Departure

This is amazing. I’m sitting on the train to St. Anton. I have a six-person compartment almost to myself, a rather nice tray to pop the laptop on…and bugger me, a bloody electrical socket! This is amazing. The carriage is clean, and I’m sharing it with an Austrian woman, which is a bit of a pity, as it means I can’t throw my possessions around, and generally ‘make myself at home’ (not that she’s actually stopping me laying back on the seat in my boxer shorts holding a TV remote and a chicken sandwich.) Having spent the last twenty minutes chatting with her, we’ve just done the ‘I’m going to read a magazine’, ‘well I’m going to use my laptop’ thing. So, where are we at?

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve been able to catch up on this, but the first thing I should point out is that the title of this journal has become, if you’ll pardon the enormous pun, hopelessly redundant. You see, at the eleventh hour, they’ve gone and extended my contract. I think it’s all to do with headcount, rather than a powerful and irrational belief in my professional abilities, but I’m not complaining. In fact, shortly after this, it became clear that while the Company wanted me to extend, it would help the consultancy I work for a lot of I took some time off. Hence, I’m still taking the three weeks in St. Anton, then a week for Dunc’s stag week, in March. I’m darned lucky, it has to be said, and anyone and everyone has the right to tell me to shut the f**k up if they ever hear me complain (and I can always find something to complain about. For instance, I’m annoyed I’m not going to go to a gym for a month, or play any rugby. Hello?)

Actually, while we’re on the subject of complaints, I should mention this week’s ‘why me?’ issue, which I’m sure you knew was coming. At some point over the last couple of weeks, having just about shaken off the cold I’ve had (Note to self: Taking a Lemsip Max-Strength™ before playing rugby in sub-zero temperatures is not an effective cure for a cold.), I’ve picked up a bit of an infection. Funnily enough, while the cold made me feel rough as hell, I never looked as bad as I do right now (and you have to wonder about a girl who goes on a date with you when you have a fever and still calls you afterwards). The problem is that this infection’s on my neck – a shaving rash, if you will. Unfortunately, because of my ‘hack ‘n’ slash’ approach to shaving, I didn’t really realise my neck was infected until it had taken hold, so I now have a rather fetching rash across my neck, and my glands are up. Of course, you can’t see this, as I haven’t shaved for a week, and am sporting a bit of extended stubble. In fact, while I look like a mongrel dog that’s just lost its job, wife and house and that’s been sleeping in a puddle for three days, my near-beard actually feels very stroke-able. Let’s hope the ninth of the population of St. Anton that’s female (and why do we keep going there?) agrees. So, I went to the chemist today, and got her to prescribe me some oral antibiotics. Handily enough, over in Switz, they’re qualified to prescribe, although she did tell me that normally I should see a doctor. She even gave me a glass of water to take the first one in the shop! It’s little touches like that that really up the quality of life in Zurich. So yeah, why me? The drugs are spacing me out a little, but I’m ignoring the colours and voices for now, and gamely typing on (‘ticket? Ticket? What ticket, voices?…oh, right. Sorry, Herr Konductor’).

So, it’s been dumping in the Arlberg, apparently. Sylv – ‘Our Man in St. Anton’ – has been winging regular reports our way. In fact, the frequency of her mails is a good indication of the conditions as, obviously, the less often she’s mailing, the more time she’s spending up the mountain. And I’ve received fewer mails, of late. I have some ideas about how highly constructive and productive I’m going to be with this laptop when I’m not up the mountain, but we shall see…

Interlude: I’ve just spent ten minutes wrestling with my bag. The reason for this was the two Swiss GI Joes that just sat down in our compartment. One of the more amusing aspects of life in Switzerland is the way in which the-most-neutral-country-in-Europe has such an active and visible National Service. Yes, several times a year, every man under the age of thirty troops off to the station, dressed from head to toe in camouflage fatigues and carrying a carbine under their arm. The problem is, of course, that because every man has to do it, and because they only do it a couple of times a year, you tend to see lots of bespectacled insurance clerks who wouldn’t go near the armed forces, or indeed any sort of physical training if it wasn’t The Law wandering around dressed like extras from Platoon. (and they do love their rules here. Just try getting them to cross when there’s not a green man showing). They are – with the exception of my grandmother – the least threatening people I’ve ever seen. It’s so tempting to knock their forage caps off their heads as they walk by, and WHAT, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE are the earrings all about? Apparently, in the UK sometime during the eighties a single stud earring was quite popular amongst the tattooed fraternity (and I’m talking more ‘Bros’ than ‘Goths’ here). Well, they’re all the rage here… anyway, rant over, these guys sat in our (our!) compartment and started a conversation at volume. Now, it’s one thing to talk at volume, but it’s completely another it in a foreign language (not that they would consider it foreign, since they’re actually…oh shut up). So, since I couldn’t eavesdrop, I tried to dig my headphones out and pointedly place them in my ears. Of course, one of the ear lugs fell off, which meant I was rooting around in my bag for rather longer than I wanted to. Of course, as soon as replaced the lug, untangled them and, with a flourish, plugged them into my laptop, the train stopped and they got off. Bugger. I’d like to think it wasn’t actually their stop, and that they were getting off as an act of contrition, but somehow I doubt it.

Back to it, then. What are my plans for the next few weeks. Well, I’m meeting Slyv at 8:45am at the Galzigbahn tomorrow morning, so I suspect we’ll be doing a spot of snowboarding. I also have to have a chat with Heinrich, mein host, when I arrive as James, Isa, Elisa and ‘Elisa’s Japanese friend’ are coming down tomorrow morning, and I have to try and secure accommodation for them for Saturday night. I’m hoping Heinrich can find something, as he sounded quite confident on email. Perhaps they tend to hold rooms back in case people want them for the whole weekend, or a week, in which case I guess he’ll know by tonight whether he has anything available. In fact, maybe they have some sort of local hotel network. I’m reasonably confident I’ll be able to find something for them.

Bugger, why on earth is Switzerland littered with unsecured wireless networks, apart from in or near stations? I’ve spent then minutes here and there locating and networks, then passing out of range before I have a chance to connect and grab my email. Funny how the world’s changed, and I’m getting irked that I can’t check my mail for free in moving public transport. Never satisfied.

I think my train’s arriving in about twenty minutes, so I’m going to draw this one to a close, with my dreams of posting from a moving train in tatters. Oh well. I just have to hope there’s some sort of network in my apartment, otherwise nobody will be reading this for a few weeks (if at all).