I am standing in the clinically efficient bathroom of a German sleeper train. The floor is gray, the walls have bland white nuance and here and there clean gray aluminium panels with painfully clear symbols on them let you operate the bathroom fittings such as toilet flushing and the tap. The only splash of color is a turquoise toilet seat cover and even that is washed out. Everything is so much better, so much more efficient, so much more comfortable than the Czech sleeper train that brought us to Budapest but that one made up for it by having so much more character and feeling. Here it feels like we are being neatly and efficiently transported from one point to another while taking a seat on an east European train has more feeling of adventure; there you are a traveler embarking on a journey, here we are part of a shipment of people to the next city.