Train Trips

I will tell you a funny story about the sleeper car.  In 2010 my Peruvian friend Constantina and I took the train from Galesburg to Chicago and then Chicago to DC.  When I bought the ticket on-line I saw a ridiculously low price for the sleeper train so I bought it.  Well, it turned out that it was only from Galesburg to Chicago, all in the afternoon.  I was so ignorant that I argued with the conductor who was putting us on the train when we changed in Chicago, but finally had to admit that I did not have a ticket for the sleeper.

I am by nature, I think, a “Pollyanna.”  (Do you know what that means?)  By that short experience in the sleeper car, I saw that it would not have been the best thing for us.  The little “bedroom” was so small that Constantina would have had claustrophobia.  And if she did sleep, I would not have been able to sleep, because she snores.  The hostess did not have much to do so she let us sit in one of the luxury rooms upstairs and that was a nice experience…it would be an OK way to travel if I had that much money.
However, I learned that the coach car has very interesting passengers….like, for instance retired school teachers making their first trip to Washington.  And a postal employee from California wanting to see the east coast, and a book author who was telling about some small endangered  animal in New Mexico that she had written a book about.  (I didn’t even talk to her; I just overheard her talking to the people across her table).  Oh, yes…and I also don’t take very much food because part of the fun is eating in the snack car, and one time I even paid the price to eat in the dining car, a fun experience also.
I have ridden in sleeper cars in Europe where the price is more reasonable.  Glenn and I rode from Mannheim, Germany, to Thessaloniki, Greece, when our kids lived there.  And Rebecca and I rode from Moscow to St. Petersburg on my first trip to Russia.