There is a version of the night train that exists in old films and in our heads: a velvet couchette, a glass of wine, the Alps sliding by like a moving postcard while a child sleeps angelically against the window.

We have now taken four night trains. We can report that the postcard is real for roughly ninety minutes around dusk, and that the rest is a small metal room shared with strangers, the smell of someone's reheated dinner, and a four-year-old who treats a moving bunk bed as the single greatest playground ever constructed.

We loved it anyway. Somewhere past Innsbruck, Ines finally crashed, and the two of us sat in the corridor with the window cracked, watching black mountains and the occasional lit village, and felt — briefly, completely — like we'd gotten away with something.

Logistics, for anyone tempted:

• Book early. Couchettes on the Nightjet routes sell out weeks ahead in summer. Sleeper cabins go even faster.
• Book a whole compartment if your family fills most of it. Paying for the empty berths is worth not gambling on strangers with a small kid.
• Bottom bunks for children, always. There's a strap, but a four-year-old plus a top bunk plus a lurching train is a no.
• Bring your own food and a ton of water. The onboard options are thin and expensive.
• Lower your expectations on sleep, raise them on everything else.

Crossing into Slovenia next. We'll write when we're horizontal again.

— Tomas, Amara & Ines