July 24th - smelly socks, lord lead me to a laundry

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July 24th

Good sleep, good LONG sleep… 9 hours or so of more or less unbroken sleep. These are the benefits of having your own room!

The bathroom IS shared however, and the guy who was in there before me (for at least 10 minutes) must have used up all the hot water because the room was full of steam but when I got the shower going, that shit was icy! Not great either because you want a good shower if you happen to be recycling socks and underwear again on account of having had a run of hostels that don’t have laundry facilities!



After some faffing about over which of the EIGHT bus stops outside the train station the girl at the hostel meant when she said; “the bus stop outside the train station” I’ve made my way to Belgrade airport on the A1 airport shuttle. I’ve parted company with my bag, so hopefully I’ll be seeing it again in Amsterdam.



My flight now is to Warsaw… hopefully their computers are all working this time!



~Slightly later~

That was odd; a second security check AFTER we’d been through customs/passport control. I thought they might throw away the drink that I just bought before, but luckily no.

~Later~

Another turbulent approach to Warsaw… must just be something about this place, strange air currents and all that. More slow passport control; the EU lines cleared out quickish, but then another plane arrived, so more EU people turned up and instead of us non-EU folk being able to move across and use those queues and get processed quicker, we had to sit in our slow line while people who had arrived 10-15 minutes after us breezed through in no time. Really though, it seems odd that they’re putting us through security again; we’ve just come off a plane (meaning we’ve been through security) and we’re going straight through to the secure area to catch our connecting flights… where are we going to get the drugs, weapons, or fresh fruit that they’re searching us for? Airports and security eh!



Another interesting thing, the 1:45pm flight left at 1:35pm… I mean there’s punctuality and there’s pre-punctuality… on the other hand; the Warsaw-Amsterdam flight was supposed to start boarding at 4:05pm but we’re still sitting here at 4:35pm… planes! I dunno.



~Laterer~

Amsterdam Schipol, for some reason they change my Croatian money (nobody in Serbia would) but not my Serbian money. Oh well at least the euros I got from Cro money was enough to buy a bottle of wine for my fine friendly hosts here in the Netherlands.



Caught the bus and ended up in the home of my friends Bev & Matthew in Alphen (formerly of Leeds). We drank lots of wine and talked travel, then I had my first experience of web surfing on a smartphone, slightly fiddly but doable. Wished Janet a happy birthday!

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Photos

Warsaw Airport
again

Wing
...doesn't sing