‘I was annoyed at the line for the Eurostar. Then I realised I’d dodged a disaster’

I curled my lip and sighed to my husband. A line of people, all laden with luggage snaked around barriers.

And the line was moving slower than a public holiday Monday drive behind a caravan on the Pacific Highway.

Because while the train might be an easy way to travel across Europe, you still have to contend with the new EES checks to go to and from the UK.

That includes on the Eurostar.

We had flown into Amsterdam from England, but we opted to take the famous train back to London.

While it famously darts between the UK capital and Paris, that’s not the only route

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The Eurostar also goes to Rotterdam, Brussels and Lille.

Soon, you’ll be able to go to Antwerp, too. You can book entire journeys across the continent or get train passes via Rail Europe.

And with long lines continuing to hit European airports, with Aussies warned queues could hit six hours, it’s an alternative to flying.

(Though I have to say on our arrival to Schiphol, it took a reasonable 30 minutes to get through.)

But I’ll admit, the time we reached the front of the Eurostar line I was rather over it. Because the passport desks were directly after security, a funnel neck developed.

However, it was much better than being at an airport.

Unlike when flying, passengers for each train must wait until that service is called to line up to go through customs, security and passport control.

So, it’s unlikely you’re going to miss it like with a flight if you’re there at the time you’re told to be. It’s usually 75 minutes before your train, and barriers close 30 minutes before the train goes.

In fact, our train was delayed for 30 minutes due to “border checks.”

And in the end it took us about 50 minutes to get through, which is hours less than some reports of lines at airports this summer.

Once complete, there is a small waiting area before you board your train.

Finally, we got on board and found our Standard Class seats.

Hopeful for a table and a nap, we found ourselves wedged in between a mother and a baby and a grumpy businessman.

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And it was more packed than Olympic stadium on NRL Grand Final night.

You see, all the trains the next day were cancelled due to a strike but luckily changing our tickets on the app had been easy.

I could not help being excited.

There’s just something about train travel through Europe. It was fascinating to zoom through four countries in four hours.

And if you forget to load up on stroopwafle and sandwiches for the journey, there is a café on board.

I was even more pleased when I got an alert on my phone: “Hundreds of UK flights grounded after air traffic control problem.”

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And while things can go wrong on trains too, It looked like we had dodged a disaster.

If we had opted to fly, we may have missed our early morning flight home to Australia.

It took about half an hour longer than the planned 4 hours and 19 minutes to reach London.

And when we arrived at St Pancras, there was another added bonus.

All the immigration and customs checks had been done already. We didn’t have to wait to claim our luggage as you keep it with you.

And even better there was no journey from the airport. We were free to breeze out of the station and into central London.

The writer travelled from Amsterdam to London on Eurostar as a guest of Rail Europe.