On a train again...

Apologies once again for the gap in the entries, and I’m sure there’s less people reading this now more than ever…

My Current entry finds me, slightly motion sick, slightly claustrophobic, and very much alone in a sleeper carriage on an 11 and a half hour train journey from Zurich, Switzerland to Budapest, Hungary… I’ve just spent the most amazing 5 days with Tess, and Cornelia and Paul, Mum’s friends (and mine too now I suppose) from Bosco-Gurin, the town where Mum’s surname comes from, maybe I’ve told you that before… whatever. It was lovely. They are the most hospitable and giving people ever, nothing was too much trouble and everything was organized for us… The town is this amazing little place with a population of only about 50 but they have the smallest supermarket in Switzerland and one of the oldest Churches, plus it was settled in 1240 something… before there was even a Switzerland… quite amazing. Now they have a ski lift and it attracts quite a few snow bunnies from all over. Very nice. On top of all that they had just had a meter and a half of fresh snow and it was gorgeous. I mean, I’ve seen snow before, but this was the soft fluffy stuff you only see in movies… it’s unfortunately still cold and wet… but fun nonetheless…

I’d just like to add that I don’t know how people who can’t touch type can sit on a bus or train and stare at their computer screens all day… Its now the morning and I can sit and stare out the window as I type. Which is nice s my mind can wander as I dribble shit on my computer. Much more interesting that sitting staring at the screen. I’ve just entered Hungary, and I should only be a matter of an hour or so away from Budapest. So apart from the matter of the “a” key sometimes failing to register that I’ve touched it, the touch typing is going quite well.

I’ve thought about a lot of things that I could and should tell you all about, but now that I actually get time to sit down and type them out, I dither can’t remember, or they seem unimportant or silly. I know I was laying in bed one night thinking… and then I was thinking about thinking, and how much amazing it is that we can think, but how much of a pain in the ass it is when you’re trying to sleep at 3 am. See what I mean?

Nothing too much bad has happened at this point – I did find an amazing deal on a 4gb SD card from a camera store that has since proved to be too good to be true – it doesn’t work either in my camera or in my computer. Bit pissed off about that, but not much I can do about it now. Might try and see if I can get it swapped over when I get back to Adelaide… I know Harvey’s can do a dodgy docket up for me… but Can and Will are two different things… *shrugs* oh well… we’ll see. And my phone seems to work only intermittently, depending on the area I’m in and the service provider that my phone picks up. A tad annoying as there are people that I need to contact and I’m not sure how or when I’ll next have internet. Although the hostels I’ve booked in both Vienna and Prague both say they have internet – we’ll see how much they want to charge me for the usage. Always a killer I’ve found.

On a good note – the cold/pain in my ass/flu that I’ve had for nearly a month now seems to be getting better… the cough has all but disappeared and there’s only a relatively small amount of sinus fluid (Snot) trickling down the back of my throat. Lovely, eh? Anyway, I’m blaming the cure on the amazingly clean Swiss air. If it gets worse again in Hungary then I’m moving to Switzerland permanently. Only joking… but it was VERY nice. And I think I could pick up German relatively quickly… I do understand about one in 50 words already! It’s a start.

Its funny being alone again now that Tess has gone home. Big empty space there. It hurts like hell… I guess when something that you’re used to and you love is taken away from you, but you get used to the pain. I know I always have. Unfortunately.

Anyway, as I think of more, I’ll let you know, for now I’m going to put this away before I get too much more motion sick and I have to throw up the half a week old Croissant that I was given by the train company for breakfast.

Ciao

If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough
- Mario Andretti