Having arrived back at Heathrow from my trip to Barcelona and Andorra, a last-minute change of plans saw me heading to the East Midlands rather than back home to Peterborough and as such I headed from the airport to St Pancras rather than Kings Cross. This did give me the opportunity to finally try out one of EMR’s new Hitachi class 810 ‘Auroras’, a train that’s introduction into service has been beset by delays and has more recently resulted in strike action by unions over safety concerns. However the Auroras are the future of the Midland Mainline inter-city fleet, so what is all the fuss about?

With my time in Bucharest coming to an end, I was back at Bucharesti-Nord ready to catch the final train on this Meander to Moldova. The third overnight sleeper train of the trip would take me north through Romania and across the border into Moldova, before reaching Chișinău some 13 and a half hours later. Whilst sleeper trains have become almost synonymous with my January trips, this one would be the first crossing outside the Schengen zone and with the border formalities that would come with it. All that was still to come, but first the train needed to arrive!

After 36 hours spent exploring the Hungarian capital, it was time to continue my Meander to Moldova and so I was back at Budapest’s Keleti railway station ready to catch the second sleeper train of the trip. This one, operated jointly by MAV and CFR (the Hungarian and Romanian state railways respectively), would take me from Budapest to my first new country of the trip, Romania and its capital Bucharest. With a change of time zone as we crossed the border, I’d be spending around 14 and a half hours onboard the Ister sleeper.

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

Having started my Meander to Moldova with a Eurostar service southward from London St Pancras to Paris Gare du Nord, it was time to begin heading east. The next leg of my trip, a 3 hour 20-minute TGV journey, would take me from the French capital to Stuttgart, my first overnight stop where I’d spend around 27 hours before continuing onwards towards Moldova. And so, having made the easy 5-minute walk from Gare du Nord to Gare de L’Est, I arrived at the latter around 35 minutes before my train was due to depart.

With the Christmas and New Year festivities having come to an end, the start of January saw me preparing for my first trip of 2026 and, in keeping with tradition, this one was a proper adventure. For previous January trips I had ticked off (Not Quite) All the Small Things and Snoozed my way to Split, so my 2026 trip needed to be as much of an adventure if not more than the trips that had come before. So, for this January trip, I would be Meandering to Moldova, via France; Germany; Austria; Hungary; and Romania with the trip, as always, starting at London’s St Pancras International.