December 13th - The Berlin to Paris sleeper train reawakens
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 13 December 2023
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
Nine years to the day after German rail operator Deutsche Bahn scrapped the Paris-Berlin sleeper train, a revived overnight service rolled into Gare de l’Est in the French capital. Simon Calder reports on the train's return and interviews the French Travel Minister about his thoughts.
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Transcript
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| 1:18.7 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder, at a very exciting Paris Garde d'Aest. This is the station that was the departure point for the Orient Express, L'Ext Place de Alleyons, which of course connected the French capital with Vienna, |
| 1:30.3 | Belgrade and Istanbul for many decades. It was also the place that unfortunately nine years ago |
| 1:39.3 | saw the ending of the last link on German railways between Paris and Berlin. |
| 1:47.1 | But that has now all changed because we have a new revived link that Austrian Railways is |
| 1:55.5 | running. Yes, but in association with French and German Railways. |
| 1:59.4 | Austrian Railways has a very good operation |
| 2:01.9 | called Nightjet building a network of overnight sleeper trains between the key locations |
| 2:09.3 | in Europe. Now it's managed to persuade everybody involved that a Berlin-Paris train is what the world needs, what Europe needs |
... |
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