City Night Line Train from Munich to Paris
Whether you’re connecting from London to Munich via Paris or to other European destinations Whether you are planning to go sightseeing, shopping, visiting friends or family or whether it be a business or leisure trip: the City Night Line is a superb way to travel.
Since Andi let me stay at his place in Munich while he was out of town, I decided to hang around until he came back from San Francisco to say 'thanks' in person. At the same time, I was eager to continue my journey and get to Metz without wasting a day on the train. As I was looking at my options, the overnight City Night Line train became a no-brainer - it would allow me to grab dinner with Andi right after he gets in and get me to Metz just after 6am on Friday morning.
Even though it was not the cheapest option, I went ahead and got the ticket for 109 Euro/$148. I was trying to choose between a four person sleeper and the six person sleeper and went for the later, saving myself about 20 Euros. I figured that there still should be plenty of space in the double decker car, even for six people. After reading about it on the Bahn website, I was explicating a pretty luxurious accommodation and boy, was I wrong!
As I got to the train track, I did not see a luxury double decker train. Instead, there were a bunch of old-looking cars sitting on the track. Well, I thought, the inside sure must be nice. As my sleeper was right there, I jumped in and my heart sank - inside it looked even worse than the sleeper cars I have ridden on in Ukraine. My compartment was full and felt really cramped with six people. Unlike taking a train in Ukraine, there was no socializing in the compartment. Everyone set up their beds right away and as soon as the train conductor collected our tickets, we all jumped on our berths and that was it for the evening. Not even a free glass of tea! Did I really pay $148 for that? Heck, in Ukraine, I could of booked the entire train to myself for that amount of money. Well, at least half of the train.
I ended up stuck on the middle berth and while I am not claustrophobic, it sure felt cramped in there. Not to mention the fact that it was far from being long enough for me. I spent most of the night twisting and turning, trying to find at least a semi-confortable position to fall asleep and pretty much fail at it. As I was only half asleep, I did not the alarm to wake me up prior to our arrival to Metz. While trying to get the bag from the overhead storage, I hit the last straw with the stupid design of the sleeping compartments - the overhead light switch was right under the overhead storage and, strangely, turned on the light when it was in the down position. Which is, of course, the position it will get in when a bag slides over on the way down from the storage compartment. So I lit up the whole compartment to the grunts of the other poor souls in there.
As I got out of my compartment, the car attendant was on his way there to make sure I was awake and ready to get off. You bet I was!