One century after the initial golden age of the railways, trains are again the talk of the journey. In Europe, in particular, train trips are increasing as an environmental alternative to short flights, with more night trains, high -speed trails and transnational cooperation between railway companies. Political bonds between European countries may be sad, but cities are more linked than ever.
Our trains also return to the romance of the journey. Pacific hours invite reading and meditation, as landscapes reveal the geography between destinations – Zen opposite the Frittered Tedium of the air travel.
I travel to Sweden annually from my home in Florence, Italy. Searching for the modern culture of other cities and to reduce the flight, I devised a train from the Mediterranean south to the Scandinavian north. Could it really work a trip with so many providers and legs? Using a HodgePodge from railways, I was booked on a two -week route with high -speed trains from Milan to Stockholm, with stops in Zurich, Berlin and Copenhagen: Five cities in five countries.
A tips word: Book one or two months in advance to get the best prices. Check that an Eurail or Interrail card can benefit you. And package meals – the food service on these routes are spotty and, when available, scary industrial.
With tips from local friends and not for control directories, I was ready to cross Epirus.
Milan
Milan has been remodeled as A vibrant city, full of people with high policy that makes things happen. An international flight hub is a convenient starting point for travelers arriving from abroad.
My first stop was the Prada Foundation, whose modern exhibitions give the city a measure of cool and cultural significance. Moving on to Corso Venezia, I fell into the park and the surrounding streets full of wild experiments in the 20th century architecture, visited the Luigi Rovati Foundation, with Etruscan Antiquities and Contemporary Art in a 19th -century palazzo by architect Mario Cucinella.
In the evening, a friend joined me in Nolo-the long-standing neighborhood north of Piazzale Loreto. After an Aperitivo in La Botte Fatale, a wine bar that hosts occasional small concerts and exhibits, we arrived at Thrumming Piazza Morbegno, where we dined at Silvano, which was packaged by last year. “My dream was a place with happy customers, not a Michelin star,” said chef Vladimiro Poma for his “gastronomy for all”, with slabs sharing like peanutic peanuts and coriander.
While he crashed into a friend, travelers could test the new Casa Brivio Hotel (from 300 euros, or about $ 315), in a pair of residential buildings with suites inspired by architect Matteo Thun.
Departure from Centrale Station, with Art Deco and its rational architecture, tallest halls and mosaics of the Roman press, the large scale of the fascist era and the screens that have been naked and with LEDs, reduces me with awe and anger. I arrived on the line in Zurich.
On a crystal clear Swiss train (3.5 hours, tickets from 34 Swiss francs, or about $ 38), I watched the soft slopes of Italy to give their place to the Craggy Cliff Faces in Switzerland. The waterfalls were burst from the rocks, with snowy alpine peaks turning to clouds full of over-the-white cows and black and white cows-a fantastic landscape.
A short walk from the station, I threw my luggage to the Locke am Platz (from 150 francs), which opened last year with apartment rooms inspired by Swiss design.
More than a few days, I wandered from Nude, a river coffee shop at Tanzhaus headquarters. At the Löwenbräukunst Art Center, a beer factory converted into art areas. In Josefwiese Park with Pétanque’s crowds and Alpine Chalet Bar.
From the Bürkliplatz flea market, I entered the Gallery along the Rämistrasse before reaching the largest Museum of Kunsthaus-Switzerland since it doubled its spaces in 2020 with the cute monolith of David Chipperfield. Inside, the Impressionist paintings of the permanent collection were hung between spectator research, with questions such as: How to deal with these works donated by a Nazi dealer?
Zurich is built on the shores of a swimming lake and the streets of the image are scenery of mountains with a saws-an idyllic union of nature and a flawless city. However, there is a Vibe shift to Rote Fabrik, a factory that has become a scruffy center for an alternative culture, where a new generation packs the calendar with concerts, parties and drag shows. In the courtyard of Graffiti-Encusted, the DJs threw music at home in a day I watched, while a full class “Queer Tango” went in. For the whole predictable order of Zurich, there is also a thriving and disciplined side.
Throughout the lake, Le Corbusier Pavilion, a 1967 radical home in 1967, 1967, was like a giant stack of rainbow block. Going to the ship in the center, I stopped by Heisswein, an unpretentious natural bar wine serving small plates and its own pickles. Back at my hotel, I sat on the balcony and admired the capacity of the city.
Berlin
The Deutsche Bahn train I boarded on Bedraggled (from 70 euros), but the landscape of the trip was for the cornfields and the Vineyard hills, shifting flat areas before a shock in Frankfurt. We stopped for an hour outside Berlin, and as the longest foot of my trip was stretched in more than nine hours, I broke my basic rule to avoid soft drinks with red wine of artificial oak and despair.
A 15-minute Metro Ride from the Station, the Hoxton Hotel (from 100 euros), opened last summer, hoping to become a hot spot on the narrow-carlottenburg narrow. The pastel charms of the accommodation seemed to work – I was watching the musician Devendra Banhart at Breakfast.
I went around Pretty Prenzlauer Berg with a friend who reminded the neighborhood when, until recent years yoga and ceramic studios, was full of war, heated squatters. I watched in the evening to come to life in Neukölln from a window seat in the new wine wine and found the love of food in Sathutu, an imaginative Berlin that takes the flavors of Sri Lanka.
Berlin is a muscle city, with epic post-war avenue and East -versus-West. At Kulturforum, a monumental 1950s square, I fell from one museum to the other-the Neue Neuue building of Mies der Rohe, Great Masters’s Gemäldegalerie, Airy Museum of Music Instruments with Cinema’s old performances and Saturday.
Against the stunning scale of Berlin, the city’s river and canals provided relief for locals: Goth punks, regular punks, barefoot neo-hippies and eccentric-a citizen who does not indulge in weeds, but also hard drugs and a Plein-air gender.
Even with rents growing, the free spirit seemed radiant.
Copenhagen
From Berlin, the journey of almost eight hours (60 euros) took me through the German cities of cookie-cutters of houses, but when I woke up from a nap in the oversized train armchair, the view had changed in corrugated fields of shear gold wheat.
In Copenhagen, the rain went down on hard slopes, but the bike strips were busy as cyclists in popsicle-colored parks traveling by, children pushing Christiania loads. The well-preserved city, with centuries-old brick or bright apartment buildings, was pure-so obviously healthy and good functional that I could be the only Jaywalker in the city.
I went to Cisternerne, an underground water tank transformed, with its open pools, into an unusual art area. In almost overall darkness, I crossed a corridor over the tank water, surrounded by a Dirge -like audio by Taryn Simon. Emerging into the separation of rain clouds, I was cycling, stopping from the Gardens of the Rosenborg Castle, then the Nørrebro neighborhood of Vintage stores and local favorites such as the Wine Bar Pompette. There were bicycle strips even on the smaller roads.
The next day was the inauguration of Riviera, the third café by the talented baker Chiara Barla, whose recipes extend to Denmark and her home country in Italy. In the corner restaurant furnished with backup designs from the Copenhagen Frama, I took butter -made bread and apricot Ricotta cake. “People go well to Copenhagen,” Ms Barla said, radiating.
Taking the dazzling fast subway on the island of Amager, I left the center for an Aperitivo in Josephine, a circus wine, somewhat, before leaving the brand new Bella Grande Hotel, where I fell my luggage earlier and more Italian inspiration, Modern and non -acoustic and uncomfortable goodbye.
Stockholm
Leaving the Copenhagen Castle, the train (5.3 hours, from 35 euros) crossed the five -mile bridge connecting Denmark and Sweden, which opened in 2000 as a symbol of the optimization of the common European Union. The birds sinking by the melon followed the train over the border, formed by the waters of the narrow Oresund.
From the windows of the tattered but silent train, I watched the show: Falu Red Farmhouses, cows and horse pastures, glamorous lake lakes. We found rabbits and deer between the thin birches and spruce pine trees before the train slipped over the mouth of the Baltic Sea in the islands that form Stockholm.
I was walking in Östermalm for a bun on the morning of cinnamon at Stora Bageriet in the 17th -century industrial building that houses the Swedish Museum of Arts. In the nearby Nybroviken, a bay where the boats departed for the archipelago, I chose the ship to Djurgården, an island of museums and forests that were once royal hunting spaces to visit modern art exhibitions and new lilies halls. Skeppshwshwshwhswshwhshwshhwshwhwshwshwshwshwshwshwshwshwshwshwshwshwshwshwshwshs
One afternoon I stopped at Brutalisten, where I found the artist and the owner, Carsten Höller, the food on a window table and a multi-mushroom. Another night, friends and I illuminated in the corner of Främmat, a natural wine -inspired restaurant in a dim, warm cellar at Vasastan. “In Stockholm, we are obsessed with calculating what will happen and what is cool,” one of my dining roomrs said.
I wanted to stay at Södermalm, the island of Stockholm of selective bars, young creatives and paternity-legged dads with their offspring in Babybjörns, so I found a room at Hotel Frantz (from 140 euros).
Just across the street, I got a lift in the renovated Gondolen, a 1935 cocktail cocktail with 11 stories over the waterfront of Södermalm, overlooking the ports of Stockholm and the Swedish architecture Grace. Placing to check many points, I met friends at the low-key Ninja, but I never left-the wine, the music and the easy atmosphere installed until they were closed.
My trip ended with departure 5 am From Arlanda Airport: I had given the amenities and hermetically sealed difficulties of budget air travel to head to Italy. However, even in the zombie state of my flight, I was dreaming of the primary, the landscapes I had seen and the lighting cities I was briefly part of it.
