Eurotrip with Mom - The Train

We left the hotel two hours before our train was due to depart because I've noticed that bad things tend to happen. We got to the train station, via a cab, over an hour and a half early, to find that the ceiling of the waiting area happened to be the dastardly cold winter night sky. I told you bad things happen!

I was starving by this time and the only available place to eat was a little sandwich vender. I ruffled through my mom's purse for some change and told her I was going to get a baguette. "I keep seeing that girl rubbing her nose and she's wiping her snot everywhere," my mom responded. "But you can get something if you want."

Needless to say, I ate animal crackers for dinner that night.

The whistle blew and it was time to board the train. Our ticket stub said that we were in car 87 and the numbers started at 95 and moved backwards. Perfect, or maybe not. (What seemed like) Two miles later, we found our car. I helped my mom load all of her bags onto the platform and she went in search of our cabin. Meanwhile, I helped myself lift a 10-lb carry-on, a 55-lb suitcase and a 70-lb suitcase onto the deck. I then had the curious task of dragging all three bags to the end of the car where our cabin was located. As (my) luck would have it, the hallway was just about as wide as the massive suitcase - but only if I angled it sideways. I had my carry-on over one shoulder and I propped the massive suitcase up on my right foot and dragged. Each pull, and subsequent straining of my back tendons and neck tissue, moved the suitcases three inches. The guy behind me sighed loudly. I glared at him. He looked like he could dropkick me.

I finally made it to the car. I sat down on a bench because the suitcases were making it hard to stand, stretched my back, and was like, "Gosh, Mom, the guy behind me was a total jerk." The total jerk stuck his head in the compartment. As luck would have it, he was roommate number one. Roommate number two was a black girl. Both were French, and neither spoke English.

The question of what to do with our bags came up. There were luggage racks near the ceiling, but I could barely drag my bags, let alone lift them. The asshole reached down and went to pick up the giant bag. "No, no," I said, motioning with my hands. "It's too heavy," I added, just for kicks, as he pulled it in the air and placed it cleanly on a rack. The total jerk was now renamed Luggage Boy, and he became a friend.

The best way to describe our compartment was to say it was like two stacks of three coffins piled one on top of the other. It started out as three seats on each side, but then you could pull down the beds and you would be sleeping army style (or graveyard style, as I liked to say). "Well," my mom began, trying to make conversation with the French people, "Maybe we'll be lucky and it will just be the FOUR of us!" She holds up four fingers. The French people, who know how to count but have no idea what my mother is saying, respond with, "No, no!" and they hold up six fingers. And my mom's like, "Oh right, I know this holds six people, but I was just saying that I really hope that only the FOUR of us are in here!" Another set of four fingers. The French people are shaking their heads wildly and brandishing their six fingers like weapons. I wanted to cover my ears and scream, but instead I just told my mom to stop talking. This was not headed toward a solution.

My mom decided it was time to go to sleep. We arranged our bunks, her across from me and Luggage Boy on top of me. Besides having little to no patience, Luggage Boy also had another interesting trait. He was shady and he smelled like fire. He kept jumping out of bed and running out of the compartment, only to come back smelling like he had lit himself on fire. Not cigarette smoke, mind you. I'm talking real orange shooting flames. It was better than his horrible body odor, inadequately masked by several shots of Axe.

At one point in the night, I heard this tremendous snoring coming from the opposite side of the compartment, otherwise known as three feet away. My mom is the world's loudest and most frequent snorer, and while this is unbelievably annoying, I also realize that I'm her daughter and I have to put up with these God-awful traits I'll probably come to inherit. But snoring that echoed off the train walls in a tiny compartment with two other people? I had to do something.

I reached my arm over and touched her ever-so-slightly. I would like to add here that there had been times on the trip where I would say something to her and she would respond five minutes later with, "Did you say something?" I wasn't betting on immediate results from my poking. However, as soon as I touched her, she jerked and almost jumped out of her pants. I almost screamed myself. My mom was wide awake and gripping her purse with claws of death. The snoring, however, continued on full blast. Whoops. Wrong person. My mom glared at me.

In the morning, my mom recounted another train horror story for me. She awoke in the middle of the night and had to go to the bathroom. She made her way down the hall and found that our car's bathroom was occupied. She went another car down, and theirs was occupied, too. Finally, two cars away, she found an open bathroom. After a few minutes, she emerged and sleepily headed back to the cabin. She got scared at this point, remembering that I was alone in the compartment with two other guys (another guy had joined in the middle of the night in addition to Luggage Boy). She hurried to the cabin door, shut it, and tried to crawl into bed. Someone was already in there. They stared at her and she stared at them, and then she left. She stood outside the door for a few moments and then went back inside. It was a man and he just stared at her. "Sir, I think you're in my bed," she said. He didn't answer. "I know this is my cabin..." She left again. She opened the door and peeked in and the guy was still staring. She was trying to figure out what to do when she heard the door shut and the lock bolt. He had locked her out. That's when she realized that she was in the wrong car. Whoops.

We survived the night. However, around 4 o'clock in the morning, Luggage Boy bolts out of bed, grabs his suitcase and said, "Bon voyage!" We had arrived in Florence and he was gone. "Crap," I whispered to my mom. "Luggage Boy is gone. We're screwed." She said she thought that was the funniest line of the entire trip. I think we were both delirious. All I knew is that my 70-lb suitcase was sitting on top of the luggage rack and there was no way I was getting it down.

Late the next morning, we were the only ones left in our compartment. We went to the dining car to get food and they only had hot chocolate left. Sick. When we arrived in Rome, two hours later than scheduled, a porter pulled my luggage down from the rack, no Luggage Boy needed.

Hello, Roma!