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Sweden to Italy by trainSweden to Italy by train
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I live in Sweden and work with rail infrastructure. Ergo, when there is a two-day meeting in Italy (in a project with environmental focus) I prefer to take the train.
We'll see how it goes. Read more
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  • TravelerSweden to Italy by train
    Day 1–6

    First leg, Åsa - Malmö

    April 7 in Sweden ⋅ 🌙 9 °C

    I left Åsa on time, steadily keeping an eye on the Trafikverket website where you can track and follow all (passenger) trains on state railway (which most of it is).

    And after an uneventful trip, arrived as scheduled in Malmö. Now waiting for the night train Snälltåget.Read more

  • TravelerSweden to Italy by train
    Day 1

    Night train from Malmö to Hamburg

    April 7 in Sweden ⋅ ⛅ 11 °C

    There is this wonderful service that runs from Stockholm to Berlin and back, called Snälltåget. It has a really nice restaurant car, seated cars and of course sleeper cars. The sleepers are available in both first and second class, but due to the significantly higher prices for first class, I chose second.Read more

  • TravelerSweden to Italy by train
    Day 2

    Third leg: Hamburg to München

    April 8 in Germany ⋅ ☁️ 12 °C

    So I arrived in Hamburg on time, actually I think it was a few minutes early, but who cares at 5:30 in the morning?
    I like Hamburg Hbf - it is often the first touchdown on foreign ground (Denmark hardly counts as foreign if you are a Swede) and the first sense of "Wow I am really going abroad!". And it is just as big, classically laid out, dirty and full of people as you would expect. A place to pass through, not to spend time at...

    It was early in the morning, and I did not need breakfast at that time plus I kind of expected there to be a decent breakfast available for purchase on the DB train to München. And I guess it was, but it was not really what I expected (I suppose I expect more from European trains than the Swedish, SJ and now I know that I shouldn't). A cheese sandwich on the typical German rye bread had to do.

    The 1st class car was ok, nothing special for 1st class apart from the space that was between the cars - it was more like a small exhibition hall. Interesting.

    When I travel, I always track my journey with Locus Maps. It is an Android app that I have had since 2011 (!) that provides offline maps, navigation etc, which is perfect when you travel or when you are out in places with no cell phone coverage. But it kinda needs GPS connection, right? I found out the hard way that the DB trains lock out the GPS signal - not even holding the phone to the window helped. BUT, and this is strange, in the exhibition space between the cars I could make contact. The only difference that I could spot was that the windows were larger, could that be it?

    So every now and then I would go out to that space, get a signal so I could get a point of reference on my map and edit the trip afterwards. Quite annoying.    Read more

  • TravelerSweden to Italy by train
    1
    Day 2

    Fourth leg: München - Bologna

    April 8 in Germany ⋅ ☀️ 27 °C

    I arrived in München 35 minutes late, due to a train that malfunctioned in front of ours and blocked us for some time. It might not be a big deal, but when you have 50 minutes change in total, it is tension enough for me. Plus I had to go and buy lunch before I boarded (don't want to make the same mistake as with the DB food options).

    It turned out that it was not DB anymore, but ÖBB, Austria's state railway. AND it was the new RailJet which I have wanted to travel with for a while. I would also like to go on the NightJet but it will not happen this time.

    So all of a sudden there was a real menu to order from right to your seat, with breakfast, lunch, dinner, sweets, snacks and coffee etc.
    Just as important (well almost) was the GPS contact from the seat which was spotless.

    Working on the train was easy, with the small shelf on top for mobile phone and the usual table below. There is supposed to be a charging zone on the top shelf, but it did not work with any of my Samsung phones (who support other wireless charging), and also the USB contact on the small upper table was out of order. In addition to the two mentioned, there is a regular socket in the seat and a USB port in the seat, so it worked out well.

    Beautiful but not much happening along the way. Took some pictures of the magnificent alps while passing through, but pointless to publish since it does not come close to picturing what it really looked like...    Read more

  • TravelerSweden to Italy by train
    Day 2

    Fifth and sixth leg: Bologna to Pistoia

    April 8 in Italy ⋅ ☁️ 17 °C

    Arrival in Bologna was a bit late, and the trains for Pistoia (my final destination) were local trains and not very frequent, so I really wanted to catch the next one which was in 8 minutes. Eight minutes is doable in most places, but I have never been to Bologna before and navigating was not the easiest. It turned out that my connection to Prato (where I had to change again to Pistoia) departed from track 1 East, at the far far end of Bologna central. I guy understood where I was going and said "Me too, follow me and we'll run together!". And I did. But it was far, my throat burned and I almost accepted the fact that I would never make it - especially not when I saw the train far away in the very end. And somehow I managed to get on the train in time, which was really good because next connection was not until after midnight...

    At around 21:50 the final change was in Prato. However, there was a 40 min wait for the last 15 min train ride, and only about 25 km, so I figured I could take a taxi and just pay for an earlier night.

    Turns out that Prato is not the best spot to find a taxi at night. There was a line at the taxi stand but no cars, and the woman in front of me tried to get one and failed. So I figured I'd just stick to my train, but make the hotel (4 km off the centre of Pistoia) come and pick me up so I don't have to walk 3 km in the middle of the night.

    I called the Hotell Villa Capuggi, and practicing my Italian that I have studied now for one year at university of Stockholm, I asked her if she could send someone to pick me up at 22:45, and when she said no, I asked her if she could order a taxi for me. She said she could give me the number, but I asked her if she could do it for me (ALL OF THIS IN ITALIAN!!) and she said yes.

    So when I arrived in Pistoia, there was a taxi waiting and within 10 minutes and €10, I was at the hotel.    Read more

  • TravelerSweden to Italy by train
    Day 2

    Summary of train ride, Åsa to Pistoia

    April 8 in Sweden ⋅ ☁️ 10 °C

    I started out from Åsa Station at 18:09, and arrived in Pistoia at 22:44 the day after, as planned.

    All segments worked really well, there were a few delays, but nothing big. The longest delay was Hamburg-München where somewhere halfway were held up by the train in front of us who had problems, not us.

    The DB train was nice, clean fairly spacious in 1 class, absolutely no GPS reception except for the space between the cars. I know this does not affect a lot of people, but for me it is a big thing since I want to track where I am going (and especially where the railway is going...).

    ÖBB RailJet was really nice, made for working with enough space for laptop and mobile, and with several charging outlets (4, of which only two were working).

    Both of them has service at the seat in 1st class, which is nice so you don't have to leave your belongings just to get a cup of coffee. On the Swedish SJ trains, coffee, tea and fruit is free in 1st class, just saying.

    Local train from Bologna was...well, it was like the commuter trains usually are - made for easy transport of lots of people and easy to clean. Not good or bad, just not a place made for working (which was not expected either).    Read more

  • TravelerSweden to Italy by train
    Day 3

    Work and pleasure in Pistoia

    April 9 in Italy ⋅ ☁️ 13 °C

    Today was the first day of work in Pistoia. The EU project Earth4Rail, Work Package 4, had Face To Face meeting at Hitachi's facilities. The weather was beautiful med 20-22 degrees and a sun-cloud mixture.

    I was amazed by the lunch room at Hitachi - it was enormous (serves some 1500 meals a day), efficient, lots of food and since we are in Italy the food was gorgeous. If it had been at a restaurant, I would have said it was "good", but now as it was a gigantic canteen - it was just great.

    We took a tour of the facilities as well, I would have loved to share pictures but it is of course not allowed to take pictures in the plant. Many trains in production at the same time for various train or subway operators. Some in our group are really competitors of Hitachi, but in these projects we try to work around that. Meaning, not trying to do espionage, and not divulging secrets, and then it works out pretty well.

    Since my hotel, Villa Capuggi, was 3 km from the city centre, I stayed in town between work and dinner. One of my hobbies is geocaching, which is a really good hobby when you are new at a place or arriving as a tourist. If you are unfamiliar with it, it is sort of a treasure hunt, it makes you go to places that you likely would not have seen if it was not for geocaching.

    So I did what I usually do - I plotted the nearest caches downtown Pistoia (two traditional and one multi, the multi had too many steps so I did not bother). It took me to the buildings shown in the photographs. Not the first one though - that one is from my hotel room in the morning. Nice, huh?

    And it got even better. In the evening, the project participants met at Voronoi, an italian restaurant in the city center. We had been given a special menu in advance to choose from. Short version: OH. MY. GOD. Food was soooo good. Four courses naturally, antipasti first, then a pasta with finely cut meat (not minced, cut) in a sort of Bolognese way but sooo much better than regular bolognese at home.
    Then cheeses and chocolate cake. I guess the chocolate cake was the most ordinary one, and cheese is..well, cheese. But the pasta and antipasti blew my mind.

    If you go to Pistoia, make sure to visit Voronoi.    Read more

  • TravelerSweden to Italy by train
    Day 4

    Second work day in Pistoia

    April 10 in Italy ⋅ ☁️ 14 °C

    Day 2, new workshops, today about environmental indicators; what they could look like, what they should mean etc, excellent planning and execution by University of Twente 👏👏👏👏👏👏

    Excellent lunch again, of course, and then after the day was finished I rushed to the train station to begin my journey back to Sweden.

    Short trip today, only to Bologna for my morning departure, which might be a little too exciting since there is supposed to be a train strike in entire Italy tomorrow. It seems like it will start at 9:01, and my train leaves at 7:45 so it could work out. It is the ÖBB RailJet again, so perhaps I'll make it since it is not Italian. We'll see.    Read more

  • TravelerSweden to Italy by train
    Day 5

    Bologna to Göteborg through the alps

    April 11 in Italy ⋅ ⛅ 11 °C

    Early morning in Bologna, leaving The Social Hub (a very nice hotel with an apparent ambition to be a youthful hotel but still in a good way). Today was train strike day all over Italy, and it was uncertain what effect it would have on my trip. My best shot was that I was travelling on a DB ticket with an ÖBB train (yes, the very same RailJet luxury one as on the way down, lucky me!) and that I was leaving at 7:45 so I might get far enough early enough.

    It turned out that the strike did not have any effect on my train ride whatsoever, and thank you very much for that!

    All my connections worked perfectly. We had a standstill for a half an hour in Fulda I think it was, because of something with the police. The information over the speakers were generally in both German, English and Italian when in Italy, but for some reason this part about why the police were there was only in German. And my German has its limitations, to say the least.

    But I had plenty of time in Hamburg, so 30 mins here or there did not really matter.

    Arrived in Göteborg after Snälltåget took me from Hamburg to Malmö and then Öresundståget Malmö-Göteborg, just on time 11:20.

    Two long and very well-functioning train rides in a few days    Read more

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