Get on at home, fall asleep – wake up and get off at your destination: night trains are experiencing a real revival. They are not only practical if you want to travel in an environmentally conscious and climate-friendly way, but also an experience in itself. For this reason, the European railway companies have been including more and more night train connections in their timetables for several years.
By far the largest offer will be found by fans of night train travel at the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB). The Austrian Nightjet stops in many German cities and connects them with numerous travel destinations throughout Europe.
For example, you can board a Nightjet in these ten cities:
Thanks to the ÖBB route network, which has now been extensively expanded, travelers can reach some of the most popular travel destinations in Europe overnight. From Germany, for example, it is possible to reach the following cities with a night train:
The complete ÖBB route network can be found here.
But the Austrian Federal Railway is by no means the only provider of night trains in Europe. More and more countries are discovering the special train journey for themselves and introducing new connections for night owls. And many of them are also stopping in Germany this year.
From May 2023, for example, there will be a new night trip from Berlin to Brussels. The Belgian-Dutch train company “European Sleeper” has included the relevant connection in the timetable, the first ten-hour journey is scheduled to take place on May 25th and then every Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. The night train also makes stops in Hanover, Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Antwerp on the way. An extension of the route is also planned for the coming year. Then the train starts in Prague and stops in Dresden before Berlin.
In cooperation with the Croatian night train, Deutsche Bahn also offers two connections to the popular holiday destination on the Mediterranean. Train travelers can reach the Croatian capital Zagreb or the Adriatic metropolis Rijeka overnight from Stuttgart or Munich. The Hungarian night train towards Budapest also starts in Munich. He also makes stops in Vienna and Salzburg on his nightly tour.
Deutsche Bahn’s own night connections are essentially limited to Germany and a few selected cities in neighboring countries. These include, for example, Vienna, Copenhagen, Zurich and Basel. The prices for a trip on the night train with Deutsche Bahn start at 17.90 euros. However, the places in the sleeping car are significantly more expensive and very popular.
So if you want to get from A to B really comfortably, you should be quick – and rather plan a few euros more. Compared to flying, night trains are often the more expensive alternative, at least if you want to be comfortable at night. For a night trip from Hamburg to Vienna, for example, you pay 130 euros in a sleeper car – a flight from Hamburg to Vienna costs 100 euros on average.
Also read:
You can get that far in five hours with Deutsche Bahn
Deutsche Bahn idea train: This is how we could travel by train in the future
Retro train: Photographs from the early days of the Deutsche Bundesbahn
