Night trains in Europe. Night train travel in Europe. Night train Prague – Krakow

At first glance, the rattle of a passenger car being uncoupled or driven to a siding somewhere at a station in central Europe at midnight is not all that romantic. But if you imagine that this is a night train, following from to, and that you are lying on a narrow shelf right under the ceiling, and everything immediately changes and becomes much more exciting.

In contrast to day trains, whose principle is to get passengers from point A to point B as quickly as possible, the slowness of night trains aims to get passengers to their destination rested and ready for a new day. A trip on such a train is an adventure in itself, because it is impossible to predict who will be your fellow traveler. And there is always a chance that you will never be able to fall asleep, either because of the fantastic landscapes outside the window, or because of a cheerful company.

An invaluable advantage of night trains is the ability to save on hotel costs. Rail carriers offer different types of compartments: for two/four passengers, compartments for six berths and seating. Choose the option that suits your budget and buy your ticket in advance (at least a few days in advance) especially during the high season. You can save a lot if you buy a ticket 30 - 120 days before the intended trip.

Choose one of the best European night trains and good luck!

Night train St. Petersburg - Moscow

For 77 years, every evening around midnight, the iconic train "Red Arrow" departs from the Moscow railway station to the sounds of R. Glier's "Hymn to the Great City" from to. The dream of many Soviet people to ride on the Strela has become available today. This train was quite deservedly the pride of Russian railways. The political elite, high officials and ordinary people traveled on this train, and all were offered the same comfortable travel conditions. The same journey can be made in the afternoon on a high-speed train in four and a half hours, but remember, you will not have a comfortable bed, a glass of vodka at night, a famous anthem and a sense of belonging to history.

Night train London - Fort William

There are only two trains with sleeping cars. One, the "Night Riviera" departs from Paddington Station and travels southwest to the port city of Penzance in Cornwall.
But more interesting is the Caledonian sleeper train. This legendary train departs every night (except Saturday) from Euston station in London and travels in different directions to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverness, Aberdeen, Fort William. When approaching Fort William, stunning views of the Scottish Highlands and the highest mountain in Scotland, Ben Nevis, open up.

Night train Paris - Venice

At night, trains leave the capital and diverge in different directions across the continent. This is perhaps the only way to leave, especially on a hot summer evening, when, waiting for a train at the crowded stations of Bercy or Gare de Lyon, you really want to get into a cool car, go to bed in a cozy compartment, and wake up somewhere on the coast in the morning. The most popular destination on night trains is Paris - Venice. If you suffer from insomnia and cannot fall asleep, outside the train window you will see an enchanting spectacle of the moonlit Alps and Italian lakes. Leaving the bustle of Paris in the evening, in the morning you will plunge into a unique flavor. By traveling this way, you will have the advantage of two hours without the tourists arriving on the daytime trains.

Night train Trondheim - Bodo

In general, amazing beauty should be admired in the light of day. But there are two reasons for taking the ten-hour night train journey from Trondheim to Bodo. Firstly, if you make this trip in the summer, you will lose absolutely nothing - the sun in the summer here almost does not hide behind the horizon, and you will see in detail the most beautiful Norwegian landscapes. Secondly, Norwegian trains are a great place to have some fun in the company of temporary fellow travelers, and a shelf in a sleeping car is a great way to save money in this expensive country.

Night train Amsterdam - Copenhagen

CityNightLine services can be called a benchmark among European transport companies offering overnight transfers. The trains of this company serve passengers in and provide passenger connections with other countries. These modern trains offer reclining seats and compartments with 2, 4, 6 beds. The best offer is provided by the German railways, on the route from to through Hamburg. For only 29 euros (seat) or 49 euros (sleeper) you will have several hours to look at from the car window.

Night train Budapest - Split

Keleti station in the capital city of Budapest is a great place to start your journey, while Split, the port city in , is an excellent place to visit. The station is located very close to the port, from where you can get to the islands of Brac, Hvar and other smaller islands. On the way from Budapest to Split, you will pass by the Hungarian Lake Balaton, make a short stop in the capital of Croatia, Zagreb. Keep in mind, this route operates only in the summer.

Night train Prague – Krakow

This is a classic European destination linking two of the most important cities in Central Europe. A nine-hour overnight journey will be quite enough to oversleep after drinking in

Modern tourists know how to save money, and therefore more and more often travel around Europe on night trains.

Such trips are extremely profitable: you do not need to pay for a roof over your head to a hostel or hotel, because. you can sleep in a relatively clean and safe place, in addition, while you sleep, the train will take you to your destination.

There are two types of night trains in Europe - fast and sleeping.

Ambulances travel all night, you can get into them from any station and get off at any stop at any time. Such a train includes all types of wagons. Fast trains use regular fares.

Most of the European night trains leave after 7 pm and finish the route by 11.00 am.

In rare cases, the train starts or ends its route in the afternoon.

A daily train trip is a real rarity. This is the prerogative of the Balkan countries, since the rail transport system is poorly developed.

The standard timetable is this, the train leaves at 23.00 pm and arrives at 7:00 or 8:00.

Sleeper trains are more comfortable, depart in the evening and stay on the road until the morning at most, and also never travel during the day. Such a train makes two circles of stops - evening and morning.

Passengers boarding is carried out in the evening, and only disembarkation awaits them in the morning. There are no other tickets. At night, from about 0.00 to 5.00 or 6.00, it is forbidden to leave the sleeper train, because. in Europe they worry about the sleepers. If the sleeping train suddenly stopped at night, these are just technical stops..

On this train, you must immediately reserve a seat. It has its own price system that does not depend on the distance, and the fares are slightly different.

The cost of tickets here is slightly higher than in fast trains. The first class carriage ticket includes breakfast.

Changing the timetable of night trains in Europe

Night trains in Europe

Employees of German railways spoke about another reduction in night train runs.

It should concern a number of transit international trains passing through the FRG.

From December 14, 2014, the new timetable will be valid on such train routes going via Berlin and Hamburg to Paris, as well as routes from Copenhagen to Basel, Amsterdam and Prague. Plus, the Warsaw-Amsterdam train route will be shortened to Cologne.

Caring tourists are collecting signatures for a petition for the preservation of the former regime.

The railroad spoke about the real reason - this is the unprofitability of night routes, because night trains have been in decline for the past 10 years due to the rapid growth of low-cost airlines.

Summing up, we note that dozens of night trains have been removed in Europe. The biggest cuts were made in Spain, which left behind one sleeper train to Lisbon, and in December at night it will be possible to go from France only to Italy. This means that now tourists will either have to check into hotels or fork out for other transport.

If the petition does not affect the decision of the authorities, there are always comforting sides for tourists - architecture and sights are not visible at night, departure takes place late in the evening, and arrival is early in the morning, so you can’t always count on a good sleep.

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October 29, acting Head of the Board of UZ Alexander Zavgorodniy once again confirmed the company's course to reduce the number of night trains, which are perceived as "hotels on wheels". For many years now, we, tourists, have been observing such a course and its results, and we simply cannot remain silent any longer.

To begin with, I would like to describe why such trains are needed. The point is not at all that tourists want to save 100 hryvnias on a hostel. Speech is completely different - in time. You can take the train on Friday evening, spend the weekend in Odessa, Dnipro, Lvov, Kyiv, spend money there and be at work on Monday morning. The second scenario - trips to one-day conferences, exhibitions, events in Kyiv. If you use a day train, then you will have to spend +2 days, and to escape from work for one or three days - after all, the difference is three times. In the case of weekends, you will have to take two days off, instead of just days off.

The cancellation of night trains will deal a death blow to domestic tourism. Which, in turn, is terribly useful for the economy, since the hryvnia spent inside the country is not the hryvnia spent on the purchase of imported goods or a trip to Egypt.

In addition, without night trains, people will change to a car, since it has always been cheaper to travel by four in a car than in the same train by train. Also and often faster, plus you do not need to take a taxi at the place of arrival. The number of road trips will increase, which means more purchases of imported gasoline, currency flowing out of the country, inevitable accidents and deaths, which, even in peacetime, are almost the same as losses in the ATO. And of course more broken roads and suspension. Hello again, imports and spending on road repairs.

In general, the ministers of economy and tourism should stop talking nonsense and start "inserting the brains" of the heads of the UZ.
In fact - night trains, it's a miracle. Transport of the 21st century. "Instant teleport", working on the principle "passenger closed his eyes in Kharkov - opened in Lvov, Kyiv or Odessa". And now they are trying to cancel even that little, good thing that was before.

Comments

10.11.2015 17:26

Mladyon wrote:

That's why I wrote above that our leadership of the UZ is complete assholes!

about maintaining the old - so they are supported with all their might. trying to keep prices at the old level.
regarding taxes on UZ, I honestly wasn’t interested, but an inner voice tells me that the statehood of the company lies in the fact that the main shareholder of the company is the state and, accordingly, it receives profit from the company and, managing the company’s policy, distributes profits, for example, to support suburban transportation.
by the way, about the cost of transportation and competition - in the last 5-8 years, a lot of carrier companies have appeared that provide transportation services / lease wagons, etc. in fact, at the moment, UZD has a fleet of freight cars - trash, and if you need to transport abroad or something more decent than garbage, you need to take the cars from the carrier company. so - the cost of services somehow did not decrease, but quite the contrary
about our own production of wagons - a great idea, but you need to do this a little earlier than buying wagons. and we can only think about today and your pocket. 10.11.2015 20:03

AndySouth wrote:

Well, besides that, Hyundai makes two flights a day, unlike the night one. this pmsm is essential.
about maintaining the old - so they are supported with all their might. trying to keep prices at the old level....

Duc, the point is that Hyundai and "night" are trains of different range of application. The "night" task is to bring passengers from one end of Ukraine to the other overnight for a distance of 700-1100 km, with a duration of 8-12 hours. And Hyundai and other Skodas are trains for distances of 300-500 km, which fly in less than 5 hours. That is, some go Kharkov-Lviv or Uzhgorod, Odessa-Lviv or Odessa-Kharkov. Others Lvov-Kiev, Kiev-Kharkov, Kiev-Dnipro, Dnipro-Odessa... And bureaucrats from UZ make us believe that it is quite possible to merge these two classes and everything will be fine and convenient.
Well, and above, he specifically cited clearly that the existing trains, for the most part, are not optimal for the real needs of transportation. The same Hyundais are rarely loaded by more than 50%, so why drive such long trains. Break a couple of Hyundais into "halves" and let them go in the middle of the day, when the number of passengers is minimal, and coordinate their arrival in the same Kiev with the departure of similar "high-speed-seated" further. And then just look at the schedule. On the Kharkiv-Kyiv line, "intercity" trains arrive in Kyiv at 12:01, 17:53, 23:18. And to Lviv from Kyiv, such "smarts" go in the morning at 06:44, and in the evening at 17:21 (from Kharkov it arrives half an hour later) and in the interval of 20.10-22.40. That is, even if you quickly get to Kyiv on a Hyundai, then you have to wait a few more hours for the opportunity to go further. Here, it’s already like better “shustriks” come back from Lviv to Kiev at 10:52 and 22:30, and then there are “intercity” to Kharkiv at 11:24, 18:11 and 22:40, but between trains late in the evening there is only a docking 10 minutes, you can easily be late.

In general, the bottom line is that the railway communication in Ukraine is in many respects concretely chaotic, there is not the slightest attempt to provide the passenger with a fast and convenient movement, NOT tied to one or two trains a day. At least if you work with the schedule, there are absolutely no connections between regional teams in the same Kyiv, Dnipro or Zaporozhye. If there are more trains, there will be fewer wagons in them, locomotives will be needed with less power and, accordingly, gluttony .... In suburban traffic, it is also high time to run short trains in the middle of the day, but more often. Apply the separation of wagons as you move away from megacities. It is logical to separate half of the train at ~25-30 km from the city and send it back to the city. Until the other half reaches the final station and returns to the point of separation, and the one that returns to the city will just have time to breed the next portion of summer residents. As a result, we get one flight to a distant station, and two round-trip flights at half the distance. But alas ... no one in UZ is in a hurry to do this, but it’s easier for an ordinary person to take a bus that runs every 20-30 minutes, and not once every 3-4 hours like electric trains .... And as if the price increase in suburban trains will somehow correct this situation ....

For the sake of an example, I drove in for the same Hungarian railways (far from the richest country in Europe) a request for two towns in different parts of the country (Szombathely and Nyíregyháza, for those who are interested), about 500 km accumulated there. There were enough options with an interval of no more than two hours ... although some of them even contain 6 transfers. But the towns are quite similar in size to the same Kovel, Shostka or Kupyansk. Try to find possible trains between similar towns to get there with the help of UZ, there you will spend more time at transfer stations than you will go. And the Hungarians have no problems:

Well I do not know
Judging by the schedule, it costs 700-800 UAH and takes 6-8 hours and at least two transfers.
I prefer Hyundai

Threat. But in general it is cheap by European standards.

Regarding the chemistry with the re-formation of trains, etc. - xs how effective it is.
This will pull the complication of the infrastructure, which will gobble up all the expected savings at the stage of fantasy

In general, what I wanted to say

Pretty boring way to get around Europe, and after spending the night on the bus, it feels like you've been run over by a skating rink. There is much more to see and experience if you travel by rail. How to make a train trip not only picturesque, but also inexpensive and logical, how to eat and have fun - we share important and non-obvious life hacks.

Save on scale

If you have planned a large-scale eurotrip, it makes sense to invest in an InterRail pass. This is a travel card that is valid on trains throughout Europe or a separate EU country - depending on which type of ticket you choose. For example, you can ride a month in 30 European countries from € 200, and the cost of such a travel pass for Italy per month is only € 87. True, there are some tricks here too: the price varies greatly depending on the days that you will directly spend on the road.

Since you are a diligent traveler, we advise you not to rush into the pool with your head and carefully calculate - perhaps individual tickets will cost less. How to do it? We recommend using Loco2, a powerful train ticket aggregator that has many handy features. For example, the ability to book tickets and pay later. Or set an alert that will trigger when the ticket price drops.

Choose: do it fast or slow?

Europe is full of high-speed trains that allow you to travel through several countries a day. In Western European countries, the French TGV, Italian Thello and German ICE are responsible for such sprint movements. But if you don't feel like literally galloping across Europe, check out the following guys who offer slow and very scenic rides.

Feel safe

Statistics on your side: Train is the safest mode of transport. Okay, planes are twice as likely to get into accidents, but aerophobia is a topic for a separate discussion.

At the same time, no one canceled the basic ones. Don't interact with suspicious people near stations, especially at night, and if you're on the night train, bring a combination bike lock from home to tie down your bag. In any case, the worst thing that can happen to you is a shoe stolen at night while you sleep peacefully on the top shelf.

If you want to know if the railway workers are on strike somewhere and how it will affect your journey, follow twitter

In Europe, where distances between cities are not so great, night trains provide an excellent alternative to other means of transportation. During the night on the train, you will not only reach your destination, but also have time to sleep and gain strength, as well as save on nights in a hotel. In this article, I want to talk about night trains in Europe and the types of seats that can be booked on such trains.

There are three categories of seats on night trains: ordinary or seated places, recumbent places, and sleeping places with bed linen provided. To compare the proposed places and prices for them, consider the night train on the route Munich - Vienna. The trip lasts 6 hours, during which it is quite possible to have a good rest.

Seat place(German Sitzplatz) are provided in a 6-seater compartment or in a shared carriage. This is the most budget travel option, the cost of such a place is 69 Euro. The seats in the 6-seat coupe look like this, the nice thing is that the seat can be pushed forward and stretched out on it to its full height.

Seats in a shared carriage.

Lying places(German Liegeplatz) can be bought in a 4- or 6-seater coupe. For each seat purchased, you will be given a sheet, blanket, and pillow. It is convenient to order a separate compartment with lying places when you are traveling with your company and do not want strangers in the compartment. At night, the compartment, of course, closes. The cost of 1 seat in a 4-seater compartment is 89 Euro, in a 6-seater compartment - 79 Euro.

Sleeping places(German Schlafplatz) - the most comfortable option for traveling, but also the most expensive. Sleeping compartments are designed for 2-4 people and are equipped with a separate toilet. The price also includes breakfast and bed linen. Coupes come in Economy and Deluxe classes. A trip in a 2-seater compartment of the Economy class will cost 109 Euros for 1 person, in a 1-seater compartment - 159 Euros for 1 person. A deluxe class coupe is not provided on this route, but one must think that its price is significantly higher than for an economy class.

In a compartment above the door, there must be a temperature regulator; as a rule, there is a socket by the window.

All night trains in Europe are equipped with a dining car.

Most tickets for night trains can only be bought at the box office, if you're lucky, you can buy tickets on the Internet. If you are traveling within Germany, or leaving Germany abroad, you can buy it on the German Railways website.

I happened to travel on night trains on the routes Stuttgart - Vienna, Prague - Spisska Nova Ves (Slovakia), Prague - Budapest. Twice at the same time, I rode in seating places that you can recline at night and sleep peacefully. Once (to Slovakia) I rode on a recumbent seat in a compartment for 4 people.

The most popular and longest night train routes in Europe include the following: Berlin - Zurich (travel time - 11 hours), Paris - Venice (travel time - 13 hours), Berlin - Belgrade (travel time - 26 hours). Along the way, trains make stops in major cities along the way.