Green travel and a 14-hour train ride

Overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, and famous for Gaudí and other Art Nouveau architecture, Barcelona is one of Europe’s most vibrant cities. It’s a hub of new trends in the world of culture, fashion, and cuisine. It is also the capital of Catalunya, a region of Northern Spain that has its own unique culture, traditions, and personality (that many locals are immensely proud of). And it is the city where I will spend my exchange semester from January to May 2023.

In this blog article, I want to share with you my trip to Barcelona and my impressions of traveling “green”.

Exploring green travel to Barcelona.

It was one thousand three hundred and sixty-three kilometers to cover from my starting point to the city of Barcelona. For me, this kind of distance means a difficult decision regarding the means of transportation.

Taking a 2-hour flight is against any of my principles. It made me extremely angry that this seemed the cheapest way to get to Barcelona and plunged me, once again, into deep doubts about the current approach to the climate crisis, the collective use of common goods, and our economic system. I understand that 14 hours by train or even longer by bus do not seem appealing to people who embrace the comfort of today’s technologies. Still, to me, it shows the attitude of disrespect and ignorance that human beings have towards our environment.

But enough of the rage!

There were 3 remaining options that I took into consideration

Hitchhiking was one of my first ideas when I thought about how to get here. Unfortunately, this wouldn’t have worked very well luggage-wise and time-wise since my semester at UPF started very early, on the 9th of January. Moreover, I remembered waiting hours for someone to take me (and with whom I’d want to go) and couldn’t arrange that with the temperatures right now.

There are definitely affordable options by bus. If you plan well in advance, you can get a ticket for around 70 euros on FlixBus. However, I really don’t like tour buses and besides, the time advantage was worth the higher price to me.

So, I took the train. On the 6th of January, my alarm started at 4.30 am CET in Schleching, a small town in the mountains of Bavaria, where people could see very clearly the impact of what I described above, this year. Some friends accompanied me to Munich from which the first part of my trip would start. I felt a bit unprepared when I entered the TGV and was happy that Marie, a Karls friend would join me in Karlsruhe. The three hours to Karlsruhe went by like a flash, I slept so heavenly in the comfortable French train seats that I didn’t even notice when Marie sat next to me.

At noon, we arrived in Paris where we had almost three hours stay. During this time, we changed the train station and went to a café at the Seine. I love Paris and if I had more time and a lighter suitcase I would have stayed there for some days. Maybe on the way back! We had a café (French for what we call Espresso in Germany), a 5.5€ cappuccino and a wonderful view. I decided to spend some time in France this summer when I heard the people around us chatting cheerfully in French.

The second part of the travel went without problems, as well. We finished a university assignment, listened to music, and talked about expectations for our Erasmus semester. I tried to sleep for a bit but realized that I was too excited by now. At 9.30 pm we arrived at “Barcelona Sants”.  Warm air welcomed us and made us feel like we skipped the winter to arrive in German April temperatures.

We really liked our “Green Travel” adventure and can recommend all other students to check out this option – it is quite comfortable and you get to see so much of our European landscape!

Marie and I enjoy the Mediterranean winter on Barceloneta beach.
Marie and I enjoy the Mediterranean winter on Barceloneta beach.

We are very excited to be spending this semester in Barcelona and are looking forward to the many experiences to come!

Article by Tabea Buck – Student in International Relations (B.A.)