This is the Venice Simplon Orient Express. It costs around €3000 per person for an overnight trip and a cabin from Paris to Venice.
This is the Venice Simplon Orient Express. It costs around €3000 per person for an overnight trip and a cabin from Paris to Venice.
The concept of sleeping in an open public area around strangers terrifies me. The possibility of some pervy dude watching me sleep or potentially touching me is fucking hellish.
That can be countered with sufficiently good culture, I think. Like, in a culture where people looked out for each other and had a really no-nonsense attitude about stuff like that. (This being a hypothetical; I don't know that there are any cultures I would characterize as sufficiently protective/supportive in this regard, other than micro-cultures like a specific school or something.)
Idk. I guess the only experience I've ever had where I've felt comfortable with the concept of sleeping around people I'm not super close with, especially in a mixed gender environment was probably camping with Scouts/Venturers/Rovers as a teen? Like, I knew most people well enough and felt sort of baseline comfortable enough with people that sleeping near the few people that were strangers (esp. male strangers) wasn't entirely nightmarish.
I guess my point is, it's difficult to find a way to be comfortable knowing that people are gross and that if you're sleeping in an open space, there's always a small chance you'll wake up at 4 am to pee and discover some horny creep is staring at your boobs and has his hand down his pants and nobody noticed or if they did they felt too uncomfortable to do something. Idk.
That's a good (sad) point, people are creeps. Futon cubbies then? The seats on Amtrak are already adequate for sleeping anyway, so maybe we can stick with those. I just want more trains in the US 🥲
A lot of overnight trains will have very small private rooms which usually have either couchettes or actual little sleeper beds and these fold-down beds that are around the size of a submarine bunk, usually in 2, 4, or 6 berth rooms.
I wouldn't describe them as super comfy, but they're kind of like a capsule hotel on wheels.
I'll have to check one of those out, thanks. I used to sleep in a closet as a kid, so sleeping in a tiny room sounds great to me.
VIA Rail and Amtrak in CA and US respectively both have sleeper cabins, though I've never actually been in one of the VIA ones. I gotta ride more trains once transit opens up and the pandemic isn't such an issue.