Monday, April 18, 2011

My First 13-hour Train Experience

“Hey wake up, I need to pee.”

The light reaches out and finds my face as I crunch up to unlock the door. I wonder how much longer until we reach the ferry to get to Sicily.

I see a shadow, and thinking it is my roommate returning from the bathroom, I slide the makeshift curtain that is my scarf away from the window to ensure it’s her. Instead of a thin, blond haired girl, I find a thickly build Italian man with well-baked skin, a blacked out outfit staring in. He raises is plump sausage fingers to wave at me. I snap my head away and continue waiting for my roommate.

“It’s pretty sketch out there. If you really need to go, just be careful,” she says when she returns. I look out into the hallway and see the man has passed and was making his way onto the next train car. I quickly move in the opposite direction and slip into the bathroom. I brace myself, getting ready for a stocky man to push me into the bathroom to hurt me. I think of all of those tips, I’ve learned over the years to defend myself. Luckily, I returned to my room with no problems that night.

Our door gets double locked, and I get reacquainted with my pillow and the three train seats that are flush together and open up into a “bed”.

Two songs into my iPod, the silence the outside world is listening to is disrupted by the shrillest of screams. At first, I think it’s just the girls who were drinking a couple rooms down. I wake up and realize it was them, but the scream had more reasoning than “she really hooked up with him”.

“MY BAG! IT WAS UNDER MY PILLOW! THE DOOR WAS LOCKED!”

Three bags from three different rooms were stolen. They ended up catching one of the guys who wore a neon orange sweater. Two very expensive cameras and one iPod are still missing. Another thing missing? An explanation of who that man I saw was and why he was at our door.

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