Prussia meets Poland

If you are looking for another Kraków, think again. Szczecin offers something very different. No great Italianate piazzas. The Prussian imprint is evident in the Szczecin streetscape with some bold 19th-century buildings akin to those you might expect to find in Berlin. Throw in some superb examples of brick Gothic – of the kind you’ll run across throughout the Baltic region – and Szczecin makes for an appealing mix.

Key sights

One of our favorite Szczecin corners is the museum on the history of the city housed in the old town hall. It traces the story of the city’s early development and recounts how German Stettin morphed into Polish Szczecin. You’ll find green parkland aplenty, especially north of the city center. For riverside strolls head for the esplanade above the River Odra, where you will find the impressive nautical academy and a clutch of decent cafés.

Top choice: the Hotel Focus

The top overnight spot is undoubtedly the Hotel Focus (just a stone’s throw from the nautical college) where contemporary chic comes at budget-friendly prices. Double or twin rooms from about 200 Polish zloty (€50 or US$68). The Focus offers modern rooms, free Wi-Fi, free sauna, and a superb breakfast spread. Watch your eggs cooked to order just the way you like them. The Focus also has a first-class restaurant, where tasty regional dishes are served with great panache. Starters for just 12 zloty (€3), while mains are typically 24 zloty (€6).

Hotel manager Dominika Dulat appreciates that many travelers work to tight budgets, so it’s a nice touch that a free pack lunch is there for the taking as guests leave the breakfast buffet. “Don’t forget to take your lunch,” reads the big sign.  The Focus also offers an all-inclusive overnight rate where the cost of dinner is bundled in with the overall accommodation charge.

Cafés and bars

Szczecin is not just a place to see, but a place to be. Expect modest prices and a great range of city center bars and restaurants. There is a good quartet of cafés on Jan Pawel II Boulevard (recently renamed in honor of the late Polish Pope). Other restaurants we rate are the Bombay, which dishes up some of the tastiest Indian food in Poland, and the Chata, where you’ll find pierogi aplenty in a folksy vaulted cellar.

Getting there

Szczecin’s quaysides no longer buzz with passenger ships the way they did of old. Direct ferries from Denmark and Sweden nowadays dock at Swinoujscie, from where there is a good rail link to Szczecin, complemented by a seasonal hydrofoil service called the Bosman Express.

There are excellent train connections with half a dozen direct trains each day to Lübeck, Warsaw and Kraków. Szczecin has a very comfortable once-daily direct Czech train to Prague, and great connections with Berlin, which is just two hours away. The one-way fare from Berlin to Szczecin is just €10 – one of those wonderful cross-border deals that you cannot buy online. Just buy the ticket from the machines on the platform in Berlinbefore hopping on the train. German regional rail tickets (so-called Länder Tickets) can be used across the border to Szczecin, so there are real opportunities for budget rail travel to this corner of Poland.

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Discontinued services

First the bad news. A number of services have been axed, notably:

1. The overnight trains or through carriages from Munich to Copenhagen, Warsaw and Moscow.

2. The overnight services from Prague to Zagreb and Zürich via Linz (although the long established City Night line service from Prague via Dresden to Zürich continues just as now).

3. The once daily direct train from Amsterdam Schiphol Airport to Szczecin in Poland.

New links and improvements

But in a Europe where rail travel is becoming ever more popular, there were many notable improvements to services that came with the introduction of the 2011 schedules last Sunday. Some of the highlights include:

1. Dramatic improvements to services between St. Petersburg and Helsinki using sleek new Allegro trains that trim about 90 minutes off the journey times between the two cities.

2. More trains and faster journey times between Paris and Geneva, as the Haut-Bugey high-speed link through the Jura came into operation.

3. Increased frequency and faster travel times on daytime services linking Warsaw with Berlin.

4. More frequent direct services between Brussels and Calais on the French coast.

5. An additional daily service on the busy Paris to Amsterdam route.

6. Entirely new services linking Prague and Dresden with Szczecin in Poland.

7. New direct trans-Alpine trains from Venice to Basel (via the Gotthard route) and to Munich (via the Brenner Pass).

8. Better links from Hamburg with a new overnight train to Paris, and a new daytime service from Hamburg to Vienna via Hannover and Passau (complementing the existing daytime service via Berlin and Prague which continues just as in 2010).

9. An extra daily fast train on the Budapest to Bratislava route.

10. A new direct daytime train between Warsaw and Budapest (complementing the existing overnight service which continues as in the past).

In the weeks ahead

While most of the 2011 schedules came into effect this week, there are a small number of outstanding changes that will be introduced  in the weeks ahead. They include:

Effective December 19: An entire new Spanish high-speed route opens linking Madrid with both Valencia and Albacete. This will dramatically transform travel in eastern Spain, slashing the travel time from Madrid to Valencia by more than half.

On the same date a new high-speed link across the French-Spanish border will open, initially with just twice daily TGV trains from Paris to Figueres, where passengers must change for onward travel to Barcelona. With much reduced journey times, the new link will give much improved daytime connections between Catalunya and cities such as Geneva and London.

Effective January 7: New direct ski season services from Belgium and Luxembourg to the Tarentaise region in the French Alps and to resorts in both the Tyrol and the Salzburg regions of Austria.

You can review all the main 2011 rail schedules in each monthly edition of the Thomas Cook European Rail Timetable.  The December edition, which is already available, contains over 500 pages of the 2011 schedules.  The January edition (published next week) includes the full schedules (including late changes which were not available when the December issue went to press) and a useful fares supplement.  That comes as standard fare in each January edition of the timetable, and we find it especially useful as it gives indicative costs for journeys within most European countries as well as for international routes.

The post European Train Update: 2011 rail changes appeared first on EuroCheapo's Budget Travel Blog.