Saturday, 30 May 2009

Trying not to be grumpy and failing

I'm really really trying not to be grumpy but it's difficult. I got a fitful hours sleep in Burgerking before getting on the train which despite being a luxury high speed one has really small seats just too small to sleep in, even though I found two. The TER trains have wide comfortable squidgy seats which it's easy to sleep in but not these. And the armrests are made out of an especially hard plastic and the lights are brightly on. I managed to sort of wedge myself in and cover my eyes with my hat so that although I wasn't asleep I was in that sort of suspended animation state where you don't use any energy and so don't get any more tired than you already are – just grumpier. But because it's a luxury train it has air conditioning and what is the point of having air conditioning unless everybody knows about it? So of course it is set to just below comfort levels so that anyone not moving very much (i.e. me) quickly starts to get borderline hypothermia. And then, not half an hour in (so only 4:30am) some woman comes tramping down the aisle screeching 'Morgan, Guten Morgan' in a children's TV presenter voice. I assume it's the guard and jump up to dig my ticket out but it turns out she just wants to know if I want some coffee. I glare at her and say 'Nein – nur schlarfen' and crunch back down into my self imposed stress position. She continues her merry way up the brightly lit ice box of a train carriage loudly asking if anyone else would like some coffee. Then the announcer comes on but not content with just saying 'Next stop, Stuttgart' she has to say 'Hello, good morning , the train will shortly be arriving at Stuttgart, that's stuttgart, the time is bloody stupid o'clock in the morning, thank you for travelling with Deutsch Bahn ICE, on this train from Munich to Mannheim, connections from Stuttgart are for Berlin, etc etc, we hope you have enjoyed your journey with ICE and we look forward to seeing you again ..blah blah...' and on and on as if she was on cocaine or something, and then all over again in English. Grrr. And then the guard did come round and then insisted on seeing my ticket again on her way back down the train. And not only are the stupid seats too narrow but so is the aisle so although I only have two toes protruding out by half a centimetre everyone who walks past has to bang into them. And I got my wallet nicked and so I keep checking everything twice to make sure some thieving sausage eater hasn't made off with the rest of my belongings. And I'm tired. And the burgerking is sitting in my stomach like a greasy brick.

Post-post note
The discovery in Koln that the local speciality was giant size cakes did something to elevate my mood and after eating a toffee iced walnut pastry the size of my head I felt better. After all I had a lot of sunny snoozes yesterday so I should be charged up enough to get through a day of low sleep levels without becoming homicidal, even though I got off at the wrong station in Brussels and am now on the super-scenic (i.e. slow) train to Gent. But there exists a place where they make cakes as big as my head and so the world is alright after all.

1 comment:

bairuide said...

Enjoying the running commentary....and thanks for post card....DAD