The Eiffel Tower, a Swiss Train and a Nightmare

Imagine this. You are on the Eurostar! How exciting, to travel from London to Paris on a high speed train that passes underneath the English Channel. You are served a warm, delightful breakfast and you are enjoying the beautiful scenery in France. You make it to Paris, the train arrives safely, but then the nightmare begins...

It was totally dry outside a few minutes ago, but the rain pours gently on the Parisian sidewalk. Luckily, you have an umbrella, so it's not quite a big deal. You find your way to the Eiffel Tower, and the sun comes back out. Good thing, because you left your umbrella at the restaurant where you stepped inside to wait for the shower to pass. Hmph! A brand new umbrella you had just purchased for your trip to Europe. It was almost as if the lost umbrella were a warning, a foreshadowing of what was to come...

You get your ticket to climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower, anxiously awaiting the magnificent views of the French city below. You get to the top, on the lift, with about twenty other excited travelers. The wind starts to pick up, and by the time you reach the highest place tourists are allowed, the wind is howling and roaring. It's almost strong enough to blow you sideways as you stand on the platform outside of the lift. Then, out of nowhere, the rain comes back. It's raining cats and dogs, or chats et chiens, as the French would say. You don't have your umbrella. You put on your poncho. Ha! That really helps. It really just makes you feel like a drowned rat...

So, everyone heads for the lift to go back down and get out of the storm. Well, wait a minute! What's that you say? The lift isn't working. Don't worry, you hear everyone say, it'll be going in a moment. Twenty five minutes later, you still stand drenched, with wind blowing, and it's getting quite chilly! The worse news is that you have to make it back to the train station to catch your overnight train to Switzerland. You've booked a first class cabin, all to yourself with you and your mate.

Eventually, it is announced that everyone will have to walk the steps down to the bottom. It's like what, six hundred and fifty steps? It might as well be a million in a wind and rain storm. You get to the bottom, and then you can't find the subway station to get back to the train station. So, you have to spend like $50, wait, $25 Euro, on a cab. But, hey, you get there just in time to get onto your overnight train! Whew, it's a miracle...

So, your mate is lifting your luggage up onto the rack in your personal overnight cabin on the train. For some reason, the train designers decided it would be a good idea to have your fifty pound suitcases go above your head on top of the bunk bed in the cabin. And no, there really isn't an option to just leave them on the floor because there is barely enough space for you on the floor. So, he's lifting up the suitcases, and all looks good. You smile because you made it to the train, and you think you're about to get some much needed sleep after you change into dry clothes...

All of a sudden, this alarm goes off. At first, you don't know where it's coming from. Then, you look around, and realize it's coming from your cabin. Apparently, the train designers also thought it would be a good idea to have an alarm right next to where you lift your luggage onto the racks, that can easily be set off and did I mention impossible to turn off? Right before the departure, right before everyone was sound asleep and comfortable in their cabins, this awful, annoyingly loud alarm sounds throughout the whole train. And it's because of you...

One by one, people who work at the train station come and try to turn it off. No one accomplishes the task. Even the train conductor, the supervisor, anyone who has ever heard the word alarm must have shown up to try to break this obnoxious beast. They finally realize they will have to detach this part of the train from the rest of the train, just to be able to take the trip to Switzerland! So, everyone in first class has to board another car on the train, second or third class. You can bet how many people were really, really angry at having to give up their accommodations. And, so we end up in second class sharing a cabin with another couple. We may have gotten a better deal than some others. How embarrassing!

What's next? I'll bet you smarter readers out there already have the next part figured out. We miss our connecting train from Basel to Interlaken, from being late. So then, we're tired, wet rats who have gotten no sleep, trying to find another train to get us to our innocent Interlaken destination. By the time we figure it out, we realize that we had just by one minute missed another connecting train. Ugh!

Well, after some struggle of trying to find someone in the train station who was working in the closed train station since it was four a.m., I believe someone sweeping floors finally helped us figure out another train to catch. It took awhile for it to leave and then depart again. And then, finally, beautiful Interlaken as the sun is rising at about 7 a.m. The hotel is right across the street. I can take a nap and relax! Das ist wunderbar (that's wonderful), as the German-speaking folks of Interlaken would say. Aaaaaaccccchhhhooooooooo! Uh oh, that's the sound of a cold coming on. Not good for the next part of our adventure.

Need I say more? I could keep going with the story, but I think you've got the idea. Now to look back on this nightmare, I consider it an adventure, and I wouldn't trade this story for anything. Hope you enjoyed it.