As I said in my blog about Amsterdam, I took the train to meet Brad and we took the train together home. I have some thoughts/stories about the train trips to share and thought they were worthy of their own, separate blog.
My train left Stuttgart main train station at 3:05 in the morning. Unfortunately this meant I had to find parking downtown since the city trains don't run after midnight. Getting up at 1:40, I left by 2:00 am. While my trip downtown was fast (the power of no traffic), the parking garage I planned to park in was closed between 1:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m.! Oh no! I found another garage close to the station but they charged 20 Euro a day to park there! Since it was already 2:30 and I knew I wouldn't find much better downtown, I just went with it. So I took my carry-on and headed for the terminal - a block down and across the street.
When I got to the train station - the gates and doors were all locked! I knew I was in the right place, and I could see people walking around inside, but I couldn't get there!!! Finally, after trying all the doors on one side of the building, I headed for the end and found a door that was open. By this time it was 15 minutes before my train, so I went to the designated track - my train was there - and got on. I had not reserved a seat, and had heard horror stories of having to move seat to seat around other peoples reservations (the lesson being always make a seat reservation if it's an option) but fortunately I found a seat with no reservation above it.
There are three options for seating when taking a night train: a day couch, a couchette, and a sleeper. I had to change trains at 5:12 a.m. so I stuck with the day couch option and stayed awake for the first leg. Fortunately the train was really empty. Unfortunately the conductor didn't speak English and I wasn't sure what stop I was supposed to get off at. We communicated enough for him to tell me I switched trains at Frankfurt Airport. I was on an ICE train, which are the fast ones - being in a day-couch I was in a section of the train where the lights remained on. I'm not sure if the ICE trains have the sleeper cabins - we were on a CNL (Night train?) on the way back and it was almost all sleeper cabins. Fortunately, a nice German man had overheard my conversation with the conductor and came and told me when it was time to get off the train. I exited, and after a couple minutes got on the next train of my journey. Good thing I was paying attention because it only stopped for about 30 seconds to a minute in order to get on and then it was off again.
At this point I tried to doze off, pulling my jacket over my head to block the light. This train stopped in Amsterdam so I wasn't worried about oversleeping and missing my stop. Unfortunately I was only able to doze for about two hours. When I woke up and looked around I was looking at a palace across a river, very close up and very beautiful. Then right after that I saw a huge cathedral, very ornate. We had just arrived in Koln, Germany. After these sights, and with the sun shining brightly, I stayed awake for the rest of my ride to Amsterdam, where I met up with Brad.
On our ride back to Stuttgart, we were on a CNL train, with couchette's in a 6 person sleeper cabin. A couchette is actually a bunk bed (not a matress though) and is very hard. Even though several of these 6 person rooms were empty, we had three cabin mates - two of them young men that got up and left the cabin every time the train stopped (I think they were smoking).
Since our train went 8:31 p.m. to 4:17 a.m., the conductor asked when we wanted a wake up, to which we answered 4:00 a.m.. He never showed up, so it was good that Brad woke up shortly before 4:00. It was a miserable ride because of our noisy cabin mates, the miserably hard couches/beds, and the frequent starting and stopping of the train.
When we boarded the train and went to the cabin, all the lights were out. Completely dark. We figured they just needed to flip a switch and power the train so we waited, surely it would be fixed before we left the station. Then the train started moving - still no lights. I walked down the train (3 trains down) and found a conductor - who waved me away and said something about getting to us later. When I told him we had no lights, he got really aggravated and shouted "Moment" at me and waved me away. He did follow me back, and tried the lights in three other cabins before he'd admit something could be wrong, then unlocked a room and flipped a switch turning the lights on for all of us.
I had finally fallen asleep when Brad woke me up for two people looking at his papers. For some reason I thought they wanted to know if we were together so I shouted "41" (the number of my bed). Brad just looked at me and said, "Nikki, they're checking papers, give them our passports." Since I was curled up around my purse, which had our papers, I pulled them out. They were asking if we were traveling for leisure - since we were to Amsterdam we both said yes, though I think they meant to Germany. It was surreal and I'm not sure I was completely awake for any of it.
We got back to Stuttgart and paid for our parking only to find the parking exit gates propped open and no ticket required to exit. Heading home we crashed hard, making up for the lack of sleep en route. It was still better than driving.
So DB - couchettes - not sure I'd do it again. Day couches - don't plan on getting sleep and reserve a seat if you can. Cabins - $$$$. All options have their pluses and minuses. I would not have liked the couchette cabin at all without Brad. Hopefully if I was alone I would have ended up in a cabin with other women, not all men, since gender is one of the data pieces you have to enter when buying tickets. It'd be seriously creepy otherwise.
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