| |  | |  |  | |  |  |  | Happy New Year and welcome on board Midnight Trains, a company where every minute counts Here at Midnight Trains, we’re aiming to better connect the great European cities – with ‘hotels on rails’ that freshen up the good old-fashioned sleeper train. But while we wait to really welcome you on board, every Friday at midnight the Midnight Weekly newsletter will explain just how the night train could change your life. While some of you are no doubt emerging from beneath your covers after a heavy night out, this edition has a few remedies on hand to get you through the day, including a 80-day world tour that you might well want to do yourself, an ode to train travel which might well make you want to head to your nearest train station, a brief guide to Naples and, this being January 1, a detox juice that you can whip up in no time at all. | |  |  | What else could you want at the start of a new year than to explore as far and wide as possible? To keep you dreaming of sunnier climes as winter sets in (and border restrictions still blight many of our holiday plans), this week we’ll be sharing the tale of an around-the-world tour that will help you travel in your mind, at the very least. A flightless tour, that goes without saying. After all, the first time a book was written on the subject was in 1872, when travelling companions Phileas Fogg and Jean Passpartout aimed to see the world’s greatest cities in just 80 days. In Jules Verne’s tale, they left London for Suez (seven days by train and boat), then Bombay (13 days by boat), Calcutta (three days by train), Hong Kong (13 days by boat), Yokohama (six days by boat, San Francisco (22 days by boat), New York (seven days by railway) and London (by boat and then train to finish). We speak for a lot of people when we say that when we picked up this literary epic for the first time, it immediately made us want to traverse the globe. But this odyssey wasn’t merely the basis of one book. In fact, it was two. In 1936, around 60 years after it was first written by Verne, another artist started dreaming of another 80-day world tour. The geopolitical situation in Europe was as delicate as ever, and Jean Cocteau wanted to live a little. He wanted to see the world. ‘Isn’t it fair that I relax a little, that I move across the earth and take, like everyone else, trains and boats?’ he said. He conceived of this journey as ‘a slow promenade, with lazy stopovers in each port,’, but quickly came to realise that it would be difficult to undertake his mission without jumping on any planes. In his case, Cocteau started in Paris, and he didn’t neglect to take his pen with him: the publisher of newspaper Paris-Soir – the same person who allowed Antoine de Saint-Exupéry to run into the Petit Prince in a train headed to Moscow – had asked him to write about the experience in his paper. On March 27 1936 at 10.20pm, Jean Cocteau left Paris on a train to Rome. ‘Sleep overwhelms me, a huge, opaque, extraordinary sleep cut up by brief moments when I appear to return to lucidity, and by landscapes sweeping by. Trains are like Beethoven’s symphonies. You remember certain phrases that appear to roll effortlessly into the breathless rhythm of speed, as if their origin, deafness, linked them to the silence composed of a thousand organic sounds. This beating of blood, this dark metronome of arteries, these triumphant marches, these nocturnal stations and – during the day – those white, almost Arabic cities comprising cubes, clothing and minarets, jutting into a sea, blue like washing-up liquid: all are intervals in this dream-theatre hosting only untranslatable plays.’ Jean Cocteau had only been out of Paris for 24 days and already the melody and landscapes revealed to him by the railways had begun to inspire him. At 9pm the following day, he arrived in Rome, where he took another night train to Brindisi in Puglia, where a boat would take him to Athens. He had three and a half hours to spare, and used the opportunity to explore the Eternal City by moonlight. ‘Because at night, you see how a city is made. It’s empty, men do not get in the way of its decor (...) and the noblest of facades don’t hesitate to come and confide, hand over ear.’ Like a prelude to the new dreamscapes that his next sleeper train will open up to him, Jean Coteau let the night take him places. As he walked through Rome’s streets, he felt like time had been suspended, listening to ‘the chant of fountains that denounces the true city, the necropolis that evades Mussolini’s pickaxe’. This world tour was only just getting going and already it’s become an almost dream-like experience for the poet, sharpening his lucidity, whisking him far, far from his Parisian routine. ‘This journey between two trains and two sleeps hasn’t changed my way of seeing. (...) The Soul of a country doesn’t change. It’s she who observes us behind the reinforced palaces, (...) behind the tragic mask of Il Duce. It’s her I listen to that night, suffocating, stuttering, confessing, demanding, through the moonlit fountain water. (...) Free fountains burst higher, further. They spray beyond the censors, their light vapour unsticks posters. I’ve understood you, Rome’s fountains. That night, nothing perturbs you. The master is proud of your sculpted mouths; no way could he silence their avowals.’ In 2022, let’s hope many more of us get to experience worldly thrills in the same way Jean Cocteau did. Trains will be a precious ally as we cross borders, sample new cultures and explore. Travelling isn’t just a formative experience for the young; it can bestow empathy, humanity and clarity of thought on all of us. Aged 47, Jean Cocteau certainly understood that when he left Paris on March 28 1936. ‘Tour du monde en 80 jours, mon premier voyage’ is published by Gallimard | |  |  | Let’s leave Jean Cocteau’s poetry on the platform and take some time to listen to a woman currently leading the fight against the climate crisis. As of last September, Albane Godard has been director-general of the Fondation GoodPlanet, created by photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand. The mission of this foundation is to raise awareness of ecology and the environment, and Albane Godard without a doubt is the person to do just that. A specialist in cities, mobility, energy and the food industry, Albane Godard is no newbie. It’s her to whom we owe the success of Urban Lab in Paris, a place where some of the City of Light’s most cutting-edge innovators are currently at work. And you know what? It so happens that she’s also a big fan of night trains, so we asked her to share her vision and describe why she’s so passionate about what she does. Albane, over to you! ‘I could list the conclusions of the IPCC, bring up the catastrophes that are piling up, raise the alarm. I could reel out the figures: a return flight from Paris to New York that churns out more CO2 than any given human should be producing in a year; not to mention the five annual road trips from Paris to Montpellier you undertake every year in your brand-new 4X4. With the same annual ‘CO2 budget’, you could take the train to Montpellier and back 400 times. But who would want to do 400 round tips from Paris to Montpellier in the space of 354 days? Figures, storms, heatwaves won’t suffice. Instead, I’m going to speak to you about happiness: I’m going to tell you why I chose the train. I love travelling. Deeply. After my studies, I wanted to discover the world, travel as widely as possible, as quickly as possible, as often as possible… for as cheap as possible. A plane to Ladakh, a plane to Uzbekistan, a plane to Turkey… No ‘losing time’ to transport, reaching my destination as quickly as possible, ticking another place off the bucket list. But then, my conscience sharpened. I decided to cut back on my plane use and opt for trains instead. A Paris-Glasgow to start. Eight short hours to get across the Channel and travel up through the English and Scottish countryside. Then a Paris-Berlin and a Paris-Rome, both mythical night train routes… there are few pleasures greater than falling asleep in one city only to wake up in another. Leaving the Hauptbahnhof or Termini, sitting down at a café and letting yourself get swept up in the effervescence of a new place, itself only just arising from slumber. Oh, but why have these trains disappeared? Then Zurich-Vienna, a total marvel: the train takes you through a succession of postcards; crossing the Austrian alps on the side of a cliff, nose pressed up against the window, really does make you appreciate the beauty of the natural world. You want it to go on for ever. What had started as a constraint (not taking planes) quickly became a pleasure and the train an essential ally in my ecological awakening. It helped me understand that the journey can be just as interesting as the destination. It helped me appreciate the importance of slowness, something that allows you to reset, to leave at the platform your usual routine and open up to new possibilities; allows you to do away with the tourist persona and become a traveller instead. It showed me how body and mind adapt better to progressive changes, like they like to contemplate landscapes that transform, bell towers becoming rounder, plains becoming mountains. They like to feel the climate is evolving slowly, just as they cling to their food, language and habits. Just like they like to be transported by the steady, reassuring mode that is the train, with its slowly evolving landscapes visible through the windows. It’s taught me history, geopolitics, sociology; lessons in otherness, magic, life. I found myself, one day, in a carriage suspended in mid-air in Brest (the other Brest, on the border between Poland and Belarus), in order to change the bogies, the railways between Europe and USSR being quite different so as to avoid all-too-rapid invasions. I crossed, without really noticing it, four separate time zones between Moscow and Kraznoyarsk, within the mind-blowing theatre of the third-class wagon of the Trans-Siberian. Sixty hours’ observation of life in all its forms, the constant bustle around the wagon-samovar and babushkas selling doughnuts on the platforms. Stretching out for 24 hours on the majestic Baikal-Amur and starting to better understand the works of Svetlana Alexievich. Travelling through China, first on the hard seat of a provincial service packed with travellers, then on the ultra-modern comfort of the CRH (China Railway High-Speed), and seeing the country itself transform before your eyes. Spending a day on the wooden bench of an old British train in the middle of the Burmese jungle, traversing tunnels cut into the vegetation, and spending hours in the station of the Zig-Zag Reverse waiting for the daily train that passes in the other direction on this unique railway. Being fascinated. Getting a sense of distances, understanding what separates us, identifying true frontiers. The train isn’t something that allows you to get from A to B; it’s a bubble, a boudoir, a part of a journey, a slice of adventure, the first verses of the poetry of departure.’ | |  |  | Naples is the favourite city of Victor of Le Masne, the musician, arranger and ‘sound architect’ to whom we owe the playlist that soundtracks our newsletter each week. ‘There the Mediterranean hits you right in the face, even more than anywhere else,’ he explained in the brief article we dedicated to him last week. Because as impetuous and volcanic as Naples is, the sea no doubt helps the southern Italian city find its sense of balance. So, without further ado, let’s explore. As in many Mediterranean cities, you’ll want to start your trip in the atmospheric alleyways of Naples’s historic centre. Everything is a spectacle in this city, so dive straight in and let yourself get lost a little. Take it all in: the city’s streets, buildings, shops, churches and, more than anything else, the locals. You’ve got to take the time to observe to understand the powerful (and invisible) ties between those without whom Naples would be but a museum. There’s not one Naples, but multiple – perhaps that’s why there’s an s at the end. Over the centuries, the city hasn’t stopped evolving, growing, building on top of its former selves. Want to get to know the palace? Head in the direction of Napoli Sotterranea, where you can play archaeologist for the day. Here you’ll head underground and be blown away by a Roman-era theatre beneath a house and a chunk of the Aqua Augusta, an aqueduct built between 27 and 10 BC on the orders of Emperor Augustus, to provide water to the settlement along the bay of Neapolis. Stick around in ancient Rome and you’ll discover that the city’s more debauched side has been ingrained in its DNA for quite some time. Go see what we mean by visiting the city’s Archaeological Museum. This place brims with illustrious objects – the Farnese Collection, in particular – but you’ll probably be most intrigued by its Gabinetto Segreto. That’s where you’ll find out more about the Romans very liberal attitude towards sex, and above all one of its symbols: the phallus. There are a lot of them here. While these days it all seems quite quaint, this history wasn’t always accepted: Mussolini decided to hide the objects away and ban access to the public. But there’s a lot more to Naples than just ancient history. Several excellent contemporary art galleries are proof of that, and we’d especially recommend the Alfonso Artiaco gallery, whose eclectic, globally minded exhibitions draw visitors from across Europe. Tucked inside a palazzo on the Piazzetta del Nilo, the gallery does an amazing job of showcasing the cream of the current art scene – and in some pretty dazzling surroundings. Given the range of attractions near the city, you’ll no doubt want to get out and explore a little further afield. No trip to Naples would be complete without a visit to Pompei: the ancient city that was buried beneath the ashes from Vesuvius, fixing it in place for eternity. You’ll also want to make it out to Procida and Ischia, two islands with two very different vibes. The former feels a little more authentic, with its population of fisherman, while the latter plays the tourist card a little harder (no surprise given its surfeit of natural charms). Some of you may even hit up the Amalfi Coast – the famous Costiera where turquoise bays contrast with rolling hills. Oh, and the food! For breakfast, the sfogliatella is unmissable. Whether riccia (puff pastry) or frolla (short crust), it’s best eaten warm, when all the flavours contained within will emerge subtly yet distinctly. The best are to be found at Sfogliatella Mary and the Antico Forno delle Sfogliatelle Calde Fratelli Attanasio. At this time of year, you should also try struffoli: small balls of sugary fried pastry, often assembled into a colourful nest shape. Next, you’ll want to try a glass of local natural wine. Two key addresses are Puteca, which has all sorts of jewels from across Italy and further afield, and Vineria Bandita, in the north of the city, which also has excellent sourcing credentials. If you fancy sitting down to eat, we’d recommend a visit to Mimì alla Ferrovia, which has been open since 1943 and serves up homey Neapolitan grub like mamma made it, and Salumeria Upnea, which is more of a taverna and sources all its produce locally. But we’ve saved the best till last. Naples, famously, is the home of pizza. The only real pizza there is, if you believe Neapolitan themselves. The Vatican of pizzaioli is no doubt Antica Pizzeria da Michele, where you won’t know how to choose between the margherita, the pizza fritta (fried and generously stuffed) or the marinara. At Sorbillo, meanwhile, you’ll find the most exquisite sauces. And at Pizzeria Concertino ai Tre Santi is another must-visit: it’s definitely worth braving the queues for the creative pies of Ciro Oliva, who’s recently led something of a pizza renaissance in Naples. | |  |  | So you’ve gone pretty hard for New Year’s Eve. What better than a healthy pick-me-up to see you through the first day of the new year? For this week’s culinary segment, we’ve got a delightful recipe for a vitamin-packed juice that will actually make you feel pretty good about yourselves. This hangover remedy comes courtesy of Ai Loan Dupuis and Hakim El Bour, the founders of Sezono, a Parisian establishment who’d already offered up their recipe for an oyster-mushroom kebab in a previous edition of this newsletter. This deli-market-restaurant (whose name means season in Esperanto), veg-based cooking is the name of the game and almost all products are organic and sourced locally. But not only do they serve up delicious food (shout-out, right now, to the beetroot accras and vegetarian pâté en croute), they also have an epic range of natural wines and cocktails that make your dining experience that little bit better. To perk yourselves up a bit this January 1, Sezono has suggested making this lightly aniseedy, sugary, yet incredibly fresh-tasting drink. Among its various health benefits? The fennel will apparently help cleanse your body of toxins, reduce hypertension (and thus reduce the risk of cardiac arrest), improve your vision, repair your subcutaneous tissue, keep your hair looking fine and healthy, and – last but not least – make you less likely to fart, too. And the carrot, meanwhile, will help cleanse your kidneys and support the functioning of the liver, all while improving sight and cerebral health. Just what we need today, basically. Here’s how to make it. Ingredients for two 300ml glasses -Three large apples
-Two small carrots
-Half a fennel
-A few ice cubes | |  |  | To mark the first day of 2022, we’ve dug up a track that’ll get you swinging into the new year. It’s another gem from our Midnight Trains playlist, this time an energetic number from Donny Benét. Sure, you may have had a good dance last night, but that was just a warm-up act. With Mr. Experience, the Australian singer had a good laugh mixing up genres and eras, borrowing notably from the Italian pop of the 1980s. If 2022 really does mark the start of a new Roaring Twenties, listening to his song feels like an apt way to ring it in. | |  |  | It’s not every day that three globally known directors team up to make a film together. So when Abbas Kiarostami, Ermanno Olmi and Ken Loach got together in 2005, they needed something to unite their various backgrounds and perspectives. You guessed it: a train played that role. A train connecting Austria with Italy, on board which several fortuitous encounters take place. Each of the three directors manages to leave their mark on this one-of-a-kind film, and their successive chapters home in on a family of Albanian refugees, and a professor struck by unreciprocated love, a woman who’s just lost her husband and three spirited Scots on their way to see a football match. It’s chaotic, and brilliantly so. Buon fine settimana! | |  | | |
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