I’m irresistibly drawn to sleeper trains even though the reality of services like the Caledonian Sleeper and the California Zephyr is more functional than romantic. The same is true of the new European Sleeper from Brussels to Berlin via Holland which, with the right Eurostar connection, enables you to leave St Pancras on Friday afternoon and wake up in the German capital the next morning.
The age of the train’s rattly carriages — 1955 sleepers and 1967 couchettes — not only keeps the price down but carries a powerful nostalgic charge for me. In 1985, aged 18, I lived with the cultured, welcoming Khalcke family and worked in an old people’s home right by the Berlin Wall, tending to people who’d lived through the Second World War, for four hugely formative months. The Wall is now long gone and the city reunified and reconfigured, but it still feels like the place I know and love best after London. The sleeper reminded me of the trains I travelled on to Berlin and across Europe in the 1980s.
