Pre-/Post-Conf Events: sustainable 🚄 train travels from and to RustFest Barcelona

The big plan 🚆

What if you could meet with other Rustaceans while you travel to and from RustFest Barcelona? We want to make that happen and are organizing a community travel from the North of Europe all the way down to Barcelona, with stops in between. We want to encourage more people to join us or plan similar travel events.

So what do we need for that?

1. Is there a path to go by train?
2. How far can you go in one day?
3. Which stops are interesting?
4. Where can I meet other people?
5. Where do I get my ticket?
6. Can I rework the slides of my presentation?

1 and 2 you have to answer for yourself.

3 and 4 we can help. We are collecting all pre-/post events on our website.

5 you can solve on our ticket page.

for 6 your proposal needs to be in the CfP: Apply now!

Beeing able to talk to your peers directly makes planning easy. The Rust User Forum is a great place to organize.

All the plans below are suggestions that allow for a day or two of sightseeing on the way. Once more groups announce their interest in running an event we will update our Pre-/Post-Conf Events page.

Tickets or Interrail

Usually people buy tickets from A to B, sometimes by locking in on a single connection. However, a travel of this length has some challenges.

When traveling huge distances over many countries sometimes delays happen or a train might break down. With a regular ticket you have to find staff and organize a reroute on the spot.

This is where Interrail saves the day. With the Interrail global pass you buy travel days over a period of time. So you can simply catch the next train and continue your journey.

If you buy 7 travel days within one month, you have the flexibility to ride any train outside of your home country on 7 independent days. In addition, the ticket is also valid for travel in your country of residence during one outbound journey and one inbound journey that occur during travel days at any point in your trip.

Most high-speed and night trains require a reservation at an additional cost.

For most European citizens the Interrail pass (currently 10% off) is probably the most flexible and affordable ticket. For Non-EWR citizens there is Eurail.

Prices

Prices varies on how many days you want the ticket to be valid. Here is a some ballpark figures:

All prices are available here.

You might want to check special offers by your local train company also.

Tools

Within Spain, Portugal, France:

• Trenes (Don’t forget to uncheck “Also search for accommodation”)

Central Europe:

• SNCF

For Northern Europe:

• Austria, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, Serbia -> ÖBB
• Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland -> Deutsche Bahn
• Switzerland, France, Spain -> Schweizerische Bundesbahnen

The travel to Barcelona

Now let us look at some examples we came up as a guideline:

Map credit OpenStreetMap

Within Spain

From Madrid to Barcelona there are two kinds of trains traveling.

• A cheaper train that takes 9.5 hours.

• With the high speed train you can reach Barcelona in 2.5 hours.

• From Sevilla Santa Justa you travel directly to Barcelona within 5.5 hours.

From France or Portugal

From most bigger cities of France you can reach Barcelona within 7 to 9 hours.

• From Paris, there is a direct TGV connection 3 times a day.
• From Rennes, take the TGV via Nimes.

• From Bordeaux, with InterCity and TGV via Narbonne.

• From Lisboa Estacion Oriente there is a train to Madrid Chamartin. Since it is not a high speed train it takes 11 hours and you will probably need to continue on the second day.

Note that there is a cheaper Interrail country pass and you probably only need 3 days within 1 month.

From the North

These events are timed so that people traveling towards Barcelona can stop by. What does that mean, let’s go through a possible option:

The NightJet 471 from Berlin rolls directly to Zürich. It is the connection I used to get to and from the first RustFest in 2016.

From the East

If you are traveling from the East it might be possible to cross routes with folks from the North and join their travel. Lucky us there is a direct connection from Budapest to Zürich. Let’s look at it:

Note that you can take a direct train from Warsaw or Prague to Vienna.

From the South

We suggest two possible options from Italy. Italy basically has one “train backbone” that goes from South to North so you choose how many stops you want to do. For more options and ideas visit https://www.interrail.eu.

First option, only two stops and a whole night in Marseilles:

Second option, three stops but less time idle:

The way home

Depending on how fast you need to go back you can decide to detour. With the Interrail global pass you are free to change your plans on the go provided you have enough travel days.