Kauniainen-Prague by train

 

Yet another business trip by train! Had lots of fun, stopping at the head office in Sweden, riding the night train while hacking software with my colleagues... and much less CO2! Need to do this again.

My route was Kauniainen-Leppävaara-Turku by train, then bus to the Turku harbor, boat to Stockholm, bus to the center, then underground to my office in the northern Stockholm suburbs. After the day of meetings, back to the center and then hop on a night train to Hamburg. In a first class cabin! (With two of my colleagues, was very nice but also a bit tight, no real space for luggage for instance.)

Leppävaara, VR above as the opening picture.

Then the bus to Turku harbor:

And Viking Grace to Stockholm:

Arrival:

Bus and subway to the suburbs for the office:

Back to central Stockholm for the Stockholm Central station :-)

And our night train arrives here:

Nice cabin, three beds, good seats. Seats not usable though while beds are out:

We had shower! I think everyone's first shower on a train :-)

First class included breakfast. A bun and a juice. And tee/coffee, much needed for the way too early wakeup. We didn't realize the train would have continued to Berlin, we could have slept beyond the 6am stop in Hamburg. 

But in Hamburg we did get off, for better or worse:

The next train would be going all the way to Prague (6h). Or even onwards to Budapest. We kept hacking all the way:

Nice to see the Elbe and the countryside hills and cliffs on the few last hours of the trip:

Success, arrival at the conference hotel:

Costs for this trip were roughly equal to flying, about 200-300€ per direction. Of course we spent more time, too, but in our case that was working time that we much needed together. So all good, can recommend! But next time I'd sleep until Berlin :-)

Of course, the costs and feasibility depends on the details, like in our case we were able to share a cabin and use the first class. For a single traveller I've previously booked a 2nd class cabin for myself. IIRC that one did not have a shower, though, but did have a toilet.

My approximate calculation of the CO2 produced on this trip was 30 liters of fuel by airplane, 1 liter by train. Whatever that is in CO2 terms, but there's clearly a difference. However, I was unable to find out what the fuel or CO2 impact of my boat ride was. The Viking Turku-Stockholm boats are reputed to be environmentally good, but not sure how good boats in general are. Maybe less horrible than other boats? If anyone has numbers, I'd be interested to hear!

Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot or TGR. Photos and text (c) 2023 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.