From Western to Eastern Europe by land
How we traveled from the Netherlands to Romania: issue #13
Hey there,
It’s classic of me to say that I’m returning to the newsletter and disappearing for another month. Sorry about that! I will try to be better. But I am gladly reporting that I still don’t use social media!
Today, I wanted to share a little story on how we traveled by land from Zwolle, the Netherlands, to Cluj, Romania, in June.
We had a great time in Romania, and I shared the information about the city in my latest video. Check it out if you haven’t already. But the road there wasn’t as great.
Our trip
We wanted to make an experiment and travel more sustainably through Europe without using planes. I hope this issue won’t be seen as a rant but rather a current land travel state report.
Here is an overview of the path we took:
🇳🇱 Day 1: Regular local train from Zwolle to Utrecht
🇦🇹 Day 1: Utrecht to Vienna night NightJet train
🇦🇹 Day 2: Spend the whole day walking around Vienna from 9 am to 8 pm
🇷🇸 Day 2: Took a night Flixbus from Vienna to Belgrade
🇷🇸 Day 3-4: Spend a few nights in Belgrade
🇭🇺 Day 5: Took a morning Flixbus from Belgrade to Budapest
🇭🇺 Day 5: Walk around Budapest until 11 pm
🇷🇴 Day 5: Took a night bus from Budapest to Cluj-Napoca
🇷🇴 Day 6: Arrive to Romania
I cannot say I enjoyed Nightjet trains much, but I immediately forgot about their quality once we traveled by bus.
I hadn’t traveled by bus for some time and immediately remembered how uncomfortable it could be. You cannot sleep on the bus, rather than snoozing out occasionally. I wish there were a train connection, but unfortunately, this part of Europe still doesn’t have reasonable train solutions, including a connection to Romania.
The Serbian-Hungarian border was probably the most exhausting part. We spent around 6-8 hours crossing it, which was especially hard during the night trip. We should have arrived at 5 a.m. but came to Belgrade around noon, completely drained.
It took the same 6-8 hours on the border to leave Serbia, but it was a little bit easier since it’s been daytime.
I don’t know what’s happening at this border, but I do not recommend crossing it by land. Some people on the bus said it’s been like this for at least a year already.
The land crossing border to Romania was quick and easy, however. Despite entering the Schengen zone, Romania still has border controls on land, but I think they will eventually abolish it. It took us, at most, 20-25 minutes to cross it.
The funny thing is that the only people who have been even asked anything at the border were us (Russian citizenship) and another guy from Oman. I guess everyone else had EU or at least non-suspicious passports 😂
We took the same trip but skipped Serbia on the way back to the Netherlands, so it was a bit smoother without terrible borders. However, it still took us two nights to get home, and the sleep schedule was ruined.
Conclusion
Eventually, I conclude that traveling by land must improve significantly before it can be as comfortable as using planes and cars, especially in Eastern Europe. The EU must launch more trains and faster rail connections across the continent.
The current price/comfort ratio could be way better. Many train startups are entering the market (like Dutch GoVolta, Spanish Avlo, and Dutch/Belgian European Sleeper), so hopefully, they will manage to dominate the low-cost train market, and we’ll see the prices around the plane level.
Right now, with NightJet, for example, for around €150-200, you get an average-quality couchette (especially compared to regular seating fast-trains in the Netherlands, Germany, or Spain) with 6 people inside the compartment. I think the price should be at least three times lower.
For ourselves, we concluded that travel by night train is fine as long as you don’t have the connections the next day. For the bus, it was probably the last time we traveled this way. I think it’s the worst way of travel, and you need a lot of time to recover afterward. The cheap cost is not worth it.
Thanks for reading. I’ll be back next week with more exciting news and updates!