Post #4938096 · Elektrine

2026-10-05 18:08 UTC

It occurs to me that a lot of people reading me here may not actually grasp how normal international trains are in this part of the world. Want to take a train from Mannheim to Karlsruhe? You can hop on the train to Zürich. Want to go from Berlin to Dresden? You should absolutely go on the train to Praha. Want to go on the train from Vienna to Salzburg? The train to Frankfurt is definitely a possibility. They’re just trains, and part of the route, and handled no differently than the national ones.

Replies (1)

@moof@cupoftea.social 2026-10-05 18:12

I grew up on an island with three train lines. I grew further up on an island that didn’t have a rail connection to the continent til 1994, and that you have to check in as if it were a flight to go there. I now live in a country where there are only 4 trains a day in each direction that go further than the town on the other side of the border… and even the low speed train is advertised as going to Port Bou. The Cerbère stop is only really mentioned if you look very very closely. To me, being able to get on a train to Amsterdam just to get to Hannover, is now normal, but I forget how revolutionary that concept is to those who live in the less connected parts of Europe. When people on fedi talk about #CrossBorderRail, it’s in the context that this sort of thing should become normal all over the place. There are other issues for sure, the border town workers have completely different priorities. But it’s definitely part of it.

Open ##4938093