An update...

All right, I have received sufficient harassment to update this blog, so now I am taking a few minutes to do it.

Obviously, I wasn't stabbed to death or robbed blind after sleeping outside. In fact, it was a pleasant experience (the not getting stabbed or robbed part), chilly, but pleasant. When I woke, as dawn began to light the day, I crawled out from my sleeping bag and shook off the morning dampness, then had a light breakfast of bread and meat. Perhaps I was less of a pilgrim as much as a vagabond. After hiking back to the train station and waiting around for the counter to open so I could book a ticket, I caught the next train west. It was a bit of a disastrous day, but by the end of it, I managed to catch the train to Hamburg, Germany.

I spent one night in Hamburg, staying in a very rock and roll hotel/bar. There were courtesy earplugs on my pillow. It was far more expensive, but it was worth every penny to have a shower and put on clean clothes. I never did need to earplugs, the lure of the bar outside my room was far to great to miss out, even if I was ready to fall over with fatigue. I even got a neat little tour of the better views by a local.
Since the bar didn't close until four in the morning, there was a very late check out time, which I took advantage of... Having taken advantage of the late closing time.

The next day, or the same day I suppose, I took advantage of the shower again before leaving. I had about a lot of hours to kill before my train, so I took a circuitous route to see some of the city. I watched the sun set and had a very intense conversation with a very crazy rastaman with dreads to his knees. He had a very fascinating sun salute which was part Tai Chi, part military salute, part yoga, and a lot weird. He was one of the coolest people I had spoken to in a long time. By morning though, I was in Paris with no place to stay, but this time I was determined to find a hostel.

I never did find a hostel, it found me. More on that later. In this story, I only got lost once and took one train to the wrong part of the country once.