I’d like to clarify one thing before I jump into this story, and that is that spending the night in an airport and spending the night in a train station are worlds of a difference. One is inside, one is outside. One stays open all night, one closes and kicks you out to survive on the streets. Also, usually I would have had a hostel for this kind of a situation, especially in Switzerland, but I wasn’t aware of the misunderstanding until it was too late.

Okay, let’s go back to the beginning. I’m traveling around on my autumn break. I have spent the last few days in Switzerland and I’m now on my way to Vienna, Austria (that’s right, I’m in a train, warm, and headed to the right destination). So you can rest assure knowing this story ends well.

It all began at about 2 p.m. in the afternoon yesterday when I went to the train station to get everything sorted out with my tickets for my trip. I was struggling because I couldn’t find my ticket and everything was written in German, and I was under the impression that I had purchased an overnight train ticket from Geneva to Vienna. The lady at the counter explained to me that not only was the time printed on the ticket was incorrect, but also that I was going to take a train to Zurich that arrived at midnight and then would be there until my train from Zurich to Vienna, which would leave at 6:40 a.m.

Now at this point, I was feeling rather confident in my traveling/sleeping in airport skills, but totally manageable to sleep in a train station for a night.

Boy, was I wrong.

The train from Geneva to Zurich went off without a hitch. Found the platform, boarded the train, no big deal.

Then I arrived in Zurich.

It was midnight, it was cold. Here is where the differences between sleeping in an airport and sleeping in a train station come in. Not only was there no inside area that I could crash in, but also, the train station acted as some sort of wind tunnel, and there was construction echoing through the area.

So I decided to walk around Zurich and try and find another place. Luckily, I found this semi-underground-closed-down-mall thing in the other train station nearby. I was stoked, but simultaneously still had the issue of needing to use the restroom, but for some reason, THERE WERE NO PUBLIC RESTROOMS OPEN IN ALL OF ZURICH. That might have been an exaggeration, but trust me, I looked hard.

I found a bench, used my jacket as a blanket, my backpack as a pillow and tried to get a little shut-eye.

Only to have two cops wake me up less than a half an hour later telling me that this area was closed and I had to leave. They told me I could go upstairs. So I went upstairs and huddled into a corner. Then they found me again and told me I couldn’t stay there either. So I started wandering the streets of Switzerland looking for a place to sleep. No bars were open, there were no receptionists in the hotels, and I still had to pee.

Eventually, I found a concrete staircase and decided that I would be slightly shielded from the wind and that I could fall asleep there. At this point, I was desperate. I tried so hard to sleep. I was scared. I peed on the side of the street. I was alone sleeping on the side of the road in a foreign city. The Swiss air was unforgiving and I kept getting excruciatingly cold chills running up my spine that I couldn’t quell. When I finally got to sleep, I had nightmares and I woke up every 30-ish minutes. Sporadic people walked by and stared. I woke up at one point to someone staring at me from a bush higher up near the stairs. All this to say, I learned one very important lesson: I would not survive on the streets.

Daylight finally hit, and I found myself being more grateful than I’ve ever been for a comfortable warm chair on a train to my destination.

Now I don’t tell this story so that you will feel sorry for me or even scare you into double and triple checking your travel plans before you embark, but rather, because I learned something really important last night. Besides becoming mildly aware of my incapacity to be as hardcore as I always say I am, I was absolutely desperate for the very basic necessities — shelter, warmth, an ability to use the restroom. And not being able to do those things made me feel inherently inferior to the rest of the world. Being kicked out of every place that I tried to sleep in made me wonder how people who are perpetually homeless make it on a day-to-day basis without going crazy. And after having a night like that, having to sit on the side of the street and beg for money and food, how difficult that must be.

I felt insane after only one night, I have so much respect empathy for the people who are sleeping on the side of the road at night.

They are just people.

Not that I thought differently before this point, but when I would see people that are homeless, I felt no connection or understanding of their lives.

Now before you jump down my throat and argue that I don’t understand their struggle because I spent one night on the street, you’re correct. I’m not pretending to. But it’s a lesson that I took to heart and can now share with you.

Next time you are annoyed by someone asking for money or constantly using the bathroom in the Starbucks you work in, or pan-handling for food, ask yourself how you would feel if you had spent the night on a concrete staircase without food, water, or a proper place to go to the bathroom. And then add to that the stigma that people automatically think less of you. That homeless person could be any of us.