Leaving England

I'm at Pancreas station in London, waiting for the boarding to start for my train to Paris. I've enjoyed my short sojourn in England; London and Cambridge.
On negative point is the crap I had to endure yesterday evening in my attempt to get home on the tube. I've never been a huge fan of the tube, as I feel it's slow and inefficient at the best of times, but yesterday, out of the 3 lines I could catch home, 2 were completely shut down due to a trespasser on the tracks and the other was delayed due to signaling problems. All this in peak hour.
Off to board now.

In Cambridge today

I arrived in Cambridge yesterday evening by train. The train was comfortable and fast; it took only 45 minutes. I feel that the ticket price of 20 pounds each way is a bit steep. I haven't had a chance to explore the town yet, but that's on the agenda for today.
I spent yesterday (until my train here, of course) in London where I looked around at the Barbican centre, which surprised me by not actually having a barbican at all, and then I went down to The Monument and I climbed the 311 stairs to the top and received a certificate certifying that I'd done so. (actually, as far as I'm aware, there was no actual verification process to check if you'd made it to the top or just turned back halfway; the certificate was handed to you upon exit.)

I was fairly lazy during my last few days in Paris because I got sick. I still caught up with a few friends over those days but I didn't explore many places or wander around the city as much as I'd planned to.

A l'aéroport de Cracovie

I'm currently waiting near the gate assigned to my flight. It was scheduled to take off at 10.40am (it's currently 10am here) but it's been delayed until 11.30am. The delay has been on the screen for some time, and I hope it doesn't follow the fates of 3 earlier flights which were cancelled. The reason for these problems is poor visibility, and it's hard to see anything outside from the windows here.
In other news, I went to a restaurant last night called 'U Aniolów' in Ustron, a resto known for its pirogi. I had pirogi ze szpinakiem, oliwkami i feta (pirogi with spinach, olives and feta). It was delicious, so I know why it's a well-known resto.
Well, I'd better finish there. I have some waiting to do.

Herbaciarnia

I'm currently sitting in a tea room in Gliwice. It didn't exist when I lived here. In fact, there have been quite a few changes here. There's a new shopping centre. It's not huge, but a decent size for this city, and it's clean and the toilets are free (a novelty in Europe, especially the east).
As well as this tea room, there's a vegetarian restaurant, where I had a delicious meal yesterday (Zloty Osiol), so the city seems to be becoming slightly more alternative. The guy running this tea room has long hair and a shaggy beard, and the girl in the vegie resto had a flower tattoo covering most of her back. This is quite a big step forward compared to my memories of this town.
The shopping centre even has a H&M. It used to be necessary to travel to Wroclaw or Kraków if you wanted to shop there. One thing I found odd though was the chocolate shop in this new shopping centre: it sells delicious hot chocolates and other chocolate-related products, and generally portrays itself as a fine Belgian chocolaterie, but it's called 'Mount Blanc'. I realise that one can call one's shop whatever one wants, but I usually don't think 'ah, Belgian chocolate' when I see/hear 'Mount Blanc'. Maybe that's just me though.
Today's my last day in Gliwice as I'm going to Bielsko-Biala this evening (via Sosnowiec). Tak, ten wieczor, jade do Bielska-Bialej, przez Sosnowca. Poniedzialek, musze jechac do Krakowa bo bede jechac do Paryzia na samolocie.

Updates

As I left the cafe, I heard the unmistakable introduction of the venga bus.
Aussi, j'ai acheté un billet pour Wroclaw. Je prends le bus.

Cafes with free wifi are good

I'm currently sitting in a cafe with free wifi, hence the number of recent posts. The song being played at the moment is YMCA.

Skiing update

The name of the place just south of Vienna where I went skiing is 'Stuhleck'. The place seems to have a canine mascot who strongly resembles a beagle.

Wroclaw-Breslau

Je pars bientot à Wroclaw. Je ne sais pas comment j'y vais parce que je pourrais prendre l'autobus ou le train. Le train est plus chèr, prend 2 heures en plus et me ferait changer au milieu. Donc le bus est préféré mais on ne sait pas s'il y a une siège disponible et la départ du bus arrive à 3h du matin, donc on ne veut pas aller à la station sans un billet reservé.
Donc je vais à Wroclaw mais je ne sais pas comment. On verra.
Aussi, à cause d'être à Vienne, je souhaite que je parlais allemand.
À la station du ski où je me trouvais hier, il y avait une pancarte qui disait 'Single-Spur' (ou peut-être c'était 'Singel-Spur'). J'y était avec un ami viennois et je lui ai demandé, 'Single-Spur veut dire quoi?'. Il ne m'a pas compris car je l'avait prononcé comme le mot 'spur' en anglais. Il a rigolé quand je lui ai montré les mots écrits. En fait, cette histoire veut dire qu'il ne comprend pas mon dialect unique.

Time stamp

Just a note to point out that all the posts that I've so far posted from Europe have actually been sent 9 hours earlier than the time marked on the blog post. This is because I'm in Europe, but my blog's timezone is GMT+10, and I can't be bothered changing the settings.

Skiing

I like skiing. I'm not particularly good at it, which isn't helped by the huge amount of time between my opportunities to go skiing, but I enjoy it.
I went skiing today in a place called Stahlek or something like that. It definitely started with an S and contained an H, along with some other letters.
It was a nice place, and the view from the top of the mountain was fantastic. I'd attach a photo but I forgot to take my camera with me.
I managed to acquire an impressive bruise on each of my upper thighs after some (many) arguments with gravity, all of which gravity won. The one on my left thigh is bigger than the right, and both are more like raised welts than mere bruises.
In spite of these injuries, I want to go skiing again.