Dateline: 09:17 05 Sep 1996
Location: Kobenhavn-Hässleholm, IR 290
And the Great Trip continues, with some 9 hours
still to go of the total 25h journey. During this time I will take
4 different trains (this is the 3rd), no stop at any station lasting longer
over an hour. I had half an hour in Kobenhavn, less than I thought,
so I regretfully forgot a shower and a cup of tea in the IR Center and
instead went shopping. I pondered for a while, trying to decide between
a 9 kr elite yogurt (with müsli) and 4 kr cheapo one, in the end opting
for the cheapo. A very wise choice, as it turned out: it turned out
that my bible, Thomas Cook's European Timetable, was wrong (GASP!), this
train does need reservations, and I had to pay the conductor 14 kr -- a
sum I would've been exactly 1 kr short of had I bought the more expensive
yogurt. Phew! This is the second time the wisdom of stowing
away a smallish sum of the local currency for unpleasant surprises has
been demonstrated. It's a very nice train though, I'm (almost) glad
to pay the 14 kr extra.
Highly amusing. I was just subjected to my very
first personal Customs inspection on this whole trip. No wonder:
a long-hair coming from Amsterdam should set alarm bells ringing
(even if, as I lated discovered, searches without prior knowledge, like
this one, are actually illegal inside EU borders). Of course, the
truly amusing part was the total inadequacy of the check; sure, the ten
minutes they spent digging through my bag, my seat and my pockets ensured
I wasn't bringing back a kilo of hash in person, but my acquaintance of
yesterday would certainly have gotten past with his cheese trick.
In one pocket of my backpack, I had a large airplace-cosmetics-baggy filled
with my personal supply of drugs (purely the medical kind, I'm afraid),
but the Customs type never even noticed it. Probably a good thing
though, some of those ziploc bags of colorful pills might have attracted
unwanted attention...
The day's budget
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