Really? The last time I rode the Eurostar was out of Waterloo station in 2002, and I don’t recall there being much security whatsoever. Certainly not airport-level security anyway.
The two things i remember about it were that i was questioned about my small pocket knife (so there must have been some security check, perhaps x-raying of bags or a metal detector) and that i had a small piece of trash, like a candy bar wrapper, that i wanted to throw away, but there were no wastebaskets, suggesting concerns about physical security of the station and bombs. I finally threw away the trash in the ladies room, in the bin provided for tampons.
I’ve never had any security check at all at any other train station.
It was a long time ago, though. The channel tunnel was still new enough that i planned my trip to use it. (Rather than changing planes in some random European city. I wouldn’t have given myself an extra step if i could have flown direct.)
Kitchen knives and chef’s knives are not illegal weapons (unless used or carried as a weapon, obviously, or in a place where knives are not allowed like a bar or something). You may bring a knife to and from home to cut the cake at work; what did you imagine people do?
Small pocket knives are not illegal either.
Kitchens exist in the UK and are legal. Here is a knife from Tesco:
What is illegal is carrying unauthorized weapons in public (plus some weirdness where some items are randomly banned, like “zombie knives” or switchblades or whatever is on the naughty list du jour).
In general, if you have to go through any kind of security check in the UK, it’s best to avoid carrying anything that even looks like an offensive weapon. This also includes pepper sprays etc.
Of course, you can take a cook’s knife to cut a cake at a party. Probably better to avoid wearing a hoodie and very low-slung jeans though.
When we did the Monograms tour of Rome, Florence and Venice we chose the option that had us going between cities on the Freccia trains. It was hard for us to get our luggage up the stairs, but I have horrible upper body strength and my father was 82. We stored our luggage between the back to back seats (there’s room).
We chose the Frecchia from Venice to Milan, but noticed too late that the tickets said from Mestre (the next station) to Milan, so we went to their Venice office where we were assured with a great deal of gesturing that getting on in Venice was fine. There was a distinct whiff of “you wacky Americans! Worried about that!” I found charming.
From Milan to Lecco we chose a local train and while we were waiting on the train a bunch of Roma or beggars came through begging. They got some coins so they would leave. They hopped off right before the train left.
The last time I took Eurostar was out of St. Pancreas and the belt on the X-ray machine broke down leaving luggage stranded inside. Good times.
I don’t have a tuxedo.
As an American transplant to Europe, one of my favorite things about living here is the ease and wide availability of rail-based travel. It definitely varies from country to country — the speed and convenience of rail travel in France is much better than in Belgium, for example. But in general, with certain exceptions, we generally prefer to jump on the train any chance we can.
You should definitely be prepared for local idiosyncrasies, though, especially if you use any of the internal trains or metros while you’re in your destination locations. One that jumps to mind is Munich, whose city’s ticketing system is so complex and non-intuitive there are whole websites dedicated to explaining it to visitors. Also, if you take any intercity trains in Italy, you need to be careful about the difference between buying a ticket and validating it. A ticket is not an admission to a specific trip; it’s an open trip. When you board the train, you need to look for the little yellow box (at least it was usually yellow in my experience) and punch the ticket on your way in to signify you have used it on this particular trip. There’s no gate where you’re required to validate your ticket, like in Athens or most other cities. If you don’t do this, and the conductor asks to see your validated ticket, you’ll be fined.
Here’s a good story illustrating some of the weirdness you may encounter. This happened to me on a train trip to Paris a few weeks ago.
When you book passage on a high-speed SNCF train, your ticket will show you the specific car and your seat within that car, both by number. You walk down the platform, looking for your car, and then you board and you find your seat, with the number shown (usually) on a little raised marker on the seat’s back.
If you look closely at this marker, you may see that there are actually two numbers, only one of which is lit, the other of which is dark. This allows the seat numbering to be reversed if the train car is flipped front-to-back. Imagine there are fifty seats in the car. The first seat at each end has a marker with both number 1 and number 50. When the car is traveling one direction, the lights are set so the first seat at the front is numbered 1, and the last is numbered 50. If the car is then shifted to another train, flipped the other way, the lights are reset so what was previously the 1 seat is now 50, and the 50 seat is now 1. It’s a pretty clever system.
Now, what happened to us was, we boarded the train in a French city about two hours from Paris. We found our seats and stowed our luggage, no problem, and started our journey. After maybe thirty minutes, the train made its one midway stop in another city. Some people got off; others got on.
And we found ourselves looking up at a few of the new passengers, as they said to us, “You’re in our seats.”
It took a moment to figure out what had happened. For some reason, between the first and the second city, the seating lights had been switched. It’s possible they were set wrong originally, and then silently fixed; it’s also possible someone switched them by mistake. Either way, when we sat down, our seat numbers were correct; but now, looking at the marker, we saw were in the wrong place.
This was not announced in any way, and we weren’t the only passengers in the car who were disrupted and confused. There was several minutes of milling about as people stood up, moved their bags, and otherwise shifted around to the new arrangement.
It wasn’t a big deal; it amounted to a minute of “WTF?” followed by five minutes of annoyed crowding as a car’s worth of people tried to figure out how to move past one another and effectively invert their seating arrangement, for no apparent reason. Then it was done, and we finished the trip without further incident.
But I can see how an inexperienced traveler might have had a bit of panic, wondering whether they’d gotten the wrong ticket, and were supposed to get off at the second city, and now didn’t have a seat for the final leg. All I can say is, when you travel in France, you should be prepared for some very peculiar bureaucracies and organizing systems. The French are notorious for an almost bloody-minded adherence to complex consistency in the face of obvious inefficiency and frustration (cf. their old rule about cars inside a traffic circle being required to yield to cars entering the roundabout), and you just have to know it will happen and be ready to roll with it until you figure out what’s required.
Anyway, I hope this was interesting and entertaining, if not actually useful. Enjoy your trip!
Jacques Tati, thou shouldst be living ar this hour!
I was traveling in Europe about 20 years ago. I got so pre-occupied seeing the sights in Berlin that I got to the train station only seven minutes before my train left. I swore I’d never do that again. Two weeks later, I lingered longer than I should at the Air & Space Museum near Paris. I took a train back to the city, subway to my hotel, collected my bag, taxi to Gare du Nord, and I caught my train with seconds to spare.
That one is just for the Etoile roundabout (the one with the triumph Arch), others are normals.
Every train we took in Europe I don’t recall anyone ever checking if we actually had a ticket.
It is now St Pancras, which is about 45 minutes faster (1:55 to Brussels). They have a ticket scan, then an X-ray, then passport control for UK leaving, and Passport control for France entering.
Your luggage was also scanned back in 2002. I used to commute every two weeks for a year and a half through Waterloo on the Eurostar from 2001-2003. It wasn’t shoes off, belts off, liquids, but your luggage was X-rayed. And your person was scanned too. It usually was not that sensitive, was trying to catch big metal objects on person, and weapons on luggage.
I have not ridden the rails in every country in Europe to be able to tell you how it varies, but certainly experienced plenty of routine checks and ticket controls. If you get busted riding without a ticket, which people do or else they would not bother checking, you will be liable to a fine. If you get caught without a valid ticket for some reason, I would just find the conductor and buy one on board.
Well, yes, Etoile is a holdover from the way it used to be everywhere.
I’d say it’s intermittent and variable. F’rinstance, we were using what we thought was a family ticket in Lyon, but it turns out we’d misunderstood the rules and were using it wrong. We got caught (and fined) by ticket inspectors on the third day, after two days of nobody noticing. Similarly, I’ve taken the high-speed to Paris probably eight or nine times, and I was asked to show my ticket maybe four or five of those. On the other hand, the two times we took a train in Slovakia, we were checked on both trips.
I asked my wife if she remembered anyone ever checking our tickets and she said she remembered it happening mid-trip on the train from Brussels to Amsterdam and she remembered someone buying a ticket from the guy checking tickets. I don’t remember this. I may have been in the restroom.
That sounds prime for scammers. Get on the train without a ticket and buy one when they check for tickets, don’t buy one if they don’t. How often does that happen?
Sure- I was thinking more US TSA style airport security. I didn’t have to take my shoes or all the crap out of my pockets, etc… Just go through the old-style metal detector and that was it before passport control.
In German-speaking countries, the practice of getting on a train without a ticket and hoping you don’t get caught by an inspector is called “Schwarzfahren,” i.e. “riding black” (because of course German has a word for everything). More info here.
They’re trying to phase out the term due to concerns about its racial implications, but you’ll still hear it used.
What people forget is that in Europe/EU is that each country has individual quirks and histories and cultures, often based on whether they were the invader, invaded, or neutral. This bleeds out into general regard for law at a few levels. The Germans assume honesty, and might not check so often, but crack down seriously if caught without a ticket. Others assume dishonesty, with ticket barriers before you can get into the station, but that tends to lead to less checks on the trains, if at all.
Some countries, Belgium, for instance, a country where their government was someone else’s due to invasion, seem to have a complete dislike for ticket barriers and I’ve known people to use the tram service multiple times a day for years in Brussels without ever buying a ticket. Last I heard they installed barriers which caused such an uproar and change of habits, that it improved the ticket revenue despite them never actually switching them on.
Then you’ve got the likes of Eastern European countries, which is a whole other “rule of law” culture.
But the upshot is that a lot of times on trains and trams they don’t enforce the ticket checks, Expect a fine if caught. Expect it to be different in each country.
Also while not clear, the fast trains like Thalys and ICE are more expensive but you can easily find yourself on one in some countries by mistake, but other countries have them locked off and entrance enforced (due to the multi country law).