| Never A Dull Moment |
We left Venice on Sunday evening, after another lazy day spent wandering around looking for something to do. It's not that Venice is a bad place to visit. It's an amazingly picturesque city with the kind of character we haven't seen in many other places. But there really isn't much to do there, and everything is fairly expensive, so we were somewhat limited in our options. Our days typically consisted of a grocery store lunch consumed in one of the town's few parks, a long walk around the main island through sleepy neighborhoods and touristy piazzas, and then a little dinner and perhaps some gelato or a nice bottle of moscato. Not terribly exciting, but not a bad way to live for a few days, either.
With big and exciting Budapest as our next stop, we were looking forward to departing small town Italy and heading east, into mysterious former Soviet territory. We had reserved beds on a 14 hour direct night train back in May, so we were expecting an uneventful journey. Of course, keeping with the theme of unpredictability on this trip, we arrived to see not a platform number listed beside our train number on the departure board, but the letters "SOP", which of course meant nothing to us.
We found our way to an information desk where I inquired as to the meaning of this ambiguous Italian acronym. "Probably strike," the man replied, without much emotion. "The train no run tonight." Uhh, well then. From what I gathered, some fine gents in Slovenia weren't in the mood to drive trains that day, so we wouldn't be going on that cushy 14 hour sleeper after all.
I talked a few moments longer with the man at the information desk, who spoke English remarkably well. He told us we had two minutes to board a train to Vienna, which we could hop off of at 4am in Salzburg to catch a 4:30 train to Budapest. It seemed simple enough, though we had no tickets for the train. We decided to give it a shot anyway, and before long I found myself yet again jogging down a train platform with 40 pounds of stuff on my shoulders.
I'm always thankful for little mishaps that make our days more interesting, but I have to admit that when we sat down in some seats we had not reserved, instead of a nice, flat, private bed that we had, I was wishing for a little peace. The beauty of our Eurail passes is that we can board nearly any train in Europe without tickets, at a moment's notice, and take it wherever we want. Having a seat that isn't already reserved is another story though, and sometimes people end up having to sit or sleep in the hallway. We were lucky enough to find a compartment largely unoccupied, which we claimed as our own. Soon a pack of Spaniards on their way to party in Ljubjlana but who were also displaced by the rail strike sat down with us. We enjoyed lively conversation mostly in English with a sprinkling of Spanish, until they departed around midnight.
With the compartment to ourselves, we made our move. We shut the door, turned off the lights, and raced to fold all the seats out into their bed-like positions before we were spotted by newly boarding passengers. The compartment could sleep three but seat six, so it would be worth our while if we could keep the room to ourselves. Thanks to some excellent fake sleeping, which turned into actual sleeping and, without a doubt, some intense snoring on my part, we were never bothered.
We awoke at 4am in preparation for our arrival in Salzburg, only to find that we were somehow running half an hour behind schedule. How a night train in Austria loses a whole half hour, I do not know, but we ended up missing our connecting train. The choice was to wait for three hours in the cold, dark train station until 7 when the next train to Budapest rolled through, or stay in our cozy private cabin and ride all the way to Vienna. When we got there at 9am, then we could figure out what to do next. We found the choice easy, and with our minds made up, we repeated our routine of folding the seats into beds and proceeded to pass out again. Around seven, a bunch of Austrians began knocking on the door and we were more or less forced from our slumber and back into cramped seats, but it was good while it lasted. We made it to Vienna and got some delicious strudel for breakfast, which really made me look forward to our visit there next week. We boarded the next train to Budapest with little drama and made it to the Hungarian capital by 1pm, only an hour later than we were originally scheduled. Maybe it wasn't as cozy as we had expected, but it certainly was another fun journey. |
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