Two weeks in Europe by train: Amsterdam to Budapest

This is the classic first Eurotrip route, and it works because every leg is a direct train: Amsterdam to Berlin, Berlin to Prague, Prague to Vienna, Vienna to Budapest. Five countries, no flights, no car. The connectivity side is where most people overpay, either by leaving home roaming on or by buying a fresh local SIM in each country. Neither is necessary. One regional plan covers the whole route, and the only real planning is how much data to buy.

The route, leg by leg

Fourteen nights splits neatly across five cities with two or three nights each and no day lost entirely to a train. Every leg is a single direct service, so nobody is dragging a suitcase across a platform with four minutes to change. Times are approximate and worth rechecking when you book, since seasonal timetables move.

Run it in reverse if flights home are cheaper from Amsterdam. Nothing about the connectivity advice below changes with direction.

The four trains, one by one

These are four quite different trains, and knowing which is which decides whether you book a seat, which side you sit on, and how early you need to be at the station.

Amsterdam to Berlin is the long one, and it is now an ICE rather than the older Intercity: NS International runs it five times a day from Amsterdam Centraal to Berlin Hauptbahnhof in a little under six hours, with a restaurant car, sockets at every seat and onboard wifi. Reservations are not compulsory, and the operator still advises taking one. Take the advice: at that length, standing in a vestibule near Hannover is a miserable way to start a holiday. Leave on a mid-morning departure and you arrive in time for dinner.

Berlin to Prague is the one people remember. EuroCity services run roughly every two hours, take about four and a half hours, and spend the last stretch threading the Elbe valley between Dresden and the Czech border, with the river on one side and sandstone cliffs on the other. Most departures now use Czech Comfortjet stock with a proper restaurant car. Sit on the right leaving Berlin for the valley views, and treat Dresden as a legitimate place to break the journey rather than a blur through the window.

Prague to Vienna is the leg with a real choice. The ČD and ÖBB railjets run most frequently, around nine or ten times a day, and take a little under four hours into Wien Hauptbahnhof. RegioJet, a private operator, runs fewer departures at a lower fare with a seat always included and steward service on board. Neither is wrong. Book the railjet if your timing is fixed, RegioJet if your budget matters more than your departure time.

Vienna to Budapest is the easy one and a good argument for keeping Vienna short. ÖBB and MÁV run an hourly railjet or EuroCity from Wien Hauptbahnhof to Budapest Keleti in about 2h37. Reservations are optional and cost a couple of euros, and are worth having in summer. Because it runs hourly, this is the one leg you can genuinely turn up for.

Booking, and what a reservation actually buys you

Two things are being sold separately on this route and conflating them is the usual expensive mistake. The ticket is your right to travel. The reservation is a specific seat on a specific train. On these four legs the ticket is what needs planning; the reservation is a few euros of insurance.

• Advance fares (DB's saver fares, ÖBB's Sparschiene and their Czech equivalents) go on sale months before departure and rise as the train fills. Booking early is worth substantially more than any other saving on this trip.
• Advance fares are tied to one train. Miss it and the ticket is generally worthless, so leave a real buffer on the day you fly in.
• Flexible fares cost more and let you take any departure. Worth it only on the day your plans are genuinely uncertain.
• Reservations are optional on all four legs here, and cost a few euros. Take one on Amsterdam to Berlin and on anything in July or August.
• Buy each leg from the operator whose train it is, or from one national operator that sells the whole journey. Booking four legs across four sites is normal on this route.

An Interrail pass, which now covers what Eurail used to sell separately, is worth pricing against the total if you are adding stops beyond these five or want to decide departures on the day. Note that a pass is not a seat: reservations are still bought per train on top of it. For exactly this itinerary, four advance tickets bought early usually win.

If the direct train is sold out

Sold-out days happen around public holidays and in high summer, and none of these legs is a dead end when they do.

• Amsterdam to Berlin: change at Hannover or Duisburg. It costs an hour or so over the direct ICE and opens up far more departures.
• Berlin to Prague: break at Dresden, which is on the same line, and continue on a later EuroCity. This turns a sold-out day into a decent half-day stop.
• Prague to Vienna: if the railjets are full, RegioJet sells the same city pair on its own trains, and the two operators sell out independently.
• Vienna to Budapest: hourly departures mean sold out is rarely a real problem, and RegioJet runs the route too, into Budapest Déli rather than Keleti.
• A night train can also replace a daytime leg between Amsterdam, Berlin and Prague and save you a hotel night. Check it still runs on your dates before planning around it, because that timetable has changed more than once.

The five stops, in order

Two or three nights each is enough to see a city properly without living on trains. What each stop is actually for:

Amsterdam is an easy first landing: the airport train reaches the centre in about fifteen minutes, and the city is small enough to walk end to end. Three nights covers the Rijksmuseum, a canal loop and a day trip out of the city.

Berlin is the one stop where three nights still feels short. Taking the long train ride second gets it out of the way early, and leaves the time for a city that rewards wandering more than ticking off sights.

Prague has the prettiest arrival of the five, on a scenic run down the Elbe valley. The old town is compact and very busy by mid-morning, so early starts are worth the alarm.

Vienna gets two nights rather than three, because the trains onward to Budapest are frequent and fast. Coffee houses, one palace, then move on.

Budapest is the cheapest of the five and a good place to end, because the last leg runs under three hours and leaves most of the arrival day intact. Thermal baths, and the parliament seen from across the Danube.

Day trips worth the extra ticket

Three nights in a city means two full days, and on this route the second day is often better spent an hour outside town. Every trip below is a local or regional train, bookable on the day, with no advance fare to worry about.

Bratislava is the sleeper hit of that list. It is a different country, an hour from Wien Hauptbahnhof, and the old town is small enough to see properly between two trains. Slovakia is covered by the same regional eSIM as the five countries you sleep in, so it costs nothing extra in data terms to spend a day there.

One eSIM, or one per country?

One. A regional plan covers all five countries on a single profile, so you cross four borders without touching your phone. Buying five single-country plans costs more, wastes whatever is left on each one, and means five installs. The exception is a trip that spends almost all its time in one country with a single night elsewhere, where a single-country plan plus a little patience is genuinely cheaper. Our guide to single-country, regional or global plans walks the maths.

One thing to check before you buy anything: if your home plan comes from an operator inside the EU or EEA, roam-like-at-home already covers you across this whole route at no extra cost, and you do not need a travel eSIM for it. This guide is for everyone arriving from outside that bloc, including UK plans that reintroduced roaming charges, where the alternative is per-day roaming fees.

What actually uses data on a rail trip

Rail travel is unusually data-hungry in short bursts, because the moments you need a connection are the moments you cannot wait: a platform change, a ticket barrier, a hostel address. Steady browsing matters much less.

That lands most travellers between 500 MB and 1 GB a day without streaming, which is where the 10 GB figure comes from. If you stream on long legs, budget nearer 15 GB or plan to top up mid-trip rather than over-buying up front. Our breakdown of how much data a day of travel actually uses has the per-app numbers.

Train Wi-Fi is not a data plan

Every operator on this route advertises onboard Wi-Fi, and on none of them should it be your only connection. It drops in tunnels, saturates when a full train boards, and on cross-border legs it often stops working entirely once the train changes network. Treat it as a bonus for the stretch between cities, not as the thing your ticket lives on.

The apps worth having before you go

Each national operator runs its own booking app, and each one wants a connection at the point you least want to depend on one. Install and log into them at home.

• Netherlands: NS for domestic trains and the Amsterdam airport run.
• Germany: DB Navigator, which also sells most cross-border legs on this route.
• Czechia: ČD for domestic services and seat reservations.
• Austria: ÖBB, which covers the Prague and Budapest legs too.
• Hungary: MÁV for the last stretch and Budapest regional trains.

Add offline maps for all five cities while you are at it. Our offline prep checklist covers what else is worth downloading before you lose easy Wi-Fi.

Networks change at every border

Each country on this route has three national networks, and a travel eSIM registers onto one of them as it crosses: KPN, Odido and Vodafone in the Netherlands; Telekom, Vodafone and O2 in Germany; O2, T-Mobile and Vodafone in Czechia; A1, Magenta and Drei in Austria; Magyar Telekom, Yettel and One in Hungary. You do nothing at the border. The phone re-registers on its own, usually within a few minutes of the train crossing, though it can take a little longer on a fast leg.

If data stops after a border and does not come back, it is nearly always the phone holding onto a network it can no longer reach. Toggling airplane mode for ten seconds forces a fresh registration and fixes it more often than anything else. The full sequence is in our guide to eSIM data that stops working abroad, and coverage per country is on each destination page.

Set it up before you fly

Install the eSIM at home on Wi-Fi, leave the line switched off, and turn it on when you land in Amsterdam. Set it as your data line, turn Data Roaming on for that line, and leave your home line's data and roaming off so it cannot quietly bill you. That is the whole setup, and it holds for the remaining four countries without another change.

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