Your guide to European Rail Stations

Tips for the great unwashed

The ability to get around large amounts of the continent by simply jumping
on a train is, astounding. It is also good to know that no matter where
you go, European rail stations are always the same:

Fast Food. Don't panic, your saturated fat-laden diet is safe here. You
won't have to worry about mysterious herring salads anymore. Just keep
looking and you will find any or all of a McDonalds, Starbucks, Pizza Hut
and or Burger King.

Backpackers. They will always be there standing in line for a ticket or
washing their underwear in the water fountains. You get no points for
spotting them. They are in fact a piece by the artist in residence at
the Stockholm Institute of Anthropological studies. If you approach them,
carefully, they will be quite friendly and you can ask them for a guide to
the installation. They will never speak in your language.

Tickets. There will be a line, and the staff will continue hate you, just
get over it. In fact, ticket staff are a classic demonstration of the
difference between 'nice' and 'polite'. Only a seasoned station attendant
can perform their public role with such practiced disdain. How else can
they sell you a ticket and at the same time make perfectly clear that you
are ruining their day by not only asking them for something, but also
getting them to speak English.

Drink the water, It is good for you

Don't drink the coffee, it is made with that water you just drank.

Pee. Somewhere, when you least expect it, you will find yourself near a
corner that smells of rancid urine. I'm still not sure how the managers
of rail stations have not made the connection between making people pay to
use a toilet (or locking them completely) and why their buildings reek of
yesterdays beer.

Dogs, they run a close second to the 'packers. I don't know why it freaks
me out, but there is always someone leading their dog through the station.
I'm thinking is because they like the smell of pee.

Empty first class. I'm also perplexed as to why there is a first class
section of any train. As far as I can tell, the kind of people that can
afford first class are also the kind of people that would want to be as
far as possible from a place full of junk food, backpackers, dogs and
smells of pee. Yet there are all these nice and shiny carriages just
waiting for Madame DuPont to turn up with her three steamer trunks, furs
and personal assistant.

All I can assume is that first class is actually a form of purgatory, a
special hell reserved for self important upstarts who don't tip the valet
and feel it is important to send the room service back twice because it
isn't up to scratch. You want the first class treatment ? Be careful of
what you wish for.

Two tickets for Brussels, please.

Time for a good deed

[ note : I haven't written anything for at least two months because I've
had a busy summer that has lacked the usual combination of boredom and
bitterness that drives me to write another five hundred words. ]

Travel, on the whole, Bites.

It is not getting any easier. Getting on planes is just more difficult
and, on the whole, People Suck.

This weekend, for example, I decided to try something completely different
and drive to my destination. What I hadn't factored was the inventive
level of hell that is 'Holiday Traffic' and the way it can put the most
even tempered person into a cursing, cat kicking funk that only years of
alcohol abuse can ever hope to temper.

In my case, a sequence of delays left me somewhere near Reno at about
11pm, exhausted and in desperate need of a hotel room. I had foolishly
thought that, being a casino town, this would be a piece of cake. I was
wrong. There was nothing, nada, zip. The whole town was booked out.

After driving past many ( I lost count after 10 ) no vacancy signs. I
started to just walk into places and ask if they knew of anything. They
didn't. This city was so closed that people had stopped caring.

This is where I need to point out just how bad people suck.

I actually stood in line at one hotel while the fool behind the counter
checked people in and then suddenly, AFTER WE WERE STANDING THERE FOR 15
MINUTES, he looked at all of us and said "Sorry we're full, I only had the
a few rooms in the first place".

Somehow, while most of my brain was thinking of inventive ways to tear him
a new one, a tiny rational collection of synapses kicked in and reminded
me that I had a 24 hour 1-800 number to my travel agency. (yes, you can
call me stupid now).

The conversation went like this :

"I'm on the 80, headed west from Reno. Find me the first room in my path"

"Ok, I'll call you back"

Less that 10 minutes later she called back and had found me a room that
was in the next town.

"Call this number and ask for Bob, he is expecting you"

A few short minutes later I fell into the hotel where the night manager
looked at me, looked at the line of people waiting for rooms and without
hesitation said

"Sorry, we're full"

"No," I replied, "I have a reservation"

So while I was feeling full of myself about being clever and organised I
had to be taken down a few notches by talking to another couple who were
in the line. They had been turned away, were even more tired than myself,
and were seriously considering sleeping in their car in the carpark.

But, I think the night manager knew what to do. As he was checking me in
he gave me the two keys for my room and said "All I have for you is a
suite". Sure enough, when I opened the door, I was faced with a palace of
two rooms, two bathrooms, a sofa bed and two room keys.

I didn't have to think for long before I ran out the carpark, found them
just as they were driving around the corner and thrust the spare room key
in their hands.

"Play nice, no snoring, we'll work put details in the morning"

I slept very soundly that night.