
The Man in Seat Sixty-One - thunderbong
https://www.seat61.com/
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n1000
For people travelling in Europe: The German railway company Deutsche Bahn has
the most complete set of international train schedules in their system. This
makes it a great resource to search for international connections. Once I even
saw Hungarian railway employees use www.bahn.de to look up their own
connections.

[https://www.bahn.com/en/view/index.shtml](https://www.bahn.com/en/view/index.shtml)

~~~
Arkanosis
French train traveler here. I concur. I use them to travel from France to
Italy through Germany and Austria. bahn.de is a great resource and so is their
Android app. Even in France, I sometimes use their schedules rather than the
local ones, because they give me every single train station a train is going
to stop at, which is useful information you don't get everywhere.

Take a step back when booking, though. It can suggest trips with tens of
connections without taking delays into account (and it's rare, if not
impossible, to not have some delay with that many connections).

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Yuval_Halevi
I follow this site for a while and actually thought about doing the Trans-
Siberian road from Moscow to Siberia (Around 9000 KM) and it's by far the
longest railway line in the world.

The reasons I didn't went to it was because I couldn't see my self sitting for
so many hours a day.

But I guess my destiny was different than I expected.

A few months ago I got an offer to participate in a 22,000KM journey called
the 'Mongol Rally' which is basically a race when you need to drive from the
Czech Republic to Mongolia in a shitty car.

Joining this race meant sitting in a car for at least 14 hours a day

I agreed to the offer without thinking twice

and after I finish it, doing the Trans-Siberian road looks like a piece of
cake

~~~
msl
One nice thing about trains is that you don't need to just sit: there is a lot
of room to move about. Also, the trains you use on the Trans-Siberian route
stop all the time, often for half an hour or longer at a time, so you can get
off the train for some proper exercise. Still, I would not recommend doing the
trip on one go: 24 hours is just about long enough stretch to spend onboard
any train. There are a lot of cities worth visiting along the way.

~~~
Yuval_Halevi
The train do stop but the amount of stops depends on how long you can go for
your trip

In my case I had only 6 weeks for the Mongol Rally so we drove every day 14
hours in the car

I'm not sure how long it takes to do the Trans-Siberian route, but if I will
do it I will make sure I have enough time to have few days in nice places
along the way.

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frereubu
The disjointed nature of train companies and their booking systems used to
make planning an inter-country trip effectively impossible without either (a)
huge amounts of time to do research or (b) get professional advice. This site
straddles those options and makes it easy to know where to go, including extra
touches like photos showing you the way to a station on another line when
interchanging at San Sebastián.

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michaelhoffman
This is an amazing web site. Whenever I want to travel by train anywhere in
the world, I always Google for [site:seat61.com <country>] first.

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ddrdrck_
There is so many good things to say about seat61.com . First it is of course
an invaluable source of information for any train travel (I used it again this
summer for a night train trip from Budapest to Bucarest). But it is also one
of these few web site that still retain this "end of the 90's" look and feel.
And more important than the "look" is the "feel" : behind this web site there
is no huge corporation trying to steal your data and sell you stuff, but one
man that is really passionate about train travel, sharing his passion and
trying to help as many people as he can. Site seems to be down at the moment
(HN kiss of death I presume) but there is a donation section that is well
hidden. And guess what : donations are not for "the man in seat61", but for
helping people in Syria (or it was two months ago when I visited this
section). I suggest anyone that has found this site helpful to at least visit
this section.

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dtjohnnyb
[http://web.archive.org/web/20190909013313/https://www.seat61...](http://web.archive.org/web/20190909013313/https://www.seat61.com/)

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gatherhunterer
That did not work for me. This should work for others who find the site
inaccessible.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20190325120315/https://www.seat61...](http://web.archive.org/web/20190325120315/https://www.seat61.com/index-
mobile.htm)

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iantimothy
This was an amazing resource for me. i travelled from Singapore to London by
land this year using buses and trains and the info on this site really helped.
What I came to appreciate from this trip is that it’s possible to travel
across the world using public transport.

~~~
kaybe
How long did it take you?

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iantimothy
I took about three and a half months. The trip can be done much faster if the
goal is to reach London ASAP - I estimate about 17 days. I spent about a month
in China exploring it using her High Speed Trains. Also stayed in cities for
varying durations depending on the feel of the city.

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merricksb
Big discussion/upvoting on HN about this site 8 months ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18895833](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18895833)

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aegatlin
I love this website! The Java train system is a little confusing and this man
helped me navigate it. I owe this man a train ticket

