European Sleeper experience

[doc7austin]

I thought youtube today would be full of videos of the first train but there seems to be hardly anything!

How ? When ES had to cancel/downgrade tickets.

According to one traveller on the inaugural train Paris-Berlin, ES was short of 3!!! cars.

 

[Gag Halfrunt]

Simply Railway has posted a video. I haven't watched it yet.

(ETA: There's an editing mistake in the video. The shot of Mons station is actually Liège-Guillemins.)

Hello folks!
It’s Fitia here — you might know me from the Montreux to Zweisimmen video . Tonight, I’m taking you with me to the launch of the Paris to Berlin ride with European Sleeper.

Enjoy! (Please go easy on me — first time filming a night train launch, pretty stressed out!)

 

[BRX]

How ? When ES had to cancel/downgrade tickets.

According to one traveller on the inaugural train Paris-Berlin, ES was short of 3!!! cars.

I'm not sure how the train being short formed would have prevented people filming it.

Did you travel on it?

 

[StephenHunter]

Haven't they got some AB33s now? Also, Comfortlines will become available from Nightjet soon.

 

[JustPassingBy]

I tend to agree with the other poster(s) here who are somewhat sceptical of European Sleeper.

On a recent experience with them in the "comfort-plus" sleeping car from Berlin:

- No running water in cabin
- Bins in cabin not emptied from previous night (so cabin smelt of stale food)
- Food mess on seat not cleaned
- All toilets in that sleeping car out of order
- etc

On reporting this to the steward, there was very barely an acknowledgement of these not being up to standard. Many basics not working properly.

Suffice to say I decided there and then I won't be travelling with them again for a long time.

I hope they improve because more sleeper options is a good thing, but I'm not sure more bad options is a good thing.

 

[doc7austin]

I'm not sure how the train being short formed would have prevented people filming it.

Not, when ES cancelled/downgraded tickets.

Did you travel on it?

I was booked on, but ES pulled my ticket.

 

[doc7austin]

On a recent experience with them in the "comfort-plus" sleeping car from Berlin:

Never ever book the Sleeping Car on ES - apart from the toilet situation, these cranky old cars have a habit of breaking down frequently.

 

[riceuten]

I tend to agree with the other poster(s) here who are somewhat sceptical of European Sleeper.

On a recent experience with them in the "comfort-plus" sleeping car from Berlin:

- No running water in cabin
- Bins in cabin not emptied from previous night (so cabin smelt of stale food)
- Food mess on seat not cleaned
- All toilets in that sleeping car out of order
- etc

On reporting this to the steward, there was very barely an acknowledgement of these not being up to standard. Many basics not working properly.

Suffice to say I decided there and then I won't be travelling with them again for a long time.

I hope they improve because more sleeper options is a good thing, but I'm not sure more bad options is a good thing.

IIRC, the staff are poorly paid Eastern Europeans with minimal training. I would imagine the cleaning and carriage servicing staff are as well. It would be impossible to fix the faults in the carriages because the staff to do this are not situated in Paris. I imagine you might be offered a €25 voucher as "compensation". I wouldn't mind, but they have/had exactly the same issues on the original route. Management don't care.

I dearly want companies like ES to succeed, but ES management are just phoning it in, presently. If they are still around in 6 months' time, I will be very surprised

 

[rvdborgt]

IIRC, the staff are poorly paid Eastern Europeans with minimal training.

I know a number of Belgians working on ES. They use Wagon Plastron, a Belgian company, for on-train staff. Not sure how many eastern European staff they might have, but far from all of them.

 

[riceuten]

I know a number of Belgians working on ES. They use Wagon Plastron, a Belgian company, for on-train staff. Not sure how many eastern European staff they might have, but far from all of them.

This was purely anecdotal from various sources, but I do remember some Dutch/French speakers unimpressed that the carriage staff spoke only English as a common language

 

[danshrimp]

For what it's worth I've always found ES staff to be an absolute delight. Sounds like it must be a pretty mixed bag then. I guess that's the downside of outsourcing your staffing!

I can't help but feel like it would be better for them to ditch the AB30s entirely at this point and just provide "comfort standard" as the higher level of service (even if it it's only marginally higher than the standard couchettes) - assuming the AB33s couldn't reliably cover both routes. The reliability issues show no signs of abating, and they look and feel knackered even when they're working perfectly so they're at best embarrassing and at worst a liability. It was one thing when ES started and the couchettes they had were pretty rough as well, but the 5-berth ones they use these days are decent and reliable and they have plenty of them.

Perhaps they're planning to soldier on until they can replace them with Comfortlines (themselves not bastions of reliability, but one would hope there'll be more spares available at least!). Indeed, is there a chance that delivery of these is connected to the start of the Milan route? (Perhaps it even has something to do with the delay in starting that route?) If so, I hope they'll get enough Comfortlines to replace the AB30s and not use all available stock for expansion...

 

[StephenHunter]

This was purely anecdotal from various sources, but I do remember some Dutch/French speakers unimpressed that the carriage staff spoke only English as a common language

I don't know what the Dutch are complaining about in that department. They're a nationality that speaks English so well that several of their actors have gotten cast to play Americans in American television shows.

 

[rvdborgt]

I don't know what the Dutch are complaining about in that department. They're a nationality that speaks English so well that several of their actors have gotten cast to play Americans in American television shows.

We don't know the nationality of the mentioned Dutch speakers. Also, serving a country while only speaking English wouldn't impress me either. Finally, some people still prefer to be able to be use their own language, even if they can speak one or more other languages.

 

[AlterEgo]

I'm not sure how the train being short formed would have prevented people filming it.

Did you travel on it?

Some people filmed it and didn’t declare their tickets were free. Naming no noms.

 

[StephenHunter]

We don't know the nationality of the mentioned Dutch speakers. Also, serving a country while only speaking English wouldn't impress me either. Finally, some people still prefer to be able to be use their own language, even if they can speak one or more other languages.

True... but when I was in Italy most recently, on three occasions people spoke to me in English before I even had a chance to try my Italian on them. I looked that much like a tourist.

 

[rvdborgt]

True... but when I was in Italy most recently, on three occasions people spoke to me in English before I even had a chance to try my Italian on them. I looked that much like a tourist.

That also started happening to me in France, from about 10 years ago, never before. Any hint of an accent seems to incite some speakers to switch to English, like you're in Amsterdam :/
In France I just persist in French. In Italy... it depends. A breakfast order works fine in Italian and the response is normally in Italian too.

 

[Struner]

I don't know what the Dutch are complaining about in that department. They're a nationality that speaks English so well that several of their actors have gotten cast to play Americans in American television shows.

just wondering, how many languages & which do you have?

 

[StephenHunter]

That also started happening to me in France, from about 10 years ago, never before. Any hint of an accent seems to incite some speakers to switch to English, like you're in Amsterdam :/
In France I just persist in French. In Italy... it depends. A breakfast order works fine in Italian and the response is normally in Italian too.

It's all fun and games until you order potato juice.

just wondering, how many languages & which do you have?

GCSE French and German, a year of Russian at uni.

But there are more English speakers in the Netherlands than some English-speaking countries have people.

List of countries by English-speaking population - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[185143]

It's all fun and games until you order potato juice.


GCSE French and German, a year of Russian at uni.

But there are more English speakers in the Netherlands than some English-speaking countries have people.

List of countries by English-speaking population - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Can easily believe that.

Think I've met one Dutch person who's English I would rate as "Good". That's to say, we could hold a conversation easily enough, but he was clearly having to think for a few words/phrases. On the whole the Dutch probably speak better English than most Brits as they won't have the slang.

 

[87015]

Some people filmed it and didn’t declare their tickets were free. Naming no noms.

Please do, will help massively on knowing what's going on with these cowboys, wether some freeloading was allowed at the expense of paying passengers

 

[185143]

Please do, will help massively on knowing what's going on with these cowboys, wether some freeloading was allowed at the expense of paying passengers

Agreed.

If they've cancelled tickets for farepaying passengers and let freeloaders on, I sincerely hope they go out of business.

 

[Amalie]

I don't know what the Dutch are complaining about in that department. They're a nationality that speaks English so well that several of their actors have gotten cast to play Americans in American television shows.

Dutch speakers from The Netherlands tend to speak pretty good English. Of course, some speak it better or worse than others, and it’s very easy to bring up ancedotes that argue in favour of us being better or worse speakers. I would say that the biggest advantage we have is that our accent is relatively understandable compared to some others, That being said, especially with European Sleeper, a Dutch-language speaker could also be Belgian. The Flemish Belgians also tend to be decent at English, although that is no reflection on the Dutch people of the Netherlands.

To return to topic a bit, I’m in the same position as several of you regarding European Sleeper. I love their ambition, and the fact that they managed to actually get them to run at all is a miracle. On the other hand, they are stretching themselves thin, and it doesn’t seem sustainable. I also don’t think I would want to travel with them as they are simply not reliable enough.

 

[BRX]

For what it's worth I've always found ES staff to be an absolute delight.

Same here.

 

[StephenHunter]

Agreed.

If they've cancelled tickets for farepaying passengers and let freeloaders on, I sincerely hope they go out of business.

It's a press launch. They want the publicity from the vloggers.

 

[rvdborgt]

If they've cancelled tickets for farepaying passengers and let freeloaders on, I sincerely hope they go out of business.

ÖBB have done that in the past, IIRC for the first run of Berlin-Paris. Don't know about ES.

 

[185143]

It's a press launch. They want the publicity from the vloggers.

That's fine. Run a press launch train ahead of the first public one then, like happens elsewhere.

But to boot off normal passengers for freeloaders is unacceptable.

 

[AdamWW]

But to boot off normal passengers for freeloaders is unacceptable.

Freeloaders seems a strange term to use to me.

They are providing publicity - while of course it benefits them too they are still providing something for their free travel.

I understand why people are upset at the idea of them potentially being priotised over paying passengers but I imagine this is one of those decisions that seems very different when you're the one trying to keep a company going.

If European Sleeper had paid for their own camera crew to film the journey would people expect them to be chucked out to get more paying passengers in?

Doesn't seem right to me though if someone doesn't declare getting free travel.

 

[riceuten]

Freeloaders seems a strange term to use to me.

They are providing publicity - while of course it benefits them too they are still providing something for their free travel.

I understand why people are upset at the idea of them potentially being priotised over paying passengers but I imagine this is one of those decisions that seems very different when you're the one trying to keep a company going.

If European Sleeper had paid for their own camera crew to film the journey would people expect them to be chucked out to get more paying passengers in?

Doesn't seem right to me though if someone doesn't declare getting free travel.

I'd also be pretty hacked off if I, as a paying passenger, had been bumped for someone who hadn't paid for travel, because they would write a presumably glowing review of their experience, and skim over the non-functioning toilets, short-forming of the stock to provide the service, and offered derisory compensation that doesn't even accord to consumer protection in the countries they operate in.

ES need to up their game, and quickly.

 

[Jealgu]

I'd also be pretty hacked off if I, as a paying passenger, had been bumped for someone who hadn't paid for travel, because they would write a presumably glowing review of their experience, and skim over the non-functioning toilets, short-forming of the stock to provide the service, and offered derisory compensation that doesn't even accord to consumer protection in the countries they operate in.

ES need to up their game, and quickly.

They do not simply write a glowing review, but create a video (or write a blog, though I do not think I have seen one of those for the new service) that is seen by thousands if not more.

The one video for the Paris journey is from Simply Railway (let me know if you know others), and in that video you can see that in one carriages electricity is not working, nothing is skimmed over.

 

[riceuten]

They do not simply write a glowing review, but create a video (or write a blog, though I do not think I have seen one of those for the new service) that is seen by thousands if not more.

The one video for the Paris journey is from Simply Railway (let me know if you know others), and in that video you can see that in one carriages electricity is not working, nothing is skimmed over.

I'd trust Simply Railway to give an honest review - isn't he planning his own sleeper service in the future?