#train mishaps

[givrally]

So I took the wrong train...

... and ended up in Paris.

I was in Rouen with a friend for academical matters. Pretty nice day, we had done everything we needed to do before 3pm, so before taking a train back to our city, we took a break and went to McDonald’s. 

We stayed there until around 4pm, so by the time we arrived at the train station we had missed the train. The next train was departing at 4:57pm, so we bought our tickets for the 4:57pm Paris Saint-Lazare train.

[statetimes1]

Train mishaps

Three train derailments in as many months claiming nearly 200 lives can’t be accidents due to technical failure. Though unfortunate the accidents have a common trait snapping of some portion of rails which is blamed on the fatigue of the track and the extreme cold prevailing in plains of central and northern India. Or is it that there is some agency working nefariously to cause damage to the…

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[rajatchakraborty]

How My 5 Year Old Daughter Saved the Lives of My Entire Family

How My 5 Year Old Daughter Saved the Life of My Entire Family

At 03:00 in the morning on 02 Jun 2015, I got a phone call from my uncle. By the time I could pick up the call, I missed it. There had barely been any signal at the place where I was staying and I was not able to receive any messages since last day. When I opened up my ‘Watsapp’, I got the message from my wife; it was erratically written and it said, “Help, all of us are falling ill in the…

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[frightfullytreeish]

UGH so my train broke down at the station. like, it pulled into the platform and came to a stop and there was half a dozen of us queueing up to get off but the doors didn't unlock. I never found out what actually went wrong BECAUSE after five mins or so hanging around sighing dramatically, a drunk guy waiting with us decided it was so important he get off the train he was gonna break the glass and pull the emergency door-open lever. I and a few other people tried to persuade him not to but he got all... not aggressively shouty, just 'too drunk and excited for indoor voice' shouty. I told him not to shout at me, which did get him to lower his voice but then he WENT FOR IT ANYWAY and elbowed the glass cover and we all backed the fuck off and washed our hands of him.

(emergency lever interlude: I don't know what the lever actually does, but it made a very loud hissing noise that didn't stop until the furious train driver with some other train officials came and locked it again and I'm willing to bet it probably fucked up whatever was happening with the train ever further.)

so he leapt off into the waiting hands of the station security, and the station staff let the rest of us get off seeing as the door was open now. and like, I hadn't been particularly bothered whilst it was happening, even when he was getting a loud? I was just embarrassed for him, really, but once I was off the train and walking home I couldn't stop crying.

DRUNK GUYS IN RELATIVELY ENCLOSED SPACES: ALWAYS INTIMIDATING, I GUESS

[ba-in-bs]

Made it to Budapest!....And have seen about as much of the city as the back of my eyelids can show me. Damnit trains! Why must you be so exhausting? And what's with the insistence upon sitting me across from dirty old middle aged men who spend their entire train ride waggling their eyebrows at me from across the lane with their filthy feet stuck in my side. Can't a body just get some nice, uninterrupted train-sleep? Ugh, nightmares for months. But! I'm up, showered, dressed and feeling vaguely human again so here goes my first (well, really second) foray into the eastern bloc. More later!