Day Twenty One - Munich

My final full day of the trip consists mainly of me languishing in front of the Olympics on Eurosport in the hostel.



Having no money in a foreign country is a slightly worrying prospect, especially when your phone is out of battery and the only way of communicating with the outside world is email, which itself costs one euro per twenty minutes.



Fortunately, the hostel lays on legitimately free tea and not so legitimate free bread and fruit (purloined from the open kitchen window) and so I wile away the best part of the day reading and scribbling some notes against a backdrop of basketball and weightlifting with German commentary. How Romantic.

i finally drag my sorry self out into the streets to be met by throngs of bustling tourists, clogging up the Marienplatz hoping to catch a glimpse of the Rathaus' clock striking the hour. The heretofore good weather was swiftly supplanted by a humid downpour and I am forced to take shelter in the colonnades of the Hofbrauhaus.

This was tantamount to Chinese water torture - listening to the grey rain spatter on to the cobblestones as I, dripping wet, stared through the window at at rotund Bavarian couple enjoying foaming litres of beer and a suspiciously large sausage.

Coming to the conclusion that I manage to get by without much money and with much temptation in London all the time, I wander back to the hostel and spend my last five euros on a couple of beers in front of Eurosport. That I've already watched Poland lose to China in the women's volleyball three times today does little to brighten my mood.

The final irony as I trudge to my night train is that tonight - the one night I can't be sociable and meet new people - appears to be the friendliest night so far. Three separate parties (several American men, two American women and an Australian couple) approach me offering to buy drinks and issuing invites for a night on the tile. There is, I hope, no discernible pity in their faces.

Where were all the nice young people yesterday, when I wandered the sedate Munich streets in the vain hope of meeting a drinking buddy, before giving up early and reading in bed?

My compartment is full, there is nowhere to put my feet owing to a large woman's even larger bag blocking the floor, and an eminently punchable Dutchman will not stop fidgeting.

Day Twenty - Munich

Or München, if we're concerned with semantics. München has far more echoism; as the Baverians certainly know how to eat. And drink.

The last time I came here the 2006 World Cup was in full flow. I went to the Allianz Arena to see Germany take on Sweeden and I am not ashamed to say that, at least for one gloriously treacherous day, I was an honorary Germany supporter.

I make no apologies for this. Speaking to an Irish ex-pat this evening confirmed by incling that German's outperform the English in almost every sphere. The one possible exception being humour.

"Nothing troublesome ever happens in this town," beams Morris, a graphic designer who followed a woman over here six years ago and sees no reason to go back to Ireland. "If there are a group of Germans following you, the most they're gonna get you with is shouts of "Bad example!". If they do want trouble, just cross the street on a red man sign and they'll wait until it turns green to chase you," he said.

They have better beer. This is non negotiable. I sat in the English Garden (more on that to come) with a stein (one litre of fresh Helles lager) and certainly didn't feel the need to fight my neighbour - the carry from the bar had worn out my biceps.

They have better culture, classically speaking of course. Think Kant, Nietzsche, Schoepenhauer, Marx and Engels etc. Then think Beethoven, Strauss, Wagner, Brahms, Bach and Handel. These are to name but a few. They have 100 nobel prize winners, second only to the US.

I shall relent, before my father cuts me clean out the will but you get the point. In England the beer garden and kiosk culture would be unsustainable. There would be fights, breakages and petty disputes galore. But not in die Motherland.

I arrive at Munich Hauptbahnhof insanely early and bang on time (thanks German efficiency) and after a badly needed shower at the hostel set off for a stroll, the streets still empty as the lemon sun begins to spread its light.

The cathedral, which I've been in before, never ceases to amaze me, particularly its 'devil footstep'. The story goes that when the church was completed, the devil wandered in for a nosy. Where he has standing, the sight of the footstep, was a unique position in the church as from there on windows at all are visible. The devil apparently muttered some jibe about there not being much use for a building with no windows before a no-doubt slightly embarrassed altar boy pointed out that, yes Your Evilness, there are in fact many windows and if you'd be so kind as to take one step forward, you'll see them.

Annoyed by his rashness and stupity, the devil stamped his foot and left in a huff. The diva.

As it was a glorious day I went for a walk in the English Garden, one of Europe's largest urban green spaces. It's beautiful, with shaded walkways of dappled light intersecting rolling green pastures dotted with, er, lots of naked people.

Apparently it's the rule rather than the exception to srip off entirely to sunbath in the Garden and this proved emphatically the case as I walked through, averting my gaze from leathery tanned men doing naked lunges next to piles of meticulously folded clothes.

I even saw a naked man riding a bike. This, I thought was brilliant because it must have been done for pure pleasure. You do not ride a bike in the nim to get from A to B, there is no reason for doing it, just sheer, unadulterated pleasure. If an alien landed on earth and asked my to explain the meaning of "leisure" I would point him in the direction of the tanned cowhide on wheels. Then advise him not to use the bike afterwards.

I trawl the area around the Hauptbahnhof in a vain search for the Charity shield match. Bloddy Setanta. Even places advertising the game didn't have a subscription. I watched the Olympics, but it wasn't the same, even if USA vs China basketball was probably a far better game.

I eat alone (boo hoo) at a small beerhall down a secluded alley and drink beer from a pewter-topped tankard under the shadows of a weepong willow. That should be something Göetherian to rouse the soul, but I find myself at a loss.

I always considered myself relatively at ease in my own company (God knows I spent enough days at home watching Diagnosis Murder reruns) but it's harder in a big city. I don't feelin inclined to communicate with the scores of drunken, high-fiving Americans ("Yo man, it's like Europe, we can do whatever we want?") so I climb into a stuffy bunkbed and listen to them through the paper-thin drywall instead as I try to sleep. The lesser of two evils, I think.

Day Nighteen - Belgrade to Zagreb

Belgrade train station must seem unforgiven at the best of times. Its concrete facades have the dinge of neglect and the pistachio green pillars bearing the 'Belgrade' sign can't have seen a lick of paint since the break up of Yugoslavia.



Today, however, it looks especially bleak, under siege as it is from a formless, slate grey sky and a steady streamy of arrow straight rain.



I run for the cover of the International ticket office (there are no apologies that our train was over three hours late arriving this morning) and soon wish I'd have stayed in the sopping wet.



The woman at the desk is simply not cut out for the service industry. I ask for the price for a couchette to Venice, and she simply shrugs moodily, as if I've asked her for advice on my premium bonds. I see a price guide closed on her desk and gesture to it. She snaps at me, claiming I should know. I'm tired and have nowhere to go in a hurry, so I decide to irritate her a little more.



It's like poking a starved pitbull as I stand there and continue to ask in different tones about the train to Bergamo (knowing full well there is no such route). She eventually relents, takes off her glasses and, with perfect straight face, confounds me with her heretofor unproven English grasp:

"Fuck off you."

She calmly draws the blind and there is to be no service whatsoever from the International ticket desk today, much to my amusement and fellow commuters' annoyance.

I wait for five hours with no money (as I've broken my card the smallest denomination of euros at my disposal is a 50 and I'm not about to change this all into Serbian. The rain continues to pour down and, just as I think the day can't get any more mundane and miserable, the announcement comes that there shall be no trains to Venice today. At all.

I board the night train to Munich which stops at Zagreb along the way and takes its sweet time doing. There are no sleeper carriages so I sit huffily as an unwashed Frenchman sits unceremoniously opposite. The Croatian lady next to him is cleary unimpressed and her impressions could hardly improved as said smelly Frenchman bites salaciously on an overripe tomato, sending pips and juice flying across her newly starched-white top. Sacre bleu.

The night is long in coming and stubborn in passing. I feign sleep with my feet arcoss the narrow gap between seats - after two of the rudest, avaricious Austrian girls woke us up because they had nowhere to lay down, so, instead of two people not sleeping, all four of us could now lay distainfully awake. Come back aeroplanes, all is forgiven!

Day Eighteen - Sofia

I share a draughty compartment with two Dutch guys who, for reasons that remain thankfully unknown, are content to talk loudly about sex in English for most of the night.

At Bulgarian passport control I am handed a form by a tired looking officer, belly straining at his belt-buckle, with instructions for visa control. Clause 2.1. states that, "You must presnt this fork whenever prompted by the autharities."

Fortunately, Bulgaria's cutlery centric immigration policy must have been relaxed, for soon we were scudding through the foothills of the Balkan Mountains as a spectacular electrical storm raged on in the distance. Windows, usually rammed open as far as possible in these hot and dusty trains, have to be wedged shut to stop the torrential rain from soaking our papery matresses.

I awake in Sofia, which is fine. The Dutch guys alight and I wait for the train to crank painstakingly into motion on its continuing path the Belgrade. Only it doesn't. My carriage attendent, a new best freind owing to my modelling of Fenerbahce's new away kit, informs me solemnly that there is engineering work taking place on the way to Serbia. It seems nowhere, not even 500 miles from the Euston-Rugby mainline, is immune to the dreaded replacement bus service.

I decide to make the best of the now ten hour delay by seeing a bit of Sofia. Sofia struggles against its mightir northern neighbours of Budapest and Prague, but this little and unlikely fourth capital of Bulgaria (when made capital in 1879, the town had a population of less than 12,000) is engaging and pleasantly strollable.

I have a look at the mosque, the synagogue and a Russian Orthodox church before stumbling, almost literally, across the impressive Alexsander Neksi Cathedral. As I walk pack across a scruffy park, pavement cracks beneath my feet I spy a soviet memorabilia market with soem true gems for sale.

I can't help thinking my friend of Taras 'Not all of Stalin's ideas were bad' Goat as I wander between stalls selling anything from reclaimed cigarette cases to a 1:4 scale broze bust of Stalin. I briefly entertain buying Uncle Joe but my bag is feeling heavy enough without 20kg of dictator weighing it down.

I eat a late lunch in the Sofia Gardens, an attractively quaint strip of lush, landscaped grass ringed by playful fountains, which the locals are not shy about derobing for in order to cool off. Most of Sofia's young are here talking, laughing and comparing mobile phone ringtones as the old men of the town look on disapprovingly over a game or ten of chess.

I trudge back toward the train station actually thankful for a ten hour delay. If something like this had happened in England I would most likely be either apoplectic or incarcerated by now, but Sofia is a worthy entertainer for a day. It's creamy Baroque parliament buildings have a naturally calming hue (even when some protesters sit on the outside steps playing 'Ride of the Valkyries' over an improbably loud PA all afternoon) and its boulevards are thronged with a mixture of shopping women and cafes populated with soothed locals.

Definitely worth a longer visit in the future not least due to the ridiculously low price of food and drink (think 20p a beer).

Back on the train I share my compartment with a longhaired German with one of those really shit, wispy goatees who is, in all seriousness, called Herman. I try to make myself scarce and listen to music as another almighty storm cracks its cheeks, but Herman is clearly not known for his subtlety.

I try to read for a good half an hour as he insists on explaining the inner workings of MP3 files and it takes even longer after I have obviously stopped even grunting a reply, turned off my light and got under the sheets before he relents.

"Do you like any German authors?" he says, spying a book of mine. I answer that I don't know as much as I#d like in terms of fiction, but all the philosophers have their moments.

"Yes, I really like Schoepenhauer."
"I think we'll leave Schopenhauer for another time, Herman," I reply and turn out the lights.

Day Seventeen - Istanbul

My last and Claire's penultimate day in this city and we still don't feel like we've scratched the surface of its vibrant cosmopolitanism and preserved heritage.

I'm not keen but Claire persuades me to take an unofficial tour down the Bosporus which, aside from costing more than the state-recognised trips, seems to take place in a vessel of far more dubious seafaring calibre.

The trip is a relaxed and effective way of seeing the parts of Istanbul that they won't bother showing you from land. As we drift toward the Black Sea we can see large, modern houses, men (never women) diving recklessly into the surly blue river from precipitous balconies and children playing boisterously in leafy parkland.

There are also Turkish flags everywhere you turn. There are more red flags than at the Indy 500 and they serve as an incandescent indicator of this country's fierce patriotism.

We eat fresh mackerel kebabs for just less than a pound and head back to the hotel for that most soul-destroying of tasks: packing.

As we sip our last Efes (the sweet taste of which, I recently found out, can be attributed to the amounts of sugar they add after fermentation) in a side-street bar, a news report comes on the TV.

There are hastily composed shots of wounded men and women and distressed men weeping into the arms of others in the street. The waiter says that four bombs have this morning exploded in the Asian part of town, place we drifted past no less than two hours previous. It's testament to Istanbul's vastness that we can be less than two miles away from an alleged terrorist attack and not have a clue.

I will miss Istanbul, especially as I wile away the uncomfortably warm nights on the trains. It truly is a place city of two worlds, not separate but intermingled to provide a unique atmosphere of extravagance, piety and (except, it seems for tonight) a celebratory tolerance.

Day Sixteen - Istanbul

Today we are in for a treat. The heralded Grand Bazaar, one of the world's leading trading centres since its original construction in the 15th century.

Again by prejudices are severely tested as my preconception of the bazaar's dark, oil-lamp lit alley ways and stalls burgeoning with rugs and hessian sack bound spices proves to be woefully antiquated.

The bazaar, owing to health and safety (yes, we're still in Europe) and taxation laws, is not compartmentalised into individually owned shops, with doors, windows and there own bazaar reference number. I am not a little disappointed that the first thing for sale I see upon entering beneath the east gate's facade is a replica Fenerbahce shirt.

As I am sure is apt for much of commercialsied Istanbul, the bazaar seems to have forgotten some of it's authentic lustre; the shops are clean and straight, too ordered to merit the connotations of a bazaar. It feels like an antiseptic version of the souk in Tangier - there are no smells, virtually no street sellers and, I feel, precious little intimacy.

With still a whiff of disappointment cloying to my as-yet untantalised nostrils, we enter the Aladdin's cave that is the Egyptian Spice Bazaar. Now that's a bazaar. Spices are piled high like multi-coloured snow drifts, huge wheels of Turkish delight and luridly coloured jellied confectionery jostle for space as they stretch towards the Bazaar's tarpaulin roof. And the smell.

The bazaar smells like every curry house, sweet shop and perfumery in Arabia rolled together into one tangy potpourri bomb. Through in some locals getting their weekly spices, sellers laughing and bartering with customers and fellow proprietors alike and you have the 'authentic - although I hate using that word, as it implies that tourism is not indelibly part of many country's present national identity - Istanbul we've been so keen to discover.

We have fresh fish in a restaurant tucked under the Galata bridge, a position that offers views of the ethereal, almost Gaudi-like New Mosque. The food is excellent but the service a little show, most likely due to Fenerbahce's Champions League Qualifier against MTK Budapest blazing out from an over sized television.

Fenerbahce win 5-0 and has no bearing whatsoever on me purchasing their away shirt immediately. I just like the colours, alright?

Day Fifteen - Istanbul

The morning heat comes hard and unrelenting through the hotel window. It's early, but it's impossible to sleep so we skip breakfast to get a peek at the monumental Hagia Sofia, just a short, sweat-soaked walk from our street.

We round the corner to see the queue stretching at least 100 yards back, packed with Japanese fortysomethings with cameras and a pack of bored looking French students dressed in identical orange t-shirts. Istanbul knows what it's like to be burdened by tourists; at the same time these hordes must boost Turkey's inflating economy. One Turkish student we met said that he had gone to the church four weeks ago and paid half of that currently required for admission.

We take the ferryboat across the Bosporus to Uskudan, in the Asian part of town. For some reason I am disappointed to find out that the part of Istanbul on another continent is - well, the same.

The main plaza is populated with old men seeking shade, gesticulating to one another and smoking every cigarette as if it's their last. Woman in headdresses push prams with brightly robed toddlers and hawkish street sellers approach you with everything from Handmade Ottoman rugs to miniature rubix cubes.

The mosques call for prayer as we catch the ferry to Besiktas, home of 'New Istanbul's' most bustling area, Taksim.

After asking for directions to the suicially piloted minitaxi to get us from the port, I am casually accosted by a man wanting to shine my shoes, which are white and made from canvas. I protest to little avail and he plants my foot atop his decorative shine box before massaging my scuffed, greying trainers with a toothbrush and whitening cream that smelt suspiciously of Colgate.

I laugh as it is being done, not so much due to the stupidity of polishing canvas shoes than the fact the whole process tickles me profoundly. Finished, feet wettened and having any prior knowledge of the shoe-shine industry turned on its head, I reluctantly pay what must have been well over the odds.

We spent the afternoon strolling in and around some of Galatasaray's main streets, with the best shops to be found just off the beaten track, wherein prices decrease by roughly a half. Throughout the trip, I had been banking on Istanbul being an inexpensive sanctuary from the exorbitant prices we've encountered in most of Europe's capital cities. So far, this hasn't proved to be the case an, as I helpfully earlier sat down with my buttocks plush on my only functioning card, I might find myself having to pay those Turkish waiters in kind.

Ended the night with shisha and baklava which, although extortionate, were lovely and served by possibly the best educated waiter I've ever met, him being a PhD student in statistics. It must have been him that set the prices.