Travelling in Sweden

I am going with my Mrs to Sweden to visit some family and we will be making a day trip by train. I have never travelled in Sweden by train before.

I have already booked the tickets for the journey.

We will be staying in Stockholm and travelling to Mariestad on the Saturday.

I have booked the ticket via the SJ website.

We are on a 0729 X2000 train but have to change in Skovde from a train to bus (didn't realise the journey involved a bus at first)...

Then we come back on the 1817 bus arriving into Stockholm at 2134 with the same change to train in Skovde.

The total for the journey for two of us was 1982sek (£155) first class return- quite expensive I thought compared to comparable train/bus journeys in UK booking far in advance, but never mind.

We was also able to book tickets to the ABBA experience through the SJ website so booked all these together as far as I can tell, for the train/bus return journey and ABBA experience. The total was 2352.

Now a few questions, at the bottom of the booking confirmation it says collect tickets. Does anyone know where we collect tickets? And what we need to collect them? I assume maybe a print out of the confirmation and the credit card I booked with?

Also has anyone any experience of travelling by train in Sweden? What can we expect on the train in first class? Is there any bar service included? Or if we have to pay for it how expensive are the buffet cars on Swedish trains for booze? If it is very expensive I will find out a M&S simply food style shop to get some wine and GnT premixed cans before getting on board.

Thanks in advance

You collect rail tickets from a machine the same as in UK - I assume it is the same process if you have attraction tickets included, but have never booked any so am not certain. If in doubt ask in the travel centre - all staff will speak perfect English.

In First Class I have just received complimentary coffee, soft drinks and snacks. There was a trolley selling stuff as well. As to prices, alcohol in Sweden is expensive anywhere except the Systembolaget. Stronger stuff (including wine) is only available in the latter, not normal supermarkets etc.

I got something hot for breakfast served on an X2000 on a Copenhagen-Stockholm run a couple of years ago, included in the 1st class fare.
The crew apologised for not serving coffee before Malmö, but said they were not allowed to do this on Danish territory!
But this was midweek, not a Saturday.
If you booked online with SJ, don't you have the tickets to print at home?
You can look forward to stocking up with refreshments in advance at a familiar Upper Crust kiosk at Stockholm Central!
Spacious trains and great scenery on a sunny day.

hungry said:

If it is very expensive I will find out a M&S simply food style shop to get some wine and GnT premixed cans before getting on board.

Click to expand...

It's not so easy in Sweden
https://www.sj.se/sj/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=3470&a=14722&l=en

You may not consume your own alcoholic beverages (except low-alcohol beer) on our trains or stations.

Click to expand...

I don't know how well it is enforced.

However, only beer up to 3.5% can be sold in standard shops. Everything stronger must be bought from a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systembolaget

There is a price list; it's not cheap, but not actually so bad for Sweden.
http://www.sj.se/content/1/c6/08/81/49/SJ_bistromen-s9.pdf

I have heard, although it may no longer be the case, that you have to give 24hrs notice to the state off licence before purchasing spirits.

This may be an urban myth though?

I travelled first class from Copenhagen to Nyköpping and pre booked a meal (extra but not that much) it came with a low charged beer (2% ABV).

Visits to Sweden are a good excuse to 'dry out' given the prices of alcohol.

Recently travelled in 1st on a X2000 from Gothenburg to Stockholm and pre-ordered the lunchtime meal on the website when I bought my ticket, choosing the 'print at home' option. The meal was identical to airline style, but tasty enough. Help yourself to free coffee and apples at any time.

Surprised to see that the X2000 trains are coming up to 25 years old according to an article in the SJ on-board magazine.

Stockholm is a marvellous city, but the ABBA experience is one thing I can't report on. The Vasa exhibition was fascinating though.

Wow .. thanks for the help everyone.. didn't expect that.

Looks like I will have to get a couple of bottles of spirits at LHR on my way OUT there!

Yes looking forward to Stockholm. Speaking of high booze prices? How much can we expect? £5 a pint? Surely it can't be more expensive than Paris or Dublin?

What are the X2000 trains like? They sound like some super service thing, similar to TGV maybe?

2% beer... pfft, may as well drink tap water!! Is that seriously all you can get?

Its not so much the journey there as its early (though a bottle of Prosecco or something would be nice- can we get this in the station (cold) at all?) - but on the way back, we would like a few drinks of course (and not 2% crap)..

At least we are flying business class with BA so at the airport on the way home we can enjoy 'proper' drinks without having to worry about the £££s

Thanks again

hungry said:

Speaking of high booze prices? How much can we expect? £5 a pint? Surely it can't be more expensive than Paris or Dublin?

Click to expand...

One traditional way for Scandinavians to avoid high alcohol prices is to go an a ferry trip to Finland via the Åland islands halfway across the Baltic.
They still have a special status which means it's duty free.
Hence very large alcohol shops on board, and prices pretty much as supermarkets here.
The single foot passenger fare Stockholm-Turku is only €15 for an 11-hour crossing, subsidised by the alcohol sales.
You can do a day trip to the Åland islands from several Swedish ports, and it's one of the most spectacular ferry crossings you can make, through the Stockholm archipelago.

X2000s are rather like ICEs - spacious, quiet, well designed.

I've done Malmo-Stockholm and Sundsvall-Uppsala in recent years, both in first class. There should certainly be jugs of coffee and hot water as well as bowls of fruit and brownie bites available- the brownie bites are particularly recommended, and the first class hostess on the Malmo-Stockholm train was due to go off duty about an hour before we arrived into Stockholm Central so made sure that the coffee jug was full before she finished.

I think I paid about £5-6 for a pint of domestic beer in a touristy café in Gamla Stan in Stockholm, so that's probably as much as it's going to get. The climate means that a lot of Nordic people tend to drink spirits rather than beer, although bear in mind that you can't buy duty free at Swedish airports if you're heading to another EU country (if you're flying to and from Scandinavia I'd recommend connecting at Oslo or Copenhagen for this reason!). To be fair, I think the alcohol laws in the Nordic countries have a lot to recommend them (Norway and Finland have similar arrangements) as one effect is to stop people buying bottles of cheap vodka etc. on a Saturday night on their way out.

When I did Sweden last year, we bought a 6 can pack of Carlsberg 2.8 percent in a supermarket (I've forgotten the name!) for around 6.60 GBP. This includes a charge that all shops put on (1 Swedish Krone per can) which you get back if you take them to somewhere which recycles them. You will see a lot of street people raiding bins for empty cans for this purpose, to claim the refund (1 Krone isn't much at all, I think 10p GBP) that others don't go for. This charge also applies to plastic bottles, I believe a large pop bottle has a 2 Krone charge added at the tills.

I recall a supermarket on the lower level of SJ's Central station, which will be most useful for your long journey. It's worth pointing out the concourse area, with all the shops, is actually quite a nice place. It's a bit like Birmingham New Street at platform level though.

We only did Stockholm Central to Vasteras but the EMU we had (I think it might have been an X2000) was quite comfortable. Power sockets at window seats too, and free WiFi!

What we saw of Sweden was mostly Stockholm, but the metro system was incredibly reliable, easy to use and very reasonably priced too. The trains themselves were quite decent it must be said, and the network covers a huge area. I think I paid roughly 23 quid for a 72 hour pass which starts from your first touch in. Highly recommend using it if you like metro systems, second only to London's Underground in my eyes! Old Town is highly recommended too as it's quite a pretty area.

Worth noting too the coffee from the vending machines, while not huge cups, in the shops on stations (can't remember the name without reading my trip report!) is actually really rateable!

As for pint prices, well the restaurant we did charged around 6.40 GBP for a pint, 4.20 GBP for a light beer. It is not cheap drinking in Sweden at all.

Have an amazing journey, I want to go back one day to see more of Sweden as it was a lovely country to visit!

Sweden has not been cheap for drinking for ages, but prices remain fairly level and as we go up in price there's not as much of a difference.

Of course where you're coming from in the UK (and indeed where you're going in Sweden) will make a difference.

I read on here about people still paying around £3 a pint in some parts of the UK, which seems impossible for me. In London, you can easily pay over £5 a pint for a Peroni or similar, which is now on a par with Sweden.

It wasn't that long ago you could find a pint for £2 in London, but I am not sure of anywhere that would even serve one for £3 unless a very special promotion. Even in Hertfordshire, you're looking around £3.50-4.50.

Naturally, we now have more people pre-loading at home here just as Swedes have done for ages.

I find Sweden generally on the pricey side for lots of things from a UK perspective. I thought that public transport tickets however tended to be cheaper than Switzerland, although alcohol is generally cheaper, better and available in many station shops in Switzerland.

LNW-GW Joint said:

One traditional way for Scandinavians to avoid high alcohol prices is to go an a ferry trip to Finland via the Åland islands halfway across the Baltic.
They still have a special status which means it's duty free.
Hence very large alcohol shops on board, and prices pretty much as supermarkets here.
The single foot passenger fare Stockholm-Turku is only €15 for an 11-hour crossing, subsidised by the alcohol sales.
You can do a day trip to the Åland islands from several Swedish ports, and it's one of the most spectacular ferry crossings you can make, through the Stockholm archipelago.

Click to expand...

Even better if you make the trip in winter when the ship is also the de facto ice breaker.

Åland has all sorts of interesting constitutional exceptions ... funny how everyone knows about the duty free but little else

Warning however, Mariehamn closes around 17h00 every day

Trivia: Sweden's Systembolaget and Finland's Alko have some of the most experienced buyers in the Europe and consequently and /technically/ the cheapest, good wines in Europe...however then there's the tax which really sorts that out

t.

Ian

jonmorris0844 said:

Sweden has not been cheap for drinking for ages, but prices remain fairly level and as we go up in price there's not as much of a difference.

Of course where you're coming from in the UK (and indeed where you're going in Sweden) will make a difference.

I read on here about people still paying around £3 a pint in some parts of the UK, which seems impossible for me. In London, you can easily pay over £5 a pint for a Peroni or similar, which is now on a par with Sweden.

It wasn't that long ago you could find a pint for £2 in London, but I am not sure of anywhere that would even serve one for £3 unless a very special promotion. Even in Hertfordshire, you're looking around £3.50-4.50.

Naturally, we now have more people pre-loading at home here just as Swedes have done for ages.

Click to expand...

Retail prices via the Swedish Systembolaget state booze monopoly are pretty reasonable for beer and wine, since it is Europe's largest wine buyer. Also, those living within a day's return car ride to Germany club together and rent a trailer to take advantage of lower prices there. All legal within the EU and a competitive pressure on Systembolaget.

Where it hurts is when service is involved - restaurant, pub - where higher wages are reflected in the price you pay. It also means there is no tradition of buying a round!

A little tip if you are prudent with your Money arriving at Stockholm Arlanda Airport
The Swedes charge a premium to use the airport railway of 85SEK (£7.50 ish) even on a travel card.

You can avoid this by taking a local bus which runs every 15 minutes from the airport to Marsta
Having bought your travel card from the airport Info place who even give out a little map of where the bus stop is
Takes a bit longer but if there are a few of you....


What we saw of Sweden was mostly Stockholm, but the metro system was incredibly reliable, easy to use and very reasonably priced too. The trains themselves were quite decent it must be said, and the network covers a huge area. I think I paid roughly 23 quid for a 72 hour pass which starts from your first touch in. Highly recommend using it if you like metro systems, second only to London's Underground in my eyes! Old Town is highly recommended too as it's quite a pretty area.



Have an amazing journey, I want to go back one day to see more of Sweden as it was a lovely country to visit![/QUOTE]

So Do I !

The Access card is great if you put a travelcard on it, but somewhat more confusing otherwise as it's not PAYG like we have here (although I think there's a plan to offer something like that one day) because you need to go to a ticket machine and put a chosen ticket (zonal) on it if you don't have travelcard/season.

When I'm in Sweden, we often do the latter as we're just going in and out for a day (family on the outskirts) and a fully flexible travelcard is more than we need.

Within the Stockholm region (SL), over-65s pay the reduced fare, which brings a 72 hour ticket down to under £11. You also pay a reduced price on the expensive Arlanda express train.

Robert Schwandl's Tram Atlas Nordeuropa is good on Stockholm, which does have an interesting and efficient transport system- historic and modern trams, underground (T-bana), suburban EMUs (Pendeltag) plus a number of tram-train style lines in the suburbs.

As regards the surcharge for using the station at Arlanda, this applies to everything including northbound travel (proof if it were needed that Britain isn't the only country which mucks up public/private partnerships for major infrastructure work)- but during the summer, when the Arlanda Express offers 2 for 1 travel, they have a meeting point outside their booking office at Stockholm Central where, if you're travelling alone, you can meet up with another solo traveller and take advantage of the offer!

Thanks so much for the advice and tips everyone...

Although it seems the smooth trip is not to be. Today I received a text:

"Hej! Trafikverket förbättrar järnvägen på sträckan Alingsås-Göteborg och din resa med tåg 10423 den 2015-11-14 med boxningsnummer QXXXXXXX ställs in. För ombokning eller återköp av din resa, vänligen använd länk: www.sj.se/andraresa. Due to railroad maintenance, your train 10423, 2015-11-14, has been cancelled. To rebook or cancel your journey, please use this link: www.sj.se/searchorder. Mvh SJ"

All I can say is.. WOW... Its a week to departure and they tell me by text a train is cancelled.. Why did they sell me a ticket for it then??

I have yet to establish if it is due to emergency works?? Or regular engineering works?? If the latter, why did they book the ticket..

This is going to cause MASSIVE disruption to the trip..

To be fair I don't even know what to do. I followed the link and entered the booking ID and email address and the next page is in 100% Swedish.. so I have NO IDEA what to do...

At this stage I am thinking just turn up and hope for the best as planned. The instructions to re-book etc are irrelevant as I do not speak Swedish.

Already regretting booking Swedish Railways !!!!!!

Have you tried Google Translate?

I did a bit of playing around with the link and eventually found this contact number:

+46 771 757575.

Don't know if it gets you through to a human but if it does I'll bet they speak English. Snag may be if it asks you for options in Swedish first but worth a go.

Or just fill in the comments form in the link and they will get back to you, again in Englsh.

Try using the journey planner as if you hadn't previously booked to see what options it now comes up with.

Good luck.

There is a replacement timetable here for 14-15.11. L is Saturday, S is Sunday. Stockholm-Goteborg is diverted and taking longer so I guess they have reduced the service.

I would ring them asap as capacity may be limited, if you can't find a friendly Scandinavian (or possibly German) speaking person to help. Dial +46 771-75 75 75 from abroad. I am sure they will speak English.

Hi All thanks for the help and phone numbers

Tried ringing and nothing. The phone answers in Swedish but there is an English message saying for help in English press 7.. Have done several times and it never answers. Ive also tried ringing several times and pressing any option... no help. Nobody even answers.

I have probably made about 20-25 international calls to Sweden today at who knows how much £££s trying to sort this out.. Not even managed to get through to a person.....

Its ridiculous...

When I made the booking they charged me the equivalent of about £10 BOOKING FEE, to pay on a debit card and collect the tickets at the ticket machine/station (i.e. no postage costs).....

We complain about the Trainline... but these robbing b******* are taking the mick... especially by declaring engineering work at such short notice and not answering the phone to re-book when I call them which is costing even more money !!!

Why did they offer the train and take my booking over a month ago if there was planned engineering work, then give me LESS than one weeks notice to re book, which is impossible...

£10 booking fee!!! Daylight robbery....

I'm only guessing here:

From the SJ journey planner, the outbound journey can still be made on the 0744 from Stockholm, change at Hallsberg and Töreboda arr Mariestad 1110.
The return journey is unchanged.
With your tickets, or reservation, there's surely a good chance that SJ will change them on the day in Stockholm?
It's not your fault that the 0729 has been cancelled.
You should have no trouble explaining it all in English.
Just trying to help.

If you are unable to reach SJ by phone, please try to reach out to them through Facebook or Twitter.

It's strange that they announce the cancellation at such short notice. Engineering works are planned many months in advance and should have been known to the operators if this concerns routine maintenance.

This may be different if the cancellation is due to emergency engineering works, but I do not expect those to be scheduled for 7 days later. Here in the Netherlands, emergency engineering works usually happen within 24 hours of them being announced.

Yesterday I got the same email... This time regarding our train coming back to Stockholm (which is later that same day, next Saturday the 14th) :

"Hej!
Trafikverket förbättrar järnvägen på sträckan Göteborg-Alingsås och din resa med tåg 446 den 2015-11-14 med bokningsnummer Q ställs in.
För ombokning eller återköp av din resa, vänligen använd länk: www.sj.se/andraresa.
Due to railroad maintenance, your train 446, 2015-11-14, has been cancelled.
To rebook or cancel your journey, please use this link: www.sj.se/searchorder.
Mvh SJ"

So both trains now cancelled!! Great

Will try and call them later today
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
So just called them.. it was not an easy conversation.

Basically they explained that going out the train was cancelled due to engineering work, no further explanation. They have re-booked us on the next service, so we are basically losing an hour of the day.

Coming home the train is still running but they have changed its station of origin which apparently causes the automatic email to be sent. Also all the previous bookings & reservations are cancelled and everyone has to call to rebook. Even though our journey isn't even affected at all by the change of origin..

This seems absolutely crazy to me! Basically she said the train is very full and we are lucky to be able to rebook onto it.. LUCKY???
How are we lucky at being able to travel on the train which we booked in advance MONTHS ago?

She said now I have to print the tickets because she can't offer the changed ones for ticket machine pick up. But we can't print the ABBA ticket and still have to pick that up on the machine at the station. Id have rather just picked them all up at the station.

And also she was kind enough to tell me that we must carry ID at all times when travelling. Why I asked? And what ID? She said its the rules!!! Go figure that one out..... We have undiscounted Adult full price tickets for train travel in Sweden. What could we possibly need ID for?

I am now not looking forward to experiencing my journey with SJ if the experience so far is anything to go by.

Why do people complain about our English railways? They are a dream compared to this fiasco.

I am certainly going to be applying for compensation as we have effectively been delayed for an hour going out, through no fault of our own.

hungry said:

And also she was kind enough to tell me that we must carry ID at all times when travelling. Why I asked? And what ID? She said its the rules!!! Go figure that one out..... We have undiscounted Adult full price tickets for train travel in Sweden. What could we possibly need ID for?

Click to expand...

It is generally the case in mainland Europe to be required to carry ID at all times. This is generally your national ID card. We, of course, in the UK do not have one so our passport will suffice.

As far as the railway is concerned if you have Print@Home tickets you must carry ID sufficient to confirm that you are the intended passenger - remember extra prints off could be in existence.......although the chances of using them on the same and/or another train are probably slim.

reb0118 said:

It is generally the case in mainland Europe to be required to carry ID at all times. This is generally your national ID card. We, of course, in the UK do not have one so our passport will suffice.

As far as the railway is concerned if you have Print@Home tickets you must carry ID sufficient to confirm that you are the intended passenger - remember extra prints off could be in existence.......although the chances of using them on the same and/or another train are probably slim.

Click to expand...

But we never wanted print at home tickets we were forced into them by SJs incompetence.

Of course I will have a passport with me and as soon as I arrive at my hotel it will get locked in the safe until it's time to check out and go to the airport, as I always do when travelling abroad. I'm not risking losing it just for Swedish Rail. I've never known anything so stupid as needing a passport to travel by train (except Euro* of course)

hungry said:

Of course I will have a passport with me and as soon as I arrive at my hotel it will get locked in the safe until it's time to check out and go to the airport, as I always do when travelling abroad.

Click to expand...

You know there are countries (not Sweden) with compulsory identity where you MUST carry it at all times, no? The Netherlands is one. Always worth checking when going somewhere new.

I'm not risking losing it just for Swedish Rail. I've never known anything so stupid as needing a passport to travel by train (except Euro* of course)

Click to expand...

Identification is normally required for print at home tickets - same in the UK. Though it isn't just a passport, a country with a national ID card may well simplify and say passport or that.

The customer 'service' provided to you by SJ is pretty poor. I don't know how much of help this will be to you, but have you checked if you can cancel one or both of the SJ tickets, and go with MTR Express instead? Maybe they have a train running close to your original booked times.

MTR Express is an open access competitor to SJ on the Stockholm - Göteborg line, you can find their website on www.mtrexpress.se.

P.S.: Personally I prefer having my passport with me at all times. I like to save myself from the hassle of having to ID myself without any supporting documents should something happen (I get hospitalised, my hotel room is robbed, the hotel burns down, the safe refuses to open, and so on).