Northern Europe by Train

Our accommodation is a beautiful wee flat in the very heart of old Warsaw. I say old and it is but central Warsaw was largely demolished by the retreating German Army and has been painstakingly restored in the post war period including the old town.  We have done our usual day of wandering about and spent our second day sheltering from the rain in various museums including the Jewish Museum, the City of Warsaw Museum and the home of Marie Curie. All fascinating places with different overlapping tales to tell. Overall so far we prefer Warswaw to Vienna. Now let's see what the Baltic State Capitals can offer.

A long and straightforward journey today in a pleasant old style 6 seat first class carriage. Sadly the dining car attached, while also quite retro, was not included in our first class ticket. The food however was quite cheap. We share the carriage with a Polish soldier and his Ukrainian partner who were both lovely and chatty and very helpful in sharing their local Warsaw knowledge with us. We arrived in Warsaw about 8pm and were helped on our way by our Ukrainian train companion who took us directly to the bus stop that we needed. 🇺🇦

What to say briefly? A compact and densely populated capital city with mostly 19thC 4, 5 & 6 storey buildings.  Flatted accommodation is clearly the norm here. Many facades have ornate detailing particularly around the windows. Very few parks. The city also has many grand, sacred and palatial buildings. There is an incredibly efficient, cheap and effective public transport centred on a more than 100 year old tram network. The city is very beautiful in lots of different ways but situated in a valley basin it has no real skyline to speak of.  We've had lovely warm weather and taken in a few wee highlights. These include: Mozart's House and tomb, traditional Viennese cuisine, Schonbrunn Palace gardens, St Stephen's cathedral bell tower, the Old Town, a Beethoven residence, Haus des Meeres rooftop bar, the Vienna State Opera House, the Danube... And this evening is our last in Vienna. Tomorrow we catch a couple of trains to ge...

Travel Day 1 And we're off. Our journey began with an early train from Edinburgh to London. Our departure time was 8am but in order to fully appreciate life as a first class passenger we thought we'd head up a wee bit earlier to check out the LNER first class lounge facilities...unflashy but perfectly pleasant with complementary teas/coffees/fruit etc and somewhat stale prepackaged pastries. Then it was onto stage one of our first day's travel to London King's Cross... Our first transfer of the day was the very simple and straightforward walk from the now very pleasant Kings Cross station to the nearby and beautifully elegant St Pancras.  An amazingly quick train to Brussels was marred only slightly by the 30min delay caused by animals on the track outside Lille. And then the NightJet Sleeper to Vienna. This train was rather basic and functional and also ended up 2.5 hours late in Vienna. But we got there. Now time to explore Vienna.

 In a few days time Soaz and I will be heading off on our latest wee travel adventure. This time we'll be covering (mostly) Northern Europe by train. We have bought Interrail passes and intend to head off to a wee selection of European Capital Cities which neither of us have ever visited previously.  Our route takes us first to the Austro-Hungarian and Hapsburg capital Vienna. From there we travel to the former Soviet city and now Polish capital, Warsaw. And then it's off to the Baltic States - Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn. And then we visit the broadly Scandinavian cities of Helsinki, Stockholm and Copenhagen and return back to Edinburgh via the Low Country Benelux capital that is Brussels. I intend to keep up a wee short blog of our travels and adventures with at least one blog entry per capital city. I hope the end result is mildly interesting and possibly informative.