When you travel to other European countries, what mode of transport do you take?

46 comments

1. 90% of the time I take my car. the rest is divided between bus and train.

2. Car / campervan or train, depending on circumstances.

3. Plane or car. Car usually for Germany and Austria, plane for the rest and sometimes Germany and Austria

4. TRAINS (or planes if its far away (or cars if for whatever reason trains dont cut it))

5. Plane to most places, ferry to Tallin / Stockholm.

   Helsinki.

6. Usually car if it’s somewhat near (as a South German that means like Austria, Czechia, Northern Italy), plane otherwise. I’ve also taken trains and buses before, but long distance trains make me too anxious and buses are too annoying.

7. Within Switzerland: Train/other public transport

   Outside Switzerland: if there is a good train connection Train, otherwise plane. Good train connection for me means no changes outside of Switzerland.

8. Travelling across Europe from the UK – train. I’ve done Chester – Paris, Paris – Milan and Milan – Rome in 3 days in recent years.

9. Most of the time car. When I go somewhere I tend to skip places a lot and also visit more remote areas.

   For places that are really far (E.g. UK) I take a plane.

10. Plane and Train for most travels, Boat and Car for some specific ones.

11. I’ll take trains to Belgium, Northern France and Western Germany. Planes everywhere else, though when we go skiing we take the car to Austria. I still want to take the new night train to Vienna some time.

12. Depends on what my travel plans are, but for the most part car and plane.

    For shorter vacations, I might consider taking a ferry to Finland, Estonia or Germany for example. But for me, this would also involve driving a car, because I live quite far away from harbors and larger train stations.

13. Planes, because I live on a frozen rock separated by the sea from the rest of the continent. Sweden is sometimes the exception, in which case it’s car.

14. It really depends on where in Europe. I think train is the most common, followed by car, and then plane. The choice kind of matters on how far away it is and where I am going. If I go to Paris, the train is the easy choice as they have good transportation there and it is not a long train ride. If I am going to the German Black Forest, I would drive, as you kind of need a car in rural places. Spain or Sweden, well, then I would fly as they are both far enough away that driving or a train would take a long time.

15. Most often fly, one year I got the train to the Alps to snowboard but they’ve discontinued the direct Eurostar and Eurostar is currently only running from London. We’ve gone by car a few times on le shuttle and once by ferry and we have a trip book later this year to visit several countries by rail.

16. I prefer the train, if that’s too expensive I take the bus.

    I take the plane if I’m going to another country where taking the bus or train would just be completely impractical.

17. Trains and ferries. I don’t have a car and I am afraid of flying. Doesn’t leave me with many options.

18. Usually by train, when I cannot, by car, sometimes by ferry.

19. I usually fly (by airplane). When I want to bring my car, I take the ferry. Living on an island, they are the only choices available.

20. Mostly train because I go by train over the bridge to Copenhagen a lot.

    But I’ll be taking the train the next time I head further south in Europe too. I’m done with planes.

21. Motorbike, generally.

    Planes for city breaks but not since COVID.

22. Depends on how far Im going.

    To get around town in general? Car

    to the grocery store? Car

    To the gym? Car.

    To work? Car

    destinations within my region and Neighbouring regions? Car or train depending on which is more convenient and cheaper.

    Neighbouring countries? Car. Unless it’s extremely far up, considering I live closer to southern Sweden I dont feel like driving for 20+ hours to northern Norway/Sweden/Finland…

    The Neighbouring countries of our Neighbours? Plane. Maybe in some instances car+ferry when it comes to like northern Germany.

23. I mean, it depends. Germany, The Netherlands — car or bus. France? — plane. And Vilnius – Oslo commute is counterproductive without a plane.

24. Mostly plane, sometimes train (but they were cancelled due to covid) or bus.

25. I do not travel often, but most likely bus or car for Austria, Czechia, Hungary and Poland. For Czechia also train, but they are always notoriously late.

    Typical Holiday destination is Croatia and again, most people travel by car, some by buses or maybe even planes.

    Ofc when you travel further away, usually it’s by a plane(especially vacation). Most people travel from either Vienna or Prague, since they offer much better coverage than Bratislava.

    Back in the days it was typical to drive to France on car and than take a boat to UK.

26. If I can I will always take a train. This is doable for neighbouring countries (Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, France). But when I go on vacation to Spain or Italy I usually take a plane.

27. So far only car. Every time I went abroad was on holidays with my family and my dad always drives the car. Maybe if we wanted to go to Spain or Sicily or Greece or any place that’s very far, we would take the plane, because travelling by car would take too much time. The only exception was when I travelled to Berlin in high school as a prize in a contest and we took a bus.

    If I had to travel by myself, I think I would rather use a train than a plane, because I’m scared of planes. And there’s no 100% guarantee that my luggage will arrive with me.

28. Car/train for neighbouring countries. Plane for longer trips.

29. I Zeppelin everywhere.
    But in all seriousness it depends on the distance. If it’s a neighboring country then I go by car. That’s usually a range of about 600 or so kilometers so 300-400 miles. That’s 6-8 hours of driving.
    One time I took a bus from Hungary to France, that was 1200 kilometers so around 800 miles. On trips that would be a greater distance than that I flew.

30. From Wales, but live in Germany;
    The last 6 years I’ve been only using public transport. As Austria, Czechia, and Italy are so close everything is doable by train. Even going up to Berlin or the Rhine is very possible if you book in advance else it can be quite costly. I did once do a 12 hour Flix Bus from Munich to Amsterdam but hated it.. ended up booking a flight back.

    I’ve also travelled the south coast of France and northern Italy all with Flix Bus. Unless you’re flying somewhere rather exotic like Scandinavia, or Portugal, I find there is very little reason not to use the trains and bus.

    That all being said; I recently bought a car and as its my first I’m a little over enthusiastic to be driving it. Lets see if the diesel prices allow it.

31. I live in Luxembourg – generally train/bus if I’m going to Belgium/Germany/France/maybe to Netherlands, plane to other places. Depends on connections and how long I have for the trip, e.g. for a short weekend I’m likely to pick the fastest travel option so I can spend the time in the destination, if its for a longer time I don’t mind spending longer traveling and I like the trains.

    From Finland its usually plane or a ferry (cruise ship) if I’m going to Sweden (around Stockholm, to southern Sweden I usually fly to Copenhagen and take the train from there) or Estonia.

32. Within the UK: train/ car

    To the continent: plane unfortunately. I’d love to be able to hop on a train and end up somewhere on the continent, but unfortunately that just isn’t practical when you live in Wales.

    When I lived in Germany I did a lot of travelling by train, mostly within Germany itself but also to the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.

33. Usually train, but I fly if it’s more than a day away. I take the ferry to the British isles.

    If I go camping, I rent a car.

34. Airplane. Taking a train from Moscow would take too long.

35. Car to bulgaria, plane everywhere else, Trains just take too long to get anywhere interesting outside of Romania, I did take one to Veliko Tarnovo in Bulgaria once, 12 hours in winter, 1/10 would not reccomend

36. Car because I usually bring my camping gear and I like to be able to go to more remote places. I try to take the plane as little as possible because I don’t like the hassle at airports

37. Car to Sweden, ferry to Denmark, plane everywhere else

38. airplane, ain’t nobody got time for other modes of transport, I don’t live near a border of a country I’d like to visit (frick you russia and belarus)

39. I live in Cyprus, wich is an island. So I have to take the plane.

    Within europes mainland I mostly use trains though, unless I’m going to opposite sides of the continent.

40. Depends where. I’d fly to countries like Britain, Ireland, Spain but I take a bus or train to Germany or Austria.

41. Basically the train but it strongly depends…. a trip from where i live to london is basically 12h straight (hoping german trains aren’t late).
    going to lisbon afaik is nearly impossible rn. Greek islands with the train will be pain as crossing the serbia, croatia, bosnia is somehow difficult…

    Dont get me wrong….if you do a country-by-country tour….the train is fine. We have ferries and such but if you need to go straight to a certain place….think twice and maybe get a flight.

42. Pretty much always by train nowadays. Last year I did a quick weekend getaway to Croatia using the sleeper train from Munich.

    And for my main holiday I went to Sicily in November (with a side trip to Malta where I obviously had to use a ferry, plus there is a rail ferry from the mainland to Sicily). Wasn’t even too expensive: direct train from Germany to Milano (~€60 in 1st class), Milano to Sicily in my own sleeper cabin (€80 out, €85 return), ferry to Malta was something like €70 return and then did a detour to use the Bernina Express (Milano-Tirano ~€11 2nd class, Tirano to Germany ~€51 1st class including all reservations in panoramic coaches/Bernina supplement). Plus some local rail travel in Sicily but those were pretty cheap too.

    This year I unfortunately haven’t been able to travel abroad yet as I’ve had to cancel my main holiday to Scotland. But I’ve got a few trips planned (Liège, Graz, Gdansk/Olomouc, Košice) all by rail (with quite a few nights on sleeper trains). This year I also get some significant discounts on rail travel through work (although I think those wouldn’t have made last year’s trips any cheaper).

43. Depends on where and for what reason.

    Few days in Paris? – Take the TGV train. No need for personal transportation there.

    In close vicinity but no good public transport there? – take a car.

    Takes forever to drive? – Take a plane

44. From the UK, I’ve not walked, biked or flown in a Zeppelin. I’ve used all the other ways.

45. Only ever taken car or bus, even though I use the train for the vast majority of intrastate travel. There’s a neat train to Montenegro but I haven’t needed to go there for years so I haven’t used it.

46. I just came home to Hungary from the Netherlands by trains and bus within 24 hours.