Today is mostly a Buda day. My hotel is in Pest, the station I arrived in is in Pest, and the boat trip went from that side too, but today I’m venturing across the river.
My new hotel has a light on the smoke alarm that flashes so brightly, I can see it through my eyelids, and people upstairs in the dentist’s (I think) decide it’s a good idea to move furniture around at 5am, but I have cunningly brought an eye mask and earplugs with me – essentials for travel.
First a quick film review of Before Sunrise. It’s a film in which not much happens. It’s basically a couple of self-involved people in their early 20s talking to each other for two hours. My advice would be to watch this when you are as young as possible, while their conversations still seem profound rather than inane. I expect I would have enjoyed this much more when I was a student but I haven’t the patience any more.
It is another beautiful day, so the shorts are making a second appearance. The weather is supposed to break tomorrow, so this is the perfect day for doing outdoor things, like walking “The Ring”, an approximately circular collection of boulevards that circles Vienna city centre and contains a staggering number of world-class buildings.
I’m ready early so I can use the last 15 minutes’ validity of yesterday’s 24-hour ticket to get to the station, which is handy since I only have tuppence ha’penny left in Czech currency.
I spent most of yesterday being too warm and carrying my jacket, so naturally today I went out in shorts and a sleeveless top, no jacket, and spent most of the day being too cold. It was lovely when I was in the sun, though, and I must have fairly stoked up my vitamin D.
Bad dreams bordering on nightmares (the whole of Sussex was destroyed when an earthquake set off a nuclear accident) but awoke well rested nonetheless.
Very weird dreams that I won’t bore you with, but the shower did indeed work. Breakfast had a wide variety of foods, but no bowls for the cereal, so that was a bit of a challenge. I expect they only put cereal there for the foreigners, anyway, and there weren’t many of those. It’s a big conference-type hotel, so it was all Germans, or at least German speakers.
Everything goes very smoothly this morning – I wake up just ahead of the alarm, the train from Bellgrove is on time and Avanti has not cancelled first class (as they did once before) so I get plenty of free coffee and a somewhat bland avocado bagel delivered to my seat for breakfast. By the time we reach Carlisle, the train announcer is apologising for the delay. Should be OK though – I’ve left plenty of time for the transfer in London 🤞
K C Murdarasi 