...Speaking of spending ten days travelling Europe by train wearing the same underwear. I left for the the U.K. in September where Phil, my significant-other-in-law, amused himself watching me stand around for an hour or so at Heathrow before pity took over and he brought me back to see my sister Kay, and my nephew Tophie. After a few days with the kinfolk, I was on a plane for Paris and the start of my adventure. France is nice country except that it’s full of French people. I’d been to gay Paris before, so I was not especially anxious to spend any unnecessary time there. But, of course, a French rail worker strike had started that day. Great start, I thought to myself (en francais). However, good fortune smiled upon me and I managed to get one of the last berths available on the overnight express to Rome.

Now, before I bore you with an overview of the rest of my trip, you need to understand that Europe by rail is a risky venture for an anal-compulsive scheduler, such as myself. You have to just let yourself go where fate takes you and hope for the best. The worst that can happen (outside of being beaten to death for your Levis in a filthy public restroom of a decrepit train station in a former Soviet-bloc nation) is that you only bath once every few days, you sometimes sleep on the metal floors of trains filled with chain smokers, and you’re constantly worried about missing your station because you can’t read the signs. All in all, a great adventure.

Roma was all that I expected. After fighting my way through scores of American and Japanese tourists at the Coliseum, Pantheon, Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, etc., I had an authentic calzone in a tiny, tucked-away trattoria, and then managed to locate the only two Irish pubs in the city for a couple of Harp lagers. When in Rome, do as the Irish.

Continued commentary on such an itinerary. You do a lot of walking! Good thing I only packed one pair of underwear, to keep my load light (so to speak). Also, you haven’t seen lines till you’ve tried to reserve a seat on a southern European train. Especially frustrating when you get to the window and are told in barely recognizable English that you’ve been waiting in the line to have your cat neutered and that train reservations are two lines down, except that window just closed for lunch.

The trip north through the Alps was spectacular. Then, just a few short hours exploring in Zurich. From Switzerland, I barely made the last train of the evening to Hungary which turned out to be a fifteen hour ordeal from Hell, as the train was too full for me to get even a padded seat, let alone a sleeping compartment. Imagine trying to sleep on one of those tiny, hard plastic chairs they have in the backs of police cars* you find entirely new and unexpected ways to get comfortable. To while away the journey, I hung out with a couple of guys from California, and we ended up getting a room together in Budapest. We spent two nights in a cramped, third-world apartment, on a back street on the "poor" side of the Danube. But we ate real goulash, spent an afternoon in the natural hot spring baths, visited an outdoor market and ate at the fanciest Chinese restaurant that I’ve ever been to.

My Hungarian adventures were not at an end, however. I left Mike and Gary in Budapest and waited for a very tardy train to Vienna. Of course, signs in foreign languages are hard to read, but in the rest of Europe you can muddle through because many of the words are at least related to their English counterpart. Not true in Hungary where the alphabet is different. But not obviously different, here they mess with your mind the letters look like they’re the same ones we use but they’re not. This ignorance led me sleep too long on the trip back out of the country and miss my stop for a train change. I awoke, somewhere in the middle of the Hungarian countryside, the only passenger on a car attached to a much shorter train than the one I’d left on. I got off at the next stop, where a lone post-adolescent in soviet-era uniform guarded a tiny one building station. The only word we could communicate with was Wien (Vienna), with me pointing at myself and an idle train, saying "Wien, Wien" over and over. We got it figured out, and a lot later than planned, I was in Vienna with English speaking Austrians.

I spent several hours exploring cosmopolitan, downtown Vienna and then back on board, bound for the Bundesrepublik.

Mathias met me at the station in Munich at about one in the morning and we went straight to a very smoky, underground bar straight out of a bad sixties movie. Now, Mathias (like Hubert, whom I hung out with in Banff (see last MW), and Andreas, whom will be mentioned again later) is a friend of Mark’s, whose ranch I, until recently, lived on (confusing?). Mathias generously agreed to put me up and show me around while in Munich. Now, this part of the trip was, I assure you, not an accident in planning. You see, I had arrived in the middle of Oktoberfest, which I found out is actually the biggest drunk in the world, and yes, I’ve seen some pretty big drunks. Imagine a fairgrounds the size of a small town, with about ten gigantic tents, each the size of a football (American) field. Each tent is sponsored by a local Bavarian brewery (Spaten, Lowenbrau, etc.), and is packed with several thousand extremely inebriated Germans. Every tent has a huge podium in the middle with an "oompah" band that plays sing-along songs with lots of opportunity for bawdy lyrics and the profanities that are the same in every language. Each tent also has a staff of dozens of serving frau who supply vast quantities of the sponsoring beverage in gigantic, one liter steins. Oktoberfest lasts one week, I was in town for three nights, I went twice.

On my off day from Oktoberfest, Mathias and I drove up into the Alps to visit Andreas who was tending a small dairy farm. Cars aren’t allowed into the valley, so you hop on the local bus and then hike for a mile or so. The farm was high on an alpine, Heidi-like hillside, no phone or electricity, just a fireplace, candles and card games. Proudly representing America, I lost one particular game with the worst hand in Bavarian history. I think it’s nailed to wall to commemorate my visit.

After a too-short stay, highlighted by sharing beer with countless drunk Germans, then forgetting all the lyrics they taught me by the next day, I was back on the train. I had originally planned stops in Berlin and Copenhagen, but I overstayed my schedule (and most likely my welcome) in Munich, and went straight to Amsterdam. After a day wandering art museums, riding trolleys, touring the canals and propositioning hookers, I spent the night a youth hostel and rose early to catch the train back to Paris, for my flight to London. Upon my arrival, I wrapped up my continental adventure spending several hours standing in filthy clothes in front of Heathrow airport (again), swearing at my sister. Next time I visit, I’m renting a car.