Live from München Station

Well, the journey is underway. Actually, I won’t be able to post this until after I get in to Belgrade, but whatever. The last twelve hours have been a trip. First to the Danish War Resistance Museum. Smallest museum I’ve ever seen – is anyone surprised? Skip the trip to Copenhagen, I’ll give you a quick rundown: Hitler liked the Danes because they were followed his Aryan model and really had no use for their shitty country so he allowed the government to stay as long as they did what he said; the Danes were terrified of Hitler and didn’t want to make waves, so they just sort of did whatever he wanted. When some of the citizens (like eight of them, seriously) rebelled, Danish law saved them from death. You can imagine that didn’t go so well with ol’ Adolf. The Danish government was soon replaced, and rebels were executed. Clearly fed up with this, in 1944 as the Germans were losing the war, the Danes finally resisted. Way to jump on the bandwagon, guys.

Cut to the train ride. I get on the 18:53 (I guess AM/PM is only used by the States?) train for München (Munich). I get in a six-seat compartment and find I’m all alone. Score! This poor Italian girl (who’s English isn’t great and speaks zero Danish) is being told by a conductor who hasn’t got the time nor the interest to explain in great depth that her ticket is only good to some random shit town in Germany outside of Hamburg, not all the way to Munich (eight hours south of Hamburg). He doesn’t explain to her that it’s going to be a mere €4 to continue on to Munich. So I help her out a bit and squeeze a few answers out of the conductor (thank God I didn’t have to translate them to Italian. Andiamo? Ashpete? Yeah…) and she gets moved into my little, formerly-private compartment. But it’s two rows of three seats facing each other, so no worries right? I can still lay down. I beat the system, right? For 221 DKK (less than $44) I have a semi-private compartment and a “bed.” Scoreboard USA. That is, until we get to Hamburg around midnight. Good thing I got a few hours of sleep beforehand, because there was no more to be had when these sketchy Germans got on the train. First a mother and daughter came on and were very nice, sat on the outside facing each other (Italy and I were on the inside facing each other once we saw we were getting guests), and in the middle were these two sketchy German dudes who didn’t speak a lick of English and looked like Megadeth roadies. Both in their forties, one looked like a blond version of Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers sporting an American Choppers t-shirt and whitewashed jeans, the other extremely overweight (of course he sat next to me, right?) with awful teeth and smelled like a dumpster (maybe he lived in one?). I figured if they were going to attack us when we were asleep, it being me and three women, I would definitely be first. Talk about food for thought while you’re trying to sleep (sitting up, no less – why don’t European trains have reclining seats??). So much for beating the system; so much for getting any more sleep. Maybe that whole “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” adage is truer than I thought…

So I’m on the high-speed train from München to Budapest going 160 km/h. Take that, Amtrak. I grabbed some breakfast at the station, but I refuse to pay €5+ for one of those horrendous looking sandwiches they’re walking around with now. So this German girl sitting next to me offers me just about the worst sandwich I’ve ever seen – swiss cheese and butter on stale Czech bread. And a carrot. This must be how the ‘other half’ lives. Devastating. But props to the Europeans for putting power ports on their trains. Now if I could just get internet…