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Day 12
At precisely 6:30am my phone did not start to make the irritating noise I had been expecting, because in my infinite wisdom I’d left it in vibrate-only mode. Fortunately I had my hand on it at the time and so I did wake up. This was therefore not the event that was to make me miss my train some 70 minutes later.I packed quietly, but had a panic when I couldn’t find my towel. Eventually it was located hanging on the bunk above mine, but this was also not responsible for my missed connection.
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Day 11
I’m up and out by nine, and Venice is just waking up. Shops were mostly still shut (though some were just opening), and the buskers were gone. One supply boat chugged down the canal delivering coca-cola.I walked to the station, brought the aquatic equivalent of a one-day travel card, and took a boat bus to St marks Square. I found the city’s main tourist information office and asked about visiting the dolomites. Unfortunately the assistant only had information about Venice, and referred me to a travel agency. I went in search of a travel agency, doubtful that I’d get any decent information out of them except stuff about package tours.
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Day 10
At about 1:30am our short visit to Croatia was at an end and more immigration officers boarded. Now if you happen to be an immigration officer, let me give you some advice. A good way to wake me up against my will at 1:30 in the morning is to gently prod me in the shoulder or arm. Turning on the compartment’s bright fluorescent lighting is not a good way.
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Day 9
I checked out and headed for the station to leave my luggage. A large sign indicated the ‘Luggage Room’, which turned out to be a big but very dark room despite the bright sun outside. A man sitting behind the desk took my bag and wordlessly tore off a ticket for me. I wondered how many hours of sunlight he got each day. Maybe his eyes had adjusted to the lack of light and were now super-sensitive.Another short metro ride back to the centre of the city, and I switched lines to the city’s park. Lunch used up most of my remaining florents at a restaurant near the national museum of culture. I’d had quite enough culture the previous evening and was feeling very poor, so I skipped that museum in favour of the transport museum, which cost just 150 florents to enter (about 40p, US$0.28).
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Day 8
No repeats of the previous days delay – I knew the metro by now and I was in the centre in no time. I had a few other things to do before seeing more of Budapest, the first of which was to arrange to leave it. I went to the MAV office (Hungarian railways) to book a seat, and found yet another take-a-number system. I took a number and went to play with the touch screen information terminal while I waited.It was quite a long wait, but the system on the touch screen terminal was excellent. I looked up trains to Istanbul, Venice, Bucharest and Athens, so I had quite a lot of food for thought by the time my number was called. It was all getting very complicated. I could go to Istanbul, where I could then connect to Greece easily, but I’d be way ahead of John, Chris and Sunil so we’d probably never regroup. Bucharest would be a good place to stop on the way to Istanbul or Athens, but it seemed silly to go there simply because it was conveniently located. Going to Athens directly was a long trip, and it would probably result in passing the others in Italy somewhere but not managing a proper regroup. Venice was an interesting option, putting me in northern Italy to get to Greece from the other side, and almost certainly meet up with the others en-route, but it meant cutting short on Eastern Europe.
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Day 7
I imagined I might be sharing a compartment with some seasoned travellers, and that we’d exchange stories about our adventures long into the early hours.Of course, as it turned out, none spoke English – though one, a Romanian farmer, was happy to try out his high-school English. The others also looked as though they were on business rather than pleasure, so we were all in bed by 22:30.
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Day 5
I woke up at one o’clock. PM. I didn’t know that yet, but I did notice that everyone else has disappeared so I leaned over for my phone to check the time. I did a double take and had to check again to make sure I really had slept though the whole morning.For a moment I panicked and thought that the others had probably got up and gone out at 8 or some equally reasonable hour, leaving me to slumber through the whole day, but then I found that the bathroom was occupied so at least one of them was still there. It turned out to be Chris.
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Day 4
Our second-class couchette could not have been more impressive given the class we were travelling. The carriage was brand new, with aircon that worked, sockets to plug in phones, pleasant staff, and even a questionnaire in German asking us to comment on the quality of the service, rating each part on a scale of 1 to 5.Berlin-Zoo station turned out to be rather disappointing, considering our train had come all the way from Holland and chosen this particular place to stop. No tourist information kiosks were obvious, but there was a guy waiting outside who delivered his pitch. We decided to go there – it was reasonably cheap, included breakfast, and the room was nice.
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Day 3
We woke up at about 0940, and just made the checkout time. At the station our bags went into lockers. Probably the most complicated, over-engineered lockers I’ve ever seen, since in order to store an item you needed to find an empty one, stow your luggage (ok so far), close the door, wait for it to automatically lock, insert money in a nearby touchscreen terminal, and take a printed ticket which was dispensed.The problem was not so much the complexity of the system as the springyness of the doors. If they weren’t locked, they sprung open, which obviously helps people considerably when they are on the finding an empty locker stage, but becomes an issue when trying to close them, because you actually needed to HOLD the door closed while the motorised locking mechanism engaged the bolts. All over the room loud clangs could be heard where frustrated people slammed the doors with ever increasing force, only for them to spring open again immediately, because the locking mechanism hadn’t had a chance to close the lock.
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Day 2
We woke at 0730, not sure why, but as sure as night follows day John was first in the shower. He’d first begun to exhibit this behaviour when I travelled Australia with him in 2000. It begins with everyone agreeing on what time we’ll wake up the next morning, and then sure enough John’s gotten up half and hour beforehand to get the shower. I don’t want to sound like I’m being pedantic about this – my complaint is about the lack of hot water that seems to result from John’s showering process.Anyway, breakfast was included at this hostel so we grabbed our entitlement of corn flakes, one slice of bread and one plastic cup of squash, and set off for the European Parliament.