Train journey: Prague to Warsaw

I arrived at the railway station ridiculously early even for me. My usually cool room felt hot at 5am, so I took off as soon as I was ready for my last walk down the hill to the station. I'd been so fixated on a route I'd mapped out for myself, I didn't see a much simpler alternative. It took a lightly inebriated man with no English, standing next to me on the metro, and responding to my baggage, to show me a direct route to the station, which took me no time at all. No eerie corridors that went on forever. No escalators soaring into the empyrean. No puzzling over directionality. No daunting flights of stairs. Just one change, and a short escalator. Thank you, stranger.

I used the time to sit in the sun, prowl around the magnificence of the station, drink what has become my habitual espresso and change a variety of left-over currencies into złoty. I was very glad to see the end of forints, and I had enough Polish money at hand for taxis, bus tickets, dining out, nappies and food when I arrived.

I was eager to reach Warsaw and less than committed to photographing out the window on this trip, although a mischievous little boy sitting opposite me took delight in putting his hand in front of the camera whenever I did brandish it.

Then I heard that my grandson was in hospital, and the train got slower and slower (it really did) until it was an hour late. He was fine, but in for a second night, while they monitored him, fearing pneumonia. So after a quick dinner my daughter went back to hospital to spend the night, and while we waited for M. to come home, his mother and I communicated incomprehensibly across a monstrous language barrier which had no gateways except grinning. Our granddaughter was asleep, so we couldn't communicate through her.

Which meant that I'd had a good night's sleep when I first encountered Maja, and she screamed at the sight of me and koala-ed up her real babcia. Exactly her reaction to the terrors of sand and sea at Christmas.