You board in Brussels late in the afternoon. You drop your suitcase, settle into your cabin and have dinner as the landscape outside the window starts to change. You switch off the light and sleep. When you wake up, you're no longer in Belgium but in Italy. This is the new route from European Sleeper, a rail company specialising in international night connections: four countries in one night and arrival in Milan by mid-morning.

The train runs three days a week. Tickets start at 49.99 euros for the cheapest seats, and a private cabin costs from 179.99 euros. There are seats, couchettes and closed cabins for those who don't want to share space with strangers. There's food and drink on board, and breakfast can be booked in advance. And one more difference compared with flying, which you feel at the start and at the end of the journey: the stations are always in the city centre.

This isn't the company's only route. It has already brought back the Paris - Brussels - Berlin night connection, and from December it will add Antwerp, Breda and Eindhoven. The night train, which for a long time looked like a relic of the past, clearly has a market in Europe again.

Cologne, the first big stop

You don't have to ride all the way. The first major stop after Brussels is Cologne, where the station sits right next to the huge Gothic cathedral, the symbol of the city. Inside is the gold and silver shrine that tradition links to the relics of the Three Wise Men - Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar. Around it is the old town with cobblestones, colourful façades, medieval churches and the Heumarkt and Alter Markt squares. The Rhine is a few steps away, with the Hohenzollern Bridge and the Chocolate Museum, and the day ends with a glass of Kölsch in one of the traditional brewhouses.

Zurich, then Lugano in Italian

Before the Alps and before the language changes, the train stops in Zurich, a city where in a single day you go from the Middle Ages to cutting-edge architecture without leaving the centre. Niederdorf with the Grossmünster, then the Opera House, the Kunsthaus and the luxury Bahnhofstrasse. On the other side of the station is the new Zurich: the National Museum, Langstrasse with its vintage shops, bars under the old railway arches at Im Viadukt and the Freitag tower built from recycled shipping containers.

In Lugano both the landscape and the language change. This is Ticino, the Italian part of Switzerland - a little Italy on a lakeshore, with arcaded squares, terraces and mild air. The Cathedral of San Lorenzo and the church of Santa Maria degli Angioli, with a large Renaissance fresco by Bernardino Luini, are in the old town. For a view from above, the funicular from Paradiso takes you up Monte San Salvatore.

Como and Milan at the end

Next comes Como, already in Italy. Boats leave the harbour for the lakeside villages, and Bellagio, a little over an hour's sail away, is the best known, with its stepped lanes and the gardens of Villa Melzi. A tip worth having: don't try to see everything in one day. Pick one shore, get on a boat and let the lake do the rest.

The train pulls into Milano Porta Garibaldi by mid-morning, with a whole day ahead of you. The Duomo, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Brera, and in the evening the Navigli canals and an aperitivo. One night, four countries and not a single airport queue. How far away is a train like this from us - not in kilometres, but in decisions?