The first train trip I ever took was in Denmark. I flew into Copenhagen and took the train to Odense which is about 2 hours away. I had never been to Denmark before and was on a business trip with a friend. She was travelling there from business in Germany and I was coming directly from the United States. She had visited this business in Denmark before. At the train station, we purchased our tickets and went to wait for the train. I looked at the ticket and we had an assigned seat and car. My friend told me not to worry about that because these trains were never full and it didn’t matter where we sat. When the train arrived, we go on the car closest to us, found seats across from each other and started catching up with each other. We didn’t work in the same facility and hadn’t seen each other in a while so we had a lot to talk about. Someone came by and checked our tickets and nothing was said about where we were sitting so everything was ok.
We had been on the train for a while when a lady across the aisle from us looked at me and said, “Excuse me. Can you be quiet?” I thought this was an odd request. A guy in the next row over from her looked at me and sort of rolled his eyes in a way that seemed to indicate that this lady was crazy. I don’t remember saying anything but we were quiet for the rest of the train ride.
Odense is the third largest city in Denmark although it didn’t seem that large. I don’t know if it is known for anything else but it was the home of Hans Christian Andersen. The hotel where we stayed had a Hans Christian Andersen restaurant and was just around the corner from his home. We did stroll by the house on the day we arrived but didn’t do any other site seeing in Odense. I remember that I didn’t like any of the food anywhere that I ate.
When we were done with our business, we went back to the train station. When we were getting our tickets, I joked with the lady at the counter that we wanted to be in a car where we could talk. She replied, “So you don’t want to be in a quiet car?” That’s when we found out that it DOES matter which car you get on. That’s when we found out that the lady on the train wasn’t crazy. When we got on the train that time, we did find our car. We also passed through other cars on the way to ours. We also saw the “No Talking” signs in the quiet cars. Oops!
