John

Well a true story from the darkest days of pre-Thatcher British Rail decline and fall. <BR>Friend (fellow college teacher type) buys a first class sleeping car ticket Glasgow-London, arrives in the morning to discover that along with the free tea and stale biscuit he's the proud owner of umpteen insect bites, now merging into major redness on his extremities and other body bits. <BR>He goes about his business in London, then flies home (good), and sends off a scathing letter to BR Scottish region complaining about his fellow travelers in the sleeper. (I saw the letter and you wouldn't know this guy is a mild mannered bespectacled professor type.) <BR>So time passes and he gets a letter signed by the head of BR Scottish region, which heaps apology on mea culpa, offers a free trip, grovels, pretty pathetic stuff, really. <BR>Unfortunately the BR poobah's secretary has forgotten to remove the boss's note to the typists. "Send this idiot the usual first class bug letter," it reads.

Shanna

One trip, sublime: Brussells to Brugges on Ascension Day and the car filled with teenagers. When the train stopped and we were all exiting, one of the boys, fatally attractive, bumped me a bit, then smiled and winked at me. I was not a teenager at the time, but gosh that put a smile on my face! The next incident was not sublime, but I felt absurd. Taking the train from Brussels to Paris, I needed to take a break from my traveling companion, so I walked out of the cabin to the area where the exit door was located. It was roomy and empty and I just watched the countryside go by. Shortly a woman and her daughter showed up, waiting for the train to stop at the next station. She smiled at me; I smiled back. She and her daughter talked for a bit, in French, about the daughter's visit to her grandmother's. Since I had been acknowledged, I asked the girl, in French, if she was going to visit her grandmother. She looked wide-eyed at her mother, pointed at me, and said, astonished, in perfect unaccented English, Mommy, she's trying to speak French! The same tone as if one of the cows out in the field had started talking. The mother had the courtesy to smile sheepishly at me, but gee whiz, that kid wasn't going to cut me any slack!