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From Berlin to Stockholm: New night train connects Germany and Scandinavia

2021-06-29T04:17:40.717Z


Competition for cars and planes: Train drivers can now travel by night train from Berlin to Copenhagen and Stockholm - for the first time since the 1990s.


Enlarge image

Private competition for Deutsche Bahn: In future, Scandinavian vacationers will also be able to travel by night train

Photo: Martin Drube / Snalltaget

1043 kilometers, more than 19 hours of travel time: the European night train network is growing by one connection.

Since Monday, passengers have been able to take the night train from Berlin via Hamburg to Copenhagen, Malmö and Stockholm.

The Swedish railway company Snelltåget offers the connection every day until the beginning of September, then four to five times a week in autumn.

The company announced that it was the first regular night train connection between Germany, Denmark and Sweden in almost 30 years.

The first trip from south to north starts on Monday evening in Berlin-Gesundbrunnen at just before 7 p.m. and arrives in Stockholm on Tuesday around 2.30 p.m.

Then later in the afternoon it goes back again.

The new night line replaces the train connection between Malmö in Sweden and Berlin, which was offered until 2019, on which the ferry crossed the Baltic Sea between Trelleborg and Sassnitz.

"We believe in the night train as a product and we welcome our passengers back on board," said Adam Holmberg, head of Snallenåget.

Reclining seats would be offered from 74 euros.

Deutsche Bahn does not want to buy sleeping cars

The expansion of the night train network is considered to be an important climate component in order to shift more intra-European air and car traffic to the railways and thus reduce emissions.

While the route to Scandinavia is operated by a Swedish subsidiary of the French Transdev Group, Deutsche Bahn also wants to offer more night trains again in the future.

Together with the state-owned railway companies from France, Austria and Switzerland, Deutsche Bahn announced, for example, that it will in future connect 13 European metropolises with night trains.

From December, the Vienna-Munich-Paris and Zurich-Cologne-Amsterdam routes are new to the timetable.

Vienna-Berlin-Brussels-Paris will be added at the end of 2023 and Zurich-Barcelona a year later, according to the announcement.

When the night train departs for Stockholm for the first time on Monday evening, Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) also wants to be there in Berlin.

"In 2021, the European Year of the Rails, the privately operated Snallenåget is an important signal," says Scheuer.

Unlike the Austrian ÖBB, for example, Deutsche Bahn does not yet want to invest in new night trains with sleeping and couchette cars.

Instead, the state-owned company is to participate in the night train connections of its European partners with its seating cars, according to the answer from the Ministry of Transport to a request from the FDP parliamentary group.

"DB Fernverkehr AG no longer has any sleeping cars and is not planning to buy or lease new sleeping cars," it said.

During the German EU Council Presidency last autumn, the Minister of Transport announced the revival of the “TransEuropExpress”.

"Get on the train in Munich or Berlin in the evening and arrive relaxed in Paris or Brussels in the morning," Scheuer promoted at a rail summit for the idea.

This will make cross-border traffic in Europe more climate and environmentally friendly.

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Source: spiegel

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