I should know better

I seem to spend a lot of time at the computer. Well, I have a club website to run as well as writing this.

And I was searching for somethng else when I came across a site where I could book online for the Trans-Siberian.

It`s one of the things I always wanted to do. In my youth I went all over Europe by train. I must have been on every train there was, from the squeaky clean German ones to the little chuggy slow Greek ones with the slatted wooden seats, most of them occupied by ancient women in black, carrying live hens wrapped in newspaper under their arms - never did work out the reason for all that traffic in poultry. I`ve taken the Orient Express (the old one, the REAL one) to Istanbul, and come back via the Hellas Express, a dingy desperate rickety affair, in those days usually full of gastarbeiter and invariably minus food or water after the first day. I`ve travelled the length of the Rhine in comfort, and seen the grinding poverty of the parts of the old Yugoslavia the tourists never saw - all by train.

But I never quite managed the Trans-Siberian. And in those days it was paradoxically easier, especially if you were a student and could travel anywhere in Soviet Russia for very little and would be welcomed just because you were a student. I remember putting it off because I had to go to America and wouldn`t have obtained a visa too easily with Russian stamps all over my passport. And after that it just never happened... Everything got in the way somehow.

And here I am, at home with puppies in need of worming, looking at websites. One of them tells me that the "Trans-Siberian experience is the ultimate experience for the adventurous young"

I suppose once that was me......