Right now, my parents are on a night train from Graz to Geneva. It's a really cool way to travel...one can sleep comfortably, and they serve breakfast. I've been on one of those once, on a trip from Graz to Hamburg. It's efficient, the sheets are fresh, and the breakfast is typically European; fresh breads, jams, etc.
Quite a contrast from another train trip from Geneva to Graz in 1992. First trip alone to Europe...I traveled with a friend who was traveling with her grandfather back to Austria. They had a sleeping compartment, but I got a normal compartment that seats six. Granted, you can pull the chair out for a makeshift bed, but I couldn't get any sleep. It was so damn cold, and I was an idiot Floridian in shorts. My friend and I did spend quite a bit of the evening talking about music, life in America, life in Europe, with a mixture of German, French and English. I had a rather big crush on this girl a few years before this trip...self-fulfilling prophecy, I guess, as our families had always teased us that we would get married.
I think I might have a point to this post, but that point is long gone. Our families have been friends since the 70s, my sister's best friend is this girl's sister.
Anyway, the cool thing about traveling on trains is the brief glimpse of life you can see. A light in the kitchen of a small house; cars stopped at a railroad junction. This gives you a sense of place that you can't really get in an airplane. I could stare out the window of a train for hours.