Everyone sleeps, and usually the hardest part about traveling is finding a good place to do it. Housing is expensive, and comfort is important. This series of posts shares some of my solutions to finding a cozy place to spend the night:
-Night travel is very convenient for sleeping. You have to get somewhere else anyway, so you're paying for a ticket, so all that's left is to get comfy. I've never slept in the sleeping compartment of a night train (too expensive), but I have spent many nights on night trains, in uncomfortable chairs, among hundreds of peers, equally uncomfortable. I was in Granada, Spain, heading up to Barcelona. There was a night train that made the run every night, very practiced. It stopped at places in between, but ran like clockwork. I found a seat, tried to find a comfortable position, while mimicking the findings of my peers (legs on seat in front? Ick. Head on window? Ok, but with padding. Sit on your pack? Hmm, good enough). After an hour in the half-lit compartment with everyone radiating misery, I drifted off to sleep. I vaguely remember a couple of stops in the night, but mostly slept the whole time, being utterly exhausted. I woke up in Barcelona, heading the complete opposite way. Something with the route in the night had shuttled the train in two different directions. How did I know which car I was on? How did they know I wanted to go to Barcelona? Was I in fact in Barcelona? When everything turned out alright, I thought nothing more of it, just made a mental note to double check all night trains.
The best strategy, on regular trains, is to find the most seats that you can, in a row, and stretch out and claim them all. The bad news is that someone will probably want one of those seats as the train gets more crowded. I find that pretending to be asleep lets you not deal with the ill will of other tired passengers. I was in Porto, Portugal, taking a train down the coast to Lisbon (supposedly a great visual experience--too bad, it was dark and I was tired). I had stretched out across 3 seats (what a luxury! There were usually only 2 seats), to be jostled awake as a group of six guys in their twenties came on board and started spreading out. One of them really wanted the chair my legs were on, and pretending to be asleep didn't mollify him. Seeing as the guys had tripled the population of the train car, I thought it was reasonable to cede them some territory. I was a bit apprehensive about sharing my minuscule territory, but everyone settled down, I checked that my bag was secure, and we waited out the night. I slept, they slept, we weren't exactly more comradely for the experience, but we all got to Lisbon marginally better rested.
-Switching gears, I have slept in interesting places to avoid travel. Occasionally when too tired to make the commute home, I have slept in the theater where I was working. This was a college thing, as most professional theaters would frown upon this situation. I liked the sets with beds on them the best. They were comfortable. Other times, I would find a couch in the space, or haul in a prop mattress from props storage. The sleeping arrangements were always improvised, with extra fabric as bed linens and prop teddy bears as pillows, and always cold. But they got me through the night, gave me some rest, and got me to the theater before anyone else the next morning. Not recommended.
-Night travel is very convenient for sleeping. You have to get somewhere else anyway, so you're paying for a ticket, so all that's left is to get comfy. I've never slept in the sleeping compartment of a night train (too expensive), but I have spent many nights on night trains, in uncomfortable chairs, among hundreds of peers, equally uncomfortable. I was in Granada, Spain, heading up to Barcelona. There was a night train that made the run every night, very practiced. It stopped at places in between, but ran like clockwork. I found a seat, tried to find a comfortable position, while mimicking the findings of my peers (legs on seat in front? Ick. Head on window? Ok, but with padding. Sit on your pack? Hmm, good enough). After an hour in the half-lit compartment with everyone radiating misery, I drifted off to sleep. I vaguely remember a couple of stops in the night, but mostly slept the whole time, being utterly exhausted. I woke up in Barcelona, heading the complete opposite way. Something with the route in the night had shuttled the train in two different directions. How did I know which car I was on? How did they know I wanted to go to Barcelona? Was I in fact in Barcelona? When everything turned out alright, I thought nothing more of it, just made a mental note to double check all night trains.
The best strategy, on regular trains, is to find the most seats that you can, in a row, and stretch out and claim them all. The bad news is that someone will probably want one of those seats as the train gets more crowded. I find that pretending to be asleep lets you not deal with the ill will of other tired passengers. I was in Porto, Portugal, taking a train down the coast to Lisbon (supposedly a great visual experience--too bad, it was dark and I was tired). I had stretched out across 3 seats (what a luxury! There were usually only 2 seats), to be jostled awake as a group of six guys in their twenties came on board and started spreading out. One of them really wanted the chair my legs were on, and pretending to be asleep didn't mollify him. Seeing as the guys had tripled the population of the train car, I thought it was reasonable to cede them some territory. I was a bit apprehensive about sharing my minuscule territory, but everyone settled down, I checked that my bag was secure, and we waited out the night. I slept, they slept, we weren't exactly more comradely for the experience, but we all got to Lisbon marginally better rested.
-Switching gears, I have slept in interesting places to avoid travel. Occasionally when too tired to make the commute home, I have slept in the theater where I was working. This was a college thing, as most professional theaters would frown upon this situation. I liked the sets with beds on them the best. They were comfortable. Other times, I would find a couch in the space, or haul in a prop mattress from props storage. The sleeping arrangements were always improvised, with extra fabric as bed linens and prop teddy bears as pillows, and always cold. But they got me through the night, gave me some rest, and got me to the theater before anyone else the next morning. Not recommended.
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