Just back from three chilled-out days on the rails: 8 trains, 1 bus, one missed train (on purpose!), a derailing (freight train up ahead), and to top it all off, a spooky 3 am arrival at Paris Gare de l’Est station due to the derailing incident!
If you’re a psychopath, you can actually do Krakow to Paris by train in one day. If you like getting up at 4am, that is:
I am not a psychopath. And also, 267€ !!
Yeah Nah.
Here’s the map of the three days/two nights route I took:
Photos and juicy details of the trip below.
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DAY 1
Krakow to Wroclaw 8:35 - 12:02 10€
The first train went all the way to Hel! I just took it to Wroclaw, half way to the German border. Grey sky. Poland magnificently green, magnificently flat, and magnificently boring on this stretch. The train stopped about 6000 times at villages you’ve never heard of. But the ticket was cheap as chips. Had a seat in a 6-person compartment with a sliding glass door rather than open plan. These are still the norm in much of the East. Love them. Much better for striking up conversation.
Old overgrown platforms on arrival at Wroclaw station.
And a hint or two that Wroclaw was called Breslau (i.e., it was full of Germans) before WWII.
Wroclaw - Zgorzelec 12:36 - 14:55 6€
Cheap and cheerful local train. Could tune out the noise because I don’t speak much Polish.
No hills on this stretch of Poland either. Green and featureless. A bit dull.
The marvellous ruin of the train station building at Zgorzelec town centre. Love it!
Zgorzelec is on the German border; across the river it’s Görlitz in Germany. In case you get confused, there are helpful posts:
Poland looking across to Görlitz.
Germany looking across to Zgorzelec.
Random dude standing with one foot in both countries.
Both sides of the river used to part of Germany. But: WWII.
The Polish side is nothing to write home about, but Görlitz is a hidden gem. It wasn’t bombed during the war so it’s all preserved like a kind of miniature Prague, cobblestoned with fantastic Baroque architecture and retro trams. Not to mention 4000 listed buildings, for a population of only 50,000!
And maybe a hundred tourists or so. Fantastic.
See how empty it is! Suck on that, Prague tourist hordes!
Hollywood has certainly heard of Görlitz though: movies filmed here include The Grand Budapest Hotel, Inglorious Basterds, The Monuments Men, and The Reader.
A sunset beer in Poland looking over towards Görlitz.
And why not a nightcap back over the border in Görlitz?
I stayed overnight at the Penjonat Miejski in Zgorzelec (48€).
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DAY 2
Zgorzelec - Dresden 8:00 - 9:24 13€
The same ticket costs around 25€ if you buy it on the German side of the border!
Even better, I got on the train at Görlitz, not Zgorzelec, for one last wander through the pretty streets of the town.
A cool wind pushed through a mostly sunny day across agricultural land dotted with small hills in eastern Germany. Cows and sheep to be seen. A smoother train track on the German side. Better pastries too.
A beautiful modern building in Dresden, a city infamously fire-bombed by Britain during WWII. (See: Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five for a ‘fictional’ portrayal of events.)
A lot of the old town is reconstructed, but feels like it’s missing a soul.
In the old town.
Some pretty flower gardens though.
And a lot of construction going on.
And way too many tourists milling around like camera zombies. Ugh.
Gorlitz was like fifty times prettier, but not the same recent dramatic history, I guess.
You can take a boat to the Czech border from Dresden! Good to know for next time!
You can also vote for an extreme-right-wing party in the upcoming German elections if you’re a fan of factory-farmed pigs.
Dresden - Prague 13:10 - 15:36 & Prague - Cheb 16:43 - 19:26 24€
I took the train to Prague because it follows the scenic Elbe river and also because it has a restaurant car!
Unfortunately, my lunch ended up looking like this:
I think I got all three major food groups in there. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Arriving at Prague, I found out why the restaurant car had armed guards: the German foreign minister had privatised it for lunch on his way to Prague. This was the media circus at Prague central station.
Had one hour and seven minutes between trains in Prague, so I rushed up the Vinohrady hill behind the station for a quick hipster coffee in an old haunt.
The sweaty armpits were worth it.
Started cursing myself for not staying overnight in Prague, the beauty of all beauties.
Then ran for my next train.
This was express train to the lovely village of Cheb just before the German border (a different part of the border!).
The A/C wasn’t working and the train was cookin’ hot, full, and delayed half an hour to boot.
Gradually the train emptied out as we crossed the Czech Republic westwards. Another 6-seat compartment, which means people talk to each other, which—as you know—I love. Even if one person is Japanese, another Czech, and another is me, and zero languages in common!
The Japanese girl in question did not even speak ONE word of English, which was amazing to experience in 2021. I spoke broken Polish to the Czech lady and we pretended to understand each other. It was fun!
Stayed the night in Cheb at Pension U Vlčků (38€), a pretty nice place except for the construction works somewhere in the building at 7:30 am that were strong enough to shake me awake.
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DAY 3
Cheb - Nuremberg 9:36 - 11:22 & Nuremberg - Frankfurt 12:57 - 15:04 16€
Cheb station in the early morning. A German regional train ready to ferry me back into Germany. Did you spot how four hours of German train cost was only going to cost me 16€ ? There’s a trick to it if you’re coming from the Czech republic. You simply add a connection through (or start at) Cheb and make your booking on the Czech train website, not the German one. The same trip usually costs 3x as much if you book it on the German website.
Thanks to the Man in Seat 61 for this tip.
There were unexpected track repairs on the first segment.
Which meant an ignoble half-hour bus ride between two towns. Ugh, buses!
Then back onto the train to Nuremberg. Two of my favourite things in this photo. See if you can spot them.
The train got in late to Nuremberg. It wasn’t too late to miss my connection but I had planned lunch in Nuremberg. The conductor told me I could chill out in Nuremberg, have my lunch, and then catch a later train to Frankfurt.
Done!
I went back to my favourite coffee shop in Nuremberg, The Sweet Vegan.
Her coffee is the best between Paris and Krakow, and her chocolaty-cinnamonny pastry is damn good.
The next train—to Frankfurt—was an uneventful two hours, especially as I didn’t test the conductor on whether I truly could take this (later) train; I pretended I’d already had my ticket checked.
Lol.
Three hours to kill in Frankfurt before the early evening train to Paris. Outside Frankfurt main station is pure human desolation: a sprawling uncontrolled drug addiction zone which is actually scary to walk through. So many fucked up people stumbling around looking dazed, walking quickly towards you or past you, others yelling at each other, rubbish everywhere, and the feeling that someone might charge you with a knife at any moment. In the middle of the afternoon!
Meanwhile a small terrace house in the suburbs of Frankfurt now costs in the millions.
I ran down the clock at an art gallery—ironically for free—sponsored by a big German bank.
This was the bank. It was a lovely sunny afternoon in a noisy and dodgy downtown Frankfurt.
And the same photo, looking down.
Time to grab some food, avoid the knives, and hop on the last train to Paris!
Frankfurt - Paris 18:56 - 22:52 55€ in First Class
The first thing I saw when I got on the train:
This guy should not be on a train, let alone in First Class. I hesitated about whether to show him my pocket-knife, but finally decided to let it pass.
Night falls on the high-speed train.
Totally caning it.
Then shit happened. About 100 km into the French leg of the trip, a freight train derailed up ahead, and we were stopped for an hour on the tracks. The decision was made to high-speed us back in the other direction—towards Germany!—then hook into the slow-train tracks from Metz all the way back to Paris.
Estimated time of arrival: 3am!
So, that happened. I got up, brushed my teeth, and went to bed in my seat in the almost empty wagon. Thanks to a combination of suspicious Sicilian and spicy Czech wine, I had a decent four hour sleep and was quite surprised to wake up at the Gare de l’Est in Paris.
At 3 am!
Dazed passengers leaving the Gare de l’Est with a police escort.
Heading home, one last goodbye to the ICE train sitting all on its lonesome in an empty Gare de l’Est.
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Conclusions
Train tickets: 124€ but with a 75% refund of the 55€ for the delay in the final train, so finally only 83€ overall (from Krakow to Paris!)
Hotels: 85€
Three days’ food and beverages: 75€
Total: 243€
Would I do it again? Yes! But…
This trip can be done easily in two days/one night. I added the extra day to fit in the Dresden-Prague segment for the restaurant car by the river. That was an unlucky mistake.
Probably the most civilised way to do it would be the direct Krakow - Berlin train: 10:15 - 17:16 (tickets starting at around 35€) with plenty of time for an evening in Berlin, then the next day: Berlin - Paris with a change in Frankfurt (or Mannheim/Karlsruhe) where you could leave a couple of hours between connections to go for a wander, stretch your legs, have lunch, etc. This would break up your day into two segments of about 4 hours travel in nice high-speed trains, with a big break in the middle. Easy peasy! Unless a freight train derails your plans.
If you’re in even more of a hurry, you can take the night train from Krakow to Berlin, then day trains through to Paris. And if you’re a psychopath, go back to the top of this page and check out the timetable!