I realize that I am getting older when I tell people that as a college student traveling in Europe during the summers of 1979 and 1980, we were using a guide called Europe on $10 a day! On one of those trips, we were taking a very long train ride up to the land of the midnight sun in Scandinavia. My buddy Steve (now a Doctor) and I had to endure numerous stops on the way and at one of them in a small town not large enough to even deserve a name, we watched with envy as a man walked onto the train with a juicy looking ice cream cone. We were hungry, we were always hungry and in those days we were both thin so ice cream sounded perfect. I asked the conductor how long we would be in this station. He replied “at least 15-20 minutes” Great, off I went into the small depot telling myself that if there was anything close to a line, I would can the ice cream purchase and hop back on the train. Lucky me there was no line and I got two cones right away. I walked back out to the track and guess what… no the train was there BUT when I got back on I looked around and saw only a guy sweeping up. “Where were all the people” I asked. “What people?” “The people on the way to such and such a town in the land of the midnight sun” I responded with much more alarm. “Oh that train left”. Oh God. No money, no ticket, no passport, no luggage, just two ice cream cones. And all of this in the days before cell phones. What to do? I did what any red blooded American would do. I looked pathetic and told the story to the ticket seller inside the station. He had pity on me and said that he would give me a free ticket for the next train, but it wasn’t due to leave for over 3 hours. So I sat on a hill eating one and then the other ice cream cone and then waited. What would my friend do? Would he get off at the next stop to wait for me or would he come back or would he go to the destination? I got on the new train and got off at the next stop. I looked up and down the platform for him, but he was not there. I thought, right, he went all the way but being more than scared, I mentioned my plight to a ticket seller at this station. “Oh, yes, your friend told me the same story, he is back out on that platform” I had missed him and would have been really screwed if I hadn’t told my plight to this particular man. I rushed back to the platform and there was my friend laughing his ass off! Turns out he was so engaged in talking to some girl on the train that he didn’t realize that I had been missing!