midnight train to Milan

In the summer of 2012 I had a once in a lifetime opportunity to study abroad for a semester in Nantes, France. The program included an unforgettable experience in Brussels, Belgium studying the European Union. After the program ended, some of us decided to stay in Europe for a few extra weeks to do some traveling. The next two weeks took me on an adventure across Europe that I'll never forget. Our first stop was to Italy where we would spend a couple days in Venice, Rome, and Milan. One of my rules of international travel is to never expect everything to go as planned. Which leads me to my story…

Being the broke college kids that we were, we decided that we would buy a 15-day Eurail pass to use for our weekend and post-study abroad travels since we thought it was the cheapest option for traveling around Europe (disclaimer, usually it's not). We had days left to use on our passes so we decided to book tickets on the Eurail from Brussels, Belgium to Venice, Italy. Venice would be our first stop on our two-week traveling escapade. Our route on the Eurail was a high-speed train from Brussels to the Gare du Nord train station in Paris and Gare de Lyon train station in Paris to Venice. That meant once we got into Paris we had to get a taxi to another train station, which would take about 15-20 minutes depending on traffic at that time.

Our train out of Brussels was in the morning. We got to the train station and talked about what we were going to do once we got to Paris since we had to transfer train stations. We settled on dividing into two group to get taxis and meeting on the platform next to our train upon arrival at Gare de Lyon. We only had about 45 minutes in between our arrival time at Gare du Nord and our departure time at Gare de Lyon. We knew we would be pushing it on time but were familiar enough with the Eurail system to know that they are usually never off on their arrival or departure times. That means that even if the train was departing in two minutes once we arrived, we would still be able to get on the train.

Once we boarded the train in Brussels and sat in our seats, the conductor came across the speakers and said that we would be delayed for about 30 minutes. We all looked at each other with an “oh sh!t” look on our faces. We knew we would be pushing it with only 45-minutes to transfer, but now this delay meant we only had 15-minutes to transfer. There was really nothing we could do other than get to a taxi as quickly as possible, tell the driver about our situation so they could get us to the next train station as fast as possible, and hope that traffic was light.

The train ride from Brussels to Gare du Nord was only about 1.5-hours, the shortest leg of our 12-hour trip to Venice. As the train approached the platform at Gare du Nord, the doors started to open. As the train was still moving, one by one we started throwing our suitcases onto the platform and jumping off to gather them and run for the taxis. The only guy with us, Chris, was last to jump off the train. Once his feet landed on the platform, we took of running with our luggage for the taxis. This was not an ideal time to have a 50lb rolling suitcase, a 30lb book bag, and a 10lb purse. As we’re running down the platform, something catches my attention out of the corner of my eye. I looked towards Chris and everything he had packed in his book bag was airborne. Chris had left his book bag unzipped and everything that was inside was projecting out and onto the ground. We all stopped to help Chris gather his things and zip up his book bag. While all of that happened in what seemed like 1 minute or less, every second was valuable in this situation. We started running down the platform again, out of the train station, and got in the nearest taxis we could find.

Chris and I were paired together to get a taxi. We told our taxi driver about our situation and asked how fast he could get us to the station. He laughed and pretty much told us that we weren’t going to make it in time. We pulled up to the train station, jumped out of the taxi, and ran into the station and onto the platform just in time to see our train pulling out of the station. We had just missed our train.

Our only option now was to go to the ticket counter to see if any more trains were going to Venice that day and if there were seats left. We were able to exchange our tickets for seats on a train to Milan that left later in the afternoon, but the only ticket we would get to Venice was for the next morning out of Milan. A few hours later, we boarded the train to make the 8-hour trip to Milan.

We arrived at Milano Centrale around 12am. Since none of us wanted to pay extra for a hotel since we had already paid for and lost a night in Venice, we were going to stay overnight in the train station. But upon arrival, we found out that we were the last train in that night and no more trains were departing, so the station was closed until about 4am. We left the train station and went to a 24-hour McDonald’s that was near to come up with a plan. Even though we only had about 5 hours until we had to be back at the train station, we decided that a bed to sleep in and a shower would be better than sitting in a McDonald’s all night. Chris and I left our luggage with our two other friends and headed out to find a hostel to stay in. We didn’t have a GPS or map, so our only option was to pick a direction and start walking.

We came up to the first hostel and asked the man working the front desk if they had any rooms available. He said that they were booked for the entire night but that there were other hostels in the area that might have vacancies. We left the hostel and started walking down the street until we came across the second hostel. We went inside and asked the man at the front desk if they had any rooms available for the night. They didn’t have any, so we left and continued walking down street and going into every hostel we came across. The same thing happened at the third and fourth hostels… no rooms available. By this time, it was about 1:15am. We were exhausted and feeling defeated.

Chris and I talked about just giving up and going back to the McDonald’s, but we decided we would try one more hostel. We walked into the fifth hostel and asked the man at the front desk if they had any rooms available for the night. Our questions was finally answered with a yes. We booked two rooms and went back to McDonald’s to get our luggage and our friends. By the time we got back to the hostel, in our rooms, and showered, it was nearing 2am. We were up within 2.5 hours to get back to the train station to catch our train to Venice. We boarded the train to Venice and were immersed in the beautiful beaches lining the Adriatic Sea only a day behind schedule.

Until the next adventure…