Eight hours in the Austrian Alps.
The first class tickets had seemed overpriced at first, but now they were paying dividends. With the train stalled, the train people offered the entire snack and drink cart up for free. First class was empty save our band of three adventurers, and so we each commandeered one-third of the snacks and drinks apiece.
I didn't, of course. Drink. So the guys boozed it up, and I ate all the peanut M&M's. I never had really eaten peanut M&M's much before. Maybe as a kid, if I wound up with them during Halloween. But now, I ate a lot of them.
They became my favorite candy, actually. There were also iced teas and coffees to be drank, and I drank those, and I ate some of the breads and crackers.
I did briefly step into the air between the train cars and climbed down onto the cold snowy ground, but I was scared that somehow somewhat possibly (however unlikely) the train would get moving again and I wouldn't get back on, and that was terrifying. So I scampered back up quickly, after one look at the police lights flashing blue and red ahead of us. Police lights, probably, anyways.
The guys are right drunk at this point, and 1.5 times as old as I am, so they're mostly sharing stories and I'm mostly listening, occasionally interjecting an odd question or nodding along.
The whole scene seemed vaguely like the start of a joke. "An American in his 20's, an Englishman in his 30's, and an Australian in his 40's are on a train that's stopped in the dead of winter in the Austrian mountains, when…"
They ran out of M&M's, and that was fine with me, because I ate too damn many of the things. Before that particular long afternoon and evening, I wasn't really a candy-eater at all, and afterwards I became something of a candy-eater and now regularly consider eating peanut M&M's if I'm eating carbohydrates. I just ate a pack of them two days ago, in fact, before lifting weights at the gym.
Isn't it funny how little things like that change who you are? From not-candy-eater to candy-eater? I bet the guy that jumped in front of the train earlier never saw that coming.