In Brussels train station

My favourite thing about central Europe is how everyone speaks four languages. The woman in the cafe here told me the specials in English, then fielded a question in French from the table behind, interrupting herself to share a joke in Dutch with a passerby. It's astounding.
I said "Hallo!" to the man at the ticket desk and he started out in German, switching fluidly, mid-sentence, to English when I said "Wait, I mean 'Hi!'". It makes me feel like a slacker: I can sort-of-kind-of follow what's happening in German if everyone speaks slowly and uses small words, but it's not enough to pull my weight in a conversation; I can barely get by in Irish for that matter. This relaxed and easy multilingualism is a wonderful thing. I love it.
My other favourite thing about central Europe is bread. I could live entirely on bread and butter here. And the other best thing is cheese, of course. And the way that enormous dogs come up to talk to you in cafes, though I admit that this doesn't always happen. And pedestrian streets and plazas with markets on them. Those are great. And bikes, too, and separated bike paths and miles and miles of canal paths to ride along. Or riverbanks where you can sit and think and watch ducks. Although, actually, big train stations with lots of platforms are even better than any of those. All of those trains heading off to everywhere. Trains and trains and trains. Europe is amazing at railways.
I love trains. That's pretty much why I'm here, travelling, I mean, instead of being a productive member of society. I wanted to sit on a lot of trains. Europe has the most fantastic network of high speed services. I have a timetable here for international trains from Brussels: in the next few hours, just to list a few options, I could take the TGV to Nice, the Benelux IC to Luxembourg or Amsterdam, the Thalys to Paris, or the ICE to Frankfurt. From each of those cities more lines spiderweb off in all directions. If you've got your visas sorted out, you can take trains from London to Tehran and beyond. How cool is that?
International railways feel positive and optimistic to me. It takes time and effort and cooperation (and a huge pile of money) to build them and, if you stop being friends with your neighbour, you can't just point them off in another direction. Wars happen and borders close and the tracks sit there, getting grassy, waiting for people to get over themselves and reconnect. Just think about that! The conflict fizzles out and the engineering is ready to go again. Cooperation and trade and unity, all symbolised by parallel lines running off into the distance. Wonderful!
I do realise how cheesmongery this sounds, but I can't help it. I get pretty excited about railways :-) And individual trains, for that matter. My favourite days on this trip have been sitting by the window watching the countryside go by, reading for a bit, maybe talking with other passengers, just sort of logging out of the real world and into the train world, and getting such a kick out of the parts of the journey when the train is going around a curve and you can see it out of its own window. That just about makes my day.
I'm about to get on the Eurostar to London. This time tomorrow I'll be on the Dublin ferry, and then off to Galway on the last train of my trip. I'm looking forward to seeing you, Ireland-people!

On the Rail. Way. To. The. Euro zone.

(Joel says that isn't as hilarious as I think it is.)

Right now I have fourteen currencies in my bag, including a Sri Lankan two rupee coin, an inch thick wodge of Uzbek som and some goaty Mongolian tögrög worth $120. If asked at some border to declare the money I'm carrying, I think I would lie.

But no new currencies for me for a while, because it's eurotime! I'm writing this on the Spirit of Zurich, a lovely red Railjet train bound for Austria. This wasn't in the plan, but I suddenly realised I could have breakfast in Vienna tomorrow morning and there was no good reason not to. I'll get an early train from there to Munich so I'll have daylight for looking out the window: the internet says that it's a scenic part of the country. That said, the only part of Germany I've ever been in is Frankfurt. Let's just say that the bar is low :->

We had fun in Budapest. It's a peaceful place to walk around and look at things, and it's insanely beautiful at night. The wind was too cold for us to work up enthusiasm for the baths, but we saw the synagogue and the cathedral and the castle and Buda's old town and some bridges and a Christmas market. That actually sounds much more productive than we were: mostly we just sat around and ate things. It was pretty great. More of that kind of thing.

Budapest is funny because it starts off so hostile. You get off the train in a station that has few signs and no ATMs. Guards stand blocking the doorway for no obvious reason. You leave the station and go down the street to find an ATM between a gambling hall and a sex shop. Then you walk along a building site until you notice steps leading down to the unmarked metro station. There's a woman selling orange paper tickets at an unofficial looking desk near the top of the stairs. When you see a more traditional ticket booth inside the station, you wonder whether you just bought a black market metro ticket or maybe entered a raffle. On the platform, there's no subway map and no list of stops for the line. Many of the other stations have both, but I guess they want visitors to prove their worth.

I mean, obviously it's saner than the MTA -- the one time I took a bus from Montreal to New York, the gate from the bus station to the subway was locked and I had to find my way out to the sketchy, poorly lit street, cross over, then navigate through a party of winos to get to the A train. Where there were rats on the platform. Welcome to America, Canadians! -- but that's New York for you, bless its grubby, surly heart. We expect better from you, Hungary! Be more Central European! Aw, ok, or give us more of that bean soup and we'll call it good.

Btw, I feel like I must know someone who lives near Munich. If that's you and you'd like to have dinner, please drop me a line.