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Austria Life

East / West and counter-intuitive train stations

I was booking train tickets from Vienna to Budapest this week and noticed the following absurdity:

My train from Vienna to Budapest leaves at Wien Westbahnhof and arrives at Budapest Keleti pályaudvar. In other words, I’m leaving from the western train terminal in Vienna and will arrive at the eastern train station in Budapest.

So far, so good.

It’s just that Budapest is straight to the east of Vienna.

(Yes, there are good reasons for that, for the Vienna side it’s that the train is coming from Zurich. In Budapest Keleti seems to be the default station for international trains.)