Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries of hidden europe magazine report for EuroCheapo on the pleasures and value of European night trains:

Do you know Tczew? Perhaps not. It’s an unexciting sort of spot. Poland, top right, more or less. We had never imagined that we might enjoy a leisurely breakfast of caviar, crackers, and coffee at Tczew. Sitting in a Russian railway carriage, which lingered for an hour or two in Tczew. Waiting for a connection perhaps? Who knows. Night trains are like that.

The pleasures of the night train

Night trains are extraordinary. They rattle past factories and canals, disturb the deer that graze at the forest edge in the evening. In the wee small hours of the night, they screech round sharp curves in some foreign town. A listless child stirs in her sleep in a house next to the railway tracks, while last night’s unwashed crockery trembles on the scullery table. And then the train is gone, an emissary from another world, and silence returns to the unnamed town. Night trains get to places that other trains never reach.

Night trains are the stuff of poetry, but they can also be extraordinarily good value. There is something undeniably civilized about being able to sip a good malt whisky in the evening, as the night train from London to the Scottish Highlands weaves its way out through the northern suburbs of the metropolis. Supper on the train and then to bed in crisp clean linen to awake in the morning as the train climbs up onto Rannoch Moor. Book well in advance, choose the right day, and you can even travel from London to the Scottish Highlands for £l9 (yes, that’s less than $40).

Germany’s new night trains

The Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s national rail network, capitalizes on its location bang in the middle of Europe to run the continent’s most extensive network of night train services. Revamped for the 2008 season, the trains are quiet, comfortable and often a great value. Trains head from Copenhagen or Prague to Basel in Switzerland, from Amsterdam to Milan or Vienna, and dozens of other connections across Europe.

The comfort of the night train is a quiet retort to the frenzy of modern air travel. They’re also an antidote to the breakneck speed of the fastest daytime express trains. Why not try one next time you visit Europe?

Booking a night train

“Special fares apply” says the admonition in the Thomas Cook European Rail Timetable, a monthly publication that is the bible for all savvy rail travelers in Europe. That might imply hefty surcharges. But no, night trains are often cheaper than daytime services. From Switzerland to Denmark overnight in a couchette from just €49 cannot be matched by any discount airline or day train. Choose carefully, and you can travel overnight between European cities in a comfortable sleeping berth for €69.

Most European night trains use a global price system with one all-in charge covering both the train fare and the fee for on-board accommodation. Holders of Eurail and other passes don’t often secure great advantage. The best value all-in fares that Europeans buy locally may cost little more than the supplements that pass holders must pay to secure a couchette or bed. It’s a market which rewards travelers who book well in advance, committing them to traveling on a specific day. Find out more about German night trains, now marketed under the “City Night Line” banner, at www.nachtzugreise.de.

This article is the second of a guest series of summer postings by the editors of hidden europe magazine. Check out the magazine for regular features on European rail travel.

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Even the most seasoned European traveller can be caught unawares by rail schedules changes. Most European rail companies introduce major timetable changes over the second weekend in December, and this year there are some big alterations in the offing.

There is no more civilised way of making a big hop across Europe than on a night train, and the new schedules see a whole raft of new night train services. Take Amsterdam for example. The Dutch city has always featured on Europe’s night train schedules, but for 2008 Amsterdam secures new daily services to Copenhagen, Dresden, Milan, Minsk, Moscow, Prague, and Warsaw.

For the first time for many years Switzerland and Bavaria will benefit from direct overnight trains to Poland and points east, with new direct night sleeper services from Basel SBB and Munich to Warsaw and Moscow. Fixed fares apply for travel on most European night train routes, often with little advantage for railpass holders. A one-way journey in a shared sleeper costs from €69. For those on a budget, couchettes are priced from €49 and a one-way overnight in a reclining seat begins at €29.

The changes are of course not limited to night train services. New for 2008 are a daily direct train from both Vienna and Prague to Stralsund on Germany’s Baltic coast, a very handy new daytime train from Kraków to Budapest (less than nine hours on a beautiful route through the mountains that straddle the Polish-Slovakian border), a new fast direct daytime service from Paris to Munich (just over six hours) to supplement the long-standing Paris-Munich night train, a new direct Berlin to Copenhagen link (where the entire train gets shipped on a ferry between Denmark and Germany), and a new direct once daily train from Geneva Airport to Venice.

Rail travel in Europe can challenge even the most competent travel planner. Web sites like those of the Deutsche Bahn can help. But there is really no substitute for the Thomas Cook European Rail Timetable, a gem of a book updated each month. For many savvy European travellers, it is required bedtime reading.

This is the fifth in a series of fortnightly blog posts by the editors of hidden europe.

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For over a week now we’ve been staring at a postcard sent to us by Miranda Siegel. Postmarked Kangerlussuaq, it bears an image of snow-covered houses in the Greenlandic town of Ilulissat. Miranda reports having eaten caribou, muskox, and arctic bilberries, among other exotic delicacies during her recent Greenland adventure. She also reports that capital Nuuk needs a budget hotel.

In news from another arctic land, we learned today that Karelian Trains—a partnership between Finnish and Russian Railways—have ordered four high-speed trains for the company’s Helsinki-St. Petersburg route. In 2006, the passenger tally on this route jumped 26 per cent over the previous year’s numbers. The company clearly hopes to maintain this momentum.

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