thetrainfamilyWhen we booked a seat on the night train from Rome, we checked prices on both bahn.de and öbb.de and found that there were big differences in the prices. We ended up booking on bahn.de as the tickets were cheapest there.
We had booked seats for the five of us, but it was a six-person compartment, so we were curious if one more person would come. When the train rolled out of the station a short time later, no one had arrived yet and we began to consider how to make ourselves comfortable.
We had seen on another travel blog that you can pull out the seats halfway, so that the two seats on each side reach each other and thus form a kind of bed. We did that to all the seats, so we got one big bed. At first we lay down on our sides, but then we couldn’t all lie there, as the seats couldn’t be folded down completely and the top of the seat bent upwards. Then we laid across and it worked better, although it would be a lie to write that they were comfortable.
We used our brought blanket and jackets to put under and over us. It was very hot in the compartment on departure even though we had turned down the air conditioning and it was not possible to open the windows. But during the night it got colder.
After not much sleep, we were woken up at 4 am by the border police, who had to see our passports. We just held them up without opening them – and then the passport control was over.
Fortunately, we fell asleep again, actually slept a little longer than we had expected, as the train was late.
We did not show ticket at any point during the journey nor did we see any train staff. In other words, there was a total lack of communication, but on the other hand it was also good, since we wanted to sleep.
As described here, we drove (unplanned) only to Salzburg and not to Munich, which is otherwise the train’s terminus.
The journey between Italy Austria/Germany can therefore easily be made by train and if you want to save money, seats are an option, although we would definitely recommend eisleeper or sleeper!
