Viability hinged on the night train from Stuttgart, but it was full. I chased it down the line on the app until finally: availability from Salzburg. We’d pick it up there and still get to Budapest at 9am. However there were no berths: I booked window seats, better for leaning heads against. It would have to do.
Amazingly, I managed to drag myself out of bed at 3am for the first train to London. The day was a rollercoaster of naps on trains and coffee in stations. We had three hours in Munich, so we marched across town for a vegan Currywurst, then a pint in the Hofbräuhaus – the historical beer hall that, I later read, had hosted the first meeting of the Nazi party. No blue plaque.
We got to Salzburg at 1am. It was a hub for reconfiguring sleeper trains while passengers slept. I was reminded of my mum’s coach holidays in her 60s, where charabancs from every corner would descend on a motorway service station and shunt passengers onto the Turkey and Tinsel Traveller or the Glens and Lochs Cruiser. There I was, only marginally younger, taking my son to Ukraine. 60 is the new 21.
We had a compartment to ourselves. I was about to lie across three seats when Sacha discovered they pulled out halfway, to make three single beds. He also turned up the heating. Neither would have occurred to me. He’s either a natural traveller, or I’ve just had expectation beaten out of me. I slept like a log, oblivious to the shunting, and woke up in Hungary.
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