Midnight Train

(6-26-06)

We arrived at the station just in time to board the train leaving for Venice. We were initially assigned to a couchette with 2 other travelers. The first was an American named William. William was from California, but had spent the last year in Alaska after graduating from Harvard (class of '05). He was on his way to meet up with some friends in Rome before heading back to the US, where he was planning a move to DC. Prior to returning, however, he had plans to visit Pamplona for the running of the bulls. Our other bunk-mate was a little Itallian guy named Charles who had been vacationing in Budapest and was on his way back to Milan. As you might expect, it wasn't long before the four of us (at least three of whom had seen "The Sting") decided that it wouldn't be a night train ride if we didn't break out a deck of cards. Charles only understood about 5 words of English, so it took several hands before we were successful in explaining to him that the Queen of spades (or peakes if you will) was worth 13 points. Several hands after that we were successful in communicating to him that points are bad in Hearts. Our game was briefly interrupted by the wind blowing away our discard pile, but Charles was kind enough to donate his 3 gram miniature stick of Old Spice deoderant (fresh from being applied all over his body) to the job, serving as a paper weight.

Before long, everyone was getting pretty sleepy, so Sam and I said arrivederce and snuck into an empty couchette, where we pulled the bunks down and watched the sun set over Hungary's hills and lakes with the wind blowing in our faces. I fell asleep relatively quickly, only to be waken up every couple of hours as we crossed the borders of Croatia and Slovenia on our way to Italy.