June 29, 2009 – 7:58am (Germany Time)

As I was on the train from Rome to Munich I met a young girl named Sonia. She was on her way to Venice for work and we talked for a couple of hours in what I’d have to describe as one of the most difficult conversations I’ve ever had. LOL. She spoke very little English so every other sentence I had to break out the Italian-English dictionary for certain words she was saying that didn’t make sense to me and vice versa. We were in a couchette compartment with 4 other people inside as well as a lady that was occupying one of the seats out in the hallway.

As the night progressed and people were starting to fall asleep and a peaceful silence blanketed the train. But not for long though. Two compartments down we heard a lady screaming and whole lot of ruckus. The lady that was sitting in the hallway had this terrified look on her face as she rushed to get into our compartment to escape whatever violence was happening in the other compartment. I then go to investigate what’s going on and I see a guy standing out in the hallway with blood dripping from his face, head and eyes. He was an older guy, maybe in his 60’s. I go up to him to see what happened, then turn to look into the compartment and I see a young guy sitting there with his girlfriend on his lap trying to calm him down. He had a look on his face that he was ready to kill someone. By this time everyone is out of their compartments and people are coming to the old man’s aide. Everyone is talking in Italian so I have no idea what is going on. The only thing that I could imagine was that the old guy was trying to talk to the younger guy’s girlfriend and he got jealous. It didn’t make much sense to me but that’s the only thing I could think of. Later on we find out that the young couple was smoking in the cabin and the older guy asked them not to smoke. I guess the younger guy had a different opinion and decided to attack the man.

When we reached the next train station the police came in and took the attacker off the train after doing an informal investigation. The girl I was talking to also got off because she realized that she was on the wrong train and needed to take a different one. The night after that was pretty non-eventful as people shook off the shock from the brawl and fell back into their slumber. What a night to remember, LOL.

1 Comment »

1. 

   Interesting. The smoking in the train thing comes up more often than you might think… I was on a train in Germany with my friend when he noticed that some guys were smoking. He’s an ex-smoker, and also the kind of guy who doesn’t let that sort of thing slide, so he took it upon himself to go talk to them about it. To add to the intercultural aspects of the interaction, he said they were Polish, and the only language they had in common was French, which none of them spoke very well…but in the end the smokers desisted without yelling or violence, for which I’m sure everyone was grateful. Fun times, Bobby. ; )

   Comment by Karin — June 29, 2009 @ 8:22 am

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