Guten tag!
Yesterday, on December 16th, Paris and Berlin saw for the first time a high speed train linking the two cities in just 8 hours. Join me as I traveled on the very first ever ICE service from Paris to Berlin in first class!

Enjoy, and don’t forget to like/leave a comment to help the channel 🙂

– TRIP INFORMATION –
Date: DECEMBER 2024
Railway company: @DBPersonenverkehr and @SNCF-Voyageurs
Route : Paris Est to Berlin Hbf
Time : 8 hours and 8 minutes
Price : 69€ in First class, 59€ in second class

Thumbnail credit : @tgvpix
Map realized with Viaduct, more at https://viaduct.world/

LINK FOR MY BOOK ABOUT NIGHT TRAINS!

– BOOK IN 🇫🇷 : https://www.fnac.com/a16082670/THIBAULT-CONSTANT-Trains-de-nuit
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00:00 : Intro
00:45 : An historic day
03:22 : Departure from Paris / Overview
04:27 : Seat pitch
05:28 : Inaugural gift
05:51 : 320km/h through Eastern France
06:55 : Strasbourg
07:46 : Crossing the border
08:06 : Lunch at the dining car
09:26 : Frankfurt
09:58 : Mid roll ads
10:37 : Non stop to Berlin
11:18 : Walk through the train
13:20 : Toilets Time
13:47 : Göttingen
14:13 : Arrival in Berlin/Thoughts
14:38 : Outro

44 Comments

  1. The distance is almost exactly the same as Tokyo-Fukuoka which takes 5 hours. However, eight hours is decent as a plane would be about 6 hours given all the "add ons." In addition, looking at the route, there is room for improvement as far as the current zig-zag track is concerned.

  2. Typical… They advertise it as "IT GOES 320!!!!" and then you realize that most of the time the train can't reach its max speed due to way to many speed restrictions on the old infrastructure (tracks).

  3. Deutsche Bahn once wanted to remove dining cars from their train. We almost ripped their head off. Thankfully the Swiss were able to explain to them why these are important. So in the end, they kept them and since a couple of years they improve the quality a bit. Especially the variety.

  4. Can you reserve a specific seat? I traveled by ICE in 1999 and although I paid extra to reserve a seat, someone was sitting on my reserved seat when I boarded. I couldn’t get the train conductor to do anything about it. Left a bad taste in my mouth about ICE.

  5. In Germany we should really look at our neighbor's impressive long high speed lines and improve our own infrastructure to a similar level. This train connection between the two capitals is a milestone, but Germany's high speed network still has too many gaps with sections that only allow 160 km/h or even 120 km/h. That's not using the full potential of the ICE trains.
    Also I have the feeling that:
    1. Trains are only a side quest to any of the recent ministers of transportation in Germany
    2. Mayors of small to medium cities for today's standards beg for ICE stops in their unimportant one-horse-town that barely qualifies as "large city" by the definition decided on at the 1887 World Statistics Congress…

  6. Any reason why this route choose Kassel-Hannover, instead of Erfurt-Halle (Saale)? I thought the later one is shorter, and it will includes a section where the ICE can run 300kph.

  7. As a pilot-in-training (only at the private level), and frequent flier. I can whole-heartedly agree that flying has become more transit-oriented and not experience-oriented. Trains are still keeping that up! Flying used to maintain that luxury, but after it became the dominant way of travelling for passengers, especially on the domestic level, the quality quickly changed from luxurious to utilitarian. It'll get the job done, but it won't serve the same experience as riding along in a train car.

  8. Finally. I think, for the cohesion of the EU, a high speed rail connection between the two main capitals has been long overdue. Should have been done in 1992, but hey, here we are at last.

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