This summer I took the ferry from Hirtshals, Denmark to Seydisfjordur, Iceland. 2 full days, over 48 hours of travel time. And back.
Relatives and friends thought my wife and I were crazy - or at least eccentric. Why would you waste 4 full days (+ 2 days to get to and from Denmark by car).
Turns out, travel time is still travel. And what a beautiful time that was!
There is no stable Internet conncetion on the ferry itself (no cell connection AT ALL at sea), plus you have to pay for it a pretty hefty fee. So from observing other people, +95% did not have Internet access at all.
The ferry itself is not huge, it is not a cruise ship. But large enough to be entertaining and fun to explore. Kids had a few attractions, including a tiny cinema. They sold popcorn though, that's all kids cared about besides the Minecraft movie.
For us, adults, there were a few bars, restaurants to hang out. Even a little library, a corner with board games, couple shops.
Because people were not glued to their phones, you could actually meet and talk to other people, have non-trivial conversations. People would read books, have a sip of coffee, walk around.
Not once did I get bored, not once did I not know what to do. Sure enough, I would pull out the iPhone from my pocket only to see it is completely offline. What was also fun: if I went out with the kids, there was no way I could let me wife know we would be late or any other matters. Same the other way.
Life felt slower, but somehow more real?
Anyway, I can only recommend a travel experience like this, at least once in your lifetime. For us, it became part of the memories we made, besides visiting Iceland itself. I can imagine the same being the case if you travel long distances by train.
Took a train from NYC to Chicago and it was so nice. Similar amount of time, about two days I think all in all. And just rolling on the plains, got myself a bunk, was more expensive than the plane ride home but 25 times more enjoyable and fulfilling.
Ditching my phone as much as possible has been the best decision I've ever made. Life always feels a little slower when you're not constantly inundated with outside noise.
I still pay attention, but instead of constantly paying attention and doing nothing, I pay attention a good amount, and do things instead.
I was a little taken by the state of American trains if this was true. Two days would mean at least 36h for me and that in turn would mean that the trains would have an average speed of 20mph.
But it turns out that it takes 20h, so twice that speed. Still not fast but better. With that duration it also seems unlikely that the speed is kept artificially low to allow some sleep on the train, as is very common in Europe.
Can only agree on that: took 5 ferries this summer from 5 to 18 hours, and it's almost always a very nice experience. You have to be ready for "rough" seas though, may be a problem for some. Even the wait time before getting on the ship can be a good time to chat with other travellers. And you see things you wouldn't see from land.
I took the train from Copenhagen to Stockholm a few years back. I remember getting on the train and then all of a sudden we were boarding a boat, and got kicked out of the train while they transited the across the ocean.
I really liked it, was a cool experience, and an easy way to get on a boat.
IDK if it's still like this. I hope it is.
I had checked google maps before the trip and saw a bridge so figured the train would go over that, but looks like it's car only bridge. Was a pleasant surprise.
The Øresund Bridge is a combined road-rail bridge.
(As an interesting aside, the Swedish railroad system drives on the left, while the Danish one drives on the right, so the trains have to cross to the other side after crossing the strait.)
Yeah, if you actually walk around outside of your cabin. I took this ferry last summer, pretty much didn't leave the cabin (except to look at Shetland Islands), only just before arriving. Having plenty of food, movies and games with me... yeah
If you take this ferry, make sure to do the stop in Faroe Islands, it's absolutely amazing.
I plan to sail this route again next year.
Side note: was it just me or this ferry or route is particularly rough? I crossed Baltic like 20 times by ferry (18h crossing), never got sea sick, until this one.
The funny part of this is, you just described not only travel, but all of life prior to about 2003ish (at least in the United States). This is when, in my social circles, we transitioned to most people having cell phone access and the ability to "let people know if you would be late." Still a long time before smart phones became ubiquitous.
So this was "just life" in the 90s and beforehand. The upside you describe was also sometimes the downside. E.g. my mother was traveling for work when one of my brothers was injured in a way that required a trip to the ER for stitches (he's fine). My dad was getting us all (4 kids under 7) into the car as she called from her hotel and he basically had to answer and say that we were on the way to the hospital, and she just had to wait for an update once we got home many hours later.
And yet, I would still agree that "Life felt slower, but somehow more real?" and that we haven't yet found the right equilibrium for always being connected in a way humans were never able to be before. I'm glad experiences like this are still possible.
Paul Theroux talks about this a bit in one of his books, about how it’s about the journey and not the destination basically. I think it was The Old Patagonian Express.
I've done a number of long distance walking holidays now. Weeks straight of walking every day. Pilgrims walk ~800km in ~6 weeks on the Camino de Santiago in Spain throughout the year. I've done shorter routes both in Spain and elsewhere. It's really a great way to switch off. Your whole life becomes the Way. How far do you have to walk? Where are you going to eat? Do you need to carry food? What's the weather looking like? Going back to being stationary afterwards is quite jarring actually.
As a sort of counter anecdote - we took a ferry from Portsmouth to Bilbao once, it was also just over 2 days on the sea. But oh boy, I regularly take ferries from UK to Netherlands, but I've never seen sea as rough as this. We were pretty much stuck in the cabin, sea sick, for the entire two days. I decided to brave the neausea and attempt to go for some food, but in the main buffet plates were literally sliding off the tables.
On the way back we decided to drive through france and skip the ferry.
But yes, on the Newcastle to Amsterdam crossing my favourite thing is being completely cut off from the internet, can finally sit down with a book without the compulsive need to check my phone every 5 minutes.
The Orient Express stopped running in 2009 (after it had already been successively cut back to just Strasbourg-Vienna), although it was a "normal train" in most senses (it was a regular EuroNight service, not really any different to ride from less famous ones like the Cassiopeia or Jan Kiepura).
The train you may be thinking of, a luxury train that imitates a historic one, is mimicing the the Simplon Orient Express which did not run through Vienna (and also it rarely goes beyond Venice).
The "mega bridge" is one of the most politicized and polarizing projects I've ever seen in my life.
My family lived in Messina for a while and it seems that in the last 100 years no one was actually interested in building nor genuinely stopping the project for good, just using it to bash whoever is on the opposite side of the argument.
- On the left it's seen as the biggest ecological issue they have in Italy, despite the ferry company handling the passage is a well known mafia-owned monopoly whose ferries leak tons of garbage and oil on the sea every single day.
- On the right they've gone with the most ridiculous, expensive and unachievable version of a project in order to to make sure they can siphon as much money as they can before declaring that the project has to be stopped or whatever.
Every summer I go back to my mother's family and when the topic comes out it's as they're basically stuck in a time loop.
Prince Edward Island had a century-old plan that was finally executed in the 1990s to build a bridge to connect to mainland Canada (1).
This is the same debate that happens each time there’s a fixed connection to an island until the damn thing opens and people grow to love it.
It’s a pain in the arse to have to wait for the ferry, to sync your travel plans to ferry times, only to have to change plans again when the ferries break down.
Skye. Never used the bridge, used the ferry from Kyle of Localsh to Kyleakin and the one to Mallaig from Armadale. But what you say rings true. Romance went out the window, but for locals its a shitload easier to get on with life.
> when the topic comes out it's as they're basically stuck in a time loop.
Fellow Italian here. The whole country is stuck in a time loop. Have you noticed that even the crime pages of the newspapers are filled with articles about investigations on murders of twenty or thirty or even forty years ago? And that on tv, people debate furiously terrorist acts that took place almost 50 years ago- when they also don't get updates from eternally ongoing investigations and trials? In politics, the same reforms that were proposed at the beginning of the '90s are brought up by each new government, generating new controversy and division, until they're forgotten or, sometimes, rolled back by Italy's supreme court. These days there's even a debate going on about the opportunity of introducing sexual education in schools for 6-8 graders, when I remember we had it already in the late '80s.
It's quite interesting for southern Italians to claim that a bridge will be detrimental to the ecology of the region, when in Sicily people routinely burn their trash on the street because the mafia controls the garbage disposal apparently.
2025. In Europe. They burn. Their trash. On the street.
Huh interesting. I overheard a conversation in a bar around Kabukicho, Shinjuku, Tokyo a few years ago with similar story.
The bartender was talkingto a local bar owner, and he was explaining how he was trying to find another contractor for garbage disposal because he found the current rate ridiculous. Every contractor hung up on him after hearing his address, and he found out that yakuza had territories around Kabukicho and you'd get in trouble if you took a contract there.
Interesting to hear garbage disposal being a common business organized crime go for. I guess there's many utilities too to have garbage disposal infrastructure for other illegal activities
it is that, it is a fairly undesirable business for goody two shoes to go into and expose people, it is also not a sympathetic business type, and everybody needs it.
Garbage disposal is also remarkably hard in Japan, maybe understandable since they don't have anywhere to put it.
Instead of the famous Japanese customer service, residential garbage requires you to sort it, put it in transparent bags, put it out on specific days etc. so your neighbors can personally shame you if you do any of it wrong.
Commercial garbage in Tokyo gets left out on the street (like NYC up until this year) and occasionally attracts rats.
Japan burns 80% of their garbage compared to 35% of Germany or 12% of US. So disposal isn't very complex but does entail a lot of sorting.
The rest of Japan's garbage culture (small bins, poor/mafia organization etc.) is totally self inflicted and is more of a cultural phenomena rather than a technical one.
No, it's way worse than that. They not only control the garbage disposal business and regional administration, they physically stop you from keeping your street / neighbourhood / town clean...Guess how do I know.
It's their "service" or no service, with some extremely narrow exceptions, like a very small town named Aci Bonaccorsi, which fought that and now they're able to keep their streets on an amazing level of cleaniness compared to nearby municipalities.
Garbage disposal is the last remaining big business handled by the local mafia (drugs are handled by camorra nowadays) and they're absolutely doing anything to avoid losing that.
It was/is also that way in Athens, at least in the "anarchist" quarter of town. Every Friday the so-called anarchists (would) take dumpsters and light them on fire, to make a point, that the government is corrupt, or something. I'm not Greek so I can't speak for Greeks but other Greeks told me it's just part of life, so just look the other way. Also trash collection seems to often be an issue. They also have an island just for trash, but I heard it's already overflowing so they are looking for another island to use as a trash dump. Admittedly I haven't been there in a couple years, so maybe things have changed lately, but I do have a lot of photos of dumpsters on fire.
This is not really accurate. I have lived in Athens. There were some years where burned dumpsters were not a rare sight (after the big riots of 2008), but it is really, really uncommon, especially considering the size of Athens.
And I have never heard anything (or were able to find something on google) about an island full of trash. Islands are simply too valuable for that, and you'd also need to bring the trash there by boat.
Sort of interesting, yes. But it’s human nature to put more effort into something you might have some influence over rather than something you don’t. Possibly doing more of the former could lead to the latter being more feasible
Honest question. Is Sicily actually economically important enough for such an expensive mega bridge? To my mind it would make more sense to invest that money in Milan.
Why invest in the region that’s already developed when you can invest in one that still has room to grow? That’s the meaning of investment. It seems likely that Sicily is poorer, in part, because of the lack of a bridge to the continent.
Only if Sicily can somehow make water magically appear (I won't bother linking any articles, as there are literally hundreds in the last 2-3 years about the utter lack of water and suffering of Sicilians).
Or perhaps building a bridge will enable them to bring water in easily from the mainland?
There already is investment. Milan just opened a new metro line to its airport over the past couple years; and the new Turin to Lyon tunnel will allow Milan to Paris in 4h30 compared to 7h today.
What would you build with $20B near Milan? Also, it's not like Northern Italy is forgotten when it comes to government investment. The Brenner Base Tunnel is being built there which will probably cost on the order of $15B or more.
Per-capita GDP is very low for Sicily relative to other regions - but it still has an overall GDP of around $100B, which is similar to Costa Rica or Croatia. Giving it a car/rail connection to the mainland would be a huge boon for the region and Italy in general.
> Sund & Bælt, the Danish transport company overseeing the project, has now confirmed that IVY has not yet completed full testing and has not received final approvals from relevant authorities, despite arriving on site last October. The preparatory delay is about 18 months, a setback that project managers say makes meeting the original 2029 opening target difficult.
> There is also an issue with restrictions around the working conditions. Contracts for the main construction works were signed in 2016, before German planning approval had been granted. That timing meant certain later-imposed requirements – notably restrictions on underwater noise from work vessels and limits on sediment spill in German waters – were not written into the original contracts, complicating attempts to speed up work now that the rules are in place.
Over budget, decades behind schedule because Germany does everything to rise costs and delay. First they sunk the bridge project, now they delay the tunnel project. See the Wikipedia page.
You're describing a perfectly normal and healthy development arc.
An initial study into a problem poses a preferred solution.
Time and effort is put into deep study of the solution path. Unfortunately, in this case the study proves it is far less ideal than initially assumed.
The project is switched to Plan B.
Granted, sometimes this kind of early change in direction is for dumb or dishonest reasons, but one cannot perfectly know the results before the studies are completed.
I am in rail design. We are currently designing things for needs in 2030-2060. The world is complicated.
At least this one is getting built, similar to the Brenner Base Tunnel in the South - the common thing tying both projects together is Deutsche Bahn, the federal parliament and the local parliaments being unable to get their asses together and expand the regional tracks to be able to carry the extended traffic that both these tunnels enable.
The BBT itself, no that's indeed (thank God) not handled by DB.
But the BBT also needs supporting infrastructure from Kufstein to Munich, the so called Brenner Nordzulauf [1], some of which (the Truderinger Spange) is also covered by the Ausbaustrecke 38 programme [2]. Unfortunately, the Brenner Nordzulauf has been hotly contested [3] with very good points being raised - among others, some of the route proposals run through nature protection reservates, people are skeptical of years worth of construction, noise, debris, rail and road blocks, and separation of entire areas by another rail track.
The initial phase of the Edinburgh Trams project wasn't great - but I suspect everyone involved knew it was going to be difficult and it's the approach of getting the project started and once started it's difficult to kill (see Robert Moses for that strategy!).
However, it's now a good service, popular and the trams are probably going to be expanded to much more of the city?
Also the Queensferry Crossing bridge was built with relatively little fuss - there were some delays but those were down to some spells of very bad weather.
My family is from Sicily, and I remember taking this train every year when I was a kid. After several years, I took it again last summer and was bufflled at how inefficient the whole ordeal was... Basically you have to wait for the train wagons to be detached and reassembled on the other side, you easily waste a couple hours.
Now, I don't really mind this, it's a bit of a tradition if you want, but I asked a relative of mine who used to work for the Italian national train company, and he told me that this train works like this cause in the past all the Sicilian migrants would travel with a lot of luggage, and it would be very impractical for them to transfer all of that twice. Nowadays this is not really the case anymore.
I've been on this train. The sound of the train being pulled onto the ferry did wake me up to say the least. It was dark outside and the blinds were shut in our sleeping coach. I remember feeling a bit of a weight, being in bed, in a closed coach, inside a large train, deep inside this massive ferry with many floors above us. It wasn't until much later that I realized that the train was open-air and not that big at all. You then wake up a few hours later near Palermo where the train runs just by the ocean – that was lovely.
I've also been on the second-to-last train of this type a few times (Snälltåget from Sweden via Denmark to Germany). That one also got canceled for the same reason – mega bridge construction (Fehmarn Belt). There, you used to get off the train to go up to the canteen for lunch with the truckers.
It was trains from Hamburg to Copenhagen used to run on the Fehmarn Ferry until the line was shut for reconstruction, they now run via Padborg.
The Snalltaget sleeper train from Berlin to Malmo used to run on the ferry from Sassnitz to Trelleborg avoiding Denmark altogether, that stopped because the ferries don't run on that route any more, and the train also runs via Padborg.
I think some consider the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link to consist of multiple parts, as the main tunnel (Fehmarn Belt Tunnel proper) is between a German island and a Danish island so stops a bit short. On the Danish side, they rebuild the Storstrøm Bridge, and on the German side they decided to build another tunnel alongside the existing Fehmarn Sound Bridge. So in total, one existing bridge, one rebuilt bridge, one short new tunnel and one long new tunnel will connect Germany proper to Denmark proper.
They seem to have missed one key detail in the title: this is the last European passenger train that travels by sea - or rather, the last ferry crossing that carries passenger carriages (I doubt that they carry the engine across by ferry?). There are (AFAIK) several other ferry lines that carry freight carriages, among them the Rostock-Trelleborg line served by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Sk%C3%A5ne
> I doubt that they carry the engine across by ferry?
I don't know about this specific instance, but the Germany-Denmark train-on-a-ferry carried the whole Diesel-powered train, engine and all. It drove onto the ferry on its own, and left it on its own as well.
The first ever night train I went, about 25 years ago, on was from Berlin to Malmo. Early morning, I woke up to the feeling of my bed swaying and looking out of the window realised 'hang on, they've put the train on a ferry'.
I had no idea that trains got put on ferries, although I had been puzzled by the way the route on the route map crossed the sea but had assumed it was just to make the diagram simpler. It was quite a surreal thing finding myself unexpectedly on a train on a ferry. It was nice though as you could go and wander round the ferry and it was quite fun seeing it go off the ferry which had special train tracks on it onto the normal train tracks on the land.
I took that train many years ago. At least back then it was faster to get off the train in Calabria, hop on whatever local ferry was next, and then grab another train in Sicily, depending on your destination. In my case it was Catania to visit a friend.
I took this train or another one that crossed to Sicily in the early 90s. It was at night, so there wasn’t much to look at while the mechanics of being transferred from the wharf to the boat and then back to land took place. But I do remember the friendliness of the Sicilian people on that train. I only spoke a little French and some high school Latin, but it was enough to have a basic conversation and even a few laughs.
I can see why this is worthwhile for a freight train, it takes a long time to unload goods onto a boat and offload them the other side. But why does it make sense for passengers? Is it just because they were doing it with freight already?
You board a train in Milan and wake up in Sicily without ever having to drag your luggage across terminals, onto buses, or through port checkpoints. Especially for night trains, that seamlessness adds a kind of magic
Passengers are more time-sensitive than freight. For a 20 minute ferry crossing, having everyone and their luggage disembark the train, go on a ferry, disembark the ferry and board a train would easily double the travel time of the crossing. It would also be far less convenient
> In August, the Italian government revived long-standing plans to build a vast €13.5bn (£11.7bn) suspension bridge over the strait – one of the world's most ambitious engineering projects.
What makes it particularly ambitious? The strait of Messina is two miles across, and I don't think that even cracks the top 100 of the world's longest bridges.
It will be by far the longest span of a suspension bridge at 3300 meter.
The current longest is in Turkey at 2023 meter.
Each of the pylons of the Messina Bridge will be around 400 meters tall. Which is taller than the Empire State Building.
The strait is too deep, with too much current and seismic activity to place the pylons in the water. So they have to be on the shore, as I understand it.
it's geologically and seismically challenging. The project is a single span for 3300 meters, which would make it one of the longest in the world of the kind.
The strong presence of organized crime in the area also makes a lot of people uneasy about the whole deal, but that's not a technical issue.
Apples to appleseeds. The main span doesn't cross the entire gap. The main span is just the middle part, typically a small fraction of the overall length between endpoints or shorelines, however those are defined.
Well, in this case, the main span will cross the entire gap (or at least it's planned to do it). This BBC article has a rendering which is higher resolution than the one in the Wikipedia article: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c80d74v0e4lo
I don't really know but looking at a depth map at the narrowest part it's pretty deep at 200+ meters. At another section where it's wider it's about 100m. Not sure where they're planning to build it.
A tunnel would be massively easier to build, but there's strong political hubris and greed in keeping the original single-span bridge project from the early '60s.
> "...building a suspension bridge of this scale poses significant engineering challenges. The Strait of Messina is known for strong winds, seismic activity, and deep waters, all of which complicate construction and long-term stability. Engineers will need to ensure the structure can withstand earthquakes, which aren't unheard of in the region, while addressing corrosion from the salty marine environment."
I remember reading an article, posted here on HN, that went into much more depth about why this was all unusually challenging, but I haven't found it again.
That would be much worse for passengers who can normally just sleep through the whole thing, it would take much longer to do the transfer, you'd need a larger and more complex ferry with bathrooms, seating, luggage storage, and more staff to deal with the guests, you'd need to deal with scheduling issues (what if you get to the other side and the train isn't there yet?).
I have taken this train and it would have been a nightmare to wake up everyone at like 3am, get them and all their stuff out and onto the ferry, and then do it all in reverse on the other side. It would add at least an hour to the trip if not more.
Don't those already exist? I don't know, but I assume that regular passenger ferries operate on this route, no?
> it would have been a nightmare to wake up everyone at like 3am
I presume that if one were offloading passengers onto an existing ferry one would not schedule the train to arrive during normal ferry operating hours rather than 3AM.
I think the right answer here is that Sicily is bigger than I thought, about 100 miles across, and so the onward travel time can be significant, and so if you're going to offer a night train whose final destination is (say) Marsala then putting the train on a ferry in the middle of the night makes sense.
When I took the Germany to Denmark crossing I'm almost certain you weren't allowed to stay on the train. I certainly didn't anyway. But, yes, it still saves a lot of time compared to walking between train and ferry twice.
At least in the past trains went by ferry also between Helsingborg (Sweden) and Helsingör (Denmark). Could not find if they have been stopped. So the Italian train might be not be there only one in Europe.
I went on the train between Hamburg and Copenhagen around 2007. Crossed on a ferry between Puttgarden (Germany) and Rødby (Denmark). Looks like this was discontinued in 2019 but I'm not sure what replaces the Hamburg-Copenhagen link. I'm glad I did it, it was definitely a strange experience to disembark the train on to a ferry and go and stand on the deck as it crossed.
The Helsingborg-Helsingør train ferry was replaced (car ferries remain) by railway on the Öresund Bridge (from the 2011 TV series The Bridge) between the big cities Malmö, Sweden and Copenhagen, Denmark in 2000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98resund_Bridge
On a not totally unrelated topic, this gem in Aomori Japan, well off the beaten track, is amazing. It's the last train-carrying ship that used to sail between Honshu and Hokkaido (a particularly dangerous stretch of sea), before they built the Seikan Tunnel for trains.
If your destination is Messina or even Catania, you can can save some time leaving the train in Villa San Giovanni (last stop before the train will be loaded into the ferry) and, literally, jump on the first ferry that is starting, so you save all the time needed to load and unload the train.
No one will ask you for a ticket (no one will ask for anything, actually). Or at the least it was like this some twenty years ago when I did it.
This is also a great way to randomly arrive in Siracusa wondering how did you end up there, in some sort of re-enactment of the last Indiana Jones movie.
Well, I guess I was lucky! More seriously: I just followed a local that suggested this, and he knew the right way but from what I remember, it wasn't that hard to catch the right ferry. And, honestly, after so many hours of train, I was happy to physically move around and not wait another 40+ minutes.
It's easy to frame the bridge as "progress," but it risks bulldozing over the kind of slow, sensory-rich travel that people are increasingly craving again
Yeah I know, that's what they do literally everywhere else in the world. You take the train to a place, and then you book a ferry, and then you take another train.
Only these italians had the genius idea to keep going with the train.
On the contrary, train ferries used to be commonplace - for decades they were a great solution to the problem when you need to cross a relatively small stretch of water as part of a long, mostly overland journey. They've gradually faded out as we've gotten better at building longer and longer bridges and tunnels, but that doesn't mean they weren't a good approach in places where we hadn't managed to build a bridge or tunnel yet.
Denmark had an unfortunate situation about 13 years ago, where the only rail bridge to the northern part of the country was hit by a ship, cutting rail network in two. Some trains where stuck in the north and had to be ferried to Sweden and the take the trip down from Gotenburg, via Malmö and then across the bridge to Copenhagen, because those trains where needed to maintain the service level.
Since then I've been wary of dismantling too much backup infrastructure. The rail tracks to the ferry terminal was still in place in this case, because they are listed as NATO infrastructure, still they where barely maintained.
The tracks on the Gothenburg side have since been removed, so even this workaround would not be possible today (they would have to go to Trelleborg instead).
If that’s a new term to you, more info at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fehmarn_Belt_fixed_link. It’s a new submerged tunnel that’s being constructed between Germany and Denmark, hopefully opening in 4 years time (though that’s looking increasing unlikely at this point).
I’m looking forwards to it as it’ll nearly halve the Copenhagen <-> Hamburg train time, down to 2 hours and 20 minutes.
Meanwhile on the other side of that lovely little island:
> In 2025 when the tunnel (the Fehmarn Sound Tunnel) was still not approved by authorities it was revealed that it would not be opened in 2029 as it was then planned but in 2032, which would delay train traffic along the new connection until then. Road traffic can use the old bridge.
I'm struggling to come to terms with the depth of anti-modernity sentiment in the West, that it's considered normal (and not mortifying) to read a BBC piece praising a twenty-hour rail journey as a thing of "lyrical beauty", quoting authorities like a "philosophy researcher". Who elevated this flowery nonsense over the common sense of the masses of sane people, with lives and goals and needs and places to be?
We just took the train to get from Berlin to Sicily for our holiday and will take it back on Sunday. There’s no one forcing you to take the train - there’s plenty of airports around here. But night trains are - at least for some - a great way to travel. You boards the train a 8pm in Milano, and by the time you had breakfast, you’re almost in Messina. Now, I wish that they’d refurbish the rolling stock and make the train run faster on the last legs, but that’s fundamentally a maintenance and upkeep issue. The technology is perfectly fine.
Technology is fine, but this night train is dangerous between Rome and Messina. I got robbed twice. Once you are over in Sicily everything is fine again. We left our luggage in a small Sicilian town center for some hours, and nothing got stolen. Near Napoli it would be gone in 10m.
The experience was okay, I would take it again. We went all the way from the start in Milano to Messina. The train left Milano on time and pretty much remained on time except for a minor delay in Rome (15 minutes).
We had a 3 person sleeper cabin for ourselves. They do serve a little breakfast - espresso, shrink-wrapped croissants, some biscuits with Marmelade and some salty crackers. Not a great meal, but good enough. If you’re going beyond Messina to Syracuse or Palermo, you should bring food along - or pick something up on the ferry.
The rolling stock is old - as in the toilets are still the kind where you can see the tracks, not a closed system. So they close the toilets a while before you get on the ferry.
Still, the ride was comfortable enough to actually sleep, even though the top bunk is a bit short for people of my size (1,85) - but neither wife nor kid could be convinced to climb up there.
Going to bed in Milano and waking up with a view of the coast was amazing. The beds fold up and you have a proper 3 seat cabin for the rest of the ride.
The ride was amazingly cheap - we paid 160 EUR for two adults and one 8year old, one way, so 330 in total.
Not the parent but took this train (Rome -> Palermo) in 2019 and had a middling experience. Based on previous excellent night train experiences (in France) I'd recommended the sleeper train as a great way to get our family down to Sicily. With 3- and 6-year-olds the idea of travelling while sleeping had much appeal.
Unfortunately I should have factored Trenitalia (Italian train operator) into the mix. The train departed an hour late - not such a big deal you'd think for an overnight sleeper train - but it arrived late at Roma Centrale so we couldn't board it and get comfortable. Two small kids at 10pm on a train platform in a big city is not much fun.
The sleeper car was tired, but clean enough. Unfortunately, we'd been mis-advised and there were no buffet/restaurant facilities on the train. We'd assumed that breakfast (either delivered or in said car) was provided, and all we had were a few snacks.
Once the train started moving, the gentle rock-you-to-sleep I remembered from previous night trains was notably absent; rather it was a violent side-to-side pitching that increased concerningly when the train got up to full speed. As the bunks in our compartment were transverse to the direction of travel, in my upper bunk this ended up feeling like lying on a see-saw.
Unsettling accompanying grinding noises pointed to a lack of maintenance, and sure enough, at ARGH o'clock, a frantic banging on the compartment door and some italo-english gesturing from a Trenitalia attendant made it clear that we were being ejected from our broken car. We had to pack up all our stuff which we'd exploded all over the compartment, plus wake up two sleeping kids, and pajama-clad, move onto the 3am platform of Who-knows-where while new compartments were found for all the unlucky residents of our little cocktail-shaker.
Our new digs were much more stable and the overnight ferry crossing passed so smoothly that none of us even woke for more than a second or two when there were some bumps and clanks. I second the request for more speed on the Sicily side though; when you've got a hungry family with no breakfast available, you just wanna get there ASAP. Pretty nice scenery though. Needless to say we demolished everything we could find at Palermo station on arrival though!
"I'd prefer to spend time with my family at the end of this rail journey rather than spend that time contemplating the history-rich aesthetics of the rail carriage" isn't a "grindset".
Transport is a *tool* for most people—a means, not an end, as it is for a tiny subset of travel reporters (overrepresented in print). It dehumanizes people to delegitimatize their subjective valuation of their own lives' priorities. Wanting to go fast, deprioritizing transport as a mere tool, doesn't make them defective people.
High-speed rail is an awesome thing and it weirds me out to have been shamed and mocked for advocating for it.
Please consider that your original post could also be seen as shaming people who appreciate the beauty of train journeys.
Some of the best quality time I've spent with my son has been during train journeys. Like many two-year olds he loves the whole experience. Watching out of the window while the train is moved onto a ferry would blow his mind. I agree that high-speed trains are marvellous; I'm sad that their introduction deprives us of some rich cultural experiences.
As the article states, they’re planning to build a bridge. You can have an efficient option and a scenic/nostalgic option on the same route. This is just a bit of sentimentality about a cool train journey that might be replaced, not “anti-modernity sentiment.”
Is spending life time in a train your goal? I like trains. To get quickly, safe and comfortable from A to B. Changing to a ferry is ... what I would consider a one time experience, but I rather would have the option to go by fast train straight to sicily whenever I feel like.
As of now, flying remains way cheaper, despite being worse ecological. But this won't change like that.
The time you spend on a night trains is spent sleeping. They deliberately don’t run full pace - no one wants to arrive at 5 in the morning. So they slow-roll on a long stretch to make arrival times reasonable.
Very often you can make an earlier arrival at a destination via night train than you can via plane - unless you fly in the evening before.
There are often distances I like to travel, far longer than one night. I really don't see the point in making it harder on purpose. There are plenty of places where getting there is an adventure. I like adventures. But not when just visiting family or alike.
Nobody is making anything harder on purpose. You can take a plane. But for a lot of European distances, night trains are perfectly good. I would love if they’d resurrect the night train that went to my parents place - I would board it on Friday 10pm to go home, be there Saturday for breakfast, board the train back at midnight on Sunday and roll into the Berlin main station in time to make it to work. Not a single lost minute for the trip, maximize time at the destination.
I know. But my ecological consciousness has a problem with that. So yes, I also like night trains. And I also like bridges in general for better connection. I did not run the numbers to see if it makes sense here or just for the Mafiosi (I heard that complaint a lot). I am arguing against the romanticed point above, keeping the ferry because some think it is romantic.
Yes, I have. As I wrote in the sibling comments the last time just a week ago, the actual train that’s being discussed here. I’ll be again on Friday, for the return. I’ve taken multiple other night train connections before and in my experience, the quality depends to a large extend on the operator and the rolling stock. Older stock makes for less comfort, especially if not well maintained.
In my experience sleeping on the train also takes a bit of getting used to. Then again, maybe it’s really not for you - that’s ok.
You should read the whole article before claiming things.
> After the 2019 closure of the Puttgarden-Rødby service between Germany and Denmark and the seasonal Sassnitz-Trelleborg route linking Germany and Sweden in 2020, the Intercity is now the last one running. All the rest were replaced by bridges or tunnels, or proved too expensive to maintain as demand fell in favour of air travel.
Yes, sorry. I sometimes pass the connection Rødby - Puttgarden by car, and I have seen trains there recently. But they obviously don't use the ferry anymore.
My bad. Sorry.
I see that they changed the route to go via Jutland because of the upcoming tunnel. So yes, the Italian line is probably the last one of its kind.
The Danish-German connection will probably not be reestablished, as the new tunnel will replace the ferry.
Its closure is also mentioned in the text: "After the 2019 closure of the Puttgarden-Rødby service between Germany and Denmark and the seasonal Sassnitz-Trelleborg route linking Germany and Sweden in 2020, the Intercity is now the last one running."
Ah, sweet memories. Grumpy German border guards boarding to loudly demand papers, but if you were slow to pull the ID card out they just kept walking. Semi-open border policy ;)
During the Cold War, the train on the Trelleborg-Sassnitz ferry went to West Berlin ... throughEastGermany with no getting on or off over that stretch.
BTW. I was on the Hamburg-Copenhagen train on the Puttgarten-Rødby ferry in 2015 during the height of the Syrian refugee crisis. I had changed my booking to earlier trains because of expected delays. It and connecting trains were packed, as were the train stations, also with immigration officials and volunteers. Brings tears to my eyes to this day.
This summer I took the ferry from Hirtshals, Denmark to Seydisfjordur, Iceland. 2 full days, over 48 hours of travel time. And back.
Relatives and friends thought my wife and I were crazy - or at least eccentric. Why would you waste 4 full days (+ 2 days to get to and from Denmark by car).
Turns out, travel time is still travel. And what a beautiful time that was!
There is no stable Internet conncetion on the ferry itself (no cell connection AT ALL at sea), plus you have to pay for it a pretty hefty fee. So from observing other people, +95% did not have Internet access at all.
The ferry itself is not huge, it is not a cruise ship. But large enough to be entertaining and fun to explore. Kids had a few attractions, including a tiny cinema. They sold popcorn though, that's all kids cared about besides the Minecraft movie.
For us, adults, there were a few bars, restaurants to hang out. Even a little library, a corner with board games, couple shops.
Because people were not glued to their phones, you could actually meet and talk to other people, have non-trivial conversations. People would read books, have a sip of coffee, walk around.
Not once did I get bored, not once did I not know what to do. Sure enough, I would pull out the iPhone from my pocket only to see it is completely offline. What was also fun: if I went out with the kids, there was no way I could let me wife know we would be late or any other matters. Same the other way.
Life felt slower, but somehow more real?
Anyway, I can only recommend a travel experience like this, at least once in your lifetime. For us, it became part of the memories we made, besides visiting Iceland itself. I can imagine the same being the case if you travel long distances by train.
Took a train from NYC to Chicago and it was so nice. Similar amount of time, about two days I think all in all. And just rolling on the plains, got myself a bunk, was more expensive than the plane ride home but 25 times more enjoyable and fulfilling.
Ditching my phone as much as possible has been the best decision I've ever made. Life always feels a little slower when you're not constantly inundated with outside noise.
I still pay attention, but instead of constantly paying attention and doing nothing, I pay attention a good amount, and do things instead.
I was a little taken by the state of American trains if this was true. Two days would mean at least 36h for me and that in turn would mean that the trains would have an average speed of 20mph.
But it turns out that it takes 20h, so twice that speed. Still not fast but better. With that duration it also seems unlikely that the speed is kept artificially low to allow some sleep on the train, as is very common in Europe.
Can only agree on that: took 5 ferries this summer from 5 to 18 hours, and it's almost always a very nice experience. You have to be ready for "rough" seas though, may be a problem for some. Even the wait time before getting on the ship can be a good time to chat with other travellers. And you see things you wouldn't see from land.
I took the train from Copenhagen to Stockholm a few years back. I remember getting on the train and then all of a sudden we were boarding a boat, and got kicked out of the train while they transited the across the ocean.
I really liked it, was a cool experience, and an easy way to get on a boat. IDK if it's still like this. I hope it is.
I had checked google maps before the trip and saw a bridge so figured the train would go over that, but looks like it's car only bridge. Was a pleasant surprise.
The Øresund Bridge is a combined road-rail bridge.
(As an interesting aside, the Swedish railroad system drives on the left, while the Danish one drives on the right, so the trains have to cross to the other side after crossing the strait.)
What you described reminds me that travel isn't just about the destination, it is the time in between
Yeah, if you actually walk around outside of your cabin. I took this ferry last summer, pretty much didn't leave the cabin (except to look at Shetland Islands), only just before arriving. Having plenty of food, movies and games with me... yeah
If you take this ferry, make sure to do the stop in Faroe Islands, it's absolutely amazing.
I plan to sail this route again next year.
Side note: was it just me or this ferry or route is particularly rough? I crossed Baltic like 20 times by ferry (18h crossing), never got sea sick, until this one.
Which part of the Baltic takes 18 hours to cross?
Anyway it wouldn't be too surprising it's less rough than the North Atlantic given the Baltic is closely wrapped in land.
Nynäshamn - Gdańsk. I've also did shorter routes like Ystad - Świnoujście and Helsinki - Tallinn
Stockholm - Helsinki, for example.
The funny part of this is, you just described not only travel, but all of life prior to about 2003ish (at least in the United States). This is when, in my social circles, we transitioned to most people having cell phone access and the ability to "let people know if you would be late." Still a long time before smart phones became ubiquitous.
So this was "just life" in the 90s and beforehand. The upside you describe was also sometimes the downside. E.g. my mother was traveling for work when one of my brothers was injured in a way that required a trip to the ER for stitches (he's fine). My dad was getting us all (4 kids under 7) into the car as she called from her hotel and he basically had to answer and say that we were on the way to the hospital, and she just had to wait for an update once we got home many hours later.
And yet, I would still agree that "Life felt slower, but somehow more real?" and that we haven't yet found the right equilibrium for always being connected in a way humans were never able to be before. I'm glad experiences like this are still possible.
Paul Theroux talks about this a bit in one of his books, about how it’s about the journey and not the destination basically. I think it was The Old Patagonian Express.
I've done a number of long distance walking holidays now. Weeks straight of walking every day. Pilgrims walk ~800km in ~6 weeks on the Camino de Santiago in Spain throughout the year. I've done shorter routes both in Spain and elsewhere. It's really a great way to switch off. Your whole life becomes the Way. How far do you have to walk? Where are you going to eat? Do you need to carry food? What's the weather looking like? Going back to being stationary afterwards is quite jarring actually.
As a sort of counter anecdote - we took a ferry from Portsmouth to Bilbao once, it was also just over 2 days on the sea. But oh boy, I regularly take ferries from UK to Netherlands, but I've never seen sea as rough as this. We were pretty much stuck in the cabin, sea sick, for the entire two days. I decided to brave the neausea and attempt to go for some food, but in the main buffet plates were literally sliding off the tables.
On the way back we decided to drive through france and skip the ferry.
But yes, on the Newcastle to Amsterdam crossing my favourite thing is being completely cut off from the internet, can finally sit down with a book without the compulsive need to check my phone every 5 minutes.
This summer I did Paris to Istanbul by train, through Vienna and Bucharest, it was wonderful!
Was it a normal train or the famous "Oriental Express"?
The Orient Express stopped running in 2009 (after it had already been successively cut back to just Strasbourg-Vienna), although it was a "normal train" in most senses (it was a regular EuroNight service, not really any different to ride from less famous ones like the Cassiopeia or Jan Kiepura).
The train you may be thinking of, a luxury train that imitates a historic one, is mimicing the the Simplon Orient Express which did not run through Vienna (and also it rarely goes beyond Venice).
I was in fact thinking of the luxury version. I was not aware it was an imitation.
The "mega bridge" is one of the most politicized and polarizing projects I've ever seen in my life.
My family lived in Messina for a while and it seems that in the last 100 years no one was actually interested in building nor genuinely stopping the project for good, just using it to bash whoever is on the opposite side of the argument.
- On the left it's seen as the biggest ecological issue they have in Italy, despite the ferry company handling the passage is a well known mafia-owned monopoly whose ferries leak tons of garbage and oil on the sea every single day.
- On the right they've gone with the most ridiculous, expensive and unachievable version of a project in order to to make sure they can siphon as much money as they can before declaring that the project has to be stopped or whatever.
Every summer I go back to my mother's family and when the topic comes out it's as they're basically stuck in a time loop.
Prince Edward Island had a century-old plan that was finally executed in the 1990s to build a bridge to connect to mainland Canada (1).
This is the same debate that happens each time there’s a fixed connection to an island until the damn thing opens and people grow to love it.
It’s a pain in the arse to have to wait for the ferry, to sync your travel plans to ferry times, only to have to change plans again when the ferries break down.
(1) https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-isla...
Having lived the majority of my adult life in greater Puget Sound, the ferries are great for tourists and a pain for actual day-to-day travel.
It's not just that bridge, it seems it's almost any big new bridge that attracts all sorts of howling, even when it's painfully obvious it's needed.
Skye. Never used the bridge, used the ferry from Kyle of Localsh to Kyleakin and the one to Mallaig from Armadale. But what you say rings true. Romance went out the window, but for locals its a shitload easier to get on with life.
> when the topic comes out it's as they're basically stuck in a time loop.
Fellow Italian here. The whole country is stuck in a time loop. Have you noticed that even the crime pages of the newspapers are filled with articles about investigations on murders of twenty or thirty or even forty years ago? And that on tv, people debate furiously terrorist acts that took place almost 50 years ago- when they also don't get updates from eternally ongoing investigations and trials? In politics, the same reforms that were proposed at the beginning of the '90s are brought up by each new government, generating new controversy and division, until they're forgotten or, sometimes, rolled back by Italy's supreme court. These days there's even a debate going on about the opportunity of introducing sexual education in schools for 6-8 graders, when I remember we had it already in the late '80s.
It's quite interesting for southern Italians to claim that a bridge will be detrimental to the ecology of the region, when in Sicily people routinely burn their trash on the street because the mafia controls the garbage disposal apparently.
2025. In Europe. They burn. Their trash. On the street.
Huh interesting. I overheard a conversation in a bar around Kabukicho, Shinjuku, Tokyo a few years ago with similar story.
The bartender was talkingto a local bar owner, and he was explaining how he was trying to find another contractor for garbage disposal because he found the current rate ridiculous. Every contractor hung up on him after hearing his address, and he found out that yakuza had territories around Kabukicho and you'd get in trouble if you took a contract there.
Interesting to hear garbage disposal being a common business organized crime go for. I guess there's many utilities too to have garbage disposal infrastructure for other illegal activities
it is that, it is a fairly undesirable business for goody two shoes to go into and expose people, it is also not a sympathetic business type, and everybody needs it.
Garbage disposal is also remarkably hard in Japan, maybe understandable since they don't have anywhere to put it.
Instead of the famous Japanese customer service, residential garbage requires you to sort it, put it in transparent bags, put it out on specific days etc. so your neighbors can personally shame you if you do any of it wrong.
Commercial garbage in Tokyo gets left out on the street (like NYC up until this year) and occasionally attracts rats.
Japan burns 80% of their garbage compared to 35% of Germany or 12% of US. So disposal isn't very complex but does entail a lot of sorting.
The rest of Japan's garbage culture (small bins, poor/mafia organization etc.) is totally self inflicted and is more of a cultural phenomena rather than a technical one.
watch The Sopranos :)
or ghost in the shell
No, it's way worse than that. They not only control the garbage disposal business and regional administration, they physically stop you from keeping your street / neighbourhood / town clean...Guess how do I know.
It's their "service" or no service, with some extremely narrow exceptions, like a very small town named Aci Bonaccorsi, which fought that and now they're able to keep their streets on an amazing level of cleaniness compared to nearby municipalities.
Garbage disposal is the last remaining big business handled by the local mafia (drugs are handled by camorra nowadays) and they're absolutely doing anything to avoid losing that.
It was/is also that way in Athens, at least in the "anarchist" quarter of town. Every Friday the so-called anarchists (would) take dumpsters and light them on fire, to make a point, that the government is corrupt, or something. I'm not Greek so I can't speak for Greeks but other Greeks told me it's just part of life, so just look the other way. Also trash collection seems to often be an issue. They also have an island just for trash, but I heard it's already overflowing so they are looking for another island to use as a trash dump. Admittedly I haven't been there in a couple years, so maybe things have changed lately, but I do have a lot of photos of dumpsters on fire.
This is not really accurate. I have lived in Athens. There were some years where burned dumpsters were not a rare sight (after the big riots of 2008), but it is really, really uncommon, especially considering the size of Athens.
And I have never heard anything (or were able to find something on google) about an island full of trash. Islands are simply too valuable for that, and you'd also need to bring the trash there by boat.
Sort of interesting, yes. But it’s human nature to put more effort into something you might have some influence over rather than something you don’t. Possibly doing more of the former could lead to the latter being more feasible
There's been suggestions to use the military as construction labour
https://youtu.be/ei-bG4XfB4s
Feels like no one really wants a solution
Honest question. Is Sicily actually economically important enough for such an expensive mega bridge? To my mind it would make more sense to invest that money in Milan.
Why invest in the region that’s already developed when you can invest in one that still has room to grow? That’s the meaning of investment. It seems likely that Sicily is poorer, in part, because of the lack of a bridge to the continent.
The opposite angle is that investing is a well functioning region gives better results that investing in a corrupt and dysfunctional one.
To figure out which angle is more correct, you need to consider facts about the specific regions.
But Milan is a sure bet? You know that you'll make the money back.
Backwards regions are subsidised by the cities. Sicily can be made into a tourist resort for pensioners.
Only if Sicily can somehow make water magically appear (I won't bother linking any articles, as there are literally hundreds in the last 2-3 years about the utter lack of water and suffering of Sicilians).
Or perhaps building a bridge will enable them to bring water in easily from the mainland?
There already is investment. Milan just opened a new metro line to its airport over the past couple years; and the new Turin to Lyon tunnel will allow Milan to Paris in 4h30 compared to 7h today.
With its potential and location and it’s well worth it.
What would you build with $20B near Milan? Also, it's not like Northern Italy is forgotten when it comes to government investment. The Brenner Base Tunnel is being built there which will probably cost on the order of $15B or more.
Per-capita GDP is very low for Sicily relative to other regions - but it still has an overall GDP of around $100B, which is similar to Costa Rica or Croatia. Giving it a car/rail connection to the mainland would be a huge boon for the region and Italy in general.
Sounds very similar to HS2 in the UK
Or the Fehmarn Belt tunnel (northern Germany to Denmark).
Or probably most of those big infrastructure construction projects.
Not sure why you added the Fehmarn Belt tunnel, there are no rumors or news of being mismanaged or going over the budget or being behind schedule.
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/fehmarnbelt-delayed-...
> Sund & Bælt, the Danish transport company overseeing the project, has now confirmed that IVY has not yet completed full testing and has not received final approvals from relevant authorities, despite arriving on site last October. The preparatory delay is about 18 months, a setback that project managers say makes meeting the original 2029 opening target difficult.
> There is also an issue with restrictions around the working conditions. Contracts for the main construction works were signed in 2016, before German planning approval had been granted. That timing meant certain later-imposed requirements – notably restrictions on underwater noise from work vessels and limits on sediment spill in German waters – were not written into the original contracts, complicating attempts to speed up work now that the rules are in place.
Over budget, decades behind schedule because Germany does everything to rise costs and delay. First they sunk the bridge project, now they delay the tunnel project. See the Wikipedia page.
Hadn’t they designed a bridge, they were getting ready to build it, and it was changed to a tunnel.
It does make sense since tunnels won’t need to closed for high winds like bridges do.
I might have misremembered bits of this.
You're describing a perfectly normal and healthy development arc.
An initial study into a problem poses a preferred solution.
Time and effort is put into deep study of the solution path. Unfortunately, in this case the study proves it is far less ideal than initially assumed.
The project is switched to Plan B.
Granted, sometimes this kind of early change in direction is for dumb or dishonest reasons, but one cannot perfectly know the results before the studies are completed.
I am in rail design. We are currently designing things for needs in 2030-2060. The world is complicated.
At least this one is getting built, similar to the Brenner Base Tunnel in the South - the common thing tying both projects together is Deutsche Bahn, the federal parliament and the local parliaments being unable to get their asses together and expand the regional tracks to be able to carry the extended traffic that both these tunnels enable.
But is Germany even deeply involved there? I thought construction was split between AT and IT.
The BBT itself, no that's indeed (thank God) not handled by DB.
But the BBT also needs supporting infrastructure from Kufstein to Munich, the so called Brenner Nordzulauf [1], some of which (the Truderinger Spange) is also covered by the Ausbaustrecke 38 programme [2]. Unfortunately, the Brenner Nordzulauf has been hotly contested [3] with very good points being raised - among others, some of the route proposals run through nature protection reservates, people are skeptical of years worth of construction, noise, debris, rail and road blocks, and separation of entire areas by another rail track.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenner-Nordzulauf
[2] https://www.bahnausbau-muenchen.de/projekt.html?PID=29
[3] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/ebersberg/brenner-basis...
And Berlin Airport
And the Edinburgh Tram Project
Future:
- Heathrow Third Runway (assuming the government meddle in it heavily)
- Lower Thames Crossing
The initial phase of the Edinburgh Trams project wasn't great - but I suspect everyone involved knew it was going to be difficult and it's the approach of getting the project started and once started it's difficult to kill (see Robert Moses for that strategy!).
However, it's now a good service, popular and the trams are probably going to be expanded to much more of the city?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Trams
Also the Queensferry Crossing bridge was built with relatively little fuss - there were some delays but those were down to some spells of very bad weather.
As a taxpayer, I can't stomach such acceptance of incompetence and mismanagement and corruption in the UK, personally.
It was a "litany of avoidable failures" as the Hardie report explained.
It does look like a tremendous success now though (not financially though. A double whammy for the taxpayer). The ends justify the means I guess?
Indeed, I wasn't trying to defend the management of the trams project - which did seem a farce.
Mind you - the investigation into the trams itself took far longer than expected and cost far more than anyone thought it should...
> the investigation into the trams itself took far longer than expected and cost far more than anyone thought it should
It's like the dessert coming out after the buffet! Doubles all round!
My family is from Sicily, and I remember taking this train every year when I was a kid. After several years, I took it again last summer and was bufflled at how inefficient the whole ordeal was... Basically you have to wait for the train wagons to be detached and reassembled on the other side, you easily waste a couple hours.
Now, I don't really mind this, it's a bit of a tradition if you want, but I asked a relative of mine who used to work for the Italian national train company, and he told me that this train works like this cause in the past all the Sicilian migrants would travel with a lot of luggage, and it would be very impractical for them to transfer all of that twice. Nowadays this is not really the case anymore.
I've been on this train. The sound of the train being pulled onto the ferry did wake me up to say the least. It was dark outside and the blinds were shut in our sleeping coach. I remember feeling a bit of a weight, being in bed, in a closed coach, inside a large train, deep inside this massive ferry with many floors above us. It wasn't until much later that I realized that the train was open-air and not that big at all. You then wake up a few hours later near Palermo where the train runs just by the ocean – that was lovely.
I've also been on the second-to-last train of this type a few times (Snälltåget from Sweden via Denmark to Germany). That one also got canceled for the same reason – mega bridge construction (Fehmarn Belt). There, you used to get off the train to go up to the canteen for lunch with the truckers.
It was trains from Hamburg to Copenhagen used to run on the Fehmarn Ferry until the line was shut for reconstruction, they now run via Padborg.
The Snalltaget sleeper train from Berlin to Malmo used to run on the ferry from Sassnitz to Trelleborg avoiding Denmark altogether, that stopped because the ferries don't run on that route any more, and the train also runs via Padborg.
In the case of the Fehmarn belt it's an underwater bridge though.
I think some consider the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link to consist of multiple parts, as the main tunnel (Fehmarn Belt Tunnel proper) is between a German island and a Danish island so stops a bit short. On the Danish side, they rebuild the Storstrøm Bridge, and on the German side they decided to build another tunnel alongside the existing Fehmarn Sound Bridge. So in total, one existing bridge, one rebuilt bridge, one short new tunnel and one long new tunnel will connect Germany proper to Denmark proper.
They seem to have missed one key detail in the title: this is the last European passenger train that travels by sea - or rather, the last ferry crossing that carries passenger carriages (I doubt that they carry the engine across by ferry?). There are (AFAIK) several other ferry lines that carry freight carriages, among them the Rostock-Trelleborg line served by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Sk%C3%A5ne
> I doubt that they carry the engine across by ferry?
I don't know about this specific instance, but the Germany-Denmark train-on-a-ferry carried the whole Diesel-powered train, engine and all. It drove onto the ferry on its own, and left it on its own as well.
It's not longer than the ferry?
They decouple/shunt the carriages so they're alongside each other rather than having to fit them all in end to end.
The first ever night train I went, about 25 years ago, on was from Berlin to Malmo. Early morning, I woke up to the feeling of my bed swaying and looking out of the window realised 'hang on, they've put the train on a ferry'.
I had no idea that trains got put on ferries, although I had been puzzled by the way the route on the route map crossed the sea but had assumed it was just to make the diagram simpler. It was quite a surreal thing finding myself unexpectedly on a train on a ferry. It was nice though as you could go and wander round the ferry and it was quite fun seeing it go off the ferry which had special train tracks on it onto the normal train tracks on the land.
I enjoyed the writing but the few photos left me curious about the ferry transfer. 34-minute video:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BA_2p5RUbe8
I took that train many years ago. At least back then it was faster to get off the train in Calabria, hop on whatever local ferry was next, and then grab another train in Sicily, depending on your destination. In my case it was Catania to visit a friend.
I took this train or another one that crossed to Sicily in the early 90s. It was at night, so there wasn’t much to look at while the mechanics of being transferred from the wharf to the boat and then back to land took place. But I do remember the friendliness of the Sicilian people on that train. I only spoke a little French and some high school Latin, but it was enough to have a basic conversation and even a few laughs.
I can see why this is worthwhile for a freight train, it takes a long time to unload goods onto a boat and offload them the other side. But why does it make sense for passengers? Is it just because they were doing it with freight already?
You board a train in Milan and wake up in Sicily without ever having to drag your luggage across terminals, onto buses, or through port checkpoints. Especially for night trains, that seamlessness adds a kind of magic
Passengers are more time-sensitive than freight. For a 20 minute ferry crossing, having everyone and their luggage disembark the train, go on a ferry, disembark the ferry and board a train would easily double the travel time of the crossing. It would also be far less convenient
Passengers have luggage, you don't need a second train on the other side.
What a delightful technological artefact. Certainly a shame to lose it, even if the bridge would be more convenient/efficient in the long run
There might have been occasions where a train ferry transported one of those train that carry cars onboard. I like that thought.
The transit version of a turducken.
Ferrtrainen?
Discussions (with more than 2 comments) of the planned bridge:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44854834
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44817863
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43427008
> In August, the Italian government revived long-standing plans to build a vast €13.5bn (£11.7bn) suspension bridge over the strait – one of the world's most ambitious engineering projects.
What makes it particularly ambitious? The strait of Messina is two miles across, and I don't think that even cracks the top 100 of the world's longest bridges.
It will be by far the longest span of a suspension bridge at 3300 meter.
The current longest is in Turkey at 2023 meter.
Each of the pylons of the Messina Bridge will be around 400 meters tall. Which is taller than the Empire State Building.
The strait is too deep, with too much current and seismic activity to place the pylons in the water. So they have to be on the shore, as I understand it.
it's geologically and seismically challenging. The project is a single span for 3300 meters, which would make it one of the longest in the world of the kind.
The strong presence of organized crime in the area also makes a lot of people uneasy about the whole deal, but that's not a technical issue.
If you sort the list on Wikipedia by "main span length" rather than overall bridge length then the longest span is just over 2km?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_bridges
Apples to appleseeds. The main span doesn't cross the entire gap. The main span is just the middle part, typically a small fraction of the overall length between endpoints or shorelines, however those are defined.
Well, in this case, the main span will cross the entire gap (or at least it's planned to do it). This BBC article has a rendering which is higher resolution than the one in the Wikipedia article: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c80d74v0e4lo
The current design for the Strait of Messina bridge has a main span of 3.3km - which is quite a bit more than the current longest span?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Messina_Bridge
Nice adaptation of the metaphor. Golf clap.
I don't really know but looking at a depth map at the narrowest part it's pretty deep at 200+ meters. At another section where it's wider it's about 100m. Not sure where they're planning to build it.
A tunnel would be massively easier to build, but there's strong political hubris and greed in keeping the original single-span bridge project from the early '60s.
The strait is unusually deep, 250 m. That seems quite a slope.
Apparently we already have underwater tunnels 292 meters below sea level https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryfylke_Tunnel#:~:text=The%20R...
Shortest summary I could quickly find:
> "...building a suspension bridge of this scale poses significant engineering challenges. The Strait of Messina is known for strong winds, seismic activity, and deep waters, all of which complicate construction and long-term stability. Engineers will need to ensure the structure can withstand earthquakes, which aren't unheard of in the region, while addressing corrosion from the salty marine environment."
-- https://www.iflscience.com/worlds-longest-suspension-bridge-...
I remember reading an article, posted here on HN, that went into much more depth about why this was all unusually challenging, but I haven't found it again.
This is cool, but a little crazy. Why put the whole train on the ferry instead of just offloading the passengers and putting them on the ferry?
That would be much worse for passengers who can normally just sleep through the whole thing, it would take much longer to do the transfer, you'd need a larger and more complex ferry with bathrooms, seating, luggage storage, and more staff to deal with the guests, you'd need to deal with scheduling issues (what if you get to the other side and the train isn't there yet?).
I have taken this train and it would have been a nightmare to wake up everyone at like 3am, get them and all their stuff out and onto the ferry, and then do it all in reverse on the other side. It would add at least an hour to the trip if not more.
> you'd need a larger and more complex ferry
Don't those already exist? I don't know, but I assume that regular passenger ferries operate on this route, no?
> it would have been a nightmare to wake up everyone at like 3am
I presume that if one were offloading passengers onto an existing ferry one would not schedule the train to arrive during normal ferry operating hours rather than 3AM.
I think the right answer here is that Sicily is bigger than I thought, about 100 miles across, and so the onward travel time can be significant, and so if you're going to offer a night train whose final destination is (say) Marsala then putting the train on a ferry in the middle of the night makes sense.
When I took the Germany to Denmark crossing I'm almost certain you weren't allowed to stay on the train. I certainly didn't anyway. But, yes, it still saves a lot of time compared to walking between train and ferry twice.
At least in the past trains went by ferry also between Helsingborg (Sweden) and Helsingör (Denmark). Could not find if they have been stopped. So the Italian train might be not be there only one in Europe.
They’re no more.
Since when? What have they been replaced with?
I went on the train between Hamburg and Copenhagen around 2007. Crossed on a ferry between Puttgarden (Germany) and Rødby (Denmark). Looks like this was discontinued in 2019 but I'm not sure what replaces the Hamburg-Copenhagen link. I'm glad I did it, it was definitely a strange experience to disembark the train on to a ferry and go and stand on the deck as it crossed.
> Since when? What have they been replaced with?
The Helsingborg-Helsingør train ferry was replaced (car ferries remain) by railway on the Öresund Bridge (from the 2011 TV series The Bridge) between the big cities Malmö, Sweden and Copenhagen, Denmark in 2000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98resund_Bridge
The Puttgarden-Rødby train ferry was replaced by a new longer but faster railway route via the Great Belt Bridge and Flensburg until the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link is ready. https://www.seat61.com/trains-and-routes/hamburg-to-copenhag...
I went on this train as well back in the late 1990s. It was a surreal experience that you get off the train on a ferry!
On a not totally unrelated topic, this gem in Aomori Japan, well off the beaten track, is amazing. It's the last train-carrying ship that used to sail between Honshu and Hokkaido (a particularly dangerous stretch of sea), before they built the Seikan Tunnel for trains.
https://en.japantravel.com/aomori/memorial-ship-hakkoda-maru...
If your destination is Messina or even Catania, you can can save some time leaving the train in Villa San Giovanni (last stop before the train will be loaded into the ferry) and, literally, jump on the first ferry that is starting, so you save all the time needed to load and unload the train.
No one will ask you for a ticket (no one will ask for anything, actually). Or at the least it was like this some twenty years ago when I did it.
...
This is also a great way to randomly arrive in Siracusa wondering how did you end up there, in some sort of re-enactment of the last Indiana Jones movie.
Well, I guess I was lucky! More seriously: I just followed a local that suggested this, and he knew the right way but from what I remember, it wasn't that hard to catch the right ferry. And, honestly, after so many hours of train, I was happy to physically move around and not wait another 40+ minutes.
Oh that's so lame. I liked the one in Denmark. I always imagined it was still there and I could go again some day. Sad.
It's easy to frame the bridge as "progress," but it risks bulldozing over the kind of slow, sensory-rich travel that people are increasingly craving again
Why don't they just maintain a separate train on the island?
You'd have to troop everyone on and off (potentially with quite a lot of luggage) in the middle of the night.
Yeah I know, that's what they do literally everywhere else in the world. You take the train to a place, and then you book a ferry, and then you take another train.
Only these italians had the genius idea to keep going with the train.
On the contrary, train ferries used to be commonplace - for decades they were a great solution to the problem when you need to cross a relatively small stretch of water as part of a long, mostly overland journey. They've gradually faded out as we've gotten better at building longer and longer bridges and tunnels, but that doesn't mean they weren't a good approach in places where we hadn't managed to build a bridge or tunnel yet.
Passenger trains used to be ferried across the baltic sea when I was a kid, in fact they still ferry cargo trains over to Poland.
I think it's more about the state of the infrastructure, and the scope of the railway carrier, at least in this case with Sicily.
For example the railway ferries between Sweden and Denmark ended long before the bridge was built, in the 80s.
I'd thought this would have been somewhere in Denmark or Norway
Denmark had an unfortunate situation about 13 years ago, where the only rail bridge to the northern part of the country was hit by a ship, cutting rail network in two. Some trains where stuck in the north and had to be ferried to Sweden and the take the trip down from Gotenburg, via Malmö and then across the bridge to Copenhagen, because those trains where needed to maintain the service level.
Since then I've been wary of dismantling too much backup infrastructure. The rail tracks to the ferry terminal was still in place in this case, because they are listed as NATO infrastructure, still they where barely maintained.
The tracks on the Gothenburg side have since been removed, so even this workaround would not be possible today (they would have to go to Trelleborg instead).
That's a fascinating bit of rail history
https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jernbanebroen_over_Limfjorden#... See the 2012 collision, in Danish only, sorry.
It used be one between Denmark and Germany. Likely that one you are thinking about. Canceled due to the Fehmarn Belt bridge construction.
If that’s a new term to you, more info at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fehmarn_Belt_fixed_link. It’s a new submerged tunnel that’s being constructed between Germany and Denmark, hopefully opening in 4 years time (though that’s looking increasing unlikely at this point).
I’m looking forwards to it as it’ll nearly halve the Copenhagen <-> Hamburg train time, down to 2 hours and 20 minutes.
Meanwhile on the other side of that lovely little island:
> In 2025 when the tunnel (the Fehmarn Sound Tunnel) was still not approved by authorities it was revealed that it would not be opened in 2029 as it was then planned but in 2032, which would delay train traffic along the new connection until then. Road traffic can use the old bridge.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fehmarn_Sound_Tunnel
I would bet actual money that we (as in we Germans) don't get that tunnel done before 2035.
There's a bridge between Denmark and Sweden.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Øresund_Bridge
In 1989 I took the rail/ferry link traveling from Germany to Copenhagen (and back)... It's faster now, but not as "cool"
I'm struggling to come to terms with the depth of anti-modernity sentiment in the West, that it's considered normal (and not mortifying) to read a BBC piece praising a twenty-hour rail journey as a thing of "lyrical beauty", quoting authorities like a "philosophy researcher". Who elevated this flowery nonsense over the common sense of the masses of sane people, with lives and goals and needs and places to be?
We just took the train to get from Berlin to Sicily for our holiday and will take it back on Sunday. There’s no one forcing you to take the train - there’s plenty of airports around here. But night trains are - at least for some - a great way to travel. You boards the train a 8pm in Milano, and by the time you had breakfast, you’re almost in Messina. Now, I wish that they’d refurbish the rolling stock and make the train run faster on the last legs, but that’s fundamentally a maintenance and upkeep issue. The technology is perfectly fine.
Technology is fine, but this night train is dangerous between Rome and Messina. I got robbed twice. Once you are over in Sicily everything is fine again. We left our luggage in a small Sicilian town center for some hours, and nothing got stolen. Near Napoli it would be gone in 10m.
Please share the details of the journey
The experience was okay, I would take it again. We went all the way from the start in Milano to Messina. The train left Milano on time and pretty much remained on time except for a minor delay in Rome (15 minutes).
We had a 3 person sleeper cabin for ourselves. They do serve a little breakfast - espresso, shrink-wrapped croissants, some biscuits with Marmelade and some salty crackers. Not a great meal, but good enough. If you’re going beyond Messina to Syracuse or Palermo, you should bring food along - or pick something up on the ferry.
The rolling stock is old - as in the toilets are still the kind where you can see the tracks, not a closed system. So they close the toilets a while before you get on the ferry.
Still, the ride was comfortable enough to actually sleep, even though the top bunk is a bit short for people of my size (1,85) - but neither wife nor kid could be convinced to climb up there.
Going to bed in Milano and waking up with a view of the coast was amazing. The beds fold up and you have a proper 3 seat cabin for the rest of the ride.
The ride was amazingly cheap - we paid 160 EUR for two adults and one 8year old, one way, so 330 in total.
Not the parent but took this train (Rome -> Palermo) in 2019 and had a middling experience. Based on previous excellent night train experiences (in France) I'd recommended the sleeper train as a great way to get our family down to Sicily. With 3- and 6-year-olds the idea of travelling while sleeping had much appeal.
Unfortunately I should have factored Trenitalia (Italian train operator) into the mix. The train departed an hour late - not such a big deal you'd think for an overnight sleeper train - but it arrived late at Roma Centrale so we couldn't board it and get comfortable. Two small kids at 10pm on a train platform in a big city is not much fun.
The sleeper car was tired, but clean enough. Unfortunately, we'd been mis-advised and there were no buffet/restaurant facilities on the train. We'd assumed that breakfast (either delivered or in said car) was provided, and all we had were a few snacks.
Once the train started moving, the gentle rock-you-to-sleep I remembered from previous night trains was notably absent; rather it was a violent side-to-side pitching that increased concerningly when the train got up to full speed. As the bunks in our compartment were transverse to the direction of travel, in my upper bunk this ended up feeling like lying on a see-saw.
Unsettling accompanying grinding noises pointed to a lack of maintenance, and sure enough, at ARGH o'clock, a frantic banging on the compartment door and some italo-english gesturing from a Trenitalia attendant made it clear that we were being ejected from our broken car. We had to pack up all our stuff which we'd exploded all over the compartment, plus wake up two sleeping kids, and pajama-clad, move onto the 3am platform of Who-knows-where while new compartments were found for all the unlucky residents of our little cocktail-shaker.
Our new digs were much more stable and the overnight ferry crossing passed so smoothly that none of us even woke for more than a second or two when there were some bumps and clanks. I second the request for more speed on the Sicily side though; when you've got a hungry family with no breakfast available, you just wanna get there ASAP. Pretty nice scenery though. Needless to say we demolished everything we could find at Palermo station on arrival though!
"These people" just dont have the same grindset as you sadly.
They will never know the joy of a 4am ice water facial followed by 21 hours of grinding before 3 hours of sleep before another 4am ice water facial.
"I'd prefer to spend time with my family at the end of this rail journey rather than spend that time contemplating the history-rich aesthetics of the rail carriage" isn't a "grindset".
Transport is a *tool* for most people—a means, not an end, as it is for a tiny subset of travel reporters (overrepresented in print). It dehumanizes people to delegitimatize their subjective valuation of their own lives' priorities. Wanting to go fast, deprioritizing transport as a mere tool, doesn't make them defective people.
High-speed rail is an awesome thing and it weirds me out to have been shamed and mocked for advocating for it.
Please consider that your original post could also be seen as shaming people who appreciate the beauty of train journeys.
Some of the best quality time I've spent with my son has been during train journeys. Like many two-year olds he loves the whole experience. Watching out of the window while the train is moved onto a ferry would blow his mind. I agree that high-speed trains are marvellous; I'm sad that their introduction deprives us of some rich cultural experiences.
As the article states, they’re planning to build a bridge. You can have an efficient option and a scenic/nostalgic option on the same route. This is just a bit of sentimentality about a cool train journey that might be replaced, not “anti-modernity sentiment.”
Is continuous hurry your ideal state of civilization?
Is spending life time in a train your goal? I like trains. To get quickly, safe and comfortable from A to B. Changing to a ferry is ... what I would consider a one time experience, but I rather would have the option to go by fast train straight to sicily whenever I feel like.
As of now, flying remains way cheaper, despite being worse ecological. But this won't change like that.
The time you spend on a night trains is spent sleeping. They deliberately don’t run full pace - no one wants to arrive at 5 in the morning. So they slow-roll on a long stretch to make arrival times reasonable.
Very often you can make an earlier arrival at a destination via night train than you can via plane - unless you fly in the evening before.
There are often distances I like to travel, far longer than one night. I really don't see the point in making it harder on purpose. There are plenty of places where getting there is an adventure. I like adventures. But not when just visiting family or alike.
Nobody is making anything harder on purpose. You can take a plane. But for a lot of European distances, night trains are perfectly good. I would love if they’d resurrect the night train that went to my parents place - I would board it on Friday 10pm to go home, be there Saturday for breakfast, board the train back at midnight on Sunday and roll into the Berlin main station in time to make it to work. Not a single lost minute for the trip, maximize time at the destination.
"You can take a plane."
I know. But my ecological consciousness has a problem with that. So yes, I also like night trains. And I also like bridges in general for better connection. I did not run the numbers to see if it makes sense here or just for the Mafiosi (I heard that complaint a lot). I am arguing against the romanticed point above, keeping the ferry because some think it is romantic.
> The time you spend on a night trains is spent sleeping.
Have you ever been on a night train?
I love train travel but night trains are rough since I find it very difficult to sleep. But, I cant really sleep on planes either.
Yes, I have. As I wrote in the sibling comments the last time just a week ago, the actual train that’s being discussed here. I’ll be again on Friday, for the return. I’ve taken multiple other night train connections before and in my experience, the quality depends to a large extend on the operator and the rolling stock. Older stock makes for less comfort, especially if not well maintained.
In my experience sleeping on the train also takes a bit of getting used to. Then again, maybe it’s really not for you - that’s ok.
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That's not the last European train that travels by sea. If you go from Sweden or Denmark towards Germany the train crosses from Denmark to Germany by ferry (that is until the new Femern tunnel is finished): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8DPuDsYe_k https://femern.com/the-tunnel/fehmarnbelt-tunnel/
You should read the whole article before claiming things.
> After the 2019 closure of the Puttgarden-Rødby service between Germany and Denmark and the seasonal Sassnitz-Trelleborg route linking Germany and Sweden in 2020, the Intercity is now the last one running. All the rest were replaced by bridges or tunnels, or proved too expensive to maintain as demand fell in favour of air travel.
Yes, sorry. I sometimes pass the connection Rødby - Puttgarden by car, and I have seen trains there recently. But they obviously don't use the ferry anymore.
The line you mention doesn't run anymore, and hasn't since 2019.
Yep. I took that train, Hamburg to Copenhagen, back when it still ran on the the ferry. Lots of fun!
The route actually does still run, of course, but it takes the long way around via land until the Fehmarn Belt tunnel[1] opens around 2029.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fehmarn_Belt_fixed_link
My bad. Sorry. I see that they changed the route to go via Jutland because of the upcoming tunnel. So yes, the Italian line is probably the last one of its kind. The Danish-German connection will probably not be reestablished, as the new tunnel will replace the ferry.
Its closure is also mentioned in the text: "After the 2019 closure of the Puttgarden-Rødby service between Germany and Denmark and the seasonal Sassnitz-Trelleborg route linking Germany and Sweden in 2020, the Intercity is now the last one running."
Ah, sweet memories. Grumpy German border guards boarding to loudly demand papers, but if you were slow to pull the ID card out they just kept walking. Semi-open border policy ;)
During the Cold War, the train on the Trelleborg-Sassnitz ferry went to West Berlin ... through East Germany with no getting on or off over that stretch.
BTW. I was on the Hamburg-Copenhagen train on the Puttgarten-Rødby ferry in 2015 during the height of the Syrian refugee crisis. I had changed my booking to earlier trains because of expected delays. It and connecting trains were packed, as were the train stations, also with immigration officials and volunteers. Brings tears to my eyes to this day.