With the skies empty of planes and no real sign of a comeback, trainlandia is exploding with juicy tit-bits.

• France’s “relaunch” slush fund includes 100 million euros for night trains. Which likely means the Paris-Hendaye and Paris-Nice night trains will be Back on Track in December 2021.

• Sweden has launched a tender for Stockholm-Hamburg and Malmö-Brussels night trains.

• Despite most trans-European night trains having to go through Germany, the latter continues to pretend that cars and planes are the way to go.

• It’s well known that booking train trips right across Europe is a right royal pain in the bum that only some of us get a kick out of. The Swiss are petitioning to make the whole booking rigmarole a lot easier. Good luck with that one.

• Perhaps the coolest find is this “secret” direct train/night train connection all the way from Berlin to Eastern Slovakia (Preŝov) via Prague, Bratislava, and Koŝice. If you’re a train geek, here’s a great 40 minute-long video of the trip.

In particular, check out the full restaurant on board! This is one of the best things about trains, sipping a local glass of wine as you wooooosh through villages, forests, and river valleys.

The trick with this “secret” direct train is that that Berlin-Prague train has sleeping compartments joined on to it at Prague, so all you have to do is book a seated ticket from Berlin to Prague, then wait for the sleeping compartments to arrive and walk through to them!

Trains are the best.

This news was brought to you by the Back on Track mailing list and Joachim Holstein in particular.