My Vancouver friends would tell me that I was staying in probably the worst neighborhood in the city. From the train station to my hotel, the homeless roam their streets. Outside my hotel, the encampments are the transit residences to clusters of people, huddling, sharing and, in general, just looking after each other

  Life aboard was good again after several reversals of fortune regarding my first class upgrade. One time, first class -my class!- had even been sold out. Nevermind that I was able to ride for “free,” my seat reservation in second class already paid in full by my eurail pass. “Let them eat cake, I sniffed, as I waded
through the rabbit warren of second class, on my way to the Desolation Row of
my “free” seat assignment.

  But my reservation to Marseille signalled a
return to the ancien regime. Carriage 1, seat 75 my
reservation heralded from the rooftops. Which is precisely when it nearly all
 came crashing down like the Bastille.

Except for that debacle in Paris, I do not have a problem with the concept of the shared bathroom. That one in Paris was not a shared bathroom anyway; it was a shared bedroom.

  The shared bathroom in Zaragoza, was fine, except for the fact that it was shared on a different floor than the one where my room was located.