I don't know if Forrest Gump's Mama was ever riding a train a all, bu I am pretty sure that she had never taken the night train, in one of those 6-man cabins that you can get tickets on-line for not too much money. Yet she knew it all, cuz: Night trains are like a box of chocolate - you never know who's gonna be with you in your cabin.
I have been using that cheap-ticket-night-train option quite a bit(good, though not the most comfy way to travel through Europe when you don't have that much money) and hell, yeah, it is always exciting who you get along as company with this seat in the 6-man cabin in a train that is taking you from A to B... Sometimes you can tell the very first second you see your company what night you will have...like on my trip from Munich to Paris last January...three big black women were entering the cabin and I was sure this night would be one of little sleep and lots of loud talk and laughter...or when I was going from Munich to Venice, only an Italian middle-aged women and I - I knew that it would be quite a relaxing ride with lots of space, at least some sleep and almost no worries about someone steeling your stuff.
But sometimes your first impression is full of prejudices as well a stereo types and the night on the train takes a surprising and interesting course.
Like the one from Venice to Munich when I was in the cabin with Miroslav and his friend, both truck drivers, about 50 years old and Germans with migration background from an Eastern Europe country. When I stepped in the cabin I have to admit I was not very happy about my company, but the two were the most polite guys that finally were scared of me when I started to scream while sleeping and not the other way round.
Kind of the same happened yesterday night when I was on the night train from Berlin to Cologne. I was not to pleased to see that I would be all alone in the cabin with a 60-year old almost toothless guy in a jogging suit (who happened to be a farmer from Ireland with a strong passion for traveling whenever there is just a little bit of money left and who had already been to Cuba and Viet Nam and who was once refused to enter Israel)...but I ended up talking to him until 5 in the morning about traveling, Irish history, the unknown, WW II , the sense of jails and so mnny other things although there would have been enough space to sleep all night long in a not too uncomfy position.
As a girl who is taking the night train on her own I always have some butterflies in my stomach as I never know what piece of chocolate I'm gonna get out of the box as company in my 6 man cabin. But so far I can say that the pieces might have tasted differently and differently good, yet they were all made of chocolate and I still like the taste of chocolate a lot.
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