Operator: OBB/MAV EuroNight
Headcode: EN50237 ‘Kalman Imre’
Route: STR-BUD
Class: Single Sleeper
Seat: C262, S11
Date: Sunday 4th January 2026
With 24 hours in the German city of Stuttgart under my belt, it was time to continue onwards with my Meander to Moldova. The third train of the trip would be taking me across Germany, through Austria and into Hungary, with the Hungarian capital Budapest being my next destination. Sleeper trains have become a key part of my January adventures over the years, and this year would be no different with this overnight journey from Stuttgart being the first of three sleeper trains of the trip. If you want to check out the other posts from this trip, you can find them here, here and here.
I was at Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof (Hbf) around an hour before departure, allowing me time to freshen up after a day of exploring and buying some overnight supplies from one of the kiosks in the station (the supermarkets in the city were closed due to German Sunday trading laws). Unfortunately, with the construction works at the station, there’s no-one really to wait and so I ended up sat on a platform bench watching the trains before collecting my bag from the storage lockers around half an hour before departure. Thankfully the train itself arrived shortly after and I was able to head onboard into the warmth, although did nip out again to get some photos of the OBB (Austrian Railways) loco that would be hauling us to Wein.
The EuroNight service from Stuttgart to Budapest forms part of a NightJet service to Venice as far as the Austrian city of Salzburg where the train splits overnight. In total there were nine carriages forming the train at Stuttgart, with three to Budapest, three to Zagreb and three to Venice, each portion being formed of a sleeper carriage, a couchette carriage and a seated carriage. With my berth obviously being in the Budapest bound sleeper carriage, I was in the penultimate carriage of the train and had a bit of a walk down to the loco. Interesting, one of the other trains that splits and merges with this one at Salzburg is the EuroNight service from Zurich, which I travelled on to Zagreb back during Snoozing to Split (read about that here).
Rooms onboard the MAV (Hungarian Railways) sleeper carriages can sleep up to three people, although you can book single occupancy. The rooms have two European power sockets and two USB-A sockets along with a shaver socket and also have a sink, bin, hangers and luggage storage. As would be expected there’s also controls to adjust the volume of the announcements and the temperature of the room and despite the cold temperatures outside, I did have to turn the heat down from the as hot as possible that it had been set to. My room also had an apple juice, bottle of water, pack of peanuts and a chocolate mini roll supplied, although I’m unsure as whether this is just for solo rooms or all sleeper compartments.
We departed Stuttgart on time at 2029 and shortly after the sleeper attendant came round to hand out breakfast slips and do a basic room tour. Unfortunately, they didn’t provide a pen, so I had to head to their compartment to complete the breakfast slip. Prior to the extended remarshalling stop at Salzburg there would be five intermediate stops in Germany with these being at Göppingen, Ulm, Augsburg, München Ost and Rosenheim. The first stop at Göppingen came around half an hour after leaving Stuttgart and we had a stop of around 15 minutes here, followed by a journey along quite a winding valley to the second stop at Ulm at around 2150.
With over an hour between Ulm and Ausburg I decided to settle down and hopefully be asleep before we stopped again, however before I could drift off, we came to a stand in Neuoffingen station to allow another train to overtake us. However, I seemingly did still drift off before Ausburg as I don’t remember us stopping there. The mattress was pretty firm and although I slept fairly well, I did wake up a few times to roll over when I lost feeling in my arm or when the braking as we arrived at a station was a bit harsh. After short spells of awareness at Munich Ost and Salzburg, I woke up properly just as we arrived at St Pölten, the second Austrian station after departing Salzburg.
From Salzburg, the service to Budapest calls at Linz, St Pölten, Wien Meidling and Wein Hbf in Austria, before then running non-stop to the Hungarian border. The stop at Wein Meidling came just before 0630 and between there and Wein Hbf there was a large railway yard just after with lots of stabled locos, carriages, DB ICE and IC sets. As we passed a Railjet set made its way out of the yard to start its days workings, arriving at Wein Hbf at the same time as us. We had around a five-minute stop at Wein Hbf however after departure we stopped again almost immediately adjacent to another yard and sat there for five minutes before getting on the move again.
Crossing the Austrian/Hungarian border at 0727, we almost immediately stopped at the first station across the border, Hegyeshalom, with further stops at Mosonmagyarovar, Györ, Tatabanya and Budapest-Kelenföld before reaching the final destination of Budapest-Keleti. Mosonmagyarovar came around 10 minutes after Hegyeshalom with breakfast then delivered between Moson and Györ. By the time we stopped at Györ we were running around 11 minutes late, although this did give me the opportunity to see Railjet unit ‘Spirit of Zurich’ up close in the adjacent platform on its way to Zurich. After running parallel to the Danube but a good few miles away from it, we got alongside Europe’s second longest river at the town of Komárom where it forms the border between Hungary and Slovakia.
We didn’t stay alongside this grand waterway for long though as we headed south to the town of Tatabanya, our final stop before Budapest where we arrived at 0845, 15 minutes late. Less than half an hour later we reached the western outskirts of Budapest, passing the southern edge of Budaörs Airport, Budapest’s international airport until 1950, before stopping at our penultimate stop of Budapest-Kelenföld at 0920, 16 minutes late. Between Kelenföld and Ferencváros stations there was some major engineering works going on, possibly adding an additional line as there seemed to be new bridges and OHL masts being installed. Crossing the Danube at 0926, we then had around 15 minutes of winding through the maze of rail lines in this area, before finally arriving at Budapest-Keleti at 0940, 21 minutes late.
After clambering over the bags of laundry dumped in the vestibule and grabbing a couple of pictures of the Austrian loco that had brought us from Salzburg, I dropped my bag off in a luggage locker and had some time to reflect on the journey. The journey from Stuttgart to Budapest had been relatively comfortable, although the mattresses could do with being a bit softer or having extra padding. The refreshments provided in my room when I boarded were a pleasant surprise and breakfast was standard for a European sleeper train, however the lack of a restaurant or café car does mean taking a picnic onboard if you want anything substantial. The sleeper attendant was friendly and helpful despite our language barrier, although obviously our interactions were limited to the start and end of the journey. Finally, the delayed arrival seemed to snowball stop after Wein Hbf which we never really got an explanation for, but a 21 minute delay after travelling over 900km doesn’t seem too bad.
Lounge 0*
Seat/Facilities 3*
Food 3*
Service 5*
Punctuality 3*
Overall Rating 14/25 (read about my rating system here!)
Flights & Times 