Faster than a speeding bullet, hewn from steel, electromagnets and generous subsidies, able to leap small countries in a single bound – is it an Audi, is it a plane? No, it’s continental Europe’s sickeningly efficient rail network.

There’s no doubt that those Europeans can do trains. It seems you can scarcely turn on the nightly news without learning of a French flyer leaving a sonic boom in the Massif Central, or the business people of Germany chopping up their air-mile cards as the journey time from Berlin to Frankfurt shades the trip from Putney to Waterloo.

And that blur of noise and colour whizzing past you at a level crossing is no white elephant – research has shown that every time a new Euro rail link opens, the obvious attractions of city-centre drop-offs, far fewer security hassles and all that room to stretch your legs soon leave the rival airborne options looking empty and unloved.

That’s all very well if you’re visiting your granny in Neugersdorf – but what if you’re on holiday? What’s the best way for a Brit abroad to make use of the eerily clean, reliable and convivial service that shuttles our continental cousins about the place? The environmental case for taking the train over the plane on your hols is a no-brainer – rail travel produces about 10% of the greenhouse emissions per passenger mile – but in the search for guilt-free fun, it’s as important to maximise the pleasure as it is to minimise the impact.

To do that – as I discovered over 12 rail rides in two weeks, taking in eight cities and five countries – involves more than just a different machine carrying you from A to B. It means thinking about your next European trip in a completely different way ...

THE DISASTER

In the climate-motivated push to divert travellers from planes to trains, it’s possible that a few puddings may have been overegged: fast-moving though its trains may be, Europe is still awfully large. Is it really possible to use its rail networks rather as we would no-frills airlines – to be booked and ridden just like long, thin planes? To find out, I tried to replicate the classic RyanEasy experience, the kind of trip few of us took 15 years ago, but millions do now – a sunny city break. Madrid for the weekend, anyone?

Aah, Paris in the rush hour – and the almost reassuring realisation that another European city has an underground network just as fetid and overcrowded as London’s. The overnight train to Madrid leaves from Gare d’Austerlitz, a cross-town commute from Eurostar’s Gare du Nord that’s just long and stressful enough to rewind all the tension you released on the cross-Channel glide. Never mind – as I boarded the 19.43 Elipsos sleeper service to Madrid Chamartin, one of the real benefits of rail travel emerged: with neither in-flight dehydration nor the rules of the road to worry about, you can start your holiday with a shamelessly stiff drink.

Not, sadly, that the Elipsos bar is a soothing speakeasy. Bright and plastic, it matches the functional, borderline-drab mood of the train’s cabins and restaurant car. That’s all very well – the Elipsos isn’t pretending to be the Orient Express – but the decor is worth remembering the next time someone tries to sell you “the romance of rail travel”. Elipsos is comfortable, if you pay enough, but romantic it ain’t.

Later, during the hours of darkness and after a pleasant meal and a tour of the impressive wine list, the train’s real problem emerges. Many sleeper trains cheat by disappearing into a siding for six silent hours; or, second best, cruising along at a metronomic pace, rocking you to slumber. The Elipsos does neither – it stops, it starts, it clunks, it strains, it wheezes, it snorts. It’s not an appalling night’s sleep, but nor is it a beatific one – it’s an almost exact equivalent of one of those fancy flat beds on a transatlantic flight (and nobody’s pretending that you say “Goodnight” in New York and “Good morning” in London, as fresh as a summer lark).

As I chugged coffee and dunked pastry while the sun rose over the dormitory towns of Madrid, I was foggily aware that an hour or two in a motionless bed was in order, to steady the ship. As we rolled into Chamartin at 9.13am, a grim fact struck home – the hotel wouldn’t let me crash out until 2pm. I slept on a park bench.

Madrid, of course, delivered all its magic – its streets and sights as elegant, grandiose and undeniably self-regarding as its immaculate inhabitants. Two days and one night is plenty of time to get a taste of the place – but enough time to shake off one long journey and prepare for another? We all pray for a magic carpet home at the end of our holidays, but I’m not sure I’ve ever prayed harder than on the platform at Chamartin.

I did sleep better on the return leg – I drank more – and, next morning, rather than sweat sherry on the Métro, I chose to yomp the hour across Paris. Here, grazing on warm pastries when yesterday was all squid and chorizo, was a glimmer of what European trains might really offer – the spice of variety, not the pace of modernity.

Right now, though, they just offered a Eurostar back to Waterloo and a pretty disconcerting final bill for a weekend away. Unless you get a promotional fare, a return from London to Madrid costs about £185 a head, sharing a four-berth cabin with strangers, or £227pp for your own two-berth home.

So, if you need 36 hours in Madrid – a wedding, or a tricky away leg – and have fallen out with flying, Elipsos certainly does the trick. But if you just want a cheap, restful minibreak? On this evidence, the idea of travelling to distantish spots for instant fixes of warmth and foreignness – Madrid is almost 800 miles from London, after all – is not on the timetable. The train is not the new plane. Details: Rail Europe (0870 584 8848, www. raileurope.com) has return sleeper fares from Paris to Madrid on the Elipsos from £169. Or try Spanish Rail Service (020 7725 7063, www.spanish-rail.co.uk).

THE TRIUMPH

Right, let’s get the gushing out of the way; in my increasingly long years as a travel journalist, my second rail effort was probably the most enjoyable trip I’ve ever been on. The full tick list – independence, enlightenment, conversation, action, relaxation, inspiration and irresponsibility – was marked off, and I haven’t stopped recommending it since I got home. If all Euro-rail trips can have the same fun to carbon ratio, then I’m a convert.

Noticing that the market for taking the train around Europe has extended beyond school orchestras and Australian au pairs, InterRail has devised two new tickets aimed at grown-ups with limited holidays. One, ideal for a week’s break, allows you five days of travel across Europe within a 10-day slot; the second offers 10 days of travel out of 22, for two or three weeks off work.

Armed with my five-day pass and the Thomas Cook European Rail Timetable, I headed back to Paris – and got the hell off the train. Twenty-four hours later, after plenty of strong coffee in sunny cafes, a couple of sultry jazz clubs and a few good meals, I was officially on holiday, and ready to head east.

Aachen, the western outpost of Germany, is famous for its cathedral and its gingerbread – neither awfully encouraging signs – but the city centre is a cheery cluster of bars and food stalls. When there isn’t the pressure to try to fill a weekend here, simply because you can fly from Luton for tuppence, the city makes the ideal civilised pit stop: get off the train before lunch, get back on straight after. Perfect – and Cologne is just an hour of lush forests and towering wind farms down the line.

At something of a crossroads for speedy trains, Cologne is likely to figure in many transcontinental pootles. This is no bad thing, as the city is a gem. Two-lane bike paths glide through parks and piazzas, while the trim locals convene for long evenings sipping seriously at the local brews. There’s a hippieish contrarianism to the place, too. When I rented my bike, the request for a helmet was rebuffed languidly – “We prefer to ride free, man” – and everything is inexplicably affordable. (Eventually, the Germans will surely realise they’re charging 30% less than everyone else in western Europe for dinner and drinks, but let’s hope they don’t see the light for a while.)

The train station is, of course, the very model of efficiency, depositing you in the heart of town, at the cathedral steps. So, after a day spent pedalling along the Rhine, ogling the largest collection of pop art outside New York and pigging out in the Lebanese district, it was a simple affair to consult the timetable, consider Berlin, ponder Munich, contemplate Vienna, then plump for Amsterdam.

Another leisurely, cultured city, another rented bicycle, another 24 hours of exploring, reading the paper on a warm terrace with a cold beer and generally enjoying the life of Riley. The rail tourer’s sense of passing through negates any urge to sightsee – just by moving on, you stay stimulated. And if you’re holidaying solo, perpetual motion is the ideal antidote to loneliness.

Next, I popped in to Rotterdam for lunch – a sharp-edged, mercantile place, it’s worth no more than an hour or two – before pulling into the chicest city around, Antwerp, for a much-needed spot of shopping. (Ladies, if your man is still dressing like a child, or starting to look like his dad, this might be the spot for a rescue mission.) It’s a fantastically diverse place, with a large Orthodox Jewish area neighbouring the North African districts, which themselves fold into the affluent Euro-hipster hang-outs – accentuating the sense that you’re getting much closer to the modern Continent than if you just parachute into a single destination for a few days. From the latest German eco-inventions (bikes with giant child baskets, carrying up to three toddlers, are all the rage) to inexplicable Belgian waistlines (these people will fry anything, but are as skinny as cheroots), InterRailing offers a bumper harvest of European phenomena.

The Antwerp line pulls into Brussels straight through the red-light district, generating the strange sight of women in cheap lingerie frantically “working it” towards the carriages, in the hope that you’ll abandon your connection in favour of a connection. I demurred, and hopped on the Eurostar home.

Done in this relaxed, unhurried way, the new train trumps the old plane. I’d visited four of Europe’s finest cities in a week, and popped into three more, but all that change – facilitated by travel that was never cramped, never stressed and never even slightly, sneakily guilty – had proved as restful as a fly-and-flop.

As the tunnel fell away, the allotments got smaller, the cycle lanes turned to contraflows and the schoolkids lounged plumply on the platforms, looking about as European as the rings of Saturn, I was all but oblivious – buried in the timetable, planning my next continental conquest.

Travel details: a pass for five days’ travel in a 10-day period, covering 29 countries, costs £179 in standard class (£115 for under25s). First-class travel costs £237 for all ages. A pass covering 10 days in a 22-day period costs £259 (£172 for under25s, first class £352). For a month of continuous travel, the price is £431 (£287 for youngsters, £583 in first class). Buy tickets through Rail Europe (0870 584 8848, www.raileurope.com) or visit www.interrailnet.com. Prices will vary slightly with the euro exchange rate.

With an InterRail ticket, you can get a discounted Eurostar pass-holder fare (£50, 0870 518 6186, www.eurostar.com), but, if you’re truly skint, Calais to Paris Nord is only two hours, and SeaFrance takes pedestrians from all of £6 (0870 571 1711, www. seafrance.com). Some trains on the Continent charge cheeky pass-holder supplements (Paris-Cologne was £19, for example), which are paid for at the station. All German trains, notably, are free to pass-holders. You’ll also need the Thomas Cook European Rail Timetable (£12.50; www. thomascookpublishing.com).

Where next?

BASED ON the principle that train travel is better savoured than stuffed, here are some standout itineraries. Unless otherwise stated, tickets are available from Rail Europe (0870 584 8848, www.raileurope.com).

THE PROVENCAL FLYER

One bullet train stands out – the Paris-Provence run. Allez to Avignon in just three hours, then potter around the many lovely connected towns, such as Nîmes, Arles and Aix, before TGVing home. Or take the tour – loop home via Carcassonne, Toulouse and Bordeaux (the latter two are both now linked to Paris by bullets) on a trip that will demand a decade of dieting.

Or, to really show off, take the TGV flyer to Marseilles, catch the ferry to Corsica (www.sncm.fr; returns from £11) and ride the stunning rail routes from Ajaccio to Corte, Ponte-Leccia and Calvi before turning home – you’ll need at least nine days.

InterRail one-country passes allow three days of travel in France during a month from £138, four from £153, six from £197 and eight from £219. Alternatively, as TGV services tend to apply on-the-spot pass-holder supplements of about £10 per trip, you could buy direct tickets from London through Rail Europe; London-Bordeaux return starts at £49.50, London-Nîmes £54.50. Visit www.idtgv.com for daydreaming.

GIRO D’ITALIA

What a feast – ride the Artesia overnight train from Paris to Milan, then take at least 10 days to loop around Verona, Bologna, Florence, Pisa, and Genoa, maybe adding in Siena, Lucca and even Como. Hell, take a month off. Artesia fares start at £52 return, while single-country travel around Italy starts at £80 for three days of travel during a month, £102 for four days, £138 for six and £168 for eight.

DOING SPAIN RIGHT

That is, slowly. Elipsos would be fine if you had time to regroup, so loiter in Madrid, then take the four-hour ride to Barcelona, potter some more and head home overnight from there. That trip, in four or five days, would be lovely. The best bet would be to buy the legs separately, rather than with a pass. London-Madrid might cost £150, but more likely about £185; Madrid-Barcelona is £42. If you have more time, Madrid-Seville is less than three hours now, via Cordoba; from £84 return. Call 020 7725 7063 or visit www.spanish-rail.co.uk.

Another intriguing option is the Paris-Nîmes TGV, then a scenic hop over the Pyrenees via Perpignan to Barcelona, and the Elipsos home.

THE WORLD CUP REVISITED

With no sneaky supplements, and hospitality so cheap, Germany is a great-value and seriously sociable option, ideal for those blighters who can still qualify for youth fares. London to Cologne, then Berlin and Hamburg, with Amsterdam as an add-on, would be a convivial week’s travel, with Munich thrown in only if you fancy the challenge. The short international InterRail pass is the right option.

THE ALPINE EXPERIENCE

With more miles of scenic railway than any other European country, Switzerland is a banker. A 10-day circuit linking Basel, Lausanne, Chur, Zurich, Lucerne, then returning to Basel, is beautiful, and will begin just 3½ hours from Paris after June 10, on the new TGV Est (www.tgvesteuropeen.com). Regional passes are priced at the same rate as Italy’s, while London-Basel should cost about £120 return – but can be as cheap as £30.

Times recommends

• Your Top 10 questions on low cost airlines
• How to hen party in style
• Steaming into Bangladesh