The Mysterious Case of the Invisible Platform

"In America," asked Sasha, "does everyone really have their own number? Is it true that people keep it secret from one another? If you find out someone else's number, can you do them harm?"

Early morning in Prague. Waking up was easy, the apartment was next to a train station and rattled like a dried gourd full of seeds every twenty minutes or so. We had a nine-something bus to Ljubljana, so we planned to use the knowledge gathered from the previous night's scouting mission to make a sunrise bridge run.

This time we knew to make a left at the darkling towers, not to dip unto the gallery of fake pot lollipops, and to double-time it past the opera house before the trams got restless. It worked like a charm. Ducked under the hanging trdlo signs, saluted the astro-clock, and made it to the Karlov in time to see several Vietnamese couples taking wedding photos.

It was a major production with dozens of photographers, a chilly bride, and a groom all a'beam. The statues were less grim at dawn, the martyrs less smoky. We watched the mist curl away from the gate towers as the good lord slid the "light" bar ever more to the right. 

"You know," she said, "I could be a cruise-ship therapist one semester, and this could be our life. You could come and write, the cruise pays for the therapist's partner...but you have to find something cruise-useful to do. You have to contribute." I suggested I could host the at-sea trivia shows, and it sounded (for a moment) like a plan. 

I asked where the cruise went. She didn't know. "Hmmm," I said. "Hmmmm," she said. 

It's the sort of thing one only thinks about on an ancient bridge surrounded by buildings made from ancient pink stone. We grabbed coffee at a bus station but not OUR bus station, snagged our bags back at the snagging place and headed to where we needed to be. 

Ten hours of busing was in our very near future. We passed the Benches of Experience again on the way in. Will I ever see them again? What will they teach me next time?

Controlled confusion at the station. It's normal when you catch a bus at the train station to find yourself sliding down chutes and spiraling down holes and sneaking into board rooms in an attempt to find the platform, but the Flixbus stop at the Praha hlavní nádraží is another level of complexity.

It was like trying to get the One Ring past the watchtower at Cirith Ungol. A perverse series of challenges, chief of which being the bus was operated by a company with a wildly different name and radically different colors. 

When I found their office to get the platform info (not posted anywhere -- you had to know or ask at the office), it was like I'd ordered a Whopper at Subway and gotten one. 

"Why yes, we do serve Big Macs at this Home Depot. How many would you like?"

Even then, it was a wild scramble underneath a highway to get to the X that marked the spot. Memorably difficult, but we got on and were on our way to Munich. 

Neither of us had previously appreciated how The Czech Republic nestles into the crook of Germany's elbow. 

It soon became apparent that on the food-run Sara made while I was in search of the platform, she had only gotten food for herself. She offered me a raspberry pastry that we called The Shame Muffin, and I ate it to absolve her. 

She's not much to blame. My appetite is much reduced on these trips. I have burek for breakfast and then forget to eat until it's time for another burek breakfast. There was total forgiveness. We dove into our books. I tackled "Arab Spring, Libyan Winter" a journalist's report on the collapse of Libya in the 2011. 

Buses are great for this sort of reading. That stack of impulse buys just melts away. You read the unreadable. You read the things you never thought you would read. It's the realization of the hope you had when you bought them. 

At a roadside toilet stop, the men's room was called a "pissoir," an orderly line of urinals. If Sara had had one of those cup things that let women stand, we would have achieved peequality. But... alas, a long line. A ladder full of bladderfulls. 

Munich! We had a short rest, ate some Turkish food, bought some saft mit chia seeds and some "Nuts for Students" and did our ankle exercises. The bus to Ljubljana was easy to find. It was as easy as finding a bus at a bus station.

Killed the Libya book. Really interesting plain history of recent world events that I was mostly ignorant of. I felt smarter afterward.. or more informed anyway. I can't really USE this info, but now I can be the guy who says, "I knew this would happen!" when Exxon's storm troopers place Seattle under martial law.

Once we crossed over into Austria, the scenery got dramatic. Craggy mountain peaks and villages with tiny castles. The foothills of the Alps. The actual Alps. From the map! But soon, it was dark, and there was only the road and the soft chattering of the driver and his comfortdriver.

Most people slept, but the silence was often broken by the active phone of a woman with a voice forged in the dungeons of Cirith Ungol. A cartoon croak from a dream.

And then... Ljubljana. A tiny station in the dark. We got a taxi and found our apartment. Wide marble stairs, a slender elevator and a soft bed. After twelve hours of buses and platforms, it was most welcome.

There was no question of late-night exploration. There was only a bag of Nuts for Students, a few sips of water, and Slovenian darkness.