The Weary and Unwanted Road Home: Munich to London via Paris

We leave Munich Friday night to a strange chanting noise, as though a crowd of football fans are working their way through the station. Boozy shouts and cheers. I am beyond tired, as though all the travelling has meshed together with my malaise at returning home, like some bad romance. Being that I was by this point as broke as a pebble, I paid for a seat (€4) and not a couchette (€20) and made a space for my aching limbs to curl up to a deep, dark sleep. Woken only briefly by a train guard who gently taps me on the shoulder and then kindly brushes aside my apology for fumbling with my now battered and travel stained interail pass (he tells me off later though, for resting my feet on the chair in front. I like him less then).

I share a cabin of seats with a very stiff and formal Indian man, about 30 years old, though aged by his old-fashioned neat suit and fastidious attitude. he continually sets his hair down just so, adjusts his watch to the exact position on his wrist and flicks the curtains across the cabin windows into place. I feel slightly uneasy about sharing a cabin with a male stranger, but it turns out I have little to worry about; he is more concerned with order and neatness. Goodness only knows what he thinks of me, looking as crumpled as my interail pass.

Saturday dawns as cold as the night before, mist curling around the edges of the train. We appear to have lost some compartments at some distant stop (in Germany or France?) and I find that I am in the last cabin on the last compartment, which means I can stand at the end of the train and watch the track curve into the distance. I am so glad of my Arron jumper and leather jacket. The train is delayed and my companion begins to panic. He seems remarkably clueless about where he is going and I take pity on him, helping him plan his route on the Metro which baffles him hugely. I explain its workings again and again but he insists he comes with me on the Metro as we are going the same way. I take him as far as I can and when I come to say goodbye he gets a scared look in his eye and keeps saying, "I go with you!" He can't though as he is going a different way to me, so gently I leave him with the copy of the Metro map and the reassurance that the guards will help him if necessary. He seems as innocent as a babe and for a long time after I worry he will be wandering around the Metro tunnels for days trying to find his way out.

My Eurostar train leaves at 12.13 and this time, I pay attention to the Channel Tunnel. It takes about 15 minutes to pass through. I compare my excited, energised self travelling out towards Paris two weeks ago, with this sad creature returning home. Damn how I wish there could be a way to avoid it. The only silver lining is the fact that I will see friends and family, but I want to be back in Budapest and not hurtling back towards work and 'real life'. I hope this trip will have subtly transformed me. Imperceptible to others, inside there is the other me, the free spirit, the one who doesn't get chained to a desk and a small world. I want to try to maintain the psychological distance I have achieved from work these past two weeks, try not to get so involved. I need to remember the distance, remember the fact that it's a small box in a huge world.