Briefings/13
Travel · Central Europe
Vienna, Prague, Budapest — by train, not by myth
Three cities that share a railway and a reputation. They do not share a language, a currency, or a single long weekend.
8 minute read · Desk edition, October 2026
Pick two
The Railjet will carry you from Vienna to Budapest in a morning. Prague is a few hours the other way, with a change or a direct train depending on the year and the timetable. The geography tempts people into three cities in six nights. Resist, unless you already know one of them and are only passing through.
Vienna is imperial, caffeinated, and more interesting in its neighbourhoods than in a loop of palaces. Prague’s beauty is real and heavily visited in the lanes between the clock and the bridge; sleep in Malá Strana or Vinohrady rather than above a bar on the tourist lane. Budapest is a river city with thermal baths that are ordinary civic life, not a spa brochure, and a Pest side where people actually eat.
Money and manners
Austria uses the euro. Czechia uses the koruna. Hungary uses the forint. Order cash from a bank machine attached to a real bank, decline the machine’s offer to convert at a comic rate, and pay in the local currency. A euro bill waved in a Prague bakery is not sophistication.
None of the three is “Eastern Europe” in the vague sense guidebooks still use when they mean the train was cheaper. They are central, specific, and tired of being a single chapter. Read the place page for the one you will actually sleep in.
See also
Places in this orbit
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