My third weekend abroad, being Easter weekend, was extra long. School was cancelled for Good Friday and Easter Monday (which is definitely a holiday here in Germany). Given the extra time to travel, my group of four looked into going somewhere a good distance away. Eventually we developed a plan where we would take a Thursday night train to Paris, spend Friday in Paris, and take a Friday night train to Barcelona. We would spend Saturday and Sunday in Barcelona and stay in a hostel overnight. (This would allow us to take a much-needed shower.) We would take a Sunday night train back to Paris, and probably take afternoon trains back to Ulm on Monday. We were hoping to save Paris for one of our 2-week vacations, but it was too convenient of a train connection.

Now here is what really happened.... On Wednesday I walked to the Hauptbahnhof (train station) in Ulm to reserve the Thursday night train to Paris. There did not have 4 Liegeplätze (couchettes) so we got 4 sitztplätze (seats). I didn't try reserving anything else that day..... I think we might not have known which trains we wanted yet. On Thursday afternoon, Allyn and I went to the train station to try to reserve the rest of the trains. The train we wanted from Paris to Barcelona was ausverkauft (sold out), but we were able to make reservations for Liegeplätzen on a similar train. When we tried to make the reservation for the train back from Barcelona to Paris, the lady told us that she was locked out from making reservations. She did not know how long the lock out would last. We decided we would make the remaining reservations from Paris.

Allyn and I missed out bus to the Hauptbahnhof on Thursday night. While we thought we were making it to the bus stop six minutes early, it turns out that the bus stops nine minutes earlier than we had expected. We hoofed it to the Rathaus and were able to take bus 5 to the Hauptbahnhof. We were actually there on time. We caught the train without incident and suffered through a horrible night sleeping in a crowded 6-seat cabin. I actually managed to get a few hours of sleep and avoid getting a sore neck or back.