A night train between Berlin and Paris is to return after a nine-year break thanks to increased demand.
Austrian operator OBB announced that its Nightjet sleeper service will start partially running again from December this year, making three trips a week, while the full daily service will be up and running by October 2024.
“The service will start on 11 December from Berlin with three trips per week before becoming a daily service in October 2024,” said Bernhard Rieder, an OBB spokesperson, reports AFP.
It will also stop in Strasbourg, Mannheim, Erfurt and Halle, with Mannheim acting as OBB’s sleeper train “hub”; its Brussels-Vienna and Paris-Vienna trains will also stop there.
Trains will depart from Paris Gare de l’Est at 7.12pm in the evening and arrive into Berlin the following morning at 8.26am.
The Berlin-Paris train, meanwhile, will leave at 8.18pm and pull up in Paris at 10.24am.
The new service means travellers from the UK can leave London on the Eurostar in the late afternoon, before making a swift connection in Paris from the Gare du Nord to the Gare de l’Est (the two stations are a 10-minute walk apart).
Prices are expected to mirror other Nightjet services, starting from around €50 for a bed in a shared couchette. Tickets go on sale in October.
It follows the launch of a brand new sleeper service between Brussels and Berlin in May this year.
The European Sleeper service started on on 25 May 2023 with three weekly services, with the hopes of ramping this up to a daily train by 2024.
Prices start from €49 for a seat, €79 for a bed in a shared couchette and €109 for a private cabin.
UK travellers can also journey via Brussels for OBB’s new sleeper services. The train will leave Brussels at 7.03pm and arrive into the German capital at 8.26am; on the return journey, it departs Berlin at 8.18pm and gets into the Belgian capital at 9.56am.
