Students travelling through Europe this summer could never have predicted the current heatwave when buying their interrail tickets earlier this year. “I brought a pair of jeans and two jumpers thinking I might need them,” says Alec Thompson, a Trinity College student from Dublin interrailing with friends. “I wore a pair of linen trousers our first night in Vienna and I had to pull them up to my knees while I was walking around. It was 35 degrees the first night and that rose to 37 degrees. It’s very oppressive during the day because you’re in the city with no wind and the sun is just beaming down on you.” Thompson says they went to a public pool and bathhouse “because we needed to cool down. You kind of need to do that. We sat out in the sun and it was the first time we could enjoy it.” A swimming pool on the outskirts of Vienna The humid heat in cities, however, is nothing compared to the boiling hot train carriages ferrying students and other travellers on hours-long journeys across Europe. Thompson says it was a “horrible situation” travelling from Berlin to Prague. They left their accommodation – a “hostel with 14 people with no fan or air conditioning” – and arrived at the station to find their train had been cancelled because of the heat.A train arrived destined for another station in Prague. Thompson was relieved to be in a carriage with electricity, working chargers and, most importantly, air-conditioning. However, soon after leaving the station the train stalled for 25 minutes without light or electricity. They were then informed they needed to disembark. The tracks needed to cool down.“We got off the train, and we’re in a train station in a place I’ve never heard of. I didn’t know where I was, what country I was in, nearly,” Thompson says. At one point a woman stood up on a bench, among a crowd of football fans drinking and playing music, and asked: “Does anyone know where we’re going?” Crowded corridors on the train between Berlin and Prague. Photograph: Alec Thompson A new train arrived, which was the original cancelled train Thompson was meant to get in Berlin. It was now so full that everyone had to squeeze into the small compartments or stand in the hallway. This train stopped again for another 40 minutes and the windows couldn’t be opened as they were broken. Thompson was told the train was “too heavy” with the number of passengers on board and additional carriages had to be added to the back of the train where “people had to call an ambulance for a child who was sick because of the heat”.“We’re all sat there, piled up in the corridor. The football fans still drinking and playing music which was fun for everyone. We were talking to English girls who were travelling like us. It’s a good way to meet people. It’s mad when you get into situations like that.” Overheated tracks, two broken-down trains and 12 hours later, they arrived in Prague. “We never thought we were gonna get there but it’s such an experience,” Thompson says. Ella O’Byrne, a UCD student from Dublin interrailing and travelling to Budapest, Hungary, says that you have to be “very careful” when travelling in the heat. And in particular when you might be drinking alcohol. “We have to be careful to not drink too much because alcohol affects your body in the heat.” [ How the current heatwave compares to the scorching summers of 1976 and 1995Opens in new window ]In addition, O’Byrne says “you need to sit down and eat but obviously we don’t really have much appetite because it’s so hot. One of the girls, two days ago, felt very faint and vomited, I think, because of the heat.”Some cities have adapted to the heatwave. “All around Europe they have water fountains and mist machines. We would fill up our water and walk through the mist which was just so good,” O’Byrne says. Mist machines in Budapest, Hungary. Photograph: Ella O'Byrne It wasn’t just O’Byrne and her friends feeling the adverse effects of the heat – it was also their phones. “They keep overheating and dying. If we have to contact each other it is quite difficult. That has been so stressful.”“Because we’re Irish we need to adjust to the heat a lot more,” O’Byrne laughs. “We’re obviously used to being absolutely freezing.”