Yet another night basically without sleep. This train ride was actually worse than the one with the drunken Russians, from Budapest to Munich, as it was a bit more unnvering. I had a couchette and below me was a gypsy woman and her maybe four year old son, next to her bunk was a rather large spanish woman, above me was a vietnamese cigarette addict, and next to him was a nice french woman. The bunk next to me I think was supposed to be occupied but was not.
From this description, though, you wouldn’t think it all that bad. I wouldn’t either. But I’m in Europe, and some fundamentals that Americans take for granted are ‘debatable’ here.
Take hygiene for example. I honestly fear for the life of that gypsy woman’s son. At such a young age, yea, kids should get dirty, roll around, have fun, but should probably be washed off after that. Apparently his mother didn’t think so. I would estimate that he has not had a bath in 3 months. His mother, true to her philosophy, had not bathed in maybe a third that much time. It’s as if we’re back in Elizabethan times, and people think the more dirt caked to your face the better, as the ‘bad spirits,’ now known as microbes, can’t get in. And they honestly did have dirt caked to their faces. When the boy scratched his face with his surprisingly long fingernails, a thin line of off-white skin shown beneath. He did it again later to the otherside of his face and it looked like warpaint. Now the great thing about the modern world is that we read about thins like hygiene in the Elizabethan age, dirt-caked faces, muddy, manure-laden streets, etc. and we can shudder at the thought of it. But what reading about it, or even seeing movies set in that time do not do (thank god that this technology hasn’t yet been developed) is let you understand exactly what that smells like. It is like a physical barrier to be walked through when you enter a room. It has the effect of immediately unsettling stomachs. My first instinct was to not put down my bags but to run to the window and open it. This was smell number one (well, one and two if you count the fact this the mother smelt of something slightly sharper than the son).
The large spanish woman was a case all her own. She had on some kind of business suit, in a low green, like turquoise or the color of the statue of liberty. It was heavy looking for early summer, and she was obviously feeling the effects of it. She was sweating when I got to the couchette, and, here’s what I honestly cannot fathom, later when she settled down to go to bed she not only kept on her whole business suit, heavy jacket mit sweatstains included, she didn’t even open the package with the light cotton sheets in it, she just threw the heavy wool blanket over her. Am I missing something? Did someone spike the that coke I bought at Gare de Bercy? Perhaps needless to say, after a few minutes of this, I could see the sweat rolling down her face, and the sweat stains that before had been darkness at folds and fabric borders became long lines. My guess is that she had something spicy for dinner before she got on the train, as the smell that soon competed with the dirt twins was, in addition to natural body odor, sharp and gave a strike high in the back of the nose like when you smell hot peppers. This was smell number two.
The Vietnamese guy, though nice, was a chain smoker. Thankfully he spent a large portion of the evening at the train door, blowing smoke out into the french countryside. He was clean and well dressed, too, and left his heavy blanket on the eave over the door. He slept with just one sheet and the only smell that came from him, thank god, was that of heavy smokers around the world. Seeing as I’ve spent now three months in Europe, where people like to smoke even in the shower if they can manage it, I’m actually well used to this one and it didn’t bother me. Other than the fact that he was figgety, and would occasionally pull some precise gymnastics to turn from one shoulder to another in one fell swoop and without actually moving his body from an apparently well grooved spot, he was great.
The person I was happiest with was the french woman. She looked Mediterranean in origin, and wore all black with a black bag. We had fluid and funny conversations in French, and, despite the popular and generally accurate preconception of the French, she did not smell. Given that half the people in the cabin were battling for pungent dominance, you have no idea what a relief that was. When she got off in the morning at some small stop in Italy, she walked past and smiled, and for the first time the whole train ride, I smelled something honestly beautiful and refreshing: French perfume. And with that I laid back and got a whole hour of sleep.
Firenze
…Is beautiful. I’ve only been here for a few hours and have not explored much, but it is quite beautiful already. I lucked out, as well, that it rained all last night and now the sun is shining and there’s nary a cloud in the sky. More updates on that later. I’m gonna go have lunch and check out the Duomo.
Much love everybody.