12/11/13 thru morning of 12/12/13….Sleeping with my Boots On!

December 12, 2013

Well this was quite the 24+ hours! We left Ashridge for St. Pancras Station to embark on a day (and night) full of trains! We knew it was going to be a bit of a crazy time, but off we were going. London to Brussels (yes back to Brussels but only to switch trains!), an hour or so break then on to Thalys high speed from Brussels to Cologne. All going well so far….we had a layover in Cologne. We lost track of time and ourselves and screwed up on the military time and 20:05 became 10:05pm in our head when in reality it was 8:05pm…argh! I KNOW military time very well; Pat even set her phone alarm for 7:15 so we could update and get to the platform. I am not sure how it happened, but neither of us seemed shocked or upset as would normally be. I felt awful and responsible…a normal first reaction for me; Pat was kind and reassuring….it just HAPPENED! But at any rate, we just missed our train and calmly went to the office to switch; were told we would lose the entire purchase, and had to but new tickets with much worse accommodation for twice the money. We were both sick inside but being brave and kind to each other and bought the ticket which would now take us at 11:45pm from Cologne to Munich where we would arrive at 7:10 am and have to switch to another train at 7:27am to go from Munich to Vienna, arriving only about 2-1/2 hours later in Vienna Thursday than our original 9am plan on the direct train we missed. But when we got on our train car I could have puked. It was the most filthy and disgusting thing I had ever seen. Every inch of this train car was filthy, and if there was padding or material on the seat or arms it was disintegrating off. What material there was on, was filthy; the floor was filthy with trash and empty cups, etc. on it; and bodies sprawled out on various seat already sleeping. It looked like something out of a horror film staged to PUNK us! It was old and dirty and disgusting… I could have just died; I was crying inside like you will never know. No one spoke English or helped us in any way…I almost put our bags in a refrigeration compartment!!! But Pat found a luggage rack and put up her bags; I tried to find our seats. I had to brush past gross people slovenly sleeping and hanging out through the aisles with my luggage; I found our seats and a closer luggage rack. Pat got in to her seat; and I decided to run back and bring her bags up forward…not trusting them so far away from us. Without speaking, Pat and I went into “personal control mode”….we slung our luggage like you’ve never seen us do ever! When we sat down, grossed out and disgusted, and tired and flustered, we realized that we had both simultaneously pulled our antibacterial wipes out of our purse. I don’t know what good we thought they’d do, but we were both determined for CLEAN!

Then they came to check/stamp our tickets. I tried to explain to the lady that we had 1st class tickets on the prior train and we were supposed to have “couchettes” on this one; these disgusting seats WERE the couchettes I guess. We asked what we could do to change our situation. She did not really understand English, but I think our faces spoke EVERY language. For 10 euros each, we were upgraded to a sleeper car that would sleep up to 6 persons. We were not thrilled about sleeping with 4 strangers but decided it HAD to be better than sleeping sitting up with these folks in this current car. The man she sent to collect our 20 Euros spoke NO English, so whatever he was saying to us he just kept saying louder and louder and louder! We later laughed together Pat and I because it’s what we do, isn’t it. When someone doesn’t understand what we’re saying, we say it again, LOUDER!!! What he must’ve been saying was they had a space for us, he would take me and my bags and come back for Pat. But Pat followed as we were desperate to exit that car. Well the woman than said one beautiful phrase of English: Private for the ladies! We had the sleeper car for 6 to ourselves! And we had three pairs of fresh and clean flat sheets and pillows and ELECTRICAL power to charge our phones with. We got them to help and fold up the middle two “beds” so we could have the option of either sitting or laying down in our bottom beds. We laid down, in momentary heaven, knowing we were in a private quarter. The gentleman showed us how to lock our unit so we would be safe; he brought all our bags to reside with us, and we were at peace. A few minutes after that, of course, we realized that our “beds” were material-covered SLABS….kind of like what you’d pull out of a morgue! We chatted a bit; we tried to sleep a bit; we moved our pillows from one end to the other and switched around. Our joints whined in discomfort, but we were safe and happy and even got a little rest. The train stopped at every teenie stop you can imagine. So we never slept for long…but we were out of that nasty nasty car!

We arrived at Munich with a total of 7 minutes to catch our connecting train…WE MADE IT….to a modern and clean and lovely train, and now had FOUR MORE HOURS to get to Vienna. But we did fine. We were good soldiers, and even better travel-mates! And we’ve laughed about some of it…I’m sure some day we’ll be able to laugh about all of it!!!

Missing our train was just”one of those things” and it afforded us the opportunity to wander out to the plaza outside of the Cologne station to see some gorgeous cathedrals and take some great pictures! We ate at a restaurant and had spaetzle with roast pork. You’ll see the pics below. We got to our beautiful, old and old-fashioned hotel almost directly across the street from the Vienna train station! It stood proudly beside a gorgeous cathedral which ended up being our view from our rooms (pic below). The hotel is like something out of a history book but, unlike our train experience, it is everything old and classy that you’d dream for! We unpacked, I started today’s blog and then we went out for a bite to eat as it was about 2:00 or so and our dinner tonight with Julia and her boyfriend isn’t until 8:30. It was wonderful. I took a pic of the plates we got. We’ve shared several dishes/orders this trip and it’s given us a nice variety. Pat ordered Goulash which came as a full plate including…ready…a VIENNA SAUSAGE and some pickle spears and POTATOE DUMPLINGS that looked a little different but tasted exactly like what we make with pork roast on New Years! We shared risotto and I ordered Veal Schnitzel with potato salad….yummy too. Yes I took a pic!

St. Pancras Station

Lip Smackers for sale in the London train station!

We’ve arrived in Cologne!

Took this for my niece Erin!

a poignant display made to commemorate War, History and Christmas

These were the lovely cathedrals in the plaza outside the Cologne train station; as well as Christmas tree, which we would not have experienced had we not missed the train!