TRANSPORT HELL

So- I left the hotel this morning at 9:15 for the zoo but I didn't arrive till midday. This was because I was stuck in some alternate universe where everyone spoke the transport language but me. I'd asked at the hotel reception for directions to the zoo which the guy kindly gave me, and I rocked up to the main train station chirpily looking for the S1 or S9. It can't be that hard, I thought, they're bound to have signs everywhere.

Half an hour later, I asked a disgruntled stall owner where to catch it from. "Right here," he pointed to where we were standing. Since we were just next to the entrance of a carpark, with a roundabout in front of us and nothing but a give way sign, I had my doubts. So I asked a woman who passed, and she couldn't speak English but gestured a roof or something else with her hand and pointed across the road, where there was no roof and nothing else. I decided to go to the tourist office inside the train station to ask, and after 20 minutes I managed to locate it. The man I spoke to didn't speak English either (I thought it was a prerequisite for working in a tourist office...) but waved vaguely with his hand and kept saying, "elf, elf." Elf what? There are 50 different kinds of transport systems at this station. I left the station trying to find a bus stop for Bus 11 but there wasn't one. So I went back to the tourist office and this time the elf man wasn't there and I spoke with the lady who spoke English. She told me it was a tram I was supposed to catch, across the road, so I returned, this time to the tram lines and stood in front of the machines for five minutes until a man kindly asked if I needed assistance and taught me how to buy a ticket. I jumped on the next 11 tram that came along, until 15 minutes on realised I was going in the wrong direction. So I got off, crossed the tracks, caught the tram back another 15 minutes plus 15 minutes to the stop the woman had told me to get off at. There was nothing there. The first people I asked weren't locals but the second man said it was 500 metres down the road.


Cute zoo. Saw an okapi and a bongo. They're both horsey kind of animals but with stripes, like a mix of donkey /horse and zebra. The only difference I could see was they had stripes in different places. Can't remember which had stripes where. Also saw some really fat seals.