Following a day exploring the German capital, I was back at Berlin Hauptbahnhof in plenty of time to catch the second sleeper train of my trip. This would be with Nightjet, a division of Austrian national rail operator OBB, a would take me from Berlin, down through Germany, to Zurich in Switzerland.
Day two of Snoozing to Split started early as I arrived into Berlin onboard the European Sleeper at just after six in the morning. After an amble around Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof whilst dropping of my bag and having a lazy breakfast at McDonalds (its foreign food if you can’t buy it in the UK right?), it was finally a reasonable hour and time to head into the centre of Germany’s capital.
After an afternoon exploring the Belgian capital, I headed back to Brussels Midi/Zuid station with plenty of time to collect my back, grab a waffle and an overnight picnic from some of the shops in the station and get my self ready for a journey with Europe’s newest Sleeper operator. From Brussels I was travelling with European Sleeper to Berlin
Having arrived in the Belgian capital onboard a Eurostar service from London, I had just under seven hours in Brussels until I was scheduled to depart onboard the European Sleeper. With Eurostar terminating at Brussels Midi/Zuid, I was a little bit out of the city centre, and so I headed round to the main domestic concourse ready to catch a train to my first stop.
Back at the start of January it was time for my annual ‘big’ trip and this year I’d named it ‘Snoozing to Split’ as the majority of my travel would be onboard some of Europe’s night trains. However, despite some undelivered ambitions in the 1980s as the Channel Tunnel was being constructed, there are no night trains between the UK and Europe. As such my trip started as many do, with a train to Kings Cross and then a walk across the road to the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras International.
Having had a day exploring Geneva and a small part of the Swiss railway network, my day in Switzerland was drawing to a close. Starting the journey home with another trip on a loco-hauled InterRegio service from Brig, I travelled the one stop to the Geneva Airport terminus and headed back upstairs to reach the Airport itself.
