You shouldn't be flying. I shouldn't be flying. We all know that. Which would explain why, recently, the British media has enthusiastically bought into the idea of international train travel as a realistic and relaxing alternative.
All you need is a laptop, a credit card, The Man In Seat 61 and, a few days later, you too can be waking, refreshed, as your night-train pulls into Berlin; or enjoying splendid Alpine views as you make your way to Milan. Or so the Sunday supplement version goes.
To an extent, I'm on board with all this. Four years ago, I decided to limit the number of times I would fly each year to one transatlantic flight, or two within Europe. Admittedly, this was driven as much by fear as a desire to live greenly. At the time, I hated getting on the big metal death bird in the sky. The idea of the train as a far more authentic and civilised - not to mention non-lethal - mode of travel was seductive.
The reality, however, is more complex. You see more of the world, for sure, but that is a mixed blessing. I now know that the Hamburg-Copenhagen rail-ferry is a splendid way to travel between the two, but also that Belgian train stations are some of the bleakest in Europe. Similarly, whilst I smiled at one American's startled reaction to Prague's dated but perfectly adequate main station - "Oh my God," she howled, "It's like a third world country." - sat, later, in a cramped, stuffy compartment, on a rackety old bit of rolling stock, I had to admit that this was no way to reach Munich in style.
This year, particularly, has brought the excitement and limitations of train travel into sharp contrast. A planned trip to America, with no internal flights, was nixed after discovering it would take three days (!) to travel from New York to San Francisco. Then there was a nine-hour odyssey from Manchester to Amsterdam which - booking, admittedly, two rather than three months in advance - ended up costing £150pp, plus the cost of a return ticket to London. I could have flown from Liverpool for 30 quid.
A recent trip taking in Lisbon, Madrid and Barcelona was similarly ridiculous. Booking online was a non-starter. There is an English language version, but after much swearing at a laptop, I had to abandon Renfe's website (notoriously user-unfriendly according to a Spanish contact), and book through their London office. In the meantime, I'd missed the discounted advance and e-ticket deals, which meant a cabin on the Lisbon-Madrid night-train cost £170 for two.
Night-train: it's an evocative phrase, isn't it? Less so stood on Lisbon's dull, modern Santa Apolonia station at 10pm on a Friday night. No-one is ever going to set Brief Encounter here, nor mistake a Renfe Trenhotel for the Orient Express.
Sure, the welcome is warm and efficient in that easy, multilingual way so alien to the British, and the cabin, if a little faded, was spick and span, and a feat of capsule engineering allows you to stow two hefty suitcases more easily than you might think. You even get a little complimentary bag of Renfe toiletries. However, stood in the empty, lifeless bar, nursing a Super Bock, enveloped in the inky blackness of the surrounding countryside at night, it would be a perverse traveller indeed who saw this as a highpoint of a holiday.
Not that you're here to party, of course, you're here to sleep, or try to. I managed about two hours in a nine-hour journey. Hard bed, noisy train, multiple stops, the bizarre sensation of waking to find yourself spiralling down Spanish mountainsides. Oddly, none of it lulled me to sleep. You wake to a (reasonably good) breakfast, bleary and unshowered, passing municipal dumps, shanty towns and fantastically ugly apartments. Welcome to Madrid!
It was an experience, alright. One I'll never repeat. Particularly as, later that week, I glimpsed The Future. Not only does the AVE high-speed link between Madrid and Barcelona cover the same 600km as the Lisbon-Madrid leg in under three hours, but it's supremely comfortable; relatively cheap (I got it for €42.65pp, one-way); there's leg and luggage room to spare; you get free headphones to enjoy the onboard radio and films; and, in the lively bar, they do a creditable cafe solo. The commuters may look bored by it all, but, for the first timer, the novelty of doing a silky smooth 300kmph through Spain's awesome spaghetti western interior, is quite something.
The fact remains, however, that this not the age of the train ... yet. In my experience, Europe is decades away from the kind of integrated rail network that would make people think twice about flying. Do you agree? Am I being too harsh? How have you found Europe-by-rail? Moreover, what practical steps could operators take to make European train travel more appealing: is it a matter of price, centralised booking, speed or comfort?
