Dear Violeta, It has been a little while since I last wrote you a postcard from one of my cross-border rail trips. But this week I took a little journey from Berlin to Szczecin / Stettin in West Pomerania in Poland, represented in the European Parliament by Bogusław Liberadzki – […]
I’ve discovered a few tricks to book extra cheap rail tickets in the past – I’ve explained the Eurostar Aachen trick, and how to split tickets in Germany, but now – thanks to a discussion on Twitter with @seatsixtyone and others, there is a new trick – involving Czech Republic […]
(this is part of my Rail Postcards to the Transport Commissioner series – you can find all the other postcards here) Dear Violeta, I’d hoped to not have to write another one of these postcards to you so soon after my last one. But things go wrong all too regularly […]
Dear Violeta, Today I am writing to you from Aachen, and I am not here for the Christmas Market. I am here because I am stuck due to the immense incompetence of European railways and the lack of basic collaboration between them in the interests of passengers. This story is going […]
The bad news from the timetable change in December was that Deutsche Bahn stopped all its night trains. The good news was that Austrian Railways (ÖBB) has taken over some of the routes under the new brand name NightJet. If you want some background on this change I was quoted […]
My parents live in Newport in South Wales. I live in Berlin. I am going home for Christmas, and so – on 27th December – I want to return to Berlin. All in one day. By train. If I wanted to do this in a few weeks’ time, it would […]
Dear Violeta, Have you ever changed trains in Baden Baden (in Baden-Württemberg between Freiburg (Breisgau) and Karlsruhe)? I guess not. It’s a pretty unlikely place to have to hop off a TGV and onto a ICE, but that’s what I had to do there today – because of yet another […]
Dear Violeta, It’s only a week or so since I wrote the last postcard to you. That one didn’t receive a response – perhaps you were too busy talking to the rail industry, rather than thinking of passengers’ needs? Anyway, today at Köln Hbf things went spectacularly wrong as happens […]
A couple of weeks ago Seat61 had the splash that booking cross-border France-Spain TGVs would cost you more on French language websites than anywhere else (Seat61’s news page here – you have to scroll down as he has no link to individual stories). After a bit of a furore that […]
Dear Violeta, I have had plenty of time to contemplate this postcard to you. Most of the day in fact, as I’ve wasted that long trying to get to the bottom of what ought to be a rather simple cross-border railway problem. Later this week – on Thursday 8th October […]
In 2009 the United Nations Climate Change Conference was held in Copenhagen. The UIC organised a special night train (pictured) for dignitaries to be able to get from Brussels to Copenhagen by rail – the Climate Express. By 2009 regular night trains to Brussels were already history, and in 2014 […]
Following the end of the Berlin – Wrocław EC Wawel (early December 2014), Frankfurt(Oder) – Poznań RegionalExpress trains (end December 2014), we now have the news that Dresden – Wrocław RegionalExpress trains will cease at the end of February 2015. News of this cancellation can be found here in Polish […]