A new way to sleep your way across Germany goes on sale this year. Nox Mobility, a Berlin-based rail start-up, will run its first overnight service between Hamburg and Munich from 23 March 2027, and every passenger gets their own enclosed suite — from just €65 one way.

Trains run three times a week in each direction, calling at Bremen and Augsburg. Headed south, you leave Hamburg at 9:22 pm, roll through Bremen at 10:30 pm and Augsburg at 7:35 am, and pull into Munich at 8:14 am. The northbound service departs Munich at 9:20 pm and arrives in Hamburg at 8:27 the next morning. Roughly eleven hours on board, none of them daylight hours you'd otherwise spend doing anything.

So what's a €65 suite actually like? Nox leases Deutsche Bahn intercity carriages and configures each with 30 individual compartments behind sliding doors. The centrepiece is a large seat that reclines into a lie-flat bed two metres long, positioned by the window. You also get a table for working or dining, power sockets and storage big enough for large luggage. It's a step down from the fully private bedrooms the company originally pitched — those are now promised for a later phase, sometime in 2028 or 2029, with bathrooms staying shared either way.

There's no dining car. Instead you order food, including breakfast, delivered to your seat. Nox is also working on arrival add-ons like shower access, coworking space or hotel rooms, which could make early-morning landings in Munich or Hamburg more bearable. Kids under four travel free with an adult.

Co-founder Thibault Constant's pitch is straightforward: overnight rail replaces a short-haul flight, saves a hotel night, and lets you work or rest rather than burning daytime hours in transit. It's the same logic behind the sleeper revival spreading across Europe, but with a business-class seat concept rather than a traditional couchette.

And this route is just the opening move. Nox wants to reach 100 European cities across 35 routes by 2035, with Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Budapest and Warsaw previously named as targets. That's a big ask in an industry where rolling stock, track access rights and national approvals are slow and expensive to secure — which is exactly why the first months on the Hamburg–Munich corridor will be watched closely.

For travellers, it's a genuinely useful link. The Hamburg–Munich route is one of Germany's busiest domestic flight corridors, and an €65 entry fare undercuts both the flight-plus-hotel maths and Deutsche Bahn's own sleeper pricing. Book early for the cheapest seats, and if you're connecting onwards, the early morning arrivals in Munich and Hamburg slot neatly into onward trains. Worth noting too that this launches alongside services like the expanding Nightjet network, giving Germany's north–south spine a real choice of overnight options by 2027.

Story via Travel Tomorrow.