The "Europe by train" fantasy is real, but it works on certain corridors and fails on others. The difference is whether the route is one of the legacy high-speed networks or whether you're stitching together regional lines that take twice as long as flying.
This is a directional guide: pairs where the train is genuinely faster, scenic, or both — and pairs where you should fly.
Pairs where the train wins decisively
Paris ↔ London (2h20). Eurostar from city center to city center. No question.
Paris ↔ Amsterdam (3h20). Thalys / Eurostar. Center to center, faster than flying once you count the airport hassle.
Paris ↔ Brussels (1h22). Same network. Worth the train every time.
Paris ↔ Lyon (2h). TGV. Almost a commuter line.
Vienna ↔ Prague (4h). Railjet through Czech and Austrian countryside. Beautiful, fast enough, pleasant.
Munich ↔ Salzburg (1h30). Regional but quick. The natural side trip from either base.
Berlin ↔ Prague (4h). EuroCity through pretty Czech towns. The Prague airport bus negotiation alone makes the train worth it.
Florence ↔ Rome (1h35). Frecciarossa. The platonic Italian-train experience.
Madrid ↔ Seville (2h30). AVE high-speed. Genuinely fast; airports here add an hour each side.
Pairs where the train still wins, scenically
Zurich ↔ Milan (3h30). Through the Gotthard Base Tunnel. The trip is the experience — Lake Lucerne, Alps, Italian-speaking south.
Bergen ↔ Oslo (7h). The Bergensbanen. Long, slow, gorgeous; this IS the Norway trip.
Brașov ↔ Sinaia (40min) ↔ Bucharest (2h). The Carpathian regional line. Cheap, slow, deeply atmospheric.
Pairs where the train technically works but you should fly
Barcelona ↔ Rome. No direct route. By train it's an overnight or a 14-hour transfer through Marseille. Flight is 1h45.
Lisbon ↔ Madrid. Used to have a sleeper; now it's a fragmented 9+ hour trip. Flight is 1h15.
Athens ↔ anywhere not in Greece. Greek rail is sparse and slow. Fly to Greece; trains within are mostly local.
Helsinki ↔ Stockholm. The ferry is the better answer than any rail-based combination, but flying beats both for time.
Anywhere ↔ Istanbul. The Bosphorus crossing means you're on multi-day trips through the Balkans. Beautiful in theory; impractical in practice.
The strategic move: base in a rail hub
If you want to do multi-city train travel, base out of Paris, Munich, Vienna, or Milan. From any of these you can hit 4-5 great cities by train without a single airport.
The Paris hub gets you Amsterdam, Brussels, London, Lyon, and the south of France. The Munich hub gets you Salzburg, Vienna, and Switzerland. Vienna gets you Prague, Budapest, and Salzburg.
Where to stay near the station (vs near the center)
This is its own decision and we covered it in detail in why train-station hotels are usually a mistake. The summary: stay near the station only if you have a 6am train. Otherwise, the central neighborhood is worth the extra 10-min walk on day one.