Monday, August 10th was our big travel day - from Uppsala to Berlin. We had an hour train ride from Uppsala to Stockholm, a 30 minute lay-over in Stockholm, and then a 4.5 hour train ride to Malmö. I was worried about the kids being stuck on a train for that long and they did really well.
In Malmö we had a 1.5 hour layover before our night train to Berlin. (I've been so excited about the night train.) We put our luggage into a large locker and took the opportunity to walk around Malmö for an hour.
My plan:
The night train left for Berlin at 9:30pm and arrived in Berlin at 6:05am - so I knew we'd have to get a good nights sleep if the kids would be functioning and ready to drag suitcases at 6:00a. So I prepped them ahead of time - we would have our own sleeping car, we'd have a short amount of time to explore, but then we'd need to get right to sleep.
What happened:
The kids did great. We got settled in our cabin, explored our train car, washed up in the bathroom and got ready for bed. It was a warm evening and the small breeze through the small window was greatly appreciated. We all slept in just t-shirts although I kept my shorts nearby for the conductor's upcoming visit and pass control.
After finally getting the hyper kids to calm down and go to sleep, our train started some funny movements. It would stop, wait 10 or so minutes, then move a little - either backwards or forwards, there was a lot of clanging going on and parking our train car under streetlights so sleeping was seriously hampered. Plus, without the moving air coming into our cabin it became unbearably hot. We stayed in the cabin, trying to get the kids to sleep, when eventually our train car was loaded onto a ferry - bright lights, heat, no circulating air. Try as we might, we could not stay in our cabin so we went upstairs to explore the ferry.
We ran around the ferry, which had restaurants, duty-free shops, bars, gambling, etc. We spent most of our time outside enjoying the cool breeze and mingling with the other passengers on our way to Berlin. Finally at midnight, our skin was cool enough to make our hot cabin seem do-able. We went to the cabin and went to sleep.
3 hours later our ferry docked in Gdańsk, Germany and we went through the back and forth, clanking and slamming we hand encountered a few hours before. Eventually the train was pieced back together and the train was again on it's way to Berlin. The captain gave a wake-up call at 5:30a and the train entered Berlin's Hbf Station at 6:00a.
We were EXHAUSTED!!
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