The First Train Booking!

So we have literally just over a month until we depart from St. Pancras International. And we've only just booked and paid for our first train! Such is the way with most trains, you simply cannot book them that far in advance! A couple of months really is your maximum, even less for the type of journey we're going on! As I mentioned before, we turned to a company called Trainseurope to book our journey from London to Moscow, and a great job we did! One of their top men, Bob, has sorted us both a single journey from London to Brussels to Berlin (for the day) to Warsaw (for the night) to Moscow all for the 'Easyrail' price of £300! You couldn't get from London to Blackpool for less than that!

I have just realised that I forgot to give a detailed report on how my medical in Thornton Heath went. Basically, early one Saturday morning last month, my partner and I went to the very hospital where my Grandpa was born and had a chest x-ray. Which would have lasted a whole five seconds, but for the fact I have 'long lungs' (due, apparently, to my great height!) and the nurse had to take two shots of them. Ten seconds passed and we left. That was that.

The following Thursday I popped back to another part of Thornton Heath and had the remainder of my medical examination. Which was excellent. I completely take back moaning about the cost of it, given the results. There probably isn't a soul on the earth who would take issue with paying a few hundred pounds to a medical professional and, in return, being told they are completely healthy!

Needless to say, I passed. Both in medical eyes and immigration eyes, because approximately one week later I was issued with a 23 month visa for New Zealand and 12 month work permit! It's all on!

So there we are, all pretty much up to date. We leave the UK on 11th August, in just over one month's time; My employers are still completely clueless (they think I am going on another vacation there!); My partner is getting very excited about her home country and discovering parts of it with me; We've cancelled the TV licence; it's all go!