Back!

Thank you, Niki, for keeping the family up to date with my whereabouts - it was a journey, but I made it and am now back in Lisboa. Funnily enough, a 28-hour train journey, despite hour-long delays and the fact that all trains were basically packed, is not as tiring as even a 2,5 hour plane journey. I mastered any linguistic insecurities rather well, even if I say so myself, and thus managed to avoid even more delays or missing the final Night Train to Lisbon. Mind you, thanks to the fact that I traveled first-class, I was able to observe the ant-like throng and chaos in second-class, so I do realise I´m a bit privileged. I just felt that hey I can´t afford to travel business class on a plane, I sure as **** can afford a first-class ticket on a train :). So, from Irun, in the North of Spain, to Lisbon I was able to sleep in the comfort of my own compartment, have a shower and use private facilities, have a free dinner in the restaurant and breakfast before disembarking. Even though the facilities seemed to have been created in the seventies, and I narrowly fitted the shower cubicle, it was lovely to rock myself to sleep on the rhythm of the train on its tracks.

Oh, and Niki ... the word for platform is ... Voie ... I knew it :)