Solo Balapan is the main railway station for Surakarta, a handsome building with a Javanese-Dutch colonial character that has been substantially preserved through successive renovations. The station serves as the city's main transport hub and handles several million passengers a year, but it retains the character of a provincial station rather than the anonymous functionality of Indonesia's largest urban terminals.
The station forecourt is a good place to watch Solo life — the becak drivers waiting for arrivals, the food vendors, the mixture of people moving between the city and the train network. The trains to Yogyakarta depart frequently throughout the day and the journey through Central Java's rice paddies and volcano views is pleasant.