After the last day of our mini-vacation we arrived at the train station to buy our 8pm train tickets to Lviv and discovered that they were completely sold out. The next train was not going to leave until 7am the next morning and since we had no room in our budget to spend the night in a hostel we decided to sleep on the train station floor. We figured that since we recently spent the night sleeping on a gas station floor, a night in a train station would be a breeze.
So we put all of our massive packs along the wall and settled in for the night. After only an hour the drunks and homeless began filtering in. One man came and laid down directly under my chair, mumbling and drooling. After a couple attempts at asking him to move the security guards came over and had to drag him to another section of the station.
Moments later a woman came and planted herself next to us, sharing her bottle of vodka with the man next to her. I watched as she saw another man who looked hungry, set down her bottle, and pulled out a sandwich to give to him.
We decided to create a barricade of bags in the corner and decided that sleeping would not be smart. A fight broke out near a young girl, sitting alone. We went up and asked her if she wanted to stay by us for the night, she looked relived. A young German boy quickly sought refuge in our small corner as well. He was heading home for Easter vacation and his train didn’t leave until 5am. We spent the night using our iPod translator to learn new German card games.
By midnight the place was filled with snoring homeless men and by 3am the stench was so strong that I had to pace outside. A smell so intense my scarf and sweatshirt were not enough to keep it from my nostrils; it was even stronger than walking through the Filipino garbage dump filled with human waste.
Laughter seemed the only way to remain sane. We were attempting to make light of the situation and even videotaped the men with the intertwined legs next to us who continued to have nightmares, yelling out through their snores. I was giggling and in a way mocking the situation that lay before me when a sleeping man a few rows down raised his hand and flicked me off.
I quickly sat down and began to feel an intense sense of guilt. These were the people that I had left everything behind to help and here I was laughing at them. This may have been our circumstance for one night but for them it was their reality. It may have been inconvenient for us to have to spend the night in a train station turned homeless shelter but for them it was very convenient, this was the only warm place they had to sleep.
Before we realized sleeping was not going to be possible
Kat using her T-shirt as an eye mask and her scarf as a blanket on the train station floor, only on the World Race would this happen
The homeless men with interwined legs directly behind Britni and Konrad's card game
Konrad (our friend from Germany) using Goolge translator while the men snored behind
Finally Getting on our train!
