Today we caught the train.

Early: at  0700. 

We got off the train.

Late: at 1800.

It was a long trip, very little happened in the intervening period, but I have to make a blog entry out of something, so here it goes:

Breakfast was the traditional ‘7 Days’ chocolate spread-filled croissant that was washed down with a healthy dose of sleep. At some point later (hours really did blur into each other) we read books (The Kite Runner for me, very good), magazines (finished the issue of Empire that had been teasing me for weeks) and played iPhone games (FlightControl!). Then we slept some more.

Lunch was a variety of cookies and sandwiches we had brought onboard and was more a boredom-relief measure than anything else…

…we slept a bit more…

…then NS disappeared off the the back of the train to take some pictures. Minutes later he returned with an awkward grin.

“I can’t shut the door,” he half snickers.  With sharp words I sent him on his way to sort it out as he had now made me accessory to manslaughter. It turns out that he had opened the back door of the train to take a photo like last year.

But this was not Romania and the doors are electric. So once they were pulled open, they would not shut.

He returned satisfied he’d made the train door toddler-proof and our journey continued…until the German boarder. Here, we incurred a mysterious delay as an army of DeutscheBahn technicians headed to the rear of the train with a variety of power tools – how curious!

We slept….

…until we arrived late in Berlin Hauptbanhof, a monumental building with many layers of train tracks running through it.

 We were met by Mr. Stylianou’s Uncle Steel and his son, George who gave us a lift to Jetpak Hostel, where we spent an inordinately long time checking in thanks to the overly chatty Australian masquerading as the receptionist. Afterwards we went for an Italian at a local restaurant and had a very pleasant dinner with good company.

After this, we were desperately flagging with travel fatigue, so we gave our thanks and headed back to the hostel for another very deep sleep.