The argument for the night train is usually made badly. People talk about romance, and romance is not a thing you can put in a spreadsheet next to a seventy-euro fare. Here is the version that survives arithmetic.
A sleeper from Vienna leaves at about nine and puts you in Venice a little after eight. That is thirteen hours of a journey you were going to spend somewhere anyway, and it replaces a night of accommodation. Against a flight you are trading two hours in the air for zero hours at two airports, zero transfers, and one fewer hotel night.
Somewhere after Villach, which is where the good bit starts. Photo: Tudose George.
What it actually costs
- Couchette, six berth: the cheap option, and fine if you are on your own and sleep through anything.
- Couchette, four berth: the sweet spot. Enough room to sit up, cheap enough to still beat a hotel.
- Sleeper with a basin: roughly double, and worth it exactly once, on the night before something that matters.
The sleeper is not a way to see a country. It is a way to be somewhere else in the morning without having spent a day getting there.
When not to
Do not take it if the train arrives before seven, because nothing is open and you will spend two hours in a station with a bag. Do not take it two nights running. And do not take it expecting silence: a sleeper is a corridor of doors, and at four in the morning somebody always needs the one at the end.
