Heading East

Look at a map and you’ll see that Vienna lies, pretty much, due east of Paris. As we waited for the train to pull out, the announced list of towns and cities (were we really going to stop at all of these!!) were dizzying with historical and cultural associations. It didn’t occur to me to note them down–lists of towns as poetry–but I remember Nancy, Strasbourg, Freiburg (I think), Munich . . .
As I’ve already intimated the seating was not comfortable, so as the light began to fade we asked the attendant to put the beds down (it didn’t seem entirely clear how the mechanism worked) and discovered that the beds were, contrary to the seating, extremely comfortable. So it wasn’t long before we were preparing for sleep, nibbling on provided treats, reading and . . . and then what do I remember?
I woke at Strasbourg where we seemed to wait (change of engines, driver?) for perhaps half an hour. I had no idea what time it was, had no curiosity about it, simply waited for the train to start again so that I could return to a glorious sleep; and that was the revelation, I loved sleeping on a train. I was like a baby being gently rocked by some benevolent force. How long has been since I felt so held?
I woke in the grey light of a misty Austrian morning; woods and neat fields, neat houses, a breakfast of prepacked bread, cheese, jam, orange juice, yogurt and coffee all ordered on the previous evening. The train pulled into Vienna exactly on time.
As in Paris we had a couple of hours before catching the Belgrade train–this time from the same station. So again with our wheelie suitcases we wondered out into the warm and peaceful Viennese early Sunday morning. Looking out from the station entrance we saw a church across the way and decided to make for that. It turned out to be a Lazerene church inspired by the work of St Vincent de Paul. I did pick up an English leaflet at the back of the church but cannot find it now, but he founded an order that was committed to work with the poor.
After a short time and a discussion about finding internet cafés in order to put posts on the blog it was time, with a fine sense of anticipated adventure, to climb on to the Belgrade train . . .

ak


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