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I came careering down the piste at speed and skied slap-bang into some chap who stopped right in front of me. At the time I wasn't aware that I'd broken my left collarbone... following two weeks of immense boredom I was on the verge of insanity, and so when on a trip to my local village I found myself returning to my hotel not only with the bag of apples I'd set out to buy, but also with an Interail ticket, entitling me to free carriage on virtually any train in Europe for a month...
European Tales: Interrail trip around Europe, a lengthy tale
Joseph Tame2006-06-30 17:39:54
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my spirits, but perhaps, as I wrote in my diary, it was more the standard of living that got to me: 'I really detect a coldness and a tiredness in the eyes and faces of the Budapest people- A little lad, perhaps 10 years old has just sat down beside me and asked me for money for food. There is no shame in asking, it happens everywhere and anywhere. As soon as I stepped from the train I was pounced upon by a whole heard of folks. Taxi drivers, porters, black-market moneychangers etc, they all wanted a piece of the action. I'd say that life is very "raw" here. There is an air of desperation that I have never felt before, an underlying struggle beneath all aspects of life- Budapest - such a strange place. Like a starved ex-communist state struggling to adapt to a new role in Europe. Certainly an experience. Old and new all rolled into one.'
I was glad to board my next train that was to take me through Romania. Crossing the border from Hungary we were to experience the first of what seemed like endless searches by border guards of our carriages. It was 2am when the train stopped in a dark station in the middle of nowhere. Looking out of the window all I could see were a few gun-toting soldiers and perhaps six dogs, almost all of which only had three legs. They owed their existence to the passengers on trains such as mine. Whilst waiting for the carriages to be searched people threw scraps of bread from the windows - the unfortunate risk in this game was that occasionally one of the dogs would be looking the wrong way as it scouted the ground around us, caught by a passing goods train it would be lucky to escape with its life, let alone three legs.
This particular pause in our journey lasted some three hours and I completely lost count of the number of times some official or other would pull back my door and mutter something to his colleague. Whenever I sensed a question being asked I simply repeated the word "British" until they tired of
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Italy Gallery
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Romania Gallery
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