Having started my Meander to Moldova with a Eurostar service southward from London St Pancras to Paris Gare du Nord, it was time to begin heading east. The next leg of my trip, a 3 hour 20-minute TGV journey, would take me from the French capital to Stuttgart, my first overnight stop where I’d spend around 27 hours before continuing onwards towards Moldova. And so, having made the easy 5-minute walk from Gare du Nord to Gare de L’Est, I arrived at the latter around 35 minutes before my train was due to depart.

With the Christmas and New Year festivities having come to an end, the start of January saw me preparing for my first trip of 2026 and, in keeping with tradition, this one was a proper adventure. For previous January trips I had ticked off (Not Quite) All the Small Things and Snoozed my way to Split, so my 2026 trip needed to be as much of an adventure if not more than the trips that had come before. So, for this January trip, I would be Meandering to Moldova, via France; Germany; Austria; Hungary; and Romania with the trip, as always, starting at London’s St Pancras International.

The end of October last year saw me heading to Glasgow once again for work however, due to engineering works on the East Coast Mainline north of Doncaster and a fully booked Sleeper, I had to take a different route to normal. My route of choice was to head across to Birmingham and then catch an Avanti service from there and, with a four-hour journey to Scotland ahead of me I of course lined up a Seatfrog upgrade. Unfortunately, whilst on my way across to Birmingham, it became clear that my relaxing journey was already off to a bad start…

With us having arrived back in The Netherlands by way of a Deutsche Bahn (DB) Intercity service from Hannover, our arrival into Rotterdam at the end of this leg would just leave a couple of local trains/metros before boarded the ferry home. And so, for this final long-distance train of the trip from Hilversum to Rotterdam Centraal, we’d be travelling onboard one of NS’ (Dutch Railways) new Intercity trains in 1st class. These Intercity Nieuwe Generatie (ICNG) trains have been introduced since my last journey on an NS ‘Intercity Direct’ service so I was looking forward to trying one out.

After an enjoyable couple of weeks spent based in Dresden and Hildesheim, with plenty of exploring of both those cities and day trips to others, it was unfortunately time to head home. The journey back to the UK would see us heading back to The Netherlands and the city of Rotterdam, before catching the overnight ferry back across the North Sea to Harwich. However, before we got there, there would be a couple more interesting trains to try out and so, after a short S-bahn ride into from Hildesheim, we found ourselves at Hannover Hauptbahnhof (Hbf) once again, ready to begin heading west.

After a full day of exploring the wonderful city of Hamburg which included the obligatory visit to Miniatur Wunderland as well as plenty of other sights, it was time to make my way back to Hildesheim. For this return journey, I’d be travelling on a Deutsche Bahn (DB) ICE service from Hamburg Hauptbahnhof (Hbf) to Hanover Hbf where I’d change on to the Hanover S-bahn network to get back to Hildesheim. And so, with about an hour before the train departed I was sat nursing a coffee in the McDonalds overlooking the platforms at Hamburg Hbf as although DB do have a lounge for first class passengers, access isn’t allowed for those travelling on cheaper tickets.