We take our family on the same train journey every summer. How it changed the way we travel

Every summer, our family travels north.

We begin in Utrecht, where we live, and end in Finland, where my wife’s family is from. The destination matters deeply — Helsinki means family, cousins, familiar food, a return to the Finnish language all around us, and eventually the stillness of the summer cottage (mökki), with its lake, sauna and long, light evenings.

Over time, some of our strongest memories have become tied not only to Finland itself, but to the movement towards it. The stations, crossings, trains and ferries have taken on a meaning of their own.

We could fly. People often ask why we don’t. The simplest answer is that we no longer think of the journey as the thing standing between us and the holiday. The journey has become a ritual in our family life.

With our Interrail Passes, the route has become familiar now – Utrecht to Hamburg, Hamburg to Copenhagen. We usually stay across the Øresund Bridge in Malmö, and then travel from Malmö to Stockholm before taking the Silja Line ferry overnight across the Baltic Sea to Helsinki.

Written down, it looks like a list of connections. Lived through, it feels like the slow unfolding of one world into the next.

The children know the pattern – the early start in Utrecht, the first train, the snacks packed too optimistically, the bags we always promise will be lighter next year. Hamburg is the great northern junction where the journey begins to turn towards Scandinavia. 

North is no longer abstract. It’s written on the departure board.

After Hamburg, the landscape opens out. Denmark feels quieter – fields, wind turbines and enormous skies stretch out beyond the train window. In Copenhagen comes the brief work of transition as we gather bags and guide our children toward the train to Malmö over the Øresund Bridge.

Even now, that bridge feels miraculous – we move quickly over the sea, carried from one country into another so gently that the border feels like a breath.

We usually stay in Malmö, which has become one of those places that belongs to us because of repetition. A familiar hotel. A station we understand. The feeling of crossing back to Copenhagen for the day and returning to Sweden in the evening as though this movement between countries were ordinary.

For our children, perhaps it is.
 

That is the magic of travelling this way. Europe stops being an idea and becomes something physical and continuous. Countries arrive gradually through windows, platforms, languages, announcements and landscapes.

The leg I love most is Malmö to Stockholm. There is something about that train which gives me a feeling I find hard to explain. Partly it is the speed and comfort of the SJ train, the satisfaction of covering vast distances without losing contact with the world outside. But mostly it’s the landscape – long Swedish forests, flashes of water, red houses appearing and disappearing between trees, summer light falling softly over everything.

On that stretch, I often feel an almost complete happiness.

Some of it is anticipation. Stockholm in summer is a city running on light. But the feeling on the train is also about what is happening inside our own journey.

I look at our children and feel proud of them.

They have learned how to travel. Not just how to sit on a train for hours without asking whether we’re nearly there – although that remains a work in progress – but how to inhabit a journey. How to wait. How to carry their own small part of the load. How to notice things from the window. How to feel at home while moving.

Modern travel often tries to remove difficulty. But I believe that effort is part of what makes a journey meaningful, especially for children. Not hardship, but effort shared together.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Stockholm when we make our way to the ferry.

As foot passengers, the walk to the Silja Line terminal can feel long, especially with children and luggage. It is bags slipping from shoulders, tired legs, and reminders to keep going.

But I love that walk.

I love it because it marks the crossing. The train part of the journey is ending. The sea part is about to begin. We are between countries and atmospheres. This is the journey asking something of us before giving us the next wonder.

And then the ferry appears.

Our cabin is small, but with a window it becomes everything we need – a private room moving across an enormous sea. We watch the ship leave Stockholm, passing through the archipelago, where islands slide by in the evening light. Outside, the Baltic opens wider and wider.
 

There are moments on that ferry when I feel almost overwhelmed by the beauty of what we are doing. We are together, suspended between land, moving slowly towards another place. The sun sets and the children fall asleep. The ship continues through the night.

By morning, Finland appears gradually.

First the small islands. Then boats. Then harbour walls. Then Helsinki itself, rising slowly from the water. 

The city doesn’t feel foreign to us. It’s a place of relatives, familiar streets, Finnish food, cafés, playgrounds, supermarkets, the children falling back into relationships with cousins.

After a few days, we continue north to the mökki, where travel gives way to stillness, and the ritual I love most – sauna, lake, repeat.

Before I had children, I worried that family life might mean the end of real travel. I imagined responsibility and movement pulling in opposite directions. But this recurring journey has taught me the opposite.

Travel didn’t disappear when we became a family. Instead, it became deeper.

Each year, the route is the same, but we are not. The children are older. Places that were once strange become familiar. Stations become part of memory.

For our family, Utrecht to Helsinki has become a rhythm. A geography of belonging. A way of teaching our children that the world is large, connected and possible – and that movement, when shared with people you love, can feel like home.