Travel Time Between Countries... Help!

Distance isn't very important but you can use Mapquest, Bing, Goggle Earth or any of the other mapping sites to give you the distances. What is important is travel time. Use bahn.de for scheduling information from location to location via train. If a train is more than six hours, I will consider air. Then just use any flight search engine to give you the flight times. And remember to add three or four hours to the flight time for checking in, security, getting to and from the airport, etc.

Amanda, The easiest method to use is compile a list of cities that you want to visit, and then use the bahn.de website to determine the travel times. Although that's the German Rail website, it covers rail trips in most countries. Many routes include slower Regional trains as well as "fast" trains such as the TGV in France (which travels at 300 kmH!). Try to arrange your Itinerary in a logical and efficient route, so that you're not doing a lot of "backtracking". If this is your first trip to Europe, I would highly recommend reading Europe Through The Back Door before you get too far in your planning. That will provide you with a lot of information on things like Itinerary planning, Rail Skills, money questions, etc. My "tipping point" for deciding between rail or budget air is slightly more than Frank mentioned, which is mainly because I try to avoid the annoyances of air travel whenever possible. It will be easier to offer more specific advice once you have a list of cities somewhat "roughed out". Good luck with your planning!

Thanks for the replies! Frank, I did mean the travel time, I guess I worded that wrong. :) Ken: We do have somewhat of an itinerary in place. I have actually traveled a lot throughout Europe. I did a similar trip back in 2009 but I was only gone 3 weeks. We visited 11 countries in that 3 week period and though it was fast paced, I never felt like I didn't have enough time to see what I wanted to see. This go round, we are planning on covering 10 countries: Starting In France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy. My sister has never been to Europe whereas I have been a lot so she is depending on me to pull everything together. She has told me of her places of interest and from that I have kind of put down how many days we need to spend in each country. I was just trying to figure out how much time we will spend traveling. The last time I traveled, there was not a night train available between two of the countries we visited and we spent almost 8 hours on a train, wasting a whole day of sight seeing. I am trying to avoid this again!! Thanks again!
Amanda

Amanda, We use three print sources to plan our trips: Rail Map Europe by Thomas Cook
Frommer's Europe by Rail Euripe by Eurail 2010 has rail line miles between stations All of these are available from Amazon. My wife uses internet to find distances by searching the route between two points, i.ce. Coln to Berlin, rail route, distance.

I use the Thomas Cook Rail Map to see where the trains go, and bahn.de to check actual connectivity and train times. Sometimes you CAN connect two cities by train, but it's too cumbersome to be worth it (Seville to Lisbon for instance). I don't have a particular cut-off for train vs. air - it depends on how scenic the route is, as well as cost.

You need to know the times, not the distances. The absolute best place to get train times would be the German Rail website. You can put in any two cities in Europe and, if they are served by public transportation, it will give you the time and the routing. No need to add up the times for individual legs. For road times (and distances), I always look at viaMichelin.com. Just remember, those times are ideal, assuming no traffic delays, rest stops, getting lost, etc.