Buying train tickets in Venice. Photos by Tom Meyers

Two regular contributors to EuroCheapo respond to a good question posed on our blog.

Victor posted on March 11, 2010:

“Hi, three of us have planned a trip to Europe from 27th June 2010 to the 10th July 2010. Our itinerary will take us from London to Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, Venice, Vienna, Berlin and back to Paris and London.

We wish to travel extensively by rail. Please help us make a schedule that would enable us to touch all or most of the cities as planned above and at reasonably priced rates. We are all adults above 40 years of age and most likely do not qualify for any discounted fares. Please also inform us when and where rail bookings could be done in the UK. Thanks.”

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Reply from Susanne Kries and Nicky Gardner of hidden europe:

Hi Victor,

We cannot help you with all you ask, but we can venture a few comments that will perhaps inform your thinking, as you and your friends plan your journey. In responding to your question, we hope these thoughts will also be of broader interest to folk here on EuroCheapo.

The key thing here is to think very carefully quite what you and your two traveling companions want to get out of your upcoming journey. Is the journey the centrepiece or are your hearts set on getting to know the various cities you plan to visit? We rather sense the latter.

1. Too packed an itinerary

Europe is a lot larger than many outsiders imagine, and your itinerary touches only a small part of western Europe. You have fourteen days for your explorations (including your days of arrival in and departure from Europe). Let’s assume that you spend at least a couple of nights in London after flying in, and you want to be back in London on the eve of your departure. That brings the time available for the round trip through continental Europe down to ten nights.

Taking the fastest trains, your itinerary from London to Rome and back (as specified) would take 75 hours. Are you really thinking of spending six or seven hours every single day on trains? If you use slower night trains, you can sleep from one city to the next, but your 75 hours travel becomes closer to 100 hours.

Our view is that this could so easily turn out to be the trip from hell. Of course, you could use night trains for some legs, but you are still spending much time travelling. At the pace you propose you have only one day to see some cities. Yes, that is do-able, but how much can you see in that time?

Let’s take an example. You could leave your hotel in Rome before 7 AM and be in the middle of Venice in time for lunch. You could sightsee in Venice for the afternoon, and catch a night train at 9 PM direct to Vienna. You would be in the middle of Vienna by 9 AM next morning – great if like us you sleep very well on night trains. But if you don’t sleep perfectly, you could arrive shattered and it’ll be too early to be able to check into a hotel.

The sequence in which you have ordered the cities is very sensible, but the entire itinerary is too condensed. Over a couple of months it could be fun. Packed into a few days, it might become an ordeal. You could possibly shift Amsterdam towards the end as it could easily be accommodated en route from Berlin to London, assuming you had no real wish or need to go back through Paris a second time. So the home stretch back to London would now look as follows:

Berlin to Amsterdam: 7 hrs by day (with one train change en route at Amersfoot)
Amsterdam to London: 5 hrs by day (with one change at Bruxelles Midi)

Moving Amsterdam to later in the sequence then frees you up to take the Palatino night train direct from Paris to Rome. Departure is around 6 PM each day. Lovely train – you can enjoy dinner on board as the countryside south of Paris slips by outside the window. It is a super way to spend a summer evening.

Bear in mind that our aggregate travel figure is time on the actual trains. Add in transfers in each city from hotel to train and vv, and your time for sightseeing is even more eaten up by travelling.

Our feeling is that each city on your list deserves a week – not just a few hours. At the very least, you need two full non-travel days in each city just to begin to scrape the surface. That implies three nights in each city. With the time you have you could perhaps pack in three cities on the continent (ie. apart from London) but surely not more.

2. What kind of Europe

Europe is a continent of countryside and small towns. The places you propose to visit are busy, cosmopolitan, and (dare we say) much favoured by international tourists. They are spots you can be sure of finding Starbucks, crushed ice and waiters who speak English.

But there is another Europe – the Europe favoured by many Europeans. If you could throw in a dose of small town Europe, you would find out so much more about our continent, our lives and our varied cultures. And if you are to travel so fast, then it is easier to get the flavour of a country in a smaller place. Better Bergamo than Rome; better Potsdam, Görlitz or Quedlinburg than Berlin; better Shaftesbury, Lavenham or Cambridge than London.

Why not drop some big cities in favour of smaller places? Relax. Take time and watch the sun set behind the mountains in the Alps. Less might be more.

3. Advance booking is the way to deep discounts

You suggest that you may not qualify for any discounted fare. This is not the case. Anyone in Europe can qualify for a discounted fare.

Let us take Vienna to Berlin as an example, using the only direct trains that link the two cities. These all run via Prague and Dresden (yes… more temptations Victor, we know, for now you’ll surely want to pack in an afternoon in each of those two cities as well).

If you just pitch up in Vienna and buy the Berlin ticket on the day (and that is always possible), the regular one-way fare is €117. If you purchase the ticket well in advance (we always recommend 10 to 12 weeks), then you can ride the same route on the same trains for €29. Even with the cheapest fares, you can still break your journey (in Prague, Dresden or anywhere else on the way), but you have to specify that at the time of booking. With the full fare you do not need to pre-specify stopovers.

If you book slightly in advance, say just a week or two before travel, you will still get a ticket for way less than €117, but it will no longer be €29. For a midweek off-peak day, booked a week in advance, you might pay €49. For a peak summer travel day, you might pay €99. But chances are that you will still get a discount.

But it is not as if students or seniors can somehow get privileged access to the rock bottom €29 fare. You can secure the most heavily discounted fares if you book well in advance. Advance booking is the key to cheap travel – not age.

4. Night train fares and the Eurail pass

If you take our suggestion above of using the Palatino train from Paris to Rome, bear in mind the fares structure. We give this as just one further example of how much fares can vary. That run can cost as little as €76 per person if booked in advance (using the Artesia Depart+Go fare). Or as much as €265 each if you book at short notice and opt for the highest class of accommodation (ie. sole occupancy of a sleeper compartment).

Be wary of rail passes sold outside Europe. If you are doing a very packed itinerary, spending hours each day on trains, they may be great value. But check the small print. For many routes they may not offer entirely free travel.

Let’s go back to our Artesia example above, using the Palatino night train from Paris to Rome. Book now, and as we said you could get tickets for €76. If you have a rail pass that includes either France or Italy, you might imagine you would ride for free. But actually not – a Eurailpass valid in France or Italy will give you a €6 discount on the €76 Depart+Go fare. So you pay €70 in all.

5. More information and booking

Web sites are great for travel planning, and you can book most or even all these tickets online now – even before you leave the US. We would advise that, rather than waiting (as you imply in your question) until you arrive in the UK to book tickets. 

And remember that the best deals will always be on the websites run by the rail operators - not those run by agents outside Europe. To get the best from those websites, use the native language versions of them.

Once your exact itinerary is clear we can advise you the best site to book each leg. You could end up using such a variety of services, that you might be looking to a mix of train companies for your bookings: Eurostar, DB, Thalys, Artesia, SNCF, Trenitalia, SBB, ÖBB and more besides.

With a packed itinerary like this, and so many trains, there will surely be a hitch or two along the way. In such cases, there is no substitute for a printed timetable – and it is good at the planning phase too. We suggest you purchase the current (ie. March 2010) issue of the Thomas Cook European Rail Timetable. Details are available on the Thomas Cook website. That will be a great asset in planning.

You might also consider getting the June issue in due course too – just to ensure that the schedules you have with you on the actual journey are bang up-to-date.

6. Apologia

So, Victor, we fear we have not answered your questions quite as you would have wished. But we hope that in these words there is something that will assist you in your travel planning. We wish you and your two traveling companions a fun time as you journey through Europe.

Susanne and Nicky run a Berlin-based editorial bureau that supplies text and images to media across Europe. Together they edit hidden europe magazine. You can read more of their writing in their regular e-brief and in the Notes section on their website.

Popularity: 2% [?]

By Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries—

Travelling around Europe, we are so often struck how the start dates advertised by new transportation operators are all too frequently hopelessly optimistic. On the whole, Europe’s rail companies are pretty good when it comes to sticking exactly to what they say in their pre-launch publicity. But airlines and ferries much less so, for the late delivery of a first aircraft or ship to a new venture can so easily lead to delays.

Over-optimism on the part of a new venture’s promoters, difficulties in securing regulatory approval, and under-capitalization are all potential pitfalls for which even the most lavish PR show cannot compensate. Some ventures never get going at all. Air Vardar, Air Maxi, and GetJet are just three of many European airlines that went bust before having flown a single revenue flight.

Planning your trip to Europe

So, as Cheapos plan their spring and summer travels around Europe, it is just worth checking on carrier details. If your itinerary relies critically on a new air or ferry route in its opening week or two of operation, just be aware that all may not go absolutely according to plan.

And if a flight or sailing is canceled, while the operator will usually quickly refund your fare, you may be left with a gaping hole in your travel schedule that can only be filled at very high cost. Those cheap promotional fares on offer from a wannabe airline or start-up ferry company may look great on paper, but if the venture folds or the launch is postponed, you may rue the day you opted for the new kid on the block.

Even well established carriers are not immune to such start up problems. In late 2008, Ryanair was due to launch a new Edinburgh base, but just a fortnight before starting a raft of new routes from the Scottish capital, delays in aircraft delivery forced the Irish carrier to defer its Edinburgh launch by six weeks.

False Starts: Two topical examples

This week has seen a few false starts as some carriers were just a shade too optimistic in their plans for new services. We mention just two here, by way of example. Fastnet Line announced that its new ferry link from Ireland to Wales would debut on March 1, 2010 - St David’s Day, always a treat in Wales. That was deferred after a last-minute glitch.

Some companies really specialize in false starts. Would-be ferry operator Euroferries has confidently promoted its claim to be the leading fast ferry operator on the English Channel. The company does not actually own a single vessel. Euroferries was due to debut on the Ramsgate (England) to Boulogne (France) route in March 2009, but has thrice delayed its start date since. Press reports late last year suggested that Euroferries would eventually set sail on March 1, 2010, and the publication of a timetable effective March 1 on the company’s website gave credence to those reports. But March 1 has come and gone without any ferry operations.

The bottom line

So the moral of this tale is that the misplaced optimism of others can all too easily wreck a traveler’s best laid plans. Check, check, and check again. And on the eve of departure try and ascertain if the service really will start as planned. It is often best to check by phone, as companies needing to postpone a launch are often slow in updating their websites. Bad news spreads too quickly on the internet.

Susanne and Nicky run a Berlin-based editorial bureau that supplies text and images to media across Europe. Together they edit hidden europe magazine. You can read more of their writing in their regular e-brief and in the Notes section on their website.

Popularity: 2% [?]

The town of Lübeck, not far from Hamburg. Photo by lokenrc.

By Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries—

It has become fashionable for minor airports across Europe to seek prominence through association with major cities that are often many miles away. And airlines that serve these minor airports, largely because of their cheaper landing fees, are happy to join in the game.

Exploring Allgäu from “Munich West”

Canny Cheapos know that Germany’s Frankfurt Hahn airport is nowhere near Frankfurt. Likewise, one discount airline has now decided that the name “Memmingen Allgäu” airport just does not have the necessary appeal, so styles the airport “Munich West”—slightly to the surprise of folk locally who are all too well aware that their regional airport is not near Munich at all.

The cachet of a big city name has become important. So much so that it obscures the fact that the communities which lie on the very doorstep of those airports are interesting destinations in themselves. The name “Munich West” is misleading, and hides the fact that the Allgäu region, so close to the airport, is a stunning area of Germany well worth visiting.

Discovering lesser known gems in Germany, Italy, and beyond

Girona Airport. Photo: Lorentey

But as airlines and airports create their own mysterious cartographic realities, sensible travellers exploit these secondary airports to visit spots that really are well served by them.

If you fly to what Wizz Air or Ryanair euphemistically call “Hamburg-Lübeck” airport, you will land a long way from Hamburg but happily very close to Lübeck. The medieval center of one of northern Germany’s most historic and engaging towns is just an eight minute train ride away from the airport (which has its own rail station).

And the same argument holds for other secondary airports across Europe. If you are bound for Barcelona, don’t be seduced by the publicity that suggests that Barcelona Girona Airport is close to Barcelona. It is not! But Girona, just twenty minutes away on the bus, is really worth a visit in its own right. It boasts a particularly well preserved medieval Jewish quarter.

Few of those who jet into Orio al Serio airport near Bergamo, Italy have any intention of visiting Bergamo, just a ten minute bus ride from the airport. No, the airlines market the airport for its rather remote proximity to Milan. Yet Bergamo is an absolute gem, and for first-time visitors to Italy an infinitely better introduction to the country than Milan.

Exploit the system

So does anyone really fly to Frankfurt-Hahn on purpose? Well, they should. The out-of-the-way airport, utterly inconvenient for Frankfurt, is just ten miles east of the most beautiful stretch of Germany’s Moselle Valley.

For those in the know, the wayward cartographic fictions of Europe’s discount airlines throw up a few unusual travel opportunities.

Susanne and Nicky run a Berlin-based editorial bureau that supplies text and images to media across Europe. Together they edit hidden europe magazine. You can read more of their writing in their regular e-brief and in the Notes section on their website.

Popularity: 4% [?]

The Maltese capital, Valletta. Photos © hidden europe.

By Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries—

Combing through old posts here on the EuroCheapo blog, we were surprised to notice that more than half the countries and territories in Europe have hardly had a mention. Among the lacunae are the Mediterranean outposts of Malta and Gibraltar.

Malta is of course a sovereign country. Tiny Gibraltar, by comparison, is one of those little political oddities, a relict of Britain’s colonial adventures, that has its own parliament and generally administers its own affairs. And like Malta, Gibraltar is part of the European Union.

A thin veneer of Englishness

Malta and Gibraltar both pack a few surprises. Folks jet in from other parts of Europe and expect Cockney voices or fish and chips; a dash of England with the big plus of more sunshine. And in truth, tourist-oriented businesses in both Malta and Gibraltar do pander to just such expectations.

But you only need to scrape below the surface of either to find that neither Gibraltar nor Malta have more than a thin veneer of Englishness. Both have their own distinctive languages, a reminder that British efforts to impose their own language on these communities were not entirely successful.

Malta is noted for its fabulous old-fashioned buses.

An intriguing ethnic mix

Many visitors to Malta who have Middle East experience comment that Maltese sounds uncannily like Arabic, and they are not far off the mark. Maltese is closely related to Arabic. Gibraltarians speak Llanito, which draws heavily on Spanish but also has words of Arabic, Hebrew, English and Genoese Ligurian origin.

Culturally, both Malta and Gibraltar are an intriguing mix, each community reflecting the respective patterns of migration that have underpinned the development of the two territories. Who ever would have guessed, for example, that Gibraltar has a thriving Jewish community? Or that the threads of Armenian life are alive and well in Malta?

Malta and Gibraltar are both incredibly interesting places to visit and linger, and more in spite of their historic links with Britain than because of those connections.

One of our favorite travel writers, Jan Morris, has written a novel called Hav about a fictitious port in the Mediterranean. Ms Morris certainly had somewhere much further east in mind when she imagined Hav (and in truth, her chimerical Hav, which has a rather Levantine demeanor, enjoyed direct trains from Russia). Yet there is just a hint of Hav as you wander the alleys of the Maltese capital Valletta or explore the backstreets that cling to the west side of the Rock of Gibraltar.

Susanne and Nicky run a Berlin-based editorial bureau that supplies text and images to media across Europe. Together they edit hidden europe magazine. You can read more of their writing in their regular e-brief and in the Notes section on their website.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Kaliningrad's South Station. Photo © hidden europe.

By Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries—

It is almost time for us to put down our quill pens and leave the scriptorium for the last time this year. Three weeks of quiet retreat are in the offing, a chance for us to recharge our batteries and plan a few journeys for 2010. So a good moment, perhaps, to look back and see what 2009 meant for travel in Europe.

We have over the past twelve months spent time in and reported from some twenty countries across Europe. The year has seen a lot of changes. We are pleased to see some governments across Europe beginning to levy heftier taxes on aviation, and we hope that 2010 will see more following in their wake. Higher plane fares within Europe will be a big incentive to encourage more responsible traveling. Britain has taken a welcome lead in this. We applaud the decision in Scotland to subsidize ferry fares on longer routes to the Hebrides - another important step in encouraging travelers to think twice before hopping on a plane.

Over the past year, travelers have benefited from Switzerland joining the Schengen group of nations and Slovakia adopting the euro. Iceland’s financial misfortunes in late 2008, with a slump in the value of the Icelandic króna, suddenly made the island nation much more attractive for travelers from North America and mainland Europe. In ailing economies in eastern Europe, and particularly in the Baltic States, tourism has been a key element in the fragile recovery now underway.

New travel opportunities

Citizens of some Balkan states are today much less well traveled than their parents. But that looks set to change with the new European Union visa regulations that came into effect last weekend, ushering in a more relaxed visa regime for visitors to the EU from Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia. For Serbia, this is a tangible reward from the EU to the Belgrade government for playing the great game of European integration. Olive branches from Brussels are being offered to Minsk too, and we predict that 2010 will surely see some thawing of the relations between Belarus and the EU. That will perhaps in time make life easier for travelers bound for Belarus, which remains one of Europe’s most inaccessible and yet most intriguing countries.

Rail links and politics

A new train service would not normally be greeted as a major diplomatic event, but when the new service links Serbia with Bosnia via Croatia then folk do take notice. The Belgrade to Sarajevo route was severed during the conflicts of the nineties. Now it is back, with a very welcome once daily train from the Serbian to the Bosnian capital. The new service started in mid-December.

If train services are a mark of political cooperation, then we must mourn the demise of one of Europe’s key night train links - the daily service from Berlin to Kaliningrad. It ran for the last time ten days ago. The withdrawal of this train now leaves Russia’s Baltic exclave at Kaliningrad even more isolated.

Airlines that left the skies

Finally, a thought for all the staff and passengers affected by over a dozen airline bankruptcies in Europe in 2009. Casualties included the national flag carriers of Lithuania (FlyLAL) and Macedonia (MAT); discount carriers such as Sky Europe, Fly Globespan, and My Air; and niche carriers serving particular markets such as Sky South and KD Avia (with hubs at Shoreham and Kaliningrad respectively).

We shall be back next month, but meanwhile warm best wishes for the holidays from us both.

Susanne and Nicky run a Berlin-based editorial bureau that supplies text and images to media across Europe. Together they edit hidden europe magazine. You can read more of their writing in their regular e-brief and in the new Notes section on their website.

Popularity: 5% [?]

A train in Görlitz, Germany on one of the routes featured in the book.

By Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries in Berlin—

What train routes might make it into a list of Europe’s greatest train journeys?

The book that inspires us to ask this question is published next month by Time Out Guides Ltd. Great Train Journeys of the World is edited by Andrew Eames who pulled together a team of leading luminaries on rail travel to write the book. (Full disclosure: Andrew was good enough to ask us to contribute prose and images for a number of routes across Europe.)

The routes: Classic long-distance and branch lines

Europe makes a good showing in this global compendium of journeys worth making. Of course the book includes many classic itineraries such as the Trans-Siberian and the posh tourist train Orient Express. But the joy of the volume is the neat way in which unexpected tiddlers are pushed into the limelight. For example, the book includes a rural run through the Cévennes area of southern France, a branch line that crisscrosses the border between Germany and Poland, a rural route in Catalunya, and a line that cuts through the heart of the Bosnian countryside.

This is not just a book for train buffs. It is pitched at the general reader who is looking for hints about journeys that might be worth taking. Some cutting-edge European express trains are celebrated for their speed, such as the Eurostar link from London to Paris, Germany’s ICE services, the TGV in France and the AVE routes in Spain.

But the lure of Europe’s greatest rail journeys is not generally in their speed, but in the way that trains trundle through the countryside both by day and by night. The book has a little Hungarian rhapsody in an account of a 12-hour journey by day that takes in four European capitals, and a Highland fling with a super essay on the Caledonian Sleeper night train from London to the Scottish Highlands.

A firm favorite: the Caledonian Sleeper to Fort William

Editor Andrew Eames comments in the book that the night train from London to Fort William in Scotland (often dubbed “The Deerstalker”) was the service that every one of the two dozen authors really wanted to write about - no matter how many times they had taken the train before. In the end, Eames himself wrote about that particular journey.

Bargain berths, too

Rail travel on some of Europe’s classic rail routes need not be impossibly expensive. Some of the journeys in the book are brief and cost no more than a few euros. And bargain berths on that overnight train to the Scottish Highlands can still be booked for dates later in 2009 for as little as 39 pounds sterling - all inclusive in the comfort of a sleeping car with crisp linen sheets.

Susanne Kries and Nicky Gardner are based in Berlin and write regularly for EuroCheapo. They contributed to “Great Train Journeys of the World” with articles and pics on rail routes in central Europe and Scandinavia. Nicky and Susanne are editors of hidden europe magazine, about which you can find out more on www.hiddeneurope.co.uk.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Nature galore in Iceland’s wilderness. Photos © hidden europe.

By Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries in Berlin—

Where has Iceland been of late? There has been hardly a mention here on EuroCheapo in 2009 of the island nation that has, over the last year, been through greater financial turmoil than any other country in Europe. The plummeting Icelandic króna has wrought havoc across Iceland, as businesses struggle to cope with mounting debt and the country faces unprecedented levels of unemployment.

But Iceland’s woe comes with a silver lining: travellers and visitors to Iceland now get twice as many krónur for their dollar or euro as they did this time last year. Who knows, perhaps 2010 really will be the year when the Iceland stopover - a mainstay of transatlantic travel in the 70s - comes back into fashion.

To Iceland by Plane

Icelandair is already gearing up for a mini-boom with new North American and European routes coming on line. Six weeks ago, the airline added Seattle to its list of US destinations, and next spring will up its frequency on that new route from the Pacific Northwest to Reyjavík. On August 27, Icelandair returned to Glasgow after a gap of many years, and in 2010 the airline will pull Brussels into its network for the first time.

Maritime Adventure: Our trip on the Norröna

Smyril Line's ship Norröna.

But Europeans are not beholden to airlines to get them to Iceland, and some prefer to travel by ship. And a growing number of canny travellers from North America are realising that there is a smart way of getting to mainland Europe via Iceland which combines flying with a dash of maritime adventure.

The Norröna, a seductively comfortable vessel operated by Faroese shipping company Smyril Line, does a sterling job in transporting provisions from Denmark to the Faroe Islands and Iceland. On its southbound journey back to Denmark, the ship is full of fresh fish bound for the continent’s fish markets. But the Norröna is no grimy freighter, and passengers are very welcome aboard. The company operates from Easter to early October on the Iceland to Denmark route and year round on the link from the Faroe Islands to Denmark. One way fares from Iceland to mainland Europe start at €125.

A Cruise with a Difference

The Norröna is socially a very interesting ship. On our journey back from Iceland this week, our fellow passengers on the Norröna included a fair number of Faroese families returning from short visits to Iceland, off-road driving fiends from Italy, the Czech Republic, and Germany who had tested their 4WDs with the very worst that Icelandic roads could offer, students from Iceland and the Faroes travelling to Denmark for the start of the new college year, and a fair few folk who were just there for the ride.

The sort of Europeans who might normally never think of taking a cruise find in the Norröna something distinctly different - the chance to spend a week on a regular working ship, mixing with the locals in a way that never features on cruises. One never quite knows what diversions might occur on the Norröna. This week, as the ship cruised through the northernmost islands in the Faroes, the Norröna took part in a practice air-sea rescue exercise—a reminder that the vessel operates in lonely waters that are often as turbulent as the Icelandic economy has been this past year.

About the authors: Susanne Kries and Nicky Gardner are regular contributors to EuroCheapo and together edit hidden europe magazine.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Norwegian Air Shuttles from Warsaw to Malaga? Photo by Valter Jacinto

By Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries in Berlin—

The liberalization of air traffic across Europe has created some improbable flight patterns and routes in recent years. As such, it always pays to learn more about major and smaller air carriers and their proposed routes. After all, the flag an airline flies no longer dictates which route it serves. Norwegian Air Shuttle, for example, now offers a year-round service on the Warsaw (Poland) to Málaga (Spain) route.

Here’s a quick look at some improbable routes making “airwaves” in Europe:

Lufthansa from Milan, Italy

The German national carrier, Lufthansa, offers plenty of flights from Milan to Germany. No surprise there. But the German airline has this year also launched non-stop services from Milan’s Malpensa airport to Rome, London, Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, Budapest, and Bucharest.

Why? Alitalia’s financial troubles encouraged non-Italian airlines to enter the Italian market and Lufthansa didn’t waste a moment in establishing its Milan base. With similar intent, the Austrian carrier Air A!ps has been trying its luck on Italian domestic routes, operating a hub out of Perugia airport.

Lufthansa connects Milan to Europe. Photo by caribb

Aer Lingus at London Gatwick

The Irish carrier Aer Lingus, still jealously guarding its independence from avaricious Ryanair, has this year developed a very visible presence at London’s Gatwick Airport. Aer Lingus now offers direct service from Gatwick to a dozen non-Irish destinations including Munich, Vienna, Vilnius, and Bucharest.

Air Berlin in Spain

An unlikely dominant carrier on the Spanish island of Mallorca is not a Spanish airline at all, but Air Berlin, which this winter offers non-stop flights from Palma de Mallorca to more than a dozen other Spanish airports alone, not to mention a galaxy of direct links to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Portugal.

True devotees of utterly improbable flights in Europe can fly with Syrian Arab Airlines from Berlin to Vienna or opt for Kuwait Airways as an unusual carrier for a non-stop flight from Paris to Rome.

Know how to go

Finding out about these unusual air routes is not always easy. Who would have guessed that Air Malta would offer direct flights from Catania airport in Sicily to Geneva, Munich, or London?

The timetables published on airport websites are a good source of information, but for a comprehensive guide to all scheduled air routes the undoubted authority is the subscription-based OAG service. Those reluctant to splash out on an OAG subscription can find some decent listings at the Alternative Airlines website.

About the authors: Susanne Kries and Nicky Gardner are regular contributors to EuroCheapo and together edit hidden europe magazine.

Popularity: 11% [?]

The station at Schaanwald in Liechtenstein. Photos © hidden europe.

By Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries—

Remember George Dubya? Here in Europe he is still revered as a remarkable pioneer in “alphabetical tourism.”

After all, during his first-ever visit to Europe in June 2001, the presidential itinerary featured Spain, Sweden and Slovenia - or perhaps it was Slovakia. Even Dubya himself was a shade uncertain, but he did a grand job in covering up his doubts.

From Vaduz to Vilnius

In any case, given the fact that most visitors to Europe have only the haziest notion about their intended destinations, alphabetical tourism makes perfect sense. The Netherlands and Norway one year, Poland and Portugal the next.

For urban types, the principal of alphabetical tourism can be extended to capital cities. Tallinn and Tirana find themselves nicely allied as travel partners. And the letter V throws up an improbable handful of desirable spots: Vaduz, Valletta, Vatican City, Vienna, and Vilnius (which if visited in a single long trip, would reveal a peculiarly Catholic Europe).

Think L: Liechtenstein and Luxembourg

For “first timers” to Europe we really think “L” is the place to start. Latvia, Lithuania, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg make up the perfect foursome for Europe novices.

Latvia and Lithuania are an object lesson in just how different neighbouring states can be. And Liechtenstein and Luxembourg are among the most perfect countries on the entire continent, both heaving with interest, yet each small enough that the visitor can have a sense of coming to grips with the issues of culture, identity, and language that make up nationhood.

We happen to be great fans of both Liechtenstein and Luxembourg, and were in both countries only last month. If there were an award for the countries on the planet with the finest public transport, it would be shared by Liechtenstein and Luxembourg. Amazing bus services, and in both countries you can travel for a pittance across the entire national bus network (in each case it is just €4 for a one-day ticket).

Trains, too!

The Princesse Marie-Astrid approaches Wasserbillig in Luxembourg.

And both countries have trains, too. Who ever would have thought that Luxembourg could boast more than sixty train stations? Tiny Liechtenstein packs a punch with four train stations, including at Schaanwald, one of the most handsome little station buildings in the Alps. And, what’s more, it’s a border station–the first stop on the line from Austria after the train crosses the Liechtenstein border.

It is too easy to write off Europe’s small countries as undeserving of a visit. We beg to differ. Liechtenstein and Luxembourg are both perfectly formed, and each country deserves a thorough exploration. There are few better European days than listening to cowbells in the Liechtenstein Alps above Vaduz or cruising up the River Moselle in Luxembourg on the Princesse Marie-Astrid.

So if you don’t know Europe from A to Z, think L. It’s as good a place as any to embark on alphabetical tourism. And from there it is an easy hop to M for next year’s tour, with a neat fivesome: Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, and Montenegro.

About the authors: Susanne Kries and Nicky Gardner are regular contributors to EuroCheapo and together edit hidden europe magazine. They live in Berlin. hidden europe 27 has just been published and contains articles on Italy, Georgia, Vienna, Switzerland and more. Have a look at the table of contents.

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A Deutsche Bahn train in Berlin's main station. Photo by hidden europe.

By Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries—

Okay, we’ve said it before, but we’ll gladly say it again. Have Cheapos realised just how much rail fares in Europe can vary according to where you purchase your tickets?

We took a day out from our regular work with hidden europe magazine last week and conjured up a tempting palette of trips criss-crossing the continent. And then we compared the ticket prices on a national rail website (that of the Deutsche Bahn) with the prices offered for those journeys by rail ticketing agents based in Britain and North America. We took care to ensure that the tickets we purchased were in every case for exactly the same trains.

So a straight comparison, comparing like-with-like. Same class of travel, same comfy seat, same scenery slipping by outside the window – for all five routes in our basket of European rail trips.

The five routes we tested

1. Berlin to London single (by day, depart after 9:00 AM, any route) on September 3: one adult, 2nd class.
2. Amsterdam to Salzburg single (by day, no more than one change of train) on July 14: one adult, 1st class.
3. London to Cologne via Brussels single (depart at 8:00 AM or later) on September 10: one adult, 2nd class.
4. Berlin to Zagreb single via Hamburg (2 night stop) and Munich (2 night stop) on August 20: one adult, any class.
5. Nuremberg to Dresden same day return (direct trains only) on June 20 for a family of five, 2nd class.

For each of these five journeys, we thought that the German Railways (viz. Deutsche Bahn) website at www.bahn.de would offer some reasonable fare advice, and so it did. Indeed, all five journeys could be booked online through their website.

Then we turned to agents selling rail tickets in North America and Britain to get quotes for precisely the same journeys. This was done first by online research, often followed up by telephone calls to check precise details.

The results

And guess what? The leading agencies specializing in European rail tickets always charged at least twice as much as would the Deutsche Bahn for exactly the same journey.

The key point here is that in most of Europe, rail operators have a whole raft of special promotional fares that massively undercut the regular tariffs (often with discount of more than 80% on the standard fare). But agents rarely offer those discounted fares, preferring to safeguard their hefty commission fees by selling only the full fare.

Comparing the fares

Now take a look at how those fares compared. Listed below are the Deutsche Bahn (DB) fares that were available for purchase around midday of Friday, June 12, 2009 followed by the cheapest fare quoted the same day by a leading North American or British agent (all sterling and dollar fares have been converted to euros just to make things clearer).

1. Berlin to London (2nd class) DB: €49 / Agent Fare: €209
2. Amsterdam to Salzburg (1st class) DB: €79 / Agent Fare: €255
3. London to Cologne (2nd class) DB: €49 / Agent Fare: €106
4. Berlin to Zagreb with stops in Hamburg and Munich (2nd class) DB: €29 / Agent Fare: €322
5. Nuremberg to Dresden day return for family of 5 (2nd class) DB: €37 / Agent Fare: €705

Helpful advice?

We found one leading British agent who was extremely helpful on the phone, going to some lengths to suggest that for certain routes it might be wiser to get the tickets from a German source (but declining to give the specific name of the company or website).

A well-known North American agent emphasized that their dollar fares on offer would undercut anything we might purchase in Europe – a claim which is patently undermined by the results of our survey. The North American agent suggested that a rail pass might be a better bet for some of our journeys, and hinted that we would encounter a range of problems if we attempted to purchase directly from the Deutsche Bahn website.

Booking tickets in advance

The reality is that booking train tickets on www.bahn.de is pretty easy, even without a knowledge of German. The site has a decent English language interface, though in some instances you will find additional functionality on the German language website.

Also, it really helps to have a good knowledge of European patterns of service and railway geography. A good place to start is by studying the latest edition of the Thomas Cook European Rail Timetable and the same company’s Rail Map of Europe.

Booking well in advance is often the key to finding cheap fares, but our research found that plenty of discounted promotional fares are still available for travel this summer. And we did not cast around trying to dig up the cheapest possible travel dates, having fixed our palette of routes and travel dates before embarking on our research. If you would like the see the full results of our survey, just click here.

And, oh yes, just in case you were wondering, we were paid not a cent by the Deutsche Bahn to publish this!

About the authors: Susanne Kries and Nicky Gardner are regular contributors to EuroCheapo and together edit hidden europe magazine. They live in Berlin.

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