The Jan Kiepura

[trainosaurus]

I am taking this from Germany to Warsaw (and back) next month and never having travelled in a 'couchette' before, I wondered if you are confined to the room for the duration or is there somewhere else to go and sit when you dont want to lie down/sleep?

Any other helpful advice/tips would be gratefully received too.

 

[gordonthemoron]

couchettes do have (2) door locks which the compartment occupants can use.

However, you can leave the compartment to go to the restaurant car (if there is one). Otherwise, you can buy drinks and snacks from the sleeping car attendant but you'll have to consume them in the corridor.

I have done Posnan to Cologne on that service, and also used couchettes on many other routes in and from germany

 

[lemonic]

I have used this service a few times. There is a restaurant car attached from the Polish border (Rzepin) to Warsaw so it's available for breakfast in the direction of Warsaw and dinner in the direction of Amsterdam.

To be honest, there isn't really anywhere to go if you don't want to lie down as the whole carriage is full of compartments. There is a 'seated sleeper' carriage which is basically just First Class seats but I don't know if you will have access to it from the couchette carriages. It is not uncommon for people to leave their compartments and just stand in the corridor for a while though.

All the couchettes are Deutsche Bahn couchettes and are the same as those found on CityNightLine sleeper trains.

Berths 1 and 2 are the bottom two, berths 3 and 4 are the middle two and berths 5 and 6 are the top two. For example, if you have berth 56 then you are in 'compartment 5' (though it is labelled with numbers 51-56) and in one of the top two berths.

You may find this page helpful as it lists the formation of the train (search for EN446/447) and so you can try and find out in advance what part of the train your carriage is in as the train is pretty long. http://www.grahnert.homepage.t-online.de/r111-400.pdf

Finally, this page contains lots of useful info about the train http://www.seat61.com/Poland.htm

I hope this helps. A lot of the info is relevant to sleeper trains in general, so I hope it wasn't just repeating stuff you already knew!

 

[trainosaurus]

Cheers for the replies. I’ve only ever travelled overnight in the States and on those occasions I’ve just had a seat, so I didn’t really have much idea of what to expect! I was hoping I’d be able to look out of the window for the brief part of it when it’ll be daylight but I guess the corridor will have to do!