As many of you know, we are living in Italy with our Chocolate Lab Barley. Our most recent trip was to Salzburg, Budapest and Vienna over Christmas. We decided to try the overnight train from Milan to Salzburg and back, since we knew Barley would be fine overnight for 12 hours.
Traveling by train with a dog requires some preplanning and predictability. We took a 4:30 train from Verbania, where we had three hours in Milano Porta Garibaldi until our 9:10 departure time on OBB, Austrian rail, with expected arrival in Salzburg at 6:15 am. We splurged on the delux double with a toilet, sink and shower. (€269 each way). While I couldn’t imagine taking a shower in the tiny space, it was great having a toilet. My husband took the top bunk, with a narrow ladder to climb up to bed. We were provided with two small bottles of sparkling wine, slippers, bottled water, and earplugs. Overall we did not sleep good, between the stops, movement and noises, it was equivalent to sleeping on an airplane. If you sleep on planes and in cars, you’d probably sleep OK. At some point during the night we noticed we were not moving for a while. The cabin attendant woke us up at 5:30 to let us know we would be delayed by two hours due to delays from the train from Rome. Apparently the overnight trains merge someplace in Austria where they reconnect cars to Munich (Salzburg stop) and cars to Vienna and that direction. As our car was getting shuffled around it was not condisive to sleep. And sharing my bottom bunk with a 90 pound dog, didn’t help sleeping either.
We arrived in Salzburg at around 8:30 worn out and tired, dropped our stuff off at our hotel, then went back at 2:00 when our room was ready.
Our train back was to leave Salzburg at 10:00 pm, with arrival time in Milan at 8:10am. Since we were taking the 11:40am train from Vienna to Salzburg, we had about 8 hours to kill. And since I’d come down with Bronchitis, killing 8 hours in rainy Salzburg sitting in cafes or wandering was not going to be any fun. So we splurged on a hotel room at the train station to hang out for the afternoon and evening. My husband took Barley on a couple walks to make sure he was ready for another 10-12 train ride.
The train arrived early, we settled in our “delux” cabin, and went to bed. I only slept a bit better due to the prescription of codeine pills to help me sleep through the night. Early in the morning we noticed we were stopped at a station near Lake Garda for an extended time. I got up to see if we had time to get off and let Barley take care of business. The attendant said there had been an accident with a person so the train was delayed for an unknown period of time. But we could get off the train, and Barley appreciated a short walk along the platform.
We arrived at Milano Porta Garibaldi two hours late, and only had an hour to wait for our 10:45 train back home to Verbania.
After this trip we would not take overnight trains again. For train trips longer than 5 hours during the day, we will either break up the journey into two legs, with an hour connection time, or break the journey with an overnight stay at a hotel.
Unless you can sleep anyplace, regardless of noise, movement, and temperature (too hot or too cold), I’d avoid the overnight train as a way to save time. (Certainly doesn’t save money) Plus, with late departure times, you have hours to kill until you board the train. So in our case we basically paid for an extra hotel room.
When we go to Sicily in May, we are going to take the overnight ferry, and reserve a private dog friendly cabin. We’ll see how that goes, compared to the train.