Driving vs. Rail Travel

It all depends on where you are going and what you are seeing. If you are spending your time in major cities and towns, a car is of no use and no value. If you want to see rural landscapes and out-of-the-way places, you'll need a car.

Lynette, As you're touring four countries that cover a fairly wide geographical area in such a short time frame, I would definitely recommend travel by train (preferably fast trains). It will be a MUCH faster mode of travel, and will allow you to spend more of your very short travel time actually seeing each of the cities. As the previous reply mentioned, if you're going to be visiting mainly rural locations, a car is an advantage. However, if you'll mainly be visiting cities, rail is the best choice. Which cities are you visiting in the four countries you mentioned? Good luck with your planning!

I've done both but prefer rail travel when the itinerary is heavy on cities. Driving in rural parts of France, Luxembourg, Germany, or Austria can be efficient, fun, relaxing, and refreshing with the windows down, but there are tons of cons associated with driving in bigger cities: parking cost, daily rental cost when car isn't being used, crazy high fuel cost, cities not on grid plan – getting lost, heavy traffic, worry about following laws and ordinances (red light cameras, restricted zones, environmental permit, toll sticker, insurance, etc.). I'm definitely not militant about it either way like some are here, because each option can be great depending on your itinerary. When I've had itineraries that included mostly rural places and small towns (or when I'm done in the big cities), I've picked a car up before on the way out of a big city, such as in Paris or Frankfurt, and dropped it off again upon returning to fly home...perhaps that might be something you can consider. Trains are your best bet for worry-free/mostly hassle-free traveling IMO. These days, I'll opt for the train most of the time. BTW, I've used buses in Bavaria and in Spain. Both worked well for me from point A to point B. But transfers and schedules can make it too time-consuming depending on your itinerary.

Lynette: You'll only have a few days in each country. You probably aren't going to visit some unheard-of German town that isn't on the 5,400-station train network. You will not need or want a car at all within any major cities you visit. You'll be covering a lot of ground. The train will doubtless get you where you're going faster and with a lot less effort than driving will. You will get outstanding help from Lee and others here on how to minimize ticket expenses if you provide a precise list of places you intend to visit.

Doug and Ken are absolutely right... I've used both train and car, with the car only to access more rural areas. Keep in mind that the train system in Europe is very well developed, and you can access quite a lot of the continent this way. For the average traveller, the train system is quite sufficient ( and efficient), but a car does give you a lot of flexibility to reach those "nooks and crannies"... all of my travel has been by train with the exception of renting a car in Innsbruck to drive to Neuschwanstein castle area in southern Germany. I like the train because you never have to worry about where to park it...lol

As the others have said, it does depend on where you are going, etc. There are pros and cons for both forms of transportation and it is up to you to see which one fits your travel schedule. Pros of trains: Fast, everyone gets to look at scenery, you can have a glass of beer or wine while traveling or before, you can eat on the train, no traffic jams, it is part of the European experience, it may cost a whole lot less than a car when you figure in rental and fuel, you don't have to worry about parking in the city. Cons of trains: They may not go where you want, if you don't get your tickets ahead of time, you might have to pay more for them than a rental car might cost, lack of spontaniety. I don't drive here in Germany and haven't really felt like I lacked anything as far as travel experiences because of it. Can't really post many pros and cons to travel by car in Europe as it is something I have done so seldom, that it wouldn't be fair for me to comment on it, other than to say, I have been stuck in traffic jams that lasted several hours and doubled our 4 hour travel time to 8 hours. That said, trains go on strike and break down too. It is all the luck of the draw sometimes.

The big advantage of a car is that you can stop wherever and whenever you want to. A scenic lookout, a quaint place to eat, an interesting town or village, an interesting shop or market. And when you stop & leave the vehicle, you don't have to bring your luggage with you. Not so with a train. Like Douglas said, it depends on how you want to travel and what you want to see. By the way, the countries you're going to all have very good roads and highways, particularly Austria.

"If you want to see rural landscapes and out-of-the-way places, you'll need a car." That's a myth created by people who did not know how to use public transportation. In the last decade I've spent 16 weeks in Germany and Austria, only 20% of the time in major cities. So, I've spent 90 days+ in rural Germany and Austria, without ever having a car, using just trains and buses, and I got everywhere I wanted to go. Renting a car is sooo expensive. Using actual rental quotes, fuel estimates from ViaMichelin, and actual transport expenditures, in the last four trips alone I've saved about $1600 by not using a car. But, it takes some work to plan a trip using only public transportation.

"If you want to see rural landscapes and out-of-the-way places, you'll need a car." That's a myth created by people who did not know how to use public transportation." Or perhaps, people who know how to use the transportation system but rather don't want to spend their precious spare time on a series of transfers... Agree with most of the others. You can reach just about any city easily by rail, but traveling around many rural areas can sometimes be pretty inconvenient without a car. For many of the published hiking routes I follow in Germany and Austria (which often take you past historical sites that are far from any road), you simply can't finish the hike in a day without driving directly to the trail head.

Lynette, With only two weeks to visit four countries over a wide area, I really don't believe you'll have time to explore "nooks & crannies". The quickest and most efficient travel method is via "fast" train, which will hopefully allow you to see everything on your "list". Does your two-week time frame include your two travel days? You'll arrive in Europe the day after you depart and the last day will be spent on the flight home. Cheers!

Trains and busses. We always use them and haven't found any place we wanted to go that we couldn't use public transportation for. We once had to use a taxi to go to an American military cemetary in Belgium on a Sunday. Oftentimes there will be a sale for seniors on tickets that you would not know about if you didn't ask. It seems to me that Americans have a need to control every thing and renting a care in a foreign country in an example of that. Put yourself in the life of the country you are visiting. Take a train.

'Put yourself in the life of the country you are visiting' Exactly who owns all those damn cars you see - - american tourists who don't know how to ride trains?

Thank you so much for all of your great replies!

Lee - I'm hoping we just have different definitions of what rural is. I mean to say if you want scenic routes with stops in little towns or hiking trails or other remotely accessed spots, you need a car. Trains (and busses) do serve many smaller towns but not all and as someone else said, you spend a lot of time getting there on public transportation. I know, I HAVE considerable experience doing it that way so it's no myth.

The point some people miss is that there is a difference between access and convenience. If a hiking trail has 3 daily buses passing there at 9 AM, noon and 16:30 PM, it is possible, but not necessarily efficient to go there with public transportation. On the same page, it is possible to reach everywhere in big cities with a car. The largest pedestrianized zones or traffic restricted zones are never more than half-a-mile from the nearest parking garage. But of course that can be expensive and so. One advantage of taking the car is taking, on the spur of the moment, the incensed "back door" to explore a random village on a mountain you spot from the highway, or to take country roads stopping for photos whenever you feel like doing it and so on. In all Western European countries, the share of daily passenger traffic as measured per km*passenger (the international standard for such comparisons) is above 65% in all countries, sometimes (France) as high as 81% (to compare, the US car share is 94%). A large majority of travelling in Europe is done by car, so there is rather misleading to say "Europeans ride trains while Americans drive". =============== As for costs, if you are travelling in a group of for it is certain you can save money using the car, even in a city-based trip. There is no way you can get around cheaper with train tickets and, no, riding a 18h, 113 stop, 9 connections sequence of regional trains from Berlin to Paris to prove the opposite won't do the job.

You do not mention your arrival and departure points, but I would hope they are like Zurich and Amsterdam because you are covering a whole lot of territory in what will be two very short weeks and the only way to do it is on a fairly linear path, not a loop. As much as I like Salzburg, I personally would skip Austria to reduce the stress. On to the car vs. train discussion. The European train system is excellent if you are just doing big cities where a car is a real burden. However we have found that the real charm of Europe and the places we remember most fondly are the smaller towns like Rothenburg, Andernach, Stein-am-Rhine, Kayserburg, and Lauterbrunnen/Murren to name a few, and they are not that well served by trains. The other problem is that when you get there, you will be at the train station which for the most part is not where you want to stay. One solution would be to have the beginning and the end in big cities and connect them by car with the smaller places. A couple weeks after you get home look back and see which places you remember the most fondly and start planning the next, hopefully longer, trip.

"However we have found that the real charm of Europe and the places we remember most fondly are the smaller towns like Rothenburg, Andernach, Stein-am-Rhine, Kayserburg, and Lauterbrunnen/Murren to name a few, and they are not that well served by trains. The other problem is that when you get there, you will be at the train station which for the most part is not where you want to stay." Small places in Europe like those above are indeed charming, but they are also very well served by train. Rothenburg: 17 trains per day leaving town for Würzburg, Nuremberg, etc. Andernach: there are 13 southbound trains and 10 northbound trains just in the 5 hour period I happened to check between 11:00 and 4:00 pm. That means there are dozens and dozens of trains stopping there all day long. Stein am Rhein: 11 trains to Zürich just between 11:00 and 4:00 pm - again, dozens and dozens. You get the picture, no doubt. People come on these boards all the time and say things that are terribly inaccurate. Get some advice on places of interest and identify those places you want to go, but don't rely on the specifics. Check them out yourself. And let me just say that there's nowhere I'd rather stay if traveling by train than in a comfy hotel a few blocks from the train station - which is almost always right in the heart of town if you're talking about smaller places.