There is a particular pleasure in boarding a train at nine in the evening with a paper bag of snacks and a book you have been saving. The platform empties, the doors close, and the city slides away behind you. Twelve hours later you step off somewhere else entirely, having lost no day to the journey.
Across Europe, sleeper services that were shut down a decade ago are running again, and new routes appear every season. The cabins are smaller than a hotel room and the showers are an adventure, but the trade is a good one: a night of travel that also counts as a night of rest.
The best part is the morning. You raise the blind and the landscape has changed completely: flat fields have become hills, or the hills have become a coastline. Coffee arrives in a paper cup. Nobody is checking a boarding pass. You simply arrive.
Book early, choose a couchette if you are traveling with friends and a private cabin if you are not, and pack earplugs. Then let the train do the rest.
