July 2013
The Great Circular European Railway Challenge
18 chapters
Start at chapter 1 → Newest: chapter 18
Thalys, what's the matter?
23 countries in 18 days. Fucking madness, I tells ya.
That there is a teetotaller amongst us is one of the biggest surprises of the day.
How do I love Three, let me count the ways
13 minutes to spare. Never any doubt, was there?
If we didn't make the train to Copenhagen, we were screwed.
The grim and frostbitten North
It’s raining. And 13°c. We’re further north than I’ve ever been.
As I type it's 0137, broad daylight, and I'm in a cabin in a campsite in a town 140 miles inside the Arctic Circle.
South
Because there was no other direction to go.
We'd got the bus up, but it was high time we got on a train south.
Supersize Mike
This train was going on a boat.
McDonald's in 3 different countries in one day.
Shouting Prague, er, Prague, er, lager
Anyway, that bridge in Prague. Y’know. That bridge.
Dresden to Prague by train is, simply, fantastic.
Oh boy
4 countries in 7 hours? Love it.
I just had one of the best days of my life.
When in Romania
The scenery, including the train line itself, was just wonderful.
Emerging from the station we crossed the wide communist boulevard and HOLY SHIT LOOK AT THAT PALACE.
Are we there yet?
Things are a bit weird.
I guess Skopje was "there", and now we'd been there it was time to make our way home.
Balkan trips and Balkan kips and Balkan nips and ...
A passport stamp! With a picture of a train on it!
I've never spent so long simultaneously cluelessly lost in the middle of bastard nowhere yet also precisely aware of my location to within 50 metres.
Hey EU
Time to get back to the EU.
I hope peace lasts a long time, and Sarajevo is somewhere I already want to revisit soon.
Not in Balkansas any more
This is a very special way to approach a very special place.
We spent twice as long in Venice as the whole of Slovenia (and about 5 times more than Slovakia).
The Great Circular Venetian Shanks' Pony Challenge
Venice is bloody amazing.
Rome was just pissing me off.
Hannibal Lester
The scenery was outrageously outrageous the whole way.
We're going over them, not through, not around, but over.
Tourisme Grande Vitesse
I like it here.
Stretch says he woke up several times in the night wondering why the fuck we weren't moving, the 4-bunk dorm making him think it was a train, delayed again, delayed again...
The last supper
It’s our last night on the rails.
Well, Jason and I went to a museum, rules be damned. We're renegades like that.
Home Stretch
It’s been a long trip.
This has been, in the skipper's words, the biggest fuck-off train trip of all time. He's not fucking wrong.
Off the rails Newest
It’s over.
I'm cleaner than I've been for nearly 3 weeks and my bags no longer give me a sore throat when I open them.