80%93Mohan_railway

Thanks for posting this as I surprised that the route stopped in Saigon when I thought one would be able to find a way to Malaysia or maybe even Singapore (not sure if there are rails across the straight anymore). Hadn't thought of heading back around.

The line to central Singapore has been closed, but there is still a pathetic shuttle service that crosses the causeway from Johor Bahru:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KTM_Intercity#Operational_serv...

There are plans to replace this with a metro service and eventually build high-speed rail between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, but both have been repeatedly bogged down by politics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johor_Bahru%E2%80%93Singapore_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuala_Lumpur%E2%80%93Singapore...

It's been a dream of mine to travel overland from Singapore to London. This would make it a lot easier, but probably a lot less fun.

A cousin of mine has been doing this the other way around. She is riding a bicycle home to Australia from London.

She made it across Europe and Russia, all the way to the Chinese border before Covid-19 hit and the Chinese wouldn't permit her to enter, so she has backed tracked to Tbilisi to wait it out before continuing.

Is her name Lauren O’Bryan? Because your story reminded me of a similar story in an ABC article [1] profiling ppl stuck overseas with the pandemic.

[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-23/coronavirus-pandemic-...

Indeed

Tbilisi is a great little cozy place to stay put for a while. They did well to contain covid cases.

You’ll probably enjoy “First Overland” [1], it’s a great travel story. There was an expedition in 2019 sort of recreating it[2] with one of the original vehicles and characters.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/336877.First_Overland?fr... [2] https://www.lastoverland.com/

Depends which direction you go. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_Across_the_World_(series_... was good, aside from the winners. Series 2 was better.

maybe if you just stayed on the train the whole time but the great thing about trains is there's another one tomorrow!

We took a part of this route (Warsaw to Hong Kong via Mongolia and China) with some friends during summer vacations in 2006. We even "accidentally" landed in Tibet for 2 weeks and visited the Everest Base Camp near Shigatse. The entire trip that took more than 2 months cost 2-3k USD back then. I was quite amazed by how different and cheap everything gets once you cross the border near Brest. Now when I'm writing this with one hand and holding my sleeping son in the other it feels like it was in a previous life entirely. Happy times. Too bad Belarus didn't change too much since then from what we hear.

> We even "accidentally" landed in Tibet for 2 weeks and visited the Everest Base Camp near Shigatse.

Presumably with an entry permit and guide? I visited this camp, the one next to the Rongbuk Monastery, last year. It was quite a touristy spot. And the toilet facilities were horrendeous. There was an another base camp closer to the Everest, but only accessible if you have an "Everest permit". How was it 14 years ago?

We had a local driver and a permit we got from a travel agency in Lhasa if I remember correctly. Unfortunately, I can't recall which base camp it was. The toilets were indeed horrible, one of the worst I've seen in my life for sure. There weren't that many tourists at that time. I remember a Chinese couple that had to use oxygen due to altitude sickness and some very fit Russians.

I went from London to Saigon by train, and then various overland options to southern Thailand, back in 2007. It feels like yesterday.

From London it was 2 hours to Brussels, 3 hours to Cologne, 34 hours to Moscow, 100 hours to Ulaanbataar, and 30 hours to Beijing. So that’s 170 hours of train from London to Beijing. From there, I criss crossed China for a month before travelling the length of Vietnam, then through Cambodia to Thailand, ending 90 days of overland travel. Great times.

> back in 2007. It feels like yesterday

As you get older, memories of time compress dramatically. What used to be measured as "oh wow that's a year away" is now measured in decades. It's depressing, and inevitably leads to a mid-life crisis.

while at the same time, I can't remember what I had for lunch the day before yesterday...

(2011) although the byline says 2019 (probably a reposting date). There's a 2013 snapshot on Wayback Machine dating the article to November 28, 2011, plus the references are from 2011: http://web.archive.org/web/20130807195501/https://basementge...

Here's a story of travelling a similar route, but finishing off by taking the highest train ride in the world to Tibet instead:

https://driftingclouds.net/2018/07/01/from-siberia-to-tibet-...

> From Poland, travellers have two options: travel through Belarus, which requires a transit visa one must apply for in person that takes days to process; or take the slightly longer but more sensible option, which is to continue north through the Baltic states and then continue east to Russia, which would add a day and some euro to your bill but would remove some of the hassle.

Actually the sensible option is to turn south and go through Ukraine - the overnight train to Kiev is pretty pleasant, and from there you have plenty of options to Moscow.

Are the routes through Donetsk and Luhansk safe though?

Donetsk is 600km away in the wrong direction. The Kiev-Moscow trains cross the border at Seredyna-Buda, which is open and safe. Ukraine has said that it will stop those trains, but it's also said that it will build a border wall; whether anything will actually come of it I rather doubt.

For those who enjoy traveling by rail. "The Man in Seat 61" is a great resource:

https://www.seat61.com/

Up until 2 or 3 years ago, you could directly travel by night train from my (relatively minor) home town Freiburg to Moscow. There are direct trains from Paris to Freiburg or Frankfurt (where the night train also stopped), so this could've saved the layover in Warsaw.

https://www.bahnbilder.de/1200/wlbm-172-am-ende-eines-777062...

Note that there are already regular freight train connections from Duisburg, Germany to China:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Trans-Eu...

I believe the longest single train trip in Europe is still Nice-Moscow via Genoa, Milan, Austria, Poland, etc.

Posted in 2019 but all references are from 2010-2011. I assume many things have changed by now.

Anyways, even at that time, why not start at Lisbon instead of starting in Porto to go to Coimbra and add even more time and distance to the trip.

Certainly. The trail on the map between Warsaw and Moscow doesn't follow the actual route. That one enters Belarus more to the South.

Trains in the Baltic states are really irregular, so it might be faster to wait for the visa. The train between Poland and Lithuania only works on summer weekends nowadays, the train between Lithuania and Estonia goes only every 4 days due to some complication in Latvia, if it even reaches Estonia in an unbroken connection at all. Either way it's so impractical that you might as well forget that it even exists (as my fragmentary memory proves).

Baltic current route could be: Sat morning (weekend-only) Vilnius to Daugavpils local, to Riga local, to Valga local. Sunday morning to Tartu one modern train and then express to Tallinn. Overnight to Petersburg and finally supermodern express to Moscow by Monday noon or so.

To connect that to Warsaw: Friday afternoon-ish to Białystok, evening to Kaunas, then one more regular connection to Vilnius.

One option, if ferries are ok, is to take the Stockholm-Riga ferry. In a few years it might also be possible to travel north around the Baltic Sea uninterrupted by train to Helsinki, and then onwards.

> many things have changed by now

I know it's stating the obvious, but even aside from covid, China and Russia have sunk from high to almost bottom of my travel list.

I would love to return to China - a few years ago I was there and loved it (and Hong Kong). But, the surveillance state and hostility towards Canada (i.e. two Cdns are currently being detained with very little of the customary consular accommodations) - makes it just too risky/unpredictable. Ditto for Russia.

Hopefully a change in US leadership will help restore relations between East and West!

I've also travelled in China and Russia in the past. I understand your concern regarding China and I have similar feelings. But I'm curious why you feel this way about Russia; have westerners been disappeared in Russia recently?

> why you feel this way about Russia

Putin's propaganda machine inside Russia (e.g. internal daily news) has been full-on anti-West for a while now. And so, where Russian people used to be generally positive about the West, now I believe that is somewhat diminished.

What's your take?

Paul Whelan, Trevor Reed.

You can start in Cadiz, Spain for a longer trip than from Lisbon. Actually I don't know the rules for this "longer route" since you could go zig-zagging.

There used to be equally enjoyable and intriguing, the world's longest bus trip, from London (UK) to Calcutta (India) in mid 1970s. It appears there was quite a bit of fanfare for it. People used to take the bus and then ship to Australia then on.

https://curlytales.com/this-was-the-worlds-longest-bus-route...

I've always had a dream of travelling around the world via the "surface". Probably home to NYC via train ->Southhampton, UK via a swanky cruise ship -> train from there to Beijing or Shanghai -> some sort of ferry/boat to Japan -> Cruise (or freighter 'direct' to the West Coast) to Hawaii -> West Coast US/Can -> train back home. I should really do it, one day.

You should check out the travel documentary 'around the world in 80 days' by Michael Palin.

Reminds me of a game I spent my "Google Rewards" on recently: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.inkle.eigh...

> Once in France, it’s a transfer onto the TGV (but not the high-speed trains, which won’t ply this particular route until 2017)

At first I thought, oh, this is an old article from before 2017. But scrolling back to the top, I see it's from June 2019, so it's puzzling why they would write that.

Almost $400 for Koln to Warsaw?! A quick search shows that's out by an order of magnitude compared to the cheapest tickets on offer. I did this journey in winter once - something very atmospheric about trundling through central Europe in the snow.

> Once in France, it’s a transfer onto the TGV (but not the high-speed trains

It's a little funny to say you transfer onto the Trains-à-Grande-Vitesse (high-speed trains) but not onto the high-speed trains :)

    > Using the shortest timetable, the distance from the 
    > coastal centre of Porto to the Polish capital of Warsaw 
    > can be covered in 40 hours and 33 minutes (including time 
    > zone changes) with just four transfers.

Wait, what? How are timezones relevant? If I travel one hour across the date line, does it mean the trip took me minus 23 hours? Not that I don't care what time it is when I get off the train, but that has no bearing on the time that the distance can be covered in.

The author probably wanted to say that by looking at timetables, times being indicated in the timezone of the station, if you cross a timezone you have to add/remove hours to get the real duration of the trip.

> longest single uninterrupted train journey

> with just four transfers

I don't understand the rules set forth from the article for its calculation

I think it means "train ride between the 2 furthest possible points", so using train only.

The table at the end including the $2.27 to get between stations within Paris is cute.

Does anyone know the best directish train route from Amsterdam to Athens?

I just did this last month with my partner and 2 kids. We didn't go as fast as possible, but took 5 days to let us break up the trip and see stuff along the way.

We went from Amsterdam to Munich on day 1 via ICE trains (changing in Duisburg), had dinner at a biergarten and stayed overnight in Munich. Day 2 we explored Munich and that night got on the Nightjet sleeper train to Rome. Woke up in Italy on Day 3, enjoyed the views, arrived in Rome around 9 AM. Explored Rome , and stayed overnight. Took a Frecciargento train to Bari in Apulia on Day 4 and from there an overnight ferry to Patras in Greece, arriving Day 5. Took a taxi from there to Athens, which was pricey (€260) but sadly the trains don't run to Patras anymore and for our family this was a better option than the bus (and it was quicker, plus we stopped at Isthmia for souvlaki and to check out the canal.)

Trains through the Balkans are not currently an option - they weren't running north of Thessaloniki even before COVID shut the borders. If you want to avoid flying or driving, you'll have to take a ferry from Italy to Greece.

If we had to do it again, we might have taken the ferry from Venice or Ancona instead just because the port of Bari was so unwieldy for foot passengers and the Superfast I ferry was pretty bare bones and more geared towards truck drivers.

Also, beware entry requirements to Greece, as they are constantly changing. Right now you couldn't actually do this trip because people arriving from the Netherlands have to show proof on arrival of a negative COVID test taken within the last 72 hours.

Currently, Amsterdam-Frankfurt-Vienna-Zagreb-Belgrade-Skopje-Thessaloniki-Athens. Or Köln-Munich instead of Frankfurt-Vienna. Also, south of Belgrade I think the schedule is a bit sketchy. Source, as always, https://seat61.com

In December an Amsterdam-Vienna night train service will start.

"The longest train ride in the world"

Longest bullshit post. With changing trains, it does not mean much. BTW, the China - Thailand Railway opens soon. Then you can go to Singapore from Lisbon. Or from Marrakesh to Beijing if you take the ferry to Spain.

"All prices were hastily sourced from various travel sites."

TLDR: No idea what I am writing about, but I collected some stuff from the internet.

For some real world experience: https://www.seat61.com

> the China - Thailand Railway opens soon

Very interested! Do you have any reference that I keep an eye on?

So where can I buy a ticket to ride?

For the Porto -> Moscow leg you should be able to get a SCIC (Special Conditions of International Carriage) ticket in any European train ticket office.

The complete list of participating countries is here:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeinsamer_Internationaler_Ta...

However, an Eurail pass will most likely be cheaper and you will enjoy greater freedom in chosing your connections:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurail

I suspect the Moscow -> Saigon leg to be a bit more complicated, but there are travel agencies specialized in offering exotic train rides.

I think the Trans-Siberian rail still runs from Moscow to Beijing (with a link to the Trans-Mongolian rail at Ulan Ude or the Trans-Manchurian at Chita).

From Beijing it shouldn’t be too difficult to find a single link to Hanoi. And from Hanoi there is a single sleeper that runs to Ho Chi Minh (I’ve taken this one in the other direction back in 2008).

So if I’m not mistaken (or out of date) Moscow to Ho Chi Minh should be at most 3 connections (Ulan Ude/Chita, Beijing, and Hanoi).

Vietnam is currently closed to tourists but the trains are running as usual. I travelled along the south central coast hard seat class in July which has some amazing seaside and mountain views. I also did a personal first took the once-daily train along the branch line to Quy Nhon; highly recommended.

for those interested in very long train rides, don't miss Bong Joon Ho's "Snowpiercer."

I found the movie so far-fetched it was hard to enjoy it. Loved Parasite though (same director)

Movie & TV Show

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