An American train trip.

This is the worst travel experience of my entire life.

We were in New York City. Then came the interesting part - getting to Toronto.

We had been told that it was "so simple" to take the train. The ticket agent almost laughed at us when he heard what we wanted,

"A sleeping compartment to Toronto".

They were sold out six months ago. How about a seat? - No, they are all sold out too. This train is full, come back in a couple of weeks?

"What, you are new immigrants? - I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll sell you two tickets, even though the train is oversold, and you figure out a way to get on."

That was certainly encouraging words.

It will forever remember this horrible train trip one of the low points in my life. All the stories, books read or movies seen, had totally mislead us on what to expect.

These were the days when the railroad companies were still trying, hard, to get out of the passenger business. We know now why they succeeded so well.

The train had fewer cars than listed. This lead to total overcrowding and a complete disregard for the seat reservation system, ever so incomplete and inaccurate as it may have started out to be.

We expected a "normal" train ride and had not had any dinner. We were "of course" to enjoy a leisurely dinner on the train, as always on any trip over a couple of hours. - There was no restaurant car, no food service at all on the train! Well, we had a least managed to find two seats in an air conditioned car, surely we can live on candy and water overnight. Neither was to happen.

Our car was one of very few where the air-conditioning actually worked. It was one of the warmest weeks of the year, remember. The trainman who came thorough occasionally muttered something like, "you must be freezing to death in here," and switched off the cooling. I paid attention to where the switch was and got the air conditioning started again each time. This went on for about half the night, then the trainman smartened up and added a large padlock to the switch after he, again, had cut off the cooling. We started to become really sick of this adventure.

As for our chocolate bars and water? The chocolate melted soon enough and we didn't find any water anywhere on the train. It had left New York on a fourteen hour run to Toronto with empty dispensers and empty water tanks. The stench in the toilets was unbearable.