A Midnight Train Going Anywhere

Introduction: Remember that post I did a while ago about when I missed the entire football game due to the weather, and I was really bitter. This post should be read with that same irritated tone.

The next stop on what I had deemed the “mind the gap” adventure – filling the space between scheduled stops – was to make our way south so it would be easier to reach our final destination of Croatia.

We looked at where trains from Innsbruck were heading, and decided that the most appealing southward direction was Italy, and if we only had two days to spend in Italy, we might as well make it to Rome.

We thought that since we had rail passes, and we didn’t want to waste any time going extremely long distances, why not take a night train? That way, we could save money on accommodation and it would be nifty to fall asleep in Vienna and wake up in Rome.

I can’t sleep on planes. I can’t sleep in cars. I can’t sleep on buses or in vans, and I’m fairly certain that I can’t sleep in any kind of contraption in which I am sitting upright. Why I thought I would be able to sleep on a train is beyond my comprehension, but I believed it, and so we booked seats on the 11 p.m. train from Innsbruck to Rome. While that was pretty much the only mistake, it was a big one.

We boarded the train at around 11:00 p.m., so we were already tired. Our compartment already had two guys going in and out of sleep taking up the window seats, so Annie and I took the seats by the compartment door. Also probably a mistake. Since we had hiked for seven hours that day, I figured that I be so pooped that I would have no problem falling asleep. Wrong. I find it impossible to get comfortable enough to fall asleep in any kind of sitting up position. And when the train conductor is coming in every 10 minutes and checking your ticket (doesn't do that on any other train, only the one where I'm trying to sleep), it becomes hard to enter a real slumber.

I'm not quite sure where it was that we stopped, but about a billion people got on our train, so our compartment door was opening and closing every 10 minutes with someone looking for a seat.

Then into our compartment barge two French women who proceeded to take the two middle seats in the compartment and proceeded to seep into every other seat in the compartment as well. After about 10 minutes I was sufficiently cuddling with one of them and quite unhappy. That’s also when the Italian cowboy disco picked up in the hall outside.

So with everybody drinking, smoking, and carrying on outside our compartment, a French woman's head in my lap, and 1 cubic foot to sleep in, I finally gave up and proceeded to glare at Annie for several hours, who was nodding off peacefully. I was not a happy man.

The French women were supposed to get off in Verona, but instead missed their stop and had to get off in Bologna, where, lucky me, another man in our compartment got off as well, meaning that, at around 6 a.m., I finally had enough room to sleep. That is, of course, until people started boarding around 8 a.m. for their morning commute.

Obviously, night trains aren't my thing.