Robert Hampton

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5th October 2014

Berlin Finale: Night Train

Berlin Hauptbahnhof Upper Level

This is a very long post about my journey on the sleeper from Berlin to Paris. I also made a YouTube video of this journey – it’s embedded below, but you want to watch it first, or instead.

I’d been mulling a trip to Berlin for months. As far back as June 2013, I was considering the possibilities and had started saving up.

My original plan: take Eurostar to Brussels, then an ICE train to Cologne, stay there for a couple of nights, then travel onward to Berlin. On the way home, I would return via the overnight sleeper train to Paris, then take Eurostar back to London.

Of course, this is complete madness, given that easyJet fly between Liverpool and Berlin, a journey taking (in theory) just a couple of hours. But I’m a rail enthusiast, and the chance to take a long train journey on some of the most iconic trains in Europe was almost too good to resist.

The City Night Line sleeper runs daily between Berlin and Paris. The journey takes approximately 13 and a half hours, which sounds like a long time, but of course the idea is that you’re asleep for most of them. Go to sleep in Germany, wake up the next morning in France, refreshed and with a full day ahead of you. It’s undoubtedly the most time efficient option and a very civilised way to travel.

I wanted to do it so badly, but then… I hesitated. I sounded out some friends about the trip, but for one reason or another, none of them could come with me. Then I contemplated going on my own, but that was a scary thought. What if I was robbed, or kidnapped by bandits? No, I couldn’t possibly travel alone. It looked like my epic train trip would have to wait until 2015.

Then Deutsche Bahn threw another spanner in the works. The German rail operator announced that, from December 2014, the City Night Line sleeper from Berlin to Paris would cease operations.

It looked like I’d missed my chance. I spent a good few days kicking myself for not seizing the opportunity. I would never get to ride the City Night Line train, as I’d so often dreamed of doing.

Then, one day in early June, I sat staring at my computer screen. I can’t remember what made me do it. I remember that I was in the midst of revision for my Open University exams; was probably looking for something to distract me. Whatever the reason, I called up bahn.com and started searching for night trains.

There was still good availability on night trains in September, but the cheap advance-purchase fares from London to Cologne had sold out. I therefore revised my plans: I would fly out from Liverpool to Berlin and then

So I thought about a trip to Germany, then decided against it, then changed my mind and booked a slightly different trip. That’s spontaneous, by my standards.

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18th September 2014

Reichstag Night
Posted by at 10.32pm | Out and About, Trains | No responses

Just before 4pm on Friday afternoon, I reached the Reichstag building in central Berlin. I’d seen the building from the outside on my last visit to the city, but this time I was going to actually see inside. It’s a grand structure, with the famous inscription DEM DEUTSCHEN VOLKE (“To the German people”) providing a bold statement of intent, even though the slogan has not always been adhered to over the years.

Reichstag building

Here’s my best GCSE history lesson: the Reichstag building was the seat of the German parliament from the late 19th century, until in 1933 it was severely damaged by fire. This was the event which notoriously gave Hitler all the justification he needed to abrogate basic human rights and establish a totalitarian state. Like much of the rest of Berlin, the building was left in ruins at the end of World War II. Although it was repaired after the war, it saw little use during the Cold War division of the city. Only in 1999, when the Bundestag returned to Berlin post-reunification, was the building finally restored to its former glory.

As part of the restoration, a new glass dome (designed by Sir Norman Foster) now sits atop the building. It is open to the public by prior booking, offering excellent views across the Berlin skyline. I was eager to go – practically the first thing I did after booking my plane ticket was to head to the Reichstag web site and arrange a visit.

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26th June 2012

Raised in a Bahn
Posted by at 11.21pm | Out and About, Trains | No responses

Berlin S-Bahn train at Schönefeld Airport stationI tend to judge a town by the quality of its public transport. A city could have the world’s best cuisine, culture and nightlife, but if its subway system is scruffy, it will lose a lot of points in Hampo’s Travel Guide.

First impressions of Berlin’s transit network were, in fact, not good. We wanted to use the train to get into the city centre, but Schönefeld Airport station is an absolute dump. This could be excused because they were expecting the airport and its station to be closed from the beginning of June. However, there’s no excuse for the complete lack of information to guide incoming passengers. We had a vague idea that there was a “RegionalExpress” train into Berlin city centre, but we couldn’t find its departure platform amidst the jumble of destinations on the departure board and missed it.

S-Bahn interiorWe ended up instead on an ambling S-Bahn train. These suburban trains are great, but stopping at every little wayside station meant it took forever. Also, the train terminated at Sudkreuz, some way short of our intended destination. We had to change to another S-Bahn line, then transfer to the U-Bahn to reach the station nearest to our hotel. It took a lot longer than we thought it would.

Fortunately our later experiences cancelled out this initial trouble, and I’m pleased to report that – from this tourist’s point of view at least – Berlin’s transport is generally quite good.

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