You can thank all local train operators for this. They have been fighting a shared ticketing system tooth and nail at the European level and the weak politicians in Europe who don't push for a shared system.

There is a legislative proposal but that will take years and operators are going to try and get around it: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/spotlight-J...

What is the rationale for fighting a unified system? A unified system would make it easier to travel by train, which should in theory encourage people to do so more.

Is this a problem of the operators within each country not wanting to be unified with each other because then they'd have to compete more directly? Or is this actually the operators between countries fighting over it for some reason?

They'd have to adopt transparent pricing across the union.

As someone who often crosses the borders between Germany, Austria and Italy it is basically:

1. Enter my route at ÖBB (Austrians), DB (Germans) and Trenitalia (Italians) and see who is cheapest

2. Book one ticket for the whole trip

Whenever I checked, trains from north Germany to Austria and back were always significantly cheaper on the ÖBB site. It was bizarre.

It's just price differentiation in action. A Polish ticket for the same train can be a third of the price of an Austrian ticket. People are rightfully pissed when this happens to them online, yet they seem to accept it for trains. I don't understand it.

Strange, I don't usually hear Austrians complain when they get paid 3x for the same job a person does in Poland.

Austrians moving to Poland doing any specific job will pe paid exactly the same as the Polish. Similarly a Pole working a job in Austria is paid the same as an Austrian doing the same job.

The fact that there might be a wage difference between different countries might be interesting, but it us utterly irrelevant to the fact that there is a price difference between tickets sold for the exact same train. Not an Austrian vs. a Polish train -- literally the same actual train with the same finite, exact seats for sale.

Do they, though? In 2024/2025?

A bit more than twice.

Before tax...

Really? When traveling from Poland to Germany, it's cheaper to buy a ticket from DB.

I suppose it varies from case to case. I've only done Austria<->Poland, with tickets bought from AT/CZ/PL.

Trainline works well enough including refunds, seat selection, etc.

It can't book the Eurostar as part of a larger trip and there might be similar limitations.

Wow thanks for the hint, I did not know trainline it even shows the connections I’m searching for where trainitalia, sbb and DB failed :)

Of course - they add their own fees, though I guess there's nothing wrong with using them to find a route.

I had a good experience earlier this year on a Paris/Berlin/Vienna/Venice/Stuttgart/Paris loop using raileurope.com and nightjet.com

I guess it may be more expensive but I don't mind, I find the booking experience very clear cut as to what is refundable, what is nonrefundable etc, easy to pick which class for each segment and so on. no complaints.

Doesn't trainline support some of Europe now?

Trainline support most of the Europe. Used it from Poland to Portugal, not much of a hassle.

It does miss some regional train tickets which could be found on local platforms but major lines are covered fine.

Wow, that's some voyage. How was it?

The worst part is Germany as usual. Had to change some trains with buses on Gdansk-Berlin route.

Other than that it was quite good and on schedule. I’ve used railpass so it was also cheap enough.

My longest voyage was Moscow-London back in the days when Moscow-Berlin and Moscow-Paris trains existed (pre-covid).

You can (except for Germany I think, that stopped accepting the tickets issued from international tariff book few years ago), but this will get you the base price, without any possible discounts, so is usually way more expensive than tickets bought directly. But gives you tickets with date change/cancellation possible.

Why isn't there a Google flights for trains? Do the operators hoard their data?

In the end you’ll just have to buy 3-4 different tickets that become obsolete once you lose your connection in Köln.

Not needed, at least in most Europe. Operators share data and you can get timetable information from any of them for all trains, including combined itinearies, and the expectation is you get information from your local train company.

..Google Maps? (Or Citymapper, or ...)

All Aboard is doing this, check them out: https://allaboard.eu/book

Given that the majority of the railway companies are state owned one could think that integrating them would be a easy thing for the EU to do.