I did in cairns, arrived late and no rooms or nothing else open, was very cold in middle of night, you wouldn't have thought.....
Loads of times. Among the worst of them was in (excuse the spelling, cos it's bound to be wrong) Kekcemet, Hungary. Romanian trains were on strike and no Hungarian trains back to Budapest until 7am. This was 11pm, raining and very cold. Tzigans (gypsies) tried to get my stuff at some awful hour. They didn't and I made the trip. A lot more to the story, but that was just one of so many instances.
Boy, could I tell you a story . . . In fact, it has become a frequent request at family dinners! I was attending college in Germany, and we were on our Christmas break. My friends and I spent New Years in Amsterdam, and even though we went a week early to get the cheapest fare possible on the train back to the south of Germany, the cheapest one ended up being far more than we could afford, being starving students, and all. So we came up with the plan to take the Eurolines bus into a German city- any city- and then hop on a train from there into Friedrichshafen, where our school was located (well, a short local bus ride from there, if you want to split hairs). At that time, we could get a Weekend Ticket in Germany, making the trip much cheaper that way. So we did. Took a bus from Amsterdam to Hamburg, then a train from Hamburg to Stuttgart. From there, we were supposed to hop on a train to Friedrichshafen, but the office was closed as it was midnight, and we were told that they wouldn't open until 6:00 the next morning. We were stuck. Despite pleas to the school to send someone to pick us up, we were out of luck. Hitchhiking was forbidden for any females by the school, as well, so that wasn't even an option. Being so pennyless, we didn't want to fork over the money for half a night in a hostel. Thus, the train station became our oyster.
The Stuttgart train station isn't heated. And it was the beginning of January of a very cold German winter. So we didn't want to just sack out on a bench, or even huddle by a wall. So we first went to a pub to warm up, and stayed until three. After that, we assumed we had stayed to the limit of our welcome, and left. Back to the train station. Luckily, we found a heated stairwell, and so we camped out in there for a while. But I guess we weren't very descreet. We were talking loudly, thinking no one was around, and some of my friends kept going outside to have a smoke. It was only a matter of time before a German guard would find us. He began yelling at us, "Raus! Raus! Bahnhof!" (sorry, that might not be spelled correctly) and pointing in the direction of the main part of the train station. He was very angry, but seeing that the only person who had even remote German skills (we were all students at an English-speaking college) enough to communicate with this guy had left to find a WC, so we were down to miming and our combined German vocabulary which wasn't very much. A little bewildered, we left in the direction he was pointing in.
We soon figured out what the guard was pointing to in the train station. There was a little room filled with people, and it was heated. But they were all homeless (like us, I guess, but . . .), half of all of them were drunk, some of them had even peed themselves, and nearly none of them had had a shower in days. So to blame us for not wanting to sit in there, well you would be unmerciful indeed. My friend and I tried, and after about a minute we thought we would add to the stench by hurling all over the place!
Suffice it to say, we left. There was a hotel with an open-air lobby on the other side of the train station, so we went there. We begged the front desk agent to allow us to take cover there, provided that we would only be there until five and we would be completely silent- no one would even notice. Thankfully, they agreed.
What a night, hey?
Steph
I truly thought it went with the territory with most people here.
My best night was on a beach. My worst night in a woods.
I have good memories of the train station in Passau on a warm summer night in June. The original plan was to arrive around 7 pm and then cycle for one hour to get to the camping site and pitch the tent. But unfortunately my train was about 4 hours late, so I got there at midnight. I had been to Passau before and therefore I knew that there wasn't a snowballs chance in hell of finding the camping site in the dark. I also was not very confident riding since the battery for my light was dead and I had been up since 5 am and was ready to collapse. So I just settled down on a wooden bench in the train station like a hobo. I was comfortable enough to have a nap, nobody else but a friendly guard was there. (Passau is a university town, apparently he was used to broken students arriving in the middle of the night and having no place to sleep.) I broke camp when dawn came around and then started on the Danube cycling trail. I cycled until about noon, then I got too tired (two almost sleepless nights catching up with me) and found myself a nice meadow next to the trail.
Not rough, but I have slept on sofa's in hotel foyers a couple of times. I have literally begged the receptionist to let me, and twice I was told to go ahead, and the third place - I had to pay!!! But it was a better prospect than being outside.
gosh yes!
We've had a night on the beach on Perhentian Kecil when all the rooms were full when we arrived at 11am, sounds romantic and it was until a huge thunderstorm came along and completely drowned us and all our things.
We had another night on the beach in Kuta again when we arrived at 5am this time and everywhere was full or closed.
We slept on the street in Legion in Lombok when we got a bad ferry time and arrived at 2am and had to wait for the minibuses to start at 6am.
Oh and we also had to spend the night in a hotel basement on an old sofa again due to a bad arrival time for our bus!
I think the moral here is to get good transport times!
There have been a few more bad nights on buses but that's technically not sleeping rough so we'll leave it there!
All adds to the experience and fun(?!) of travelling!
...We've had a night on the beach on Perhentian Kecil when all the rooms were full when we arrived at 11am, sounds romantic and it was until a huge thunderstorm came along and completely drowned us and all our things....
That's exactly what happened to me in the woods. I've since bought a lightweight tarpaulin.
Haven't used it yet, though I reckon it could be used to just roll up in it if the ground's wet.
That's exactly what happened to me in the woods. I've since bought a lightweight tarpaulin.
Haven't used it yet, though I reckon it could be used to just roll up in it if the ground's wet.
Yeah, I bought a 'space blanket' for a few bucks in case I had another night like the one in Stuttgart . . . It weighs nothing and packs up really small!
I have tried many times sleeping in a car or a van. in places where it is near the jungle or anything, it could get too hot or too much mosquitoes can bite yah... so I always carry a sleeping bag with me...
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