Dresden to Krásná Lípa by train

I went on an interrail trip together with my boyfriend for almost the entire month of September. During this interrail we traveled through Europe by train. We had 6 travel days in total during that interrail. I want to write about all those 6 different routes in different posts on this blog. Last week I told you about our first travel day. Today I’ll continue with our second travel day. On day 2 of our interrail, we went from Dresden to Krásná Lípa by train. I’ll tell you about the different route options, the costs, the journey itself and more.

Route Options

As far as I know, there are three different travel routes when you want to go from Dresden to Krásná Lípa. The italic version is the route we personally took.

Option 1

This is the route: Dresden – Bad Schandau – Rumburk – Krásná Lípa. The travel time is 2 hours and 14 minutes.

Option 2

This is the route: Dresden – Bad Schandau – Decin – Krásná Lípa. The travel time is 2 hours and 42 minutes. We left Dresden around 11:27 and arrived in Bad Schandau at 12:14. At 12:56 we then moved on to Decin, where we arrived at 13:16. In Decin we were very confused as to travel further because all signs were very unclear. Ultimately, we took the train to Krásná Lípa at 14:33 and arrived there at 15:48. This part took so long because of construction work. The whole trip took us about 4,5 hours because of delay and lack of information. But you should be able to do it faster!

Option 3

This is the route: Dresden – Decin – Krásná Lípa. The travel time is 2 hours and 31 minutes.

As you can see, route 1 is the fastest. However, once we arrived in Bad Schandau and wanted to buy a ticket to Rumburk, the person at the register advised us to travel via Decin instead. As she was a local, we trusted her and did so. We now think this was the case because of construction work, but we don’t know. The transit in Decin was not good, which delayed the trip a lot. If I had to travel again, I would go with option 3. When it comes to travel time, it’s nicely in the middle and there’s only one transit. Not much that can go wrong. Below you can see the route. Don’t mind the car sign by the way. We took this route by train, obviously.

The route of Dresden to Krásná Lípa by train on a map.

Prices and tickets

When it comes to the costs of traveling from Dresden to Krásná Lípa by train, I can’t tell you much. We tried to buy tickets for the whole trip in Dresden. That did not work, we could only buy tickets within Germany. Later on we found out that was our fault, we chose the wrong settings on the machine. Therefore we had to buy new tickets for the next train during every crossover, which I would not recommend. If I must guess, we paid no more than 25 euro per person.

My experience

Spoiler: this was the best train ride of our entire interrail. As you can see, from Bad Schandau onwards, you travel through the National Park Bohemian Swiss. And I must tell you, the view from the train was stunning! Time flies by when you’re just staring out of the window. I loved the entire trip and barely read my book and checked out my phone. It was a small trip in distance, but it was stunning.

The delay was a little bit of a bummer. It was the second travel day of the interrail and the first day we had a delay as well. We didn’t figure out entirely what was the problem at that time, but I think we just missed the right train because we were so confused in Decin. This forced us to go to the counter and ask for the next train. The second delay was because of construction work, which I think is fine. The trip was a little messy, but the beauty makes up for it. I would definitely recommend this route! Even if it’s just for the view!