Europe Euphoria

Have you ever traveled on a super fast train that zips you to your destination? If you are in Europe, traveling from France do get tickets for its newest super fast link. You would probably reach your destination in record time! The TGV Est will dramatically reduce travel times. The TGV, or train a grande vitesse line, links Paris with eastern France and neighboring parts of Germany, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. Trains on the new line, outfitted with chic interiors by fashion designer Christian Lacroix, will travel 199 miles an hour, faster than any other European train. TGV engines and rail cars are built by French engineering group Alstom, in factories like this one in Belfort, France. The service cuts the Paris-Frankfurt journey by two and a half hours to three hours 50 minutes and brings the southern German city of Munich within six hours of the French capital. Inside of the train, chic and comfortable. The first scheduled passenger train to whiz along the state-of-the-art new tracks was an Inter-City Express (ICE) train, operated by Germany’s Deutsche Bahn, that left Paris at 6:43am and headed to Frankfurt. Paris’s Gare de l’Est train station It was on this stretch that the TGV broke its own world speed record in April, hurtling into the history books at 574.8kph. The line cost 4 billion euros ($A6.4 billion) to build, took some 10,000 workers over five years, and used up 78,000 tones of steel. Image credit The cost of the project was shared among 22 financial partners including the French government, Luxembourg, the European Union and the SNCF. Image credit Already 600,000 tickets for travel on the new Paris-Strasbourg line have been sold and it is hoped it will carry more than 11 million passengers annually by 2010. The scenic track. This rail link sure has become a stepping-stone towards a truly pan-European rapid transit network free from airline hassles.