From Budapest to France, we planned our trip by TGV trains to arrive at Gare de Strasbourg.
By the EuroNight train, EN 462/EN 463, Kálmán Imre, we headed to Strasbourg from Budapest Keleti pu. (the Eastern Railway Station). The journey starts from Györ – Mosonmagyarovar - Bruck/Leitha - Wien Meidling - Wien Hütteldorf – St. Pölten – Linz – Wels - Attnag-Puchheim - Salzburg Hbf – München Hbf Germany.
We were left with 14 minutes to get onto the TGV trains. What we had on hand were not tickets because in Budapest, they were unable to issue the tickets. We had to think of the alternative route if we will missed the TGV train within that time scheduled. This was the risky part of our journey but fortunately everything worked out.
A TGV was right in front of us. We asked the ticket controller if we could board this TGV train inorder to get to Strasbourg on time, the young ticket controller said 'yes'.
Reservations were made for some of the seats and it was common to see even the seats indicated the names with small slips of paper. Feeling uneasy as we were, we checked for seats that were not with these reserved slips.
TGV is the French abbreviation for Train à Grande Vitesse, which means high-speed train. It is operated by SNCF voyages which is the French national rail operator. We took the second class and it has sockets for you to connect your portable computer.
Having tried it for the first time, we personally feel that it is more than amazing. The TGV serves so many cities and towns in France and running at such a world speed record of 574.8 km/h! Imagine traveling from Munich to Strasbourg is only 3.5 hours.
We are considering future travels to London, Brussels, Zurich, Torino in this manner just because it so much more comfortable than the air plane.
To go to the other cities by TGV is certainly a breeze.
Here are some other interesting destinations from Budapest if you are considering to make use of it as the base city.