Nobody takes a train from Germany to France

Utterly depressing how this planet is predominantly populated by absolute morons with all the zeal and confidence of the best among us.

Love it when people argue that it takes 45 minutes to fly from Y to X. 45 minutes is roughly the time your plane is airborne. The whole process takes 3-5 hours door to door.

Once I flew to a city that's about 6 hours away by car. Work was paying for it, and I figured it would be easier and less stressful to fly than to drive. A coworker drove instead. He left 2 hours after I left for the airport. After my plane arrived they were cleaning it out and one of the attendants hit his head and had to go to the hospital for stitches. I scrambled and was able to get on to another flight, although it took me about 2 hours into the opposite direction, where I then had to sprint from one end of the airport to the other. When I finally landed in my destination city my coworker had been there for over an hour. There was nothing easier or less stressful about that day.
That said, that was my worst experience flying, usually it is very easy - especially if I'm traveling by myself.
- It means your driving coworker was thinking about you the entire time while driving and wishing you went on the ride with them :)
Ah, but only for normal plebs like you and me. If you fly private, you just show up at the hangar half an hour before takeoff and walk right in. TSA and waiting in the terminal are for peasants.
- Wouldn't a private plane start taking off as soon as you arrive? Assuming the runway is free.
This why I drive anything less than 2500 miles. That's two days of driving and I get to see the country. Flying would take a whole day anyway, and then I'd have to get a rental car on the other end anyway. Plus it's difficult to find a decent lifted 4wd rental, and I usually travel to spend time in the mountains on unimproved roads and hiking and camping. Probably similar carbon footprint to flying anyway.

You can go from Paris to Stuttgart in less 3h 30min by train. No customs, no TSA, downtown to downtown.

Freiburg to Paris in about 3h, just went last weekend.
In the current political climate, border control is unfortunate becoming much more common. I had the border policy empty our bus and search everyone with dogs and half of us had to open our bags.
- On my vacation in Germany we were not once asked on the train for our passports. We are white. The police would demand every non-white persons' "visa" and most of the time the questioned individual would produce a German ID or an ID from another EU member state.
  It was a sad sight.
TGV > ICE
I stopped counting how many times the ICE broke down on this route. Of course I also had delays when using the TGV but not due to the train itself. Also the seats in the ICE are not comfortable at all.
- DB is just fucked tbh, it needs serious reformulating.
- The ICE restaurant car always cures the delay blues, at least for me :)

Thats like 700km so in a proper high speed train it would be 3h or less from station to station. Thats probably faster than flying if you include all the boarding and travel to the airport.

I could walk from Germany to France in about 30 mins.
- I meant Toronto to NYC is 700km
  Germany and France share a border so yeah its 0 seconds if you are standing on the border and for one of the longest distances from Berlin to Strasbourg for example its 6h by train.
That doesn't happen anywhere. Thanks to all stops and what not a german high speed train goes like 100kmh in averge... checkout cologne- berlin
- Tokyo > Kyoto is like 475km and takes 2h so its just a matter of will and investment. It even runs every 30 minutes during the day.

In the US people will argue it's quicker to fly or drive than take the train then show up 2 hours early to be sure to make it through check-in and TSA security to be sure to make their flight on time. Then waste another hour waiting for luggage

Don’t forget the 45m-1hr travel time to and from airports.
Only a car take me ro point A to point B
Only if you mean that point B is the gigantic parking lot where you still have to walk 15 minutes to the Walmart.
Even without the check-in and security it is typically faster to fly (or drive) the places people typically go on a plane in the US.
The problem is that the railways are prioritized for freight traffic first, so the commuter train traffic takes a looooong time. My understanding is the freight movement by train is better in the US whereas the commuter train movement is better in Europe.
For example, I live in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. To travel to Chicago by different methods is:
By car: ~6 hours travel time
By train: ~9 hours travel time
By plane: ~1.5 hours flight time, call it 4 hours total travel time
- The problem is that the railways are prioritized for freight traffic first
  This is de facto true. But, the law is that passenger traffic gets priority. It's just not enforced because the companies have more power than the government is willing to spend on this issue.
Yeah, I've been using trains for travel in the northeast lately.
It's less travel time, there's no ridiculous security theater, and I don't get these nickel and dime charges for checked bags.
- I did enjoy taking Amtrak between Philly and DC a few years ago - as long it wasn't raining, that is.
It would be true. Trains are next to non-existent in the US.
I live near Acela, which is not high speed, not cheap, and does not have enough capacity but is also the only part of the US with convenient intercity rail. I would never fly or drive when I can take this train, but outside of Acela ……
- Yeah, a lot of people don't realize that there are major cities in the US without passenger trains. Not just lacking inter-city rail, trams, etc., but literally no train stations for people.
  Columbus, Ohio has a metro area of 2.1mill people. And if they want to take the train to NYC, they first have to take a three hour bus ride to Cincinnati. As they tore down their last passenger train station over forty years ago.
- Lol I used to take Amtrak back and forth between Philly and DC. Once I decided to check out if an Acela ticket would be worth it - it was like three times the price and got there a whopping 10 minutes sooner.
I'm sure the US will make train travel the same grueling experience as they made air travel
- Yeah I took the train from Chicago to Springfield, and was shocked that I had to go through security and also present the same credit card that I used to buy the ticket. In Europe I literally just get on the train most times...
Not to mention you're lucky if you don't have to take a connecting flight to get where you're going, which adds a few more hours at least. But at least it gives you more opportunities to eat that delicious, healthy and inexpensive airport food!

45 minutes to fly, but god help you if you check luggage, might as well be all day at that point.

Luggage doesn't matter.
Gotta leave the house 2 hours before the 2 hours before your flight. Then board, Then fly. Then disembark.
If flight is noon, you leave the house at 8 to be at the airport for 10. Then security theatre (remove your shoes, you're going to the LaNd Of TeH FrEe!!!).
If you're lucky, you're hailing a cab at JFK at 1:30pm.
That's your "45 minute flight". 6 hours, if you're lucky.
- Don't forget that train stations tend to be in the city centre while the airport is 30-60 minutes outside in a field somewhere, so travel time is much reduced.
- Putting transit time to the airport is a bit unfair. Depends on how far you live from the airport.
- Add in 2 hours of traffic between JFK and anywhere you want to get to. Or try your luck with La Guardia!

Even for very long distances (where flying is almost mandatory unless you are ready to spend weeks traveling) trains make things easier.

For example I'm living in a small village in the south east of France and I will be traveling to the carribean in summer for family, I will be walking to the train station is my village to take the train, 2 changes later I will be in London from where I'll take the plane to cross the Atlantic.

Same thing on the way back but with a night train.

And don't forget, airports all have to be on the edge of town anyway. So even if you're not in a small town, you're taking a train or a bus or a cab to the airport.
Meanwhile, big train and bus terminals can exist in the dead center of town. I can walk to the Empire State Building from Union Station in New York. But even one time, Gilbert Godfried suggests a picking up a connecting flight at the Twin Towers and everyone yells at him.
- Once, I arrived in Chicago by train, and had time to wander around before my bus departed for home. I walked around for a bit outside of Union Station, scanning the horizon and trying to locate the Sears Tower. (Yeah, I know it technically has a new name.) I couldn't find it. Then, I realized that I had to look up.
  That is, the train station is literally 1 block from the tallest building in the city. I so wish that the Borealis train came through here; it'd be just as fast, cheaper, and so much more relaxing to head down to The Loop for the weekend. As it is, I almost never visit Chicago because getting there is such an enormous pain in the ass. (Contrary to the popular imagination, it is a nice place. I've only been murdered there, like, three times, tops.)
Well ackchuwally you didn't consider me living in the Bay Area who can only get to SFO by car before my 17 hour flight to India. How do you think a train will help me there soygirl?
- trains will help by offering emotional support

The high speed Paris to Berlin train just started in December:

https://www.euronews.com/travel/2024/12/13/high-speed-train-from-paris-to-berlin-to-launch-this-winter-with-daily-connections-from-59

There are about 25 trains per day on the route, but I guess according to this American they're all empty?

I'm not sure that an 8 hour route between these cities with ~900 km between them really makes our case here. I don't think there's really a strong argument to be made that taking the train is better than flying between these cities.
International trains in Europe are a weak point of our network, one which we desperately need to improve.
That no one travels from Germany to France is of course entirely false. Frankfurt to Paris would be a far stronger example, coming in at 3 hours 30 minutes for ~500 km.
- Germany in general is a bad example for train travel.
  Lille Marseille is a 1k km trip and is done in less than 5 hours I believe

I've been in Germany two years and gone to France three times by train.

I honestly don't think people appreciate public transit enough. Trains are the fucking bomb and if people could make trains and trams and buses a priority I think the world would be a remarkably more fun and enjoyable experience.

Vote for the political parties, even at and especially the local level, that want to put more money into public infrastructure focused around public transit. Cars and planes have their places, but they should never be the priority when city planning and a strong country is one connected by high speed rail and convenient, reliable public transit.

I love traveling by train, but in Poland it's so fucked I have to either drive or waste days just to get somewhere. They just deleted train I could use to get to Warsaw in about 5h, now it's extra transfer, almost 7 hours, and I have to do it a day earlier, so extra night in a hotel vs 4,5h drive. The same with Berlin, I'd love to just ride a train, it's less than 4 hours drive vs 6,5 hour train ride (which is fine, I can go with that), price of the single ticket is more than gas for my car, so twice as much for two person – I could live with that, but the transfer time is under 30 minutes, which with notoriously unreliable trains means I would probably miss the connection and lost all my bookings (or just tried to go back with train/bus just to my village (already losing ~80€ for the tickets), and then grab a car.
- I'm not familiar with Poland's political or train situation, but these problems are fixable. Vote for progressives, make it a priority, we need to start taking power back from the inept and corrupt and start fixing problems again.
  I'm sorry your trains aren't good. Everyone deserves good trains.
It's the other way round. Individualism prevents communism. People drive cars to prevent them from voting for those parties.
Downvoters, do you think all that bad urban planning is incompetence of the specialists while every comment section is filled with geniuses who for some reason are enlightened about public transport but never in the position of power to bring it to life?
- It's the other way round. Individualism prevents communism
  Is that supoosed to be a good thing or a bad thing ?
  Downvoters, do you think all that bad urban planning is incompetence of the specialists
  No, they're just narrowly constrained as to what they can do eg. They cant knock back a Cosc-Co because there's no train station so, you end up with a sprawling shit hole as de facto
  A good follow on Mastodon who's an actual traffic expert and teaches it
  @drtcombs@triangletoot.party
  A good read
  https://bookwyrm.social/book/1907724/s/killed-by-a-traffic-engineer

So... Fucking... American...

'Murican*
I dunno if anyone from the US would use a Canadian city in an example.
- I think many americans don't realize Toronto is in Canada.

I've only ever travelled to Germany from France via train. I wouldn't bother flying,that's waaay to much of an effort

Ok sure, but that's going the other way. According to that guy travelling by train to France from Germany isn't physically possible.
- Only if you cannot decide which of the hundreds of passenger trains crossing that border every day to take. IIRC there are over 20 trains a day from Berlin to Paris.
- Good point well made

I had a US colleague stay with me in Ireland for a week and he was asking if it was possible to catch a train to England. It's amazing the geographic ignorance of some people and Americans seem to be especially afflicted. Maybe it's because the USA is so big, large cities so far apart, and public transport so terrible it doesn't occur to them that Europe is not the same.

You live in a world with the chunnel. The odds that a similar passage between islands formerly of the same empire is not so remote.
- The odds are and were actually zero since no such tunnel exists. And if people are aware of the chunnel spanning 20 miles they sure as hell would be aware of a tunnel between Ireland and England which would be a nigh impossible feat of engineering whether it went directly, or circuitously through Wales or Scotland.
I'm from Australia and wouldn't have been able to confidently say there wasn't a tunnel between Ireland and England. There are long tunnels in a few places and one there wouldn't be too surprising to me
In their defense, I have no idea what the capital of Kentucky or Virginia is :/
PS: I don't know it for most states 🙃 actually, I didn't know California's, New York's or Illinois'...this is starting to look like a conspiracy to make your largest city not the capital, lol
- Kentucky is Frankfort. Yes its spelled differently from Germany's one.
  California is Sacramento, New York is Albany, and every once in a while the capital is the biggest or most important city like seriously, Philadelphia was nearly the nation's capital but fumbled even being the state capital.
  Oh and ohio is fun here because Columbus has slowly grown to be the biggest city in ohio. Cleveland and Cincinnati are more historically significant while Columbus was just a big city focused on the university and business. But as the great lakes manufacturing and ohio River manufacturing fell by the wayside and Columbus kept growing it beat them out.
- this is starting to look like a conspiracy to make your largest city not the capital, lol
  Usually this is because the capital doesn't generally change over time while the relative size of cities often does, especially on the scale of a century or more.
- As an American, neither do i. I was taught them but unlike STEM courses i would never use that knowledge in my adult life.
  Meanwhile i knew there wasn't a tunnel between IE/UK.
  Some of us are more worldly i guess...
- Yeah but I do know that I can't take a train from Hawaii to California, there's a big wet thing in the way.
  Also the country's called Ireland, it's a hint.
Is that a no?
To be fair, these exist not in Ireland but in other places they do.
https://youtu.be/5ZNNPNRWq2U
Honestly, if I ever get out of this shithole and into a country with decent public transit and healthcare, it's going to feel like I stepped onto the USS Enterprise.
If it wasn't for NI being somehow behind the times compared to both England and Ireland, there would be a chunnel between them.
- I doubt it. The enormous cost of the chunnel made economic, as well as symbolic and political sense. Between ireland and UK it wouldn't.
  Come to think about it, maybe now it should be closed
I actually think that's a fair question, the distance between Ireland and Scotland is less than the English channel and that can be crossed by rail. If I were to travel to Japan or some other place that I don't know, then I'd assume that some of the islands are connected by rail and some aren't, so in a conversation it would be natural for me to ask the same question: can I go there by rail?

One of the factors is that the US is surprisingly huge. It takes EU tourists by surprise that a quick jaunt from NYC to visit their friend in Chicago is several days by road (unless you drive like an American roadtripper for fourteen hours a day) moreover, there's just huge tracks of land featuring not-too-exciting vistas (unless you plan your road trip to feature pretty routes, in which case multiply the distance by 1.3), so for the short while that airlines were regulated and we weren't worried (yet) about the air-travel carbon footprint (Huge. Enormous. Colossal.) it made sense to fly everywhere in the US.

Now that it's insanely expensive and inconvenient to fly, and we shouldn't be doing it, it's time for the US to build HSR for realsies, if the automotive / fossil fuel industrial complex will let us.

The US isn't as huge as you seem to believe (or Europe not as small). Europe is not as square, so its land area is much smaller, but the distances are comparable.
A trip from Hamburg to Vienna is not that much shorter than a trip from NYC to Chicago, but it's easily done by train in Europe: Board the NJ491 at 8pm in Hamburg central station (in the city centre, no need to be there more than a few minutes before boarding), have a good nights sleep, get your breakfast served at your bed (in the comfort category), take a shower and arrive well rested in Vienna (city center, no need to wait for your luggage) at 10am the next day.
Admittedly, a lot of people do fly from Hamburg to Vienna as well, as it can be cheaper than the train due to tax exemptions for the airlines (not everything is perfect in Europe), or they just don't like sleeping in a train, but these trains are usually well utilised.
EDIT: The link to truesize doesn't seem to work correctly, here's what I meant to show:
- You're right about all that, but it's worth noting that U.S. population centers tend to be coastal. New York to Chicago is one of the closer city pairs between the 10 largest cities in the U.S. Here's the driving distance from New York to each of the other 9:
  Los Angeles: 2800 miles (4500 km)
  Chicago: 800 miles (1300 km)
  Dallas: 1600 miles (2500 km)
  Houston: 1600 miles (2600 km)
  Miami: 1300 miles (2100 km)
  Washington: 230 miles (370 km)
  Atlanta: 900 miles (1400 km)
  Philadelphia: 100 miles (160 km)
  Phoenix: 2400 miles (3900 km)
  Dallas and Houston are close to each other. New York, Philadelphia, and DC are close (and are already connected by the most popular passenger rail line in the US). But the others are all pretty spread out.
  So the type of travel people might imagjne doing in the U.S. tends to be weighted towards pretty far distances.
- Something I'm curious of is how many train companies exist in Europe that push for more rails.
  In America, there's not that many train companies for people. Most are for commerce. There's also a lot of political backdoor stuff, like airlines getting priority, states not interested in funding it, counties having a voice about it all.
  I was thinking about this when I went to Japan, and how Tokyo has MANY competing rail lines, and the population literally having factions over what company they prefer to ride over. Which sounds like a dream.
- This is a wild comment. ~3.8MM sq miles vs ~1.6MM
  Lisbon to Vilnius ~2375 miles longest route I could picture Portland ME to San Diego ~3200 miles Portland OR to Miami ~3250 miles NY to Chicago ~800 miles Hamburg to Vienna ~600 miles
(they won't)
- You're totally right and we'll never see it in our lifetimes... but damn it'd be cool to be able to take an express bullet train coast to coast in the states.
The last time I was in the US I took a train from NYC to Chicago. It was very comfortable.
Now that it's insanely expensive and inconvenient to fly, and we shouldn't be doing it, it's time for the US to build HSR for realsies, if the automotive / fossil fuel industrial complex will let us.
I took an Amtrak from Quebec to Washington DC. The entire process was amazing. Hung out at the train station. Walked around on the train. Sat in massive ass seats. The bathroom was the size of a new York apartment. No TSA, metal detectors, overpriced food and drinks, getting blown up with ads.
Greyhound is unfortunately the next best thing if you don't live in a major city.
I feel so much frustration that driving and flying are the primary ways it travel in the US.
- Greyhound
  Sorry it went under, not a thing in Canada anymore.
This comment reminds me a meme about someone's European family visiting them in Vancouver, BC. The family decided that they wanted to go to Toronto for the weekend.
It's 45 hour drive between Vancouver and Toronto if you want to stay in one country. 41 hours if you drive through the States. It's almost 4 days by train.
Several days for an 800 mile trip? Are the roads that bad? That is roughly the distance of Hamburg to Venice and that's a 12 hour trip.
Not that I disagree that we need high speed rail, but "several days by road"? That's a day and a half tops.
- It's a day and a half the way we Americans drive which is to run on coffee and fast food and burn above the speed limit for fourteen hours a day.
  I am (or was, now I'm having doubts) of the belief that European motorists were more inclined to take their time, see some sights and not exhaust themselves in the transit. That may have been a late-20th century thing.

Well, consider that most Americans couldn't show you France or Germany on a map.

Hey it's not our fault their countries are so small.
/s
- Texas > France 😮

I used to take the train from Wales to Scotland. I'd get on at my local station and change once about half way through the trip. On arrival I could walk to my flat. The whole process took about eight hours.

Once I flew. First I had to get a bus to the airport, arrive early for security theatre, eventually fly, land, take a shuttle bus to a train station, then take a train to Cardiff Central, then take another train to my actual destination. The process took about six hours and was utterly exhausting.

Within the Schengen zone it's like that second paragraph, even for cities in different countries.
(Whilst the UK does have high speed trains to other cities in Europe from St. Pancras in London, even back before Brexit you still had to go through passport control to board so it does add a bit more overhead to the train trip, plus those trains are normally pretty expensive if you don't book a month or two in advance)
I remember this one time when I went to ski in Austria and to get there I had to catch a train from Innsbruck to the village nearest the resort and as it so happens that was a train that had departed from somewhere in Germany, was passing through Austria and was going to end somewhere in Switzerland. Normal interurban train (not even a high speed train) making its way through the Alpine valleys in Austria, that just happened to stop in cities in 3 different countries.

Just took the train from Frankfurt to Strasbourg.

https://int.bahn.de/en/offers/saver-fare-flexible-fare/saver-fare-europe-france

Huh, Frankfurt - Marseille does sound good for a week of vacation or something like that.

Nobody flies a train from Germany to France.

Air travel would be a lot better on rails. It would solve a lot of problems.
- YOU go up for rail repairs.
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbojet_train

I have my beef with the DB, but their ICE trains paired with SNCF are nothing to complain about

I took an ICE last week between Strasbourg and Paris. It was ok overall but there was a big lack of storage for luggages compared to a TGV.
- ok overall
  That's a huge compliment for the DB. The fact that they can run the bare minimum services at all between cities within reasonable time frames genuinely amazes me.
Once you expirenced an SNCF+ICE connection taking 5 hours instead of the planned 2h you will have something to complain about. I love shitting on DB as much as the next one, but they are worlds better than the SNCF. I'd rather fly than deal with French trains.

I’d love to hop on a train for a trip like that. So much more relaxing.

Let's just pretend the environmental impact is a negligible factor to save like 35 minutes on a 5-6 hour trip. Toronto - NYC, one way or another (have this guy ever been to an airport?).

Biggest city in the US to biggest city in Canada, at a distance where high speed rail could be the best choice of it existed …
I see “3” daily departures from NYC for Toronto by train, sort of. Travel time is 12h, 29h, 34h,
For flying, I see 24 direct flights on the first page of my search, all under 2h, all cheaper than train
Or an 8h drive
Even as someone who really wants to take the train, that’s not under consideration
I'm someone who prefers to drive because I don't like people much and flying is now a miserable experience, but yes, when you tally up all the time it takes to go to the airport, park, go through security, and then fly (especially if there's a layover tacked on), you really don't save much time in the end.
If I were a European and train service was more feasible, I'd go that route. It's really only a convenient option on the East Coast here.
To me, flying is just not worth it.
- Not to mention that frequent flying is also too much radiation exposure.

Wait till this guy finds out you can take a train from France to England.

It's going to blow his mind

"Trains don't float, IDIOT"
Greg, probably

Many short distance flights are business related but as someone who was working in an international corporation I can tell you there's plenty of business monkeys who fly simply for the prestige of it. They fly to attend meetings that could've been an email or a call just so they can pretend they're hot shit.

Massively disappointing.

I like getting the train. First class is often similar or cheaper than the flight, it's better for the environment, it's easy to get up and walk around, and you get 4 hours of work done (instead of 2 hours of queuing, 1 hour of flying, 1 hour of queuing/waiting).
I find companies are as happy to pay a train fair as they are a flight.
And airports commonly need trains/busses/taxis to get to/from anyway.
I'd rather arrive in the city center than the outskirts
I must admit, when I first started working after uni, I thought I was hot shit for flying domestically (Hamburg<>Munich). Even had my BlackBerry set to loud, so people know I don't belong to the tourist shmucks. God fucking damn it, I'm cringing so hard at the memories. At least I was away for the entire week and not just a single meeting.
Traveling via ICE is so, sooo much better! I do miss the BlackBerry though. The iPhone keyboard is complete garbage in comparison. I keep the phone silent nowadays. Man, what a cringelord I was back then.

Greg is a fucking moron, plain and simple.

he's on twatter, so that's a given.

I mean, it depends a bit. Toulouse to Rostock would be an annoying train ride. But Düsseldorf or Frankfurt to Paris would be kind of stupid to fly.

Having done both the flying and the high speed in a few routes in Europe, the overhead of flying is so much that for anything within about 1000km distance a high speed train is faster, especially because both the origin and the destination train stations are pretty much in the city center and have direct connections to the subway network so you almost always save time and hassle in just getting to the station from your actual origin and from the destination station to your actual destination on the other side, compared to an airport. This is especially so for budget airlines as they tend to use even more peripheric airports.

Further, within the Schengen space in the EU there is no kind of passport or security control, so in most of Europe you literally just walk into a train that happens to go to another country in just the same way as you walk into a train that happens to go to the next city over.

Even for larger distances when the whole trip door-to-door takes an extra hour or two due to doing it by train rather than flying, it's often worth it because the train is way more comfortable, with plenty of room and you can just get up whenever and go for a walk to the restaurant carriage and get yourself a drink or a light meal.

But yeah, beyond a certain point the train is not worth it anymore. For example Lisbon - Paris by high speed train would be around 6h on a straight line (if you could, which you can't because of the Golf Of Biscay) at 250 km/h whilst the flight is 3h, but of course, trains in Portugal being shit outside short commuter lines around the 2 major cities and the North-South axis, there isn't actually a high speed train to Paris or even to anywhere in Spain or even inside the country (fast trains at best, not high speed ones), so you have to take the train and a bus to the nearest point in Spain with a high speed train connection to Madrid and from there to Paris, so you're lucky if you do the whole trip in 17h.

This...planes are only faster on paper. Still gotta deal with check-in, security, boarding, un boarding, and getting to/from the airport at both sides.
I used to live in RI and worked like a 10 minute walk from PVD with a job that would do a lot of travel. I would always take the train to NYC. Way more convenient and faster to directly to Midtown Manhattan.
DC was iffy. Nowadays I'd probably take the train, (if only because DCA is a shitshow...though I do enjoy the view during takeoff/approach...can usually see most of the sights and some are more impressive from above (Pentagon, Arlington Cemetery, etc))...but I don't travel for work anymore.

The world will progress out of sheer spite for Americans and I wouldn't have it any other way

TGV: Am I a joke to you??

Would fit really well in !shitamericanssay@lemmy.world

It's crossposted from there.
- Interesting. That doesn't show on mbin. Maybe the instance is defederated.

I travelled with high speed trains from Germany to Barcelona via some French cities. Not fucking over the climate because I want to have a good time is the least I can do.

If you're close enough, you can walk.

ETA I'd expect there are fast rails from Berlin to Paris, and if not, why not?

I buy my groceries in Germany from France, and I often do that by bike. Or sometimes I take the tramway.
You can go via express train non-stop from Cologne to Paris via Belgium. At least if that journey is still I served, I did that 15 years ago several times when I still lived in the area. Took like 3-4 hours? Not sure anymore.
- You can do it from Berlin now. Still takes 8h, but that it is possible is amazing. Why it Takes you 4 Hours extra from Berlin to Cologne is another story, bascically: German train Company is terrible and they have not invested enough Into the infrastructure for the past 20 years. This year its especially bad
Interesting to note is that many trains crossing the east part of France to Paris are actually German ICE trains

You can go from France to Germany by tram in 20 minutes tho. (If you live in Strasbourg of course)

There is also the Saarbrücken tram train, which goes to France.

Cant wait for the Munich - Rome, Munich- Milano train line :3

I took a train from Brussels to London. JFC.

Yeah, if you take it from Amsterdam to London, it's comparable to Toronto => NYC.

If we're charitable and assume he means from Berlin to Paris, then he's got a point. That's a pretty long journey better done by plane, sadly. People do take the train, but usually not for practical reasons.

It's just nicer. You get more room, better view, fresher air, and quicker access to any luggage. And nobody fusses if you brought a snack that doesn't smell.
Also, who's out here using the rest of their travel day to the fullest? Do airport people really drop their luggage at the hotel and make the most of that extra couple hours they maybe saved? I'm exhausted after airports.
Paris - Berlin is 1h50min by plane and the direct train takes 8h17min using the direct train. For security checks you can add about 3h to the flight and a bit more as the train stations are probably close to the destination.
The main problem is a lack of hsr track in Germany. If that would be fixed, then trains would be faster then planes in practical terms. Paris - Marseille happens to be only a bit shorter and it is much faster in a train.
- Yup, Germany needs better highspeed railways. It only takes 1h45 from Paris to Strasbourg which is roughly halfway between Paris and Berlin. So the whole trip could potentially be under 4h downtown to downtown.
- Berlin to Munich is pretty fast. The issue with Berlin-Paris is that you have to go through NRW, which is where German trains go to get slow and delayed.
I think I'd probably still pick the train in that case.