🚆 around the baltic - 2025 edition

I wrote an original post back in 2021 about how to get around the baltic with train and only train and thought it would be about time for an updated version for 2025. It will avoid Russia and use a ferry from Helsinki to Tallin instead so it will be a bit faster perhaps.

Times are from some random day - I have not checked that they really fit togethere in a real world scenario.

Day 1	06:22	Stockholm C	12:37	Umeå
Day 1	13:32	Umeå	16:57	Boden
Day 1	17:16	Boden	18:40	Haparanda
Day 1	18:50	Haparanda	20:13	Tornio	bus here
Day 1	22:16	Tornio	10:45	Helsinki
Day 2	13:30	Helsinki	15:30	Tallin	ferry
Day 2	18:30	Tallin	22:02	Valga
Day 3	05:43	Valga	08:05	Riga	three trains a day
Day 3	16:55	Riga	21:03	Vilnius	one train a day
Day 4	12:35	Vilnius	14:52	Mockava
Day 4	15:25	Mockava	19:41	Warsaw
Day 4	20:38	Warsaw	23:03	Gdansk
Day 5	06:14	Gdansk	09:20	Poznan
Day 5	09:35	Poznan	11:33	Szczecin
Day 5	13:01	Szczcecin	13:39	Pasewalk
Day 5	14:19	Pasewalk	15:41	Stralsund Hbf
Day 5	16:16	Stralsund Hbf	19:28	Berlin Hbf
Day 5	20:10	Berlin Hbf	07:00	Malmö C
Day 6	08:07	Malmö C	12:34	Stockholm C

There you go - almost a week on the train except the ferry now to avoid Russia. Some things are better and some things are worse than last time.

On the plus side:

there is a night train now from Tornio to Helsinki. No other trains seems to operate from Tornio at this point but this will change. Finland is thinking about changing their rail guage away from the Russian standard to the European standard. This will make it possible to operate trains across the Swedish-Finnish border.
more options from Tallin to Riga. (But no direct option no more.)
this time we make use of the night train from Berlin to Malmö and in the end we are one hour earlier in Stockholm.

On the minus side:

Day 2 in the 2021 schedule ended in St Petersburg. This schedule is already in Valga at the Estonian border to Latvia. Good but then the trains through Latvia and Lthuania is so sparse that we end up day 4 in Gdansk anyway and 3 hours later this time.
Less train options in Poland. There used to be a direct from Bialystok to Gdansk. Not anymore so we need the Warsaw connection instead. Same from Gdansk to Szczecin.
Two more legs going up to 19 now.

6 days is a long time to spend on trains and to make it more interesting and actually experiencing things perhaps 2 weeks would be more appropriate. Or make smalle circuits based on this. For exampe ferry from Stockholm to Tallin, then train through the 3 baltic states down to Klaipeda and the ferry back to Karlshamn.

written by fredrik at 2025-10-29