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Comment by Scarblac | Hacker News Reader

Our Dutch Scouts of age 15-17 also plan their own camps and do so on a shoestring budget, and it turns out that yes you can get from the Netherlands to the Czech Republic with all your camping gear using only like fifteen different German regional trains :-)

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Related: We're a Czech couple, currently planning our vacation in the Netherlands, and we too are on a very tight budget. I wanted so bad to get there by train and spend the week there riding Dutch trains all over the place, but man, the train journey there and back is just as long as a car trip (~10-12 hours) and costs at least twice as much. Looks like we'll be taking our 50 MPG car instead and since it will be there with us, also using it to get around the country. Sorry about the pollution.

Have you considered long distance buses from something like Flixbus? I live in Rotterdam and see them coming into the central station from all over Europe.

Any travel by Flixbus longer than 6 - 8h is really painful imho, they are not really long-distance bus. They are nice for cheap big city hopping. Of course a lot of people do use them for longer trips but honestly, I don't know anyone that arrive from a long distance bus rested tbh also.

I'm Czech. When I lived in Amsterdam, my sister came to visit by Flixbus. She's used to all kinds of travel, but boy was she destroyed by that journey...

Some people can sleep on such buses. I for sure can't. So I always prefer to go by bus over daytime (wasting a day) instead of the night (ruining both the night and the next day).

Take the night train via Regensburg (book via cd.cz) and arrive rested. Goes every Thursday

Night trains are great! Do you have to transfer in Regensburg? There used to be a direct Prague-Amsterdam night train going through Berlin. I met some weird people on it, great times :)

There’s a startup (European sleeper) that wants to revive that route. Perhaps this fall.

Now you know why so many still use the car in the Netherlands.

"Dutch public transport is the most expensive in Europe": https://www.iamexpat.nl/expat-info/dutch-expat-news/dutch-pu...

> Dutch public transport is the most expensive in Europe

Only because the UK is no longer in the EU.

"Transport in the Netherlands is 35% more expensive than the European average, putting it top of the ranking, above Denmark and the UK, broadcaster RTL said. The figures were released in mid December and relate to 2017.

https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2019/01/dutch-transport-servic...

> Dutch public transport is the most expensive in Europe"

Yes. On the other hand, the comparison in frequency, punctuality and cleanliness between the cheap Italian regional trains and the average Dutch ones clearly favors, and by a large margin, The Netherlands. This might have an impact on the costs :)

Don't think anyone disputes that. What they will say is how Tokyo still one-ups any major city in The Netherlands at a fraction of the price.

GP is still very much right that The Netherlands, while being better, isn't good enough yet for most people to get rid of cars.

>cleanliness

Eh.. they certainly aren't clean here.

The secret sauce is density and a dire need to get this right or congest that city beyond believe. But yes they do a good job.

Prague - Amsterdam by bus

13:30 hours - 120 €

Look up Flixbus. It's slow, but cheap.

To spend 13.5hrs in Flixbus, dear god..

Definitely take a shower right before departure. Your ass will thank you.

I regularly take long distance flights.

FlixBus seats, when reclined, are on par with economy seats in any airline I used. But FlixBus seats have considerable more legroom.

Also the bus takes breaks on journeys that last for that many hours.

Even some of the direct FlixBuses Berlin–Hamburg (3.5hs) take a 5min break at a petrol station somewhere in the middle of the journey.

You could also buy this €9 ticket, go to a Czech border town, and take DB trains all the way to the Netherlands.

For example, you could do Decin (Czech) to Glanerbrug (Netherlands) in 12.5 hours with only 7 changes, all on RB/RE and S-Bahn trains.

Of course, that's still going to be a long journey, but you can break it up anywhere you want and stay at cheap hotels in random German towns along the way that you otherwise would never have considered visiting!

Somehow that didn't occur to me. It's much cheaper than a train, but it's also a bit slower than a car and it costs roughly as much as the fuel (no wear and tear though). So a bit cheaper overall.

Buuut... I was on a school trip to the UK once where I spent 13 hours on a bus and I remember hating every second of it. Well, we'll consider it :)

13.5 hours in a flixbus could be considered torture

My experience with a car in the Netherlands was MISERABLE with respect to parking, and generally dealing with having a car (parking is not only expensive but also very limited, and time-constrained, so your lovely parking spot it took you 45 minutes to find and is a 10 min walk from where you are staying is only good until 7:30 AM).

This really depends on your frame of reference and where in the Netherlands you're going. Having worked in both London and Amsterdam I think there are many more public parking garage options in Amsterdam and non of those are time limited. Just expensive, but even that is relative since London and most bigger US cities are much more expensive to park in.

If you want low cost, park in a P+R garage outside the city and you get a free train/tram/metro ticket into the city.

Especially for traveling across Germany, this ticket isn't quite useful, however I feel like it is marketed as "free traveling across Germany for a month" which isn't really the case. Am wondering how everything will play out next couple of months.

Well, you can travel across Germany if you don't mind changing trains several times. And the "free traveling across Germany" means that one ticket is valid for all regional trains and all public transport in all Germany (as opposed to e.g. a ticket bought in Munich only being valid in the Munich region), which is quite a good offer anyway...

It's not uncommon to travel through Germany using only the regional trains. There are several tickets tailored to this, like the "Quer durch's Land Ticket", which is valid for a full day.

I, for one, used to travel a lot through Germany using only the Wochenendticket, which is the predecessor of the "Quer durch's Land" - Ticket and was only valid on Saturday or Sunday.

Its really too bad that they got rid of the Schönes Wochenende ticket.

DB always had weekend or summer tickets that were heavily discounted and only allowed regional trains. Especially young adults and teenagers use those every year, they’re perfect if you’ve got more time than money.

> "free traveling across Germany for a month"

It's 3 months

No, it's 1 month (in a 3 month period):

> For 9 euros, you can travel throughout Germany on local/regional trains for a whole month in June, July or August.

You can buy one each month, though. Even of you just use it for metropolitan transit, it's super cheap. My monthly pass (reduced because it only valid after 9 am so commuters have to pay more) costs 75 EUR. A single ticket ist 2.80. This is a good deal in almost any scenario where you take and applicable train.

> so commuters have to pay more

or start later...

Sure I can do that as a self employed Programmer, but typically employees don't get to pick their work hours. Most commuters have to be in the office by 9 a.m.

My point was only that the 75 EUR is already a price reduced monthly ticket.

Pro-tip: buy three tickets!

From the linked page:

> The 9-Euro-Ticket is available in the period from 1 June 2022 to 31 August 2022.

> It is valid for one calendar month, from 00:00 on the 1st until 24:00 on the 30th/31st.

If you’re not only doing it for getting from A to B but also for the journey and have time, this can be a great deal.

Even if you really want to get to B, it’s more adventurous and cheaper than taking a direct train.

I can easily see teenagers or pensioners use this to backpack through Germany for a month. Even if you don’t know whether you’ll like it, it’s cheap enough to give it a try.

But if you travel across Germany you still likely want to use public transportation at the place where you come from/go to. Especially in inner cities using car can be a problem, parking can be very limited and/or very expensive. The ticket is cheaper then a 4x-rabat-bundle of "one way single trip" tickets in Berlin and Berlin is by far not the most expensive city wrt. local public transportation.

So even then it's a good deal.

The "traveling across Germany" advertisement is less about "you want to get to place B as far as possible" but more about "you want to travel and see a lot of places eventually ending up at place B" something the DB believes students like to do (if you look at other ads or thinks like the "Quer durchs Land" ticket.

Anyway the ticket is mainly for people which use (or maybe now have to use) public transportation for daily usage (e.g. to/from work).

I.e. the people mostly profiting from it are the people which don't have a lot of money. Which is grate as they are also the people hardest hit by the increased costs of more or less everything.

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