For this final chapter, I shall revert to the more natural tense - the Past.
For the first few chapters, I wrote the account shortly after the day itself, with the memory of the events freshly burnt into my head. Indeed, the whole Scene of London Parts I and II, and Paris as well, were written in their namesake cities. However, as you might have suspected, writing the entries soon caught up with me; the effort involved in writing these accounts exceeded the amount of energy I had left after a long day of wandering the streets of the particular European City. Hence, it goes like this: the middle chapters were completed in the later city (e.g. Geneva was completed in Venice etc) while the final chapters (Germany onwards) were only completed back in Singapore.
All in all, this whole account has taken me a grand total of a year and a half to put together - partly because of my other commitments. IF anyone was waiting patiently for this account, my apologies, and I can assure you it is VERY taxing to sustain the energy for a whole month of Eurotripping.
All in all, I'm glad I've done this. Terrible grammar aside - I'm an engineer who is more naturally inclined towards numbers than words - I'm glad this account is up.
Also, I'm relatively certain that if you have reached this far, you probably have a great deal of patience. Or you are future-me. So congratulations.
*
Anyway, that good-bye was premature - I still have a little bit of this story left to tell.
I usually have one rule regarding footwear on an aircraft - don't wear slippers. On that final day, I was forced to break that rule. One thing about the weather being nice and cool - it doesn't dry wet shoes very well. So we ended up being forced to carry our shoes on board.
In Skavsta airport, we made the final settlements to the accounts - we had to pay Lase back in Euros before we left, because the other three of us could settle the accounts in other (more useful to us) forms of currency. For example the S$. My wonderful program to handle this "who-pays-who" issue (ask me about it if you want to know more) handled this issue in seconds and then it was time to say goodbye to the Swedish man whom we had spent the last month with.
In some ways I'm glad for the technology of this world which makes it such that its possible for me to talk to my Swedish friend in Sweden more often than my Singaporean friends in the same country as me. So goodbye isn't really goodbye till you go to a place inaccessible to the all-encompassing WiFi. Internet, rather.
A minor complication - Eugene, who had decided to come along on this Eurotrip after us, wasn't taking the same flight as Gobi or I. He was taking the flight to London that was about 5 hours later. So he had to kill about 5 hours in Skavsta airport alone.
We felt bad for him because I, for one, hadn't realised the implications of having a flight of a different timing. But all turned out well in the end.
We flew earlier to London, managed to get down to a hostel (Gobi's room was unavailable now) and checked in. Interesting fact - we checked into a very familiar hostel - the Meininger again. So that made it the third different hostel of that chain that we stayed at. But I will maintain that the Munich one was the best.
We didn't stay long, because sooner rather than later we were out again to Victoria station to wait for Eugene. While waiting for him, we grabbed dinner there.
By the time Eugene arrived, it was quite late, and the Tube was not working. So we had to walk back. Not a long walk, but we did share out the burden of Eugene's heavy backpack. Turns out he was delayed at Stansted. I'm still not sure of the reason for the delay. But my flight was the earliest of the three flights - note we were all flying different carriers, all flying at different times. So we went to sleep. By then, it was already 3.30am in the morning. And I know I was wondering about the purpose of booking that hostel in the end.
*
All fears of oversleeping and missing the flight were unfounded, ultimately, as we woke up the next day bright and early. We grabbed some buns from the supermarket for breakfast but there wasn't really much time - my flight was at 11am, so I had to be at the airport by 9am.
Gobi and Eugene didn't accompany me to the airport, not that I'd expected it considering their flights were at 3pm and 5pm approximately. So we said goodbye at the Tube station - a temporary goodbye only considering that we'd be seeing each other within the next 24 hours - and I took the Tube to Heathrow.
As it turned out, Gobi's flight was overbooked so they bumped him, offering a hefty compensation and accommodation, so it was about 48hours before I next saw him.
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The Eurotrip was long. You'd know if you reached this far, as I've mentioned. But it was a colourful adventure. I can think of so many things that we did that the average tourist would not do - go down to a steamer engine room, go stand next to a giant windmill, swim in a swedish lake, jump in front of a man in a train carriage, night cycling in Paris, etc.
And so I wouldn't consider us "tourists" in the conventional definition of the word. And the Eurotrip should not be considered a "tour" of Europe. Educational adventure, perhaps.
As I'm writing this account way too late, I can tell you that that wasn't the last time I went to Europe. In fact, the next account documents my Family Trip to Spain. Again, that account was written way too late. But you know what they say. Better Late than Never.
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