First, I will write about the train ride from Berlin to Vienna and do a separate post for Vienna because otherwise the entire post would be much too long. K and I were quite happy and excited to be leaving Berlin and heading towards Vienna.
Purpleberry was too! :)
As stated before we believed that we would be traveling in similar style as the Amsterdam to Berlin trip, but much to our dismay we were not, instead we were in a 6 seat compartment with 3 other people filling up 5 of the 6 seats available. The seats did not recline so K and I along with the other people needed to figure out a way to place all of our seats in which to be comfortable. This was difficult, and I found myself scrunched up in the fetal position in my seat turned sideways trying to sleep. We did meet three nice people, two college aged boys from England traveling on to Venice and one man from Berlin visiting his brother in Vienna.
Our quarters.
Now for the weird things that happened with our train ride. The first thing that happened was at our Dresden stop, we were there for an awfully long time. When finally inquiring as to why we were waiting so long at this stop, we learned that our motor broke down and needed to be replaced. And so we waited there for an hour and a half while they took our motor away and brought us a new one. We figured after that we would be fine, wrong. About 20 minutes after leaving Dresden we came to a complete stop in the middle of nowhere and just sat there for 10 minutes, you can imagine what we were thinking. Did our motor give out again? This time in the middle of nowhere? And then all of a sudden we started up again and continued on our way. Around 12 we picked up more passengers and there were some that had no seats in the compartments and were required to sit on seats in the hallway, there was one man who was there sitting in a suit and had a briefcase, he was probably there for about 20 minutes. Then all of a sudden the entire train went black (or so I heard from my compartment mates--I was trying to sleep) and the man in the suit and had the briefcase had entirely disappeared. Creepy, right?
The last weird thing to happen with our train was around 5 am somewhere in Austria when we were at a stop for another unusual amount of time.
We found out that during this time they took away some cars that had been with us on the journey and added new ones. We figured this out because I had been using another compartments bathroom due to the working sink and when I went to use it, there was new car in its place. Weird. Anyways, we made it to Vienna in one piece, the poor English guys didn't make their Venice connection-- we never did hear what they were going to do (stay in Vienna or wait for another train). I did get to see the German man be reunited with his brother, which was nice.
K and I went and reserved our tickets for the Vienna to Venice night train and then started towards our hostel to clean up and start our day, which I will write about in a different post.
Much Love,
Taylor
