Europe, Travel Tips

My experience taking an overnight sleeper train in Eastern Europe

comments 16

I went back to Europe in July for a long summer break. To be honest with you, despite having traveled probably more than an average person, I don’t travel by train very often.

Being on the train is still a novelty for me, let alone sleeping in one. On this trip, I tried to remedy that by taking not one, not two, but four sleeper trains in the two weeks that I was there. Safe to say, I am now somewhat experienced in taking sleeper trains…?

Anyway, here is my take on taking the overnight sleeper trains in Europe!

What to expect on a sleeper train in Europe

If you’re like me and have been living under a rock (because apparently everyone else has traveled in a sleeper train before), here is what I’ve learned about sleeper trains:

My Polrail Ticket with numbers
My Polrail Ticket with car and berth numbers

1. How to read your ticket

Your ticket will tell you which car and bed/berth numbers. This should be fairly easy as it’s the same as taking regular trains.

Find the train number and make sure you are on the right platform for it. They might say “car” and “cabin” in local language so you may have to google translate but should be easy. Once the train arrives, find the car as numbered on your ticket. Then within that car, find your bed numbers.

Door of our cabin with bed numbers

2. What to do before boarding an overnight sleeper train in Europe

Give your tickets to the train car manager. They will keep your tickets for you and give it to the conductor so you don’t need to be woken up in the middle of the night unless you are taking a cross-border train. I will touch on this subject later.

From the top bunk of a private cabin on CD Train

3. Cabin Layout of overnight train

The cabins are all mostly the same, but the layout can be changed depending on the type of cabin you have reserved – private 1-bed cabin, or 2 to 4-beds cabins.

If your car manager has not changed the cabin layout to the number of beds you have reserved, you can ask his/her help to do so.

4. Sharing Your Cabin

I did not get to do this on the trip myself since I was always sharing with at least one friend, but I observed other cabins. If you booked only one bed in a cabin to share with strangers, you likely will be put in a 3-bed or 4-bed cabin which would be bunk beds stacked on top of each other.

Ticketing Rules

Each country has their own train ticketing rules, regardless of operators.

For example, Poland did not let us buy sleeper train tickets online during the summer. So even though the train was operated by the same operator (both were Ceske Drahy trains) we took on another route, we had to buy tickets from a reseller to secure our spot and pay a hefty commission + shipping price. But I am glad we did this because the train was full from Prague to Krakow!

For our train from Krakow to Lviv, Polrail would only let us pick up the tickets in person. So once we got to Krakow, we had to pick it up at a post office near the main station.

Consult seat61.com on the rules as they differ depending on the route/country.

Cabin Quality

Each train operator has different qualities. We took sleeper trains with two operators on this trip – here are the comparisons:

On Ceske Drahy (the main railway operator in the Czech Republic, which I shall refer to from now on as “CD”), the trains were amazing. Upon boarding the train, we found that the beds were already made up for us – we had private washing basin, a mirror, individual lights, all the works.

Furthermore, each train route may have different qualities even if they are from the same operator. We took two CD trains – the first train did not have any shower, the second one does. The first train had a mirror, the second train did not. And so on.

When we took the trains to Ukraine on Polrail (Polish Rail), practically nothing was done for us – we had to make our own beds, which includes changing the cabin layout by pushing up the chairs, and there was no private washing basin or mirrors in the cabin (even though we had a private cabin).  We had to use the shared bathroom to brush teeth.

There is not much you can do but mentally prepare yourself, because unlike flights they don’t indicate the train model numbers on the reservation. But really, at the end of the day, the journey is only a few hours at a time so it wasn’t that bad at all!

CD Train from Budapest to Prague
Me, on the CD Train from Budapest to Prague. It was my first sleeper train ever!
CD Train from Prague to Krakow
Polrail from Krakow to Lviv
My friend Shekhar and the interesting carpet choices on the Polrail from Krakow to Lviv
Ukrainian Train on polrail
Even though the train was ticketed from Polrail, it was actually a Ukrainian train, as evident from the insignia on the exterior and the color of the train.
2nd class, 4-bed Ukrainian Train

Crossing borders on a european sleeper train

If you value sleep – you might not want to cross country borders in a sleeper train. They will wake you up at least three times at ungodly hours – once to cross the border out of the origin country, once to cross the border into the destination country and collect passports for immigration stamps, and then once more to return the stamped passports back to your possession.

I crossed the border from Krakow to Lviv (Poland into Ukraine) and barely got three hours of sleep thanks to this. In my case, I was even woken up one more time for a random inspection into the cabin in the Ukraine side. At 4am!!

Sure, it makes for an interesting experience (and stories) but I was a zombie when we arrived in Lviv three hours later.

The pro and cons of taking a sleeper train in Europe

The pros:

  • You save money by combining transport and accommodation
  • You save time, for obvious reasons. You basically go to sleep in one country and wake up in another.
  • Most sleeper trains go to the main station of a city, which are always more conveniently located than airports. In most cases, it’s even possible to walk from the station to the city center which saves you money on transport as well.
  • You get more personal space than taking a flight or a bus. And if you are bored, you can walk around the corridor and stretch out a bit.

But of course there are also cons:

  • You don’t get to see much during the ride since it would be mostly dark outside. Most sleeper trains would leave at 10-11pm.
  • You would usually get in very early in the morning (6-7am) so you probably can’t check in to your next accommodation yet. You have to make arrangements for your luggage and tour the city first.
  • If you are a light sleeper, you might get woken up at random times of the night. And if you are unlucky you might have a noisy neighbor. Most cabins are not sound proof.

My final verdict on taking a sleeper train in Europe

That being said, as someone who can sleep anywhere I absolutely loved taking sleeper trains and would recommend it to anyone. The pros outweigh all the cons listed above.

The next time I go back to Europe, I am definitely doing more sleeper trains!

View from the Train into Lviv, Ukraine at Sunrise
Links in this post may generate small commissions that keep this website running for free, at no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support.
Filed under: Europe, Travel Tips

Written by Melissa

Hi there! 👋🏻 I'm the "Girl" in Girl Eat World. I love eating, traveling and sharing my travel experiences in this blog. During the day, I work as a designer in tech. More about me →

16 Comments

  1. Thomas says

    Thank you for your review of the night trains! We are actually thinking of taking a sleeper train from Prague to Slovakia on June next year. Since it’s both in Schengen area, would you know if you still need to give your passport to the operator as I know there are no border crossing between Schengen countries – I am bit hesitating since we do not want to give our passports to anyone else.

    • Melissa says

      Hey Thomas. I believe within Schengen you should be okay. They might still check your ID but they probably won’t keep it.

  2. Frank Goy says

    I will be taking night train Krakow to Prague early next month. And I know I have to get off at Bohumin station for transfer to next train. Do you know if this Bohumin station is the last stop for this night train ? Or the train will continue further its journey? If it does go further, I worry I miss this stop.

    • Melissa says

      hey frank. i’m not sure if the train stops there but usually they’ll make sure you get off the train if you’re taking sleeper train with bed. because another passenger might book your spot for the next journey

  3. Jill Samaroo says

    thank you for the insightful information! I am taking a group of 28 students and 6 adults on a sleeper train from Krakow to Prague. Do you know if there is a shower in the cabins or even private wash sinks? Thanks for your info!

    • Melissa Hie says

      hey Jill. I did the opposite – I went from Prague to Krakow. If i remember correctly that route does have a private basin per cabin (all trains do). there was a shower but it was communal one. i would advise the group to try and not shower on the train!

  4. Tor Lillqvist says

    One nit: “Polrail” is not the Polish Railways. (That is called PKP, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_State_Railways ) Polrail is a small travel agency (just a few persons, I guess) that takes care of going to an actual station in Poland and buy the tickets you have ordered, and then has the tickets delivered to you. It is a useful service for tickets that can’t be bought online, or from railway stations abroad, which is the case for instance for trains from Poland to Ukraine. I just used it myself some days ago, had the tickets delivered by UPS, and it worked great.

    (Once PKP and the Ukrainian Railways get their acts together and start offering on-line print-at-home tickets also for international journeys, Polrail will lose much of its raison d’être. But I am sure they will think of other businesses.)

  5. bran says

    Hi! I saw you did both Budapest to Prague, and Prague to Krakow. Which route would you recommend for sleeper train? We were thinking of doing a day train for the other route so we can experience the scenery etc during the day as well. Thanks!

    • Melissa Hie says

      hey Bran, honestly they were both great as sleeper train since they had great timing for overnight journey. I probably would do the Budapest to Prague one as overnight though, as that journey was quite long (10PM to 6:30AM)

  6. Lexie says

    I am trying to take a an overnight train from Prague to Krakow this September and this blog really helped calm some of my nerves!! How did you know when your stop was? Did you set an alarm or does someone wake you to get off?

    • Melissa Hie says

      If it’s a major stop, the train will stay there for 10-20 mins. Also the train car usher would knock to wake you up (you give him/her your itinerary when you board) but I was paranoid about missing stops so I set an alarm!

  7. Katherine Cook says

    Taking the sleeper train or any train in Europe is an absolute classic and one of the best ways to travel and explore the continent. The only con for me is that I sleep really light and get easily awaken during this trips.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.