Baltic rail adventure

Good evening. Much has been written about the romance of rail travel, although for those of us confronted with overcrowded carriages, rail replacement bus services and last-minute cancellations while navigating the UK’s rail network, this can be a difficult notion to grasp. However, we’re pleased to report that the magic of the long-distance train journey is still alive and kicking, as Kevin Rushby discovered when he took an overland trip from London to the Baltic states.
There has been a boom in high-speed rail services in Europe in recent years, partly driven by environmental regulation, but also consumer demand for flight-free options. Work has already begun on construction of a new high-speed line to connect Warsaw with Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn in 2028. But Kevin was in search of something more intangible than a sleek and seamless air-conditioned connection between two points on a map. He wanted an adventure infused with “the whiff of Soviet times, a bit of what the Germans call Ostalgie”.
After stopovers in Berlin, Wroclaw and Warsaw, the train slides into “bucolic bliss” in rural Poland where “storks nest outside quaint old farmhouses with crooked barns,” eventually pulling into Vilnius, “one of Europe’s loveliest capitals with cool street cafes and gorgeous baroque churches”. It’s a far cry from the “Soviet-era nostalgia gloom” that Kevin had pictured when he embarked on his journey, but a reminder that it’s not just the rail network which is getting a radical overhaul in this part of Europe.