Wednesday 27 March 2013

The Train Hotel

At the risk of missing out on a potentially bizarre epic travelling adventure, I booked myself onto a 12hr overnight train from Barcelona to Paris.

Now I'd heard that overnight trains can be a bit hit-as-miss: you share a 4-bed cabin with total snoring strangers, the train speeds along at max speeds of like 300km/h giving you a bit of a bumpy ride and an unsettled sleep, the only escape from this close-encounters of a foreign and slightly awkward kind is the bar, where, you may have to remortgage your home before ordering anything or at least just sit, take photos and talk with random Americans like I did and get drunk with them and not think about the bill so much haha.

Actually it was almost like that, although i've never had as much fun on a train at night time. It was so communal, so social....almost like a hostel on wheels.

I was sharing with 3 other guys, 2 French, 1 of which was ghetto, parisian and just oozing cool, the other slightly quieter and slightly more timid; the other an older guy from Austria who wanted to spend more time in the bar than me.
Just by walking up and down the narrow corridors of the train I met a group of 40+ American high-schoolers on tour, who loud and interesting, but still unfortunately as stereotypically obnoxious as portrayed everywhere else. They were though, bless them.
Also met one girl who I'd already met in Salou at the Cos Blanco confetti party through a friend of mine. We saw each other at the bar, had a few drinks together and sat talking how small the world is, and how aawesome the experience was, what we were up to and where we were going.

As I wrote all this I was hurtling out of a grey, dull, unpretty Paris at 8am or so after making my connection with about 5 minutes to spare after having to throw my 5 rucksacks around the Paris Metro a bit first.

I then got into Köln Hbf and made my connection there to Koblenz, knocking over my suitcase on poor unsuspecting guys who walked past. Oops.

Living in Koblenz is an exciting prospect and from what I've seen of the place so far, it's lovely, but i'm terrified to install myself in for some reason. I need somewhere to live duuuuuuuude. Also the forecast for Tarragona is about 25 degrees Celsius, where I already caught the sun, whereas here in Koblenz the forecast is about 5 degrees C, where i'm more likely to catch a cold. Nooooooooo........


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