In short sports shorts, Rijk (12) stands next to his bald grandfather Arie (83) and his gray-haired grandmother Geertje (82) with a modern haircut on platform 15. Ready to leave for Paris. The three are at Amsterdam Central, because Rijk has said goodbye to primary school. ‘It is tradition in our family to travel with the grandchildren when they go to secondary school,’ says Arie Kwak. And according to good practice, this time too, they travel by train with their sixth and youngest grandchild.
The Kwak family will not be the only ones traveling by train to their holiday destination this summer. Ticket sales for international train journeys were higher in May than before the corona outbreak for the first time, the NS reported on Friday. The increase continued in June: 372 thousand international tickets sold, compared to 345 thousand in June 2019.
The most popular destinations are still Antwerp, Brussels and Paris, which can be reached quickly due to a good connection. But people also choose the train more often for travel to Vienna, Zurich and Milan. The reasons for the increased popularity are diverse, according to the NS: the disappearance of travel restrictions due to corona, the increased attention to sustainability and the crowds at Schiphol.
Comfort and emergency
The Beuving family chose the train mainly because of the comfort. Fourteen strong, they wait for the train to Paris to go from there to Disneyland. The women and girls of the family are recognizable by their hair: they all wear two braids. According to the oldest of the couple, Grandpa Beuving, traveling by train is ‘much more relaxed’. “Otherwise we have to drive four cars in a row to Paris.” His 12-year-old granddaughter Jennifer agrees: “Now I can walk back and forth.”
But it is not only comfort that has led travelers to opt for the train in recent months. Schiphol airport cancels so many flights that passengers are forced to end up with rail transport, says an employee of the NS. “They will get the money back from their canceled flight, but they still have to go home or want to go on vacation.”
In the absence of a flight to Salzburg, Inge Fernhout (50) will travel to Austria by train on Friday. Dressed in a long orange dress, she is waiting on the platform with her blue suitcase for the ICE train that will take her to Frankfurt in just under four hours. From there she travels on. It takes a total of thirteen hours. She returns two days later. “I’m a little apprehensive about it, but I’ve got three novels and a stack of magazines with me, so I’ll have a good time.”
Interrail
The sisters Julia (22) and Louisa (24) Kloppenburg are both about to travel through Europe by train for a month, but they are both going in different directions. Julia to Berlin and Louisa to Bern. ‘But maybe we’ll see each other along the way,’ says Julia. During an Interrail promotion, both sisters bought a cheap train pass that gives them unlimited travel for a month. ‘This saves a lot of hassle at Schiphol, I think we are even faster, because we don’t have to check in’, says Louisa.
At the NS International counter at Amsterdam Central, there is a queue of about twenty travelers in front of the counters on Friday. The crowds are now normal. ‘Lately twenty to thirty people have been waiting here almost every day,’ says the employee. NS has noticed that passengers are also prepared to opt for the train for increasingly longer journeys to Italy and Spain. The extra night trains that have been running to Vienna and Zurich for some time now help.
Sustainable
Rich, who travels with his grandfather and grandmother, is already looking forward to dinner that is waiting for him in Paris tonight. ‘I want to eat escargots,’ he says, fondly thinking of snails. ‘He just gets pasta,’ says his grandmother Geertje Kwak. Rich doesn’t understand that. “We’re not going to Italy, Grandma.”
When the train to Paris arrives, Rijk and his grandparents board. ‘I’m glad they’re going by train,’ says his mother Berteke Hageman-Kwak. ‘That is much more sustainable. I actually never want to fly at all again, although that still leads to discussion within our family.’
She remains ‘with a lump in her throat’ on the platform. “It’s quite a milestone.” She quickly takes a picture of her son with her phone. When the train starts moving, she runs a little longer and gives them a kiss on the hand. That is also the charm of traveling by train.