Back to Blighty

I'd allowed 10 hours for the trip to Bristol - 2 from Paris to Calais, 2 to Dover, 2 to London, 2 to Bristol and 2 for odd delays. That meant that the 9am start should approximate a 7pm finish.

With no alarm it was always a bit of a gamble as to whether I would wake in time, but my eyes opened at 7.30am and I grabbed my pre-packed bags and went down to sign out and grab a coffee from the vending machine.

I hobbled the few hundred metres to the Gare de Lyon and found my way into the Metro. I didn't have a ticket, my two day pass not being valid for two days - 48 hours - but rather for the day of issue and up to midnight of the next. Which was annoying as I'd timed buying it to cover today's travel.

Still, I queued patiently in a line that fed two windows. To the left was the ticket window, to the right some kind of information window where a couple of travellers received words and left. I was next in line and not wanting information, waited. After thirty seconds or so an irate elderly Frenchman walked from the back and roundly berated me for not going to the information window, saying we were all in a hurry.

At the window I asked if he sold tickets. In that laconic way that the French have perfected over centuries of dealing with, particularly English, fools he replied: "It's what I do.."

Somehow the French have mastered the ability to talk down to you as if you were a simpleton, yet without directly insulting or patronising you. It's wonderful. It's masterful. It's impossible to counter. And it's embarrasing. I grabbed my ticket and scuttled into the bowels of the Metro.

At the Gare du Nord I surfaced and headed for a bank of chest-high machines that resembled ATMs. I'd purchased my ticket online for both the train to Calais and the ferry. To retrieve my train tickets, I simply had to enter a code into the machine, confirm my identity by swiping my credit card and the ticket would be printed out. It's a great way of reducing queues. Providing it works, which it didn't for me: my card refused to be read.

There were mercifully short queues for les billets and I was given a ticket and a troubled look as the lady pointed out the five minutes I had in which to change trains at the mid-point halt. Not to worry, they wouldn't schedule two trains without leaving adequate time to transfer.. would they?

They would and did. I missed the train and was stranded. The next train would leave some two hours hence, as would the ferry.

I tried to find a bus that would make the trip. I wandered around the station precincts trying to find an internet cafe so that I could alert the ferry company to my plight. Nothing. I just had to sit it out.


At Calais station, two hours and twenty minutes after the ferry had left, I saw a sign for buses to the ferry terminus. I followed the direction of the arrow and, some ten minutes later, found myself in town at the exact moment the tourist office was having it's lunch break. There had been no mention of buses to the ferries for some time. I asked a man getting into a 'GB' camper van.

"It's a long way, mind," he said after pointing me where I suspected I had to go. I had given up on the bus and asked about the ferries themselves. I shifted uncomfortably on my blistered feet and tried to look pitiful.

"Good luck," he said climbing into his van. Bugger, not pitiful enough.

I picked a bus stop near the station, waited for the first bus and climbed on. Asking for the ferry had the requiredresult: a shake of the head and a precise indication of where the correct bus stop lay. It was clear the sign writers in Calais had moonlighted from their job confusing tourists in Paris.

At the stop were a reassuring number of nervous backpackers anxious as to whether this was indeed the correct stop. And I wasn't the only one who had missed a connection. I relaxed a notch.

After half an hour the bus came and wound its way through the town and an increasingly complex system of roads that snaked through a buildingless landscape towards the port. I was glad I hadn't attempted the walk.

At the P&O counter I was all prepared to plead for mercy. I had the E15 ready in case I had to purchase a new ticket, but my main concern was room - could I get on the next ferry or would I have to wait? My fears were handled with a courtesy I hadn't expected. Not only could I get on the next boat, but they were used to people missing connections; there would be no need to pay again.

At immigration a Greek youth was having a problem: he had no passport.

"This is an identity card," the lady half-shouted, using the time-honoured English way of dealing with foreigners.

The other immigration chap told his client to pay attention.

"Nothing to do with you, is it?"

When I got through, I asked him about the Greek, starting by saying that after hours on the road a bit of entertainment was nice. He clearly wondered about my idea of entertainment, but engaged my question: why, if the UK was in the EU, were people not allowed freedom of movement? Without actually answering what I suspect could have been summed up by simply saying 'politics', he indicated the alternative.

"You should see what's hanging around 'ere at night. Scum of the earth, all trying to get in."

The Greek, obviously not scum, had got in. And personally I would rather be scum in the south of France than in Birmingham. I was tempted to say that the UK should open its doors and show people what they are getting into. That should cause a nett emigration.


On the ferry I looked at the duty free prices, wandered around, changed some money and finally went on deck. About a dozen ships could be seen at various points of the compass. I ate the last of my chocolate and a salad bought in Paris and went in. It was clouding over.

I have preternatural instincts when travelling. I can take a seat and sleep, waking at the merest of noises or bumps. I found a corner seat, put my bags safely around me, and closed my eyes..

"'Scuse me. Hello." A voice intruded dimly into my brain.

"Hello?" Again.

"Hello? Excuse me." Again, and unanswered. I opened my eyes.

A cleaning lady was leaning over me, smiling. The once crowded lounge was empty.

For all I was aware, I could have been robbed, stripped naked and painted blue without waking from my slumbers. I was going to have to hone my instincts again..

As we got off the ferry I felt the cold of a heavy downpour.

"Twenty years I've been away," I said to the steward at the gangplank, "and whenever I come back it's always 11 degrees and drizzle." I knew what I meant, even if it came out wrong. So many times I'd been away from these shores, and each time I returned it was cold and wet.

He looked at the downpour.

"Drizzle would be nice."

Pictures - Hungary

Pictures - Romania

Why the delays - and where are the pictures?

You might have wondered why there were no pictures, and why the updates were so sporadic. The truth is that internet access has its problems abroad:

New Zealand. Wow! Free use of the internet and not even hidden behind check-in. Upstairs there are some consoles (two out of three were working) but you can’t install any software or plug in cameras and the like. Which is pretty sensible.

Brisbane. If they had internet access I failed to find it. Mind you I was rather busy panicking over spoons..

Brunei. Beautiful transit lounge and a wee internet hub with about a dozen computers. Pay your money and sit at a computer and a clock tells you how long you’ve had. I didn’t try to plug anything in, but I did have to change some security settings in order to get access to the blog site. Most places won’t allow you to do that, so maybe I could plug things in too..

Dubai. No time to look, too amazed by the other things to look at!

Heathrow. Expensive and secure, no mucking about with their settings there! At £1 per 10 minutes it was looking a bit pricey, but the second pound gave me 10 minutes plus 10, and the next pound gave me 10 plus 10 plus 10, and the next gave me 40minutes! Did I read the instructions wrong or was it a glitch. I didn’t care, I was happy.

Romania. While my friend Jan insisted that Romania was still living in the Dark Ages I did manage to pretty quickly find an internet café near the main railway terminus in Bucharest. It was the only place I looked so I can’t say whether Jan was right about the rest of Romania, but I suspect not. Unfortunately for me the café was closed.

Hungary. This seemed a much more up-to-date country (all things being relative) and indeed my backpackers’ lodge did have a computer. They were pretty relaxed about the time I spent, having just a jam jar with a note on it asking for money to be popped in. They also allowed me to fiddle to my heart’s content. Unfortunately they had a 200MHz computer with Windows 98 first edition (circa 1990) which meant I couldn’t plug my camera or flash drive in to upload photos. I didn’t look for any other cafés and didn’t rip over any.

Slovakia. Kind of hard to judge really: I was on a train the whole time.

Czech Republic. Jan, whose place I was staying in, had access via a mobile phone which was unreliable at certain times. Being with Jan also meant my regime of writing up notes in the evening was somewhat curtailed as he showed me every single pub and beer in the country. Hence the gap in the blog. I’ll try to fill it.. we did use his laptop on the train though, picking up wireless signals for most of the two hours trip.

Germany. On a coach the whole time. Ah, not true, we did stop once. And the services did include internet access. But it was 3am and I had 5 minutes, so..

France. The lodge where I stayed had access, albeit horribly expensive. There were plenty of internet cafés around however the only one I tried did allow me to upload photos.. but my camera batteries failed at that point.

UK. Friends and family. Bags of access and ability to upload photos.. but they are friends and family and I haven’t seen them for a long, long time. Have a heart.

The moral is that when you go abroad you have varying degrees of internet access depending on where you are and who you are with. And the size of your hangover.

Begging at the Tower

“I’m not going gay”

I was in a dormitory of four beds and was in the bathroom preparing for a shower. No locks, so the young Japanese caught an eyeful as he retrieved his towel. The sight of me naked is unlikely to turn any guy gay. Celibate, sure. Hysterically blind, maybe. What a start to the day.

I was heading for Les Halles and the Pompidou Centre. Both had been substantially altered in the years since my last visit. I asked my questions at the Pompidou, snapped at Les Halles and wound my way between the teeming cafés enjoying yet another blue sky day.

Getting to the Eiffel Tower was made harder by a key Metro line being closed. I got as close as I could and walked along the banks of the Seine. I didn’t want to go up, just eat my lunch on the Champs de Mars, below.

I had a fresh baguette – sorry, but nobody does bread like the French – some chocolate for my pain au chocolat and one and a half litres of water. I also had the remnants of the Camembert which, as my dorm mates can attest, smelled like old socks. I had to eat it, it was making the dorm uninhabitable.

The tower was crawling with people and the grass was not for picnicking on, so I opted to go back to the benches by the Seine.

On the way I was cornered by a barefoot girl with a piece of paper which claimed she was a Bosnian refugee, starving and alone. For a Bosnian she had an excellent command of French – as did the other six or so girls I’d noticed running the same scam. She told me how hungry and tired she was and as proof showed me her bare feet. I showed her mine, blackened and with huge white saucers of blistered skin.

I won.

Bloody frogs

My foot felt a lot better for having drained the blister. In the end, after fluffing about with the sharp bit on the clasp of my watchstrap I had simply jammed my fingernails into the flesh and ripped it apart. Messy but effective.

I walked to the nearby market. It’s not often that I’m up before all the market stalls are, but this was one time.


Two blocks and a square were given over to vegetables, fruit, African art, fish and miscellaneous hardware. As I walked in I passed a dozen chickens roasting, the first of many, whilst butchers’ shops, some Halal, raised their shutters.


Stalls sprang up piled with artichokes, aubergines, radishes, potatoes, carrots, spring onions, garlic, mint, parsley, onions, lettuces, cabbages – all great acres of colour, purples and greens and whites. Great walls of Italian parsley and hedges of mint rose half a metre on one stall. Vendors sang their sales pitches and bagged the purchases. At the end of the street a fish shop was putting the finishing touches to icy displays of huge, whole sardines, shrimp, tuna, cod, crab, lobster and shellfish. The pavement was soaked with fishy ice-melt; even at 9am it was sticky hot and close.


Walking back between rows of produce I spotted a hardware stall with what I’d come for – cadenas – padlocks. They were cheap rubbish and hugely overpriced but I got three at €3 and a table knick-knack for €1.50. I offered him €10 which he took easily. When I said merci, he replied that la plaisir est à moi.


I wandered away. There had been something about the twinkle in his eyes. Then I realised I’d paid the price for the larger padlocks behind. Mine should have been €2 each. Little wonder the pleasure had been all his.


I went to Notre Dame and felt like a traveller amongst tourists. A mass was in progress – in English – it being Sunday, but the masses streamed round, talking loudly.


Outside an American family gave way to a French couple on the seat to my left, while on my right Spanish gave way to English. Every race, creed and colour milled around, taking cheesy photos.


I took mine and headed to the Gare du Nord to ask about a night boat to the UK. I’d had enough of being alone in Paris.


Paris hadn’t had enough of me it seemed – a ticket to London was €285 one way, albeit on the Eurostar train, well over twice what I’d spent from Bucharest to Paris. I could take the train from Paris to Calais and then get a ferry, but the ticket queues were huge. I decided to go to Sacré Coeur instead. As you do..


I bought a baguette ancien (€1.80) to go with my huge Camembert rustique (€1.40) and exited the Metro at Anvers.


Almost immediately I entered the Montmartre that Impressionists love so. As it climbed, Sacré Coeur appeared at the end of the narrow street. Below the triple-domed church, steps trisect steep grass slopes.


Entering, I was pounced on by an African tout who held up a big hand for me to stop.

“I respect you, you respect me,” he said, trying to guilt me into stopping. Turns out I didn’t respect him.


On the grass, with my back to the church, I ate my lunch and did what I like most: people-watching. Amidst the increasing trudge of tourist feet, islands of calm lay. A couple canoodled, oblivious to the world. For an hour or more they lay with their noses touching, stroking each others’ arms and egos, whispering love.


An Italian man, his wife prone, rubbed her slightly enlarged belly, obviously happy.


A Sikh, with his entourage of five womenfolk sat two metres uphill from them, and said not a word.


“Ah, I got another beer in my backpack, everything is good,” this from a smiling American, opening a bottle of wine with four friends.


A warm wind blew, sparrows ate my Camembert crumbs and a girl in green spoke into a cellphone hands-free kit and smiled.


A bad rendition of La Vie en Rose came from below. A woman, 50+ and long since slim, was showboating. She wore a multi-coloured flowered headband, a purple chiffon skirt, a short pink top, horn-rimmed glasses and too much lipstick. Her bra, struggling desperately, failed to give her the support she so needed, as her breasts leapt this way and that, almost free of their material prison.


She sang, badly, and danced, worse. The Can-Can, Brasil, numerous tunes I knew but couldn’t name, she puffed out, dancing like a thing possessed. The Africans stopped hassling tourists and looked round, laughing. After a minute they resumed their work, making bracelets from multicoloured bits of string on the wrists of the gullible and friendly.


The woman danced backwards and forwards as people turned their heads. She tried to pull a few people into her world, with no success. As she headed towards me, bosoms flailing, I gave her a look that stopped her dead at five metres. She said something and a few people laughed.


She wound her way up and down the steps, her singing ebbing and flowing. A jazz trio played below, a tumbler did flick-flacks to applause and the Africans took a break. An hour later the woman thanked everyone, in Italian, and went home singing. As if a sign, the girl in green finished her call, the couple untwined and the Italians moved off. The Americans started their second bottle of wine and I packed up.



I had to go to the Arc de Triomphe to change trains. Besides, I wanted a beer on the Champs d’Elysées. But first I thought I’d go up to the top of the Arc, that is until I saw it wasn’t free. I wandered around taking photos when, at about 6pm, a policeman ushered me to the other side of a barrier. The centre, including the tomb of the unknown soldier, was being cleared. I was curious to know why. Now, my French is passable, but I hate talking French to the French, they speak it well and do disdain better.


“Do you speak English?” I asked him.


“Non,” he said, arms outstretched, sheep-dogging me behind the barrier.


Like a circus clown he raced around telling people to get out of the centre but, oblivious, allowed two or three in behind his back. He needed a plan or back-up. Luckily back-up arrived and the sector was slowly cleared.


A moustachioed old goat arrived and moved the velvet ropes and brass stands which surrounded the eternal flame. Soldiers in dress uniform, eight men, two women and three officers arrived. A drummer and a bugler came through the crowd.


What next? The President? As I gave birth to this thought a siren approached, raced around the Arc and screamed off.


Then the heavens opened. Black clouds had been gathering and an equally black guy over my shoulder had been making ‘ooh la la’ sounds as the thunder rolled by. The soldiers ducked out of the deluge to a series of titters from the crowd.


I waited, in my pole position, for something, but knew not what. I tapped a soldier’s shoulder and asked if he spoke English.


“Non, mais..” and he called another soldier over. His English was worse than my French but we established that it was a ceremony to honour the dead of 1914-18 and that it was held daily at 6.30pm. When we concluded his friend dug him in the ribs and said “I speak ze English” and laughed.


“Should the flame be out?” I asked, pointing at the eternal flame. It had been extinguished in the downpour and, after a lot of steam, had gone quiet.


“Is this a relighting ceremony?”


“Non, it nevair goes out.”


“But it’s out now.”


“Non, it is lit twenty-three hours a day.”


“Twenty-four?”


“Oui.”


It was as dead as Monty Python’s parrot and I wasn’t the only one who was pointing at it. Some minutes later it relit itself, the flame clearly visible and just as clearly showing it had been out before.


Ten minutes into the rain and it eased off. The sun even broke through. The soldiers marched out of sight around the corner and the old goat rubbed the head of a small child and invited him and his family through the barrier. About a dozen children flowed through the opening but when a rather too large kid tried, the old goat stopped him. The boy’s father had a small child, maybe two years old, in his arms and was already through.


“Français?” the goat asked.


“Non, Maroc,” said the man and, to a small murmur of disapproval from the crowd, was told that it was for French only, and forced back behind the gate.


“Like the last two wars?” I wanted to say, but the drummer drummed and the bugler bugled. I was fuming.


Afterwards I approached the goat.


“Do you speak English?” He didn’t even look at me, just saying 'non' without breaking stride. I was furious. I found another official.


“Vous parlez Anglais?” He made a face but tried, gave up and called a friend.


“Vous parlez Anglais?” I asked again.


“Oui, un peu.”


He asked if I was English. I admitted I was and he asked why I didn’t speak French. It rather defeated the point of asking him if he spoke English, I thought, but I persevered.


Without warning he told me about the second of September when the English Legion would be at the Arc.


“Why the second?” I ventured willing, for the moment, to follow this non-sequitur.


“Yes, yes, the second,” and he got his diary out to confirm.


“Is it an anniversary?”


“Yes they all come from London with the Ambassador.”


“Mais pourquoi le deuxième Septembre?”


“Oui, they come with the big hats, cyclists.”


So, English Legionnaires and the British Ambassador would be cycling from London to Paris in big hats? I steered the conversation back.


I asked him if all the children allowed through had to be French.


“Can you repeat?” he asked. I started again.


“No, in French.”


And so, with a bit of Anglo-Saxon swearing thrown in as my French basics escaped me, I did my best to say it was appalling behaviour of the old goat to discriminate against ‘l’Africaine.”


He shuffled nervously as he saw how angry I was.


“It’s for all the tourists,” he said, and shrugged.


“Merci,” I said; it took me two hours to calm down.


“Bloody frogs,” I said, and a lot worse. And as I cursed and drank a beer, I realised I was perversely happy. This was the France I had missed: the arrogant, English-hating, xenophobic “bloody frogs”. Now I could go home.



One footnote: the signs under the Arc are in French, German and Spanish. Did I miss something?

Been there, slept through it..

Limping back to the Gare de Lyon, minus my rucksack, I breakfasted and settled on a sit-down in the Tuileries, a park near the Louvre. Quite why then I rode past to the Louvre I don't know.

The Metro station lets you up past shops and the inverted glass pyramid that Da Vinci Code aficionados will recognise. It is not, as I imagined, an extension of the one above, that one hovers over the huge expanse that sits below the Louvre proper. Information in every language, tickets, food and drinks, books - though not a sight of the Da Vinci Code - gifts and knick-knacks are all available. A spiral stairway leads up to the pyramid base whence you can exit to the Louvre courtyard. Set all around were cool stone benches. Bliss. I sat and watched the Louvre crowds for a few minutes before I felt sleep coming.

I woke suddenly to find a soldier smiling at me.

"Bonjour," he mouthed, before continuing his slow patrol with his two colleagues. I'd seen them before on the Gare du Nord, beret, boots and battledress and, of course, automatic rifles at the slope. They patrolled every 30 minutes or so as did the other three or four patrols at the Louvre. Security men in suits wandered around on foot or rode bicycles waving the touts on.

It's a contrast, coming from a place where a policeman on the beat is unusual, to see so many soldiers; I wonder if it keeps petty crime down.

I didn't want to walk around the Louvre, even at the very reasonable €8, so after a few hours of napping, I wandered into the Tuileries gardens. Paris really is a city for lovers: snuggling pairs lay on the grass, kissing or sleeping, talking or eating. I missed the Moldovan one.

I gave myself a promised citron pressé at one of the cafés and watched the ever-moving horde of tourists pass in either direction. To one side a fair included a large carousel and a big wheel, to the other an exit to the Seine, which I took.

The Metro on the other side was closed so I limped past the street cafés and the street artists and booksellers and eventually crossed back across the river to the Louvre.

A man played the accordion whilst looking wistfully at the Louvre. I looked: he had no hat for money; he was just playing for its own sake.

I subjected my bag to the umpteenth X-ray scan and took the Metro back to the hostel.

Paris in the springtime.. wait, summer

The student bus dropped us off at 7am on a nondescript street in eastern Paris. It was cool, overcast and I was wearing shorts, a T-shirt and jandals. My legs and feet were swollen and my left foot so covered in blisters that it felt like a grumpy hedgehog had been surgically implanted under the skin. I'd had two hours sleep, thanks to a passport check and two 'courtesy stops' and now I had nowhere to stay.

I piqued the curiosity of the few passers-by by changing my shirt and shorts on the pavement, then found the Metro.

I figured the Gare du Nord would be as good a place as any to ask about cheap accommodation, paid my €1.50 fare and headed there.


In twenty years the design of the Paris Metro has changed substantially. The trains are significantly newer - some are without their connecting doors, creating travelling tubes six or more carriages long - and the stations are on the whole cleaner and brighter. Shops, especially at the busier stations, include boutique eateries and the signage throughout has been revamped.

Taking a long-overdue leaf out of the London Underground's book, the Metro map has been redrawn in simplified format. The signs however were clearly designed by a Frenchman with English tourists in mind, as they lure you ever onwards before simply ceasing. In the Gare du Nord they took me to one side of the station and dumped me there. A station map showed the information bureau to be on the other side.

"Bloody frogs," I said, not for the first time in my life.

The Blue Planet Hostel (€21 as opposed to the more common €50) said it was at 28 Boulevard Diderot near the Gare de Lyon but that turned out to be a bag shop. I found the hostel tucked around the corner and looked forward to a lie down.

"Here's your receipt. Come back at three-thirty." It was 9.30am.

Definitely an old priests' hostel

My throat was sore again, probably aided by a good snore. My room-mate was in no condition to complain, he had come in drunk sometime in the wee hours and quickly gone to bed; he emerged at 1.30pm.

I wrote up notes and typed up blog entries, but I had a hangover and needed coffee.

They had changed the guard at the concierge’s station, a cupboard of a room containing a small bed, mini fridge, 14” TV, phone and a collection of keys.

“You like Turkish coffee?” I nodded and got instructions. Outside, walking through a rain that was so slight it didn’t wet the concrete and so fine you had to keep moving to get even faintly damp, I mused that for supper I’d been pointed at Chinese food and now Turkish coffee for breakfast. Hungarians didn’t seem particularly proud of their own cuisine.

I gave up for the search for the Three Guys coffee shop and traipsed back via the corner shop where I bought iced tea, as strangely popular here as in Romania.

“I couldn’t find One Guy, let alone Three Guys,” I complained when I got back.

“Sorry, I meant it was run by three guys.”

The hostel was obviously the priests’ lodging for the Catholic church over the way. Long since used as such, the floor tiles were faded and worn, plaster peeled from the walls and paintings of dead priests gazed down from on high. The stair rods and carpet were gone but the brass eyelets remained. The rooms had names outside, the ghosts of the last occupants, and inside, sometimes through two foot thick walls, lightly constructed bunk beds, tables and cupboards jostled for space.

The bathrooms on the ground floor were units of plastic. Shower cubicles, all curtainless, operated on timer buttons. On the first floor they were merely tiled, and blocked. Hair smothered the plug-holes in the sinks too.

Rudimentary kitchens, consisting only of a fridge, crockery, a table and a sink, were on each floor. Outside the barred windows of each room was a playground of sorts - an asphalt yard, caged off from the street and with a couple of benches and a hopscotch pattern cut into the tarmac. I revised my assumption.

Later on I told an American backpacker that the place must have been a church-run orphanage at one time. We were waiting patiently as the latest concierge, who spoke only Hungarian, contemptuously waved us away each time we tried to ask anything. He indicated we should sit and wait. The American had arrived after me and as he sat down, after being shooed away like an annoying fly, he asked me how long I'd been waiting.

"Fifteen minutes," I said and it suddenly felt like a long time.

"Sprichts du Deutsch" I said, using the too familiar form and was dismissed again, silently.
About ten minutes later, just as the novelty of the situation was wearing thin, the concierge from the coffee debacle turned up, apologising. The American booked in and I changed rooms, ready for Jan's arrival.

I mentioned to him my theory about the place being an old orphanage and he told me the real story. It was in fact a Lutheran boarding school in current use. The children would be back on September 1st and this was the second year that the school had been used as a cheap hostel during the holidays.

It was hard to imagine it being true - the weeds, the worn fittings, well everything.. but come September 1st, come the children, filling the high-ceilinged rooms and halls with their chatter and being hushed by priests..

Keleti Station

Budapest's Keleti station is the kind of station that train-spotters love and other stations aspire to. It is huge in the way that all good termini used to be before they got all modern and clever.

At one end is a giant window that would grace a cathedral. Down each side a jumble of stalls and shops sell kebabs, here called gyros, unbelievably creamy-looking ice-creams, tickets, newspapers, cigarettes, beer and all the necessities and paraphernalia of travel.

People hurry to and from platforms, look at the information boards and head for the Metro, the exits and the information kiosk, tucked away in one corner. In the melee a group of people play chess, an impromptu band plays and the occasional panicking traveller tries to work out where his train is. Taxi drivers pounce and people with rooms to let ply their trade.

A white haired granny tried to push a room for 7000 Hungarian Forints (HuF) – twice the going rate.

“Good luck, I’ve got no money.” I said. I went into the information parlour. Three or four sallow youths fielded the various woes and queries of groups of travellers, all foreign.

When I emerged, all the more knowledgeable, I made for the ATM and used my foolproof system for getting the perfect amount of cash out – I requested the second highest amount on offer. Regardless of exchange rates and costs of living, this usually does me for 2-4 days.

Outside the station a tangle of roads, tram-lines, zebra crossings and traffic islands played host to weeds, rubbish and a mess of traffic. Amongst the detritus of civilisation, the dust, the withered grass and the legs of pedestrians, down and outs slept in Hungary’s hottest weather on record.

All this played out in an area that could have housed a 50,000 seat stadium. Around the edges huge fin de siècle buildings boasted of past glory. At their height they would have looked upon the gentry riding past in their horse-drawn carriages , long before Europe dissolved into WWI. Now the glory was faded, but the spirit was unbroken even if the concrete often was.

The skyline, high above, was of huge roofs, leaded sheeted and tiled, with the odd onion dome frivolity. Two or three rows of windows in the roofs alone, hinted at the size within. Three metre windows lit high-ceilinged parlours and bedrooms. Closer to street level the unwanted was kept out by intricate wrought-ironwork. Great solid oak doors, battered from the decades, hid behind ornate gates. Occasional alleys allowed a glimpse into the courtyards secreted within.

At Astoria, where I had to get out of the bus, the massive scale continued. The buildings climbed skywards along wide avenues. At the crossroads formed by two giant boulevards a Metro station sucked people underground. Eight exits, one for each side of each of the four streets, confused me so I recourse to my other brilliant tactic, that of following the prettiest girl going in roughly the right direction. It didn’t work – it rarely does – but I got my bearings and re-emerged, meerkat-like, metres from a narrow side lane.

Concrete frontages blackened over the ages mixed with the sooty plane trees to darken the street several notches. Walking through a short tunnel I emerged into a courtyard. Balconies rose four or five storeys high, the sort that should have washing lines stretched from one side to the other. At the bottom, talking quietly on a pile of rubble, three workmen took a break.

Upstairs I looked out of the window as a helpful guy phoned around to find a place that did have room. In a doorway across the street I spotted some high-class graffiti – ‘Kiri te Kanawa’ – sprayed in foot high letters.

Following his instructions less than carefully I immediately got lost. Even following pretty girls held limited interest for me in the stifling heat. Eventually I found the bus stop opposite a heavily tiled synagogue and rode the bus the prescribed three stops. Opposite a twin-spired Catholic church a friendly troll was trying to lure two backpackers through the gates into a desiccated garden. Behind, a five metre door stood ajar.

Giving up on the others, he beckoned me in. They had a room, though I was lucky: the Formula One Grand Prix was in town and rooms were scarce and prices were climbing.

Like many Hungarians he spoke only German as a second language.

“Ah, New Zealand!” he said when he saw my registration.

“Sehr gut. Australia nicht so gut.”

Disfigured by an unfortunate collection of facial warts big and small, including one which formed a permanent drip under his nose, he pointed at some containers of food.

“Kina” he said, using the Hungarian for ‘Chinese’.

“Ist gut?”

I was still a little confused by what I thought was a sudden splash of Maori in the conversation, but recovered enough to get directions. As a side trip I went to a small corner shop: I had to try a Hungarian beer. They were all cheaper than Coke.

In mime I was told that the one I had chosen was okay, but improved markedly the more I drank Five was the recommended number. I bought one and headed to the takeaway.

Eight dollars bought more than I could eat. Back in the hostel, the troll saw my supper and with a great flourish, bowed and wished me “Gut appétit.”

Afterwards I checked my emails, showered and slept properly for the first time in four days.

Welcome to Hungary

Hungary welcomed us with immediate delays. We sat and watched goldfinches bathe in the puddle of a leaky pipe for thirty minutes.

When we moved it was into a very different country. New roads were under construction, new houses, even new railway track was being laid. Pylons waited empty for cables to be slung, factories had new roofs, cars and trucks were busier, cleaner, newer. Graffiti sprung up in great swathes and rubbish was everywhere. Beyond the towns fields were the hedgeless expanses of Western Europe.

I asked the guard in my best mime whether we should put our clocks back. He assured me we shouldn’t and I passed the information to my fellow travellers. We were two hours from our due arrival time. An hour later I approached the guard again.

“One hour to Budapest?” I asked, making one circuit of my watch with my finger.

“Yes, yes. Budapest, one,” he agreed.

Again I passed the news to the others. An hour later we pulled into Szolnok; we were two hours from Budapest. And the station clock was an hour out..

I decided to beat a retreat into the toilet. After six countries and three days I was getting a bit ripe. I locked the door and put my bag on the toilet seat. A tiny metal washbasin was fed by a thin spout operated by a foot-pedal. In the rolling train there were only two positions, off or full on, the latter causing the water to slam against the basin and scatter everywhere.

I stripped for action and the train promptly stopped. No using the toilet while the train is in the station – everyone knows that; to do so would attract a knock at the door. I waited while feet climbed up the steps and then receded. We started again. Barely had I shaved when we again stopped. Still unmolested but definitely disturbed – I had visions of arriving at Budapest naked and wet – I soaped what I could as we rolled off.

Sudsy water washed to the floor. Slipping and squirting, dabbing and splashing, I did the best I could, packed up my stuff and left with what dignity I could muster.

“Achtung, liebe!” the hairy German said as she surveyed the dripping scene.

As we slipped through the outskirts of Budapest I threw the CRAP down the toilet. It seemed appropriate: it tasted as it was labelled. I kept the lid as a souvenir.

Transylvania by moonlight - no vampires!

I felt a bit of a cheat leaving Romania immediately but the truth is I could never stay there long.

Travelling alone is always a series of gambles with calm periods amongst the storms. Go with the wrong guy to change money, find a cheap hotel or an internet cafe and you could lose more than your shirt. The result of knowing this is that you are always on your guard – for the guy slipping up to the next ticket window, for the piece of luggage left momentarily unattended, for the directions that seem wrong, the advice that seems suspect, the eyes, the hands, the body language..

After a while it overwhelms your ‘holiday’, taints your views, prejudices your notions.

It had been a long time since my nine month trek across the world but the nerve-tightening awareness was all too familiar. Thus when I found myself alone for a 17 hour journey in a compartment I could lock, I did so and enjoyed an oasis of pure bliss.

I love trains more than any other form of transport. They offer the scenery denied by planes and ships and a relentless rhythm that cars can never achieve. True they are inflexible in direction and destination, but within them they offer an unequalled freedom of movement.

I watched as Bucharest went by. It’s hardly fair to judge a city by an airport, an arterial route and a railway station, but I did so. The houses near the airport were alike in that their roofs wouldn’t stop a light shower, such was the state of the tiles. The Gara de Nord was stationed in downtown Beirut and the houses I was now looking at had little or no glass in many windows, judging by the broken reflection of the moon.

The conductor came and went and I relocked the door, made a bed of the bench and turned the light off. Brasov and other stops came and went in the small hours. No-one disturbed me.

At 4am I got up and looked out of the window. In the moonlight we sneaked through the low hills and woods of Transylvania.

At 6am I woke to a dry mouth and sore throat. My underwear had about 25,000kms on the clock and I ponged. I was happy.

For the next few hours I watched the rural Romanian countryside wake up. The sun rose about a dozen times as it ducked and dived amongst the hill tops. Fields of sunflowers raised their heads, mist cleared, school-kids wandered down dusty roads, men and women went about their chores.

Insanely long, thin strips of crops flicked by. From the air they had looked like the teeth of thousands of combs hachuring the landscape. On the ground they might measure five metres by several hundred.

Maize, fallow, sunflowers, grass or freshly turned earth, each showed signs of the oppressive heat. In neighbouring Moldova they were waiting for the worst drought in 60 years to break.

Romania had scores of heat-related deaths, Hungary hundreds. Even at 7am and 100km/h the air was warm and sweet.

I gave up bear-in-the-woods spotting – Romania has half of Europe’s bear population – as we came down onto the plain again. All too soon we left behind the bucolic charm of a lost century, the haystacks built around a central stick and capped with a little waterproof hat, like great thimbles, the cattle byres, horses and carts, dusty roads and the vegetable gardens. This was a place even Caucescu had limited success in penetrating. As a goodbye, a gaggle of twenty or more geese walked unhurriedly along the hard earth of a village road and the train said goodbye.

Now we approached the border at Arad and Romania tried harder to be modern. I didn’t like it. We passed two cooling towers waiting for a power station to be built. They had been waiting a while, judging by the state of them. I slept again.

Somewhere along the way I gained a room-mate. As the train was being reshuffled a guitar-toting, hair-over-his-eyes youth got in: he’d been in the wrong carriage and narrowly avoided an unwanted tour of Romanian parts unknown. Alex, from Guernsey, told me he had come directly from 6 weeks in Moldova as a volunteer.

“Was it nice?”

“Beautiful!”

Impeccably polite, he told me to let him know if he disturbed me, as he put some earphones in to listen to music while I got out. On the platform an anxious German lady, whose idea of a holiday clearly included not shaving her armpits, fretted that the train wasn’t going to end up in Budapest.

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” she asked a guard. He shrugged and indicated that he didn’t. She ignored this and jabbered away in German until he shrugged again and walked off.

“A lot of Hungarians speak German,” she said. We were still in Romania.

As the train neared the border crossing we were shooed into first class by a very uptight guard who didn’t appreciate one little bit my pretending first not to understand and then to prefer second class. To be fair, she was a little less uptight before my antics. Later it became clear why we had been moved, as school-kids and Hungarians started to occupy our old quarters. I felt a little bad - she should have left me there to suffer the fate of a thousand children!

For now, passports were checked at a station with ‘Romania’ in huge letters and a bigger flag complete with eagle rampant.

Evening on the Gara de Nord

I was pounced on almost immediately by a stocky guy with ID hung around his neck, although even a cursory examination revealed it to be nth generation photocopies. I asked where the train would go from as even the ticket lady hadn't known.

"Probably 10, but check later"

Where could I find a phone? He pulled his cell phone out offered me its use. I had to get in touch with Jan: I needed to let him know I would be early.

After digging around in my rucksack I found a string of numbers and he punched them in. He passed me the phone and I heard a recorded announcement. In Chinese. We checked the number: it was what I'd told him. He started to chuckle about how many digits there were - 15 - and wondered out loud whether that could be right. He'd already braced me for a big bill by telling me how expensive calls from Romania were, but I figured he'd just played with the phone's cost multiplier and I'd replied that I wouldn't go over 10 Lei. For someone who knew all about international call costs, he seemed unduly excited by punching in so many numbers.

The cost, when he showed me was 14,2 Lei. I made him sweat by asking about internet cafés and said, in passing as we walked to the exit, that 10 Lei should be enough. He pointed and gestured at where I should look for the internet cafe and then looked hopefully expectant. Fifteen Lei came out with some reluctance and as my reward he shook my hand and pointed at a cabin selling "cheap beer, my friend." Then he was gone.


Gara de Nord is a wide length of concrete roofed by an arched Victorian-style iron and glass roof. At right angles the arse end of fourteen tracks abut. On the platforms fixed plastic seats are given scant shelter by small roofs angled in a way last popular in the 1950s.

On the platforms proper, quiet groups awaited their trains. Dogs begged for scraps and a group of gypsy children ran sorties away and back for no apparent reason.

On the main concourse things couldn't have been more different. With exits to the Metro at either end and one in the middle, there was a constant flow of people. Serving their needs are diners, pizza shops, kebab stalls, a supermarket and a 'non-stop pani pat'. In the best position, straddling a corner, was a McDonalds. Tables and chairs gave it a Champs Élysées café look and as the sun went down and shadows swallowed the dirt, the station became almost pleasant.

For the smokers and drinkers, which seemed to include everyone, small kiosks displayed their smokes and snacks. Fridges of beer, arranged like outstretched arms, embraced the thirsty.

I wanted the internet. I was coming a day early to Budapest and I still needed to let Jan know. Now well after hours, the shops that were open plied their trade through small serving hatches. The internet café was not one of them. It was firmly shut.

Back inside, the night had erased the harshness from the day and the people seemed more relaxed.

In the cafés and diners the patrons lent an air of permanence that the masses had none of. Here and there eddies formed in the flow, around sweepers, the policeman, those checking the departure board and around the headscarved, black-dressed lady who sat, bad leg outstretched, her crutch to her side, calling out a conversation and laughing at the responses.

It was 10pm: no sign of 'Budapest' on the board.

I had a 'cheap beer, my friend' : at 2,5 Lei (NZ$1.40) it was cheap. When that was finished I took another, plus a kebab (8,5 Lei) and wandered up an unused platform. Opposite me a group of girls waited for their train, laughing and looking. A gypsy boy, no older than 7, cart-wheeled up to me, said something and cartwheeled on. His older brother did cartwheels on another platform. Inside the kebab, amongst the usual suspects, were cold fries. It was 11pm.

I went to the supermarket and came out with 2 litres of imported beer (5,5 Lei), a packet of chips and a small tub which caught my eye. It wasn't the legend 'Salata de Icre' that did it, it was the word below, in big red letters: CRAP.

11.15pm and I still couldn1t see Budapest on the board. One line, all the other details correct, displayed Arad as its destination. I checked it out - the train changed there, but I was to keep my seat while it changed around me.

There was one last thing to do. Down some stairs tucked behind the pizza shop was the tiled splendour of the station toilets. I peered down and saw a troll on guard. Turkish music blared from a cassette recorder which nestled amongst a mass of papers on a desk. Behind the desk sat the troll, old and fat and the ruler of all she surveyed. I went down and handed her 1 Leu. I paused for my 20 bani change but she dismissed me with a wave.

Inside was no place to loiter. When I came out a girl was paying. She got her change then picked two pieces of paper from the desktop and went in.


The train arrived. I walked up the length trying to find carriage 142. There were more than one carriage with second class seat number 75, so it seemed important: I didn't want to end up in the wrong section and find myself in Venice.

I asked a uniform.

"Three from engine. Three, three."

It was a first class carriage. I asked another uniform. He looked confused and asked his friend. I allowed myself a small panic.

"Yes," he said pointing to the same carriage.

"It's first, prima," I said.

"No, first, second. Half, half."

And indeed it was. I swung myself aboard and walked the corridor. I was the first to arrive.

Seat 75 was in a six-person compartment consisting of two opposing benches. Above each seat was a print showing some an in Hungary. Keeping the travellers apart were raisable armrests. two tiny tables jutted from the open window.

I hung my arms on the window and leaned out, watching the train load. It wasn't busy and the few rucksacks that got into my carriage didn't make it to my compartment.

As the train pulled away, doors wide open, it confirmed what I had hoped: I had the carriage to myself!

Gara de Nord

Gara de Nord, the hub of the Romanian railway system and my way out. I had to stay somewhere that night; it might as well be on a train. And if it was it would have to be somewhere on the way to Hungary. Beyond those criteria I didn't much care.

I asked the ticket clerk about Brasov. It was 7.30pm: I'd just missed it. She pointed at the screen. The next one got in around midnight. I made her give me both the first and second class prices.

"Cluj?" She tapped the buttons and checked the prices and times. Again.

"Timisoara?" Again with the tapping. Each time, I hummed over the timing or haaed over the cost. First class, second class, sleeper?

"Oradea?" She smiled. It had just dawned on her that I was going to list every town I'd ever heard of, and that this could be a long evening. A rather pretty young girl behind asked for a pen, agreed that she spoke English and was roped into the madness.

When it was clear I was headed for Budapest the International train was suggested, not least because it wasn't handled by that clerk, I suspect. We traipsed, the girl and I, through the huge halls, decaying and emptied, headed for the information clerk, were sized up by a sharp-featured youth who could barely keep his eyelids at half-mast, exited that building and entered another, equally past its prime. There the girl left me to buy her ticket for the next day's train to the Danube Delta, back to her family. We had spent an hour together; she seemed eager to get away.

I, ever unsure, launched into my insane questioning again. It boiled down to this: either I paid 174 Lei for a second class seat to Budapest, leaving at midnight, or headed to the border, paying who knows what and tried to get to Budapest from there.

"Hang on," I said after about 15 minutes. I went back to the first clerk who entirely failed to suppress her emotions on seeing me again. She smiled wanly. We both knew what was coming, me because I'd failed to write down anything at all during our previous hour's fun, and she because after her years in the job she knew a berk when she saw one, and for the second time today, she was looking at one.

"Timisoara?" I said, trying to sound like I'd made a decision. Sort of.

She pulled the prices up and I recalled there was no second class available.

"Cluj?" It was 87 Lei.

"Ok," I said with uncertain finality. She tapped some more. I panicked. When I'd mentioned going to Cluj to the airport taxi driver, he'd simply asked "Why?" I would get there at 5.45am and my plans for Cluj were as magnificently malleable as all my other plans.

"No!" She looked up.

"Um, sorry." I fled.


Back at the other hall I tried to buy a ticket to Budapest.

"Just two minutes, my computer's broken. Five minutes."

Windows XP! No calling IT technicians, though, she fixed it herself while I loosely held my two 100 Lei notes. To my left a slim and muscly youth whom I'd noticed hanging around on my first visit slipped up to the next window. He was built for speed and in his cut-off T-shirt obviously wasn't going to Budapest.

I gripped my notes and prepared to throw them into the ticket office. His chance gone and the other ticket lady obviously ticked off by his stupid questions, he sloped off. I walked the other way.

I had a midnight ticket and three and a half hours to kill. I entered the world that is the Gara de Nord proper..

Six down. Bucharest

I have to admit to being a bit apprehensive. My plans for Bucharest could be seen as either magnificently malleable or insanely non-existent depending on your point of view. My own view had hovered around before coming firmly to rest in the latter camp.

As we landed at what was clearly an afterthought of an airport, I barely suppressed the murmured thought "Fuck me, I'm in a field in Romania." Now would have been a really good time to wake up.

My neighbour, a middle-aged man in a check shirt and baggy jeans, simply stood up and walked off the plane. No carry-on luggage, not even a jacket or newspaper. With his walnut skin and lean looks he gave me the impression that he had been working in the field and had simply popped away for a moment. Now he was back.

In first class a priest adjusted his robes. Head to foot in black he placed a black doughnut of a hat on his cowled head and prodded it to perfection. As we walked off I could see past him to a group of black-clad priests who formed his welcome committee, smiling and taking photos. Later they would sweep past in a convoy of black cars, lights blazing despite the sunlight, precede and followed by wailing police cars. At the time I had no idea: when they look closely at thier photos, in the near background they should see some blond guy with a big idiot grin, waving.

I waited forty minutes for my luggage, still twenty fewer than at Heathrow, and repacked everything into my rucksack. Outside, the taxi drivers descended like wolves on the fold. I managed to lose all but one, who insisted on giving me unnervingly good advice. The bus?

"Downstairs to the right, about forty minutes to town. I give you good ride, about one hour. Eighty Lei good price for you, not me. One hundred Lei good price for me."

It was immaterial. I had pounds sterling, New Zealand dollars, Euros but no Lei.

"Where is the ATM?"

He pointed it out.

"You know how much to get out?" I nodded and he wandered away.

I pushed my card in and was relieved to see language options.

"PLEASE ENTER YOUR SECRET PIN NUMBER!" a voice screamed.

I felt a hundred eyes on me. I stabbed at 300 Lei.

"All right?" a voice on my left said. It was the helpful taxi driver. The ATM machine beeped loudly.

"Take your money" he nodded, and I saw three one hundred Lei notes peeking out at me.

It was hot and I was flustered. I also needed change for the bus. Beer time.


The ghastly Bucharest suburbs gave way to beautiful parks and Caucescu's little attempt at urban planning. I jumped from the bus at Victory Square - five Lei well spent - and made for the Metro. In the bowels and the semi-gloom an unbelievably bent old woman held out an unmoving hand. Equally unmoving passers-by did just that.

At the gates a lady took my five Lei note without even asking where I was going and handed back a ticket and a handful of one Leu notes.

I came up from the Kafkaesque Metro to what was apparently Beirut. Dark grey buildings overlooked a maelstrőm of traffic. A spaghetti of black cables sinewed overhead and great killer slabs of cladding had fallen away from walls. From potholed pavements drunks and toughs eagled everyone and down dark alleys dogs skittered here and there.

Five down, one to go. London

With sleep snatching away the hours dawn soon came - we were over Greece. Soon the English Channel was underfoot and the patchwork of Kent gave way to the first truly indisputable landmark: the Millennium Dome. Not so useless after all.

A few circuits later we touched down. Six in the morning on an overcast Heathrow day. After twenty years away I was back. After twenty years of increasingly persuasive and frequent dreams, here I was, feeling as if I were dreaming.

But it was a poor dream. Heathrow, as the world's busiest commercial airport was a disgrace. If it was finished it was broken, or closed or just awful. Not dirty per se but the sort of squalor that no number of strange-tongued low-paid immigrants could brush up. The walk from Terminal 3 to 2 had me half expecting to be mugged.

When I got to Terminal 2 I was mugged - ten quid for a shower (if I walked to Terminal 1), five quid for left luggage, one quid for ten minutes on the internet! I told the information lady I'd rather smell thanks, held onto my luggage and spent four quid on the net.

Tarom, the Romanian airline, were checking people in three hours before the flight, so I went into the squalid hole that was Terminal 2 check in and got rid of the bigger of my bags. Once through security I was mugged again, or would have been if I wasn't so tight. Dixons, the electronics retailing chain, offered "Duty Free" prices that were just 10% below what even they said were the high street prices. With VAT at 17.5% it was the archetypal 'Duty Free' rip-off.

At 10.30 in the morning I declined a snifter of whisky in the Whiskies Galore shop but chatted with the Kenyan Indian lady in charge. She showed me a NZ whisky - Milford - I'd never seen in NZ. Mind you I hadn't seen 95% of the other whiskies either.

"I'm tired," I said in Swahili before bidding her "Asante sana" and heading through the ghetto to the gate.

Four down, two to go. Dubai

The new seat allocations meant I now had someone better for a neighbour - no-one - although I couldn't sit closer to the repaired engine if I wanted and the smell of petrol fumes as we taxied was a little disconcerting.

For the third time the prayers came up and for the third time I wondered how appropriate was the line "and to our God surely we must return."

In the blackness we flew to Vietnam, then turned westwards across Asia to Dubai.

I adjusted my watch to claim back another 4 hours: it was to be a 32 hour day. I slid across to my non-existent neighbours working entertainment suite and watched some TV and Shrek 3. I was no longer on the list for Halal food apparently, my Moslemness having been revoked. It suited me fine, I was tiring of it already. I was tired in other ways too, so I contorted across the two seats, lay on my two pillows and snatched some sleep, despite my rediscovered skill of becoming fully alert whenever a food trolley hoved into view.

Dubai at midnight was 38 degrees centigrade and before we even landed I was in love with it. From the night air a sea of soft gold and sharp diamonds defined the city. Inside the transit lounge the impression stayed. So this was where money went to die! And lights. Constellations made up the runways. Everything that moved flashed yellow at the night. In an isolated part of the airport dozens of vehicles devoured the passengers of an Emirates plane, all its orifices open and attracting attention.

We parked at the end of the vast tube that was the arrivals hall. Inside time planners advised it was an hour's journey to the far end and back. My kids were right: it was huge.

Even at midnight the place was a cross between Terminal Man, Bladerunner and the Star Wars cafe scene: cosmopolitan, exotic and alive with new experiences.

I was glad, judging from the state of undress of several of my co-travellers ahead, that I broke my 100% record of looking suspicious, and the system spat me out into the city that was the transit hall proper.

For an hour I barely scratched the surface of it all. Gold was big - too popular to get through the two-deep queues - and so were cigars: dedicated shops, dedicated rooms within the shops and a dedicated humidor housing what must be the world's biggest stogie. As thick as my thigh and all of five feet long it was very clever. And totally unsmokeable.

Past the motorcycles and cars to the electronics store where again, I was made to feel like I was just not keeping up with technology and trends. All I wanted was a replacement for my cassette recorder which had decided to die. Recording ambient sounds, rather than dictation, was something nobody did anymore.

Just as casinos never have clocks, so the Dubai transit shopping area seems devoid of information screens. When I did find one, after leaving the shopping concourse, it was in Arabic. Flashing red was probably bad in any language, so I guessed which sequence of squiggles meant 'gate' and applying my knowledge of Arabic numbers, gleaned from three years of Asian and African studies, I headed for gate three. Almost immediately I heard an announcement of the final call for my flight, boarding at gate eight. My education was officially useless, again..