My Sleeper Train Journey Through Europe In A ‘Hostel On Wheels’

If your budget can stretch to it, opt for a solo cabin on European sleeper train services. I recently traveled to and from Sweden’s Gothenburg from my home in northern England, and my budget didn’t stretch to it. The sleeper service from Hamburg in northern Germany would, therefore, be a hostel on wheels.

My ticket was for travel with up to six others in a reserved couchette cabin.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me describe my journey from Newcastle via a Eurostar from London’s St Pancras International.

I take the train to London regularly, usually the blisteringly fast one. By skipping the stops in Durham, York, and Peterborough, the 7.04 am LNER service takes just 2 hours and 36 minutes to get to King’s Cross from Newcastle. However, to make my connection in London, I was on the three-hour, eight-minute service that leaves at 6 am. It arrived late: by about 60 seconds, so it was a saunter across the road to St Pancras to check in for the Eurostar to Brussels and then two connections to Hamburg, where the sleeper to Sweden leaves from.

Bruxelles Suid/Brussels Midi is not the nicest of stations, but if you’ve got a little time to while away here, head to the Pullman Hotel connected to the station. Here, you can relax in five-star comfort in the hotel’s first-floor bar.

The hotel loos are also luxe and free, while spending a penny in the station costs a euro.

My train left Brussels on time and didn’t get delayed en route to Hamburg, but SMS alerts told me that my planned sleeper journey from Hamburg to Gothenburg wouldn’t leave on time. It didn’t leave at all. Instead, passengers were transferred to a coach for the onward journey into Sweden. Arriving in Malmo earlier than the sleeper service would have done, I easily made the morning service to Gothenburg.

After a day in the city, I started back — the return journey wouldn’t be truncated, too, would it?

The standard service from Gothenburg to Malmö was punctual, but the couchette cabin was almost full when I arrived, with most of the spaces taken by folks who had boarded — and started sleeping — in Stockholm. I was shushed as I crept in and had to make up my top bunk with sheets, a blanket, and a pillow as silently as I could.

Solo cabins feature a toilet and shower. Those in shared cabins have to use a loo at the end of the carriage. At 5 am, I got up to pee and to ready myself for the imminent arrival in Hamburg. I clambered down as quietly as I could, as no one else was stirring. I should have crept back to bed because — too late — I could see from my phone that we were still in the middle of Schleswig Holstein, some distance from Hamburg.

This wasn’t great as I had some tight connections to hit. I missed them all, but a signed chit from the train guard allowed me to prove to subsequent ones that I had been delayed, and that’s why my ticket wasn’t valid for their services. Despite many hours of delays and missed connections, I was able to hop across Europe and made it back to London in time for the last LNER train back to Newcastle. I arrived home a few hours after my original ETA.

Does this read like a horror story to you? Maybe you’d rather stick to flying? The thing is, I’ve also had nightmare flights, with missed connections and being bumped due to overbookings.

Traveling by train is far cleaner than flying. “Save the climate while you sleep,” an information card in my couchette said.

It continued: “In terms of CO2 emissions, the railways are 31 times more environmentally friendly than traveling by plane.”

I no longer fly. For solid scientific reasons. According to Eurostar, the journey from London to Paris uses 2.4 kg of CO2 per person. Flying between the capitals emits 66 kg per person.

Taking the train reduces emissions by a whopping 96%. In the Netherlands, the Eurostar to Amsterdam is powered entirely by electricity generated from wind, and in the UK, that figure is 40% and rising.

A commercial flight from Berlin to Bonn emits the same amount of carbon as eight return trips by train. Yet despite the eco savings, it’s often cheaper to guzzle avgas than to take to the rails.

This is crazy.

Flying to Gothenburg would have taken about six hours from Newcastle. But add transit times to and from airports, buffer minutes for getting through security, and downtime waiting at gates, and the actual journey time would have been nearer ten hours. That’s 19 hours quicker than had my train journey run to schedule.

But, as a laptop junkie, I also have to factor in practical working time. Not much of the air journey is usable for writing–I find it easier to flick through social media, which is a time sink. On the train, however, I can write articles and more.

According to ecopassenger.org, traveling by train from Gothenburg to Newcastle saved 87.54 kg of carbon dioxide.

High Speed

In 2003, there were 12 flights a day between Frankfurt and Cologne, 190 kilometers apart. After a high-speed rail line opened, journey times were cut from two hours to just one. Today there are no flights between these two German cities.

An increasing number of people are now concluding that even long journeys between European cities–especially those linked by high-speed rail lines–are now best done by train.

In Sweden, many travelers have coalesced around the concept of flygskam, or “flight shame.” Until recently, Swedes were among the most profligate flyers on the planet. According to a report commissioned by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, in 2017 Sweden’s entire aviation sector accounted for 1.1 tonnes of emissions per person, five times the global average of 0.2 tonnes per person. This love affair with flying is fading fast. Swedes are switching rapidly because climate change is particularly noticeable in Sweden, with the Swedish Meteorological Institute reporting recently that the average annual temperature in the country is rising twice as quickly as the global average.

In 2023, France enacted a new law to prevent flights between Paris-Orly Airport and Nantes, Lyon, and Bordeaux.

In a press statement, transport minister Clément Beaune said: “As we fight relentlessly to decarbonize our lifestyles, how can we justify the use of planes between the big cities that benefit from regular, fast, and efficient connections by train?”

Soon, new high-speed rail lines—part of the EU’s TEN-T project of European road and rail links—will make more short-haul flights redundant across Europe, believe planners and politicians.

According to EU statistics, 17 of Europe’s 20 busiest air routes cover distances of less than 434 miles, the sort of distances where intercity trains can offer faster, cleaner, and more sustainable journeys.

Transport accounts for 30% of C02 emissions in the developed world, so it makes sense to drive less, cycle and walk more, and take the train rather than fly.