Travel

Getting There

Railway Operators

The Danish DSB is by far the best rail company I've ever travelled with. Its second class cars are better than any first class around and its first class is more comfortable than most of the hotels i've visited!

Deutsche Bahn: their Verbindungenanfrage service is simply indispensable. To compensate, trying to get information or buy an international ticket at their stations is a federal pain in the arse.

After decades offering a very good service for a decent price, DB decided to do something with the problem of increasing demand for their services: since the begining of 2003, they decided to start EasyJet-style pricing, so as to deter potential travellers from using their trains unless they have bought their tickets weeks in advance. Kickbacks from Lufthansa and the auto industry not entirely ruled out, although Hanlon's Razor might suggest that they decided to decrease demand instead of increasing capacity.

Nederlandse Spoorwegen used to have a usable website, but when the severe brain-damage, `java enhanced' site went on-line on 1st Jan 2002, the only way to access it was though the spoorboekje.nl front-end (now extinct). Later on NS added a text-only version to the train information page, which (unless one knew the direct link) was originally only accessible to those using one of two particular browsers. Other shortcuts straight to the pages that have useful information: beperkt treinverkeer and storingen, although teletext is a much better option for the latter.

The Greek ΟΣΕ used to have a website listing the train schedules and fares, but without a search engine. Not a major problem, given how few trains they are running anyway. Since the beginning of 2003 however, they decided to upgrade their on-line services, so they took down the old site and simply put up an "under construction" page. Why the old site had to be taken down before finishing the new site remains one of life's little mysteries.

In any case, the new site came on-line in September 2003, complete with a search engine that does not perform any search: when asked to find a connection between two stations it offers a menu with all possible routes (no matter how insane) and then shows all the services for all legs of the trip without making any effort to find reasonable connections. Why didn't they just buy the hafas engine or (if they're that incompetent or cheap) just send all the timetables to db.de and link to them?

Other Railway companies:

poezda.net offer a timetable search engine for all CIS rail companies.
The EURail Pass
Index of European railway resources
Railway in the Balkans

Boats

Busses and Automobiles

Airplanes

Airlines: Tickets: Schiphol Airport
UK Public Transport Information

Being There

Misc

Last update: 10-1-2008
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