Are we there yet?

"What d'you mean you haven't slept?"

6am and we're trundling through the Bulgarian countryside, a limestone valley on the way into Sofia. I haven't slept, not in any meaningful way. Things are a bit weird.

We got on that Ukrainian carriage, couchettes with 4 beds each, I was on the top bunk, but not tired yet. Everyone else was, pretty much, and there was no desire for a trip to the buffet. The cabins were roasting so most of the doors were left open. Steve and I chatted for a bit but our voices were carrying and disturbing people, so we descended into silence.

Border crossing started at about 1am. At the Romanian side there was a fair racket. British passports were waved away but everyone else's was taken in a vast stash, returned about an hour later. Disappointing, because Stoy had promised us a stamp. The old guy who had been in the corridor most of the time, talking loudly with impunity, even at one point taking a loud phone call on speaker phone, got booted off. Then a crawl across the actual border, aka the Danube, to the Bulgarian control point. Another hour or so here, combined with some violent decoupling and coupling. The train was apparently splitting into three.

I was a bit tired now, and thought about going to bed, but I couldn't get to sleep. Literally. Too clumsy to navigate the tiny 3-step ladder up to the bunk, I decided to just not bother.

Bad idea. It started off being fine, but after a while, with no data and no power to any of my devices to give me something to read or be otherwise occupied by, I started to go a bit mad. Felt at turns lonely, miserable, upset, bored, depressed, ruminative, etc etc. Fleetingly, I wanted to go home. That was the first time I felt like that.

It didn't last long, because soon the bad unhappy thoughts were replaced by full-on sleep deprivation insanity. My blinks started getting longer, 5, 10, 60 seconds. I was dreaming with each one, vividly and instantly, with the images and sounds staying around after my eyes opened, virtually to the point of hallucination. I had full conversations with people present and absent, ever more bizarre. I was in a train, a flat, work, in Australia, elsewhere, all over the place. I almost spoke out loud a few times. My legs tried to give way once or twice. The conductor shouted at me to move.

I thought about trying once more to actually get some proper sleep, but it was now broad daylight and people were getting up. What's more, the scenery was lovely, very very lovely in fact. I managed to keep up, engaged in conversation, telling people I hadn't slept as they all rose and said how comfortable a sleep it had been. The dream/hallucinations kept coming, but not as frequently or vividly. One cabin became empty, and I sat in it for a bit, getting about 15 minutes sleep. Nodded off a bit when in our proper cabin, but after a while we reached Sofia. I blundered my way at the back of the group through Sofia's sparse, 2-line metro system - at least Bucharest had printed a lot of "these would be handy, eh?" lines on their maps - to the 15 minute walk along the main shopping precinct and into a back street where we had a hostel booked. It was about 11am, and we checked in to our accommodation - a loft with mattresses on the floor and some working electricity.

Everyone showered. After that, I have no clue what they did, because I laid down on a mattress and was spark out. For a whole 90 minutes, because we had to leave. Not that we were being kicked out, but we really were only in Sofia for a couple of hours. There was a bus to catch, to Skopje in Macedonia.

Stoy got us on the bus and then said goodbye. Ever the international man of mystery, he had Things To Do in Bulgaria. To be fair, he is Bulgarian. Hopefully he will rejoin us in Rome, but for now we are nine.

I spent a lot of the bus journey asleep. When awake, I had some of the food and drink that was purchased early in the trip, another supermarket sweep. There were sausages and things. I don't remember much. I do remember being in the middle of a double data free zone - not in an EU country and unwilling to pay eye-gouging £6/mb data rates, and anyway, Three had turned off roaming for 36 hours for everyone. Mind you, they said this would mean no SMSes, but I had a few conversations with folk in Blighty, telling Nige about our delay (which wasn't a delay) and getting cricket scores from Mike.

29 to win from one wicket and Finn bowling terribly.

A 14 run victory. 1-0 up in the Ashes. YES.

About 25 yards over the Macedonian border there was a toilet break. Very very rank toilets. Ugh. I said this was the first time I'd ever hung around so close to an actual international land border, apart from at Gibraltar. Lester looked at me like I was mad, until remembering that I mostly travelled like a normal person, y'know, by plane and stuff.

The delay which wasn't a delay wasn't a delay because of two things. First, we twigged that the timezone had changed back to +1, giving us an extra hour. Second, our driver was largely ignoring things like speed limits and "no overtaking" signs. Macedonia was pretty but not gobsmackingly so. We reached Skopje with 3.5 hours 'til our train.

Parked up and went for a wander. The old town is bloody small, but moderately picturesque. Headed up to the mosque, which at dead on 5pm started emanating chants. It was sunny and warm. There was barely anyone around. Walking back down, Jason and I were engaged in conversation - opening gambit: "WHERE FROM?" - by a man who had been all over the UK and found us to be a very poor country. I was left unable to decide whether he was friendly or not. Back at the bottom the 10 of us took up tables in the square, drinking good beer and eating bad kebabs. Very bad kebabs. Shame. I was last to finish my drink, being admonished "Darren, shut up and drink faster" by Dave.

There was a travel agency with a load of destinations marked in their window, mostly big cities etc, but also Namur. Why Namur? Curious. Also a New Orleans theme pub called Bourbon House. Seemed an odd thing to spot in such a tiny, empty, non-touristy place.

A short ride back to the station and in we went. Wow. This was by far the bleakest, grimmest, most desolate station yet. A couple of shoddy cafes, a few taxi drivers - "Belgrade! 50 euros per person! I take you all!" - as Mark tried to sort out our reservations on the sleeper. It was dark and dank. A disused and derelict casino of sorts called Insomnia Cafe was above the ticket office, pretty much the only thing with any colour. The platforms were sparse. A few people were there, but not many. No trains were listed running at the time ours was meant to be. A flickering black and white monitor showed 4 trains in the next 12 hours, none of them to Beograd, which I'd now learnt to recognise in Cyrillic. Skopje is alien in every way. I loved it. Most of the others considered it a real low point.

I did get bitten to fuck by the mosquitoes though. My ankles swelled up to twice their normal size and I had to borrow antihistamine cream. Bastard little shits.

There were still 2 hours to kill. Dave, Jason, Mick and I headed to one of the shady cafes where we drank cheap beer and watched London buses go past. Skopje's beggars were particularly unenterprising, just walking up to us and holding their hands out while saying "Money! Euros!". C'mon, make an effort lads.

Back up on the platform, it seemed like our train must exist, or else there would be a few more disappointed people than us. Not masses, but a few. It's always heartening, I've learnt, to see people waiting around when there is no other evidence of a service being due. But along came our train, on time, a tiny 3 carriage job to take us to a Belgrade. We had 12 reservations, two 6-berth couchettes, but there were only 9 of us. The conductor was a bit miffed by this, until some currency cheered him up.

It was the end of day 9. There are 9 days left. I guess Skopje was "there", and now we'd been there it was time to make our way home.

When in Romania

Given the prodigious amount of absurdity, fun, and alcohol had on Friday, there was surely no way Saturday could come close. Though actually what I most felt like when waking up was a bit of respite. That the 2 hour delay was now about 3 hours, and that we as a group decided to skip Brašov and stay on until Bucharest, was very much welcome then.

11am - we had now switched timezone to BST+2 - marked pretty much exactly the one week mark in this trip. I tried to recall a few stats: 7 days, 13 countries, 15 border crossings, 23° of latitude, 3 timezones, 10-12-10 people, 112 unread emails, 17 trains, 5 sleepers, 2 hostels/campsites, countless tubes of squeezy bacony cheese, ... 

Like I said before, I had no right to feel as good as I did. I can only put it down to my mood trumping the physical symptoms of such over indulgence as Friday had seen. So surely I had no right to be treated to some world class scenery on a beautiful ride through the Carpathian Mountains and forests, topped off with a compartment to myself for a couple of hours? Well whether I had the right or not, I had that exact experience.

The scenery, including the train line itself, was just wonderful. Sunny, colourful, breathtaking, and contributory to a state of peaceful bliss, one actually helped by the lateness and slowness of our train (at points where we paired with roads, cars overtook us).

Originally we should have been to Brašov at 0930, leaving at about 1600. Instead we reached Bucharest at about 3pm, with a scheduled departure on the Russian ghost train at just after 11pm. Lester had promised us that the Romanian capital was shit and not worth a lot of hours, so there was some trepidation. Nonetheless, we dumped bags in lockers and headed towards the area my phone had told us was a scene of many eateries and watering holes: Lipscani and the old town.

We got on a tube, for 7 stops. There was a quicker route, but this trip is hardly one in which we take the shortest or quickest way from A to B, is it? Emerging from the station we crossed the wide communist boulevard and HOLY SHIT LOOK AT THAT PALACE. Despite being many, many blocks away, Ceaușescu's palace really was an imposing sight. We'd read that it's the second biggest building in the world behind the pentagon, and I'm not sure I'm surprised. We didn't get too close to it yet, preferring instead to find a base, and somewhere to eat and drink.

In the old town we hit pay dirt straight away. Or at least I did. An English pub which served cracking Guinness and had the ashes test on. So bloody topsy turvy. I love test cricket. Australia were going great guns in their second innings but we took two important wickets before we left, much to the annoyance of the 3 Aussies in the pub. Hah.

Bucharest was a bit odd. The old town had masses and masses of bars, including a great many theme bars ("Glasgow - always drinking of you" and "the schengen bar" being two I can remember) plus restaurants. We ate in a traditional Romanian one and the food was bloody cracking. I forget my main course because the memory of it was instantly wiped by the cheese strudel I had for dessert. Nom.

After dinner, 4 of us headed to the palace to get up close and a few sunset photos. Jesus, what a place. It's not just an impressive facade, but square - it must be a good 2km wide and deep. Good work, Nicolae. Shame your countrymen couldn't afford to fucking eat, eh?

I'd never been somewhere so clearly still showing the effects of communism. In particular the architecture and general road layout - grand boulevards, etc. A real same some of the housing blocks are in faded disrepair as they are really very nice buildings.

The language struck me. For no good reason, I've always thought if Romania as more eastern and alien than Hungary, but lots of the words had a distinct French tinge. Also, fewer accents.

Anyway, once our splintering finished we all met back at a bar near where we'd left each other and partook of a drink. I had a 1.9% lemon beer and loved it. People seemed tired.

Bucuresti gara nord has live departure information on the Internet these days. They've put a webcam up pointing at the physical board in the station. Good work, Bucharest. Unfortunately the page didn't work on my phone. At the station we got our luggage back and camped uncomfortably at the bar, waiting for our train to be given a platform.

There had been some doubt as to this train's existence. We all called it the Russian ghost train, cos it started in Moscow and seemed to appear in virtually no timetables. Nonethless, it was on the board and running late. Near the originally scheduled departure time, we got the platform and boarded our coach, a Ukrainian carriage that had been to Kyiv.

If was nearly midnight. The couchettes were 4s, not 6s. Mine had a Ukrainian in it already. People still seemed tired, though we knew there was border control at about 1am. Wonder if I can stay awake that long? 

Oh boy

Bit worried about writing this post. I don't know enough superlatives to describe Friday. I just had one of the best days of my life.

So, we got on the sleeper from Prague.  A Hungarian carriage on one of those typical European long distance trains, comprised of coaches from 5 or so countries' railways. We were indeed heading to Hungary...just not non-stop. Where's the fun in that?

It was a pretty brutal service. Not that it was uncomfortable - at least for me. I heard rumblings of discontent from the others in the morning, but after a night cap with Mark bought from the guy in the Czech coach who had a beer fridge (this was an employee, not passenger) I went to bed and had some very decent sleep. But the main reason for its brutality is that it was so short: 0001 boarding, 0630 alighting.

Because we were now 11, couchettes are becoming a little more of an issue. People are finding themselves sharing with us. On this train we had a full 6 and a 5+1, the one being a girl who was already asleep on the bottom bunk of the compartment I was in. It was so hot, especially up on the top bunk, John managed to convince the conductor to open the window for us: "look, there's a girl in there, and us 5 blokes. be reasonable".

We got off the train in Vienna. As per the route page on the GCERC blog, here we had just 90 minutes or so to get in a quick bit of tourism - Stephansplatz and breakfast - then get our train from the new hauptbahnhof, just around from where sudbahnhof used to be,

Stephansplatz was pretty, but it absolutely stank. We failed to find the breakfast place and didn't have enough time for a backup plan, so piled straight back on the rush hour tube to the Hbf.

The Hbf is a massive building site. We spotted the golden arches but, come on, not another McDs. S instead we asked a pair of helpers where we could grab breakfast. They said McDs. Sigh.

They also said to go to bahnorama, a viewing tower with a restaurant at the bottom of it. We trekked through the building site to get there, and it wasn't open. Sigh. So pastries and coffees were bought from a little cafe, and we went to the platform. That was quite enough of Austria, thanks.

Next up, a 65 minute train to Bratislava. Some quite nice views of the Danube and the gasometer complex. Not much more to say.

20 minute connection at Bratislava, easily made. A few of us briefly went landside, so now we can claim we've been to Slovakia. Especially because of the photo of us under the huge WELCOME TO SLOVAKIA sign. Tick.

So, now, after starting the morning on a Hungarian train, we were on our way to Budapest.  Due in at 1235, it would mean our 4th country in 7 hours (we crossed the Czech/Austria border at around 5am, and were in Hungary for midday). A 3 hour service, lots of nice views of the Danube and a fair bit of lovely electricity. I'm charging my phone 4 times a day on this trip. And I'm loving the absurdity of it all. 4 countries in 7 hours? Love it.

We had a long stop in Budapest, almost 7 hours. It was also where we were scheduled to lose Mike at the end of the day, our dozen being cut back down to the 10 who started in London last Saturday. Cracking cameo appearances from Mike and Albert.

A split occurred straight away. 7 people went to the largest and most famous spa complex, your correspondent not among them. The quarter of splitters - me, Mick, Mike, and Stoy - went on a bit of a guided tour of the city, Stoy being the guide having been here before. We jumped off the tube and rode up one of the longest escalators I've ever been on (I'm not counting Hong Kong) to reach... a building site. Next to the parliament building. Shame.

We wandered down to the tram line and the around the streets for a bit, past churches and embassies and etc. It was sunny, warm, and very pretty. The tram line is next to the Danube, the wide blue thoroughfare splitting Buda and Pest. We were on the Pest side and headed away from the river a little, towards a picturesque building which I took a photo of but didn't commit to memory because then it happened.

We'd found a holy grail. A business so absurd, so preposterous, so unrealistic, so amazing that I couldn't have scripted it if I'd tried - and it's my sort of script.

It was a cafe/bar. Pizzas on menus. Beer on tap. Bottled Guinness. A Manowar poster next to the door. Maybe they'd played recently or will do soon? An album advert maybe?

Another Manowar poster above the door.

Hang on.

Peeked inside. A Manowar poster. No, 2. No, 200 or so.

It was a fucking Manowar theme pub, or something. Inside we're hundreds of posters and photos and album covers.  A lit up thing of of a guitar conducting lightning. Just Manowar stuff everywhere.

There was wifi. The network name was MANOWAR.

I almost cried with happiness. Couldn't stop talking about it. Texted Ian, Wooj, Nige. Posted a Facebook update as myself, not GCERC. Far more likes and comments on that than anything else (I got people's attention by shouting and posting a photo, after all). This is precisely the kind of experience I thrive on - a random happening, unpredictable, in a strange place miles from home, that appeals to something I love. Like overblown heavy metal.

We had to move on. I wasn't allowed to stay all day. Time was ticking and we were meeting the others in the large indoor food market at 3:30pm. To get there we walked through another pedestrianised area, lots of shops, nothing too distinctive apart from the pub which appeared to be called PUB PUB PUB.

Reached the market half hour before the others so grabbed seats, drinks, and sausage. Nom. Stayed there when we were quorate once more, tucking into goose leg and sausage and chicken and cabbage with honey and bacon and Nom Nom Nom. Mark and Steve spent a crazily small amount of money on a large amount of booze and food for the train - this was a 13 hour ride ahead of us.

Before that, though, one last bit of group tourism. We walked across the nearest bridge to Buda, took photos, had a minor internal fracas, and jumped on a tram back to the tube back to the station. Retrieved bags from lockers, took photos, bought oh so much water, had a couple of drinks, and said goodbye to Mike. Our train went from a distant platform, no.1, and we found our berths - a six and a four, now we were 10.

We left at just after 7pm, scheduled to arrive in Brašov at 9:30am. Food was had, drinks were had, showers were had - wait, what? This train had showers? Yes, yes it did.  A proper shower with hot water and adjustable pressure and all the gubbins a normal shower has. It was better than the ones in Berlin. Especially because it was on a train.

I was enjoying myself - or so I thought - but then, but then...

Remember the buffet car on the way from Berlin to Prague? This was better. This was a bar. Not a restaurant or buffet car, not a man with a fridge full of beer. It was a bar. With proper purple upholstery and dim lighting and a barman and an American lass with a Mexican boyfriend who played mandolin. Oh, and a staff party from Romanian railways.

It was a rowdy raucous amazing bar full of us and fun people. It was smoky, because you're allowed to smoke. It was cheap, because Romania is cheap (€8 for a bottle of red wine and a lager). I bought the barman a beer but he refused to be photographed with it. Diligence!

There was a power cut. Lights went out. We all cheered. The mandolin came out and a song based around the Romanian for "thanks" was made. Lester danced. Steve was Steve. A guy from the railways gave me his seat. There was much laughter and much lager (and, so I was told afterwards, dreadful wine). The girl from the next couchette came along. The train stopped and we were told there'd be a 2 hour delay because we got rerouted due to fallen wires. We didn't care. No, we were glad, because this was a train on which we all wanted to spend more time, perhaps forever. It was one of the most fun nights of my life.

To recap: I was a week in to an 18 day train trip through 23 countries, and after having a drink in a Manowar theme cafe, I had a a shower and then got shitfaced in a smoky pub onboard a train between two cities and countries I'd never visited before, with mandolin music and power cuts and delays and Romanian train crew partying and just absurdity EVERYWHERE. Just writing this is making me grin. Magnificent.

I got so very drunk. Fell asleep clutching a beer and had to be escorted back to my bed by Steve. Apparently. I don't remember. But I do remember having no right to feel as good as I did this morning after a day like that. Grabbed a shower. We all decided to skip Brašov, and stay on to Bucharest.

Shouting Prague, er, Prague, er, lager

Woke up in Berlin at 9:30am. 7 hours sleep. I barely ever get that much even at home. Had a text from Steffen saying he was downstairs for breakfast so grabbed that, tailed off by being told by Mark that our midday checkout was actually RIGHT NOW. Hurriedly packed stuff and set off, just me, Mark, Mike and Albert as everyone else had already disappeared. Found later that some of them had arisen at 8am and thought that we had already gone. Not sure they realised we'd been out til 2...

Albert left us in Berlin, doing just 11:45-1:30 on the clock face that is our route t-shirt. But he sent us off in style, first walking us to Karl Marx Allee, a vast thoroughfare of communist glory decorated now by pornographic animated billboards advertising massage parlours.

The, 3 u-Bahns. I didn't need this. The physical punishment of the trip so far was having an effect and I was very much the worse for wear, hungover as fuck and decidedly not enjoying, well, anything. Nonetheless I very bravely joined them on the trek to the Brandenburg gate for some legitimate tourism: 90 seconds or so looking at the gate, large amounts of tourists, and some people dressed as French and US troops. Where were the Brits?

Hauptbahnhof reached and we found everyone else, after a wurst stop. We were a dozen, but becoming 11. Photos of the group were taken and we boarded the train to Prague. Some people were expecting nice things, but I'm pretty sure this journey outshone everyone's expectations.

The first expectation to be shattered was that we wouldn't be boarding amongst a school trip seeming, comprised of an entire fucking school. It took forever to get into our compartments, indeed some didn't reach them until the second stop. Me and Mick had been ruthlessly efficient in grabbing the seats early though. The last of the duty free beer got drunk and we sped through Germany.

Then it happened.

Someone went to the buffet car.

The buffet car with table service and a proper chef with no microwave. With a 16 page menu (in three languages), a la carte food, draught Czech lager served in glasses, and happy hour pricing once we crossed the border. Most of us sat there for the next 90 minutes or so, loving this luxury but also waiting for food - being freshly prepared it took a while. Still, we had fine company and a gorgeous view of the Elbe, which we were hugging all through Bohemian Switzerland. Oh, did I forget to mention that before? The buffet car pretty much had special panoramic viewing windows.

Dresden to Prague by train is, simply, fantastic. As with Narvik, though, it would have been beyond description if the sun had been out. Things have been largely overcast so far, pretty much the only thing that's a legitimate shame.

Berlin Hbf to Praha hl.n was actually our only train on Thursday, as we were scheduled to bugger off at 0001.  This gave us a lovely 5 hours to spend in a city which I had only been to once before. I don't think we did much of the proper tourism last time, as I struggled to recall many details apart from playing pool to the sounds of Danish europop, a dog drinking another dog's piss while we drank in a park listening to a guy play a giant mobile piano with bells, and a landlord asking us to keep an eye on our waitress because he suspected her of theft.

This time around was a little different. Obviously, given the main focus of this trip, we went and got a tube, the. a tram, in order to catch a funicular railway up to the top of a park which we the. descended from on foot to reach a bar named the Black Ox. Two drinks choices: light, or dark. This beer was great. The place was smoky as hell though, so we kinda fragmented a bit into the almost-outdoors vs properly-indoors gangs. A couple of us secretly hoped that our captain would be kicked out for daring to smoke an e-fag in here.

Mick lost his camera :-(

Another tram later and suddenly we were in tourist central, the vicinity of that bridge in Prague that's really famous and whose name I can never remember, and I just asked Mike and Lloyd what it was - without looking up and noting that they're spark out. Damn it. Anyway, that bridge in Prague. Y'know. That bridge.

We didn't cross it immediately, instead dropping down to a market square bordered by restaurants where we occupied 3 tables and bought lots and lots of meat. It all looked as good as it tasted, which was very bloody good indeed. I had duck with red cabbage and dumplings and potatoes and a pilsner and it were all grand, and so welcome. Another business card was handed out to about the 50th person we've explained just what it is we're all up to.

It was dark. We wandered across that bridge.  Many photos were taken. I'd had lessons from Paul in how to use manual settings on my camera to take better pics earlier in the trip, and used them as best I could to take a series of noisy and/or dark, out of focus, badly framed pictures of really pretty things. Deleted each one and used the iPhone on automatic to get a few corkers. Bleh. I suck.

There was a man wearing a t-shirt with the slogan "DON'T DRINK AND BLOG". I'll just go home then shall I? Christ. It's basically all I'm doing!

We were meant to see some kind of amusing clock show, but it didn't happen. Nonetheless the walk back to the station was a real treat, every corner turned revealing a new bit of wonderful architecture. Until near the station, where google maps tried to make us walk through a dark underpass meant only for cars. We used the passenger lift instead.

Luggage retrieved from lockers, we piled on to the Hungarian sleeper car whisking us overnight. Tara, Prague.

Supersize Mike

I hate alarms. No way was I going to set one, even though it was less than 4 hours from lights out til departure. Sure enough I was up and about before 6am, just before we pulled through the airport station before Stockholm Central.

We had 2 hours here. No tourism, but a lot to do. We had not one but two smörgåstårta to pick up, plus an emergency shipment of beer and squeezy cheese from a contact of yours truly, non-Swedish Paul the fellow AFC Wimbledon fan. Like some vision of pure loveliness, Paul had pitched up on Facebook at the 11th hour to volunteer a delivery. The Swedish beers were welcome - thought, truth told, no-one was particularly excited until much later in the day - but I was especially grateful for the can of Guinness. What a hero. Later I noticed it had a script on the side I didn't recognise. Hebrew, apparently. Why Hebrew on a Swedish Guinness? Anyone?

A few of the group fanned out to source breakfasts, some to McDs, some to coffee shops, etc. The main pay dirt was collected just minutes before we headed to the platform for our Copenhagen-bound train.

Smörgåstårta is the mother of all seafood sandwich cake things. Expensive and extravagant, they feed 12 people, though some would say 24 (and some would say 6). And yeah, we had 2 of them. No-one was amazingly enthusiastic about them, but the first one was dished out nonetheless. I liked mine, despite a fairly brutal exhasution-and-beer hangover. Wrote a blog post, kept track of data, ... this was yet another nondescript Swedish journey, We set off in tipping rain and things barely improved. Scratch that, things got worse - within about 3 stops we'd lost 10 minutes, and within 6 we'd lost enough time that our connection was looking unlikely, It was only meant to be 21 minutes, but we were 35 minutes behind by the time we crossed the border.

So, we missed our first train of the trip. It had to happen, I suppose. But this at least gave us some of the time back in Copenhagen that we'd lost through the Sunday near-miss. Unfortunately we didn't get any proper time back, as we had to spend the whole 90 minutes first attempting - and failing - to get new reservations for the 1544 service, and then planning our strategy for vestibule or bar encampment. Te train was full - our tickets let us on it, but in no way would we be able to get a seat.

Lunch (more McDs for some) and beer had, we piled on. 5 of us packed our bags and selves into the buffet car and the other 7 grabbed individual seats here and there. We bought Weiss beer and it set off.

This train was going on a boat.

Let me say that again. This train got on a boat. We didn't get on a boat. The train did. Then we got off the train. On the boat. And then we were on a boat which had a train on it, crossing be Baltic Sea for 45 minutes - international waters, celebrated and punctuated by a dark haired Norwegian girl; the second, and almost offensively superior, Smörgåstårta; and a trip to the duty free shop to buy 48 tins of dirt cheap lager. All this while on a boat. With a train.

I'm not sure if I'm getting my message across clearly enough, so I'll try once more: this train, the actual physical carriages, got on and off a boat, starting in Denmark and leaving in Germany. It was just awesome.

Mind you, it was lucky we (all) got that far. Soon after departing Copenhagen, the ticket inspector had come through. We're using interrail passes, valid on almost any train in Europe, but one of the conditions of use is that you have to keep a diary of the services you board. Not a sleep-deprived alcohol-fuelled blog of a diary, but a written record of the dates, times, start and end points, on the sheet attached to the pamphlet your ticket is stapled to.

Everyone had said that you only really need to care about that when you reach France. The most minor of run-ins had occurred in Oslo but other than that, it didn't seem that you had to be super-diligent. That all changed on the way to Roedby, This inspector through a wobbly at Mark, our skipper. He hadn't written the train down. Oh no, oh no oh no oh no. Said the conductor: YOU MUST FILL THIS OUT. IT IS A CONDITION OF YOUR TICKET. I WILL CHARGE YOU SIXTY EUROS. I READ IT OUT ONCE. I WILL NOT BE BLAMED IF YOU DID NOT LISTEN TO ME, Then he turned to the barman and had a large rant, obvious from the sound if not the language, about us bloody tourists (Mike actually understood it, and translated when a safe distance was made). The one part I did understand was the loud, exasperated JESUS CHRIST at the end. We actually avoided the fine, but Mark pegged it through the carriages warning the others to fill their forms out. Eesh.

A friendly Dane commuter told us that was this conductor in a good mood. Bloody hell.

We made a dent into our new cheap beer en route to Hamburg. I spotted the business/first class section of the train, which looked astoundingly nice, as good as many airline seats. Made a mental note to try this one day.

Hamburg station had us for an hour. A gorgeous building, it looked spectacular - inside - in the twilight, with the colours from the trains and adverts really making a vivid scene. I took a photo and made it super-extra-vivid with an injudicious application of the DRAMA filter. Go me?

Mike had a McDonald's.

Mike had had a McDonald's earlier.

Twice.

So let's get this straight,

Mike had McDonald's for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. 3 meals.

Breakfast in Stockholm. Lunch in Copenhagen. Dinner in Hamburg.

McDonald's in 3 different countries in one day. This is precisely the sort of preposterous behaviour which makes me glad I'm wearing a hat, 'cos it needed doffing,

Hamburg to Berlin in 2 6-person compartments, a short journey. We discussed dark tourism, which led to a somber moment. Hmm. The first moment of non-levity that was conversational rather than situational. Never mind.

We got to our hostel just after midnight. Much higher standard than I expected, we had 3 dorms between the 12 of us. Showers - previous, glorious, life-affirming showers - were had, and then 3 of us went for a night cap with an ex-colleague. Bed at 0230, but a huge lie-in awaited: the next train was at the ridiculous hour of 1246. A full morning without trains, Withdrawal symptoms seemed likely.

South

It was possibly darker when we got up than we went to bed, thanks to the weather. Bloody rain. It spat, and made Narvik look bleak. A well marshalled, washed, and showered group, the no-longer-dirty dozen left our cabins and walked to the station. We'd got the bus up, but it was high time we got on a train south. Because there was no other direction to go.

A small party headed to the supermarket for provisions while the rest of us availed ourselves of free fast wifi at the station, plus some locomotive photography. We grabbed our seats in the front carriage and headed off, forwards towards fjords and Sweden. True to form, Norway continued to spoil us with marvellous scenery as we climbed up, around, and over the our last fjord before hitting the border at just after 11am, a crossing which remained untoasted for a few hours.

Swedish scenery, after the first lake, was bloody tedious. Really. Largely flat and consisting of relentless trees, close to the tracks and blocking our view of the miles and miles of more of the same trees behind the. Narvik to Boden was not one of the most picturesque routes. Books were read and pastries were eaten, we really only sprang to life when a majority of us commandeered the back half of the carriage, now the rear of the train since a trainspotter's dream switch at Kiruna. I wield that apostrophe correctly: the trainspotter whose dream came true was Mike, happier than a pig in shit at his photos of the new loco being attached.

That rear half of the coach, separated by a door, became our party coach, Vodka was drunk, liquorice was eaten, and many photos of endless track disappearing behind us were taken. To the left and right: trees.

The arctic circle was crossed at around 3:50pm. We were there for around 25 hours. This seems at once a preposterously short amount of time to spend somewhere so amazing and hard to get to (if you make it hard, that is), and an eternity. A realisation hit me: we had only spent any time outside of a station or vehicle in two places so far, Brussels and Narvik. This despite 8 border crossings, and changes in Brussels, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Gothenburg, Oslo, Trondheim, Fauske, Narvik, and Boden. Yeah, Boden, the place where our change took less than 2 minutes. Off the train, cross to the adjacent platform, board the carriage one up from where we were already stood. This was the sleeper to Stockholm, a 13 hour ride. It was only 17:30 as we pulled out. Eatening time.

We had two 6-person couchettes next to one another at the end of a wagon. Jason and Dave performed wonders with bread, squeezy jalapeño cheese, bacon pate, prawn salad, and sundry other toppings. Someone went to the bar and bought extravagantly priced Swedish beer. I was particularly enthusiastic about this, suffering as I was from spirits fatigue somewhat. It seemed I wasn't alone; a lot of beer was drunk, by most of us and the arc welding girl who joined us for a couple of hours up 'til midnight. We weren't quite threatened with exclusion of travel, but we did make a lot of racket. Not incorrigibly so, I like to think. The one and only time we were asked to quiet down, we did, and we closed the door. We're nice people!

The lass was ecstatic about her journey to meet her new boyfriend. She threatened to kill us, several times, and we believed it may not all have been in jest. In impeccable English she repeatedly apologised for the quality of her English. I'd have been reminded of the Simpsons episode where the German company take over the nuclear power plant: "my English is, how you say, inelegant". But that thought only just occurred to me now. The cartoon she actually most closely represented was Family Guy, because she regularly punctuated her speech with a Stewie-esque "blast!".

She hated Albert's music. Lloyd didn't really like hers. She liked Guns n Roses, Metallica, some Megadeth, but had never heard of Slayer. What?

The bar shut at midnight. She left soon after, repeatedly apologising for not having bought a round despite our protestations that it was really not necessary, She'd assisted us through a mountain of cheese, and hated discovering that the Norwegians - those bastards - are producers of fine dairy goods. We convinced her she hadn't caught herpes from us. She said she was happy with life. Lloyd accused me of almost poetic eloquence when I said that she may have been a guest in our cabin, but we were guests in her country, and it was us who should thank her. Good night and good luck, arc welding Swedish girl. Thanks for not killing any of us.

Four of us remained: me, Mike, Albert, and Lloyd. No strangers on a train, we've all known each other since at least 1999 (1995 for me and Mike). Some whisky appeared from somewhere, no idea where. We spoke deeply about social media and depression, like some dreadful version of that show that used to be on Channel 4, the open-ended thing that Keith Allen turned up absolutely battered for.

We may have been some distance south of 66°33'44" but still it barely got dark - we saw a wonderful sunset at about 0100, making an industrial town and smoking chimneys look glorious as we sped through. It started brightening up at about 0230, when the whisky ran out and the last two of us retired to the bottom bunks. An alarm was set. We had to be off the train at 0630 after all.

Fauske and fjordius

I'm in bed earlier than either of the previous two nights. Still a bunk, but in a non-moving building. It's only 3 nights since I slept at home but already it feels like an eternity. As I type it's 0137, broad daylight, and I'm in a cabin in a campsite in a town 140 miles inside the Arctic Circle. What the living fuck is going on?

Let's rewind to where I left off. I bought no Åss beer. In fact, I ended up being the last of the drinkers to partake of sauce, fuelled as I was by laziness and no huge desire for spirits or wine. Beer is staggeringly expensive, and pound for pound a ridiculous thing to carry large quantites of. Vodka, rum, grappa, etc have a better weight/effect ratio, but I just wasn't that arsed. Truth told, I could really do with a Guinness.

I made do with water and coke light, until finally snapping and heading off to the buffet car. Taking coffee orders too, I asked if that was free as it had been on the previous service: "No sir, it is in fact surprisingly expensive" came the response. Mike had to ferry them back while I sat there wirh my Nordland pilsner, having been told it was not allowed to take alcohol back to my seat. What?

With the NSB providing wifi, the journey to Fauske was largely punctuated by narcissistically checking the GCERC facebook page, while continually keeping as close a tab as I could on our precise location, especially for Google latitude terms. Sadly within the carriage GPS accuracy varied betwen +/-5km and +/-140km. Think we could get closer than that by playing pin the tail on the donkey shaped like a map of Norway, tbh. It must have been a lead lined carriage, 'cos in the vestibule I'd catch a 5 metre fix almost instantaneously.

As previously reported, no state borders were crossed on day 3. The important frontier of the day was entering the Arctic Circle at 66°33'44". Due to guesswork, a rogue station stop, and the ropey GPS, we toasted too soon, but only by a couple of minutes. I was actually surprised to see the "birder" officially marked with a line of stone pyramids and other signage.

The trees disappeared.

We were pretty high up. 500m or so. Ears had been popping and each station had reported their altitude, prompting Albert to ask how we were 110m above sea level while next to the sea. (It was a lake, but later on my phone reported 27m below... while we were on a boat on the sea. Huh.)

Er, but yeah. Trees. Suddenky, none. Very weird. After a while the rocky escarpments gave way to more fertile land, and the circle felt a little less alien. But not much.

At Fauske, we had 8 minutes to catch a bus. 12 reservations had been hard to come by, but eeserved we were, as shown by the driver having a print out of Mark's email on his lap. We still had to pay though. Thank goodness for rural bus services accepting MasterCard, and for MBNA not refusing my transactions like they did in the USA in May.

Oops. Fell asleep while writing there. Sorry.

The bus left Fauske in pouring rain. The town was nondescript, but in no time at all we were hugging fjords, heading through 2km tunnels, and winding up and down mountains. The bus was required because the terrain is unsuitable for building a railway. It was spectacular. Largely white and grey clouds in the sky made for some angry, imposing mountains of pure rock. The coastline continued to eke oohs and aahs from us as each new turn revealed another wonderful view. Occasionally we were treated to sunshine, which only served to make the place even more beautiful. Time flew by.

There was a stop. Actually there were a few stops, but one in particular was important: we had 13 minutes opposite a supermarket. Cue a Bulgarian, an Irishman and 10 Englishmen having a mad supermarket sweep style rush to buy water, squeezy cheese, bread, cold meats, crisps, chocolate, ... back on the bus 90-odd quid poorer and 2 minutes to spare, never had food shopping been so exhilarating.

The scenery just kept coming. After a couple of hundred km we came to a ferry crossing at Bognes, and were first in the queue. Jumped out of the bus, bought hot dogs, and sat looking out the window until the last few minutes, when we stood upstairs staring at the panorama of mountains. Back on land, the sights continued to be relentlessly impressive right up until we hit the somewhat bleak and industrial town of Narvik, our destination for the day.

Some consternation was expressed as the railways appeared to be being dug up. But we weren't particularly near the station. We did get kicked off at the bus station though, a few kilometres from the campsite where our cabins hopefully were ready.

The kindness of strangers can be remarkably handy sometimes. We didn't walk those kilometres.

People need to man up. The aren't you cold brigade were 10 or 11 strong in Narvik. Yes, I'm still in shorts and short sleeves. I don't give a fuck about where we actually are, it simply wasn't cold enough to warrant coats and trousers. The only reason I've any long trousers with me is because the Vatican City has a dress code.

Ahem. I digress.

Cabins 11-13 were ours, three 4-person dorms with such things as a roof, a shower, toilets which don't bounce, a kitchen, ... amazing stuff. Showers were had and tap water drunk. Cabin 11 decided to head into town and I agreed to follow them soon. Then the rails came off a little.

Where was the meat? Where was the bread knife? Cabin 11. They swore otherwise but Lester was about to set off after them. Like a martyr, I did the deed myself. Actually I phoned Albert, twice, to try and get them to stop, but he didn't bloody answer. I had been wondering if I'd get any exercise on this trip, but what I hadn't expected was a 2.5km run, in sandals, at 2230, 5 minutes after a whisky which had itself chased a rum, in order to retrieve a cabin key. But it's not like anything about this trip is particularly normal, is it?

I was a bit of a panting and pissed off mess when I got back. The 11s swore blind they did not have the knife or meat but gave me their key anyway, and was glad to discover that the bastards did have it, so at least my grief wasn't in vain.

A feast was prepared. Squeezy pepperoni cheese, salmon, bread, apples, whisky, grappa, pastries, salami, rum, I'm sure there was more too. Cabin 13 accepted our cordial invite.

It didn't get dark. I mean we knew this would(n't) happen. It's called the land of the midnight sun for a reason. But, at midnight, it wasn't sunny. Lots and lots of grey and white cloud. But it wasn't remotely dark. Just remote. Despite knowing it would be the case, and being a rational bunch, we all seemed staggeringly ill-prepared for the reality of it not getting fucking dark.

Two of cabin 11 had returned in time to witness the border crossing from Monday to Tuesday with no visual cues. The others strolled back just after 0100. Tales of surly pizza service, giant soft drinks, and age-segregated drinking holes were told. It still wasn't dark. I had to take another photo just to confirm this fact.

Thank goodness for curtains.

The grim and frostbitten North

It's raining. And 13°c. We're further north than I've ever been. My watch has just asked "run with me later?" to which the only answer option given was "OK" ("looking forward to it" indeed). Hello, day 3.

We're in Norway. Have been since 5pm or so yesterday, will be til gone 11am tomorrow. This marks our first day without a border crossing, a rare ocurrence considering we crossed 7 in the first two days (our next border-free day is in a couple of weeks' time). Today is instead punctuated by our entrance into the Arctic Circle, a latitutde north of which it just doesn't get dark for 3 months of the year. We are in one such month. Back in Oslo last night it didn't get dark until gone midnight which was impressive enough.

Ah, Oslo, the place where we became quorate. As arranged, Albert and Mike were on the platform waiting with their stuff, a load of food and drink, and Andy, Mike's brother in law. They'd been to the beach during the day as we stressed and drank our way toward them. The beach. We were already further north than the whole of the UK. It was 20°c and would remain so until at least 1am.

Never checked in for a train before. Not check in Eurostar style, but hotel style - we had to report to a temporary reception in the dining car to pick up the keys to our twin rooms. Superb. I shared with Mike, we dumped our stuff, said goodbye to Andy - who was proudly sporting his guest GCERC shirt - and we started boozing. For a good hour or so we had a cracking session in the corridor of coach 11, obviously causing mayhem as evidenced by the woman travelling in the next couchette apologising to _us_ for walking past with her two young kids. We did get a "some of us are trying to sleep!" later though, but by that time everyone was juiced enough and retired to their bunks.

Everyone except me and Mike, that is. We went to the buffet car and bought beer and hot dogs. 2 of each. 23 quid. TWENTY THREE QUID. Christ almighty.

The train stopped.

Bloody weather. We had hardly left metropolitan Oslo when we became stationary, for about 90 minutes, reportedly because ita was too hot and the tracks had bent. What?

We were thankful our leader was missing this. I bought beer. Mike handed me the krone and taught me how to badly slur "2 more beers", which I dutifully badly slurred. I asked what "please" was and he said there's no word for it in Norwegian. Ace.

The barman appreciated my efforts, also telling me he would have refused to serve me had I asked in English. Ha. We repaired to the end of the carriage, alternately chatting to a lone traveller who was worried about the delay's effect on his journey and watching a woman go ballistic at the conductor. As if he could make us magically go ahead. Pfft. The guy told us we would almost certainly reach Trondheim (which Mike refuses to pronunce badly) late, but the train would wait for us. And anyway we'd probably make up a bunch of time while we slept.

More beer was bought. I refused mine. It didn't go to waste though.

Top bunk was nice and comfy. I grabbed 4 hours kip, uninterrupted save for a knock on the door. Turns out taking the key with you when you go for a 3am piss would be a good idea. Awake at 0630, 20 minutes before our scheduled arrival in Trondheim, we were bloody miles away. 90 minutes away, in fact. A relaxed tannoy announcement told us the connecting train was indeed waiting, but I ran into Lester in the corridor and he wasn't happy. Two nights, two sleepers, two long delays... is GCERC destined to fail?

I went to the buffet car at 7am for some wifi. The barman asked if I wanted another beer. I politely declined. Had a cup of tea though. That's one tea and 3 glasses of wine on this trip. Talk about getting out of my comfort zone.

Slightly happier about our Narvik prospects after examining the facts and options became very bloody happy a few hours later. The train at Trondheim had indeed waited for us, on the adjacent platform. We kicked a bunch of people out of our seats and left about 40 minutes late. Advice had been to inform the conductor of our bus connection to Narvik, which we duly did, but it really didn't matter. This is a 9 hour daytime train ride - much to John's disbelief - and we made up that 40 minutes in the first 80. Really. 5 stops in and we are back on time. Have that!

Breakfast was served. By Mike. And what a spread. We each had sandwiches with squeezy bacon cheese from a tube, plus slices of reindeer and moose. Seconds was a prawn sandwich, ably enabled by Albert's trip to the train's prawn draining closet. Then came chocolate. There was coke light, fruit juice, and some wonderful views of fjords and lakes. And connectivity, lovely lovely connectivity from the NSB wifi.

Norway's alright so far. We went through Hell. But there's no black metal stereotypes anywhere to be seen.

Now, what time can I have a beer without everyone getting REALLY worried about my dipsomania. However, literally as I was typing that sentence, our leader broached the subject of alcohol. To the bar! For some 7 quid Åss beer. Hmm.

How do I love Three, let me count the ways

Yeah, thanks Three. Your wonderful - I mean that - EU internet pass isn't always quite so wonderful, is it? My 24 hours ran out just as I posted the day one entry, conveniently timed enough that I couldn't even tell if it had worked. Still, all I had to do was buy a new one. So I did... and got no internet access. Tried for ages, turned everything off and on again, phoned Three and only got automated nothingness including "if this doesn't work, call back later"... so, meh, I went to sleep.

Up at 5am, I saw the beautiful view of Hamburg in the early morning sunshine as we pulled into the Hbf at about 0530. Problem is, we should have been there about 0330. Um... Lester woke up and I told him my fears (the offline european rail timetables really are handy for checking our progress in mysterious places). Eventually we learnt that, yes, we were running 2 hours late, and were now due in to Copenhagen around 1315.

This was disconcerting on 2 levels. First, we expected to arrive at 1007, making 1315 3 hours late. Second, and somewhat more of a worry, our Copenhagen to Gothenburg train was due to leave at 1332. Fuck.

The whole morning was thus spent fretting, There was also eating and drinking, but mostly just fretting. We kept stopping. Sometimes we went backwards. There were tales of floods and suicides. We KEPT stopping. And all along, no fucking data connection (I would attempt to visit a site and get "hey, your pass expired; click to buy a new one". Clicking took me to a page which said "hey, you already have a pass; use it, why not visit facebook?". Visiting facebook took me back to the expired pass page. I phoned Three, 8 times, only once getting through to someone, who passed me on to someone else, who put me on hold... and the phone signal went. Data didn't work all day. Fuckers.)

If we didn't make the train to Copenhagen, we were screwed. Properly. At the end of the night, in Oslo, we were all set to meet the remaining two members of our troupe. There's simply no alternative transport to get us there in time: the 4hrs to Gothenburg, 4hrs to Oslo was imperative. After hitting Roskilde with an hour to go I called it good, and relaxed. Then we stopped. Again. Come on driver, come on...

13 minutes to spare. Never any doubt, was there? *cough*

We piled into the nearest carriage of the train when it pulled in, pretty much taking over the quiet carriage apart from the precocious non-Danish Danish girl from Poland who spoke 5 languages and whom we nearly killed with her own suitcase. Oops. We were only trying to help! Not our fault her suitcase fell off the rack when the train leant over...

The quiet carriage wasn't quiet, and we were not making friends. One guy picked on our leader, taking him to task for daring to speak at all in this sacred place. This even though he wasn't even sitting in here, but just passing through.

Some of us got booted out by folk with reservations. I think only 3 of us managed to remain where we were for the duration. It was a seriously crowded service, but nonethless we found space to picnic and, of course, toast our 5th and 6th border crossing (in 30 hours). More jenever!

Started to get communication from back home. Murray was a set up. Wow. And Froome retained yellow, as he surely will for the rest of the Tour.

Sleep. And chocolate. No more alcohol. Surprisingly little today, so far, in fact. With no time in Kobenhavn we were short on a lot of stuff and had to implore our Norse joiners to stock up on supplies for us. We already know there are some stinky fish bits on their way...

Sweden and the Swedes are relentlessly pretty. It's really quite disconcerting.

Disappointed to learn the proper pronunciation of Båstad isn't what we'd hoped for.

It's 7pm as I type this. There's loads of the day left, but I'm snarfing data while I can. Norwegian trains pull through where my own fucking phone provider do not. But, fucking hell, Murray is Wimbledon champion! Amazing news to greet our departure from Gothenburg, where we only spent 40 minutes. Getting a bit of a thirst on now. In fact our captain just tried to toast a new border crossing, but I had to put him straight: we've an hour left of Sweden yet, and we must visit Ed first.

Thalys, what's the matter?

Ssssh. People are trying to sleep. Day one just finished and I'm the only one awake - I think. The snoring in the couchette implies I'm right, but I did see Paul the teetotal photographer out in the corridor not too long ago.

That there is a teetotaller amongst us is one of the biggest surprises of the day. But let me start at the start.

I went to bed about 1am. A little later and drunker than planned, but not incorrigibly so. I set an alarm, something I hate doing and consider a sign of weakness (in myself; no objections to others using them). So it was with a genuine smile I awoke 10 minutes before it was to go off, at 0450. Up, showered, and packed, I felt somewhat less sanguine than I had on Friday but overwhelmed by, meh, nowt I can do to change shit now...

3 bags? Really? Come on Darren, it's only 18 days fer chrissakes. Yeah, no laundry opportunities, but still, 3 bags? That was the conversation I had with myself, while diligently packing all 3 bags when 2 would have sufficed. I just couldn't back out of the decision I'd made. Fail.

Hang on. Jesus. It's hard to type, even from notes, when EVERYONE is snoring like a bastard.

So. Train zero. The 0557 from Surbiton to Vauxhall. Surprisingly crowded for a pre-0600 service on a weekend. Vauxhall seemed mainly populated by young girls recovering from a fierce night out, while the Victoria line had a large amount of well to do women acting in a way rather more befitting of 2pm on a weekday. Why the smart work clothes, well groomed state, lack of hangover, etc? Curious.

Shopping in Berlin. Shopping in Berlin. Shopping in Berlin. That's my mantra atm. I had a panic. Did I have too few clothes, too many clothes, too little footwear? (one pair of sandals, nothing else) IT DOESN'T MATTER. I CAN FIX IT ALL BY GOING SHOPPING IN BERLIN.

Ahem.

On train zero I practiced a card trick I thought I'd learnt from a book. I failed at it. Boo :-(

I was the fourth member of our squadron to arrive at the Betjeman Arms. This is a pub overlooking the Eurostar platforms at St Pancras, surrounded by gorgeous architecture and art. My hat received a compliment. We waited for everyone to turn up, including the staff. I changed into my new event shirt, the first of many times my anti-svelte figure will reveal itself in the forthcoming days. 10 full English breakfasts arrived, along with sundry teas, bloody marys, and Guinness. Hell yeah. It was 0725.

Train 1! Eurostar was a curious journey. To be expected, as the group is comprised of people who have known one another for wildly different lengths of time. For example, I've known the leader, Mark, since 1999; some have known him since childhood, and Steve had never met before. Ditto Paul. So as all good English folk do, we stuck to safe topics of conversation which mean nothing but reveal character and personality. Also circumspection, lists, and trivia. So, come on, YOU name some famous Belgians that aren't TinTin or Eddy Mercx and oh my god how the fuck did I not mentin Jean-Claude van Damme at the time? Bollocks.

We drank grappa. 50% grappa. Oh, but that was good stuff. It came out after our first border crossing: hello, France. Also we proved the the future is awesome, by allowing 5 people at once to tether on my unlimited data in the EU for £5/day. Mad. And so useful.

An altogether too regimented plan for shopping was attempted and aborted. We arrived in Brussels on time and a brief note was posted to Facebook. Delightfully, the specialist rail travel agent we used for our tickets hit 'like'. Following our progress, and on a Saturday? Take a bow, Ffestiniog Travel.

Train to Bruxelles Centraal. Bit of a walk. Moules et frites, avec biere. Ace. The ten of us sat outside Leon, the original mussels and chips venue. Sated, we wandered to Grand Place for some bona fide tourism, the highlight of which was the gallons of "enjoy the novelty, you'll hate each other by Christmas" scorn poured upon the newlyweds making a racket on the big fancy building (town hall?) balcony. Meh.

[Everyone has stopped snoring. I hope they aren't, like, dead or something]

Tourism done, we needed supplies for the next 20 hours or so. The timetable said a 2 hour trip to Amsterdam with just a 45 minute change for our 15hr sleeper to Kobenhavn. So we needed cheese. And meat. And chocolate. And alcohol. And bread.

Kilos of cheese, meat, chocolate, alcohol and bread later... we trammed back to midi and waited for our Thalys train. It came in a bit late, and boarding was chaos. The service was rammed and our reservations were a godsend, especially given we had to kick a cheeky couple out of Steve and Stoy's seats.

On this train we all fell asleep. Dave has evidence.

We also got through a full bottle of Belgian jenever. Mmm.

The Netherlands looked very Dutch. Flat, canals, windmills, you know the drill.

Go Froome!

The weather in Amsterdam was great. Warm, sunny, just lovely. We had all of 5 minutes to enjoy it. On the platform we met our contact, a man no-one really knew. He turned up with shitloads of beer, jenever, chocolates, fish, and cheese. A true gentleman. We drank beer on the platform while chatting to him, then experienced hugely chaotic boarding as we hunted our couchettes. Mostly we just dumped our luggage near the right place, and drank. Oh, we drank. For the next 5 hours we spilled 9 of us around a 6 seater compartment, shooting considerable breeze and toasting small matters such as Stoy's birthday and the crossing of borders. Just inside Germany, prior to Emmerich, we were threatened with EXCLUSION FROM TRAVEL by a staggeringly stereotypical German train manager, after a 10 year old member of staff had ratted on our leader for smoking. He smokes e-cigs. Later a new, larger member of staff spelt the ban out again, this time explicitly mentioning that fake fags are definitely prohibited. What?

I drank wine. Red wine at that. It was rank.

All day people had asked about our shirts and plans, and we had been honest. Yes, we're visiting 23 countries in 18 days. We struck up converations all over, my favourite being me and this Australian guy...

"We can take you on at drinking. We Australians consider binge drinking a sport"

"Yeah, but, Australia isn't very good at sport, is it? Did you see the Lions score?"

He buggered off after that.

As the night grew longer and louder, I finally sat down, having spent the first couple of hours in the corridor. By so doing I found myself in the middle of arguments about wartime casualty figures, British cycling, and whether it's ever OK to have a shower and the put the same clothes on as you were wearing beforehand. But, slowly, the arguments died out and the party dissipated. Before midnight only 4 of us remained. Then 3. Late enough that I had now definitely secured a bottom bunk, we had nightcaps. That was an hour ago. Maybe I should have a kip.

All night I have been receiving texts from Mike - who joins us tomorrow - about how drunk he is. Heh.

Today was awesome fun. We hit 5 countries and are en route to a 6th, 'cos in a few hours we arrive in Copenhagen, and by the end of Sunday we'll be on our way north from Oslo to Trondheim (and might - i.e., won't - have a British Wimbledon champion).

[Everyone's snoring again. Seems they aren't dead. Probably for the best.]

The Great Circular European Railway Challenge

It's 7.20pm on a Friday night. I've had a couple of beers after work, and a burrito with habanero sauce so hot I thought I might die. Andy Murray is being hard to support on the TV and the weather is lovely and sunny and hot. I'm tempted to grab a couple of Guinness down the Vic.

But I have stuff to do. I need to pack. Because tomorrow I go on holiday. I have to get up at about 5am, leave the house to get the 6.02am train, and meet some cohorts at 7am, outside the John Betjeman Arms in St Pancras. This is a pub which is opening especially early for us (we've paid them) -- we require breakfast, champagne, bloody marys, Guinness, etc, before getting a train, y'see. Eurostar. Train no.1 of... y'know, I don't know how many trains. Let's just say no.1 of several. Come tomorrow evening we'll have seen Brussels and Amsterdam on our way to Copenhagen. 24 hours later and we'll be getting to Oslo. Another 24 hours later and we'll be on a bus to Narvik, deep -140 miles - inside the Arctic Circle, in the land of the midnight sun, wherein I hope to get a photo of broad daylight at 3am or so.

And that's just for starters.

I'm not gonna write an in-depth preview. That's all been done by people much better qualified than I: by our glorious leader, who has meticulously detailed every last bit of planning over the last couple of years at the main GCERC website, and by our resident bloke-what-does-words-for-a-living Lloyd. And to top it off, Disoriented Dave has been putting a debatably human face on the whole thing by interviewing each of us who've decided that this whole thing is a good idea. And then there's our facebook fan page. But I couldn't let it go completely unsaid in my own words, and I've been pondering bringing out the ol' blog meself for a trip of this magnitude (I seem to write most, and best, about travelling anyway, right?). At the very least you can see exactly where I am - where we are - by looking at that map over on the right. It should update pretty often, hopefully.

Here, look, a poster. See where we're going? 23 countries in 18 days. Fucking madness, I tells ya. MADNESS.

Anyway. About time I packed, I think.

What's your favourite dish?

Jambo!

The destination was as relaxing as the travel had been (deliberately) punishing. That first hour or so notwithstanding, I went offline for the whole time and settled down into a pattern of pretty much nothing but recreational sleeping, reading, and drinking. I stayed on the resort grounds, no day tours to Stone Town or anywhere else; this was an escape.

The accommodation was pretty swanky. A four-poster bed (with mosquito netting), an enormous bathroom with an enormous bath and two showers, one being outdoors(!), and an outside area with a couple of seats and a table. Housekeeping came round 4 times a day, which is a bit bloody much, especially the 9pm call (and it didn't help that the "Do Not Disturb" thing kept getting blown off the door handle outside). I'd been told at checkin that the mini-bar was free for first use, but if I ever needed it refilled it would be charged. Free mini-bar, you say? Such a shame that this consisted merely of water, fanta, diet coke, and soda water.

Also a big screen TV, on which I watched England beat Sweden 3-2. I did think about going to the bar, but really I was just way too tired to move. Been a long time since I saw England lose a lead or otherwise go behind and not let their heads drop, longer still since they successfully came back to win. Was chuffed with that. And then I slept more. A lot more. Woke up about 11 hours later, which meant I was too late for breakfast. Never mind.

I wandered around the resort grounds for a bit, took a couple of photos, and settled on which shaded longer on which to spend the next 3 hours reading. Then I went back to the room, got changed, and headed out to the jetty bar over the ocean. It felt a little, but not massively, Blood Diamond, being the white guy sitting at a bar by the water in Africa. Went for the Tanzanian beer "Serengeti lager", which I honestly did not expect to be much cop, only to discover that it's almost as nice as Brooklyn Lager, which is my favourite lager in the world. Holy smokes. Three drinks there, then headed back onto land to watch the evening's game in the Library Bar (via a very swift meal at the buffet). Was amused to see a huge England flag hanging up, and a printout of the whole Euro 2012 match schedule on each table. 

As an aside: Zanzibar is mad for football: on the drive to the resort we'd passed probably 7 or 8 impromptu games of football being played, and two club houses. I'd seen Arsenal and other shirts being worn, and one van which had nearly half its windscreen covered in a Chelsea sticker.

Anyway, that was the pattern for each of the 3 full days I was there: sleep, breakfast, lounging + reading, sleeping, drinks on stilts, more drinks with the footy. There were some experiences unique to the days, I guess: on that first trip to the bar I got chatting to the board of directors of a Tanzanian ISP who were there for a strategy meeting, which mostly seemed to involve getting wankered and putting on South London accents while referring to me as GEEZAH and GANGSTA. I turned down their invite to some mad party on the other side of the island (so, 40-odd miles away), what with already being 6 drinks down and there to relax. And also being moderately terrified of the prospect.

On the last full day I thought about doing some exercise. I'd taken my running/gym kit, and scouted the gym facilities, but honestly could not be bothered with it. Instead I improvised a circuit of abs exercises and steps/knee raises/lunges using the perfect-height stone shelf in my room. Oh, and held a plank for 60 seconds, which I thought was pretty good. I actually worked up a properly decent sweat, and the next day my calf muscles told me I might even have overdone it a bit. #projectrollins never stops, eh.

Service was kinda weird. I found most of the bar and waiting staff to be uncomfortably deferential, either unable or unwilling to engage in conversation even when I was the only person sitting at a bar with 5 staff. The friendliest and most outgoing member of staff was the cleaner with a gorgeous smile who unprompted decided to teach me the kiswahili for "you're welcome", "thank you" and "bye bye". They say "you're welcome" a lot.

I got through the Mick Foley book ("Foley Is Good"), Shawn Michaels's autobiography "Heartbreak and Triumph", and Mark Kermode's "It's Only A Film", each in single sittings. Never realised HBK was such a god-botherer; should have read Foley's first book first, especially as so many chapters were stories about "how I wrote the first book"; Kermode's book is bloody awesome.

On the last day I asked at breakfast what time my car to the airport was. They said I had to checkout at midday, but my car would be at 1pm. Since none of the bars accept money, this was going to leave me with an hour of just sitting around in reception. Unimpressed. Anyway, since I was about to embark upon another 29hr 3000-mile 5-flights trip, I took the opportunity to watch a couple of episodes of Air Crash Investigation. I was tickled pink that the first one was about a hijacking of an Ethiopian Airlines flight, ha!

In the end they shoved me in a car straight away. The drive back to the airport was mostly uneventful apart from all the cows, and getting spat at by some kids. Ho hum.

Hurry boy she's waiting there for you

The Brussels Airlines lounge desk staff were a bit confused. I don't think many people fly Ethiopian Airlines from Brussels, but it's Star Alliance and they let me in OK. There was free wifi... for 1 hour only. Which is a bit odd. And I had over 2 hours to kill, thank heavens for tethering, even in mainland Europe. I knew I'd be able to leave right at the last minute, 'cos I could see my plane from the non-balcony next to my table.

Cheese and Leffe Brune (aka Leffe Bruin, aka Leffe (B)ruin) tasted amazing. I mean, like, amazing. Clearly this is not revelatory, what with cheese and beer both being awesome -- but what I mean is, together they actually tasted more amazing than separately. Again, nothing new to most people, but I have such a terrible palette it was an almost religious experience. So I got a second plate of cheese. My diet is ace.

I sauntered to the gate, my boarding pass made the computer beep, and I held up the queue.

"Ah! Mr Foreman. Do you already have your onward boarding pass?"
"Actually no, I don't"
"Please wait here"
...
"So, here's your boarding pass from Addis Ababa to Zanzibar. I'm sorry, it looks improvised, but please, all the information is there and accurate, it's fine"

I don't think I've ever had a handwritten boarding pass before. It said "Class: Y" on it. Y is economy. That caused a bit of a panic later, as I wondered if I'd be able to use the lounge at Addis Ababa.

At checkin they'd told me the flight was very busy, in fact full from Milan, but (I guess because I'd been so early) allocating me a window seat had been fine. So I perched in seat 4L, the last row of business class, kinda half straddling with economy (but with a curtain to separate us). There was one other person in business, a pilot.

Two cabin crew poured me a champagne, one supervising the other: "it's her first time on a big plane". I got used to the seat, which didn't take much getting used to tbh. Ethiopian Airlines is not, in seating terms, radically different from BA's premium economy with a bit more leg room. And in several ways it's worse, in particular the complete lack of personal TV. So no movies, no map, no nothing. There were tiny screens hanging down every few rows but I couldn't see one from my seat anyway, and it's broadcast rather than on demand. So, y'know, not great. I've been lucky enough to fly some of the best business classes in the sky, and it's fair to say that Ethiopian is pretty low down the ranking (though I had a much worse experience on Thai once). But I'm clearly being a bit churlish and snobbish: business class is still business class, the seat was comfortable and the service great.

Straight after take off I was given a beer and a cake. A "local", ie Ethiopian beer, called St George. "Fly Ethiopian, Drink Ethiopian". Nice it was too, an opinion which was later canvassed by the staff who were eager to know what I thought, having never tasted it themselves what with being teetotal.

With no entertainment I had 3 ways to entertain myself: keep a notebook, look out the window, or read a book. The notebook is the reason I end up writing so much here, because I wrote so much there, and have no real sense of how to edit myself. I type too much. But anyone who's ever read my blog knows that anyway.

The Alps are gorgeous. I took a bunch of photos of mountains. I'll put them up somewhere soon, I guess.

The book I was reading is Mick Foley's "Foley is Good". I almost gave up on it when he badmouthed the Misfits - only one of the BEST BANDS EVER - on pages 86-87. Bastard. But since he's a double-hard bastard I'll let him off.

We stopped for an hour in Milan, to pick up passengers. Business class did not fill up, in fact only 2 more people came in to this cabin. But occupying the first 2 rows of economy, immediately behind me, were 2 adults and about 8 kids. Young kids. Loud kids. I tried not to let my exasperation show (apart from on twitter) but even the flight attendants were struggling a bit, and they suggested I move about 3 times. On the 3rd time I did, to row 1. For a start this gave me a view of one of the shared screens, but it also put me in front of the two newbies.

Because I could see a screen, I could now keep tabs on the safety announcement. I'm sure they said we had to turn off PDFs rather than PDAs.

Amharic is definitely one of the source languages for the whole "African languages just sound like clicks" stereotype.

The newbies ended up talking very loudly for the first 3 hours, as it was some self-important businessman dictating to his PA. The staff actually suggested I move again, apologising for my bad luck, but I stuck with it. They were always so friendly, and oh boy did they keep the alcohol flowing. Having already had booze in two lounges and two flights I was heading towards drunk, and by the time the meal finished I was another champagne, two beers and a port in. Oh my. The meal itself was a decent chicken curry, albeit with an Ethiopian "hot sauce" that actually seemed to lessen the spiciness of the chicken, not enhance it. Huh. Maybe my awful palette is still awful after all.

I kipped for a bit. It wasn't the best sleep, and was only about 3 hours, but I've had worse on better seats/beds. It was after I woke that I had the realisation that I might need to *ahem* charm the lounge staff into letting me in, having stepped off a business class flight with an economy boarding pass for the next leg(s). But I was in no fit state to charm anyone, what with being shattered and half cut. I also realised I was 216 pages through the biggest book of the 3 I had with me, on day 1 of a 7 day trip; and that this was, actually, my furthest solo holiday ever which hasn't included Australia. Huh.

Landed at Addis Ababa terminal 2 at about 6am, I think. It was not desperately hot, just pleasantly warm. I was first off the plane and into the terminal, shepherded up an escalator, along a corridor, down an escalator and back out onto the tarmac to get a bus to terminal 1 for Zanzibar.

Terminal 2, from the outside and my short experience of its interior, seems pretty modern and nice. Terminal 1 looked, from the outside, like an old hospital.

Terminal 1, on the inside, is like a hospital. No wards, but a big waiting area and 3 League of Friends shops. And a cafe called "London cafe". Heathrow it ain't. Singapore, Hong Kong, hell, Flagstaff it ain't. But there was a lounge, and I was allowed in, without even attempting a winning smile.

The lounge had all the appearance of a British seaside venue, like the dance hall of a hotel that's seen better days - except without the dance floor, just the chrome + leather seats and mirrored walls that surround it. This was pretty charming, actually: I love the bleak British seaside. I also love serving myself a huge plate of omelette and potatoes, washing it down with an Ethiopian Diet Coke. But most of all - in terms relevant to this experience - I love my "it's always 7am somewhere" attitude to long-haul travel, during which I childishly and unhealthily revel in grabbing myself a beer at 7am local time. That's the very long way of saying I grabbed another beer. And, since I was in Ethiopia now, I made it a, er, Heineken. Go me!

I got online and tried to stay awake. I was blinking for ever longer periods of time, sometimes 90-120 seconds. Another diet coke helped me a bit, but not as much as the increasing panic over whether I was actually going to make it to Zanzibar or not. My flight was showing a 75 minute delay, and the lounge completely emptied of people apart from 2 others. The Dar es Salaam-Zanzibar flight is the last of the morning, despite leaving at 1030 - now 1145. The staff had come round announcing each earlier flight so I did assume they would let us know when ours was finally ready for boarding, but panic got the better of me and I left, went through x-rays, and went to the only gate which had people by it.

Lots of people.

Lots of people who didn't speak English. I asked the first guy I saw who looked like staff if it was the Zanzibar flight; his reply was not in English, but he did push me to the desk where, after a phone call, the woman said "Yes!" to me, put a stamp on my boarding pass for no apparent reason, and waved me away. It was about 1150 and boarding hadn't started, but when it did I was glad to leave terminal 1 and ... be put on a bus to the plane, which was sat outside a gate in the superficially much nicer terminal 2. YOU BASTARDS.

Got on, sat down nice and quickly - row 2 - and got back on the champagne. Ah, how sweet it was. It was actually a much nicer and more modern plane, though still without personal TV screens. Again economy was heaving but business mostly empty, and I was tickled when they announced "our first stop is Dar es Salaam", like on a train. A train to Dar es Salaam, I guess.

The safety announcement said laptops were fine once the seatbelt signs were off, but no laptop accessories. There was a picture of a printer with a red line through it. Who the fuck would take a printer on a plane and try to use it?

The woman sat across the aisle from me was SO AGGRAVATING. She complained about the seat - "is this as far as it goes back? the one on my last flight was much better, you know". She ummed and ahhed about whether to have a champagne, orange, or water. She complained about the wine. She complained about the bread. She complained about a lack of garlic. She pretty much stopped a member of cabin crew every other time one of them walked past to make an issue about something. GRARGH.

At Dar es Salaam she spoke to me. To complain, about the cigarette rage we'd just witnessed. Some people had wanted to pop outside for a smoke, just standing on the tarmac... at an airport while we were refuelling. Like one of the most dangerous places you could do that. The cabin crew were so angry with them, almost shouting. "No! This is an airport! Just go and sit back down!". Madness.

By this point I had turned down a beer. The only one of the trip, I think. I had had a post-breakfast Cointreau though. There was no service on the last leg, you couldn't even undo your seatbelts. It was only a 45 mile flight, after all.

At Zanzibar I was first off the plane, and met at the bottom of the steps by a woman who escorted me across the tarmac to the arrivals part of the terminal. Wow. I already had a visa for Tanzania, which seemed to surprise the staff there. So I filled out an arrivals card, turned around from the desk, and was grabbed by the arm. The guy took my card and passport, handed it to one of the immigration officials at a desk - over the shoulders of about 3 or 4 others, none of that "wait at the yellow line" thing going on here, just total chaos. I reached through the crowd to have my fingerprints taken, just generally being let through the border at arm's length. Baggage reclaim was kinda like Launceston in Tasmania: all the bags individually being humped from a dolly onto a desk, with a scramble to grab them. Mine came in on the second batch and I spotted it, signalling to the guy out back who was picking it up, who in turn signalled back.

He understood. I understood. He brought my bag - just my bag - out, and around, into my hands, and while I was fumbling for a tip whispered "tip. tip. tip. tip. tip" into my ear.

In Zanzibar, it pays to be well prepared, and the well prepared pay.

Stumbling into a bevy of cab drivers, looking every bit the disheveled mess I was, I hunted for a guy with my name on a piece of paper. I failed. So I found someone with the same hotel written down and he pointed me towards my guy, who'd been off making a phone call. Luggage in the back, welcomes proffered, water opened and air conditioning turned on, we were off to the hotel. I was somewhat disappointed by how ruly everything was, expecting - for no good reason, really - the roads to be kinda chaotic as per, say, Istanbul, Ho Chi Minh City, Bangalore, Mumbai... y'know, just that general ivory tower "outside Europe and big cities, all traffic is dreadful" stereotype. But it was fine, not a white knuckle ride at all. Rules being kept, safe junctions, etc.

I tweeted this disappointment 30 seconds before we went past a totalled upside down bus being lifted by a crane. And as we left the town outskirts for the 30 miles to the hotel, my driver was ever more frequently picking which side of the road to use based on, I dunno, essentially nothing. There was less and less traffic and more and more cows. And then a police roadblock outside the area of the island where my resort, along with plenty of others, were.

We arrived. I checked in. I tipped various people. I got online. And then I slept. Hello, Africa!

To Brussels. And beyond?

I'm kinda tired. It's been a long day. A long week in fact. In order to best carry that impression onto the page, I'm going to write - at length, so much length - about what happened. Twitter is your best bet if you want a tl;dr version.

Last Thursday I left my flat with a backpack and a suitcase, headed down the hill, up the steps, over the bridge of Surbiton station, down the steps on the other side... and stopped. Swore. Did the journey in reverse. I'd left my mp3 player at home, as well as my notepad. The latter wasn't so bad, I could always buy new paper, but there's no way I was going to survive a week without music, especially as I'd only just taken delivery of 4 Prince albums. So I headed back, stuffed the missing items into my rucksack, and started again. This was inauspicious, and I could really have done with some auspicion. But in its absence, what I needed most was a bus. Then another bus. Then a tube. And then a plane.

Just the one plane. That's all I knew for sure.

I'd been anxious for a while, kinda inexplicably. On a lot of my solo jaunts, in fact on pretty much all of them, I'm pretty carefree. So long as I've got a passport and a credit card or two then, if push comes to shove, there's really not going to be that much of a problem. So I'm not really sure what I was so worried about, but worried I was. I had a BA flight from Heathrow to Brussels booked for sure, and then, well, hrm. I either had zero, one, or two tickets to Zanzibar. That's not normal. One is normal. Zero and two are not.

If you read the post prior to this, you'll see my plan. The dates had changed but the itinerary hadn't. I had spent the last* of my BMI miles on two one-way redemptions: Brussels to Zanzibar via Addis Ababa (and two fuel stops), with Ethiopian Airlines; and Zanzibar to London via Addis Ababa, Frankfurt, and two fuel stops, with Ethiopian and Lufthansa. I'd booked it weeks ago, paid, and heard of no alterations. Yet 4 days before I was leaving, I headed over to checkmytrip.com and, er, neither reservation showed up. On flybmi.com they showed as being on the original dates, and on ba.com they showed as being PAPER TICKETS ONLY.

Wait. What? Paper tickets? No-one gives out paper tickets these days, and I certainly didn't have any. And why was I looking at ba.com anyway? Well, BA bought BMI, and their IT systems were merging. Badly. I got a bit of solace from flyertalk.com users who pointed me to a "classic" version of checkmytrip.com - "classic" being code for "works properly" - and lo and behold, there was my booking. Dates correct, flights correct, no seat assignments (despite me having done those back in April), and an e-ticket number. Good.

And another e-ticket number.

Oh.

There's a way to check your booking via ticket numbers, directly with Amadeus (the backend system some airlines use). I did that. Both numbers showed up, only one had my name next to it, and an attempt to get the full details just threw errors.

I had tried to checkin online with Ethiopian Airlines. It recognised my booking, had my name and the correct flights, invited me to click ... and then threw an error. Specifically an error saying something non-specific(!) had changed to do with my flights or reservation or ticket, and that I really should call Ethiopian Airlines. In Ethiopia.

I thought about calling (not just Ethiopian, but maybe BMI? or even BA?) to see what the hell was going on, but since I hate phone calls I didn't bother. No, I'd take my separate flight to Brussels, wait, for checkin to open, and see what happened. All part of the adventure, right?

I'd checked in on my phone for the BA flight, so as soon as I got off the tube I went to a bag drop desk and, um, paused. The BA app wouldn't show the boarding pass, because it just kept crashing. Way to go, Android. Turns out it throws a fatal error if it can't get a data signal, something it was struggling to do. Eventually it worked and I resolved to just keep the damn thing on screen as much as possible.

At security I ended up in a queue behind what appeared to be Tetsuo. Or maybe Barry Sheen. That metal detector sure did love him.

It had been a long time since I'd been in a BA lounge. Because of my BMI/Star Alliance allegiance I'd hardly flown BA for years, and when I did I had no means of getting into a lounge. I'm not forking out silly money for business class intra-Europe, and I don't have any shiny cards. Except I do! Hurrah! Thanks to my Amex Platinum - taken out purely to get a bunch of miles, of course - I've got a Cathay Pacific gold card despite not flying them since 2006. Gold with them is equivalent of Silver with BA, and otherwise known as Sapphire across the whole oneworld alliance. Yeah. Uh. Whatever. Basically this means I can get into the business class lounges when I fly BA, so that's what I did.

"Hello! Here's my boarding pass , and, er, I've got this card"
"OK Mr Foreman, you're fly...ing....econ...omy...let's...see... this card isn't on the booking?"
"No, it's not. I want to collect miles with BA. But this card lets me in, right?"
<squint>
"Right, yes, yes it does. I'm going to add 'oneworld sapphire' to your booking. Welcome!"

They may or may not have pronounced the correct typography. But, y'know, yay! [Like]

I'd decided to start using foursquare.com while heading to Heathrow. Essentially because I wanted to do location stuff on twitter, not Facebook, which I've mostly given up using. So when I got into BA lounge I did my very first checkin.

Oh dear. It auto-tweeted some horrifying thing about being a certified newbie. I was so ashamed. But, as usual, the first flush of free alcohol helped to nullify the shame. As is customary, I started with a London Pride. Mmm. London Pride. From a, er, tin. Bleh. But, free.

BA lounge food has got a lot better in the last couple of years. Self-service chicken korma was very decent, and I washed it down with a second Pride and a Malarone anti-malarial tablet. Being the reading type (and the writing type) and the somewhat nervous about health type, I read the leaflet about side-effects. The nurse at my surgery had warned me to take paracetamol because I was likely to feel ropey. The leaflet listed symptoms that over 1 in 10 people get. That's a huge proportion! And then the symptoms which "up to" 1 in 10 people get, and then the ones where they just don't know the frequency, OK? STOP ASKING.

One of the symptoms is "crying". Like Rob said: these were, potentially, emo tablets. Was giving them to a melodrama queen like me such a good idea? I s'pose avoiding malaria is kinda worth it...

I didn't have any paracetamol. I had no idea what gate my flight was at (and it could have been at the satellite terminal, which adds a good 20 minutes to the walk). And I didn't want to drink too much, in case I had to be properly with it in Brussels. So I upped, 2 drinks in, and headed out to Boots.

By which I mean WH Smith. I walked all over T5 and could not bloody find Boots, apart from a big "coming soon: Boots!" sign. Even after following the "Pharmacy --->" sign I failed. I did see a lot of duty free shops, which reminded me of the ones in Sydney which were dishing out free spirits samples at 9am back in January. Just as I was thinking, pah, Sydney beats London, that's not good, I spotted a lass handing out free Jura whisky. Didn't partake, but TAKE THAT, Australia.

I had a gin and tonic on the flight. And that's it. There was no food service. To be fair we were only in the air for about 40 minutes, but they used to do a lightning service even on the shortest hauls. I mean, this isn't a big deal, but just a bit surprising.

So. I'm in Belgium. I've got my suitcase back. I've found the Ethiopian Airlines checkin desk. I've got a €50 note in my pocket, a shitload of US dollars in my bag (useful currency in Africa, especially in countries where it's illegal to take their own currency out. Like, say, Tanzania). And I've got an hour to kill. There was a bar called "Café Stella Artois" which sold Leffe, and it was tempting, as was the American diner, but instead I just perched on a seat and fretted.

5.15pm - 3hrs before takeoff - arrived, and I sauntered up to the business class checkin desk. Handed over my passport and a printout of (one of) my e-ticket(s).

"Tanzania? Visa on arrival?"
"No, there's a visa in there"
"Oh, yes. Great!"

and pretty much before I knew it, there I was, checked in all the way to Zanzibar, my final destination. Hurrah! Not that I had boarding passes for both legs, mind - for some unexplained reason they couldn't issue the second flight's pass there at the desk, but I was assured that "someone will find [me] at the gate". Well alrighty then. I was off to Africa, via the Brussels Airlines lounge, a bottle of Leffe Brune, a Stella, and a whole lot of cheese. And Milan. But, eventually, it would be new continent ahoy!