Random Thursday: Worst Travel Experience...

Lin, Katrin and I have a slightly different topic for you this week. It doesn't require you to clean your house, bare your soul or make a long list of favourite things, but it does require you to weave a good yarn. Cos we expect to be entertained!

I've been to a few places, but I wouldn't exactly qualify as a world traveller. My stories are generally pretty run of the mill - you know, walked around, saw the sights, bought some useless crap emblazoned with a city skyline.

But there is one trip that stands out as being more dramatic than the others - and it's one that happened close to home when I was about 6 years old. \

I live on the west coast of Canada. We've got a rail system that connects us to Calgary, Alberta through the Rocky Mountains. My mom had a friend who lived there, so one summer we hopped the train and headed towards the interior.

The ride there was breathtaking. I remember there was a cabin on top of the train with huge windows so you could go up there and just watch the trees, fields and mountains rolling by. I wish we'd had instagram back then, because man that would have been a wonderful set of pics!

Anyway, the trip was... well, I don't remember much except going to the dinosaur museum. I think. Or maybe it was a petting zoo. I can't remember, but the point is, the trip was pretty uneventful. That is, until we hopped on the train to come back home. We must have been on the train for a few hours before we pulled into a station in a small town. It was evening, just starting to get dark, and we hadn't had any dinner yet.

We unloaded passengers, but we didn't leave the station. After a little while, staff and police started crowding around on the platform. Before long they told us all to gather our belongings and leave the train. We had no idea what was going on, but we did as we were told. Things are a bit fuzzy, but I think we waited at the station for a little while before being herded to a community centre.

We must have been there for awhile, and eventually word came down that there had been a bomb threat called in and the train had to be thoroughly searched before we could get back on. Pretty scary, right? Yeah. But you know what I really remember? I remember seeing dogs on the platform with the police when we got off the train and asking my mom why they had dogs. She explained to me that they were trained to sniff out bombs so that the people wouldn't get hurt.

Now, if you know anything about me (and I'm sure you'll get this, Katrin), you'll know I'm a big animal person. Seriously, I like them better than people about 99.9% of the time (no offense). So I freaked out and was so scared for the dogs that I couldn't contain myself until we heard that there wasn't a bomb on the train and the dogs were safe. But I remember that moment, the horrible realization that those dogs could die, and I don't think I'll ever have a more horrifying experience.

So that's my big, epic travel story. What's yours?