Meeting people along the way is part of the excitement of traveling.
I have met quite a few characters in my time...
- Fingerless Friend
- Incarcerated Colin
-Andrea the Wine Maker
- The Germans (2)
- The Russians (2)
-The Under "ragers" (aka kids at a Kygo concert who probably should have been home studying for their physics test on Monday)
-Sweet Canadian Lady
-French Girl in Denial About Trump's Pathway to Presidency
-Lone Ranger from Atlanta
-Old Chilean Woman Who Almost Invited Herself to Stay in My Apartment for a Month
-and most importantly: The Girl on the Train
I keep in contact with 2 of the aforementioned, and since the article is pretty much entirely based on the last person listed... I will leave it up to you to guess who the other person is. **mysterious**
Anywho, The Girl on the Train... both a thrilling novel, and the best way to describe one of my best friends formed from travel.
Let's set the scene:
My friend (since elementary school) and I were traveling from Stockholm, Sweden to Venice, Italy in order to meet up with two other friends (also from the elementary era) for the Ultimate Friendcation (much more on that in later posts).
To get there, involved many means of transportation. First, we had a layover in Germany where, naturally, I purchased some wienerschnitzel* and waited for our next flight.
We then took the connecting flight to Rome. Since it was only 4 o'clock, we had to wait a few hours in their central train station before we could board our 7.5 hour train ride overnight to Venice.
5 hours later
It was late. We were exhausted. We smelled. We had heavy luggage. All we had eaten was Swedish candies the last 10 hours.
We moved bowlegged to the platform to wait for our train which I imagined to look like this:
I got this instead.
We found our assigned seats, overhead-deadlifted (is that a thing?) our luggage into the rickety baggage-holding contraption and prayed to God that the train wouldn't stop short.
As we settled in, happy as clams that the compartment was empty besides ourselves and our four children (aka our luggage, which ultimately weighed the same as four small humans), we thought that maybe it was all too good to be true. Leg room for days! Ample space to sleep so that we'd be ready to go once we were in Venice! Privacy to converse about good looking men on the platform!
That beautiful facade evaporated within the next 5 minutes as our compartment became as popular as an Apple store after the release of a next generation iphone.
Entering our 7-hour abode:
- two guys, seemingly born in the same decade as us, though very intimidating (we later learned they were Russian)
- an adorably sleepy Canadian woman who looked to be our parents' age
-a girl who appeared to be a native to the country and a few years older than us
Do the math people: 6 fully-formed adults sitting in a compartment that truthfully should have only seated 4. Or three, if you go according to J.K. Rowling's opinions (there's a reason why Neville wasn't allowed to be a part of the core group... he couldn't comfortably fit in the train compartment with the rest of them on the way to Hogwarts)
((2 Harry Potter references in one blog... bazinga!))
So yeah, we were squished into the small space, and carefully arranged so that everyone had their own "leg room" (my friend and I had to stack our legs on top of some of our suitcases, so it was extra snug).
We popped in our earbuds, expecting to spend the rest of the trip either trying to sleep or in musical isolation...
... but that never works out.
A few hours into our extremely long journey, boredom and discomfort got to us, and besides the adorable Canadian lady in the corner, no one else was sleeping.
The Russians were talking, presumably in Russian; my friend and I were discussing upcoming Italian adventure plans; and the Girl on the Train sat quietly in the middle of the hushed commotion...
I am not sure how the conversation started, but we eventually ended up talking with the Girl on the Train (who, we discovered, was not older than us).
We learned that she was from Italy, specifically Tuscany. Naturally, I imagined her life to be as charming and amazing as Diane Lane's in Under the Tuscan Sun, and therefore double - imagined myself if I were Diane Lane living in Italy and talking to strangers on a train. So poetic.
(not from Under the Tuscan Sun, but Diane Lane all the same)
We talked about pretty much everything and found out that we all felt like the grass was greener on the other side: She wanted to visit America and we wanted to stay forever in Italy (though we were basing this completely off of research).
We found lots of common ground to discuss, mostly about American television. She asked if there was such a place like Stars Hallow in Gilmore Girls, to which we happily reported, "All of Connecticut!"
I think the icing on our discussion of American television cake would be when she drew comparisons of my personality to Jess from New Girl... like... could you say anything nicer????!!!! I have always wanted to be like Jess from New Girl, and now, to someone from Italy who is way cooler than me, I was!
We also began to talk about our travels. I mentioned that I was in love with Ireland and as fate would have it, she was currently returning home from the Emerald Isle and was already missing it.
She and my friend talked about wanting to go to Slovakia one day, which somehow brought the Russians into the conversation. They had Slovakia on their bucket list as well.
Anyway, the whole compartment was alive with conversation and perspective from different areas of the world. We formed a 7.5 hour bond that will never be broken.
How do I know?
Well, three reasons.
1. When you share plastic cups of Jameson with Russians on a train, that typically seals the deal. (vodka would have been too cliché)
2. We all lied when a drunk Italian man at 2 a.m. wanted to join our compartment and said that the seat was occupied by someone who, realistically, would have had to have been in the bathroom for 2 hours. We were a drama-free compartment, and didn't want any riff-raff.
3. The Girl on the Train and I are friends on Facebook, Insta, and if I had a Twitter, we'd be friends there too. Boom! Friends for life!
And what does "friend" mean in this far-away context?
Whelp, she always would have a place to stay in the states if she ever comes to visit, and I figure I'd be welcome back in Italy, too
... if only to reprise my role as Diane Lane.
Skål xx
* weinerschnitzel story to come soon. Look under: That Time I Was Held in the Back Room by Customs