Who is that?

We walked back down the hill across the river Danube, the border between ‘Buda’ and ‘Pest’. We watched a street band play some Hungarian hits, and resisted the urge to spend any money on trinkets.

For the most part our family and friends were going to be getting shells and stones as gifts from us. Both Rosa and I can’t walk on a beach without picking up beautiful things we see, and we have been to some incredible places.

Comments along the lines of  ‘you’ve gone all that bloody way for nearly ten months and you’re giving me a stone? You’ve got to be kidding…’ are, well, pretty understandable, but I promise you they are beautiful stones and shells from places we actually went to, and in some cases I can even remember why we picked them up and where they came from :- )

You also need to think ‘bigger picture’ here, it’s not fair on Suitcase who already has enough to deal with, what with the language barriers and the currency exchange rates. We didn’t need to be adding more ‘stuff’ to carry.

We walked back to the hotel past the second largest synagogue in the world, a building whose entrance way was covered in intricate mosaic pattern’s and which we couldn’t afford to go in to either. These Hungarians are hot on their entrance fees…

We walked across the little park next to our hotel and a community choir dressed in pastel t-shirts started singing, by silent mutual agreement we sat and listened. The voices were soft and the harmonies subtle, the music washed gently over us and the conductor, whose long fringe was a fabulous source of entertainment, dramatically over emphasised every pause and swell.

After a while Theo went and ordered a curry from the takeaway place he had found earlier in the day, and over our meal of brinjal bhaji, dahl and rice, we agreed that Budapest was a beautiful city that could do with a few more free attractions.

Our train to Vienna left at 7:55 the next morning and I was up and out by 6.00, my last walk in a foreign city…although I could already hear Rosa pointing out that we had an hour-long trek across Vienna to come : )

I headed for the park, thoughts coming and going. Getting home, friends I would be seeing soon, how was our cat?

How would it be to stop travelling?

…our journey was done. How was that going to be for all of us?

We had almost made it and our conversation yesterday, sat in the sunshine looking out over the Danube,  showed me how much closer we had become. It wasn’t that we loved each other more than we had when we left, we just knew each other better. We had figured out how to rub along in the places where we irritated each other, or where we were a bit absent.

Love is simple and involves a fair degree of tolerance and kindness. I would give my extra bit of food to Rosa, who is always more hungry than me. We both checked in with Theo about his knee and took it in turns with Suitcase. Whenever I was quiet for a bit too long, Rosa would ask me how I was, and there wasn’t much that got Theo down. He’d think about what food we needed and never minded washing up after our picnic snacks on trains and buses. They were both happy to let me plan, and when I needed help they helped. We had done okay, our little family.

Normal life rarely sets the world on fire, but it fits like your favourite pair of winter socks or that coat you’ve had for 20 years. You wouldn’t wear it to a job interview, but it was warm and snug and fitted you just right.

I followed my map to the park entrance and as I walked out into the main square, parked along one edge were loads of tanks and anti-aircraft missiles.

What were they doing here? I’d already seen a train loaded with tanks on the way from Bucharest and now there were more here? I had assumed the others were either bound for Ukraine or part of border defences but Budapest was a long way from any borders with Russia, what was going on…?

As I got closer something about them began nudging my memory but I couldn’t think what, I was too busy taking surreptitious photos without the people stood around guarding them  noticing. There was a German sign that I couldn’t understand… I walked around until I could get better photos and some video footage and then saw the same sign in English.

They were making a film, these were tanks from the 1940’s/50’s and I’d seen photos of these very same ones yesterday in the museum we had been to.

I smiled to myself and headed back to our hotel, deleting most of the twenty or so photos I had taken as evidence of ‘concerning and imminent action.’ I did feel slightly embarrassed – they hadn’t exactly been hiding them and yet I’d instantly gone into ‘war correspondent’ mode…still, better than ignoring the whole thing, and the photos I kept told a story, even if it wasn’t the one I’d been writing : )

Back at the hotel it was time to pack our rucksacks for the last time. Suitcase was wildly excited and took ages to close…it actually took all of us a little longer, our zips were either worn out…or maybe we were.

Finally, we were ready to say goodbye to our last hotel room. It hadn’t been the best so we didn’t spend too long over it.

We dropped the key back to Groucho Pest and set off to the station. We were a little late leaving, mainly because of Suitcase, but we weren’t panicking, our well worn routine of ensuring we left enough time was still in place.

We’ve gotten good at making sure we had time for the unforeseen – and today it turned out we needed it. About halfway through our walk to the station, I thought about how big Budapest was and wondered if there might possibly be a second international railway station…? It was possible, lots of the cities we’d visited had North and South railway stations but we hadn’t even checked here because the train we had gotten off the day before was going to Vienna. We had naturally assumed we just came back and got on at the same station.

I fished out our train tickets…we were going to the wrong station.

I looked up where we were meant to be and it was over an hour and a half’s walk, in the opposite direction.

We had 45 minutes.

We didn’t know it, but we were about to meet our last kind stranger. We walked up to a taxi parked by a hotel, he couldn’t give us a lift but he got out of his cab and told me exactly what I  needed to do. He told me the name of the taxi app we needed, helped me find it, checked our tickets and confirmed which station we needed to go to. He watched while I booked, checked that everything had gone through okay and that our cab was on its way and then, smiling, got back into his taxi. All the time speaking to us in English.

Thank you unknown taxi man.

We arrived at the edge of the station complex with twelve minutes to go and had the fun of running for a train, arriving with four minutes to spare. We met an Australian woman, who was travelling with her husband. She told me excitedly about her adventures through ‘beautiful Europe’ and how  happy she was to be going to Portugal and Spain to meet up with her daughters before heading to the UK to visit her grandads place of birth in Cornwall. The world is a wonderful place.

We were in good spirits having made it to the train and we howled with laughter thinking about how many times we could say, ‘well, of course when we were in China…’  ‘Yes, the sunrise over the ocean in Indonesia is spectacular in the autumn…’ ‘Rosa sweetie, do you remember Huangshan? Oh my God, the views! You really must go there…’

We promised ourselves. If we became ‘those’ people, we would stop/interrupt/bludgeon each other – Theo decided he’d whistle a little tune, which he did the very next time I talked to someone, I literally just said where we had been and he started whistling, it was so unfair – if he’d been any closer I could have kicked him under the table but I had to settle for our families new favourite way of dealing with annoying behaviour…finger wagging : )

A little way into the journey I noticed I was staring out of the window, and not even remotely feeling the depth of feeling I had yesterday. Perhaps it was the more modern train that didn’t really lend itself to romantic wistful feelings. We were having an everyday commuter experience and I would have plenty of time to think about ‘the epic train journeys we had taken’ when we got back. We were about to arrive in Vienna.

I had imagined walking through a beautiful city: parks and prancing ponies, grand cathedrals with elegant spires. The reality was concrete, cranes and industrial estates. We saw one interesting looking museum, and the rest was utterly forgettable.

Theo pointed out that there would be a beautiful part of Vienna, we just weren’t in it…

Hmmm, we’d walked for an hour and seen nothing I’d ever want to see again, he was adamant that Vienna was an elegant and beautiful city, maybe we’d see it from the bus.

Rosa and I went in search of food when we arrived at the equally forgettable municipal bus station, and found a small supermarket  full of delicious ready-made salads. We bought all the food we needed to get us home, with the possible exception of the 3.30 stop in Cologne…what do you eat for two hours at that time in the morning? Hopefully there would be a café …or somewhere to lie down.

The bus came early and we loaded on, our bus driver, charging us a cheeky extra €8 cash for Suitcase. We just paid up…we didn’t want Suitcase feeling anxious on our longest bus journey.

The bus had two storey’s and we had the bottom deck almost entirely to ourselves for the first six hours…we had a table and ate our fabulous food, looking out at the boring ring road…my raised eyebrow was lost on Theo who had carefully turned his back to me and was staring out of the window, certain his Vienna was just the other side of the concrete jungle surrounding us.

As the countryside claimed us he admitted defeat, maybe Vienna was horrible. We tried to sleep …but we couldn’t.

One of the things about buses is how regularly they stop, doors open, people get on and off, the toilet door is noisy, people snore…and you can’t lie down, so all you ever really do is dose.

We’d been in Germany for about two hours when we were directed by a police patrol into a makeshift border check area. We were all asked to get off the bus and produce our paperwork. Most of us were let back on the bus reasonably quickly but one older man was seriously grilled for about twenty minutes. Theo was keeping a close eye on how things were going for him, feeling his anxiety and stress, and making sure the police knew they had a witness. Eventually our fellow traveller was allowed back on the bus – the slight drama having woken us back out of our dosing state and by the time we arrived in Cologne, we were truly knackered.

Theo and Rosa stumbled off the bus and and went to collect all our luggage. Our bus wasn’t going any further.

But me, I knew something fabulous was about to happen and as I stepped down I heard the faint strains of one of our songs…even I hadn’t expected that! I looked around, but couldn’t see where it was coming from. Neither Theo nor Rosa had noticed… why would they, it was the last thing you would expect to hear.

Rosa looked up at one point but she shook her head and went and grabbed her rucksack from the pile the bus driver had made. Theo was turning towards us with Suitcase, and I saw the look of confusion on his face. He’d recognised the music…

‘What the…?’

As I picked up my rucksack the music got a little louder…and I can tell you that it is VERY bizarre to hear the strains of a song you know really well in a Cologne bus station at 3.30 in the morning. Rosa and Theo were looking around – priceless looks of surprise and wonderment on their faces, was it being played through the tannoy system?

A mysterious looking figure in a long coat with his face shielded by a scarf and beret walked out in front of them and started moving his arms around in a way that could be considered dancing if you were being kind, and were the threatening actions of a mad person if you were not, luckily it didn’t last too long…

To be fair, being as tired as we were, it was more interesting than freaky and they saw who it was within seconds when the ‘big reveal came’ and the hat and scarf were discarded. No need for pepper spray, which was lucky because we didn’t have any.

Cousin Tim had come to meet us.

We had started our whole journey by visiting him in the Netherlands and when we couldn’t afford to go back the same way he decided to come to us ‘because the circle needed completing’ …here, at Cologne airport/come bus station, in the very early hours of the morning.

It was such a joyous meeting…

We found somewhere to sit inside the terminal building and Cousin Tim got out a picnic.

Sandwiches, cake, tea and Prosecco : )

We stuffed ourselves and got a little bit drunk to be honest – why not?! It was wonderful to have that feeling of completion and celebration, (and maybe we’d sleep a bit better : )

Suitcase and Tim became firm friends and exchanged Facebook/Twitter and TikTok profiles. Tim tried to pop the cork quietly and with a flourish produced four plastic mugs we toasted to ‘love and adventure’ and tried really hard not to be too loud.

The time in that airport could have been so grim, there was no cafe, just a robot arm dispensing coffee – it was pretty cool watching the robot arm swinging round but I’d have preferred a sullen youth with acne and an attitude problem.

We got to share stories of our adventures with each other, giggling about nothing much, the tiredness and Prosecco affecting us in equal amounts. That hour and a half was exactly what we needed to sling shot us back home and Tim’s love and spontaneous craziness would keep us warm all the way back to Somerset…

We waved madly to Tim as we drove out of the bus station. My wonderful cousin, I mean who does that? He had driven for four hours from Alkmaar to make sure he could hide behind a post and play our music to us through a pretty big speaker when we arrived AND bring us a picnic at 3.30 in the morning. We all agreed Suitcase would go to Cousin Tim if anything happened to us.

We were buoyant on bubbles for the first hour or so chatting and laughing and then happily reached for some sleep…or fitful dosing as Germany merged into Belgium. Twenty-four hours of travelling came and went and we slowly grew more tired, this was a long one. I was glad we had asked one of our friends, Ali, to come and collect us from the outskirts of London, this end bit was tough, and it would be so lovely not to arrive home in the dark…

We had optimistically bought a train ticket from London to Castle Cary a month ago, but when our house sitter had let us know she was leaving our home a week early we had decided to try and get back a little quicker. The cost to change our tickets back to Castle Cary had been nearly £100. Someone needs to do something about train travel in the UK…

A young woman called Alice joined the bus somewhere in Belgium and after a couple of brief sentences where she seemed spectacularly uninterested in our journey (…and Theo whistled that irritating tune again) she turned away.

To be fair I was in her seat and her boyfriend had persuaded her that the one she was in was just as good, but it wasn’t.

As we slowly made our way through Brussels, our driver got slightly chatty. He was new to our bus and had arrived twenty minutes late to his change over slot ‘because of traffic!’ He had explained to the tired and grumpy driver he was replacing, not a great excuse for a bus driver I thought …he had then proceeded to get lost down some very questionable narrow streets, the highlight being a nine point turn at the end of a cul-de-sac on the outskirts of Brussels.

During his first little chat we discovered we were going by ferry to Dover which was big news to us. We had all thought we would be travelling by Euro tunnel – quick, flexible and simple but no, we were going – slow, inflexible and complicated. Still we’d get to see the white cliffs of Dover, which had the potential for some wistful nostalgic romanticness.

We made it to France and Alice finally got her seat when someone claimed hers, so she had the perfect excuse to evict me. We were both gracious about it but we didn’t become firm friends straight away…

As we left Lille our bus driver told us our ferry left at 2.30 and we ‘might be struggling to get there in time.’

We all waited for more details but there weren’t any so we all just looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders – there really wasn’t much else we could do.

I got the route up on maps.me …’the last time you will need to use that mum!’ Was she being sarcastic? I couldn’t tell, I was too tired and her face gave nothing away.

I pointed out I’d be using it in London to get us to the tube and she smiled – could have been pure evil or sweet kindness…all I wanted to do was eat chocolate or sleep!

As we got closer to Calais we started getting more little updates from our driver who was clearly trying to be positive. ‘The traffics looking good from here to the port and visibility isn’t too bad in the Channel.’

Our driver, come weather man, did some nippy little manoeuvres in the last few miles and we arrived at 13.45. In the final approach he laid out what it would take to get on the ferry, ‘please take all your luggage with you, go through both French and British border control and customs, and get back on the bus as quickly as possible!’

Really? I put our chances of getting onto a 14.30 ferry at slim to non-existent, but we all made an effort.

There were twenty-five of us to get through the one x-ray machine, twenty-five of us to get stamped out of France with only one passport officer, the other having been nabbed by P&O ferries to make sure their bus got loaded on time…and then we got to British passport control.

Every position had someone in it.

In our whole nine and a half months we hadn’t seen this many people working on border control. Rosa and I went together and the two officials were really interested in our passports – they weren’t suspicious, just curious, they’d never seen one so full of stamps and visa’s before. It was lovely chatting with them but we were in a hurry so we eased our passports back out of their hands after they’d gawped long enough, and were back on the bus in twenty-five minutes…was that soon enough to get our ferry?

If not it would be the first time we’d missed a connection in the whole time we’d been away.

We sat on the bus and the minutes ticked away.

Our driver headed back into the customs building after what looked like the majority of us had made it back. There were seventeen minutes left before our ferry sailed when he got back and told us that three of our fellow passengers had not made it through border control and we would not be leaving until they had…

I liked that, you can’t go leaving passengers at ports because there paperwork needs more scrutiny – we’d definitely been the last through customs plenty of times on this trip, bus driver loyalty was important…as the clock ticked round to 14.24 two of our passengers appeared, shuffle running through the drizzle towards the bus.

Our driver leapt out to put their bags in the hold and then went back in to the building. When he came back he had the clearance paperwork to move…what had happened to our last fellow traveller?

We set off at speed through the maze of different numbered lanes that is Calais port, arriving at the front of lane 16 after just three minutes. We could see the ferry ahead, winching up its gangplank.

I’m sure it’s not called a gangplank but the outcome was the same…the boat was leaving and none of us, including the man still in the customs building, were getting on it.

We watched it slowly move away and our driver filled us in. One of our number didn’t have a passport and wouldn’t be coming any further with us, was he the same man stopped and questioned by the German authorities?! I wondered what planet you’d have to be living on to think you could get into the UK without a passport, obviously my compassion had set sail with our ferry…

Our driver told us that our next boat was leaving at 16.00 with any luck we’d make it back into London by 19.00.

Would Ali still be up for coming to get us later? We might have to think about a hotel in London. We all looked up the FlixBus policy on delays – we weren’t the only ones who might miss onward connections.

Rosa took the missed ferry the hardest…she’d had enough.

For her, home was her sanctuary and she had missed her cat so much…I did my best to be kind and comfort her, tiredness was making it hard to think and when forty minutes later our beleaguered driver came back from another fact finding trip to tell us the next ferry didn’t look like they could take us because we were a double decker, all of us felt like crying, or swimming…

When was the next ferry?

17.50 – we would arrive into England at 18.40 (at least the clocks were with us)- ‘what time will we arrive into London.’ He wasn’t sure, he had had enough too, ‘some time between 20.30 and 21.00, if there are no delays on the M20’ he muttered darkly.

So, what had been a feeling of slight overwhelm turned into defeat – we wouldn’t get home before midnight even if anyone was prepared to drive to London this late at night.

We did nothing for a while…I’d have have built a raft out of plastic bottles if I’d have had any, but I didn’t so I just sat there.

None of us wanted to stay in London we texted Ali so she could think about how driving to and from the outskirts of London would be three and a half hours later than we’d planned for…we thought about other people we might be able to ask if it was too late for her, and I looked up somewhere to stay in Victoria, just in case…

We knew we would do what we had to and if we got home a day later so be it, small comfort for Rosa, but we had a plan.

Time to reflect on the miracle that was nine and a half months of travel without missing a single train, ferry or bus…that deserved a high five but no-one was in the mood.

The only positive side to our enforced stay on the bus was we got to know Alice a little better.

She was a couple of years older than Rosa and shared some stories with us about her five months working in Val d’Isere (a famous ski resort I had never heard of!)

Apparently the Danish lads were the ‘hotties’ of the slopes, the best skiers and really good company …despite the fact that she had managed to whizz down the mountain at over 70 miles an hour at points, she told us she was a bit of a rubbish skier. I guess she could have been sliding down the mountainside on her backside – the whole thing sounded terrifying.

Alice was bright and quirky and good company – she asked us loads of questions about where we’d been, and why, we were a good distraction for each other and the time passed. She  had done the same course Rosa had thought about doing at Royal Holloway in London so they chatted a bit about that.

When our driver switched on the engine to board the ferry I checked my phone, Ali had decided she was coming to get us, we were going home tonight.

We would need to fly across London (…not literally), two underground stops and an overland train, we knew the way we needed to go. With luck and Suitcase on turbo power we could make it for 9.30.

Time to enjoy the fact that we would get to come home across the Channel rather than under it, looking out for our first glimpse of land and those chalky cliffs welcoming us home at the end of a very long journey.