Night Trains Are Back: Europe's Sleeper Renaissance

In 2016, the writing seemed to be on the wall. Deutsche Bahn had just announced it was shutting down its City Night Line sleeper services for good. France was quietly winding down its overnight train operations. The famous trans-European sleepers that had connected the continent in the postwar era — Paris to Venice, Amsterdam to Munich, Berlin to Zurich — were vanishing one by one. Within a few years, observers said, the European night train would be a thing of memory.

This turned out to be one of the most badly-aged predictions in recent European transport. Today, you can board a sleeper in Vienna at 9 PM and wake up the next morning in Brussels, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Berlin, Zurich, Rome, Venice, Stuttgart, Warsaw, Munich, La Spezia, Genoa, or Paris. The European night train network is now larger than it has been at any point this century, and it's still growing.

How it came back

The unlikely hero of this story is Austrian Federal Railways — ÖBB. In 2016, when Deutsche Bahn discarded its sleeper fleet, ÖBB quietly bought it. They rebranded the operation as Nightjet and began rebuilding the German-speaking world's overnight network. The bet was that the combination of climate consciousness, airport fatigue, the rise of remote work, and the slow recovery of romance for slow travel would make sleeper trains commercially viable again.

The bet has paid off spectacularly. Nightjet now operates around 20 nightly routes across central and southern Europe, with new services launching almost every season. Several other operators — French Intercités de Nuit, Italian Espresso, Polish PKP, the new private operator European Sleeper running between Brussels, Berlin, and Prague — have followed.

The other quiet contributor was the EU's policy environment. The 2021 European Year of Rail, the proliferation of climate accounting in corporate travel policies, and the steady normalization of carbon costs in flight pricing have all tilted the comparison. A flight from Vienna to Amsterdam emits roughly 20x the CO₂ of the equivalent night train. For an increasing number of travelers, that math has stopped being abstract.

What it's actually like

A modern European night train is a different experience from what your grandparents remember. The romance is real — but so are the practical improvements.

You arrive at the station at, say, 8:30 PM. The train is on the platform, lights on, attendants stationed at each carriage door checking tickets. You step into your compartment. If you've booked a private cabin, you have a small space — typically 2 to 4 sq m — with a fold-down bed, a fold-out sink, a small wardrobe, a window that opens slightly, soft reading lights, and (in newer Nightjet rolling stock) a private toilet and shower. If you've booked a couchette, you share a 4-to-6 berth compartment with strangers, which sounds awkward and is mostly fine.

The train pulls out. You go to the dining car, which is sometimes a proper restaurant, sometimes a bar, sometimes simply a vending machine — operator-dependent. You buy a beer, watch the city lights blur past, eat a small dinner if you didn't bring your own, then go back to your compartment. The attendant comes by to take your breakfast order for the morning.

Lights out is whenever you want it to be. You sleep — not as well as in a hotel, generally, but better than on a plane and far better than people expect. You wake up to the sound of the attendant knocking with coffee and croissants and the news that you'll be in Amsterdam in forty minutes. You pull up the blind. There's a Dutch field outside, low fog over a canal. You eat your breakfast. You step off the train into a major European capital, having effectively traveled 800 km while unconscious, with no airport security, no luggage carousel, no taxi to a city center.

It is, when it goes well, one of the best experiences in modern travel.

The routes worth knowing

The current Nightjet and partner network is large enough that a comprehensive list would be a wall of text. The routes worth knowing about, ranked roughly by how reliably they deliver the experience:

• Vienna ↔ Brussels (Nightjet) — newish, popular, often booked out a month ahead. Wakes up in Belgium with an hour before any sensible breakfast time.
• Vienna ↔ Hamburg — long-running, comfortable, lots of cabin options.
• Vienna ↔ Rome — a slow, beautiful 14 hours through Austria, the Brenner Pass, and into northern Italy. Mountain windows in the morning are exceptional.
• Zurich ↔ Hamburg and Zurich ↔ Amsterdam — the alpine departures and northern arrivals are both atmospheric.
• Paris ↔ Berlin (Nightjet, restored 2023) — the spiritual flagship of the new network. Books out fast.
• Brussels ↔ Berlin ↔ Prague (European Sleeper) — the new private operator's route, with a more eclectic carriage mix and a strong cult following.
• Paris ↔ Venice (Thello, since restored as Nightjet) — the closest thing left to the romance of the original Orient Express.
• Stockholm ↔ Hamburg (Snälltåget / SJ Euronight) — Scandinavian sleeper revival, summer-heavy schedule.

How to book without losing your mind

European night train booking remains less smooth than it should be, mostly because the network spans many national operators with their own systems. A few practical tips:

• Book early. Sleeper cabins on popular Nightjet routes routinely sell out 4–8 weeks ahead. Couchettes sell out 2–4 weeks ahead.
• Use the operator's own site when possible. ÖBB's Nightjet site books all Nightjet routes (including ones operated by partners). For European Sleeper, book directly. For French Intercités de Nuit, SNCF Connect.
• Trainline and Omio work for most routes but can hide cheaper fares. Worth comparing.
• Consider Interrail / Eurail. If you're doing several legs over a couple of weeks, the multi-country pass plus reservation fees often beats individual tickets, especially for sleepers.
• Book a private cabin if you can. The price difference over a couchette is meaningful; the experience difference is enormous.

A few practical things nobody tells you

• Bring earplugs and an eye mask. Even the quietest trains are not completely silent.
• Pack a small bag separate from your main luggage with overnight essentials, so your main suitcase can stay overhead.
• Bring water. The train has water, but not always on tap.
• Set an alarm 20 minutes before arrival. The attendant's wakeup call is reliable but the breakfast service compresses fast at the end.
• Don't expect plane-style efficiency. The whole point of the night train is that it is not optimized for speed. Embrace the slowness.

What the comeback means

The European night train revival is one of the more cheering recent stories in travel. It demonstrates that infrastructure declared "obsolete" can be brought back when the underlying conditions shift. It offers a working alternative to short-haul aviation that doesn't require any heroic technological breakthrough — just political will and operational competence.

It's also, much more selfishly, just a beautiful way to travel. There are few small luxuries in modern life as quietly perfect as falling asleep in one country and waking up in another, with the world rolling past your window the entire night.

If you've never tried it, book one. The romance, against all expectations, is back.