Maiden voyage of Brussels to Venice night train "couldn't even enter Italy": Here's why
The maiden voyage of a night train from Brussels to Venice didn't make it to its final destination yesterday due to issues at the Italian border.
Instead, the train stopped in Innsbruck in Austria, 313km short of its destination, and passengers were moved onto a different train to complete their journey to Venice.
Train operator European Sleeper had called the route a "significant milestone" for the company, saying their "mission is to reconnect Europe's cities by night, providing travellers with more options for sustainable and comfortable."
Innsbruck was intended to be a "prominent stop" rather than the train's final destination.
'It seemed that everything was settled'
Elmer van Buuren, one of the two founders of the Dutch private railway company European Sleeper told Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, that the Italian railways gave them little notice:
"It took nine months, hundreds of phone calls and meetings to start this project. We have set separate appointments with five services similar to ProRail, in each country crossed. It seemed that everything was settled, when, last week, the Italians began to change their minds and called us to tell us that we could not go beyond Bolzano.
Now it turned out that we couldn't even enter Italy. They did not provide any reason. It is a typical phenomenon especially of the railways in Europe."
Why was the European Sleeper train stopped at the Italian border?
Train travel expert Mark Smith, who runs the website the Man in Seat 61, was on the train.
He reports that the locomotive engines needed to escort the train into Venice were not available. He says European Sleeper were only informed of the engine issue on 4 February, the day before the train left Brussels.
"The train was due to terminate in Verona as two locomotives are needed to 'top and tail' the train in and out of Venice, as the Italian network no longer allows light engine movements around Venice. They couldn't get two for this departure, should be solved for later ones," Mark Smith wrote on X.
"They then got a phone call day before yesterday from their Italian operator, unable to take the train south of Innsbruck. Again, ES [European Sleeper] hope to fix this for later departures. It's not easy, running a train across 5 countries!"
The train had travelled from Brussels in Belgium to Breda and Eindhoven in the Netherlands before moving on to Cologne and Munich in Germany.
What is the advice to passengers booked on the Brussels-Venice night train?
There are currently Brussels-Venice night trains scheduled throughout February and March.
The service is scheduled to run twice weekly for six return journeys, with the company saying, "This unique route caters to travellers seeking winter sports getaways, city breaks, cultural experiences, and the world-renowned Venice Carnival."
At the time of writing, it is not clear if European Sleeper can ensure that the locomotive engines needed to transport their train within Italy will be available.
European Sleeper and the Italian Ministry of Transport did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Cross-border train travel in Europe is tricky
Some are seeing the night train's shortened route as reflective of wider issues with European cross-border train travel.
It has historically been difficult for authorities and train operators to coordinate their services to allow trains to pass seamlessly over borders, as flights do. This is seen as a barrier to travellers opting for trains over planes, despite them being much better for the climate.
A report by the European Commission found that the total number of long-distance passenger cross-border services in the EU remained the same from 2001 to 2019, and overall they make up only about seven per cent of train journeys in Europe.
To help boost these numbers, Victor Thévenet, rail policy manager at sustainable mobility NGO Transport and Environment, says that planning a train journey needs to be much simpler.
'People need to be able to combine different rail operators and for this, you need to have your different tickets in one single ticket,' he tells Euronews Travel.
Buying train tickets in Europe can be complicated but the EU has a solution
There is currently no Skyscanner equivalent for trains. This makes booking and managing international train journeys difficult and often more expensive.
The EU has a plan to remedy the situation in the form of the Multimodal Digital Mobility Services legislation. It was delayed last year but it is hoped it will be given another chance this year.
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'When we build, let us think that we build forever,' Italian fashion designer Brunello Cucinelli quoted English polymath John Ruskin at an address to celebrate being the first recipient of an honorary doctorate in 'Design for Made in Italy: Identity, Innovation, and Sustainability'. The same quote is inscribed on a plaque in the centre of Solomeo, the hamlet which Cucinelli has made the home of his family, business and spiritual life since 1985. Once a crumbling site at the top of a hill among the rolling Umbrian countryside, it has been lovingly restored over the years thanks to funds from the Cucinelli enterprise. It is for this that he's been honoured at the University of Campania by a group of universities and specialists in the field of architecture, as well as the extension of this work to the surrounding Umbrian region. It is the first time the designer has received an award for architecture. 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The projects also go beyond preserving history, with many having tangible benefits for the wider community too. Culture, education and spirituality are at the heart of many of them. 'I have learned that architecture is made for mankind,' he explains. Brunello Cucinelli was born in the rural Umbrian village of Castel Rigone, around 20km from Solomeo. He met his wife, Federica, in her hometown of Solomeo when they were teenagers and the couple set up home in the hamlet which today is home to around 700 other residents. It's also now home to their two daughters, Camilla and Carolina, along with their husbands, all of whom work in the company, and their children. Down in the valley next to the hamlet is the Brunello Cucinelli factory and offices which provide work to around 700 employees. The space is bright and clean, with large windows that look out onto the manicured lawns and surrounding countryside, a luxury many fashion workers don't get in city warehouses. Lunch breaks are an hour and a half, no one eats at their desk, and everyone leaves on time at the end of the day. 'That time is for your soul,' says the entrepreneur. Even among his own family, they don't talk business at the dinner table. Cucinelli has a reputation as 'fashion's philosopher', and his speech at the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli was littered with the thoughts and words of great thinkers: Kant, St Francis, St Benedict, Xenophanes, Emperor Hadrian and many more. He's driven by his own philosophy of 'humanistic capitalism'. Unlike many capitalists though, he thinks far into the future. The old workshops of the company in Solomeo are kept in a way that they could be returned into residential apartments should the company no longer need them. The spaces are currently being used, however, to train future generations of artisans. 'I'm not concerned about who will buy luxury in the future, I'm concerned about who will make it,' Cucinelli says. The School of Contemporary High Craftsmanship and Arts opened in 2013 offers programmes which directly support the company's outputs, such as pattern cutting, tailoring and mending, but also horticulture, gardening and masonry, skills which he believes need preserving for the wider world. Since Brunello Cucinelli went public in 2012, its market capitalisation has grown from €530 million to €6.5 billion, a dream come true for any entrepreneur. However, it's clear from what he's done with this fortune over the past 15 years that his dreams go bigger than business success, bigger than the company itself and bigger than his own lifetime. As he collects his honorary doctorate in architecture he muses about his own company, but also calls on the room to consider the impact of their own actions, saying: 'The future is not wholly ours, nor is it wholly not ours.' The appeal of butter yellow — luminous, optimistic, sunny — is undeniable. Some fashion industry leading lights are dubbing it "the new neutral", applauding its versatility and compatibility with a whole host of staples like blue denim and black. And like butter, it slips into one's repertoire with ease. At legendary London department store Selfridges, which boasts its own iconic chrome yellow brand and packaging, the new variant is across the store. 'We've seen butter yellow spread across the runway for SS25, with brands Alaia, Toteme and 16Arlington all presenting soft, pale yellow hues across various silhouettes and accessories," says Laurie Field, Selfridges Buying Manager. "We of course have been long-term advocates of the colour yellow, but the sunny shade is sometimes overlooked. Try Lemaire's fortune croissant bag, Khaite's zesty, cashmere jumper, and Posse's airy linen set.' The shade is trending at all levels from couture to high street. At Uniqlo, where British born Clare Waight Keller is the new(ish) creative director, you can find it in soft ribbed jersey polo tops, bra tops and pocketable UV protection zip jackets. Having done her time at designer brands and houses Givenchy, Chloe and Gucci, Waight Keller is bringing her prowess to one of the most powerful movers in high street retail. 'It is a whole new territory for me and leads me deep into technological and material advances, as well as overseeing the colour, silhouettes and styles," she explains. Butter yellow has even seeped into the rarefied echelons of haute couture. Australian born couturier, Tamara Ralph, made it a focus of her January collection shown in Paris. Yellow is a natural fit for the sunny antipodean designer, who's known for her dreamy, flamboyant gowns favoured by stars including Bella Hadid and Priyanka Chopra. "In my opinion, the right colour can completely transform a look and its overall feeling," says Ralph, who fashioned a gorgeous, airy off-the-shoulder taffeta gown and a crystal siren gown embellished with ostrich feather pom poms in the hue. "Butter yellow — or as I refer to it, baby yellow — brings with it an element of joy and cheerfulness, but in such a way that is still elegant and innately feminine: it is more quietly luxurious than a bright hued yellow." Butter yellow is also being championed by fine jewellery designers like Cora Sheibani, who specialises in highly artful one-off pieces. 'I am currently using lots of citrines, which my stone cutter calls Palmeira citrine," she says. "It has a beautiful deep colour that pairs so well with other stones and looks great on most people. "I have also just designed a fabulous piece with a huge round Sphalerite, which looks like the sun and is a stone I have never worked with before but am very excited about.' But where does a fad for a colour really gain momentum? Recall a famous scene in The Devil Wears Prada in which Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) lectures Andrea Sachs (Anne Hathaway) about the rise of cerulean blue, and high fashion's authority to declare what colours unwitting consumers will soon be wearing. 'It's not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis, it is cerulean,' says Priestly, explaining how cerulean trickled down from the runway to wind up colouring Sachs' bulky cable knit sweater. "That blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs, and it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of 'stuff'." But butter yellow isn't so much trickling down as crashing over the industry in an exuberant wave. 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