I´m beginning the longest train trip I´ve ever embarked on. Budapest to Valencia, Spain. Schedule says about 30 hours on the train, with 3 connections. Sounds daunting, but I´m excited.

Tonight I´m on a night train. I walk into my sleeping cabin, but there are 2 other people there. Seems crowded, and there are empty cabins. I re-assign myself. The steward, however, wants me in my assigned cabin. The woman has left, apparently she was in the wrong cabin. But still, I think what a waste to have these empty cabins, and this thought wakes me up in the middle of the night, along with the odor from the man´s socks sleeping across from me.

I ask the steward again about the empty cabins. This time I detect his dialect: ¨Italiano?¨ I ask. ¨Si, Italino,¨ his eyes light up. ¨Mi familia in Giffoni, Italia,¨ I stumble through Italian. ¨Ah, my family is Calabria, Italy,¨ he stumbles through English. ¨Come, come,¨ he motions to my shoulder, guiding me to the empty sleeping cabin. ¨It´s okay, it´s okay.¨ ¨Grazie,¨ I reply.

Train Tip: Before lights go out on the Night Train, ask the steward to look at the copy of the train’s passenger registry if you find yourself in a sleeping cabin with others. Some stewards have with them a print-out registry of passenger seating. If the registry says a cabin is empty, ask the steward if you can move there. Usually, they will oblige, if you do it early enough in the evening, before lights out and they collect Passports for overnight border-crossings.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 at 3:42 pm and is filed under Eurail. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tags: Hungary, night train, Switzerland