In conversation with Hidden Europe

Ahead of the launch of the 18th edition of Europe By Rail: The Definitive Guide, Harriet Matthews talks with Nicky Gardner about the history of the book, and what to expect from the latest edition.

Q: Can you give a brief introduction to Hidden Europe?

My name is Nicky Gardner and I am one half of hidden europe, a small initiative based in Berlin. We have for a long time been involved, as part of a very strong personal commitment of myself and my partner Susanne Kries, in a series of projects to encourage people to travel in different ways: in more sensible ways and in more conscious ways.

A long time ago, 20 years ago, we set up a print magazine - hidden europe - which was designed to explore Europe's cultures and communities, and lives on as a corpus of online work, celebrating the diversity of European lives and landscapes. Susanne and I have also worked on several books, but one that's closest to our hearts is Europe by Rail: The Definitive Guide, the 18th edition of which is due to be published later this month on the 24th of October.

Q: What kind of travel appeals to you?

We've always been ones to not plan too much, to ensure that travel retains that serendipity of discovery. We value stumbling on somewhere, and saying, ‘hey, this place is lovely, let's stay not just for one night, but let's stay for three or four days’. Of course, this is an enormous privilege. It comes with the fact that we've had jobs which have involved remote working for two decades and more, and that does allow us to make those kinds of decisions and do things on the spur of the moment. 

We've also been ones for taking things slowly, and often felt that too many people rush too far, too fast. We get a better sense of the community, a better feeling for a landscape when we pause and allow our souls to catch up with us.

15 years ago, we published something called ‘The Manifesto for Slow Travel’. We didn’t place too much weight on it when we published it, but no other article published in the history of hidden europe has been republished so many times, now translated into over a dozen languages. I hardly open another travel magazine these days without seeing one or two of the ideas that were first embedded in that manifesto. One of the first serious reviews of the manifesto of  slow travel said, ‘this is a manifesto for travelling overland. It's a manifesto for the journey’. And that is entirely true. We had been doing that a long time beforehand in hidden europe. If there was one phrase which was a leitmotif in the early editions of Hidden Europe, it was this: journeys matter. 

Journeys matter, and journeys are too important to just be undertaken by plane. We don't take a hard and fast view on flying, but we do think so much is missed when you fly. So we fly very sparingly and almost never in Europe. There is something essentially convivial about the train, which has never been a feature of plane travel, nor a feature of car travel. What's wonderful about the train is the snapshot you get of other communities. I can get on a train in Berlin, for example, and people join for a short journey through Slovakia, a longer journey through Hungary, or a short hop through the Czech Republic. I will hear multiple languages and talk to multiple people. Train journeys are wonderful. They’re there to be enjoyed, and there to be savoured.

Q: How did you first discover this kind of travel?

We both had earlier lives in which we travelled too much, and too fast. I worked in large organizations and would have a meeting one day in Nice, the next day in Zürich, and the next day in London. I eventually realised it wasn't much fun. Having said that, I at least always took time to look around the places,  and my heart was always with exploring landscapes and communities. Now, while occasionally we do stay in nice hotels, we're quite downbeat and humble in our approach to travel. We’d often opt for simple locally-owned accommodation (with more emphasis on nice places rather than extravagant hotels), but we tend to avoid staying in places which are too luxe. I think I can honestly say that in many years of travel writing, I've never written a positive word about an infinity pool!

Q: How did the original Europe by Rail book come about?

We first got involved in 2007, initially as mere contributors to the book. We rewrote about a hundred pages and realised that the book was a bit long in the tooth. It was aimed at the backpacker market - and, by this time, the backpackers had converted to cheap flights. 

People who were travelling by train back then (say in 2007 or 2008) were much more like Byway customers, more likely to have a decent pension than a student card, and more likely to be using a suitcase than a rucksack. So we went to the original publishers and asked whether they would be interested if we took over the book, and it changed to being a book wholly authored by Susanne and myself. It took time and many editions, but that's what we did. 

It's changed from a book entirely about places, to a book more about journeys. What’s made the book special is the nuanced descriptions—at their best even quite literary descriptions—of the journeys. If you were to read our new French route in the 18th edition, you'd see that it's written in a style that celebrates everything from French philosophical concepts of the nation-state and the importance of the Capital, right through to the importance of lentils of the French diet. These are things that don’t appear in other travel books.

One thing I would say is that if you try to use the book as a canonical source of information and facts, I think that is where people often slightly stumble. It is interesting because sometimes someone will ask if I could pen a description of Verona, and of course, I can. But to be honest, you might find out more about Verona on the Wikipedia page than you will in our book. What we're good at is describing the train journey to Verona. 

The other thing is that the text is often quite opinionated. You may disagree with those opinions, but you’ll find the odd remark perhaps saying “You may want to avert your eyes as you go through x or y because the architecture is not brilliant”. I think having a book which gives opinions is something that you don't pull off the Internet every day, and that's one of the things we've tried very strongly to do.

Q: How has the 18th edition built on previous editions?

Hugely. For example, the Hamburg to Copenhagen train was no longer using the Puttgarden-Rodby ferry, so we had to rewrite that route. The first reprint came out in July 2022, just a few months after the April publication, and by then the book already looked quite different.

In early 2022, we were hopeful that many Balkans train links that had disappeared during the pandemic would return. Routes from Belgrade to North Macedonia, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Croatia had vanished, and sadly, they haven’t reappeared. In the 18th edition, we’ve removed Belgrade completely, as it’s now too isolated from other routes. But it’ll surely be back in the 19th edition, perhaps in 2026 or whenever, as a brand new railway is being built through southern Hungary to the border with Serbia.

Despite these losses, the 18th edition has added a lot. We’ve significantly improved our coverage of France, including a route that doesn’t go through Paris for the first time. This new route runs from Caen to Angers, then on through Saumur, Tours, Bourges and Lyon, to Valence. We’ve also improved our coverage of southern Poland and added a route across the Tatra Mountains. In Spain, we had to update the route due to the cancellation of the Santiago de Compostela train from San Sebastian, which we’d hoped would be reinstated in 2023, but sadly has not.

We’ve also rewritten several of the Sidetracks mini-features, added more about crossing cities, and encouraged the use of apps like Citymapper. Night trains are another big change—while there’s growing interest, we always sound a note of caution. They’re not for everyone! The new edition reflects the constant changes in rail services and how we’ve had to adapt to them.

Q: Which part of the new edition are you most excited about?

In the 18th edition, we have very consciously tried to encourage our readers, even in areas where there are high-speed trains, to travel on local services. It’s really been informed by our own journeys, one of which I did with Byway. I did a Byway trip in late February, in which I travelled from the Italian border to Nice to Marseille to Lyon,  through Savoy and into Switzerland without setting foot on a high-speed TGV. I would say that's probably one of the strongest points. We even have a new two-pager on how to avoid going through Paris, and some of the more interesting trains that avoid Paris. We also have really commended Byway as we see Byway proceed with greater confidence to help customers experience the routes we’ve described in successive editions of the book.

Q: If you had to pick a favourite route of the 18th edition, what would it be?

I still think one of my favourite routes in the book is one that appeared for the first time in the 17th edition and has been slightly rewritten, and that is a route along the south coast of the Baltic. It's a journey from Hamburg via Lubeck, then to Strasund and beyond into Poland. It's an absolutely lovely route entirely on local trains, and it goes to places that Susanne and I both like a lot. Only last Sunday we made a day trip to Stralsund which is one of the nicest places on the route, and just happens to have a direct train from our local station (which is Wannsee station in Berlin’s leafy southwestern suburbs).

Q: Lastly, you are often praised for your attention to offbeat places, and travelling away from the beaten path. Do you have any advice for people looking to travel in this way?

Yes. Get away from the aeroplane mindset that focuses on big cities. Real travel is about smaller places. It's about finding the small hotel, which may be quite simple, right by the railway station, often in a small village. We tend to look for places which are quite small and not mainline stations. We always say that staying in a place with only 20,000 people is nice, but staying in a place with just 2,000, people is 10 times nicer. And staying in a place with 200 people is 100 times nicer! 

So, look for small places, and remember: not all who wander are lost. Wandering is a lost art. We love the fact that even in countries like France, you can hop on a slow train, and find yourself in a small village in the hills and say ‘Hey, this place looks wonderful,  and as it is only four o'clock in the afternoon, let's go have a wonder and see if we can find somewhere to stay, and if we don't, we've still got somewhere else to go on to tonight’.

The 18th edition of Europe by Rail: The Definitive Guide is published on 24 October. You can preorder on Amazon, Waterstones or any good bookshop. For ordering via local bookshops quote ISBN 978-3-945225-04-2. RRP £20.99. Find out more about the book at www.europebyrail.eu.