In A Couchette Car

If you were born in Ukraine, I bet you've mastered the art of traveling in a couchette car, also known as platzkart. The challenge starts at the moment of purchasing your train ticket. There's no logic in ticket selling algorithms. To get a non-existent ticket from point A to point B, you should buy one to point C and get off at B as if you're a character of a spy novel. Your perfect seat in a couchette car should be close enough to the WC and a boiling water tank, but far enough not to make you sniff the smell. Your compartment neighbors are always a lottery. If you have bad karma, you will have all the worst neighbors brought together, like drinking men, a crying baby, and chatty ladies. If you hit the jackpot, you won't get either fleas or bugs from the train mattresses. Yet the train blankets will be traditionally damp. At night, the feet of tall passengers will hang out in the aisle as a modest decoration of railway life. The one who invents a safe way to climb onto the upper berth will become a star on Kickstarter.