oi

it has been a long week. in my efforts to get some cash together, i volunteered to do massive amounts of overtime, and i am tired. the worst is i wont get the money until the end of january, due to byzantine english banking rules i cant understand. oh well.
today i was in charge of the travel section. i was flipping through all the nice glossy books with various 1000 things you need to see/do/ visit before you die. so here is another on of my lists: best and worst train rides within europe....i didnt get tothinking about the rest of the world, so pleasures like the dakar-bamako will have to wait for another shift.

Worst:
1. skoplje-belgrade. i especially like the part where the train stops in an empty field for a few hours
2. the RERs that run from gare du nord out to departement 93. they are gross. the people on them smell. and the cops come buy all the time to make things worse for everyone. and they are strike prone (like every other RATP/SNCF production)
3.budapest- lvov. the problem occurs inevitable at 3am at chop, the border crossing. they have to change all the wheels on the train since the soviet union operated on a different track system. it takes several hours and is a very loud process.
4.St petersburg-tallinn. russian trains are normally good, but thank god this one isnt running anymore. it was awful. it should have been 6 hours but the newly erected border suddenly made it 8 or more. it was also a major route for drug smugglers, most of whom were ethnic russian babushki. there is something sad about seeing a 70 year old woman hauled off in chains. there is also something ridiculous about the way the estonian guards would greet non russians with phrases like "welcome to europe."
5.istanbul-ankara. apparently it was faster in ottoman times. take the bus.
6.athens-thessaloniki. they over sold my ticket and didnt offer compensation. i spent the trip in the restaurant.AND it was expensive. i dont think trains are a balkan speciality.
7. scotland-london. they all suck. the last time i was delayed by 3 hours. sometimes it is 5. and the worst is you pay over 50 pound for this torture. and they bombard you with psuedo polite explanations like "due to signalling problems at newcastle, this train will be delayed...." blaim thatcher.

best.
1. eurostar. i spent my childhood on the bloody ferry. couldnt pay me to take it now. the only pity is that it is so pricy, sometimes i still fly because it is often half the price. if the train were cheaper, i would take it all the time.
2. lisbon-porto. i am not kidding, this thing is beautiful and it goes incredibly fast. and it wasnt even that expensive (comparitively)
3.stockholm to copenhagen. the bridge is incredible. and it is fast and reliable.
4. oslo-bergen. the scenery is breaktaking. i have never seen water so blue anywhere else.
5. rome-munich. same explanation as above: the scenery is phenomenal, and the sevice, while not so good as in scandanavia, is still quite good.

conclusions:
1. it is better to be on a train in scandanavia than in the former ottoman empire.
2. thatcher was evil.
3.russia is still the best place for trail journeys: the trains are bearable (ok except the toilets) and cheap. and they are safer than internal russian flights.