BA Intl Relations. Working for a diverse Europe at
@GreensEFA
🟣
Democratic socialist - Smrt fašizmu, sloboda narodu! ✊🏼
Urban transport & train travel 🚋🚞
Last week I made an unforgettable journey 🚞🏔️
Traveling back from work meetings in Italy 🇮🇹, I decided to go back to Brussels 🇧🇪 the slow way. And that obviously means up the
#BerninaBahn
A photo-thread of one of the most beautiful alpine railways, winter wonderland edition ❄️
En una librería de cómics de Bruselas te encuentras con esta maravilla. Tintín como ejemplo de la diversidad lingüística de la península ibérica.
Euskara, Galego, Asturianu, Català, Aragonés, Cahtùo, Aranés…
¿Se podría ver esto en Madrid?
On the year 2000, the city of Nancy🇫🇷 opened its TVR. The 1st ever "tram on rubber tires" seemed a promising new form of public transport
In March 2023, the Nancy TVR, the last system of its kind, will be shut down
This public transport "fail" well deserved a visit & thread📸🚎
Et voilà! Here it is!
The new
#Nightjet
Wien-Brussels night train, arriving at Bruxelles-Midi station on its 1st scheduled run, even if today was operating a non-revenue service, as a general rehearsal before next week's launch.
🇧🇪🚞🛏️ Night trains are finally back in Belgium!
Video cortesía de cierto "medio de comunicación" liderado por J.N. alias "El Condenas"
Van a provocar, pero la verdad hoy se han ido con las manos vacías y además habiendo recibido un par de zascas
Esta señora es maravillosa, y el comentario final del señor, sublime. Biba zuek!
Recently it was announced that, after decades of neglect, the Charleroi Metro is getting its 5th line built and trams renovated.
A breeze of fresh air for a "metro" that seems frozen in the 80s.
Let me show you some pics of Belgium's most bizarre public transport network 🚋🚇🇧🇪
Only in Belgium 🙃🇧🇪
In the annual survey of the Brussels public transport company
@STIBMIVB
, one of the questions is what ticket type do you use most often.
And one of the answers is "I normally travel without a valid ticket".
Can't love enough this country of surrealism 😆
Two weeks ago I had to travel back from Madrid to Brussels. I was in no rush, and flying less is always beneficial for the planet, so I chose to come back via the slow yet scenic route 🚞
Madrid > Barcelona > Latour de Carol > Paris > Brussels
Here some pics & vids of my trip🛤️
Here's our new
#nighttrains
map for 2024 including the new lines starting today. Anything missing? Any mistakes? Please note we don't include irregular car-only and cruise trains.
Here it is! 🚂🚃🚃🛌🚃🚃 🌜
Brussels welcomes its second
#NightTrain
👏🏼
Test ride today for the 🆕
@EuropeanSlpr
night train Brussels - Berlin 🇧🇪🇪🇺🇩🇪
Just some VIPs riding today to Berlin before the big launch on Thursday (westbound) and Friday (eastbound)
"What if we'd make suburban trains look like trams & run them straight through the city?"
Somebody in the 80s at the Karlsruhe transport planning department had this great idea, and so, the "Karlsruhe model" of tram-trains was born
Here some 📸 of my short visit to Karlsruhe 🚋
A big fire broke out today on the thin strip of land between Trieste and the rest of Italy. Roads & railway closed. Trieste isolated
In a couple of hours, the amazing staff of Trenitalia has organised a rail replacement BOAT ⛴️
Certainly wasn't expecting that on our
#IntEHrrail
The
@SNCB
IC 2107 left Brussels Schuman this morning at 07:53 with a delay of 1 minute, and arrived into Luxembourg station at exactly 10:48, 2 minutes ahead of schedule.
Just take the bloody train.
Looks that no chance to reach the Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg today. Almost one hour in the traffic jam on the Brussels-Luxembourg highway already.
Sure. No wifi, no dining car. Like all Belgian trains.
But on the other hand, there are very few capital cities in the EU linked by a train running every single hour, every day, without reservations, and for really low fares (regular travelers can do the 3h trip for 12,7 €).
Luxembourg-Brussels train. Connecting two EU capitals. No wifi, no heating, no restaurant cars, not even a vending machine. 1 hour slower than driving, and stops at 10 towns in between with no express options.
Bruxelles ❤️ bagnoles
It's crazy that in 2023 this square in one of the most beautiful areas of central Brussels is still, literally, a big car park 🤦🏻♂️
A TRAIN FERRY ! 🚃🛤️⛴️🌊
The train ferry between Messina and Villa San Giovanni is the only remaining train ferry in all of Europe.
The train is split into different sections and shunted inside a special ferry with rail tracks. As simple as that!
The beautiful Bilbao-Abando station, the perfect starting point for a rail trip with friends across the Iberian peninsula 🚞🇪🇸🇵🇹
Expect a thread with plenty of trains, trams, beautiful cities, nice scenery, narrow gauge trains, retro trains & more trains 😄
#Porturail
begins!
Hoy he ido a Gasteiz a visitar el
@MemorialVT
. Desde q lo abrieron quería ir a verlo para poder opinar.
Se ha confirmado lo que me temía. Es un centro para contar "su verdad". Víctimas de ETA. Y punto
La complejidad de nuestro país diluida en un relato de buenos y malos
🧵hilo
Oscar ya puede volar a día de hoy desde Barajas a Buenos Aires o Hong Kong.
En cambio Iñigo, desde Madrid, no puede coger un tren directo a Lisboa, viajar en tren de noche hacia a Europa o llegar en menos de 4 horas a Bilbao o Cádiz.
Prioridades.
❄️🚋 Snow, PCCs and the Forêt de Soignes.
A winter scene in Brussels's most beautiful tram line, line 44 of the
@STIBMIVB
, crossing the Forest on its way to Tervuren. The line is operated with the 51-year-old American designed PCC trams.
Spent the last 10 hours riding the Bar-Belgrade railway that I discovered in
@seatsixtyone
's site. Perhaps one of Europe's least known railway wonders. Stunning views and with old-school carriages, you can simply open the window & see the scenery pass. A must for train travelers!
La semana pasada, en un mercadillo ferroviario en Bélgica, encontré esta maravilla.
Libro de horario de trenes de RENFE de la temporada invierno 1987/1988.
Vamos con algunas fotos retro de horarios y carteles de una RENFE muy diferente de la actual…
Across the square and up we go!
We start "low" at 429 meters above sea level. In roughly 1½ hours, we will be up at 2253 meters above sea level.
The Bernina is the only alpine railway crossing that literally goes up to the top of the mountain pass, instead of using long tunnels
We reached the top! Lago Bianco!
Rather than an hourly regional train, at this moment, at this point the trip feels as if it was a little bit of an adventure. Crossing the Alps at 2253 meters above sea level, and with roughly -15°C outside.
And yet, we're running spot on time.
A crime has been committed at Midi/Zuid station 😠
@SNCB
@NMBS
how long until you take away that lousy billboard and bring back Tintin?
(current situation - old pic)
A new
#NightTrain
started yesterday in Belgium, linking Brussels & Berlin 🇧🇪🇩🇪 (and Prague 🇨🇿 from 2024)
The
@EuropeanSlpr
is another piece in the renaissance of European night trains
A real alternative to short-haul flights, Europe needs less planes and more day & night trains
Bernina Pass IV
Another crossing. The line is single track but efficient timetabling and frequent passing bays, allow for high capacity.
Remember, this may be a super scenic railway, but it's not a tourist attraction in itself. It's a normal railway running hourly services.
When you look at the "program" of the event 🤔
When you realize who's the MEP hosting it 🙄
When you see the time of the day when this is happening 🫠
Wine for breakfast? Why-ne not? 🫣
Euskadi, ese país donde la Policía hace RT a un tuit de un partido político. Un tuit en el q el Vicelehendakari confronta con un político de la primera fuerza de oposición (
@julenaretakoa
) mientras es fiscalizado en sede parlamentaria
Lo han borrado, pero vamos, ya ni disimular
On the last days of 2022, some friends & I did the last
#RailTrip
of the year
A loop across the north of the Iberian peninsula, in order to travel, at least once, through the scenic railway of Payares - linking Asturies and León - which may be closed down next year
#AgurPayares
Bernina Pass VI
Last tight curve as we approach Alp Grüm station. And the glacier in the background. There's just no words to describe the beauty of this place.
Hoy se ha ido amama. Sin dolor y con aita a su lado, a los 89 años. Refugiada de niña, emigrante de casada y más tarde criando a aita casi sola. Una luchadora.
Siempre guardaremos los recuerdos de los momentos preciosos junto a ti.
Goian bego amama, que la tierra te sea leve.
On Wednesday, the newest trams in Brussels, the Tram New Generation, started regular service in line 51 [north].
For the moment it's just a single unit on public service, the next ones will mostly be used for training.
Here some pics I took yesterday on a cloudy afternoon 📸🚋
Bazen garai bat EHn, non zaborren afera eztabaida politiko nagusienetariko bat bilakatu zen.
Ba 10 urte ostean, Bruselan, kubotxo laranja hau eman berri didate. Hemendik aurrera, derrigorrezkoa da organikoa eta errefusa bereiztea. Bai derrigorrezkoa. Eta ondo deritzot.
Brutalism, trains, more brutalism, trams, a bit of snow, delicious food, some history… and did I already mention brutalism?
Let me show you some pics of a short weekend trip through two countries of former Yugoslavia 📸🇲🇪🇷🇸
Yesterday I traveled from Barcelona to Brussels. By train. By
#TrainDeNuit
to be more precise
One of those key 🇪🇺🛤️ connections that desperately needs a good
#NightTrain
. Because the current one is slow & "invisible" for most users
Follow this TransPyrenees 🚞 night train trip
Trip starts in Tirano 🇮🇹
Early start to catch the first train of the day, the 7:41 R train to St Moritz 🇨🇭
This early departure will allow me to arrive to Brussels 🇧🇪 on the same day.
The sun is just rising and I see no clouds around. It's time for
#FensterAuf
and 📸
Happy new year to everyone on the wonderful community of rail-twitter! 🥳
The annual change of railway timetables has been appropriately celebrated! 🍾 🚂🚃🚃 🥂
Some weeks ago I had the chance to visit the fantastic
@citedutrain
, the French Railway Museum in Mulhouse.
I'm not sure if it's actually (as they claim) Europe's largest railway museum, but it's certainly a wonderful place full of railway heritage.
Here some pics 📸
After Valladolid, we go through one of the wonders of "Alvia" trains. We enter the gauge-changing shed
Iberian standard lines are 1668mm wide - High speed lines use European standard 1435mm
Thanks to this "device" we can gently roll from one width to the other in less than 5'
Hoy he tenido una experiencia que me ha dejado fascinado.
Al visitar la Sinagoga de Sofia, he podido hablar durante unos minutos con un señor mayor, judío búlgaro. Y mientras yo hablaba castellano, él hablaba en ladino.
Pocas veces en la vida podré tener esta experiencia.
Albula Line VII
In Europe there are many railway viaducts… and then there is THE railway viaduct!
Ladies and gentlemen, the Landwasser Viaduct.
A curved viaduct that enters directly into a tunnel, in the middle of the Alps. One of the jewels of Swiss railway engineering.
Bernina Pass X
Last minutes on this train. Stereotypically Swiss scenes at Surovas.
And now that it's not so freezing outside, time for a
#FensterAuf
souvenir selfie 😄
And that's it!
At 7:41 I boarded the "trenino rosso" on the other side of the Alps
At 21:26 I arrive at Brussel Noord
What a wonderful day on the rails, and what a wonderful way to enjoy the beauty of our continent
We all need a bit of
#FlyLess
&
#SlowTravel
from time to time
Bernina Pass VII
We approach the actual Pass, which not only is the border between Val Poschiavo & Engadin, and between Italian & German speaking Switzerland.
But also, the watershed border between the Adriatic and the Black Sea (via the Danube). So, willkommen in Mitteleuropa!
New job. New challenges. New adventures.
Today I started my new job with
@GreensEFA
💚💜 at the European Parliament. I'll do my best for the political group that strives for a more diverse, fair, green & democratic EU 🇪🇺
Lanera! Jarrai dezagun herri askeen Europa eraikitzen! ✊🏼
Bruselas de vez en cuando te da sorpresas.
Ver a
@ZooPosse
tocando en un sitio chulísimo de Molenbeek y dándolo todo, es una de esas.
Gràcies Zoo. Gràcies
@ValenciaBelgica
.
One of the supposed advantages of the TVR system was the flexibility, but as much as the vehicles can "de-cable" anywhere, the procedure to "reattach" to the guiding rail can only be done on places specially adapted for it.
TVR stands for "Transport sur Voie Réservée", although it is also known in English as GLT Guided Light Transit
Conceived by 🇧🇪 company BN in the 80s, it was finally developed commercially by Bombardier in the 90s
The bi-mode vehicle can run on a guided track or without guidance
Oh I had really missed saying this...
But it's once again time for a little rail holiday! 🛤️🚞🧳😎
Starting the voyage with a train southbound... going indeed southbound...
🎥 Short video of the "dropage" (dropping the guiding wheel) manoeuvre at Essey Roosevelt stop
The vehicle stops, lowers the steel wheel and then proceeds slowly
The device on the floor centres the guiding wheels (2 for each axis) and "realigns" the TVR as it passes through it
TVRs are hybrid, able to run on electric ⚡ mode & with a diesel ⛽ auxiliary generator
40% of the route is actually done with manual driving (no guidance rail), but all of the line is driven under ⚡, at least on normal circumstances
Diesel mode is for rides to depot & detours
Parallel running as the R & the IR both leave Samedan at the same time on parallel tracks.
But make sure to turn the sound ON 🔊 and hear this announcement… in Romansh! One of the four national languages of Switzerland, but still a very very small one. Nice language policy RhB!
First main sight of the line is the impressive Brusio spiral viaduct.
A 360 degree loop that enables our little red train to gain (even more) altitude.
Brussels-Paris-Hendaia, the not-so-fast way, but ideal for
#Interrail
Brussels to Paris via Maubeuge, no reservations needed. SNCB trains in Belgium, TER in France
From Paris-Austerlitz,
@Intercites
de Nuit to Hendaia. Reserv. fee 21,50€ for a super comfy 1st class couchette
Más 📸 del archivo: Trenhotel Lusitania en Medina del Campo y Lisboa Santa Apolonia 🚃🛌🌙
El trayecto en tren entre Madrid 🇪🇸 y Lisboa 🇵🇹 que en 2018 se hacía cómodamente durmiendo, ahora se hace de día, con al menos dos cambios y se tarda 7 horas y media.
¿Progreso?
🎥 🚂🚃🚃🛌🚃🚃 🌜
And here the video of the first ever Brussels - Berlin
@EuropeanSlpr
#NightTrain
departing from Brussels Midi/Zuid.
Wishing this new company lots of success and looking forward to even more new night train routes opening in the near future! 👏🏼👏🏼
At Campocologno station we officially enter the quadrilingual country with a name in Latin, and obviously, no free roaming.
Confoederatio Helvetica 🇨🇭
[And actually, I'll get to interact with 3 of the 4 languages of CH on this short journey 🤓]
@sim_palla
I'm in no way sure about this, but I'd bet on two different private companies that just set up their stations relatively near.
In the early days of railways there used to be 0 cooperation between companies, so this kind of "silly" situation was quite frequent.
La web permite visualizar en un mapa las conexiones ferroviarias directas desde cualquier ciudad
Bilbao cuenta con 2 trenes diarios a Madrid y 1 a Barcelona
Yo diría que en la UE no hay una ciudad más grande que Bilbao con peores conexiones ferroviarias
Bernina moments. The R train to St Moritz waits at Brusio station, as an early morning mixed (passenger/cargo) train enters the station and clears the line.
#Bernina
#RhB
@rhaetischebahn
Retro trains & bizarre monorails 🇩🇪
On Sunday
@ManelRiveraB
and I went on a daytrip to Nordrhein-Westfalen, to ride on the retro replacement trains on lines RE11 & RB40.
Of course once there, it would be rude not to visit Wuppertal 😄
Nerdy thread ahead in exotic NRW!
🚂🚋🚟🚇
Next stop, Leernes.
A tram stop in the "finest" 70s brutalism style.
A building that looks more like the abandoned filming set used for one of the early Star Wars films, rather than a tram stop in suburban Belgium.
Big thanks to the
@fsitaliane
staff at Trieste station which kept assisting everyone for several hours, patiently and always with a smile.
And now let's hope that the fire is extinguished as soon as possible.
🚋 It's a grey Belgian summer Sunday and today I'm volunteering at the Brussels Tram Museum
@musee_du_tram
/
@Tram_Museum
, and I had thought about doing this for a while…
Follow this thread as I live-tweet throughout the day, to see what we get to do as tram guards at the museum!
Yesterday, a group of rail activists gathered in Mons for a symbolic action.
A funeral for the last SNCB international train from Mons 🇧🇪 into Aulnoye-Aymeries 🇲🇫
After 176 years, this Belgian city looses its international rail services into France. A
#CrossBorderRail
failure.
Just south of Pancorbo a rather sad sight
The former Madrid-Paris
#Elipsos
(Renfe+SNCF)
#TrenHotel
are in a state of complete abandon
While Europe is witnessing a
#NightTrain
comeback, Spain decides to abandon some high standard trains that were capable of crossing ES-FR border
Arrival at Grado shortly after 22:15
A big mass of people await to board the ferry to Trieste
At least 7 empty buses are waiting to shuttle us to a wide range of destinations. At around 22:45 the buses start leaving Grado
A huge effort from Trenitalia to leave no-one behind 👏
Across Europe by train 🚄🇪🇺
Today I'm traveling Brussels 🇧🇪 ➡️ 🇨🇿 Prague by train. Comfortable & cheap. City centre to city centre. No airport checks, no queues, no waiting for hours before your trip.
And much more sustainable than a short-haul flight 💚
Un pueblo con 3 ex-alcaldes. Los 3 imputados. Los 3 del PNV. ¿La primera decisión del cuarto alcalde? (también del PNV): Subirse el sueldo.
En Arrigorriaga, la primera medida de la nueva alcaldesa de
@ehbildu
, ha sido recortarse el sueldo.
SÍ, hay distintos modelos de gobernar.
PNV y PSE acuerdan una subida de sueldos en el Ayuntamiento de Alonsotegi;
@asierrobles
EH Bildu ha criticado duramente esta decisión que ha calificado como «inaudita y lamentable»