[DominikPeters]

I agree that ticketing is terrible. But note that you can take the train from Amsterdam to Barcelona or even Madrid or Sevilla using essentially only high-speed lines (the only segments that aren't high-speed are Amsterdam to Lille and Avignon to Perpignan). So at least on those routes, one can't really complain about the comprehensiveness of European HSR. Amsterdam to Barcelona can be done in 12h17 with two changes, giving an average speed of 100km/h (measuring straight-line distance!).