When you're travelling around with 2 infants getting from point A to point B can become way more than just an after thought. The logistics of hauling two kids and weeks worth of gear between two places can be a pretty daunting task. Every mode of transportation is going to have it's drawbacks. In our 4 weeks in Germany and Hungary we did them all, we rented a car throughout Germany, took the train from Munich to Budapest (via a night in Vienna), rented another car in Hungary and then flew from Budapest back to Munich. Along the way we ran into some road blocks, thought we lost our stroller, and dealt with all varieties of screaming babies.
We knew we were going to be renting a car to drive around Germany so we lugged our car-seats with us onto the plane. That's drawback #1 for renting and driving, even with our seats being able to attach to the stroller we still had to lug the seats and attachments around with us. Attaching the seats to the stroller also makes the stroller (ours at least) heavier and wider. We would have been much happier not having to deal with the car seats all trip long. Drawback #2, see "Kicking Baby to the Curb." Drawback #3 is having to deal with parking, whether it's finding a spot, figuring out what actually is a spot, or paying to keep you spot, it's a pain in the ass if you will be in any major cities, or even small old cities with narrow streets for that matter. But with the bad comes the good; you're free to do things on your own schedule, no rushing to get to the train station, or finding out that your train is delayed, just get in and go! Travelling by car opens up certain routes and small places you may not get to by train, at least not very easily. Since this is specifically regarding travel in Germany(and Hungary) how can you go there and NOT drive on the Autobahn? You'd have to be crazy to skip it, its part of the experience cruising along at 160km/h and being passed like you were standing still.
We took a short 1 hour flight from Budapest back to Munich, and I must say it was nice to have the trip done in an hour, but when you add in the half hour taxi, the two hour early arrival, the extra hour I always pad into any flight because I have an irrational fear of missing a flight, the delays, waiting for your baggage, then getting back into the City again, you've turned your nice quick 1 hr flight into an all day affair. So hey, your 1 hr flight is really 6 hrs door to door, that's still better than 9 hours on a train! In the end dealing with security and check-in, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting, then the mad rush to board, the dread of how long you're going to be stuck on the tarmac waiting while your precious little ones' melt down clocks are tick, tick, ticking away just doesn't seem worth it for an hour flight. Maybe that's just us, but the pain in the ass to actual travel time ratio is too high for most situations where your flight is less than an hour,
Our other "long haul" was the train from Munich to Budapest, not to be confused with the "short haul" flight the other way from Budapest to Munich. Sure 6 hours of travel for less than an hour of actual travel on a plane seems like a nightmare, but so does a comparable 9 hour train ride. It wasn't that we couldn't survive that amount of time on the train, we just didn't want to. We opted instead to stop for a little layover mid-way through the journey. We got off the train in Vienna in the early afternoon, checked into a hotel for the night, and left the next morning to continue our journey into Budapest. Looking back on our two journeys in opposite directions they were really both lose-lose. The plane was a pain in the ass, the train was long, stopping over for a night was great....until we had to pack up and leave immediately after we got there. I think that distance of the trip just isn't in the sweet spot time/distance wise, if we had a couple more days to spare, the stop in Vienna would have been great...for real.
For shorter journeys though, the train is definitely the way to go, it's convenient, and way more relaxing. Even at our boys' age, they like to look out the window and watch the scenery go by, as did we. One of the great benefits, at least in Germany/Hungary, was that when booking our two adult seats, the kids seats were included for free(small booking fee in Hungary). If we only had two seats it would have probably been miserable, but with the two seats for the babies, we had room to throw car-seats, diaper bags, water bottles, and any miscellaneous crap you didn't want to deal with at the moment. Beware though, if you are bringing a larger stroller, like our Mountain Buggy Duet, you will be hard pressed to find a good solution for storing it, especially if there is no luggage car. When you are shuttling bags back and forth between your seat(that someone has already claimed to be their own) and lugging car seats down tiny aisles the last thing you want to have to do is lug a stroller back and forth trying to find somewhere to put it. On our first train we barely managed to squeeze it onto a luggage rack...after taking off the wheels and car seat attachments. After that headache I dreaded having to deal with it on the next ride we took, but it all ended up working out in the end despite some hiccups along the way.
We took a short 1 hour flight from Budapest back to Munich, and I must say it was nice to have the trip done in an hour, but when you add in the half hour taxi, the two hour early arrival, the extra hour I always pad into any flight because I have an irrational fear of missing a flight, the delays, waiting for your baggage, then getting back into the City again, you've turned your nice quick 1 hr flight into an all day affair. So hey, your 1 hr flight is really 6 hrs door to door, that's still better than 9 hours on a train! In the end dealing with security and check-in, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting, then the mad rush to board, the dread of how long you're going to be stuck on the tarmac waiting while your precious little ones' melt down clocks are tick, tick, ticking away just doesn't seem worth it for an hour flight. Maybe that's just us, but the pain in the ass to actual travel time ratio is too high for most situations where your flight is less than an hour,
Our other "long haul" was the train from Munich to Budapest, not to be confused with the "short haul" flight the other way from Budapest to Munich. Sure 6 hours of travel for less than an hour of actual travel on a plane seems like a nightmare, but so does a comparable 9 hour train ride. It wasn't that we couldn't survive that amount of time on the train, we just didn't want to. We opted instead to stop for a little layover mid-way through the journey. We got off the train in Vienna in the early afternoon, checked into a hotel for the night, and left the next morning to continue our journey into Budapest. Looking back on our two journeys in opposite directions they were really both lose-lose. The plane was a pain in the ass, the train was long, stopping over for a night was great....until we had to pack up and leave immediately after we got there. I think that distance of the trip just isn't in the sweet spot time/distance wise, if we had a couple more days to spare, the stop in Vienna would have been great...for real.
For shorter journeys though, the train is definitely the way to go, it's convenient, and way more relaxing. Even at our boys' age, they like to look out the window and watch the scenery go by, as did we. One of the great benefits, at least in Germany/Hungary, was that when booking our two adult seats, the kids seats were included for free(small booking fee in Hungary). If we only had two seats it would have probably been miserable, but with the two seats for the babies, we had room to throw car-seats, diaper bags, water bottles, and any miscellaneous crap you didn't want to deal with at the moment. Beware though, if you are bringing a larger stroller, like our Mountain Buggy Duet, you will be hard pressed to find a good solution for storing it, especially if there is no luggage car. When you are shuttling bags back and forth between your seat(that someone has already claimed to be their own) and lugging car seats down tiny aisles the last thing you want to have to do is lug a stroller back and forth trying to find somewhere to put it. On our first train we barely managed to squeeze it onto a luggage rack...after taking off the wheels and car seat attachments. After that headache I dreaded having to deal with it on the next ride we took, but it all ended up working out in the end despite some hiccups along the way.
(Baby A enjoying his first train ride)
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