Needing Time Off
There’s a dream holiday I want to do, and it goes like this…
1. Train London-Paris. The Eurostar is awesome. Gare du Nord is not the world’s nicest station, but who cares, it’s Paris, it’s Eurostar, spend a couple of nights in the city, go walking by the Seine, go see ancient works of art, that whole barny.
2. Train Paris-Vienna. This is do-able. I’ve done the train from Cologne-Vienna, and it’s awesome, and I only went via Cologne because I didn’t realise you could get the earlier service from Paris. Cologne itself isn’t the world’s prettiest city, but it does have two great redeeming features. a) a chocolate factory and b) a cathedral of such epic, spiky Gothicness right by the station that, as you step inside its echoing halls and hear the giant organ blasting out a profoundly sinister chord, probably in B flat minor, you can’t help but laugh.
The train journey from Cologne-Vienna (and by extension, Paris-Vienna) is an overnighter, and takes you down the Rhine valley for a large stretch, through great wooded gorges and past castles built by mad German princelings on sheer cliffs. It is, in short, totally cool. Also, German sleeper trains are a strange and exciting exercise in origami. With everything folded up, the cabins feel spacious. When you fold the bunks down, two people cannot physically fit in the same place. It’s a sorta inverse-Tardis, really…
3. Few nights in Vienna, because why not?! I’ve been to Vienna briefly before, and remember it as a stunningly impressive city defined mostly by cake and whipped cream. Also, I studied the history of the second siege of Vienna as my final-year dissertation, and it was fantastically intersting. I am an expert in the history of 4km2 of Central Europe over 10 weeks in 1683; London School of Economics, I thank you.
Except… small gripe… in Northern Germany people are willing to, at the minimum, tolerate my bumbling attempt to speak their language and sometimes will even talk back to me without switching into their effortlessly brilliant English. In Austria people just look at me like I’m mad and bark, ‘what?!’ in their own, accented English, leaving all attempts to redeem my meagre language skills, stuck back in the Rhine valley. But ah well, so it goes…
4. Train from Vienna to Budapest. OR! Depending on how possible it is, boat from Vienna-Budapest, as this is perfectly do-able down the epicly fat river that is the Danube. I have never been to Budapest. My knowledge of its history stopped around about 1700, picked up again around 1901 and then teeters of again in 1990. I speak no words of Hungarian, but what little I know suggests that it would be an incredible place to visit.
5. Train for Budapest to either Belgrade or Sofia. I’m not sure which. I’d really need to do more research. Either way, however you look at it, a train, heading South…
6. Train from Sofia/Belgrade to Istanbul. Because ISTANBUL!! A city I’ve been to once for a little over a week, and whose history I studied for three years. Melting pot of the world, a Roman-Byzantine-Ottoman giant on the European-Asian fault line, Hagia Sofia, Topkapi Palace, the Golden Horn, Pera, the Seven Hills, Suleymani, the Blue Mosque hello yes, yes please Istanbul, please let me come and visit again.
7. Ferry from Istanbul-Venice. This exists, apparently! I have a suspicion that it might be more akin to a cruise ship than a ferry, which is a pity as I’d really like to stay as close to proper public transport for proper members of the human race as much as possible, but sobeit. I don’t get bored on ferry rides. Even the daylight crossing from St. Malo-Portsmouth, which takes about 9 hours, was enthralling. (This was a ferry ride we did almost entirely by accident, after a holiday was cancelled when my Dad died and we found ourselves with several hundred Euros worth of refunded holiday vouchers and a limited range of options on what to do with them… and it was great…) I like big ships. I like engines, I like seeing islands, watching the sea, feeling cold wind and hot sun, I like people-watching and star-watching, in short, if I have to spend two-three days on a ferry crossing the Mediterranean, then yes please, I’m there.
8. Venice. Because… well… Venice. I went there once with a gentleman we shall refer to as TLC, who opened proceedings with ‘I don’t want to go to Venice, it’ll be so rubbish’ and whose opening remark as we stepped off the train at St. Lucia station was ‘oh my god!’ which remained the continuing spirit of the trip throughout…
9. Train Venice-Paris. There are two routes by which you can do this. There’s the sensible, reasonably fast route via Milan, or the sillier, touristy route via the Swiss Alps. I have no particular interest in going to Switzerland per se, but the Alps… well…. I do like mountains…
10. Train Paris-London. Home. Sock washing, and sleep. Because of course, this holiday will not be a proper holiday if you don’t aim to travel as light as possible, and I would regard myself as something of a failed tourist if I didn’t end up a bit smelly by the time I got back.
All of this is, in theory, perfectly achievable. I could probably book the lion’s share of it right now, if I wanted to. But here’s the snag… it’s not cheap… I don’t want to go alone… and more importantly, I have freelance terrors. Spending money is traumatic and difficult for me; because as a scribbler you never quite know where your next pay cheque is coming from, and every penny I spend I always feel is one less penny I’m going to have when I’m 65 and have no pension and probably no state to support me. Being a lighting designer doesn’t ease this concern at all, for you know, of course you know that the second you book a month off June-July 2015, that’s going to be the exact same month that someone emails you asking you to light a spectacular new show at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane – of course it will be, I mean… of course!
The rest of the trip doesn’t frighten me. The rest of the trip excites me in every possible way as being totally amazingly awesome. The only barrier I really need to overcome is a the freelancer’s psychological block, and just do it.
