Planes, Trains, Busses and 36 Hours Without Sleep

The following is an accounting of my 13 hour journey from Istanbul, Turkey to Graz, Austria on Tuesday, as best I could remember it...

1:00 a.m. Taksim Square, Istanbul: After an amazing last minute ride around town and some profoundly delicious Turkish ravioli, my new found pal Can (who manages the biggest rock band in Turkey, Mor Ve Otesi) kindly drops me off at the Havas bus station, where I catch a ride to Sabiha Gokcen airport well on the outskirts of town…

2:00 a.m. Sabiha Gokcen Airport: When I’m not sitting, waiting, tapping my toes and sucking down Turkish coffee in an attempt to stay awake, I am going through security (TWICE) as well as customs and passport control. I am met with disapproving scowls wherever I go… these people love their jobs… There's a bunch of great big heaving Danes in the Duty Free shop… soldiers… probably just finishing up a NATO exercise… they’ve been celebrating their departure from Turkey… they are wrestling on the floor while Turkish police look on disapprovingly... must steer clear of this potential international incident…

3:00 a.m. Checking in at Sabiha Gokcen Airport: A cute girl in line in front of me obviously has issues with reading comprehension… she seems to have a problem with the concept of carry-on baggage versus checked baggage… she has purchased some rather large cymbals in Istanbul and wishes to carry them home… along with about 3 other carry-on bags... a mono-browed grumpus behind the airline check-in counter drags his hairy knuckles over the keyboard and utters something unintelligible and informs the pretty girl that her cymbals will cost her another 100 Euros… I watch her face grow ashen with despair… since my checked baggage is underweight I offer to let her store some of her cymbals in my bag… she seems really pleased at my offer and the mono-browed grumpus drags his hairy knuckles across the keyboard once more and knocks her fee down to a more manageable 30 Euros… Cute girl doesn’t say one more word to me and avoids me like the plague until the moment she fetches her cymbals after the flight… perhaps I am so hideously grotesque that young pretty girls will no longer speak to me… perhaps they see me as some creepy skeeze, an older guy on the make… I pray that I don’t give off that vibe, but who knows… it looks as if my ship has left the “make idle conversation with pretty girls you help with their cymbals” dock for good… one more chink in the armor of my fading masculinity...

4:40 a.m. Wheels up to Bratislava: Yes… AT 4:40 A.M NO LESS!!! There are unusually cruel masochists living among us… some of them grow up to be dental surgeons, others decide on a career of scheduling flights for SkyEurope…

5:30 a.m. Somewhere several thousand feet over the snowy Slovakian countryside: As I hang on for dear life, I ask myself, is God himself wrapping his hands around the fuselage in an attempt to rattle us violently out of the plane onto the fields below? I feel as though I am inside a salt shaker held by someone afflicted with a severe case of sodium deficiency... Now I’m no avionics expert, but I’m pretty sure a flight on a Boeing 737 isn’t supposed feel like you’re a bouncing down a gravel road on a toboggan… on its side…

6:00 a.m. Landing in Bratislava: Considering the flight was one long mosh pit, the pilot brought her down pretty easy… you know its been a rough trip when you see the flight attendants marking the Holy Trinity upon arrival…

6:25 a.m. Bratislava airport: I (and others) watch as our bus to Vienna pulls away EMPTY… I guess it never occurred to the driver that… oh… the flight would be late and he should wait a little while longer? Nope… no time for adaptive reasoning… after all, he has an empty bus to get back to Vienna... on time... the next bus? Not until 8:25… LOVELY… even lovelier is being forced to stand in the sleet and freezing rain for 90 minutes because the fat Slovak cop with the football head decided he wanted to get some coffee and therefore kicked us all out of the arrivals section… I love the bovine expressions on the faces of the Slovak employees manning the airport… they all look at you as if they have a deep desire to cut off your head and make soup from it… and English speakers? Forget it… German speakers? Nope… never mind that this is an international airport just a few miles from Vienna… Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them couldn’t speak Slovakian either…

8:25 a.m. Bratislava airport: Cold and wet… I finally get on the bus… just start to settle in for a brief snooze when a large babushka plops down next to me with a mountain of bags that look as if they are made out of carpeting… I’m not entirely convinced that there isn’t some sort of livestock living in these carpeted bags… I find that my eyes are starting to burn, for she smells of feet… and stale French cheese… and feet… and faintly of manure… and feet… I try to retain my spirit of cultural relativity… I fail…

9:45 a.m. Vienna Westbahnoff: I slog through the subway, up and down stairs with all my luggage, then outside in the freezing rain for several hundred meters… only to realize I am so punch drunk that I've forgotten which train station I am supposed to be at… of course I chose the wrong one… I wonder if it is ok for a grown man to break down crying in public… I spot a junkie fixing himself in a doorway and realize at least I’m not a junkie fixing himself in a doorway…

10:30 a.m. Vienna Sudbahnhof: I arrive at the correct train station (and later realize I have no idea how I got there)... I eat a Leberkassezemmel (basically a hot Austrian bologna sandwich) it is a glimmer of gold in my sea of blackness… mmm… and why does orange Fanta taste so good here?

10:56 a.m. Train leaves the station… in a few minutes we are in the snowy and picturesque Austrian countryside… I proceed to entertain/terrify the other passengers by alternately grumbling like a mad man, bouncing my head off the window, snoring loudly and then acting completely freaked out upon awakening, as well as producing copious pools of drool… I have become Homer Simpson… it doesn’t take long for the other passengers to gently sneak out of my immediate vicinity… I pray that I’ve committed no prosecutable sleep crimes…

1:45 p.m. Graz Hauptbahnhof: I stagger out of the train disheveled... My uncle Pietro greets me with a wary glance… I am a sight for sore eyes… I’m exhausted, wet and dirty… I smell of babushka lady, garlic, raki, cigarettes and Russian whores… (ok… maybe not the latter, but allow me some creative license…) my uncle takes one look at me and 15 minutes later there is a large bowl of goulash before me alongside a cold beer…

And all is right in the world…

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