All Aboard for Paris_world

All Aboard for Paris

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Now, however; it seems fuckin\' ludicrous as to why we had to rush from Scotland to Paris in order to catch a train to Milan. We should\'ve just said, "Fuck Milan!" which, as it turned out, should have been exactly what we should have done in the first place. Make sense? Fuck it. Here we go

Off the top though, Edinburgh, Scotland is simply magical. In its history, its strong cultural pride, the prices, the countryside, the women, everything! Fuckin\' immaculate. Truly a different world, hell, a different planet compared to where I grew up. But good Lord to get there and back from London is just a major bitch, and you only have two real choices if you\'re a back packer. Number one is the train, which, as it turns out, is the way to go, but it\'s expensive. It does, however, take less than four hours and that\'s the good part of it.

The second choice is the bus. Great deal for about $40 round trip fare, but it\'s an 8-9 hour ride. Bad enough, but when the coach is full, and you have a drunken Scotsman in the back row cracking crates of beer, the trek is a fuckin\' nightmare. Sure, you look forward to boozing it up with the lads at the pubs in town, but goddamn you gotta get there first. You\'re just not in the right mindset on a 400-mile bus trip. All right, fuck it, that\'s getting there. Like I said, Edinburgh itself is just cool

We had spent a week in Amsterdam, ten days in Paris, a couple in London, and we still wanted to catch Milan and Munich, but in order to do that, hit five countries in four weeks, we had to plan judiciously, even though we were on the run.

We set out of Edinburgh-with pangs of longing in my heart at what? 9am? Could\'ve been the 8 o\'clock coach. No, wait, it was at eight. We had booked the nine o\'clock the day before, but at the station that morning a bus driver called us over and said he had two extra seats, want them? Get to London an hour earlier now wouldn\'t ja?

We hop on, and even though this driver was more cordial than the guy we had coming up-that fucker refused to turn off the lights even though it was an overnighter-this ride here was still an endless, monotonous ordeal, sorta like this sentence.

The road coming up at youthe drone of the enginethe occasional thump of the bus running over a rabbit and hearing the driver chuckling to himself and shouting, "Hey, Rabbit Stew!" but it sounded more like, "Wabbit Stuuuuuuuuuuuuu!"

Yeah, hilarious.

Joey and I passed his Walkman back and forth and The Who\'s "Quadrophenia" became our savior across a misty English countryside

He got to sit across the aisle from two hot Italian teenage girls and I got to sit next to a 14 year old fat broad who, by the end of the trip, was asleep on my shoulder (her doing, although I did think about), and when the bus finally came to its final stop in London I don\'t know what time, she woke up, pushed me away, and couldn\'t get out fast enough. London now. Victoria Station. Terminal is packed. Dozens of policemen walking about, hundreds of backpackers of every race, color, breed, sitting, resting, sleeping, and waiting for their coach to be called. To use the WC you have to pay 40p, and even though the place reeks of fresh vomit and rotting corpses there are guys using the showers anyway. F-u-c-k that. I remember back in Amsterdam some dude at Centraal Station, whacked out of his mind on something wicked, staggering around by one of the tracks, crying and laughing at the same time because he crapped diarrhea in his pants and it was spilling out of his pants leg and people were running away from him

We must get another bus/coach-whatever the fuck you want to call it-to Dover on the coast because from there we have to catch a ferry to cross the English Channel. So we get the tickets for the bus to Dover, $11 I think, and we have to chill out for yet another hour. Since World Cup is going on over in Paris, and the hooligans have been maiming and killing in the south of France in Toulouse and Marseilles, the French government, in cahoots with the British, have banned all known rabid English fans from entering France. An actual list had been made. Passports had to be triple checked, planes and trains double-checked, and border stops for the lads were like anal inspections. It\'s a regular ol\' fashioned round up. No hooligans allowed!

So, I\'m on the floor resting while Joey is God knows where (whenever a stressful situation comes up, like this particularly nasty travel day and it\'s only going to get worse), he doesn\'t talk, and is distinctly unpleasant to be around. From where I\'m at I see some lads with their packs waiting for their coaches.

Coppers come by, not looking for suspicious, hung-over Americans like us, but for their own. They\'re asking for papers, asking for lads to open up their bags, and the cops sweep the whole terminal and end up in front of me, staring down yet another innocuous-looking dude from London.

The officer announces in a thoroughly dull voice, "Ok, now, lad. Let\'s see the passport."

"What is this! What is this!" the young man is immediately incensed.

"Come along then, lad! Let\'s not be a cunt about all this."

Another cop happens by, quickly grabs the man\'s bag and starts to go through it. "Hey now, you can\'t be doing that! That\'s fucked! That\'s fucked!"

"Calm down you!"

Another copper comes by, grabs the kid\'s jacket, goes through his pockets. Then another puts the lad spread-eagle on a wall and searches him. Yet another comes by and makes the kid take off his shirt. Then another copper comes from behind him, bends the lad\'s arm back, and starts to haul him out. His things are all over the floor, and the lad is screaming, "Piss on all of you! Piss on all of you!" and the entire entourage exits a side door. The whole thing takes maybe two minutes

Joey comes back eating from a bag of jellybeans: "Anything going on?"

"Not really."

"I think our bus is gettin\' ready to roll."

And the ride out to the coast of Dover is another three hours, but I don\'t remember much because as soon as I sat I conked out. Joey the same. Necks and heads twisted, mouths agape, snoring unabashedly, a little drool here and there, hugging our daypacks like teddy bears, faces contorted into nightmaresnext thing you know we\'re at the White

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