The Pleasure of Going Slowly: A Guide to Long-Distance Train Travel
While everyone else is sprinting to the gate, there is a different way to move through the world. Train journeys that take two days instead of two hours.
The flight from London to Istanbul takes 3.5 hours. The train takes 65 hours. I have done both. The flight deposited me in Istanbul with no memory of arriving — a kind of teleportation, efficient and utterly unmemorable. The train delivered me changed.
The Case for Train Travel
It is not merely about the destination. The journey itself is the content. Watching the landscape shift across three countries over two days gives you something no amount of time in the destination can replace: a sense of the connective tissue of geography, of where one culture becomes another, of how the light changes and the architecture changes and the language on signs changes in a gradual, comprehensible way.
On a plane, you leave one world and arrive in another. On a long train, you travel through the space between them.
Europe's Great Train Routes
The Orient Express corridor (Paris → Vienna → Budapest): Even on regular trains rather than the luxury service, this route delivers some of Europe's most cinematic railway landscapes. The Danube corridor outside Vienna is alone worth the trip.
The Caledonian Sleeper (London → Scottish Highlands): Sleep in London, wake in the Highlands. One of the genuinely magical rail experiences available in Britain. The combination of a proper sleeper berth and arriving to mountain light is extraordinary.
The Glacier Express (Zermatt → St. Moritz): Eight hours through the Swiss Alps, purpose-built for scenery. Not cheap, but the price of a plane ticket to see something you'd otherwise never see.
The Bernina Express (Chur → Tirano): A UNESCO World Heritage railway. The Landwasser Viaduct, seen from the train, is one of the great visual moments available to a traveller in Europe.
Practical Notes
- Book early for sleepers. European night train berths sell out months in advance, particularly in peak season. The Man in Seat 61 (seat61.com) is the essential resource for European rail booking.
- Bring food. Train dining cars are an experience worth having once, but expensive. A well-packed picnic is both better and more aligned with the spirit of the journey.
- Leave the earphones in your bag for at least half the journey. The sounds of a moving train — the rhythmic clatter, the announcements in languages you don't speak, the conversations around you — are part of the experience.
The destination is what you booked. The journey is what you'll remember.
