When it comes to transportation in Europe, the car is the 3rd choice or possibly 4th after the bike. When you're traveling between countries, you either fly or take a train. I chose the train because I really didn't want to deal with the airport and my baggage that was likely over the limit.
I'm a person who likes to be early in the event that something goes wrong - I've said it 1000 times: I'd rather be 1 hour early than 5 minutes late. So I went HOURS early. I'm talkin' like 6 hours early. The main reason was that I no longer had an apartment and really, dragging luggage around is a pain. I decided to take my time doing nothing. I went back and forth between the waiting area of the station and the receiving area. I went to lunch. I sat back in the waiting area. Basically what I'm trying to get at here is that I was super duper beyond bored waiting for the train. The best part? Well the best part was that the train was an hr delayed. That was fantastic. While waiting, I managed to drain 25% of my iPod battery and write an article I didn't want to dread when I got back from Europe. At the tail end of my waiting extravaganza, I stood next to a nice Polish looking family. I'm assuming they were polish but for all I know, they were American. And my view of the train terminal was blocked by an Asian family. The dad was hefty-ish; wore CK jeans and a t-shirt; he was probably about 45 but he dressed younger and, well known fact, Asians are usually older than they appear. People still think I'm 13. The mom, also dressed hip - or maybe just stylish. She wore a nice blouse and cute little shorts and 4 inch wedges. I'll never understand why women wear heels to the grocery store, Target, 7 eleven, Taco Bell, or to the train station when they're about to be locked in a cabin for 15+hours. Anyways, they had a baby stroller with a cute baby - standard bowl-cut/ mushroom head haircut, very chubby, fairly well behaved. The stroller was weighed down by designer bags: Tiffany & Co., Gucci, Prada, etc. The parents paid little to no attention to their youngin'. They were also traveling pretty light. I wondered where they were going. Perhaps to Switzerland or Florence - they'll happily take their money. I noticed they were speaking French so that explained the light luggage; they were natives. This is how I spent the remainder of my wait. I came up with scenarios for people.
When the train finally arrived, a BUTTLOAD of people boarded the train but it wasn't as bad as I thought - everyone had assigned cabins - like in the movies but not quite as cool. Luckily I was the 2nd one from my cabin to get on the train so I was able to face forward. I'm motion sickness prone. I get sick on elevators. The brief THOUGHT of getting on a rollercoaster makes me want to hurl. The first to join me in the cabin was an English man. He was nice, he helped me with my luggage, he spoke English; major plus. Found out later that he was fluent in French and Italian. The next was a large black woman with a ton of luggage, or rather, bags filled with things. The man also helped her. The last person to join was none other than the asian woman and child and husband. Everyone in the cabin was confused - we had 5 people plus baby in the 4 person cabin. Turns out, the husband was in the cabin next to ours - a swap that I would've gladly taken had I been able to see the future.
I believe it was about 3 hours into the ride when the asian lady decides she's going to take a nap and leave her child unattended and unholstered. I swear that child would've been knocked out cold several times had there not been 3 other passengers in that car with them. The ticketing...man...whatever his title, as nice as he was, decided he would take the child and play with her. The mother did not care. I must have been the only one thinking it was odd. He returned about 45 minutes later and returned the child but her mother was still sleeping - so he returned her to the other passengers. As though, simply because we are all in the car, we are ALL responsible for her. Takes a village right? When she finally woke up, the black woman asked the man and I to retreat to our beds above. I thought that was quite early and rude but I actually didn't want to deal with caring for the child any longer.
The remainder of the ride was slightly uncomfortable - I felt waves of motion sickness since I could not look out the window and I was perpendicular to the direction we were headed. Also, the cabin was incredibly hot. I slept on and off - this was due partially to the fact that it was hot and partially to the fact that the child had screamed her lungs out the entire night. All I can say was Thank You Jesus for the invention of music and headphones. I could still hear her screaming but only between songs. When I woke up around 8am, the man was gone. The 2 other women and child were still there. I was getting annoyed by having to sit up top so I climbed down and walked down the car only to find that there were several empty cabins. I guess I was too out of it to tell that we had stopped several times. I decided it'd be fine if I spent the remainder of the trip in an empty cabin. Our cabin was stuffy, boring, hot and covered in cookie crumbs.
We finally arrived about 1-2 hours later than scheduled. I found out later that overnight trains are rarely on time. When I arrived at Roma Termini - I was happy to be rid of my cabin mates and ready to explore what Rome had to offer.
No comments:
Post a Comment