In the summer of 2023, I traveled by train through large parts of Europe. This blogpost is meant to summarize the one-of-a-kind trip in numbers, which helps you understand the dimensions of what was possible within just 3 months and gives you the option to learn from it for your own trip.

Table of contents

Opening words

Overall summary

Places

Transportation

Comparison of CO2e emissions

Almost no train delays

Accommodation

Food

People

Images

Lost and broken things

Things I didn’t need for traveling through Europe by train

Travel costs

Animal yoga poses

Closing remarks

Use the links to jump quicker to the topics that interest you.

There are lots of numbers and relatively “dry” words in this blogpost. The vivid descriptions, images and description from during the trip are still available in the story highlights on my instagram profile, sorted by all the places I’ve been to. While these stories can help as travel guides with tips for all individual places, this blogpost shares the quantitative dimensions of the trip and helps you get a better idea of some of the cornerstones of such a journey (transportation, accommodation, costs,…).

• # nights: 90

• # countries: 24

• # cities with overnight stay: 45

• # train journeys: 102

• km traveled: >18.700

• Less CO2e emitted compared with flights: >>2t; most likely ca. 5t less, which means that my Interrail trip only emitted ca. 10% as much CO2e as if I had traveled with flights.

• Local foods tried: >200

• Images: >20.000

• Costs: <8.000 €

• Animal yoga poses: 13

Although it was not my primary objective to travel to as many countries and places as possible, it was still motivating to see what I could reach while bringing many different objectives together. Together with the objectives to meet many old friends, travel to places I haven’t been to before and not wanting to travel in a circle, I ended up visiting a lot of places for a timeframe of 3 months.

• 24 countries:

  • Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Vatican, France, Monaco, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands

• Cities where I stayed overnight: 46

  • Copenhagen, Trondheim, Oslo, Gothenborg, Stockholm, Helsinki, Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, Warsaw, Prague, Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Pula, Bologna, Rome, Naples, Florence, La Spezia / Porto Venere, Milano, Torino, Nice, Monte Carlo Fontainebleu, Barcelona, Valencia, Madrid, Malaga, Sevilla, Lagos, Lisbon, Porto, Bilbao, San Sebastian, Bordeaux, Lyon, Zermatt, Zürich, Munich, Brussels, Bruges, Haarlem, Utrecht, Aachen

• Additional places I visited on the way: 21

  • Malmö, Valga, Krakow, Brno, Lake Balaton, Trieste, Venice, Verona, Vatican, Caserta, Pisa, Cinque Terre, Monaco, Paris, Cordoba, Granada, Faro, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Den Hague, Maastricht

• Ø # nights / country: 3,75

• Ø # nights / place: 1,96

I tried to use my 3-month Interrail global pass as much as possible and planned a route where I could mostly travel with Interrail. However, there are some places in Europe, which are unfortunately not that easily accessible by train, especially when wanting to travel in a circle and avoiding travelling back with the same train.

In addition to 99 train journeys, for which I used my Interrail ticket, I decided to use some ferries and buses to complete my circle. Furthermore, I used the German trains to add some journeys within the country such that I could add another country to the travel list and meet some more friends.

• Trains outside Interrail; Because Interrail tickets only contain 2 journeys leaving or entering the home country, which were already used with Hamburg-Copenhagen and Zürich-Munich:
  Cologne-Hamburg, Munich-Frankfurt, Frankfurt-Brussels, Herzogenrath-Aachen, Aachen-Cologne

• Buses substituting a train:
  Mondal-Gothenborg, Vestby-Oslo, Oslo-Gothenborg

• Ferries:
  Stockholm-Helsinki, Helsinki-Tallinn

• Buses; Because there is no decent train connection:
  Riga-Vilnius, Ljublijana-Pula, Pula-Trieste, Sevilla-Faro, Porto-Bilbao, Bilbao-San Sebastian

One of my motivations to travel by train was also to promote that it is a more sustainable way of traveling than flying everywhere. I calculated the difference based on a train journey to Northern Norway, where it was comparatively easy to do so.

For my Interrail trip, flights would have emitted between 2-11 more t of CO2e compared to the emissions of the train and thus between 4,5-20 times as much. Well, that’s a huge range to compare with and I explain where it comes from below the diagram.

Calculation of my interrail trip emissions:

The actual emissions of the trains, ferries and buses I took are fairly simple to calculate based on the average emissions per means of transport: ~623kg CO2e for my total interrail trip and the calculatable distance of 18.723km.

The calculation is based on average emission factors [kg / (km * person)] as you can see in the screenshot below. The emissions of trains are highly dependent on the electricity mix used in the respective location and can thus vary significantly. For example, the emissions of electric trains in Scandinavia are much lower (as you can also see in the previously mentioned blogpost). The German train operator DB already purchases renewable energies for their trains, which theoretically reduces the emissions to a tiny fraction. However, the actual electricity production split in Germany leads to practically higher emissions because the electricity from fossil fuels is thus used for other consumers (German article with the explanation).

Scenarios for measuring the emissions of flights:

Without a clear destination, it is basically impossible to define one scenario of flights, which can be compared with my roundtrip. Hence, I decided to calculate 4 different flight scenarios and used 2 different calculation methods for one scenario:

• Only distance (total distance): 7.629kg CO2e

  • Benchmark: One-Way flight Cologne - Christchurch (~18.650km) [CGN --> CHC]

  • Calculation: Atmosfair

• 9 vacations of 1.000km: 5.913kg CO2e

  • Benchmark: 9 x return flights of ~1.000km [CGN -->ROM] = ca. 18.000km

  • Calculation: Atmosfair

• Travelled by flight from country to country - 22 flights: 5.962kg CO2e

  • Benchmark: 22 one-way flights of ~850km [CGN -->ZAG] = ca. 18.500km

  • Calculation: Atmosfair

• Travelled by flight to every country individually: 11.946kg CO2e

  • Benchmark: 22 return flights of ~850km [CGN --> ZAG] ca. 37.000km

  • Calculation: Atmosfair

• Short-haul flight emissions on average (only distance): 2.827kg CO2e

  • Benchmark: 151g / (km*person) x ca. 18.500km

  • Calculation: Factor of ourworldindata

The average of these scenarios is almost 7t of CO2e while the median is ~6t CO2e. Based on these figures, and assuming that the scenarios “from country to country” and 9 vacations of 1.000km, calculated by atmosfair are the closest ones to compare to my journey, flying would have emitted ca. 6t CO2e and thus ca. 5t more of CO2e than taking the train. In other words, the emissions from my journey were only ca. 10% of the emissions when flying to all the places.

I did not further consider the lower average emissions for short-haul flights, because I also neglected the following factors when calculating the emissions of flying:

• Connection flights are sometimes required.

• Traveling to and from the airports produces more CO2e emissions.

• Public transport or cars would still be required when traveling from city to city closer to a destination.

The traveling went surprisingly smooth with very few travel challenges due to delays or other issues. Most connections were on-time or just with a small delay such that I didn’t have any consequences. I prefer to continue focusing on the good aspects, but in all transparency I’m also describing the only few issues I had - hopefully demonstrating that it’s not so bad even if a train is a few hours delayed.

I only had 3 actual train delays in total, which is only ~3% of my train journeys. The other >100 journeys were nice and relaxed. For all three issues the missing real-time information was annoying me more than the actual delay. This is a good thing, because it should be possible to solve the information gap quite easily with real-time apps of the local train systems or even better - directly in the Interrail app.

• Warsaw – Prague:

  • No train left the city in the right direction for ~2h and there was not outlook when a train would actually go towards Prague and how the next connections would work. Hence, I just jumped on the next train that was heading somehow in the right direction and due to the delays, I was able to take the different trains even when missing seat reservations. I arrived in Prague ~6h later than planned but had 2h in Krakow to shortly visit the city and castle.

  • My learning to react better in the future: Make the best out of the situation you end up in and bond with other travelers.

• Perpignan – Barcelona:

  • The train I planned to take was cancelled, but the Interrail app didn't show it. The next train was also delayed and didn't go to final station but stopped before still in France. Overall, I had a delay of ~3,5h, which could have been avoided in large parts if I had just stayed longer on the train from Paris-Perpignan.

  • My learning to react better in the future: Take the current train as far as possible on the route unless you’re switching on a faster train, which is going to overtake yours.

• Madrid – Cordoba:

  • Heavy rainfalls on the preceding weekend led to train works before the rails could be opened again. The delays are ok after such a heavy storm, but the communication was lacking: There was neither an upfront info, nor live data available in app. Then people in the station changed info frequently. First, all trains were supposed to be cancelled for the complete day and no one knew anything so there was one long line for changing tickets. Then, they announced all trains would leave delayed, but they didn't know when and everyone had to wait at the gate to get the info. Finally, they let everyone on the platform and in trains, but the train didn't depart for another 1,5h. The total delay was ~4h and I lost at least 1,5 productive hours, because I was trying to get some information I could work with.

  • In addition, the bad communication led to no possibility to trust the system and buy a seat reservation for the continuing train after visiting Cordoba still in Madrid during the 3h wait of which most was already sitting on a train. After arriving ~4h late in Cordoba, I thus had to wait 2h more to buy a seat reservation for the evening train to Malaga before visiting the city. Neither Interrail nor other apps made it possible to buy seat reservations, which is totally unnecessary. Unfortunately, I still don’t know how I could handle the situation better, but hopefully the digitalization should make it easy soon.

Hence, I didn’t have any big problems due to train delays or other issues. I just lost some time, which I would have spent on seeing more the places and meeting more people.

To be honest, I did mess up like 3 more bookings, which cost me another seat reservation, but I could have avoided this myself if I had been better prepared or more conscientious in my bookings.

One of my primary objectives on the trip was meeting old friends - which luckily allowed me to stay at their places a couple of times, too. At the same time, I used the chance to try out couchsurfing, which I was overall very happy with. Couchsurfing made it much easier to meet locals and learn a bit more about the local cultures. Sometimes, I was even lucky to have a tour guide showing me a little bit around.

Thanks to my friends and couchsurfing, I only had to stay in hostels every second night on average. I also spent some nights while traveling and can recommend these where one actually has a bed. I got some good sleep on the night trains and the ferry, but the normal bus going overnight was a bad night. When traveling on a small budget, I could still imagine traveling overnight without a bed, but when staying as active as I did and with little time to catch up sleep, I would always go for an actual bed (or comfortable couch).

I had to book the 1 hotel night, because I didn’t find a hostel close to Cinque Terre. Generally, I prefer to stay in hostels while traveling solo, because I find it easier to meet people than in hotels.

Always when I go traveling, I want to try local foods. On this interrail trip, I set myself more specific objectives, though: I wanted to try a least one typical plate, snack, and drink for every country I visited (apart from the tiny ones Vatican and Monaco). When I stayed longer in a specific country (e.g. Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France) I also researched the local foods and snacks of the places where I was staying to eat even more local.

I almost tried so many local foods that they’re difficult to count, but I still tried to do so based on the photos I took. The number of foods and drinks is probably higher, because I probably forgot to take photos of some:

• Foods (plates): >110

• Snacks & sweets: >90

• Drinks: >25

I love trying out these new foods, indulge on the ones I know or actually learn a bit about the local cultures. Because my standards of great foods are very high, I ended up with a maybe for you unexpected conclusion and idea, which I describe in this blogpost: Many of the great tasting foods I ate were unfortunately neither healthy nor particularly sustainable and I am now considering how we could establish similarly great tasting, but better foods with food culture changes.

Moreover, I tried to find sustainable snacks in supermarkets, which reach all of my personal requirements. I haven’t found the “perfect” snack in Germany yet and neither did I across Europe. There is still no ready-to-buy food from the grocery store, which I can eat without regrets, but at least I found some ideas heading in a good direction. This topic is too big for this blogpost, but in case you know a snack that you’re 100% happy with, let me know what it is :)

The following gallery just shows a few of the foods I tried. The blogpost “What about a food culture change for a better future?” shows many more foods including descriptions while my instagram story highlights also showed which foods I ate in which place.

During the last years before my Interrail trip I was mostly working a lot and felt like I’m slowly losing connections to friends from my studies, especially abroad. Already when I started at BCG just before Covid hit, I was dreaming about a smaller Europe trip with Interrail during a 1-month unpaid “leave”. Then a few unexpected things happened, and plans changed.

When I considered taking the time for this Europe trip, visiting old friends was thus a major motivation and I’m very happy that I met so many again despite traveling in the main vacation period:

• Old friends that I met again (mostly after many years not seeing them): 36

• The longest time since meeting the last time: >7 years - last met in April 2016

• Most friends I met again, I met initially in

  • Semester abroad in Australia (2014)

  • Erasmus in Norway (2017)

  • BEST student organization (2016-2018)

At the same time, I met so many new people and made some new friends, as well. Some of the new friends I even managed to meet again on the same trip.

As you might have noticed already, I took a lot of photos again on this trip. Although I created a framework for myself when to use my phone, when to use my camera and when not to take a photo, the number of opportunities was just too large, I guess. After all, I wanted to document all sights, activities, and foods directly on instagram while literally practising how to take nice photos with my camera again.

Overall, I ended up with the following amounts:

• >13.000 Camera photos to be sorted and edited throughout the next months and maybe even years to be included in my country galleries.

• >12.000 Phone pictures and videos used for 45 highlight folders with >2.000 Instagram stories to summarize the different places, give travel tips and inspiration.

I’m very happy that I at least finished my story summaries mostly during and shortly after my travels. There are still many things that I could do with my phone images, but this will also just go step-by-step. While writing this blogpost, I still didn’t even start looking through my camera photos, because I prioritized sports during the last months.

Such a long trip without any losses would be a miracle. Even rather organized and careful people lose or break things once in a while and the risks for usage and breakage are just higher while traveling or in other situations with less established habits.

I lost and broke the following things on my journey:

• 3 sunglasses (1 drowned in a canal in Venice, 1 forgotten in a hostel, 1 broken)

• 2 umbrellas

• 1 credit card was blocked by my bank due to “payments in too many countries in a short time”

• A couple of individual socks and many worn-out clothes (as planned from the beginning and applied in the clothes I took with me)

• Countless squeezed bananas (the reason why I won’t pack a banana in my backpack without a banana box anymore)

Traveling around Europe by train does not require many things. There were some things I didn’t even have to take with me or worry about:

• Passport

• Foreign currencies

• A new phone plan for internet and calls (except for Monaco, Switzerland)

• Any special action to cross borders (the most administrative thing I had to do was showing my ID to check in on the 2 ferries)

• Limiting the liquids, food or the luggage in general that I took on my trips

• Traveling to the city outskirts to get to the airport

• Waiting long to check-in, drop my luggage or go through security

A few times, I heard the question how much it costs to travel with Interrail through Europe. Therefore, I’m sharing the split of my total travel costs divided in categories for a gross overview and below with the individual costs per month within sub-categories.

Food was to be expected by largest expense category, because I only paid for a bit more than half of the nights on my trip. Other expenses should not be neglected in this case, because they contain the obligatory health insurance, which I had to pay directly while traveling without a job.

The interrail ticket has the largest individual cost with 972 € for the 3-months. However, even considering seat reservations and 2 night trains, the ~1.300 € for traveling on >100 trains in Europe is not too much. That’s only ca. 13 € / train.

The highest fluctuating costs in my case and also the most individual costs are accommodation and vacation expenses with the fees for tours & entries, as well as the costs of going out.

This may look totally weird from the outside and it’s actually something that I did not expect before my trip either.

After approx. 1 month, I asked what I could improve in my instagram stories and what my friends and followers would like to see. One friend then told me that she would like to see photos of local animals. Traveling through cities, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to show much. That’s when I had the idea that I could create local animals myself and researched animal yoga poses for the remaining countries of the trip.

In every new country, I planned to do at least one photo with a certain animal yoga pose and continue doing the same pose within the country. This is the list of thirteen different animal yoga poses, I ended up with:

1. Austria: Upward facing dog

2. Slovakia: Eagle

3. Hungary: Butterfly

4. Croatia: Downward facing dog

5. Slovenia: Cat

6. Italy: Half pigeon

7. Vatican: Cow

8. Monaco: Fish

9. France: Crow

   Sagrada Familia: A tree in the honor of Gaudi’s incredible work

10. Spain: Dolphin

11. Portugal: Camel

12. Switzerland: Cobra

    Belgium: Butterfly… (Yes, just now while writing I noticed that I already used the butterfly in Hungary).

13. Netherlands: Locust

I summarized everything in this blogpost, which I considered interesting to quantify to present such a big once-in-a-lifetime trip. In case you are missing a variable that you have been searching, feel free to reach out to me and I take a look whether I documented it.

Overall, I hope that you now got an idea how much can be possible within 3 months and that it is easily possible to travel through Europe by train. At the same time, I would like to finish by emphasizing that it is not necessary to push everything at once in such a big trip in a relatively short timeframe. If you’re living in Europe most of the places I visited, can be visited by train in vacations of 2-3 weeks that can be fitted much easier in a “normal” life.