Things that are random

[juliet]

I love overnight trains for the time-savings (do not waste entire day with 14 hr journey!) but do not love them for the experience of trying to sleep in an upright seat. Or even two upright seats. What I really love in overnight trains is where they have proper sleepers which I can actually afford (c.f. Russia, China, Vietnam, SE Asia generally. Actually even the London-Scotland sleepers are affordable with advance tickets, as was the Cologne-Moscow one. The Sydney-Brisbane service doesn't have any sort of sleeper.).

Anyway! So after maybe 6 hrs of interrupted sleep and a 7am arrival into Brisbane, I went in search of COFFEE and now I am vibrating slightly. (And feel a little unwell, which is my *other* reaction to the consumption of caffeine.) On the upside, actually did Useful Work (of the sort that translates into Useful Cash) over breakfast. (Should now do more Useful Work, really.)

Things that are the awesome:
* wireless modem enabling me to sit on floor in Roma St station & have internets, also in cafe & have internets, etc etc.
* nice person who let me have the time remaining in their locker for free (even if I was v slightly suspicious about this & did not *entirely* relax until I was back here & could rescue rucksack).
* it is sunny in Brisbane!
* I am going to go snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef!

Thing which is really really awesome: went surfing yesterday morning & actually got on waves at the *correct* point, viz, before rather than after they had broken. (Baby surfers learn on the white water bit; being a big wuss, I kind of got stuck there for a while.) Admittedly the waves in question were pretty titchy, but still. The advantage of having spent so much time messing around in the white water is that I'm now pretty confident/comfortable on the board once I'm on my feet. Hopefully will get a bit of surfing in tomorrow in Agnes Water assuming the conditions are anything like.

Equally hopefully, will make my bus connection (should have 15 min for a 1km walk... I might give the coach terminal a ring, they're usually quite helpful about this sort of thing IME) this afternoon. Otherwise I will have to get a bus to Fingerboard Road, wild camp overnight (I am in fact equipped to do this if need be, assuming I can get water in Bundaberg, since the next few days includes a night's pack-everything-including-water-in camping on a coral island), & get another bus to Agnes Water in the morning.

Have now booked my train ticket to Melbourne in a fortnight's time, as well as booking shipping home for Cepheus-the-bike and a tea-chest full of Stuff, and telling my not-exactly-landlady when I'm leaving[0]. Which is all a little alarming, and also sad. Not that I'll make it back home before the start of July, mind: freighter travel is what you might call *sedate* in its speed.

This post brought to you by a combination of caffeine and sleep deprivation. Whee!

[0] NB: anyone sending letters that will leave the UK after about the start of May, or parcels[1] that will leave the UK after the start of this week: these should prob be sent c/o my cousin Carol in Melbourne.
[1] This is not just wild optimism, I am expecting at least one parcel before I leave :)

Comments

[rho]

My memories of Russian sleeper trains do not involve much in the way of sleep. They mostly involve a night of sweating profusely due to the vastly over-heated carriages. Have they improved in the past 15 years or so, or are you just more heat-tolerant than I am?

[juliet]

They were warm, but I didn't find them overly so - possibly I'm more heat-tolerant than you, although I usually prefer to have the window open at night when I'm at home. Mind you, I was travelling in early October & it was pretty damn cold (I had to buy a wooly scarf & mittens in Moscow, and it snowed in Omsk and froze in Irkutsk & Mongolia).

I stayed in a ger in Mongolia which was beautifully warm until waking up at around 3am, by which time the stove had gone out. I had a good 2-3" of solid woollen blankets and still had to put on my hat & scarf to get back to sleep.

[cesy]

Omsk has just earwormed me with Lobachevsky. D'oh.

[juliet]

heh I had that in my head all the way through Russia!

[zebrallama]

Are you travelling all the way home by freighter? That's so cool. I tried to do that about 20 years ago, and it wasn't possible then.

[juliet]

Yes: in fact I'm going Melbourne-San Francisco, then train across the US, then another freighter Philadelphia-London. But you can get a freighter all the way Aus-UK if you want. (I preferred doing the little bit of train for psychological reasons, i.e. it felt more like a proper round-the-world trip that way :) Plus takes about the same length of time & this way I get to stop by various ppl in the US & say hello!)

I think the existence of the internets makes booking this sort of thing way, way easier (I've gone via a chap in New Zealand). But there's AIUI only one freighter that still takes passengers Aus-UK, & it only goes once every couple of months now :-/

[zebrallama]

Fantastic. Thanks for the info. Have fun!

[juliet]

fwiw, the guy I booked through is Hamish Jamieson of Freighter Travel NZ, who has been absolutely splendid throughout & I would thoroughly recommend, if you're ever looking again :)

[zebrallama]

Thanks! Well, I doubt I can afford it in the near future: presumably it's more expensive than flying, yes?

[juliet]

[laughs hollowly]

Yes, significantly so - probably on a par with a first-class flight. It's fair enough, in that they're giving you room and board for 24 days (Melbourne-SF). It would be significantly cheaper if you were travelling with someone else (I'm not quite paying full whack for a double cabin by myself, but it's certainly not half-price.)

Sadly this means that it'll take me a while to save up enough to come back to Aus (I'm not prepared to fly any more).

[zebrallama]

That's roughly what I expected. Sad that you can't afford to do it frequently. I'd like to have a go some time. The big questions that occur to me are:

* Does one get satellite interwebs, without which 24 days would not be worth living?

* Any problems being vegan?

I don't really need to know these things urgently, so don't reply if you're busy, but it's interesting!

[juliet]

AIUI, no interwebs whatsoever (unless you pay for yr own satellite modem, I presume). You can send email via the captain once in a while but I think this is expected to be of the 'hi, still not drowned' variety to one's loved ones, rather than, say, updating one's blog.

Vegan: I'm told it's a bit eat-what-you-can and hope for the best, though will report back on return. I intend to do what I fairly often do whilst travelling, which is to be as vegan as possible and fall back on vegetarianism. (I won't eat meat full stop.)

[zebrallama]

OMG! I could handle the lack of internet (I vaguely remember life before there was an internet), but it would take a lot of planning. What do you do for entertainment, take lots of books?

[juliet]

Well, I'll update once I've actually done it, but my plan is: middling stack of books, complicated knitting, laptop. Laptop contains lots of Stargate & some Smallville, but more importantly, laptop means I can get some writing done. Both the actually-contracted-tech-book (will have 2 or 3 chapters to get 1st draft done for), and the various fic things I have on the go.

Based on my experiences of multi-day train journeys (although obv still much shorter!) the time will pass surprisingly quickly and I won't get half the stuff done that I wanted to!

[zebrallama]

That all sounds very cromulent.

What's the book on?

If you spin as well as knit, would you like some alpaca wool? (There's a rant that goes with it about veganness and knitting fibres, but let me spare you that for the moment.)

[juliet]

Book is on Linux systems administration. Hopefully due out in September, assuming I get everything done according to the schedule I've just been sent :)

Thank you for the wool offer! Sadly I don't spin, however. (I am still not sure where I stand on the vegan/knitting fibres thing... but the Complicated Boat Knitting will be a shawl from organic wool hand-dyed by marnameow.)

[zebrallama]

Very sensible not to spin. It takes forever!

I'm against animal fibres, but then I'm a bit conflicted because I don't want to waste all the wool our alpacas produce every year.

[zebrallama]

Oh, and the book: cool. Is there a particular spin? There must be lots of books on Linux sysadmin. I'm sure yours will be the best, but I bet you've got a marketing spin as well.

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[titaniccapybara.livejournal.com]

I've lost track a bit, are you no longer staying in the place with the cockroach problem? I heard on the radio yesterday that cockroaches hate cucumber so much that if you surround an area you want to keep roach-free with an unbroken line of cucumber slices, they won't cross it. Also, they have 18 knees. The problem is that this was on that programme "the unbelieveable truth" where contestants score points for slipping true facts in among a bunch of lies. I'm reasonably sure I remember correctly that these were both true facts but I may be wrong - you could check the radio 4 listen again page to be sure.

[juliet]

I am still in the same flat (although not currently, as currently I am on a week's excursion up to Queensland to visit the Great Barrier Reef), but the cockroaches are at a bearable level.

TBH I hate cucumber as well & would probably rather tolerate the cockroaches than having cucumber all over the flat. Also that might resolve the cockroach issue but would not be helpful in re fruit flies.

On the falling standards of train travel

[geekboyoz.livejournal.com]

The Sydney-Brisbane service doesn't have any sort of sleeper.

When the older trains were replaced with the new shiny XPT the number of sleepers on the trains was reduced a lot. I'm pretty sure they are still there though. Indeed checking on the CountryLink website confirms as much (Syd/Bris, Syd/Melb & Melb/Syd).

However, you can't book them online (the booking page doesn't even hint at their existence), you have to ask for them when booking on the phone or in person. Oh and they are a pretty pricey $88 upgrade over the first class price. Which does you get you breakfast, although it'd want to be a nice breakfast.

Re: On the falling standards of train travel

[juliet]

I did not know this! But given that I'm only forking out for economy class anyway I'm not actually going to go for that option :) (This was the problem with the Indian Pacific etc - they *have* sleepers but they cost a fortune.)

I don't mind that much sleeping in economy sat upright, anyway - have done lots of it now!