This will be a thread about a 4 day #crossborderRail trip of me, @Akirakio and our daughter (5). We are travelling from Würzburg in Germany to Loulé in Portugal.
Will we manage to meet @jon in Lagos??
We start strong with an interlocking malfunction between Munich and Nuremberg, delaying the ICE we wanted to take to Frankfurt by more than an hour. We didn't follow the bad advice by the DB Information to just wait for the delayed train and took an earlier (also delayed) train instead.
1/X
We managed to catch the night train from Paris to Latour-de-Carol. Unfortunately, just 10 minutes after departure the train had to stop (and has now not been moving for 50 minutes) because of.... no idea! Neither us nor any other passenger in this wagon or those adjacent to it speak enough French to be able to understand the conductor's fast announcement over very bad quality speakers. This train is filled with international travelers and the staff only speaks French.
2/X
Day 2 of our trip. This post comes very late because we were without stable WiFi until now. We arrived with the night train in Latour de Carol with only about 2 hours of delay. Unfortunately, no trains were running toward Barcelona that day because of the strong rain. So instead, we had to take the bus. Train streak broken...
In the photo I'm wearing the #CrossBorderRail shirt from @jon merchandise shop: https://crosschannelrail.eu/about/merchandise
My wife is wearing one with the same logo in red (not in the photo).
It has to be said that this trip would not've been possible without the help of extremely friendly people along our way. Not only fellow passengers but also the people at the train station or the bus driver who went out of their way to help us. It was impossible to find anything about the current train situation online and we had to rely on the local word of mouth. It tremendously helped that we spoke the local language. This also allowed us to help other travelers who didn't.
4/X
Our trip was again interrupted in Barcelona. The good news: we hadn't booked any ticket because we were extremely late after 5 hours in the bus. The bad news: in spain, trains can be "full" and once they are, you cannot board them anymore. So there was no way for us to continue our trip to Zaragoza where we had our hotel booked. We are now stuck to spend the night in Barcelona. We will get up tomorrow morning at 5 to catch a connection to Zaragoza early enough to catch the train we booked.
5/X
Day 3 went better. We got up at 4:45 to catch a train from Barcelona to Zaragoza at 5:50 in the morning. It had taken 1.5 hours to book the bloody thing the night before. We had to type the passport number, phone and email of three passengers for about 10 times just to compare prices or to simply find out if a tariff is even available in the first place. You are only told the final price after entering payment information and then you start over from zero. You cannot have multiple tabs open
6/X
As we are waiting in Badajoz for our train to leave for Lisboa I have a question: people from #Spain, your main station are cathedrals. They are enormous, they are clean and shiny, they look modern and look powerful. I would love our train stations in Germany to be this impressive and spacious. But why are these huge stations in towns with 700k inhabitants like #Zaragoza empty like they are? I attached some images from Wikimedia which show what I saw. Why are there barely #trains or people?
@josch Oh, there are multiple explanations for that.
But the most common/strong explanation for most cities is that trains used to be a public service. That's why stations are so good.
But that was unacceptable for the right wing, so they removed most train lines to be able to say it is not a good service and it needed to be a private company service.
Now there are private companies deciding the train lines. And they are only interested in the most lucrative ones.
@josch There are plenty of trains Madrid-Barcelona or Sevilla-Madrid.
But the rest of the lines are... empty.
Also, speculation from right wing politics placed some stations in the middle of nowhere, making them a bit useless. Like:
@delawen @josch I feel that Spain has a "missing middle" in rail transport. Cercanías (commuter) services are heavily used in cities lucky enough to have a network (often the platforms are separate from the main station so you wouldn't see those people when travelling long distance). And a lot of people use high speed long distance services. But regional services are poor in many places, with long gaps between services, so many stations have few travellers to places, say, 25km-200km away.
@delawen @josch This means that while Spain has done quite well in developing rail as an alternative to flying, it often doesn't work well as an alternative to driving.
Also I guess the airline-style x-ray and ticket checks before boarding don't encourage people to hang around in the rest of the station. And vast expanses of concrete as in the Zaragoza photo don't encourage lingering in the Spanish climate.
@delawen @josch Indeed the high speed era has coincided with a large reduction in the number of stations (probably a bit later than similar cuts in some other European countries like Britain and Ireland). The province of Granada has gone from I think 28 passenger stations to 6 (and only Granada maybe Loja have worthwhile services).
There is also the problem of lines that were never built to start with, with the north and south coasts having poor to non existent connections along the coast.
Day 4: We are in the train from Badajoz (Spain) to Entroncamento (Portugal) and from there to Lisboa. First perfect train day on this trip maybe?
7/X
> First perfect train day on this trip maybe?
Haha as if... Our train departed 23 minutes late because we are waiting for a late train from Madrid... And we only will have 4 minutes to change to the next train in Entroncamento... 🙃
Will the train to Lisboa wait for us? Conductor was like: no te preocupes! :D
But: first time to show off our Portuguese IDs!
8/X
> Will the train to Lisboa wait for us?
Bad news: it did not.
Good news: it was late by 15 minutes.
So the new question becomes: will we catch the next train in Lisboa Oriente?
The wagons of this train are ancient. No electricity, no internet and ancient bathrooms...
9/X
This feels like back home in Germany. The fourth train today was *also* late (by 20 minutes) and since this is the last train toward our destination, chances are now high we are making it home tonight. *fingers crossed*
This train is really nice. So much space we feel like traveling first class. Perfect wifi (no captive portal??) and powerplugs everywhere. Now we can relax and enjoy the last 3 hours of our four day trip across central Europe.
10/X
This concludes our third #CrossBorderRail trip in 2026. In a few weeks we travel back from Portual to Germany. It has to be said that planning this trip was a multi-week effort by @Akirakio and a big financial risk. If we had been unlucky with train delays, we would've had to spend hundreds of EUR more on new train tickets and hotel costs.
We signed up for @erpu We wish it wouldn't take this much effort, money and experience to make such a trip. Lets help make European rail better!
11/11