Tuesday 5th: Leaving Paris, arriving in Zurich, tired, sleep

I woke up early-ish. I got a little bit annoyed because before I could have a shower, some other people from my room were spending a really long time in there.

I eventually got to use the shower. Had breakfast. Got my stuff all packed up. Then I went to the metro station and headed for Gare l'est. The train station where I'm heading out from.

The hostel in Paris where I stayed. This is the Regent Hostel, or something like that. It wasn't anything special really. It had a few older people there, and the people who were there as I was there didn't seem overly friendly.

Some kind of creature under there.

I got to the train station a little too early perhaps. I was feeling a little bit stressed because I had no idea where my hostel was in Zurich. I didn't even know the name. I needed to find this out sometime, and how I would do this was becoming a mystery. I've had trouble getting access to the internet in this hostel in Paris. There is an old lady who is constantly sitting right next to one of the only power points on her laptop whenever I need to look something up. Consequently my laptop had about 8 minutes worth of battery left. I sat down in a food place in the train station and turned on the laptop to see if I could pick up some internet. There were no power points, so I was really in adverse conditions, with my battery likely running out soon. I got in to my email then opened up one of my mails, but it was the wrong one! It was for a later hostel. Then my laptop went into standby due to low battery. I made another attempt. Turned on the laptop. I would have little time before my laptop gave up again. Luckily I managed to get to the right email. Wrote down the address. I felt cocky, so I opened up google earth to see if I could gain some idea of the location of this place as well. Google Earth miraculously opened while the power still remained, and I was able to draw a rough map of where it was located. I felt fairly certain I could find the hostel using just this! Hooray.

I got a platform for my train then. I got on it okay. I thought I might be confused since two trains were leaving from that platform. But the trains had an electronic display on each carriage saying where it was headed. There was a luggage rack right across the walkway from my seat. Hooray.

The air inside the train felt a little stuffy, or I might have just been feeling tired. When I got to Zurich I was feeling a little more tired. The journey was 4 or 5 hours long I think. I really enjoyed the ride though. The train travelled quite fast and it was strange seeing the european country side.

I got to Zurich. It looks like a very nice city. It has a nice river running through it. There is a tram. I saw a bus that had cables attached to the power lines used by the tram. It had a silent electric engine. The weather here is really great. Blue sky and the air is really nice and warm this day.

I walked to the hostel and checked in. The hostel is about 4 floors up, (just stairs) off the side of an alley. I was feeling exhausted, so I sat down and used the internet for a while. It was nice having the window open, up high, with the warm air. Although that made me feel a bit tired. After a couple of hours I tried to go outside to have a walk around. I felt fairly dizzy and faint. I tried to buy some things at a supermarket. I went to pay with euros but the guy said, I guess, in german, that I can't use that money. They use francs in Switzerland. I'd forgotten that! Luckily I could pay with my card.

I was disappointed about feeling a little ill, but it was clear that I was a little. I think it's most likely that the bad feeling was mostly due to lack of nutrition together with spending lots of energy. However the idea of eating made my stomach feel a little not great also.

I went back to the hostel and went to bed. It was only about 6pm. I got woken up by some people out in the street playing drums. It sounded like it might have been fun. (Although the guy with the bass drum was wrecking the groove). But I had no energy. At 11pm or so, I woke up and couldn't sleep again. I used the internet for a while longer. There were some older people sitting around talking about stuff. They were trying to think the name of Steve Irwin. Their guess was Steve Worthington, or something like that. Later I went back to sleep.