Associated Press, 3/6/24
Climate-conscious travelers are jumpstarting Europe’s sleeper trains
After being gently rocked awake in her sleeper cabin, Sarah Marks spent the morning of her 29th birthday watching the Alps zip past the windows of her overnight train to Zurich.
“The train comes in right next to the lake, with the mountains coming up behind it,” Marks said wistfully. “Very romantic, I have to say.”
By the time of that 2022 journey from Zagreb, Croatia, it had been four years since she had taken a flight— since around the time Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg began to spread the term flygskam, or “flight shame.”
They join an increasing number of climate-conscious Europeans, particularly younger travelers, who are shunning carbon-spewing airplanes in favor of overnight trains. In the process, they’ve spurred something of a night-train revival while discovering what many say is a slower, richer way of traveling, one that had been on the edge of extinction.