Bus, plane, or train?
 

I am planning on a two-month trip through some parts of Europe, including Scandinavian countries, St. Petersburg, Czech Rep., Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia, and Greece.

If you have experience in such routes (or close to it), I would appreciate your advice/feedback/wisdom to get the most out of the flavours offered by those countries. I prefer bus or train to experience more. I have spent 4 months travelling throughout Western Europe (mostly by roads) and it was a great experience. I hope to have the same on this Eastern venture.

If you are planning on travelling by train, I thoroughly recommend the German Railways website http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/e to get timetables and see which routes are feasible.

The seat61 website http://seat61.com/ will give you a great flavour of travel in the countries in question, although the descriptions are biased towards getting there from the UK.

I suspect a combination of all three modes of transport is best. Www.eurolines.com will give you an idea of long-distance bus times, and skyscanner.net is great to give you prices of both LCCs and legacy carriers.

Thanks for your advices. We'll have two young children with us. So, I am not sure if it would be less expensive (hopefully as safe) to take the bus vs. the train, or the difference isn't much?

Romania
 

Romania is a beautiful country and you will easily find people that speak English there. The plane is a good solution, although on small routes are quite expensive. The train can be a good alternative, even if there are no "grand vitese" trains in Romania. By train you can also admire the landscapes that are very beautiful. I live in Romania, so if you want some more information, I'm here :)

Take the Austrian Site: http://fahrplan.oebb.at/bin/query.exe/en?L=vs_call

It's the same tool, just packaged differently.

You can do well by train at most places(this might be a good deal for you http://www.eurail.com/home). There are no international trains running to Greece so you should take an airplane there.

I have no personal experiences in Russia/Baltic states but it might be handy to take an airplane there too as I heard Russian (overland) customs can be a pain in the ....

Spain Freeways
 

May I forward this thread along to ask a more specific question about Sunday afternoon traffic along the European Route E-15 (toll road) between Marbella and Malaga (from Malaga to Marbella). How bad ? And comparitively bad to say the Long Island Expressway (NY area) or the 405/San Diego Freeway (LA) or one of the Autostradas in Italy?

Purpose of the question is time arrival of AVE train from Cordoba to Malaga, and then to pick up a rental car in Malaga and drive to Marbella.

Poland at the moment is great to travel by plane. With two airlines that just started competing on the domestic market, both network and prices are very tempting.

The two are:
http://eurolot.com/en/
http://www.oltexpress.com/en

Add this to poor rail and road system and you've got your answer...

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I took a train from Bucharest, Gare du Nord to Chisianau. Didn't see much of landscape as it was a night train. It wad quite comfortable with space to secure your luggage under your berth in First Class. My cabinmate spoke no English, and I no romanian or Russian. But we gor by.
The restrooms are locked for 3 or 4 hours for gauge conversion.

Where possible train would be my suggestion. Keep in mind the distances between cities though.

Bus may well cost less, but can take much longer than the train. Rail passes are also a good way to save money, again where possible.

and don't forget about LOT (lot.com) which is also very cheap.

Poor rail - well it's getting better and better and it's very cheap.

Arguable... Depends which part of Poland and which carrier.

if you are going that many places in that short time, i would recommend you use sleeper trains. sounds to me like you will be on a train every night.