What could be more fun than a city break to either Paris or Berlin? The answer is a visit to each of the cultural powerhouses within the same three-day trip, with no hotel fees to pay and a low environmental impact.
Thanks to the new Paris-Berlin night-train service from European Sleeper — a revival of the route operated by Nightjet that was axed in December — even the most time-poor traveller can pack the capitals into one break.
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The new timetable — with Paris departures on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays and Berlin returns on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays — means that you can sandwich a day hunting counterculture in Berlin between two days playing the Parisian flaneur. Since you’ll be sleeping in the night train’s “vintage” carriages, accommodation is covered by your train ticket, making the trip surprisingly affordable.
Jules Cooper boards the European Sleeper
If a three-day trip seems too short, make it a long weekend instead by taking the Thursday service from Paris then catching the Monday night train back from Berlin.
To make the most of my first day in Paris — a Thursday — I take the first Eurostar out of London St Pancras at 6.01am and glide into Gare du Nord at 9.34am. The train to Berlin leaves from there at 6.03pm, so I have about eight hours. I check my bag into a storage facility round the corner (£10 a day; stowyourbags.com) and head to Canal St Martin, a trendy neighbourhood southeast of the station with patches of street art and a clutch of low-key restaurants. Artazart, a chic bookshop selling vibrant prints, fashion magazines and erotic tarot cards, sums up the vibe here — firmly at the polite end of edgy; certainly at 11am, at least (artazart.com).
The Canal Saint Martin in ParisAlamy
I hire a Lime bike and ride about ten minutes east to the grittier Ménilmontant neighbourhood, north of Père Lachaise Cemetery in the 20th arrondissement, for lunch at Becquetance, a tiny bistro with a big wine list where the menu tempts me with confit lamb, herbed cream cheese, peas, carrot and asparagus, with a 2024 Loire Valley red made from grolleau grapes (£23; instagram.com/becquetance_paris). Then it’s a stroll to Rue Sorbier for vintage clothes and Benoît Castel, a bougie boulangerie-patisserie, where I load up on mini financiers (benoitcastel.com).
After a climb up to Belleville Park for its shimmering view of the Eiffel Tower, it’s time to cycle back to collect my bag and pop into Carrefour to find dinner. There’s no dining car on the train to Berlin, so a baguette and bottle of petit chablis will do nicely.
What you need to know
What does it cost? Tickets from Paris to Berlin cost from £35 for a seat; from £52 for a bed in Classic couchette; from £87 for B&B in a Comfort Standard cabin; and from £113 in a Comfort Plus Cabin
Who will love it? Anyone looking for a little adventure and a whiff of old-fashioned travel romance
Insider tip Be sure to take food with you as there is no dining car
What it’s like on the sleeper
Back at Gare du Nord, train enthusiasts crowd on the platform to photograph the brand-new Alstom Traxx Universal engine. The historic Paris-Berlin sleeper route, in its various forms, ceased to exist in 2014 and remained absent until the short-lived Nightjet service launched in 2023.
European Sleeper has resuscitated the connection, as it expands its night-train network across Europe (including between Brussels and Milan in September) and has included stops at Aulnoye-Aymeries in France and Mons, Brussels and Liège-Guillemins in Belgium. From July 13 the service will also stop at Hamburg-Harburg in Germany.
I climb aboard and find my Comfort Plus cabin, the fanciest of the four ticket options, with a maximum occupancy of three and a sink, a duvet on the bed and breakfast. A small, plastic-coated print of Klimt’s The Kiss tries to distract from the otherwise characterless and cold interior of blue and grey. But it is clean, warm, odourless and feels spacious enough for me and my two room-mates.
Peering into other cabins along the train I find some Classic compartments — the more traditional padded couchettes, which also feature fold-up mattresses. The Classics fit from four to six people to a cabin, whereas the similar-looking and more expensive Comfort Standard cabins have a three-person limit. With all types, you can book the entire compartments if you don’t want to share.
If you like sleeping in agony, or staying up all night, there’s also the budget option: seat only for £35. Thankfully, with a 15-hour journey ahead, I don’t spot anyone in this class.
As the carriages lurch forward, passengers lean out of windows and chat in the corridors, and I go for a walk along the carriages.
The European Sleeper’s Paris to Berlin route launched in MarchKeepFocus Photography
I’m offered an unidentified drink by two fun-seeking couples in their fifties — Joëlle, Frédérique, Cedric and Thierry — who will spend the weekend in Berlin.
This is not Joëlle’s first night-train rodeo. “The train is a bit old,” she says. “We thought it would be a bit more modern. It would be good to have a restaurant.”
“And a bar!” Frédérique interjects.
“We feel younger in this space, though,” Joëlle says. “It’s like we’re backpacking.”
It’s a similar concept. Taking the night train is an adventure that comes with camaraderie-fostering privations — the creaky carriages were refurbished in the Eighties and Nineties and structurally date from the Fifties to Seventies — but on this trip the meaning of “adventure” is stretched a tad.
Like many of its counterparts, European Sleeper — a Dutch-Belgian operator — does not own its engines and carriages, and on its Paris–Berlin route the carriages are provided by RDC Deutschland. European Sleeper says that it received them only two days before the launch of the service, leaving it little time to check, prepare and potentially fix the rolling stock — and boy did it show.
Most of our lavatories fall out of action within the first hours of the journey; one coach is completely broken, requiring about 20 passengers to have their tickets cancelled; and just as I prepare to clean my teeth and wash my face, the water in my carriage cruelly sputters out of existence. As a profusely sweating train attendant rushes past trying to deal with a deluge of customer requests for blankets, loo paper and directions to a working WC, it’s starting to feel a little more like wild camping than the promised “classic charm meets modern comfort”.
However, spirits remain infectiously high. It would take a particularly dedicated cynic to fail to enjoy the excited pyjama-clad children tottering down the corridors, the odd lingering goodbye embrace on the platform or the trainspotters documenting the new service.
Pulling into Berlin after breakfast
The train makes its final Belgian stop at 11.03pm, when I nip out to take a look at the sweeping, futuristic, white-concrete roof of Liège-Guillemins station. Then it’s time to hit the decidedly firm mattresses and, somehow, fall asleep amid all the juddering, hard braking and violent whooshes of other trains shooting past in the opposite direction.
When the boxed breakfasts arrive at 7am — yoghurt, muesli, a cracker, some spreads, a white bun, a carton of orange juice and an instant coffee — the train is racing through the fields of northern Germany.
A breakfast spread is provided on the train
Outside the cabin, the corridors are busy with teeth-cleaners gazing out of the windows at the tribes of wind turbines west of Potsdam. There are empty champagne bottles outside some cabins, while in another coach I find a woman wrapped in a hat, coat and woolen gloves — the heating in her carriage packed up during the night. “I’ve taken enough night trains to know to expect these things,” she says cheerily.
We pull into Berlin Hauptbahnhof on schedule, at just after 9am, so with about nine hours until my return train to Paris I check my bag into the station’s urine-scented locker room (£4) and rack my brains for a way to freshen up, as it is now more than 30 hours since my last proper wash. What I need, I realise, is a naked salt scrub and sauna.
Liquidrom is perfect — a concrete-lined cave with various modern saunas and a Pantheon-domed underground pool where you can listen to techno played underwater (from £20, book ahead; liquidrom-berlin.de). It’s a 15-minute bike ride south from the station.
The techno spa, Liquidrom Berlin, feels futuristic
Feeling human again, I ride about 20 minutes east to Neukölln, the less-gentrified sister of Kreuzberg, with an anarchic fervour writ large in spray paint and tattoo ink. I’m in search of the bleeding heart of the Berlin zeitgeist; or, failing that, some decent vintage clothes stores.
I find some incredible pancakes at 21 gramm, a brunch spot in an old funeral hall with biblical quotes written on the walls in black gothic font (pancakes from £12; 21gramm.berlin). It’s on the southern border of Schillerkiez, the slither of Neukölln east of the sprawling former airport Tempelhofer Feld, which opened as a park in 2010 — more than a decade ago it was a regular rave destination; today the runways are filled with kite-flying families.
It’s getting late, so I use my phone to track down another bike and start the 30-minute ride northeast through Kreuzberg to collect my bag from the Hauptbahnhof locker room and make the 6.31pm train to Paris.
Passengers get nine hours to explore BerlinGetty images
The journey back is excruciatingly cute. I recognise people I met on the outward leg and exchange Berlin tales and sleeper train gossip. Mercifully, I find working taps and more of the loos flush. I’m told by European Sleeper that the problems are mostly fixed and some swapping and removing of offending carriages had occurred.
Back to Paris and the end of the line
After the train pulls into Paris at about 11am I wave goodbye to my train pals, chuck my bag into the same locker room I used in Paris before and hire a bike to zoom up into the cobbled hills of Montmartre. Rather than the baggy leather jackets and facial piercings of Neukölln, I spy navy trenchcoats and laptop cases.
Take in the view of Paris from the Sacré-CoeurGetty images
I watch tourists gawp at the Instagram-fêted pink-and-green La Maison Rose restaurant, walk around the Musée de Montmartre for some bohemian and Communard history (£14; museedemontmartre.fr), then look out over Paris from the steps of the Sacré-Coeur.
Last stop: a glass of sancerre on the terrace outside Le Relais de la Butte, a brasserie in a 17th-century building with another view of the city. Picasso used to drink here and pay his tab with sketches, a velvet-jacketed waiter tells me before smoking a cigarette and nonchalantly flicking the remainder into the street in a high arc (wine from £5; lerelaisdelabutte.fr).
Le Relais de la Butte, where Picasso used to drink, is a great spot for a glass of wineAlamy
As I stare out over the Parisian rooftops, the wine almost gets the better of me — I worry that I’ve cut things a little fine and need to find another bike, pronto. But I’m in the clear; my luggage locker is less than a ten-minute ride away down some vertiginous roads, then I’m a short walk from the station.
The quietly humming Eurostar now feels like a space-age impossibility. Functioning power sockets, a dining car, running water. A smart, calm attendant quietly offers me a “refreshing towel”.
It’s a relief, though I do miss the frenetic sleeper adventure.
Jules Cooper was a guest of European Sleeper, which has overnight berths in a shared couchette from Paris to Berlin from £52 (europeansleeper.eu), and Eurostar, which has London-Paris returns from £78 (eurostar.com)