From Brussels to Venice, a new European night train is coming

Brussels – Fancy euronight? From next year it will be possible to travel by train at night from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, crossing the Alps. The new route, created by operator European Sleeper, will open on February 5 and connect Brussels with Venice. It will pass through Utrecht in the Netherlands, Cologne and Munich in Germany, Innsbruck in Austria, and finally, Verona and Venice—a unique 12-hour-long journey.

According to the tentative timetable (European Sleeper is still negotiating final schedules), the train is expected to depart at 5 p.m. from the Belgian capital and arrive at 2 p.m. the next day in the Venetian capital, or, in reverse, it will be possible to leave Venice at 3 p.m. and arrive in Brussels the next day at 11 a.m. Ticket prices have not yet been specified, but reservations are anticipated to open on September 1.

The Brussels-Venice route will be operational, according to the company’s announcement on Tuesday (August 20), twice a week during February and March to coincide with the Venetian carnival celebrations. The idea is to connect several key winter sports destinations with important art cities.

Overnight rail travel is slowly catching on in Europe as a sustainable long-distance alternative to intracontinental flights (up to one-tenth the CO2 emissions, as in the case of Brussels-Vienna night). From an economic point of view, however, this type of mobility may not be precisely convenient due to prices that are certainly not popular, although much depends on the specific route. However, in the plans of the EU institutions, the activation of the euronights responds to the realization of that trans-European transport network (Ten-T) that should make Europe interconnected as early as the end of this decade.

To date, several routes connecting the various corners of the Old Continent are already covered by a number of private operators: in addition to European Sleeper (which is also working on a new connection between Amsterdam and Barcelona), the Eurail consortium includes companies offering rides in Great Britain (Caledonian Sleeper and Night Riviera), in the Central European area (EuroNight Chopin, EuroNight Kalman Imre, and EuroNight Metropol), in the Balkan region (EuroNight Croatia, Dacia, Ister, Muntenia, Hellas express, Bosphorus express and Sofia-Istanbul express), in the Scandinavian sector (International Snälltåget, SJ and VY) as well as along another backbone from the North Sea to the Mediterranean (with the ÖBB Nightjet). As for routes involving individual countries, the Eurail group operates in Finland (Santa Claus express), France (Intercités de nuit), Italy (InterCity notte), and Sweden (Snälltåget).