During my travels, I find trains in most European countries very affordable compared to the UK, the exception being Sweden. Lithuania is also very affordable; and that was great for my recent trip when I commuted between the two main cities Kaunas and Vilnius on LTG, Lithuania Railways.
Travelling first class
We arrived at the station quite early and had about half an hour till our train to Vilnius was due to leave. This is the inside of Kaunas station, I read it had been renovated recently. There was a piano in the middle. A lady, also waiting for her train, went to play some music, and got a nice round of applause from everyone. In another area, there was a display about LTG's network, and what looked like a high speed connection where you can travel all the way from Finland, through Estonia, Latvia to Lithuania and Poland. I might try that one day. By the way, I would never have guessed that Varsuva is Warsaw in Lithuanian.
I saw our train had pulled into the platform, and wandered outside to take a look. The train was already on the platform, it was a double decker which is quite common in Europe. We don't have them in the UK. In the UK, they normally only let you onto the platform about 5 or 10 minutes before departure time. I hate that because everyone rushes to the train at the same time scrambling for seats. It's absolute madness, especially if you have luggage or small children. I figured we couldn't board yet, and busied myself with the surroundings. It was interesting to see Vilnius is only 104km away, and that Berlynas is Berlin in Lithuanian. Again, I would have never guessed that.
Another thing that caught my eye was a couple of plaques. During the World War 2 Nazi occupation, about 195 thousand Lithuanian Jews were killed. More probably would have died had it not been for Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat based in Kaunas at the time. He defied orders from his superiors in Japan and issued transit visas to thousands of refugees, enabling them to flee the country. Others were not so fortunate and were deported by the Nazis. Same departing point, different fate.
Suddenly I saw people getting on the train. Turns out, we could have boarded ages ago, and didn't have to wait, like in England. Duh!!!!! I had bought first class tickets for our group of 6 because I didn't know how busy the train would be and wanted to make sure we could sit together with our luggage. Plus, as I said, it was quite affordable and I could reserve seats in advance, whereas I couldn't in second class.
The train ride took a little over an hour and there wasn't much to see en route, plus it was drizzling most of the time. Luckily, by the time we arrived at Vilnius, the rain had stopped.
Travelling second class
A couple days later we caught the train again. This time it was just a short half an hour train ride to Trakai. Trakai is famous for its lake and a beautiful castle in the middle. That shall be the subject of a separate post.
It was a Saturday morning, and the train was quite busy as Trakai is a popular location for locals and tourists. This was also a double decker train, the normal class seats were equally spacious and comfortable, and the best thing was that it cost less than a local bus ride in England!
We passed by some interesting places on the way to Trakai. This looks like some sort of mine, it's nice that they have grown some plants on site, even though it looked a bit odd.
It was a lovely day out in Trakai and we came back on a normal single deck train. I saw they also had some older diesel trains in operation but forgot to take a photo of them.
I saw this fella outside the station.
