dormouse1953

I'm in Dortmund now for Eurocon. Spent most of the day travelling on trains.

But something happened before I set off this morning.

One of the disadvantages of being in most days is that if delivery people can't get a reply from my neighbours, they ask if they can leave packages with me. There are students next door. Just before Easter I was asked to take in a package and no-one came to pick it up before I went to Eastercon, and then nobody seemed to be at home, and the package was sitting in my hall for about three weeks before I saw someone going in the front door and managed to catch them.

Yes, you guessed it. I was just finishing my packing this morning when the doorbell rang. A man was standing there with a very large package - came up to his waist. Could I take it. I told him I was going on holiday in ten minutes, which seemed to be the best thing to say.

But I've now told a complete stranger my house is going to be empty for a week.

I took the train from Milan to Florence yesterday.

Milan Central Station (which doesn't seem very central, but was close to my hotel) is an impressive building, all white marble with statues on the roof.  Judging by  the date inscribed on it (and Wikipedia agrees), its final form was a product of the Mussolini era, and looks exactly like what an ancient Roman railway station would have looked like.

When I got on the train  and deposited my case in the luggage compartment at the end of the carriage, I then straightened up and immediately hit my head on a projecting bit of  the luggage rack - very painful.

Florence was very hot and crowded when I got there.  I wheeled my case through the narrow streets to my hotel and discovered that the entrance to the hotel led to two flights of stairs to get to reception.   I struggled up the steps and was nearly at the top when the receptionist heard me and came and gave me a hand.  He told me that the new lift to the ground floor should be operating next month.