literally another aussie in london

Literally in Poland/Germany/Netherlands/Belgium (the long ashcloud trip home part 2)

Once we got off the bad roads it seemed that Eurostar added an extra train. About half an hour later everyone on the bus had a ticket, so we were all going to Brussels. It made the trip fairly easy (as easy as it can be with no real room) from there on in, most people slept, myself and some others tried of Garfield one and two, and then started buying DVDs at services. I now own a German copy of the Hangover.

Our only major stop was for dinner. We asked our drivers to stop somewhere nice and they somehow found the worst Service station in Germany. I had something that was like a hamburger but tasted like how I assume my own ass does. The best service station was one in Poland, it had an aviary that was hidden.

Other than a few trips to services in Germany and Holland, we just pushed on. In Germany we refused to pay to piss, so we ended up pissing near the woods, myself and another guy separated, so we didn’t look like we were about to suck each other off, and he thought he saw a bear. Even a bear ate him, it surely would have better than being arrested in Germany for public sodomy.

I don’t sleep much on things that move, so when he hit the hard over night part of the trip I listened to smodcasts by Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier while everyone else was asleep. Without the smodcasts I have no idea what I would have done. Luckily I came late to the smodcasts, so I had hours of old ones to get through, and even luckier still, my iphone held strong. Somehow Kevin Smith’s brilliant bullshit and Scott Mosier’s deadpan stylings were a perfect match for a packed snoring bus.

When we hit Brussels we had more problems, our bus driver was obviously falling asleep at the wheel. Most people on the bus were asleep, but for those of us awake, we were shitting ourselves. He was drifting between lanes, and because of road works, was struggling to know where he was going at all. For the first time that trip I put my seat belt on. I’d like to thank the drivers though, they decided to make a few bucks instead of watching their president get buried, hooray for capitalism.

19 hours after we set off he got us to the hotel that was organized for everyone else (we had an apartment booked, but they weren’t open over night) to sleep and shower in during the day. We stayed for a bit before making our way to our hotel. We formed amazing blitz style friendships on that bus, but I don’t think we’ve had contact from anyone since we left that hotel.

It was a great trip considering how bad it could have been. Even if 14 hours in it didn’t feel like it.

When we told people about it, they always countered with stories of what happened to friends. Everyone could recite a story worse than yours, “That’s nothing, in Uzbekistan my friend had to crawl through broken glass for 2 miles before fighting an ex-Israeli paratrooper with a switch blade for the last seat on the bus, and when she got on the bus she realised someone had brought several deadly snakes on the bus and they’d got loose…”

We still had our 19 hour ash cloud battle scars, there was integrity in our journey, even if our asses were sore.

After a well deserved nap, we had a look around Brussels. We found a café with beer and steak, and just relaxed. Until “It’s oh so quiet” by Iceland’s own Bjork started playing. It was a cruel joke, even if it was an accident.

June 2, 2010 Posted by Jrod | belgium, Poland | ashcloud, Belgium, bus rides, Germany, Poland | 1 Comment