Train travel in Europe: Let the world pass you by

By Brian Johnston
Updated October 26 2014 - 1:09am, first published 12:15am

Picture the scene: you loll in a comfortable seat, legs outstretched, a glass of Rioja to hand as you hurtle through Spain on an AVE high-speed train. Almond groves and whitewashed villages, Baroque cathedrals and hilltop towns zip past in a Picasso blur of light and colour. Or imagine this: you sit in a little red carriage, pressed against your seat back as cogs clank and you're hoisted past grand Victorian-era hotels, smug cows and the jumbled ice blocks of the Eiger glacier in central Switzerland. Then you're swallowed by the belly of the mountains, and coughed up at the highest train station in Europe, below the summit of the ice-clad Jungfrau. At 3454 metres, the Alps are a frozen pavlova, and the panoramas gin-clear all the way to Germany.

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