The FENS is the biggest neuroscientific conference in Europe. It is 5 days long and is attended by 5’000-10’000 participants. This year, the conference took place in Austria’s capital, Vienna, roughly 600 km from my current workplace in Zürich. Of course, there are regular and cheap flight between the two cities; however, there are good reasons why to use other means of transportation instead (check out Anne Urai‘s work): busses, regular trains, and night trains. In this blog post, I will share my impression what it is like to take a night train in Europe and why it is a great option for some (but not for everybody).

What’s special about night trains?

Night trains (also called sleeper cars) typically cover longer distances than regular trains. Traditionally, they tried to offer more comfort for an over-night stay, like comfortable beds, additional cars with proper restaurants and bars, or at least a breakfast served at your seat. Especially in times when trains were slower and airplanes not available, night trains were one of the more comfortable options to make a long trip enjoyable. I was surprised to find out that some of the earliest night trains were actually operated in the USA! However, the probably most famous examples of night trains traverse the Eurasian continent. For example, the Transiberian Railway, which extends from the Western to the Eastern Border of Russia; or the Orient Express, which passes through a large part of Europe from Paris to Istanbul.

Seating carriages, sleeper’s carriages and things between

In most night trains that I know, there are three different carriages. First, the cheaper carriages where you stay on a seat over night. Sometimes, these seats can be pulled out and converted into an improvised bed. Second, the couchette, which offers bunk beds, usually with 4 or 6 beds within one compartment, with 2 or 3 stories on the left and the right. And finally, a more spacious and more private sleeper compartment, with typically 1 to 3 beds. It is also possible, for an additional fee, to reserve a sleeper compartment for oneself, for a couple or a family. The prices are moderate when booked much in advance; for example, I paid <150 Euros for the round trip from Zürich to Vienna. However, one must also state that (and wonder why) a cheap flight is not much more expensive than that.

The current state of night trains in Europe

Unfortunately, night trains have been on the decline for several decades in Western Europe. With more and more cheap flights or good high-speed train connections between many European cities, the operation of the slower night trains became less interesting for railway companies, and investments stalled. Around 2020, some governments in central Europe tried to countersteer this decline by pushing for a stronger network of night trains. But it will still take several years until these efforts will show some effect, and the success is not a given.

The re-growing interest for night trains didn’t come out of nowhere. With the public opinion looking more skeptically at short-distance intracontinental airplane flights, night trains in Europe became increasingly popular, in particular after the pandemic, as a CO2-friendly option for long distance-traveling. However, the infrastructure could not really hold up to the increasing interest. Most importantly, the fleet of trains was both too old and too small for the rising demand. The companies responded by using their trains at maximum capacity; therefore, if a carriage broke down (which was not unlikely due to their old age and the scarcity of spare parts), often there was no replacement carriage, and the passengers who were supposed to calmly sleep in a reserved bed were regrouped into an overcrowded seating carriage. Addtionally, the infrastructure inside of the carriages, like toilets, bed lights, etc. is often rather old and not always in a good state – far from the luxury atmosphere associated with, e.g., the Orient Express! Moreover, night trains are often delayed by one or several hours, especially on high-demand routes such as Zürich-Amsterdam.

In summary, one needs to face the fact that night trains are currently not as reliable and not as comfortable as they should be in order to make this mode of traveling attractive for a broader audience. It is likely that the situation will improve during the next years, with more modern cars being produced, replacing and supporting the existing fleets, and making night trains in Europe again more reliable and also luxurious. I have the impression that the companies have already taken some good first steps towards such an improved scenario, because when I took the night train to Vienna, the train was purposefully underbooked, most likely to prevent major problems in case a carriage would break down. But let’s see what the next years and decades will bring.

My own experience has so far been limited to night trains operated by the German-speaking railway companies, with the Austrian railway company ÖBB being at the heart of it. However, there are other night trains as well. For example, it’s possible to go from Milano in Northern Italy to Sicily within a long night, passing not only the largest part of Italy, but also the Mediterranean Sea with a train ferry (!). So if you’re planning your next series of Summer conferences to attend across Europe, maybe you can connect the conferences with an adventurous night train trip?

Traveling from Zürich to Vienna with the night train

The conference in Vienna started on Tuesday, June 25th, with a workshop on closed-loop neuroscience that I wanted to attend (and I was particularly impressed by the cool work from Valerie Ego-Stengel’s lab). I worked normally in Zurich on Monday and went directly from work to the main train station, where the night train departed at 8.40 pm. With me, the luggage for a Summer’s week and a big poster roll.

My train was, to be fair, quite old. I had booked a sleeper’s bunk bed in a 6-person compartment but the middle beds on each side were not used, as you can see below. You can also guess from the first picture and see from the second picture that there was not a lot of space between my bunk bed and the ceiling. It was enough to sit on the bed and work, but barely.

When I entered the compartment, I realized that I would share it with an elderly Indian couple, who were, while the train was still waiting in the station, accompanied by several family members. The couple was from Vienna and had attended a wedding in Switzerland. As most people in night trains, they had little experience with the night train experience. What are the rules? What bed should you take? When will the lights be turned off? Where are the electric plugs? Is there wifi? (Usually, there is none.) Will I be woken up in the morning? I could see the anxiety and the adventure in their eyes, and they were grateful that I could help out with some of their simplest questions.

We had a pleasant discussion about their lifes in Vienna, but after a short time, we decided to go to bed. I went up to my bed and spent an hour or two going through the scientific abstracts of the conference to figure out the best trajectory for the next days. Around midnight, I went to sleep. It turned out that this particular car and this particular bed was not perfect for me – the bed measured almost exactly 180 cm, which is a few cm too short for my height. I noticed that the lower beds were slightly longer, from which I benefitted gladly when I took the train back a few days later.

Usually, I can sleep pretty well in night trains. I like the rhythmic rattling of the train wheels, it even helps me fall asleep (to the extent that I find it difficult to sleep when the train is not rolling but standing still in the middle of the night for an hour!). It’s a pleasant feeling to know that the goal is coming closer by itself while I do nothing but sleep.

This time, however, I was a bit unlucky. My two cabin mates were very friendly when awake, but rather annoying during sleep. The woman was snoring in an irregular way that I found difficult to deal with, while her husband was occasionally speaking or shouting in his sleep with an agitated voice. Not my best night train night so far! I heard later that a colleague of mine who also took the night train to FENS was much luckier, sharing the cabin with other attendants of the FENS conference and having a good time during the evening and night.

In any case, the train arrived at 6.34 am in Vienna, perfectly on time. The breakfast in the train had not been exceptional (which is unfortunately the rule rather than the exception according to my experience). Therefore, I benefitted from the great Viennese baking culture and got a very decent breakfast at a price that seemed so much more affordable as I was directly coming from Switzerland…

After the 5-day conference, which was a pleasant mix of meeting old friends and meeting people for the first time I knew from Twitter, from collaborations or from eMail exchanges, interspersed with some interesting pieces of neuroscience, I spent another day with a good old friend of mine who happens to live in Vienna, before I took the train back to Zürich. My plan was to take the night train on Sunday just after 11 pm, to arrive on Monday morning in Zürich and go directly to work. Maybe an ambitious plan, but it worked out well. During the last hour before my train departed, I waited at the train station in Vienna, with the vibrant atmosphere of Summer still around me. Due to the European soccer championship, one of the games was publicly displayed on a huge screen just in front of the station, and a Spanish crowd cheered every time their team scored a goal.

Back on the train, I entered the compartment that was already occupied by one woman, sleeping in one of the beds, hidden below the blanket. I tried to do my best not to wake her up and took over the bed on the left.

I wrote a few notes on my laptop to record the recently passed very eventful and inspiring days, and then fell asleep.

I woke up in the early morning around 6.30 am. With joy, I noticed that we were passing by Lake Walenstadt, a beautiful lake in the East of Switzerland, and already quite close to Zürich. Through their diffuse reflection, the grey and white clouds created a beautiful metallic shimmer in the water, and I sat there, looking out of the window, being happy.

Soon after, we passed by Lake Zürich, and when I arrived at Zürich main station, I had my breakfast with delicious Viennese pastries before I went to work. A very efficient way of traveling!

Why you should (not) take the night train

It should have become clear now that night trains in their current state are not for everybody. The comfort is too low and the prices are a bit too high, and delays too frequent. But still … I would recommend this experience to anybody who is not afraid of it and can manage to sleep in such a context. It’s not only about avoiding airplanes, but also about embracing the adventure that is much more palpable for the night train experience compared to airplane flights. The sense of adventure not only makes the travel special but also bonds the travellers within one compartment to each other more easily. A great opportunity to meet with people from outside your social circles!

The probably most famous night train, the Orient Express, has long been associated with an atmosphere of both luxury and adventure. And both aspects are reflected by its prominent occurrence in works of fiction, ranging from Agatha Christie’s famous novel The murder on the Orient Express to the most recent Mission Impossible movie. Nowadays, it is mostly the atmosphere of adventure which still remains part of the night train experience. Almost 20 years ago, I was deeply fascinated by the novel Night Train to Lisbon. In this book, the daily life of a high school teacher transitions to a philosophical and linguistic adventure within a single night: in the night train from Bern to Lisbon. I still believe that this is the essence that is the most attractive aspect of night trains: the vague promise of adventure, a memorable night and a new world that opens up to the awakening senses on the morning of the next day.