Sunday: no why
http://20six.co.uk/sunday
powered by
20six.co.uk
|
|
The beginning; Calais welcomes careful drivers
It`s been a while since I expressed my intention to return to China, I also had the intention to write something about the journey. Three months ago I embarked on a journey to accomplish the former intention, only now do I get around to the latter.
It took two months to get to China as I opted for the scenic route of road and rail. I`m not even sure why I didn`t just jump on an aeroplane. Perhaps it`s the romance of those legendary journeys from former times before air travel existed. Or perhaps I felt that I had let myself down on my return from China by flying from Moscow instead of doing the last leg overland. Perhaps it`s the carbon. Perhaps I`m thoroughly sick of airports and their constant reminders of the fear of terrorism we are expected to live in. In any case, it was the scenic route.
As I said it started 3 months ago. Three months and one day. A plan was pencilled and then constantly amended as visas were characteristically troublesome to organise. Everything fell into place, and on the day the final visa was ready so was there a lift to Germany available from my former flatmate. On the morning of my departure I got a train to London, collected the passports and returned to the my former corner of South London only to find that our planned departure time was midnight. The last time I had got a ride over the channel with him, taking advantage of one of his mind-boggling wheeler dealer schemes, we had missed the ferry, and again it was a race against time. Despite a minor breakdown on the way to Dover we got the 12am ferry. My flatmate had brought along a friend to share the driving, surprising as he often went from London to the far reaches of Eastern Europe in one arduous 48 hour slog. This time he was going to Germany for the purchase of some flashy paint (unavailable in the UK) to suit the taste of his overly rich Russian employers. The friend was a Serbian Essex boy with all the charms of, well, Serbian guys and all the endearing laddishness of Essex boys. Oh if I were several years younger. Heh.
Anyhow, my admiration for the wisdom of the shared driving soon dissolved when my two charming companions settled down on the ferry with a round of beer, perhaps two. Fortunately we didn`t crash or have any major mishaps apart from having to sleep earlier than planned as the drivers succumbed to tiredness. Thus I spent my first night of travel sleeping uncomfortably on the back seat of a steamed-up car in a service station car park in Belgium.
As day broke we started off and presently got stuck in traffic around Brussels. We inched across Belgium and made better progress through Luxembourg until we finally entered Germany and found our way to Trier where my other former flatmate was waiting. For me it is a rare and unusual treat to have a travelling companion, and it was much to my surprise that he was enthusiastic to quit his job for a long trawl across Europe and Asia. A treat but also a double-edged sword as I feel I`m in a position or responsibility for a person 5 years my junior, keen but naive, enthusiastic about backpacking while I have got to the stage where I find backpacking and the culture that surrounds it as largely pretentious and tiresome.
After a drawn out few hours in a paint shop in Cologne we spent an alcohol fuelled evening of eating and touring the city only to finally bid a heart-wrenching farewell to the Eastern European contingent and collapsed into bed. Only to be painfully wrenched back into consciousness by the obligation to check out at 10am. Ten a.m., only in Germany (or so I thought). Around midday we embarked on a 21 hour bus to Warsaw. I had delegated the task of arranging the transportation to Poland and to this day I wonder weather the slow, winding, painstaking journey via every filthy minor bus terminal in Eastern Germany was really the most economical way to go. The crowning moment was when the bus stopped in a car park somewhere in Poland and waited for another two buses to arrive, upon which there was a frenzy of packing and swapping people and baggage between buses. With no English or German spoken, except by a handful of people as baffled as we were, it was a miracle that we ended on the correct bus. Yet we did, and a few hours later we thankfully disembarked at Warsaw where we were gathered up by our hosts for the next few days.
The short time in Poland merits a concerted effort to summarise so I`ll leave it at that for now. Hopefully I can write again soon, but tomorrow I`m leaving to another country, another unknown. In fact, after all the effort to get to China I had to leave and have for the past 3 weeks been in the country of elusive apostrophes
|
|
|
|
Latest entries: The Inevitable, 'Holiday'
|
|