On a Train to Berlin

When I first got onto my train to Berlin, I was in the wrong car.  Unlike most trains, this one didn’t have doors at the end of the car providing access to other cars.  I realized both these things bothering a lot of nice German people when I began trying to figure out where my seat was.  Even once I was settled in the right car, I wasn’t confident that I was in the right place—the signs around the train station were confusing. But the conductor seemed to think I was, and since he got quite annoyed with someone else who showed up on the train without a reservation, I assumed he wasn’t just being nice.

There was one other girl sitting with me—all that was left to reserve that first day in Copenhagen was a two-person sleeper.  The compartment was quite nice—three plush seats, dark blue with red, white, green, and yellow confetti patterned on it, behind which was a wall made of three flat yellow rectangles stacked long-ways which I thought would fold down into beds.  I hoped I might get some sleep that night, something which jet lag and then a blaring alarm which the hostel staff assured me was both false and related to water, not fire (what water-related emergency on dry land warrants an alarm?), had so far prevented. 

I noticed as I took my seat that the compartment had a mild but relentless odor of mold.  Self-consciously, I leaned over to subtly sniff my suitcase to see if it was the source—it had spent the day in the basement luggage room of my hostel (was it a false mold alarm last night?).  I didn’t want to offend my compartment mate with my potentially moldy possessions.  She was a pretty German girl with pretty German features who had asked me what my “mother tongue” was when I first joined her in the compartment.  While she could clearly get by in English better than I can in German (I can’t get past “excuse me, hello”), she didn’t seem very comfortable in it—when the conductor was checking her ticket, he spoke English to her, with which she gamely tried to keep up, until her traveling companion—a boyfriend or a brother—came in and told him she preferred German.  The conductor switched immediately. 

What a skill these polyglot Europeans have.  I wonder what it’s like growing up and living in a world that expects you to routinely switch between languages.  And how fortunate for my laziness that I was born to English.  Yes, I actually know another language, but not one I can exactly go visit in a foreign country. 

The train left the station and chugged rapidly across the country.  We stopped several times as the hours passed to take on more passengers.  At one point the track ran along the ocean, a beautiful blue just beyond a highway.  My compartment mate and I both took pictures through our window, though I suspect her DSLR camera did that better than my point-and-shoot or phone did. 

When it got dark out, I wanted to get ready for bed.  Trying not to be a disaster, I managed to wrestle my toiletry bag and pajamas out of my suitcase, and spent some time in the train bathroom washing up.  The bathroom was surprisingly well-appointed—there was actually a small shower, which I was tempted to make use of.  When my compartment mate went for her turn in the bathroom, I brought my suitcase out into the passage, and realized with relief that it was the carpet and upholstery in the compartment and not my things that were the source of the moldy odor—at least I wasn’t causing the problem for us both. 

I was trying to read, sitting sideways to stave off sickness, when my compartment mate asked if we wanted the beds down.  I was just beginning to wonder when such a thing was going to happen, but I’m not sure how much of a choice we really had; the conductor made it seem obligatory when she went to get him.  He laid down the three blue plush seat backs, then their ladder-like under-support, and lowered the first yellow panel, revealing a pillow and folded comforter atop a tidy white mattress.  My compartment mate examined the seat numbers and her ticket, and determined that I had this lower bed, and she the upper.  She seemed quite disappointed, gazing at the upper panel.  There were actually two, oddly enough, one shorter, cut off by the corner of the window.  There didn’t seem to be a way both upper panels could have been lowered at once; the middle bed would have been scant inches beneath the top one.  The conductor had to hop off the ladder he had hung to determine which of these bed panels he was meant to lower, and settled on the full-length, middle one.  I thought my compartment mate would feel better about it, seeing it wasn’t any shorter, but she didn’t seem to, so I offered to switch.  She seemed quite pleased and appreciative, and so was I after she went off to the bathroom and I climbed the ladder to the now-top bunk.  I think my greatest joy in Europe really is climbing all over it. 

The bed was very comfortable, and I thought the rolling train would help me sleep, but no such luck.  I dozed a bit, and tried to lay facing the way the train was going, but a pulsing pain in my right leg, a relic of my Bill Bryson syndrome, which only went away when it was bent prevented this from being comfortable.  On top of that, the train’s motion seemed to change direction, going first one way, then the other, then seemingly sideways.  I probably did doze a little, but I was conscious much of the ride.  When my alarm went off at 4:30, I hurried to the bathroom, and found the conductor at our door when I returned.  He carried two paper bags with breakfasts, and I tried to eat mine in my bunk, feeling sicker and sicker as I did so.  The food may have been partially to blame—it wasn’t German; maybe Turkish?  Two rolls, one sweet, a meat spread that smelled like cat food, and some margarine, and an oddly-flavored juice box.  There was also a cup of black tea too hot to drink.  When the train finally stopped and I rushed to the door, I was mostly just relieved to be on level ground, but in the train station in Berlin I found that the motion had followed me, though I didn’t feel quite so sick.  I sat on a bench waiting for the world to stop rolling under me and for a reasonable morning hour to arrive so I could go find my hostel and deposit my luggage.