TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

10:40 PM
Posted by jodi rose

spent most of the day missing trains. woken up early by the two vivacious french girls in my room but then fell asleep again and got to the station in time but was waiting in line to buy my ticket when the 10.06 left. decided to go have breakfast in my favourite lush cafe, the jules verne - which features a magnificent collection of old typewriters radio and photos - then missed a tram and even though the train was late managed to get there just as it was pulling out. again.
this time thought I'd better stay local, so walked around the corner up the hill in the sun - really noticing that extra few degrees colder here, although last week was apparently minus ten to minus fifteen so perfect time to be away in strangely sunny glasgow. Stumbled across the technica museum, went in and found a wonderful collection of vintage cars, motorbikes, railway paraphernalia and pictures. Some great Skoda models - one like the kind mum had in the seventies - and a wild car called the Tatra, very sexy jaguar-like. Also incredibly rare bohnlander (?) motorcycles, czech company only made 700 or so of each. Wonderful pictures of glam slovak girls on scooters in the mountains, and very funky black train with the red star on front.

Finally managed to catch the 13:56 train which turned out to stop at every station, so took two and a half hours instead of one and a half.
Actually a nice chilled out pace, time to look at the villages and scenery - very different to scotland, all the grass burnt by the cold, ponds and streams frozen and snow in the fields, no tea or coffee.
But am exceptionally glad to be home with my bridge, walked along the danube this afternoon in the twilight and admired the reflections.
Invited to Langos party this weekend - mmmm deep fried bread! - and going to talk with another high school class on monday, and warp some more innocent young hungarian minds. Well, open them to the possibilities of a life of.... art.

During my weekend as a stateless person I was a gypsy queen. Now I have this virgin passport with only one stamp, it's quite strange. I really miss my old passport - it had so many fabulous border crossing. Ship from helsinki to stockholm and tallin; car between latvia, estonia and lithuania, and again croatia and slovenia; train and foot from hungary/slovakia and train from hungary/slovenia; plus of course assorted plane landings. The new one has some kind of electronic chip in the middle page - wonder if they will just implant that in me some day. Scary futuristic totalitarian clone/id control scenario. Then they could just stamp me. With indelible ink. Ok, it's getting late. Enough.