Day 12: FRIDAY (addendum)

Okay, it's finally happened. We have Broken. It always happens at least once on every vacation, and this time, it culminated in fifteen minutes of Mom and me convulsed in breathless, tear-streaming laughter. It's been that kind of day, and one thing after another has happened, so it figured that there would have to be some kind of tension release.

We were discussing whether or not to try to track down the attendant to have him make up our beds, when the roses fell over again, right onto Dad's seat. Dad, mouth full of the pills he was trying to swallow at the time, began making desperate squawking noises that sounded a lot like “Mmmmmmmmph! Mmmmph-mmmph! MMMMMMMPPPHHH!” and which I accurately translated (thanks to the flapping motions of his arms) as “Towel! Towel!”

Of course, Dad's clothes had just about dried from the last incident when this happened. He, the pillow, and the seat were now thoroughly soaked. Two of our towels were damp as well.

Mom and I had finally reached the point of ridiculous returns, and were laughing too hard to help him blot the puddles. We then sent Dad (who was the only one wearing shoes, and train rules require shoes at all times in public areas) to fetch David, the car attendant. When he arrived we shoved Dad out in the hall to make room, while I (sitting in the only chair, and trapped in the room by luggage) became a depository for all the things that had been stacked on the bed. Mom balanced against the wall next to me, trying to stay out of the way and keep luggage from falling off of my lap while Daniel set up the bed. We were both still laughing.

Of course, things couldn't happen normally from this point on. Mom had calmed down enough to make conversation, and she happened to comment on how the previous train's berth had had a tendency to jostle itself back up into the seat position while they were trying to sleep on it. In fact, on the last train, she fell out of bed because it shifted so much. So, of course, as the attendant tries to set up the bed, it keeps popping right back up into the vertical seat back, looking suspiciously like a catapult. This set us off all over again, and we were laughing too hard to explain to David what was happening.

Finally, David took our one remaining dry towel and, while leaning on the bed with three limbs to keep it in place, wedged the towel between the seat and the wall to keep it from bouncing up again. So far, it's working. (Incidentally, this is also the technique that we and other passengers have been using to keep the walls between the adjoining compartments from rattling...)

This left us with only two pillows and no towels, so David brought us new ones and then fled before we could do any more damage. (By the way, we still have only two bottled waters.)

Dad came back, and we had to recap the whole ridiculous scene for him, which set off another fit of laughing. And then, when we finally had ourselves back under control... the neighbor's toilet began to flush. Repeatedly. Four times, I think, in a period of about three minutes (how many people are in that room?!).

I can't explain exactly why that's funny, but it is. Especially if you're in this room, discussing the downstairs toilets that have built-in fans in the wrong places, and questioning whether or not the bathrooms in your car are possessed, when it flushes with a rocket-engine sound through the wall beside your head.

So, anyway, we're back to (relative) normality now. But we're still prone to fits of giggles every time the passengers in room E flush their toilet. Somehow, I can't help feeling that I've wandered into a Marx Brothers movie.

Shoot, Mom just did it again. Sitting in the same seat where the last two water mishaps happened, she opened a bottle of water and took a drink... and managed to pour a copious amount of it down her front.

It's that seat, I'm telling you. It's haunted by a kappa. Just like the downstairs toilets.