On the train again, just can’t wait to get on the train again

From Kristen...

I knew when I booked the tickets for the 6:30 am train to Croatia that it would be a tough morning for us.

We are not early risers. Generally, we are night people. Most of you reading this probably know that Dad routinely stays up late doing graphics work, Mom stays up late grading papers, Greta does homework til fairly late, and I…well, I stay up late doing stuff. I am happiest when I get to bed around 1 am and get up at 8-9ish.

Did you catch that? Things are ideal for me when I go to bed late (or quite early, as the case may be) and get up mid-morning. Not 6:30. To me, the only good reason to get up that early is to get a chicken biscuit as soon as Chick-fil-A opens. And even then, they serve breakfast til 10:30, so why set the alarm so early?

Anyway, there are no Chick-fil-A’s in Budapest (or anywhere else in Europe for that matter…do you know what I’m already planning to do on the way home from the Indy airport when we get back?!?) but there was a 6:30 train from Budapest’s Keleti Pályaudvar station to Zagreb’s Glavni Kolodvor station (gotta love those names!) and we needed to take it.

Yes, I had considered other options:

1) Drive a rental car. No, all of the international car rental companies in Croatia folded last year so there is no way to do a one-way rental into the country.

2) Fly. I might have done this if we weren’t on a budget! Tickets ran anywhere from $400-$1200 per person. Ouch.

3) Walk. This option certainly was cheaper than the previous one and had the added bonus of helping to work off all the palacsintas (Hungarian crepes) consumed in the past few days. But, we opted not go with it as Zagreb is kinda far from Budapest. And, we have a lot of luggage. Still. Even after dropping off all those puppets.

4) Take a train later in the day. This would have been a super plan…if there had been any trains that went from Budapest to Zagreb in a reasonable amount of time. The 6:30 one was direct and arrived in Zagreb at 12:59 pm while other ones that left later in the day took MUCH longer. I even found one that took 19 hours through Bosnia and Serbia. Uhhh…

So the 6:30 one would be our train by default. Not ideal, I thought, but we’ll just go to bed early and get some sleep, get up, catch the train, and then sleep some more en route. It will work. Not the most perfect situation, but definitely do-able.

And yes, we did go to bed early! Any guesses on the time?!?

8?

9:30?

10?

Later???

Well…..Gret went to bed first just before midnight, followed by the rest of us by 1-ish. Oops. So much for getting a full night’s sleep!! The alarm came quickly at 4:30 but still, no problem, we thought, we’ll just sleep on the train.

Uhhhhh. Think again!

Just as we’d settled into our seats in our little couchette-like compartment (no beds in this one, though) and the train started to move, the conductor (who had already checked our tickets a few minutes before) returned. He turned to Dad and said two words: “No sleeping.”

Immediately, I was confused.

WHAT?

No sleeping? Huh? Why would that matter?!

I am tired.

I would really like to sleep.

So would the rest of the family.

And why would sleeping matter?

This isn’t even an airplane where you have to turn off and stow everything. It’s a train! And regardless, they let you sleep on planes!

The conductor, noticing our obviously confused faces, repeated himself. “No sleeping!”

Dad, still puzzled, turned to me. “Do you understand?”

What I thought and what I said were two different things. Of course I UNDERSTAND the meaning of “no sleeping” but I have no idea why that matters or why we can’t sleep. “Ummm, no…”

The conductor turned to his co-conductor, a female about my age, who shook her head at him. I don’t know what that means in Hungarian, but apparently something, because he quickly turned to us and said, “Ticket okay.” And then shut the door to our compartment and they both headed down the corridor.

It took a minute but quickly we all burst out laughing. No sleeping?!? How can he make us not sleep?? If I am tired (and I AM tired!) there’s pretty much no way he can make me not fall asleep.

Mom, who had been resting with her eyes closed at the time the conductor visited us, mentioned that she wasn’t sleeping but just resting her eyes. Okay, normally that would be fine Mom, but NOT ON THIS TRAIN! You look like you’re sleeping! And that is not allowed! You can only rest your eyes one at a time! But then there’s probably no winking on this train either, so even that may not work!

We never did figure out what he really meant, but we certainly had a good laugh thinking of all the things he could have been referring to.

I’m sure he didn’t mean “no sleeping.”

But if he did, then he’s not very good at enforcing the rule, because as I’m typing this (still on the train traveling though a station called “Siófok” in western Hungary) the other three members of the family are….shhhh…sleeping!! Or perhaps they’re merely resting their eyes. Yes, surely that must be it, because I’m sure they would never partake in such a forbidden activity as SLEEPING!! ;)