Days on the Night Train

It is the charm of ‘uncushioned encounters with the world’ that makes Millay Hyatt travel by train. Experiencing the excitement of departure and arrival – and, in between, the bittersweet joy of being in limbo, of looking inward – she observes how long train journeys, like books, alter us in a way jet travel has all but extinguished, and impart even sleep with an unfamiliar quality. Long-distance rail travel is a story of serendipity and missed connections, of sluggish border crossings, of embracing unpredictability and shunning the stifling regimentation of contemporary travel. In her journeys across Europe and beyond, from Edinburgh to Tunis, from Valencia to Tbilisi, Hyatt shows that it is in movement that our perspective changes – and that this is never truer than when travelling by train. Itself a journey, abundant with reflection, poetic observation, and literary excursions, Days on the Night Train is a paean to travelling by rail, to Europe’s landscapes, and to an immersive way of seeing the world.