Tip of the Day: Plan Euroropean Train Travel with Bahn.de

John Dvorak has a terrific travel tip for those who like to explore Europe by train, it’s the Bahn.de website. He explains that it’s hard to figure out how to navigate the different rail systems which connect the different countries and regions. You just enter your starting and ending destinations into Bahn.de, and it plans your trip and tells you where to get on the train and what it’s going to cost.

John Dvorak: Okay, this is a screwball tip! This is for people who travel in Europe by train.

Adam Curry: Okay, everybody pay attention; that’s you!

John: It could be anybody, because you get a Eurorail pass,which Americans love to do,and you just jump on the train. You go from here to there. But it’s kind of a pain in the ass to figure out where to go, how to go, where the schedules are.

John: The Deutsche Bahn puts together a website for everybody. But there’s an international traveler’s version, which is the one I’m recommending. And the website is https://int.bahn.de/en. But you can also look it up on Google: the Deutsche Bahn International Travel site.

You put in where you’re going and, this is for all of Europe. And it includes the UK. I don’t know why they do this, because there are all these different competing operations in Europe with different train companies. But you put in where you’re starting and where you want to go, and it will take you from train to train to train—show you what platform you’re landing on, what platform to go to for your next transfer, at what time the train comes in, what time the next one leaves, and what platform it’s on. It’s unbelievable!

Adam: If you happen to be traveling through Europe…

John: Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle Europe, England, all the way up to Sweden, it’s just astonishing that they have this. It’s well structured, very easy to deal with. They’ve changed the interface a little bit; I used to use this a lot, you know, 20 or 30 years ago.

And I thought the layout was a little nicer when it was more old-fashioned…

Adam: That’s because you like blink tags!

[No Agenda #1809]