Our arrival into Berlin Haupbahnhof (Hbf) had been by way of a slightly delayed DB Intercity service which had dropped us off in the depths of the station’s low-level platforms. For the second leg of the journey, we’d be travelling on a DB Intercity Express (ICE) service from Berlin to Hildesheim, the town in Lower Saxony that would be our base for the second half of our holiday. So, with around 45 minutes until our next train was scheduled to depart we made our way upstairs to the entry level of the five-tier station ready to get on with the second part of our travel day.

Midway through our holiday in Germany, having spent a week based in Dresden and exploring both this fabulous city and some of the surrounding area, it was time to move to the location that would be our base for the second half of the holiday. Getting from Saxony to Lower Saxony would require us to catch two trains, the first of which would take us from Dresden to the German capital, Berlin. And so, around 40 minutes before our train departed, we arrived at Dresden Haupbahnhof for the last time this trip ready to catch the DB Intercity service towards Berlin.

Having had a great day exploring the city of Prague, it was time to head back to our base in Dresden and so we were back at Praha Hlavní Nádraží (Prague Main Station) ready to catch a train back across the border. As with the journey to Prague, this service would be operated by České dráhy (Czech Railways) as a EuroCity service, however instead of running to Berlin like many of the Prague to Dresden services do, this one would instead run to Zurich overnight as the ‘Canopus’ sleeper train. Whilst the journey overnight to Zurich takes over 14.5 hours, our journey to Dresden would take around two and a half hours, with us due to arrive at 2059.

With our base in Dresden providing good connections across Saxony and into Czechia, we had decided to have a daytrip to another city partway through our stay. As such, on our third full day in Dresden, rather than jump on a tram from the Haupbahnhof into the city centre, we headed up to the high level through platforms ready to jump on a service to Prague. This journey would be with České dráhy on one of their Eurocity ‘Berliner’ services which, as the name suggests connects the Czech and German capitals via Dresden.

After a day exploring the Dutch city of Rotterdam, it was time to continue our journey east to Germany and our final destination of Dresden. However, before we could head east, we needed to head south as I had made a slight error when booking our tickets. So, after a quick journey with Nederland Spoorwegen, we were at Roosendaal and ready to start the next leg of our journey, an overnight trip on the European Sleeper.

The middle of August saw another trip to Scotland for work, however this time our weekend plans meant the trip started from the Midlands, giving me the opportunity to take a different route north. Burton’s location on CrossCountry’s Southwest-Northeast corridor meant I had a choice of heading north via Leeds to the ECML and then up to Edinburgh, or head southwest to Birmingham and travel along my less used route of the West Coast Mainline (WCML). Of course, one option also had the significant downside of a long-distance journey onboard a CrossCountry Voyager and so this blog starts with me arriving at Birmingham New Street ready to start a journey north with Avanti West Coast.