That looks awesome. I always feel bad for the US that it doesn't have a decent use of the rail network for such a beautiful country.
Hands down one of the best things you can do as a young European is get an Interail/Eurorail Pass. Wake up with your friends in a hostel in Berlin? How about looking on a map and deciding going to Prague that day? Easy.
We did about 15 countries in five/six weeks the first time and it gave such a great feeling of being a European, of the benefits of EU membership and getting to explore the culture, history, partying etc of the place. For very cheap. The train is so nice to chill out compared to a car and to see things you wouldn't see by flying. Plus you find yourself going to places you wouldn't do otherwise as you can just jump off somewhere along the way and maybe stay there for a few hours or days.
It's so awesome that the EU is bringing in a discounted/free pass for young citizens soon. It's by far the best way for people to really appreciate some of its best benefits as you sit chatting to people doing the same thing from half a dozen other countries over a beer on a train adventure somewhere.
The Eurorail was out of my price range in high school/college but the continent is beautifully accessible by car. We did a roadtrip with an old car and a tent just after college, 3 weeks, 8000km, 11 countries. Beyond amazing there’s so much to see that you don’t get by plane.
USA is huge by comparison. Did a long roadtrip a few years ago, 3300km, and we barely made it from SF to the Grand Canyon and back.
Trains and roadtrips beat planes when you wanna see the country.
One day I wanna do all of USA on my motorcycle. That would be grand.
I live in a small town that is actually quite near to Canada. It's 175 miles to the border, where there is medium sized Canadian town on the border. There's ~500,000 in the whole region, it's just not the same, passenger rail would be extremely expensive to operate in parts of the US that are like this.
For reference, it's a bit further from Detroit to Toronto than it is from Berlin to Prague.
Oh yeh I totally get the size and scale is in an issue. Maybe what I mean is more of the culture and comfort of using the train lines that do exist in that way. Opening up the places that sort of gotten bypassed along the way also.
In general and this applies to most of Europe to greater and lesser degrees, while there is much more of a usable passenger rail network than there is in the US (for various reasons), that doesn't mean you can travel pretty much anywhere by train. There are swaths of countries that have very limited train coverage so it depends on where you want to go. This is true elsewhere also. Japan has a great train network in general. But that doesn't mean, for example, you can necessarily get to more rural and mountainous areas by train.
In the case of the Czech Republic, I've never noticed an issue but then I've only needed to travel between Brno and Prague or Vienna.
Yeah, major cities in Czech Republic are fine, smaller ones are much more spotty and you need to really plan beforehand if you don't want to get stuck somewhere on the road till the next day.
Agreed that even in Japan it's not perfect in the countryside, but definitely much better than here in Czech Republic at least based on our two three week trips so far to Japan.
Trains are usually barier free EMUs/DMUs, stations are clean and have amenities, mostly stop at markers so are easy to locate even on big stations and are basically always on time. Like, there is not even a place to show a delay on the station signage usually!
With Czech trains its very rare if it arrives on time, often the platform is only reported a couple minutes before arrival and might change if the delay is too long. Then the train arrives at random part of the platform and people trying to get in or out fan out around the carriage doors. Once you climb on board up a couple steps from the platform to the train, you can expect more delay to be accumulated as you travel. Also the toilets on the stations might often be an "xperience".
Hands down one of the best things you can do as a young European is get an Interail/Eurorail Pass. Wake up with your friends in a hostel in Berlin? How about looking on a map and deciding going to Prague that day? Easy.
We did about 15 countries in five/six weeks the first time and it gave such a great feeling of being a European, of the benefits of EU membership and getting to explore the culture, history, partying etc of the place. For very cheap. The train is so nice to chill out compared to a car and to see things you wouldn't see by flying. Plus you find yourself going to places you wouldn't do otherwise as you can just jump off somewhere along the way and maybe stay there for a few hours or days.
It's so awesome that the EU is bringing in a discounted/free pass for young citizens soon. It's by far the best way for people to really appreciate some of its best benefits as you sit chatting to people doing the same thing from half a dozen other countries over a beer on a train adventure somewhere.