Another "just for fun" post.

I was 7 and had made my first communion. My mom was in the hospital as she'd had a serious stroke. So I was taken to the hospital in my first communion outfit (looks a bit like a wedding dress and veil) to show my mother. I remember everyone we passed in the corridors looking at me. Don't remember seeing my mother though.
 
Butterfly said:
I decided to run away from home when I was about 6 or 7. I imagined the horrible grief of my parents when they discovered their lovely child had gone off into the world to protest their horrible mistreatment of me (they wouldn't let me stay up and listen to Inner Sanctum on the radio with them). As I prepared to leave with my worldly goods in my little dolly suitcase, I announced to my mother I was leaving forever, she told me my sister would probably be happy to have the bedroom to herself, told me to watch out for wild animals and offered to pack me a lunch. I stomped out, got about a block away and thought better of it. Humph!! So much for the terrible grief of my parents at my departure.
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Are you sure you aren't one of my sisters? Sounds like we had the same mom - lol!
 

I remember those wonderful trains, Hollydolly. When we went to Hawaii, we traveled from northern Wisconsin to Chicago, then from Chicago to the West Coast by train. I thought it was the most wonderful adventure ever. When we passed The Great Salt Lake, my brother was jumping up and down exclaiming that we were in California because he could see the ocean.

When we came back after the war, we travelled by train, too, that time our ship docked in Seattle where we stayed for a few weeks with my mother's aunt, then by train again to Chicago before heading home to Wisconsin.

The big events to a little kid? Meals in the dining car and getting to sleep in a berth on a Pullman car. I doubt that my brother or I ever whined about being bored or asking "Are we there yet?"

On the way there, we had breakfast at the railroad station in Chicago, and before we got on the ship in San Francisco, we stayed at the Mark Hopkins Hotel. Oh, my, it was the grandest place I'd ever seen. It was Easter time, and my brother and I were very concerned that we wouldn't get Easter baskets. We did, of course, since the Easter bunny is like Santa and knows where to find little kids.
 
When I was young, we used to ride the train between Indianapolis and Norfolk, Va. I can remember the excitement of going to Union Station in Indianapolis...a vast expanse of marble, echoing with the announcements, few of which you could actually understand because of the aforementioned echoes. There were always servicemen sleeping on the benches. I swear it was the size of the Roman coliseum. There was a real sense of adventure to the place. You WERE GOING SOMEWHERE.

My first serious train riding was in the mid 60's when my sister and I spent three months roaming around Europe courtesy of a Eurail Pass. To save the $2-3 or so it would take to get a hostel or fleabag hotel room, we'd find a train leaving between 10 p.m. and midnight that would take 6-8 hours to get where we wanted to go and sleep on the train. We'd pack some food (who could pay the prices to eat on a train????) and off we'd go.

There were always adventures. One night, the train stopped somewhere in the Alps and took on a load of elite Austrian "ski soldiers" who had been on maneuvers. You get the picture: randy soldiers and American teenage girls. I slept with one eye open and a metal nail file in my hand that night.

Another time, we made the mistake of purchasing a one-way transit visa for East Germany to get to Berlin and ended up having to go over to East Berlin to get another one to get back on the train to West Germany. Since my sister was only 14 at the time, they put her on my visa as my "child". That caused no end of amusement for the East German train guards who kept coming into our compartment, demanding our papers and asking "Madam, where is your child?" and then having a good laugh about it.

And then....the Big Stoopid Idea....we decided it would be fun to go to the running of the bulls in Pamplona. We got off the train in Pamplona and were promptly put right back on the next train by the police. They claimed, and rightly so, that Pamplona was NOT a good place for young women at that moment, i.e. thousands of drunk and testosterone-charged men roaming the streets. What were we thinking? That's right, we weren't thinking. We were teenagers.....we had left our brains at home.

15 countries......lots of trains. Lots of fun.
 
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