After Oktoberfest, we had a long train ride from Munich to Paris.
We had no idea what was in store.
We left Oktoberfest late afternoon for our night train.
We waited at the station surrounded by Brats, pretzels, and waffles. Being the hungry poor college students we are, I started dancing to the music that was playing. I laid my beanie on the ground and hope people would donate to my efforts - mostly so that I'd stop dancing. After making several coins, I started doing handstands. This sparked what you could almost call conversation with some locals, who could barely speak english. They appreciated my hand stands and I made 8 euros from them.
We bought some snacks and boarded our train.
This train to Paris, didn't take us to Paris.
We thought we were being clever by finding a better seat. We got comfortable in these seats and when we woke up several hours later, we discovered the train split up.
We tried to find our cabin but it was now in France on track to Paris. We were headed to Amsterdam. It was 3 am.
We were frantically running around the train in a panic. My eyes were glued shut from sleeping with my contacts in. We left our bags, coats, and SHOES in our cabin seats. Luckily I had grabbed my purse in the middle of the night for peace of mind. Raven's purse was with the rest of our stuff. (Her ticket - proof that we were supposed to be going to Paris, phone, ipad, passport, wallet, and more). Everything was headed to paris and we had nothing.
We got off at the next stop. We spent HOURS trying to explain our situations to the people at DB Bahn. Once they saw we had no coats (it was FREEZING) and no shoes, they sort of started to realize our pain. They claimed they couldn't call the train and have them save our stuff since it was in France and no longer in their country. They also don't have a ticket booth or any staff in France, so no way to collect or rescue our bags when the train arrived without us.
Luckily, somehow the DB Bahn lady, through broken english, decided how badly we were in need and decided to help us. She didn't really care to at first. (No one did. They were sending us in circles.) She figured it out around 5 am. The next train from where ever we were in Germany to Paris was at 8:45, so we waited in a homeless shelter and got served hot raspberry tea by some very friendly people.
At this point, we were afraid we were going to have to pay around 180 euros each (basically what we paid THE FIRST TIME) to get back on track where we were already supposed to be. The DB Bahn lady told us it was our fault and if we wanted a seat on a new train, we'd have to pay. Somehow when the train arrived, she convinced the man, whom wasn't so nice, to give us a seat. We made it onto the train and had some good laughs with the people in our new cabin when they asked where our coats, jackets, bags, and shoes were.
When we arrived in Paris, we tried to say the french words that the German lady taught us, eventually they figured it out and directed us to the lost and found where we redeemed our bags.
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