12 days of basketball – more trains
I could almost sum up this day with one word : TRAINS
Waking-up in Vienna after the game there, Friday was about traveling again – this time from Vienna to Stuttgart. While planning I looked at flights, trains or renting a car, flights were the quickest but rather costly on a Friday and at the time thought that ‘sure, maybe the train is OK to take and work while traveling and it’s something different’.
So when the train, once again only cost couple of tenners – train it was.
11.20 am start from Vienna, just the short walk across the square from my hotel. First up is a two and half hour train ride to Salzburg, train isn’t too full and time goes quickly listening to podcasts.
8 minute transfer time in Salzburg is initially slightly conserning, but I soon realise that there are lots of others who are making the same change and the train is going on time.
The transfer is actually only across the platform where the second train is waiting.. this train is the first one that I look at and go ‘OK, now that is an OLD train’… not quite a steam engine from Harry Potter movies, but the quality of trains went slightly downhill. Budapest-Vienna was ‘luxury’, Vienna-Salzburg was OK and finally (for the longest leg) Salzburg-Stuttgart was an 80’s train.
Still got a single seat, so there is no seat next to me – but I slowly think that over four hours on this seat in a fully packed train (and not fully packed as in the UK where people are standing like sardines – but all seats taken) .. it will be a long afternoon/evening.
So it proves to be, probably from around 3.30pm onwards it starts to feel like my bum is going numb and going to walk from carriage to the next is bit of a chore are the automatic doors do not work, so you have to use brute force to force the doors to open… and of course they do not close after you, so cold air floods the carriage if the person opening the doors does not close them, nice 🙂
Podcasts run out about 45 minutes before Stuttgart – so I just stare out of the window as the scenery flies by.
Arrive to Stuttgart few minutes late – then to look for the S-bahn to take me to the airport, taken a hotel there for two nights as I am arriving quite late and then tomorrow have a game – and then a 6am flight on Sunday morning.
With the handle of my suitcase breaking during today – the long walk to S-bahn, well maybe 800meters or so? Feels a long one as I somehow manage to drag the bag with me, now another 30 minutes on the train to the airport and finally the days travels are over.
After checking-in it is time to drop a WhatsApp message to the player whose game I am going to tomorrow and ask ‘are there any shops that sell suitcases in the town you live in??’ – as my current suitcase now looks like it could be used as a weapon – with one bit of the handle sticking out with a metal rod sticking out of it.
Conclusion – while taking the train was cheaper, it is not that different from flying to me. I can’t work on a laptop in planes, but neither can I work on a laptop in trains. So 45minute flight vs 8 hours traveling on a train?? But it was an experience and broke off the monotony of flying from A to B.
Surprisingly NOT!! another night of not being able to sleep – as I type this at 3.30am – really could have slept from going to bed until about mid-day.. but at 3am I woke-up and just couldn’t fall asleep again… getting to be a bit of a theme of going to bed before minding and getting up at 3am – and I’ll feel it later today and tomorrow.
Such is life – sometimes you sleep, sometimes you don’t.
This post is also a thank you to my broken suitcase, you have served me well over the past 13-15 years.. we’ve had many travels together and been to many places, but all good things come to an end at some point and this was it now. Not sure who feels more ‘broken’ after 15 years of traveling .. the photographer or the bag, that I guess remains to be seen in the future.
