Timetables, tricky tickets and high prices: the problems with European cross-border rail travel

For all the fanfare over new routes, fast and efficient rail services between major cities remain a rarity

• Expanded high-speed rail network part of vision for Europe, says EU’s transport chief

At 9.55am every day since December, a German ICE high-speed train has left the Gare de l’Est in Paris headed, via Strasbourg, Karlsruhe and Frankfurt, for Berlin Hauptbahnhof, where – all being well – it pulls in just over eight hours later.

Remarkably, the service is the first direct, high-speed, centre-to-centre rail link between the capitals of the EU’s two biggest countries. Run by Deutsche Bahn (DB) and France’s SNCF, it has been hailed as a milestone in European train travel.