Vienna to Prague…with little Damian as a Companion.

05Apr08

Getting to Prague didn’t seem like it was going to be a problem: four hours of Austrian and Czech countryside, and a little light reading was all I thought I had to concern myself with. Until the child started…

They had gotten on at the second stop on of the trip and at first it was kind of cute. I just thought the kid was excited and that he would quite down soon after the he realized how boring traveling can be sometimes.

Little did I know that, for cabins back from mine was other members of our group who decided that it would be fun to entertain the kid.

A half hour later the kid was running up and down the hall screaming, pausing every now and then to scream at the one person who was holding up his finger to his lips and doing the “shhhh” thing: me, and he didn’t stop until he and his mother got off the train two hours later. Had I spoken the language, I would have told the mother to learn how to raise her kid or some was going to do it for her, but I figured it would useless, and I really didn’t want it construed as too much of a threat (the fear of police is a little stronger in me know after the events in Paris).

I got through and thinking about it now, it’s no big deal…almost reassuring, parents in Eastern Europe can’t control their kids just like parents at Target or the grocery store.