Travel Tuesday

I made it back to Poznan, Poland in one piece even though I was almost in tears a few times yesterday. I had a beautiful morning looking out my hotel window at a cloud covered Mt Blanc...still a gorgeous view. I made my way to the train station with my handy dandy researched timetable. After a few bad looks from the girl looking at her screen she tells me that I will have to wait until Switzerland to buy my overnight train to Poznan. I was not too worried at this point because I had a stopover in Bern and I knew there were lots of info points there. I got on a train and then three more before I finally arrived in familiar Bern. I went to the ticket office that I had been to many times before and the guy looked up my itinerary, got a weird look on his face and said he could not help me and that I should go upstairs to the international travel desk...after waiting a few minutes upstairs I get to the counter and the girl was optimisitic but later ran into a problem with me using my rail pass and having to buy the Switzerland and Poland pieces separately...gets help and then finds she cannot make the reservation at her terminal and tells me I can try again the next day...she then tells me I can get on the train and see if a conductor will sell me a reservation if there is room...I travel to another town an hour away and go to the ticket window there, having to wait a half hour just to talk to someone...that guy speeds through and clicks on get a reservation and the same screen pops up that was in Bern and he tries something else and then tells me that reservations are closed but the train would be arriving in 5-10 minutes--find a conductor and see about getting a ticket then...As I am waiting for the train I look at the schedule and notice that the train I would be getting on scatters in the middle of the night and only one car would be going to Poznan so I find that specific car and get on. I see three people in uniform and ask each f them if they speak Englilsh and none do..I hand them my timetable and german rail pass and they say buy from conductor...I thought I had done a lot of searching for a conductor so I sat down in the dark sleeping couchette...after about an hour the conductor finds me and I get a reservation but was told that I would have to buy the Poland portion from a Polish conductor in the morning. I would have to wake up between 5 and 6 am and find the conductor. I had dinner on the train and it was actually good! When I came back, there were other people in my couchette. By the time it was time to go to bed there were three other older men that did not smell so lovely...and none of them knew English and one kept trying to talk to me in Polish. At 10pm I gave up and climbed to the top bunk and went to sleep the best I could. I set my alarm and in the morning I could hear someone saying passport control but nobody ever looked at my passport. I got up after a while and searched for a conductor...never finding one. I made it to Poznan 35 minutes late and was extremely happy there was someone waiting on the track for me!! Long travel day lasting a total of almost 21 hours and now it is morning and I will camp outside the building door until UPS brings me my package!!! This is the second time they have tried to deliver this package...meaning they tried three times last month and then sent it back to Spain...it got lost on the way back and the publisher made me a new one and I am really anxious to see what it looks like!! So I am going to relax today and enjoy the beautiful sunshine here...maybe go to the market and get some food to eat after my book is delivered.