At 9.55am every day since December, a German ICE high-speed train has left the Gare de l’Est in Paris headed, via Strasbourg, Karlsruhe and Frankfurt, for Berlin Hauptbahnhof, where – all being well – it pulls in just over eight hours later.
Remarkably, the service is the first direct, high-speed, centre-to-centre rail link between the capitals of the EU’s two biggest countries. Run by Deutsche Bahn (DB) and France’s SNCF, it has been hailed as a milestone in European train travel.
