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So, as I mentioned in my last post we decided to take an overnight train from Florence to Munich. Partially because we thought it would be a cool experience but also to save some dolla bills from not having to book a hostel.

We had a really hard time trying to figure out what train to book and what cabin to get so we visited a travel agent in Rome to help us out. She was absolutely amazing and helped us book a reasonably priced six-bed female room onboard a German National Train. However, I’m still not convinced it was our most brilliant idea…

After a long and exhausting (okay, slightly hungover) day in Florence we were incredibly excited to settle into our beds on the train and drift off into a peaceful slumber… But things didn’t quite go as planned…

First off, the corridors on those overnight trains are tiny and trying to get through them with our huge backpacks on was a challenge in itself. We ended up trying to squish through three train cars before finding our bunks.

Upon arriving at our designated cabin we open the door to find a family of four already in the room and leaving us the two middle bunks. I honestly thought it was a joke…

A train staff member (who we are going to refer to as Mister Grumpy Pants) came around and was trying to usher us into the room as we were trying to explain to him that we had specifically booked a female room. Problem with trying to explain something to someone who doesn’t speak any English is that you end up basically playing charades.

Thankfully, I really nice man who spoke both English and German came to our rescue and acted as a translator for us. Mister GP was not pleased with us at all but eventually agreed to let us in to an unoccupied room while stressing that we would be getting more roomies throughout the journey to Munich. No problem right?

We get to our cabin (if you could even call it that) and immediately burst out laughing. Mister GP clearly did not find any of it amusing… But man, was that thing tiny. We could barely navigate the room with two of us. There were a lot of “excuse me’s” and “pardon me’s” going around.

train time

Then Danyka ditched me to go wash up for bed and of course while she’s out Mister Grumps decides to stop by. Without knocking he barges in and starts yelling at me in German (I assume he was yelling, though it was kind of hard to tell). We started again with the charades before he got frustrated and stormed off. I gathered that he was trying to tell me that we were going to be getting new roommates and couldn’t leave our things on other bunks (duh) so I moved everything under the beds before he returned.

Not even 5 minutes later he comes back with a female employee, who also didn’t speak any English, and they both tried to act out what I had already figured. So I naturally got right into the game and used some impressive miming skills to let them know I understood. After that he took our passports (sketchy right?) and left.

Once the drama was over Danyka returned and we crawled into our beds. Immediately after laying down we both burst out laughing again. This was just too funny and we were just way too tired.

The rest of the night was a frustrating blur. The beds were too short and the room was uncomfortably hot. The train lurched to a stop every hour and we left the light on for the roommates that were supposed to join us, but never did. Needless to say we didn’t get much sleep that night and definitely weren’t laughing in the morning. I think we ended up becoming Miss Grumpy Pants…

Looking back it was definitely an experience I’ll always remember. But to be honest, I think I’ll steer clear from booking overnight trains in the future… The really are no laughing matter.

With Love,

CW