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   elhult (elhult@mastodon.acc.sunet.se)'s status on Thursday, 21-Dec-2023 21:52:12 JST elhult

   Will travel to ETH Zürich for 5 weeks in january-february as a research visit. Any advice on travel connections for trains? And what is best way to find temporary living?

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     pettter (pettter@mastodon.acc.umu.se)'s status on Thursday, 21-Dec-2023 21:52:00 JST pettter

     in reply to

     • maswan

     @maswan @elhult Yeah, it does take it a while, especially from Umeå. There's a NightJet night train that goes from Hamburg all the way to Zurich, so that's convenient. The connections through Denmark aren't ideal, still, but there's some trains that run from Copenhagen to Hamburg with no layovers.

     So you can for example take a EC train at 1530ish, arrive in Hamburg at 20ish, and then take the night train at 22ish, arriving in Zurich the day after at 10ish.

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     maswan (maswan@mastodon.acc.sunet.se)'s status on Thursday, 21-Dec-2023 21:52:02 JST maswan

     in reply to

     • pettter

     @elhult Expect it to take a while. @pettter has made it to Switzerland by train a few times, I think.

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     pettter (pettter@mastodon.acc.umu.se)'s status on Thursday, 21-Dec-2023 21:56:44 JST pettter

     in reply to

     • maswan

     @maswan @elhult The other option is to take the night train as a first stage, so basically you'd leave from Stockholm at night, arriving very early in Hamburg, and then taking an ICE to Basel SBB over the day, arriving in Zurich in the evening.

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     pettter (pettter@mastodon.acc.umu.se)'s status on Thursday, 21-Dec-2023 22:02:05 JST pettter

     in reply to

     • maswan

     @elhult @maswan There's a few different options. With Deutsche Bahn you can book every trip that starts or ends in Germany, basically, and they tend to have fairly decent rebates if you book early enough. Of course, with trains in general, and DB, DSB, and SJ in particular, being in a bit of a chaotic state at the moment, there's the question how much that helps...

     Night trains you need to book ahead, obviously, and usually through the specific company that runs them (ÖBB or SJ, in this case).

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     elhult (elhult@mastodon.acc.sunet.se)'s status on Thursday, 21-Dec-2023 22:02:07 JST elhult

     in reply to

     • pettter
     • maswan

     @pettter @maswan sounds acceptable. Nice advice! Do you buy from each company separately, or are there any aggregators or travel agencies one should use?

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     pettter (pettter@mastodon.acc.umu.se)'s status on Thursday, 21-Dec-2023 22:04:23 JST pettter

     in reply to

     • maswan

     @elhult @maswan The other option, which might have made sense for a slightly shorter stay, would've been to go for an Interrail pass, which would get you a lot more flexibility and options to Avoid Points Of Trouble, potentially.

     However, with this being probably at most four days of travel over slightly _more_ than one month, that's not super helpful.

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     pettter (pettter@mastodon.acc.umu.se)'s status on Thursday, 21-Dec-2023 22:06:14 JST pettter

     in reply to

     • maswan

     @elhult @maswan There's a few travel agencies that are starting to deal with international/european train travel, notably Resebutiken i Kalmar, and they can certainly help. They might be quite busy though, depending on the time period. https://resebutik.se/