day 4 to 6 . Vienna

Staying a few days in Vienna at Sofia's place with the two Sofias and Alice :).




Having beers, walking in the gardens of Cici, eating a lot and teasing.




Pitty I got a cold in between all this :P


Alice teling me a sleeping story before I sleep at HER place :)

Day 3. Arriving to Vienna

I woke up early with the passport control at the Austrian border control police. After that the view was so beautiful that I decided to just stay looking at the Autumn colors from Austria. Autumn had not yet arrived to Portugal when I left.




At 8.51 am I arrived to Vienna Westbahnhof station.

I had a friend to peak me up and went directly home for a long and warm tub bath to recover of almost 48h in the train without proper bathing and resting :)

In the afternoon went for the first city walk and a short visit the X-ray Crystallography laboratories of the Max F. Perutz Laboratories.

Night of day 2. Sleeping from Strasbourg to Vienna

At about 10pm I arrived from Paris to Strasbourg.... and took the night train to Vienna there.



After some passport control at the German border where my compartment mate (Romanian) had a full bag search by the Polizei and I did not. The only explanation I have for that is that I'm an EU citizen while he is not (yet?)...

Day 2. Travelling through France.

Arrived to Hendaye (France) at 7h30am. The idea was to take the 7h56 TGV train to Paris. Unfortunately there were no more places on that particular TGV and had to book a place in the 10h23 TGV instead. 3h wait but 1/2 asleep / 1/2 awake ...

While there, the police was very active asking for ID cards. Since I decided not to stay on the train waiting room they only came to me once. But I saw then going more then 5 times to that room and everyone had to wake up :) and show their IDs several times. Can you take a rest like this? :)

Finally I got the train and met Manuela. A 48yo nice lady from Oporto. She had a degree in history and was a teacher while younger. She had lived in Germany working as a patent translator from German to Portuguese. At the moment she has 2 children (21? and 16 yo) and owns a small decoration company. The most interesting was that she was doing an interrail, too :). Her younger son is in the Portuguese national team of under 17 European championships Rink-Hockey (Portugal is very good on this) and the under 17 European Championship is happening in Nantes. Manuela was going to travel to Paris and then to Nantes to see the games of her son. When the championship ends and her son returns home by plane she intents to continue travelling alone through Europe. This was not her first Interrail neither her first one alone :) She was an experimented interrailer he he. But this was the first interrail done after her 26 years old. Well, I can say I made a friend. During the 7h trip we talked about almost everything, from history, geography, politics, research, languages, companies (she was reading the Portuguese Exame magazine - an economy publication that I subscribed for more then 2 years once). Thanks Manuela. I was really lucky to meet you. I hope we do not lose contact. If you ever come to Lisbon please say Hello :) I'll do the same if I go to Oporto.

oh, almost forgot ... at about 100Km from Paris the TGV hit something on the track and we had to stop. Hitting something at 300km/h can be dangerous. We stayed put for about 40 minutes waiting from them to change the train flat tire :P lol or the equivalent in trains he he

Night of day 1.The men that kills

At night I was not alone on the train compartment. A Brazilian radicated in Portugal for more then 8 years entered in the town of Coimbra. After about 1h of mutual silence we started to talk about our lives. He was 45 years old and lived with his wife in Oporto. He was very interested in my work and made a lot of questions. But then after a while he said:
- I'm a bit embarrassed to tell you my work !
I told him that any work has its own value and that he should not be embarrassed. Well, I did not know what was coming after :) . He worked in slaughterhouses killing pigs and cows and separating all the meat from the bones. He did this for many years and in the last 2 years had worked in Germany (1 year), Strasbourg (6 months), Portugal (6 months) and was going to work in Santander, Spain for the next 3 months. He said that there was a lack of people with his knowledge in Europe and he had many requests for work. The company gives him a car, all the money he spends in the supermarket and pays him an apartment, too. So all the money of the salary is kept in the bank :). So far so good.... but then he started to explain some details of how to remove the bones from a pig leg. How close is the pig anatomy to the human anatomy. That he usually worked at night, in -5 degrees C and for 10 hours in a row. That he never had drugs but some of his colleagues to keep working on those conditions were addicted to cocaine. }:-)

He started to explain that he always brought his own knives with him and that he had more then 15 different sizes knives in his bag. That he was very perfectionist about everything and that got really up set at home when his wife left things out of place.

Well, I started to look at my shoes (I had removed them earlier) in the ground and thinking if they were badly placed. I also decided not to turn off the light and go to sleep while he was on the train. :). Fortunately, he was leaving at 2am in Valadolid to change trains to Santander. Well, when he left... I was really ... really relieved. Only then I could relax and sleep while crossing spain.

Day 1. The departure day

Departed from Sta Apolonia with destination Hendaye (France). The train was the sud express also called by the brazilians the "show of the horrores" :). I'm not telling you why :P

The day was sunny and relatively warm (15-20C°). I was the only person on my compartment at departure.

I was ready to leave at the time the train was announced to depart.

Everything was on the right place and I should have a nice and smooth travel until the train change in Hendaye... at least it was what I though at the time :)








Some of initial nervousness flew away with the feeling of the wind on my face and with a sensation of freedom in my mind and heart.