|
|
Night Trains in Europeby Ben HainesIn December 1998 I wrote a note to an enquirer, and people new to night rail travel in Europe may appreciate this information as well. I have updated my note over time, most recently on 19 January 2001. I travel by at least three night trains in west Europe each year, and on a dozen or so in central Europe. The printed book, the Thomas Cook European Timetable, has times and routes of trains and is worth the money, especially if bought in Europe at 14 to 20 US dollars, not in North America at 33 dollars. Or, train schedules may be found at the several European rail servers such as for Swiss Rail or German Rail. With the book at home, you can plan out your whole trip. But you need not stick to the plan, as except in August and at Christmas and Easter you can book most berths three days ahead, and most seats on the day of travel. So you can travel fancy free, staying as long as you choose in each place, or even getting off a train because you like the look of a mountain that you see through the window. You have to hand the full picture of all the fast and express trains of Europe, not just the selection that you choose to print out from a web site. Thus you are free to change your plans at any point, or if the train is late (which is unlikely) to re-plan that part of your journey and perhaps leave at an earlier station. Even if you stick to planned travel, the book tells you whether you are late, and if your train is very late you can re-cast your journey to suit your needs. It is in major public reference libraries. You can reserve seats and berths using a credit card in any station with a computer link to European bookings (which means any large or largeish station) in Britain, France, Benelux, Germany, Switzerland or Austria. I expect there are many other countries of western Europe where this is true. Across western Europe all national reservation systems are linked to all others, so you can book a little ahead if you like. But in winter (other than at Christmas) you need to book only on trains where it's compulsory, for night berths, and for travel on Friday afternoons -- and even in these cases a day ahead is enough. The same tendency to find space everywhere is true in autumn, winter and spring in central Europe, except that internal night berths can get full in Bulgaria, Romania, between the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and in Poland. And of central European national booking systems only the Hungarian, Czech and Polish are linked with the European system. It's no big deal: you simply make a point of booking your next train onwards at the time that you arrive at a station. The booking staff are helpful, but tend to have no English, so you need to write on a bit of paper some such message as "15.II.1999. Galati 2018 -Timisoara. Train 772/3. 2 Klasse." And add the international rail icon for, shall we say, a sleeper (you'll learn this icon fast: it's widespread). Booking staff don't take credit cards in Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Yugoslavia, nor Slovakia. I think they don't in Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland, but those countries move ahead with such astonishing speed that perhaps they do now (January 2001: of course they do. How dated I sound). No matter: in all those countries Automatic Teller Machines (bank cash machines) give money against Visa or MasterCard or both, so long as you have a four-digit PIN code. The exchange rate is good, but you do pay two percent. As I say, for night travel in Europe around Easter and Christmas, and in high summer, you should reserve two weeks ahead -- though you may get away with just one week. The computer opens bookings two months before travel, but hardly anybody books all that time ahead. The reason is that once you've booked you can use your basic ticket price for any train on the route, but must pay the supplement for sleeper or couchette all over again if you change your plans. Often you can book at your arrival airport or in your first city in Europe. But in high summer, Christmas or Easter you may want to book ahead. You can do that by phoning various reservation offices, depending on where you first touch down, in European office hours, and with a credit card. Each office can book the whole journey around Europe -- basic ticket, seats, couchettes, or sleepers, and can send you your tickets. Useful places are these.
|
|
A couchette is a compartment or cabin
which by day looks like any other second class compartment. But hidden in the headboard
and seat are beds, and the car conductor turns the compartment into a cabin with three
beds either side, one above the other, so six beds in all. Each cabin has a small ladder
for people to reach to top berths. There are the usual toilets (in American English
bathrooms) at the ends of the corridor, and also smaller cubicles for washing (sometimes
with cold water and no hot). Men and women share, so you cannot change into pajamas. The conductor offers coffee, drinks, peanuts and biscuits, but none of these are good value, and the coffee is usually instant. He or she also offers bottled water, and if you have none with you you might buy some - again, it's expensive. You control the heating and lighting in your compartment. If there's a bright central light on you can switch it off, and use the little bedhead light. Whereas modern French couchettes have blinds on the window side and on the corridor side, many other couchettes have curtains, not blinds, so some people feel bothered at station platforms in the middle of the night, as station lamplight pours into the train. If there is no curtain you should ask the conductor for another compartment: I have never experienced this. The conductor gives each passenger a sleeping bag, a blanket, and a pillow, a rather solid foam filled vinyl covered affair that goes into the sleeping bag. If you receive no pillow, you'll find one somewhere. You can often beg a further blanket if you like to sleep specially warm. If some people rise before others you can easily fold away one middle berth, and thus get three or narrowly four seats. For this reason your deepest sleepers should be up in the top two berths, and your lightest in a lower and a middle berth one above the other. You can pay fares and supplements for six bunks and occupy just four, on anybody's couchette. But on a German couchette carriage you can often find a couple of compartments offered for four bunks. In these cases, the supplement rises from 13 dollars a bunk to 19 dollars each, still second class. I'm afraid I know of no couchettes with bigger than standard bunks: the 4-bunk ones I know are just cabins in which two bunks have been folded away. These German 4-berth compartments apart, a couchette supplement is 13 US dollars, and about 20 on a selected night train, a EuroNight. Fares from Paris are often "global", which means you buy your ticket and berth reservation as a package. Detail at the SNCF website. But these pages do not help on costs of French berths as a supplement to a Eurail or InterRail pass. Generally, with a pass, you pay the berth costs I've quoted. The French have first class, 4-berth, couchettes, but I've not used them. It is wise to choose the top bunk in a couchette compartment, if you can. You are farther away from the sounds of other passengers and noise coming up from the bogies and track, you have more headroom, and you are next to the controls that work the heating and air conditioning. If you open the window, the noise is bad, and the draught even worse. It is true that you have to climb all the way down from the top bunk if you want to go the loo (john) in the night (and back afterwards). There is an aluminium ladder for the purpose. Two people together like to be at the same level, so that they can talk a little -- but not after you put the lights out. If you don't get the right level bunks no worry: people are nearly always ready to swap if you ask pleasantly and before they settle. Couchettes have room enough for luggage for six people, but not to open and use luggage for six people. So on your last mornings you should take a plastic carrier bag and put in it your pajamas, toilet gear, perhaps a change of shirt, bedtime reading, rail tickets for that night only, passport, and a couple of banknotes for the city you'll arrive in next morning, and any note you need on where your next hotel is. Then you put the carrier bags on top of your packed luggage, and get it out loose that evening, not in the train, but on the platform two minutes before you board the train. Your conductor and you will be glad to get the bags put away in your cabin on shelves and under beds, leaving you to scrabble ad lib in your carrier bag. Once you have your bunk, get in and do your unpacking, whatever, on the bunk. There is just a very narrow walkway between the bunks, so standing there disrupts everyone. I made sure everything I'd need for the night was in my small daypack, so I didn't have to open up the suitcase. Be sure to have a bottle of water and lozenges (why does one always get a nasty coughing fit when it will disturb the most people?), and scope out where the WC is (so if you have to go in the night you won't have to do a search!). This last paragraph applies also to sleepers. Now that I am less active than I was when young, I seldom use couchettes, and use instead 3-berth second class sleeping compartments. The advantage for me as a bachelor is that they book single travellers by sex, so we are all men, and can with decency change into pajamas to sleep. Also, they have a wash basin (with hot and cold taps) for each three people, making it easier to brush my teeth before bed and to wash before disembarkation (they also lend a small towel and give a smidgeon of soap). But they do cost more. A couchette in a 6-berth cabin costs a 13 dollar supplement: a bed in a 3-bed sleeper costs a 40 dollar supplement. You can both lock and bolt the door of a sleeper, and you should ask your conductor to show your party how to do so. Both sleeper and couchettes cars are usually at ends of trains, and conductors lock them off both from the rest of the train and from the platform, except when admitting new passengers. This being so, I see no point in taking a cablelock to lock your bag to the luggage rack. The second class sleepers have three berths each. Couples, one man one woman, cannot book such a compartment together. No matter: what you do is book into a men's and a women's compartment, reach the platform beside the sleeper half an hour before it leaves, chat with the conductor, and see whether he or she has space enough to swap you into a 3-berth compartment of your own in which the third berth stays empty. A ten dollar tip next morning would encourage similar kindness to travellers who come after you. In the European Union area and Switzerland the conductor does not wake you during the night. You hand over your rail tickets and passports as you board or ten minutes later, and 30 minutes before final arrival conductors wake you to hand them back. This is of course no cause for concern: what would it benefit a rail officer to fail to return your passport ? Even for countries where in principle there are customs checks -- Switzerland is not in the European Union -- the task of passing passport and customs checks lies with the sleeping car conductor, acting on your behalf. This has been so for thirty years or more. In central Europe, I'm afraid, they wake you at each frontier, but you stay in bed, and hardly need to wake up fully. Then at the frontiers of Turkey... But there, I have drawn a limit, and I have notes on Turkish night travel on another file, which I can e-mail you if you ask. There's a question of what to do in the evening of the last day in a city, before boarding a sleeper or couchette at ten at night. Frail people might see whether they can hold onto just one bedroom for an extra night, and use it as sitting room for the last afternoon and evening in each city. A room of your own is a great comfort, even if (as I hope) you find for your last evening a concert, opera, restaurant, or film show, or a combination of these. Backpacks or rucksacks are a pest on trains and in storage lockers, as all luggage spaces are rectangular. A wheeled suitcase is a good idea, and I've used them for the last ten years or more. I like the kind that zips rather than buckles, as it keeps its shape and is easy to open. The case I used for my trip from Karachi to London by rail measures 28 inches by 19 inches by 8.5 inches. I am stout and 64: for me it was fine for half a mile or so: after that it became tedious. It was much better without books in it than with, and from time to time I spent about 10 dollars to send back home those guide books and other books that I would no longer need. If your night train stops to pick up passengers only a couple of minutes, you should arrive on the platform ten minutes early, hold your bed reservation tickets in your hand, and ask station staff or fellow passengers to show you where your sleeping car is going to draw up. They may show you a useful board with a plan of each night train that shows you where your berths will be. It's no problem: your conductor will be looking out for you. Still, you don't want to walk the length of the train, with luggage. Since the point of sleeping cars is to sleep, you won't want to use any buffet or restaurant car early on an arrival morning. But it makes sense to sup on any train that leaves before eight p.m. The classic routine (as in the great movies) is to book and then dine in the restaurant car. But these days in west Europe such cars are rather few (and those between Paris and Italy give poor value). Quite often, on the afternoon of your last day in a city you should go to a supermarket and buy up cold meats, pate, cheese, butter, fresh bread, tomatoes, olives, other salad to taste, fruit, and wine: a red and a white. Your hotel may even let you keep these goodies in their fridge till you leave for the station. Also, paper cups a newspaper to serve as tablecloth. And the day before that you should buy table knives and a corkscrew that works well for you, or bring them from your home country. You draw the first cork ten minutes after departure and wipe the last fruit juice from your lips an hour later. And so to bed. You won't need a sleeping pill after that lot. In Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary dining cars are fairly common on sleeping car trains. Most sleeping cars have roller blinds that draw down and seal out all outside light. If there are curtains too, you should check that the roller blind is down before you go to bed. Curtains alone are not enough: your train stops at night at platforms with bright lights that pour into the train. If you can't get your compartment properly dark you should ask your conductor to move you. Again, most have a small blue light: you should decide by agreement whether it's useful for getting up to go to the loo at midnight, or better switched off to get a deep night's sleep. One solution is to have a hand torch by your pillow, so that you can sleep in pitch dark and can still go to the loo. You should say clearly and firmly to your conductor that you want to sleep as long as possible, and that you want no morning coffee -- it's not good on trains anyway, except in France, Belgium and Bulgaria. If there's a language problem, you can do all this through a friendly fellow-traveller. Your conductor will tell you things about his duty to wake you: you look sad, and imply if you can that this won't be good for his or her tip. (A standard tip to a sleeper conductor is 5 US dollars: one no longer tips couchette conductors, except for special services). Trains don't run early, so you should know your arrival time, and get out of bed only 30 minutes before that. Even if you're all awake your body travels more restfully in bed than sitting up. Some night cars are transferred during the night from one train to another, and are left on a side line for up to an hour, to make the connection. There is no call for worry. Indeed, if you travel with the Thomas Cook timetable you will know in advance when this silence is going to happen. You lock and chain your door at night. Nobody wakes you, even at frontiers, as the conductor has your tickets and your passports. He or she tends to wake you rather too early to serve coffee and return tickets and passports, but you want to sleep as long as possible. If you do wake early and cannot sleep again you can always order a poor coffee in the morning. On short or shortish nights you can get in a little extra sleep by boarding the train at a terminus thirty minutes early, and going to bed. All concerned need to agree that if they want to chat they will walk through to an empty compartment in the nearest day car, and talk there. You need not tolerate people who stand in the corridor and chat, or who smoke in the corridor just outside your door, but can politely ask them to move down the car. If they do not, you can ask the conductor to ask them. I have rarely needed to do either. One contributor to a discussion group was bothered by a crying baby, and I admit I've no solution for that. On the other hand, it must be rare: I've never been next to one. On arrival you leave the train, but in no great hurry if it runs no further. You do anything that you want to do in the arrival station -- get a luggage trolley, exchange money, have a coffee, buy an English language paper and the local newspaper or city events list (such as "Pariscope" or "Berlin Tips"), ask the tourist information office for advice on local transport and for an events list, and if need be to book your hostel or hotel. There there are always a handful of armchairs and sometimes a lounge, so you can sit still and let the morning develop around you, not rush out to the first event. I often find that my room is in fact ready already at nine in the morning, at no extra cost, and catch up on any sleep. On the other hand, many city tourist offices run a two hour walking tour of the city centre starting at ten am, and this is a good way to see fine buildings and get an idea of the shape of the place (Last year in Augsburg we were a walking group of eight, and asked so many questions that our 2 hour 5 dollar tour turned into 3 hours, to the mutual delight of our lecturer and ourselves, and we all had a great appetite for lunch). Two guide books to Europe are designed for rail travellers. One is Europe by Train, edited by Katie Wood and George McDonald, published by Fontana, an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers. The other is Europe 2001, the Inter-Railer's and Eurailer's Guide published by Thomas Cook at 15 pounds in Britain, 18 pounds outside Europe. Both naturally concentrate upon large cities. Both start with useful general chapters on rail travel. There's a briefer note, on sleepers and couchettes on www.eurorail.com/sleepers.htm. I have a note on night trains in the Balkans and in Turkey in Asia, and on the journey from Athens to Istanbul by land. Please tell me if you'd like one of these by e-mail, or if you have another query. by Ben Haines Resources in print: Comments or questions for the author?
Aged 64, Mr. Haines is a Churchwarden, a governor of a small primary school, and secretary of a neighbourhood centre, all of them in south London. He takes trains about five weeks each year, and advises enquirers on two web travel fora. Mr. Haines calls himself a citizen of London, and of Europe. Would you like to add an article about your travel experiences in Europe? It's easy to do. Our Favorites Trip Tips and Tools The Not-For-Profit Site For Your Travel Plans |
