“We shall be travelling overland as far as we possibly can” we announced smugly when plans were made and friends and families informed. “Arrival in Moscow in a week or so, via various European capitals”.
We plotted our itinerary and people nodded, with awe, we assumed. Two days before departure my friend Abi asked “But why don’t you just fly to Berlin?”
A pregnant pause. A cough. A throat cleared.
“Because – we don’t – because – THAT’S NOT WHAT WE’RE DOING ABI, STOP ASKING QUESTIONS”.
Now here’s a suggestion for all you potential travellers: perhaps don’t optimistically schedule your date of departure four weeks after when you hope your operation will be performed, based entirely on the vague assumption of an ill-informed NHS surgeon. This is not the most sensible beginning to the trip of a lifetime.
I’ve been suffering horrible undiagnosed attacks for two years. Having finally been diagnosed with gallstones this spring, I was promised an operation to remove the offending organ “by the end of the summer”. So, big travel plans in mind, I breezily quit my job with two months notice, intending to depart at the end of August and march directly from my desk to the operating table. Gallbladder whipped out, two weeks of recuperation, two further weeks of no-heavy-lifting, then off we’d jolly well go on the first Eurostar out of St Pancras to Brussels and tally ho, hello Moscow, forwards to the Trans-Siberian, and so forth.
Some time ago we came up with the bright idea that we should travel from Sarajevo to London by train. The Sarajevo part came from Peter’s studies; the train travel from me. I love trains. I mean, I know naff all about trains but I love to travel on them. Stations are easier to reach than airports, the journey is simpler, the scenery is often second-to-none (and unspoilt by traffic or clouds), you can walk around on board, it’s easier than flying to meet interesting people (and similarly to escape from weirdos), no passport control, no hideous journey to the suburbs four hours before your scheduled departure time, and you end up slap-bang in the middle of your destination.
What began as a great idea (fly one-way to Sarajevo, then wind our way back to London via rail alone) slowly disintegrated as we left it far too long to book flights and based our travel plans entirely on the SkyScanner results of some six weeks previously. When we finally got around to sorting tickets to Bosnia, we discovered that the cheapest flights went via Istanbul. Istanbul. Further away from London than Sarajevo – but cheaper to reach. And with a 18-hour layover. We shrugged and optimistically added another destination to our already bulging travel plans. Five countries in eight days was for suckers. We could easily do six.
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