Travelling from London to Hungary by train is a great adventure and I couldn’t wait for mine when I bought my Interrail ticket for this great cross continental railway journey!
In this article I will compare some of the advantages and disadvantages of travelling by plane and train between the east and west of Europe and why I decided to travel to Hungary by train from London instead of flying.
I am from Hungary but I’ve lived in London for eight years. I am a keen rail enthusiast and I take every opportunity to travel by train. Most of it is for pleasure, except for the morning commute to work! When I go home to Hungary I normally fly but I have always fantacised about taking the train like in the golden age of rail travel.
I’ve also watched several of Michael Portillo’s Great Continental Railway Journeys and it really inspired me to go home to Hungary by train on my next trip.
Hungary: A Tourism Hot Spot
That trip came sooner than I expected as Hungary has become a hot spot for tourism in recent years and it has also organized various international events so flights have become very expensive.
When I started looking at flights I quickly realized that even the “budget” airlines wanted a fortune for their tickets.
That’s because it was the Swimming World Championship and then the Formula 1 Championship those two weeks when I wanted to travel, so they all notched the price up.
During the summer the plane tickets are already expensive but these two events made them even more so.
In the end, it would have cost me £300 for a return ticket on the likes of Ryanair or Wizzair. I was about to give up when I remembered that a few years ago I took the train home via Paris and Munich.
I started looking at tickets and found the Interrail pass at £287+postage (I know, I’m 33). I thought if I spend nearly £300 on going home then I would rather travel by train and see some amazing places in between. I quickly bought the ticket and began planning my journey home, which was to be three weeks later.
Why Travel By Train?
For me the whole point of this journey was to find out what I can see on the way from London to Budapest by train and to turn the usually boring flight into an exciting train ride.
The first day I made my way to Strasbourg via Paris, where I spent the night. Strasbourg is an amazing place which I would not have seen if I had flown.
From Strasbourg I went to Mulhouse where I spent the day at the Railway and Car Museums. I then spent the night in Zurich and made my way to Budapest via Vienna. I arrived in my home town on Sunday night, two days after I left London.
Of course it took a lot longer than flying but in the process I saw many amazing places I wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
The train route is also far more scenic and I wanted to take it easy and not just rush to the airport, do the security checks and all the rest that comes with it.
The Beauty Of Train Travel In Europe
The beauty of travelling by train is that you can walk up and down the train and if you see something amazing you can just get off at the next stop and discover.
You cannot do that by flying or taking high speed trains for obvious reasons. While taking the high speed train may be faster, it often doesn’t stop between the departure and destination stations and you will need an extra reservation to travel on them with your Interrail pass.
Luckily there is the Interrail travel planner app to avoid trains with reservations. Using the app I only picked trains that didn’t require reservations.
I’ve had to make some exceptions on the way to Strasbourg on Friday when I travelled on the Eurostar and the TGV and on the way back home but otherwise most of my journeys were included in the price.
So if you want to discover the essence of Europe and see some amazing historic places, go no further – just get yourself an Interrail pass and start traversing this old continent!