A Night to Forget: Russian Traveler Finds European Train Travel Far From Glamorous

For many, a train ride through Europe sounds romantic and effortless. But for Anastasia, a Russian woman living in Hungary, a birthday trip to Germany turned into an ordeal she’d rather not repeat. Sharing her story on her personal blog “Hungarian and Me,” she summed up the experience bluntly: “Adventures like this are not for us.”

Anastasia and her husband booked a night train from Budapest to Dresden for her birthday, paying about 82,000 forints (roughly 20,500 rubles) for a two-person compartment. The journey was supposed to take 10 hours. They planned to watch a series, but the noise made it impossible. “The train was terribly loud. We could barely hear the dialogue. When I turned up the volume, I worried we’d disturb passengers in neighboring compartments,” she said.

Sleep was no better. “The train rattled loudly. The conductor left the corridor light on all night, shining right in our eyes. Everything in the compartment clattered, and at midnight some passengers stood in the hallway laughing and talking loudly,” Anastasia complained. Then, at 1 a.m., Czech border patrol officers knocked on their door demanding passports. “I went completely mute. I just couldn’t speak,” she recalled. But when the officer learned they were coming from Hungary, he didn’t even check their documents and left.

“We somehow survived that awful night and agreed that European train travel is just not what we’re used to in Russia,” Anastasia concluded. This isn’t her first shock abroad—she previously praised a four-star hotel in Istanbul, saying the service was something “we’re not used to in Europe.”