Our third Erasmus-Meeting took us to Borgo San Lorenzo in Tuscany, Italy, so we had a long way to go. We decided to go by train instead of a plane because we wanted to travel in a more environmentally-friendly way. The first train we took was an express train from Aschaffenburg to Munich which was rather comfortable. From Munich to Venice, we took a night train which was very exciting for us because noneof us had ever taken such a train. After a little run, we reached our train and were surprised when we finally saw our compartments. We all knew that there would not be much space but when we saw the 6-bed chouchette, we did not believe we would be able to fit and sleep in there. One compartment had six beds and only two people were able to stand in the narrow space at the same time. After we had mastered the challenge to stow away all our luggage somehow, we prepared our beds and ourselves for the night and lay down.
After a while we got used to the noises and fell asleep. But just a few hours later we all woke with a start because there was a very loud noise and a jolt. We almost fell out of our beds and thought we had crashed or hit something, but we had just reached Salzburg, where the train was decoupled: one half went to Budapest while the other one continued its way to Venice. When we realized that we calmed down and fell asleep again. Just a little later when we reached the Austrian-Italian border, the police did some checks. They walked through the train, unlocked the compartments and shone with their flashlights directly into our faces so that we woke up. Fortunately, we reached our destination soon so that we could get off the train in Venice after a small breakfast and a great`Servus‘. After we had left the train station we got on a private water-taxi. During this trip we enjoyed the beauty of Venice from the Canale Grande and forgot our sleep deprived night. The trip in a night train was an exciting experience for all of us but none of us is eager to repeat it any time soon..
by Julia B.