robbed at gunpoint!

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Now some might say that "robbed at gunpoint" is a bit of an attention seeking headline, and actually, you´re probably right. But just let me explain myself a bit and I´ll try and make things live up to the title.
Also, this entry is somewhat late, so I´ll see If can catch things up a little as well.

The tale begins in the Arnhem railway station , just down the road from Nijmegan, where Lindon and I begin the next leg of our European journey. Bidding farewell to our extremly generous hosts Marit and Hannika, who have put up with us for 4 nights, we board the high speed German ICE train, which is going to take us as far as Frankfurt. It wasn´t very full, so we wandered around looking for our customary 1st class seating and then got slightly distracted when we realised that it was possible to sit right behind the driver (glass door seperation of course), and see out the front while travelling at up to 300Ks! It was all good until we got to Cologne, and then the driver got out, walked to the other end of the train and just like that we were in the very back! Whaaat! Oh well, it was dark by now anyway, whatever...

So, we back into Frankfurt, where we´ve got a really quick changeover of about 7 minutes to find and get onto our next train, so we´re panicking a little bit, as is normal. Matching bags in tow, still got the clear plastic umbrellas, we walk as fast as we can from platforn 3 to platform 18, or something like that. Quite a long way anyway, and we´ve only got about 2 minutes to spare, we make it and it´s delayed by approximately 20 minutes. Oh cool, 20 minutes to sit around in a deserted, giant railway station in the middle of Germany, it´s nearly the middle of the night, and it´s about 1 degree above freezing.

Things dont really improve dramatically with the arrival of our overnight sleeper train. Our first class Eurail tickets dont cover sleeper trains, so it´s straight back to cattle class for us! This means a 6 bunk cabin with no room for bags about the size of a shoe box. Fortunately we dont have anyone else in ours. Well, at least not sleeping there, because we seem to be getting all kinds of officials popping their heads in to say hi. The first one takes our passports and tickets for the night. That was kind of freaky, the next couple were German border guards, who just wanted to rustle around in our side bags for a bit, and when they didn´t find hard drugs, firearms or bombs, left us alone again.
We were both asleep when the next lot came crashing through the door, and this time there appeared to be a problem. The train was in a station, I have absolutely no idea where, except that it must have been in Switzerland somewhere. And yes, there was a problem. Our special Eurail tickets dont cover Switzerland, the Swiss wont have anything to do with anyone, so, ve haff to pay to go through zere country. We didn´t ask to go through their bloody country, none of the ticket people mentioned we were going to go through their bloody country and now 2 armed guards are demanding we pay them 55 euros each to go through their bloody country!
This conversation is going on in our heads, mind, the words we actually used involved more cowering tones and confusion. These stormtroopers have just woken us up, so we´re not at our sharpest either. They have 9mm Glocks, and although they haven´t drawn them just yet, we get the feeling that they´re not going to take any shit from us at all. Oficially sanctioned armed robbery, we hand over the money and try to get back to sleep.
We only get woken twice more before we have to get off.
Sleeper train, my arse!

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Comments

[Kez]

Misleading Titles
Yes that certainly was an inflammatory title - when I got the email message about this post it conjured up images of you guys held down with a gun at your head while Rob Collins gave you both a nude body-slide. Having read the post, I now understand but I'm still not sure which scenario would be worse...