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...unlike the next evenings star player! Having been left to my own devices in Hamburg, I thought I'd use the time to indulge my inner child and head to the model railway Wonderland. And let me tell you, it's lucky I never had a beloved trainset as a child, as this was... Something else. Screw gothic cathedrals, and nazi bunkers, and sweeping harbour views, this was a three-storey warehouse of THE BEST THING EVER. It runs the gamut from the wild west to the orient, and the attention to detail is amazing. Please, should you ever find yourself in Hamburg and appreciate a little obsessive artistic endeavour, cough up the meager ticket price and go visit. And if you're as blind as me, bring binoculars.
So we reach the end of my time in this busy metropolis, and I have my first opportunity to go to bed before 4am in a whole week. I head back to the hostel, clean up, eat a yummy burrito at Jim's next door and curl up in my bed by 8. I have two new australians, but I'm too tired to make much small talk, and so are they by the looks of them. We're all settled and sleepy, when the door bursts open and two guys shaped like a blob of whale blubber squeeze their way in. It's fine, it's only half 8, you can't expect total peace in a hostel room. I plonk in my earplugs as they both climb into an unfortunate bunk on the other side of the room, and do my best to ignore the creaking protest of the strained wood.
Much to the disappointment of the sadist in me, it holds. Darkness falls, and peace reigns, for all of twenty whole minutes. Then it begins, quietly at first, I barely even notice it through my plugs. I become aware an hour in, but a rhythmic faint snore has never put me off my sleep. And boy do I need that sleep... So I roll over and snuggle further into my bed. But it doesn't stay faint, it begins to bite through the little foam saviours in my ears. Soon, it's like a saw been dragged over my psyche. Maintaining calm, I switch over to relaxing music on my earphones, pumped directly to my brain. But the sound grows, even as I increase the volume, over the course of three or four hours. By the time it's at it's most powerful at 4am, even the full volume of Touchwood and the thickest pillow I can find to put over my head can't drown it out, because it's no longer bothering my ears, it's just flat-out rumbling in my ribcage. I consider saying something, but goddammit, I'm English, and complaining is just not something we do.
Also, I'm scared that it's actually a wooly mammoth that's snuck in through the window to growl at me before he tramples me to a squishy death.
With much gritting of teeth and silent cursing, I make it through the night til 7am,at which point I'd love to say that they left, and I got at least a few hours sleep, with nary a scene made. In reality... Well, there are simply no words to describe it, so before I hop on my much-earlier-than expected train to Berlin, I'll leave you with this clip, to perhaps give you an idea of the events that morning.
Note; Starvation is replaced with fatigue. The cow is replaced with a big fat snoring guy, standing between me and sleep. The two Australians are played by Mickey and Goofy, and I am, of course, Donald.
The axe is still an axe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqEVYbPw9lI&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Bleary-eyed love and slurred well-wishes,
Pip
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