Product Description

Travel five continents in a 55 country rail trip in this ten part series. On this journey, we travel from Paris through Loire and Bordeaux. Spain through the Basque Provinces; Luxembourg and Belgium and finally through Holland, Sweden, Norway and Finland.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #51293 in DVD
• Released on: 1999-03-30
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English, Japanese
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 60 minutes

Amazon.com
The second European volume in the Travel the World by Train series is a grab bag of locations from western Portugal to northern Finland, at the edge of the Arctic Circle. The first trip departs from Paris and traverses the Loire region of France. This line might well be called the "Castle Express." Then one boards the super-fast TGV to the province of Bordeaux, producer of arguably the world's finest wine. Ancient Roman history permeates the very air here. Another train runs through France's Basque country, passing the resort town of Biarritz, a favorite surfing spot. We cross a bridge into Spain and we're now in Spanish Basque country, in the picturesque Pyrenees Mountains. One of the more affecting Spanish sites is the town of Guernica, destroyed by Nazis in 1937 and immortalized in Picasso's powerful painting of the same name.

After journeys through Portugal, it's on to Luxembourg, Belgium, and Holland. Memorable sites here include gorgeous Belgian Art Nouveau architecture and dazzling Dutch fields of tulips and windmills. When the train leaves Stockholm, Sweden, we are suddenly in a very different environment. The Scandinavian trains pass towering, dramatic fjords, sparkling lakes, and huge evergreen forests where reindeer run. These trips are shot in summer in a land where the sun barely sets at midnight: the effect is magical. As with all the videos in this series, the cinematography is impressive and the narration enlightening. --Laura Mirsky

Customer Reviews

A pleasant, easy way to ride the train...
While the first video in this series displayed luxurious or special-purpose mountain trains, this one focuses a bit more on giving us a European tour (through Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Sweden) on the kind of trains ordinary folks are likely to use for day trips. The scenery, as viewed from the trains, is quite interesting, and the narrator takes time to educate the audience about ancient castles seen along the way, and their history. The background music is a bit tepid, but on balance the trips are enjoyable.

Average View of European Countries
There are some really breathtaking scenes in Sweden,Norway and Finland....they are just mesmerizing!They show sheer natural beauty that is abundant in these countries. However,the effort fails to capture anything about Spain and Portugal at all...there are only passing references to Madrid and Lisbon that might have been a little better. In some places the photography is just high class....but at the same time in other places the camera work is really poor...showing only dark images.This sure doesn't help. In its informational content I feel there is a lot to be desired.It is able to provide only a broader picture...some elaborate descriptions might help. In short,the feature can be rated as average.It could have been presented in a more dramatic fashion.The narration is not very good either.

Europe by train
I enjoyed the video trip by train through northern European countries. However, I was disappointed that almost no coverage was given on the country of Portugal.