The following is the first installment in a series of posts
in which I explain what I was doing in Europe instead of getting drunk.
One reason that I didn’t go crazy in Europe is that I never
go crazy. Another reason is that I went to Europe with my brother, and it’s
just sort of weird to party with your brother and only your brother. Our
sibling backpacking duo was confusing to everyone we met. First, they were
like, “Are you engaged?” And then, when we explained that we were
brother/sister, they were like, “That’s really weird. Don’t all normal,
well-adjusted people go to Europe with their friends?” And then they judged me.
And they asked me if I was a senior in high school.
But going to Europe with Morgan had many advantages. First,
he’s a good navigator. Second, he’s responsible and plan-oriented. Third, he
writes everything down in this tiny bound notebook, so if, for example, we were
trying to buy train tickets and having trouble communicating, he would just flash
the ticket person the train info that he’d written down, and he or she would
suddenly understand what we needed. And fourth and finally, he was willing to
loan me large sums of money all the time.
His responsibility and planning and money lending and
commitment to tiny notebook documentation were all invaluable, and I can’t help
but guess that if I had attempted the same trip with my friends, we would STILL
be lost somewhere in the Dusseldorf airport (No offense, friends!)
However, I cannot overlook the disadvantages of going to
Europe with Morgan (and only Morgan), as they were very present and very real.
First, we are both self-conscious, shy, and easily embarrassed.* This made
trying to communicate in foreign languages that we didn’t even sort of know extremely
difficult. Almost everyone** could speak English, but the fact that we were
always feeling apologetic for wearing synthetic, brightly colored clothing, and
taking pictures of everything, and being American, and existing made us
desperately want to use the native language. Most people detected our bullshit
immediately. A typical exchange went like this:
Morgan: Ich wants einen Kaffee? : /
Barista: Was???
Morgan: Einen Kaffee…bitte? : (
Barista: Oh. You want a coffee. Asshole.
Second, train seats are usually grouped in fours, so when
you’re traveling with only one other person, you are at the mercy of fate
regarding who fills those two extra seats.
The exception to this is the night train compartments, which are
exactly like the ones on the Hogwarts Express, sort of. You’ve got two little compartments
on either side of an aisle. Each compartment has two rows of four seats that face
each other and a sliding door that closes it off from the rest of the carriage.
The only time we took the night train was when we traveled
from Vienna to Trento, Italy. We arrived at the station around 9 p.m. and
waited eagerly on the platform. Soon, we were approached by an attractive and
stylish young Viennese guy. He explained that he was taking a break from his
year of mandatory civil service to meet some friends in Italy, and did we want
to drink in his cabin with him? “Yes. Absolutely. We’ll meet up with you there
soon,” I told him. I definitely did not join him for drinks in his cabin. He
was cute and interesting, but then, so was Joran Vandersloot.***
So we finally boardered the train and were so excited to
locate our very own, totally empty, murderer-free compartment. Seriously, we
were giddy. We had a bag full of cookies and some wine and all this space to
ourselves and were ready to ride into the Alps. We felt like intrepid, savvy,
murder-avoiding globetrotters. Life was amazing.
Oh how naïve we were, very Americanly forgetting that Eurorail
is not Amtrack and that people actually use trains over here. And soon enough,
this older man joined us. Which was whatever. It sort of
ruined our private cookie party, but at least the cabin was still empty enough that
nobody had to sit directly beside each other.
But then, at the first stop, this extremely thin, rough-looking guy staggered into our cabin and sat down beside Morgan. For some
inexplicable reason, this guy reeked of not booze but vinegar. He immediately
fell asleep.
Well damn. Now we felt all weird and it smelled too bad in
our compartment to want to eat cookies. But it was getting really late, so we
decided to try to sleep.
But at each stop, more and more men (invariably men, never
any young guys, never any friendly-looking Eurogirls) trickled into our compartment, at one point filling all eight seats. It was extremely tight in there, and it
smelled horrible. The middle-aged vagrant that was sitting beside me kept asking me questions in German, so I pretended to sleep. I desperately wanted to actually sleep, but I was worried that I would
accidentally drop my head onto his shoulder. Also, the temperature was dropping rapidly. So I fitfully
dozed and shivered beside the vagrant until we reached our 4 a.m. transfer
station, silently wishing all the while that I had gone ahead and allowed the Viennese guy to murder me.
Next time, The Hostile Hostel: Naked People, Prostitutes,
Russian Orphans, Towel Thieves, and Nine Euro Loads of Laundry
*Parents, I’m blaming this on your belief that children “should
entertain themselves.” This directly resulted in hours of early social
isolation in which Morgan drew Dungeons and Dragons style monsters on the inside
covers of his textbooks and I searched for the portal to Wonderland that I was
convinced was somewhere in my backyard. Damaging, obviously.
**Exception: In Trento, a waitress who could speak
absolutely no English got so (rightfully) frustrated by our shitty attempts at Italian that she
just abandoned our table.
***Just Google Image Searched Joran. Not that cute, actually.
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