Derailed and on the road.

I’m writing this on a train. Currently, I’m speeding from Copenhagen towards Hamburg. This morning I was in Stockholm. Last night I was in Turku. This evening I’ll be in Berlin, and tomorrow I’ll be in Prague. From Prague I’ll only be a hop and a skip from my final destination, Chotilsko, 50km south of Prague. Now what is so special about Chotilsko, you may wonder. Well, aside from being the potential setting of a new b-horror movie starring yours truly*, Chotilsko will play host to Friends of the Earth’s annual get together, The Big Happening. So in actual fact, I’ll be far from alone and hopefully equally far from meeting a miserable end at the maw of the wolfman/zombie/other fiend possibly residing in a small Czech village by a dam.

What I will be doing, more importantly, is meeting FOE-folk from all over Europe and strategizing on climate action, talking about Copenhagen, and working towards saving the world. Extracurricular activities might involve beer drinking, for the simple reasons of it being both good and cheap at our destination. I’m really looking forward to all of the above, in equal amounts.

But Chotilsko is still a couple of countries away, and I’m still in transit for a good many hours: Scenery changes, schedule checks, a cacophony of languages, train after train. There’s something great about getting on the rails, though. You can track the gradual changing of the view outside your window, and actually see how Sweden is different to Denmark, for example. You get to do cool things like have breakfast in Stockholm, lunch in Copenhagen and dinner in Hamburg. You have time to get through an entire book in one go. Or listen to all 168 songs currently on your iPod (I’m on 24 right now). The only thing that sucks is the lack of internet. Which is why I’m not sure if I’ll be able to post this tonight. Or if I’ll have this update online tomorrow. Or ever.

If the person reading this found my laptop somewhere with the rest of my dismembered limbs, a word of warning: run from the man with the hairy face.

* My friends seem to think that taking a train to the middle of nowhere and spending the week leading up to Halloween in the remnants of a village destroyed by the building of a huge dam, with no outsiders, no internet and limited phone network coverage, can only result in a gruesome end in which my various body parts are eventually sent home in separate packages, despite fierce garlic-wielding, ninja-chopping, silver bullet-firing attempts to save myself.

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Note from the Author: the above entry was written yesterday, and since finding an internet connection was impossible then, i'm posting it now from our hostel in Berlin. So my apologies for it coming online later than expected, but a cheer of joy to the fact that i'm still in possession of all my limbs. 

On another note, after getting a lucky six hours of sleep last night, we got up incredibly early to make it to breakfast this morning. Turns out clocks were pushed back last night, breakfast isn't served for another hour. Fail.