Just took the train from Frankfurt to Strasbourg.

I used to take the train from Wales to Scotland. I'd get on at my local station and change once about half way through the trip. On arrival I could walk to my flat. The whole process took about eight hours.

Once I flew. First I had to get a bus to the airport, arrive early for security theatre, eventually fly, land, take a shuttle bus to a train station, then take a train to Cardiff Central, then take another train to my actual destination. The process took about six hours and was utterly exhausting.

I’d love to hop on a train for a trip like that. So much more relaxing.

https://int.bahn.de/en/offers/saver-fare-flexible-fare/saver-fare-europe-france

Let's just pretend the environmental impact is a negligible factor to save like 35 minutes on a 5-6 hour trip. Toronto - NYC, one way or another (have this guy ever been to an airport?).

I have my beef with the DB, but their ICE trains paired with SNCF are nothing to complain about

The world will progress out of sheer spite for Americans and I wouldn't have it any other way

I mean, it depends a bit. Toulouse to Rostock would be an annoying train ride. But Düsseldorf or Frankfurt to Paris would be kind of stupid to fly.

Many short distance flights are business related but as someone who was working in an international corporation I can tell you there's plenty of business monkeys who fly simply for the prestige of it. They fly to attend meetings that could've been an email or a call just so they can pretend they're hot shit.

Massively disappointing.

Having done both the flying and the high speed in a few routes in Europe, the overhead of flying is so much that for anything within about 1000km distance a high speed train is faster, especially because both the origin and the destination train stations are pretty much in the city center and have direct connections to the subway network so you almost always save time and hassle in just getting to the station from your actual origin and from the destination station to your actual destination on the other side, compared to an airport. This is especially so for budget airlines as they tend to use even more peripheric airports.

Further, within the Schengen space in the EU there is no kind of passport or security control, so in most of Europe you literally just walk into a train that happens to go to another country in just the same way as you walk into a train that happens to go to the next city over.

Even for larger distances when the whole trip door-to-door takes an extra hour or two due to doing it by train rather than flying, it's often worth it because the train is way more comfortable, with plenty of room and you can just get up whenever and go for a walk to the restaurant carriage and get yourself a drink or a light meal.

But yeah, beyond a certain point the train is not worth it anymore. For example Lisbon - Paris by high speed train would be around 6h on a straight line (if you could, which you can't because of the Golf Of Biscay) at 250 km/h whilst the flight is 3h, but of course, trains in Portugal being shit outside short commuter lines around the 2 major cities and the North-South axis, there isn't actually a high speed train to Paris or even to anywhere in Spain or even inside the country (fast trains at best, not high speed ones), so you have to take the train and a bus to the nearest point in Spain with a high speed train connection to Madrid and from there to Paris, so you're lucky if you do the whole trip in 17h.