Trip in Pics.

i thought i'd put up some pictures from places the train took me. My route was as follows: Helsinki-->Turku-->Stockholm-->Copenhagen-->Hamburg-->Berlin-->Prague-->Chotilsko. And heading back: Chotilsko-->Prague-->Nurnberg-->Copenhagen-->Stockholm-->Turku-->Helsinki. Sat on lots of trains, slept in random places and ate a lot of falafel and too much potatoes. All in all a great trip.

The sky and sea looked pretty, viewed from the ferry between Denmark and Germany. Our train actually boarded the ferry, which was cool.

We got to Berlin at around midnight. A lot of empty buildings and squats in East Berlin. A lot of cool street art, too. This was a wall we passed on our way to Ostbahnhof the next morning.

Randomly spotted this on the sidewalk. Walked across where the wall stood. Can't believe it was there for more than a quarter of a century.

To take a break from conferencing, we went tree-walking in a forest valley in Chotilsko. I'd never heard of this before, but the idea is pretty simple: You get strapped into a harness, which is attached to cables that connect from tree to tree. Then you walk on planks of wood and tightropes in the forest canopy and try not to look down. It was ridiculously cool.

We also took a break from conferencing in terms of enjoying a little pre-breakfast swig of (ridiculously bad) absinthe that i picked up in Prague. There was enough conference reading to make a sturdy makeshift table for three glasses of the green stuff. Paper put to good use. 

A meal to remember. We went out to a restaurant one night. The (only) vegan option on the menu was 'Stewed vegetables and french fries'. While stewed vegetables didn't induce happy rumbling in my tummy, the idea of french fries sure did. Hells yeah, potato in a form i haven't yet encountered on this trip! A spirit-crushing experience it was, then, to see my starchy arch nemesis, the soggy, mushy, bland, yellow tater in its most mundane form. Be that as it  may, the potato still beat the other half of the dynamic duo; The stewed vegetables were the legume equivalent of mystery meat. Icky.

On the way home i had a couple of hours to spend in Prague before catching my train to Nurnberg. It was the first sunny day in a long while, so i got a Czech version of a pita falafel and walked around the old part of town and sat in the sunshine. And enjoyed it so much i almost missed my train.

Night train from Nurnberg to Copenhagen. Got the compartment all to myself. The lovely ticket inspector told me i could sleep in all six beds if i wanted to. I slept in one. (but first i watched the season finale of Carnivale and couldn't sleep cause i thought Professor Lodz was outside my window).

Breakfast in Copenhagen, which rocked after a long night on the train. What rocked more was having enough time to swing by Urban Outfitters and finding the coolest woolly hat. 
Said hat might have had something to do with the dude at the train station later throwing coins at me. Le hobo hat. I likes.

Homeward bound. With inspired thoughts, muddy shoes  and significantly less absinth than i started out with.

Notes from a Big Happening

Right now I’m sitting by a roaring fire in a wooden chair that Gandalf would sell his beard for, writing this as it gets darker and darker outside. On Sunday night we finally made it to Chotilsko at nine in the evening. After getting a bus from Prague to the worrisomely derelict looking bus stop in Chotilsko, we were picked up by the biggest camper van-driving longhaired hippie I’ve seen in a good while. About nine people and their backpacks piled into the van, and our tie-dye sporting chauffeur set off into the night. After driving for some time on crooked roads in the middle of the forest, we realize he's lost. All we see is mist in the beams cast by the van’s headlights. We turn around and head back, try a different turn. While neither his navigational prowess or automobile credentials evoke confidence, in my tired state I am rather amused by the realization that the journey is starting to play out like the horror movie I’ve been secretly scared it’ll turn into all along.

So it is to my surprise when after some more seemingly aimless driving in the dark, we arrive at our destination. In the darkness, you can’t really tell where you are. The outline of our hotel is visible against the night sky. Rather than resembling a mental asylum/Dracula’s castle/that house from Scream it looks like a ski chalet similar to the ones you’ll find in the Alps. Promising. The entrance hall is dominated by a big fireplace and wooden seats. The scent of food wafts in the air. People are talking happily. I breathe a sigh of relief. We sit down for a late dinner. In my booking form for this trip I had happily ticked the ‘vegan’ box when it came to food preference, and now found my supper consisting of eggplant laced with garlic, a slice of cucumber and fourteen potatoes (I counted). I head to bed, tired and in a potato coma.

The days are full of activity, from breakfast at eight in the morning to dinner at half past seven in the evening. The program so far has featured climate justice, plans for the Copenhagen climate conference and effective communication and activism strategies. When it comes to climate know-how this is the best of company; great people, good work and inspiring stuff are not lacking at this Big Happening. Neither is food. Lengthy discussions are followed by seminars, workshops and presentations, which are complemented by giant breakfasts, power lunches, cake and fruit breaks, two course dinners and bottomless mugs of tea. Before coming here I was worried the non-meat fare would be scarce. I was wrong, it’s plentiful. The kitchen peeps are keeping it vegan by replacing animal protein with a daily potato quota of 27 root vegetables per person. Fuel for more strategizing. Rock on, tubers.

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.