From Japan to Germany: 12.000km by Train

My time in Japan is drawing to a close and in about 3.5 weeks I’ll start my return trip. Eight years ago I traveled with the Transsib, lots of other trains, buses and even by ship all the way from Moscow to Singapore, now it’s going to be the other way round: from Japan to Germany. With this, I am fulfilling a long-cherished dream and traveling more CO2-neutral than the 14-hour flight.

The planned route is as follows:

1) Tokyo -> Vladivostok
Here I, unfortunately, have to take a plane for lack of an alternative. There is a ferry from Sakaiminato via South Korea to Vladivostok, but by calling the Japanese hotline of the ferry operator I found out that it is not available for an unknown period of time.

2) Vladivostok -> Moscow
This section corresponds to the Trans-Siberian Railway. Here I plan two stops in Irkutsk and Ekaterinburg. The route from Vladivostok to Irkutsk is the longest part of my journey.

3) Moscow -> Kiev
Here, I will also be traveling by night train and spend several days in Kyiv.

4) Kyiv -> Krakow
The journey continues to Krakow with two night trains and a stopover in Lviv.

6) Krakow -> Bratislava
After exploring Krakow during the day, I will travel on to Bratislava again by night train in the evening.

7) Bratislava -> Vienna
Here I plan to spontaneously book a train to Vienna, which will take about an hour.

8) Vienna -> Frankfurt
The second last part of the route is again a night train, this time it is the ÖBB Nightjet with which I have wanted to travel for years.

9) Frankfurt -> Kaiserslautern
The final part is from Frankfurt to Kaiserslautern 😉 Therefore, I’ll buy a ticket on the spot.

I deliberately wanted to keep this post here rather short to give an overview of the planned journey. Like during my world trip eight years ago, I will post regular updates. This time I will use Twitter and Instagram with the hashtag #JapanToGermany. If it is possible for me, there will also be Youtube videos. Until then: Don’t panic!