Arriving by night train: six dawns in six stations

Between April and September this year I stepped off six night trains, in six stations, between 7:41 and 10:36 in the morning. Every time I wrote down three things: the minute the train stopped, what the first light looked like, and how long it took to find a coffee. The fourth thing, where the bag went, I only started noting after the second arrival, when I noticed I was thinking about it.

All six trains started in Vienna or ended there, so this is a Vienna-centered set, and the timetable times below are the ones I checked before I went. One of the six I describe in detail elsewhere, in Sleeping on the Nightjet.

The night of Tuesday 14 to Wednesday 15 April, from Vienna Meidling, leaving at 22:02. I woke at 5:40 to grey fields and a thin line of orange behind them. Sunrise in Berlin that week is a little after six, so I watched the light come up from the corridor window, in socks, with a paper cup of the water that came with the ticket.

The train stopped at 7:41. The platform was 6°C and I put on everything I had. A bakery counter on the upper level had its shutter half up at 7:52 and sold me a coffee that tasted of the machine. Coffee is the first decision of the day, and in Berlin I made a bad one twice.

The night of Friday 5 to Saturday 6 June, Vienna to Rome, leaving at 20:05. This is the long one, 14 hours, and the only arrival on this list without a dawn in it. The sky was grey at five and I lay awake for the next five hours, somewhere between the Po plain and Tuscany, I could not tell which. By the time the train stopped it was 27°C outside.

It stopped at Roma Tiburtina, not Termini. I had assumed Termini, because I had assumed it for years, and I only noticed because the platform signs did not say what I expected. Metro line B takes you to Termini in a handful of stops, and I did not look for a coffee at Tiburtina because I wanted the Metro. Check the station name on your ticket before you book a hotel with a walking plan.

At Termini at 10:50 every café was open and every table was taken. I stood at a bar, drank a coffee in one gulp, as the room does, and paid at the till first, as I had forgotten to.

The night of Saturday 11 to Sunday 12 July, from Vienna, leaving at 18:36. This was the earliest dawn of the six, with light in the corridor window at 4:40, flat fields turning orange, and then a long, warm morning on the train while everyone else slept. I read four chapters and watched a freight train go the other way.

The train stopped at 8:56 on a Sunday, at Hamburg-Altona, the last stop of the line. It also calls at Hamburg Hbf earlier, at 8:38, and I stayed on because the harbor was closer to Altona. The station was quiet, which suited me. A bakery counter was open at 9:05 and sold me a coffee that I would call acceptable. On a Sunday morning, the only crowd on the concourse was a group of day-trippers with matching caps. My hotel was a short walk away and did not want me before three, so I carried the pack along the water to a bench, sat down and watched the harbor wake up, which cost nothing.

The night of Thursday 20 to Friday 21 August, from Vienna, leaving at 21:39. I describe the night itself in the other article, and here is only the arrival. The timetable on my date said 8:34, and the train stopped at 8:41. The sun had been up for more than two hours, so the light was bright and a little flat, and I stepped out onto the platform already in a good mood.

The station doors open on the Grand Canal, and the first thing you see is water and boats. A bar inside the station had coffee within a minute of my asking for it, and there is a left-luggage counter in the station, with a queue of nine on my morning. I did not join it. Venice's day-visitor access fee was a 2026 trial that ended on 26 July, so none applied on my August morning; the Venice access fee guide covers what the city decides next.

The night of Monday 21 to Tuesday 22 September, Venice to Vienna, leaving at 21:05. I had taken a day train out to Venice and gone straight back, which was an error of enthusiasm: I slept badly, because I had eaten dinner on the platform at 20:40 and was still thinking about it at 2am. The train arrived at Wien Hauptbahnhof at 8:03 against a timetable of 7:58.

Vienna on a Tuesday morning at eight is busy with commuters, and a bakery counter was open on the concourse. I had a roll and a coffee and sat there for twenty minutes without any plan, which is the best use of an arrival I know. The pack went to a locker for a few hours while I walked into the center, a decision I came to regret by noon, when I found I had left my sunglasses inside it.

The night of Tuesday 22 to Wednesday 23 September, from Vienna, leaving at 21:39. The sun rose a little after seven that morning, and I watched the light arrive over a ridge I could not name, with rain on the window. This was the latest in the year of the six and also the latest to arrive.

The train arrived at 10:36, on the minute, and it was 13°C and wet on the platform when I stepped out. I had a coffee in the station within eight minutes. It was the best of the six, and also the most expensive, a fact I noted on the receipt and will not repeat here. The hall was busy with people carrying laptop bags, and a 35 L pack on my back drew no looks at all.

The bag was the variable that changed most between arrivals. In Berlin, Hamburg and Zurich I carried it and thought nothing of it. In Rome I carried it across the city, because the station was the wrong one and I had no time to look for a locker. In Vienna I used a locker and spent the next hour regretting that I had put my sunglasses in it.

My pack was a 35 L cabin-size bag, and that is the reason I would call all six arrivals easy. A bigger bag would have meant a locker every time, and a locker at 8 in the morning means a queue and a coin or a card. Lockers or left-luggage counters exist at many of the big stations I passed through, but their sizes, hours and prices are on each station's own page, and I did not check them all.

The numbers first. The six arrivals were at 7:41, 8:03, 8:41, 8:56, 10:05 and 10:36, a median of about 8:50. Four of the six were on time to the minute. Venice was seven minutes late and Vienna five, which was never enough to matter for a coffee and might matter for a connection.

Six arrivals do not make a rule, but they make a pattern. Plan to be somewhere with a bakery or a bar within ten minutes of the platform, and choose a station where you know which exit you want. Use the ticket, not the city name, to know where you will stand. And pack so you can carry the bag for an hour without hating it.

If your first morning is the point, choose an arrival time of 8 or later, and a station with a bar inside it. If it is the long ride you want, take the 14-hour run to Rome and wake up somewhere unplanned. For the first night on a berth, Sleeping on the Nightjet covers what to expect, and for the pass or ticket question, Is a Eurail pass worth it? does the arithmetic.