You are flat on your back on the top bunk in a second-class couchette compartment on an overnight train from Zurich to Amsterdam.

You’ve already swallowed four tabs of an Austrian sleeping pill you’ve never heard of and three beers (Heineken) with which you are quite familiar. All in a futile effort to try to get some rest.

By all rights, you should be a zombie by now, but you’re not.

You feel like you are in a coffin, albeit one that is rocketing through the European night at indeterminate speed. The ceiling is, maybe, six inches from your face, and you are rapidly concluding that you’re mildly claustrophobic. Every time you open your eyes and realize you’re wedged into a space barely more than two feet high, you break into a cold sweat.

You’d climb down, but you almost broke your neck climbing up, when the ladder detached from the bunk as you started climbing and you ended up back on the floor.

Now, even if you figure out how to slither out of your crevice, you’re afraid to climb down.

The opening notes of Bauhaus’ Bela Lugosi’s Dead flash through your mind.

It’s almost two in the morning. The train is due into Amsterdam at seven.

Five hours and counting. Then, you can hit the ground running.

One of the reasons that you’re still awake is that the African chick in the top bunk across from you—who may have the same problem you do with being wedged into what amounts to a very narrow, long box—keeps walking in and out of the compartment.

You can hear her talking loudly in the hall, presumably to random passersby. Occasionally, she breaks into song, which would be great if you wanted to get your World Music groove on, but you don’t.

A little while ago, the two backpackers in the bunk under you engaged in erotic transit.

Not that there’s anything wrong with sex. In Amsterdam, people pay good money to watch people screw in “life” shows. But, in this context, it’s distracting and all you want is some freaking sleep. Zurich was hard on your constitution; Amsterdam will definitely to be worse.

You take another Austrian sleeping pill from your pocket, put it in your mouth and wash it down with Heineken. Eventually, the level of this drug in your blood has got to get so high that you pass out. It will become physiologically impossible to remain conscious. You know this. Unless, of course, the level becomes so high that it become physiologically impossible to stay alive. Then, you’re screwed.

The African chick in the other bunk climbs down again, goes out into the hallway and starts having another loud conversation with somebody.

Ten minutes later, she’s back.

She looks up at you looking down at her.

“You have match?” she says.

“They’re in my bag,” you say.

“You can give?”

The bag is down below.

“Yeah,” you groan. “Give me a minute.”

“Good. We talk.”

Great.

You clamber down without breaking your neck, open your bag and get your smokes and matches.

You go into the corridor.

“Do not sleep when I travel,” she says.

“Me neither,” you say.

You both light up.

“You go Amsterdam?” she says.

“Yeah.”

“You is American?”

“Yeah. From Washington.”

“I from Kenya.”

“You traveling from Zurich to Amsterdam?” you say.

“I come from Milano. Go to Amsterdam for week, yes.”

“I love it there.”

“Yes, for man is many womans.”

“The Red Light District?”

“Yes,” she says. “I know womans work there.”

“Cool.”

“I give address?”

“No, that’s okay. Really.”

An untrained chimp could find a prostitute in Amsterdam if you let him wander.

She shrugs.

“Why you going to Amsterdam?” you ask.

“I visit friend.”

“The same friends that work there?”

“No. Other friend. Work for bank.”

Bankers. Prostitutes. Same difference.

You nod and close your eyes, still feeling wide-awake, but very tired.

“You have trouble sleep?” she says. “You smoke?”

“Cigarettes?” you say, idiotically, even though you are smoking a Marlboro.

“No. Amsterdam kind.”

“Uh huh.”

“Come. We smoke. Maybe help you sleep.”

She gestures toward the end of the car.

“Sure,” you say.

You go into the bathroom, which is one of those fetid old European train WC’s that no one will ever be able to completely clean, not even the Swiss.

She takes a hashish-and-tobacco joint like everybody in Europe smokes from her pocket.

She lights up, inhales, and passes it.

You take a hit and cough. You look for a place to blow the smoke. You may be in Europe where people are a lot more mellow about this kind of thing than in the United States, but who wants to make the train reek of drugs?

You carry your American drug paranoia with you everywhere.

The toilet has a little door at the bottom that opens up when you step on a peddle and dumps the contents on the tracks below.

Perfect for blowing smoke out of the train.

You open the toilet. The tracks are rushing past down below. You blow the smoke down the hole and out of the train.

The African woman laughs.

“Why you do?” she says.

“American habit.”

“Why America afraid hashish?”

You shrug, not feeling a need for an explanation of American drug policy.

By the time you alight from the WC, the irritating Swiss overnight train to Amsterdam has become a much mellower place. You hang out in the corridor shooting the shit with the Kenyan chick, whose name is Agnes, then squeeze into your coffin and finally pass out. When you wake up, the sun is up and the train is already in the Netherlands. Amsterdam is less than an hour away.

Your ears are buzzing after only a couple of hours of sleep and you have the beginnings of a serious headache. You climb down from the top bunk again.

The backpackers beneath you are still out cold. Agnes’ bags are gone and so is she. You head out into the corridor and look out the window. Lush green Dutch farmland is rushing by and you feel better knowing you’ll be in Amsterdam in a little while.

The opening strains of a Beethoven symphony are blasting from a compartment down the corridor, but it segues into guitar and very compelling punk music with German lyrics.

Normally, at 6:15 in the morning and suffering from a hangover, you’d scream at someone to turn the shit down. But you’re in a good mood and the music sounds great, so you head down the corridor to check it out.

The music is coming from a big boom box that has a giant yellow happy face sticker on top.

Two guys wearing Army jackets are sitting on one side. And two very cute girls—one with short blonde hair who’s wearing jeans and a Ramones t-shirt and one with hair dyed an aggressive shade of red who has on olive green pants and a compellingly small white halter—are sitting on the other side.

The guys look at me. You can tell they expect you to shout that the music needs to come down.

You smile, point at the boom box and say, “Good music.”

The blonde girl laughs and says, “Ja.”

The redhead says, “Good Amsterdam music.”

“Ve thought you vas angry at loud music,” one of the guys says.

“No,” you say. “It’s great.”

“You vant come in to listen?” one of the guys says. He introduces himself as Lars.

Actually, you could listen a couple of cars away, but what the hell?

The music’s good. The chicks are super-cute. Amsterdam’s a few minutes away and there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Robert Guskind has been writing for a long time. An award-winning Washington-based journalist
and contributor to major national magazines and newspapers, he now lives very close to Manhattan,
where he continues to write, shoot photographs and work on a book based on his travels and
experiences as a reporter and formerly disreputable dope fiend. He is all better now. He is a regular
monthly contributor to Cherrybleeds and had just launched Gowanus Lounge a new blog that has
nothing to do with either addiction or recovery. He hopes to make Gowanus Lounge a full-fledged
literary website in the very near future.