For the last few years, I’ve been visiting the heart of Europe via rail, as my Edwardian grandparents did during the years of 1900 and 1914. I’m on a journey to see Europe how they did – and even stay in some of the same hotels (a few still exist).  

Now a century and a half later, I’m using my copy of the 1913 Bradshaw’s Continental Railway Guide to relive an era of great optimism and energy, where technology, industry, science and the arts were flourishing. This guide opened up an exotic world of foreign travel for the British and American tourist. It told them where to go, what to see and how to navigate the thousands of miles of tracks crisscrossing the continent. I want to rediscover that lost Europe, that in 1913, couldn’t have known that it’s way of life would shortly be swept aside by the advent of war. 

To date, this journey has taken me through Austria, Hungary, France, Switzerland and Germany.