Sleeping on a train

We had wanted to go to Berlin.  I’m not sure what I wanted to see exactly.  I felt like it would be a quite depressed city given it’s history.  But all the same, I felt like as part of our grand European experience we needed to give it a try.  To date all of our trips to the continent have been by car or plane (or technically cruise ship).  To also complete one of our European experiences, I felt like we needed a train trip.  We had taken the Eurostar from London to Paris; Mom & Dad had left for Rome via the train so I figured we could just ‘pop over’ to Berlin in one as well.

There are 3 daytime trains from Paris to Berlin which take about 8 hours or you can take an overnight sleeper train which takes 12 hours.  I thought the sleeper sounded fun and saved our precious sightseeing hours, so I (over the course of 3 weeks) talked Adam into it.

We left out of Paris’ Gare de E’st just after 8pm.  We’d eaten dinner before boarding, but I’d also loaded up with snacks just in case.  We had a separate cabin with two fold out bunk beds (like a Murphy bed folds down from the wall) and a private bathroom with a shower.   As we were settling into our room, the train manager came to the cabin and checked our ticket then asked if we’d like complimentary wine.  Well, if you insist!

So we had our wine and a few snacks before settling into bed for the night.  Adam insisted on taking the top bunk.  We both woke up several times throughout the night, mostly when the train pulled into a station or joined with another train (the train would stop for a moment, and then you’d feel it ram into another train to connect, then we’d be on our way).  In our 12 hours, I imagine we picked up / dropped off about 10 other train segments.  Mental note: don’t sleep walk from your train carriage or you might not continue on to Berlin!  But overall, we actually slept much better than we anticipated and actually felt rested when we woke up the following morning.

I can now say I have showered on a moving train.  I can also say I feel no need to do this again.  Being a German train, it was absolutely clean and actually had hot water.  But it did have a 30 second governor on it.  So you turned on the water, rinsed, the water turned off, you soaped up, turned on the water, rinsed, the water turned off.  Repeat as necessary.  Adam’s thinking about adding this feature to our next house, because it was the fastest shower that I’ve ever taken.

Our train manager appeared again with our breakfast. 

I attempted to put on mascara on a moving train.  Once again…no need to attempt this again.

We arrived into Berlin on time and refreshed, ready to see the city!