On our first overnight train, we looked askance at… at the… at the everything.
The bathroom wasn’t quite what we expected this century. The ‘beds’ were amazingly small and hard. The idea that one was to sleep in such proximity to strangers was a little unnerving. Our compartment held four—two lower and two upper bunks—but being a family of five, we had another bed two doors down. This other compartment had three strangers in it. Probably axe murderers.
I spent a bit of time trying to see which kids wanted to share a bunk so that no one had to sleep with the axe murderers. None of them did. So I attempted to find a child who would share a bunk with me. Nada. I suggested that my spouse and I could share this tiny strip of bed. Nope.
When night came, I said farewell to my family, for what might have been the last time, and went to my bunk with the axe murderers. Well, in the end, they didn’t kill me. Just snored a lot. And one got off in the middle of the night. And another got on. And he snored even more (someone four compartments commented on it in the morning!). But then he got off when the sun rose. And I noticed that the sun had come up, and no one had hacked me into pieces. It was a whole new dawn for me and for traveling.
Now, after more than a half dozen overnight trains (and one overnight bus, read here) we feel like pros.
This last train, we didn’t even bother checking to see what bunks we were in—oops—so we’re spread across three different compartments, covering half of the train. One of our kids is in a chamber with three strangers—at least he was yesterday evening when I last saw him…
Yes, we all kind of want the presidential suite at the Ritz. But for me, a sheet of thinly padded plywood, twenty-four inches wide, and the sounds of snoring strangers will do just fine.
brilliant — snarfell snort! xoxo