No more overnight trains ...

Let me paint you a picture with words... I am not the worlds best sleeper, not many people realise that this perfectly created individual has some flaws ... granted you have to look hard to find them ... but there are some there. Some might say that this is what makes me so interesting to you. Melissah on the other hand is a perfect sleeper, be it planes, trains or automobiles she can go to sleep anywhere. So we decided to get an overnight train from Krakow to Berlin, sleep on the train so we don't lose a day in Berlin. Maximise the up time and minimise the down time, it's all power phrases in the world of travel.

So you have that picture in your mind? Well put that picture like a comic book in the top right corner of the page because there's a few more scenes to come. Cleverly we booked a second class couchette, which only has 6 people crammed into it and not much in the way of cooling. We had a young couple (maybe 16 maximum 18) traveling with one of their mothers and an old bag who did nothing for 12 hours except give me the evil eye. Plus us two, that makes it a pretty crammed couchette. So put that in the top left of your comic book panel and we'll move on.

We loaded our luggage into the room, set up our beds and laid down, it was only 8 pm in the evening so i said to Melissah (and this is my recollection, it could be biased) "Do you want to go for a walk and stretch your legs?" "no" she replied "I want to stay with our stuff!". "Thats cool... do you mind if i go for a walk. I'll be back soon" "No worries"... Thats the gist of it anyway. So I toddled off and lo and behold I found a bar on the train. I'll just have one quiet beer and then head back and get some shut eye was what i thought to myself. Melissah will worry about me if i am gone too long. That was at 8. At midnight I returned to the cabin for more money and went back to the bar where I was socialising with the customary Pom's (what bar can you go into and not find one) and a couple of polish soldiers who had recently served in Iraq (thats right apparently Poland are in the "alliance" as well). It was a pretty fascinating night. So i finally crawled into bed at a little after three.

So for comic book aficionados you need to insert a diamond shaped window in the centre of your page. As we are looking at what went through Melissah's mind during the seven hours that I was absent. Are you ready to sympathise (everyone always takes her side!!!!) Melissah is lying in bed, listening to 4 people snore actually two people snore while the couple snuck into bed with each other for some heavy petting.... until the mum woke up and went ballistic.. Uncomfortable!!! Anyway she tells me she was wondering whether I'd been mugged, thrown off the train or the more likely found some people in the bar and decided not to come back. Unfortunately I assumed it was all cool with her that I stayed here otherwise she would come and get me but Melissah saw it a tad different because everything we currently own is sitting in two backpacks and she was the sole person guarding these, so coming to look for me was apparently not an option. I'm glad it wasn't me guarding them because I would have wandered off and left them there. Oh I also didn't think through the fact that I had both mine and Mel's passports, so had we been checked during the night, Melissah probably would have been thrown off the train. Then who would guard our stuff??? But it's easy to sound hard done by when you have been hard done by, the real skill is getting sympathy when it's self inflicted.

I hope your holding on because the final picture of this comic is pretty unsightly.. So 3 hours later after sleeping through passport control (that's a whole other story) we arrived in Berlin. I figured it was the last stop so in my hung over / still drunk state was taking my sweet arse time. Turns out it was on its way to the Ukraine which flipped Melissah out and meant that when i took all the bags off the train I may have been partially responsible for leaving 30 euro worth of food behind.. I say partially responsible because I am sticking by my stance that the European Train Network should shoulder most of the responsibility due to the fact that Berlin isn't a final stop. Surely you agree.

Last part, exhausted we (I say we but Melissah had her back pack on and was ready for the day ahead... some people slept and didn't worry about whether i had been thrown off!) sat down for a slight rest. With everyone streaming past me at the train station, and the hot air, I started to feel unwell. This chapter ends with me throwing up into a bin on the platform of the train station, German workers passing me by probably thinking "Shit, another Australian in Berlin. Just what we need" Melissah looked pretty embarrassed. So I slept the day away and ended up wasting a day in berlin anyway. New travel rule... No more overnight trains (well unless it has no bar).

In case you failed to follow the comic book story line, this is what yours should have looked like ...