Look at the bucket? Is it empty or full? It is empty! Fortunately Jill has managed to not vom, and you find us at 3pm the next day, poor Sexy Jill already having been up and gone to work for a half day came home and gone back to bed, unbeknownst to us in our stupor enjoying the respite of a good lie in. Susan, upon rousing after about 10 hours of sleep, in her vodka addled fog thinking “I can’t wait for the night train to have a nice sleep”, despite being slap bang in the middle of a nice sleep. If only if wasn’t for those pesky awake moments between all the nice sleeps! Informing Jill of this on waking and gaining her agreement we have renamed the expedition “Soups and Sleeps of Eastern Eastern Europe”.
Surprisingly Susan is first up today and finishing off the Sommersbys to clear the fog whilst cleaning up last nights demolishing of The Hammered & Sickle. She has been dreaming about bread and cheese. Sexy Jill, the hostess with the mostess, has provided a variety of both for breakfast and her cutting of both has awoken sleeping beauty from her sick bucket! After a painful waking up period and deciding Jill being ready for a mender we were dismayed to find we had polished off all the brown boozes, the last of the vodka and all that was left was the hideous honey & chilli vodka and some sweet cloying cherry liqueur, which Jill was trying to force down last nights remnants of mixed with flat cola and vodka, but we were both dying for a nice lager bottom. Realising that everyone was now awake, Sexy Jill and Stuart staggered in in their matching pyjamas and hangovers. Everyone actually seeming to be in quite fine fettle and over cups of tea filling in each others memories of last nights adventures and thanking Sexy Jill for her amazing hospitality, which surpassed even her own expectations. Even Stef came down in her pyjamas to hang out for a while and say her goodbyes. Our night in shining armour at this point was Rob, having put in a full day at work having not having known what he was letting himself in for and having the foresight to take time off – including having to teach an after school sports club and be rubbish in goal as they were were a man short, who turned up with a pint in hand to the lascivious looks of Susan and Jill drinking their cherry shite so promptly like the best of gentlemen realised their desperate state and brought forth the brown boozes! Huzzah! We congratulated him on his fortitude and all raised a glass together, like Paul McCartney’s Frog Chorus. Sexy Jill foolishly enquired as to our desires for the evening, having vaguely discussed a nice sit down meal we both piped up “Well we’re going to see that band in Mr & Missis aren’t we?”, resulting in Sexy Jill’s great pleasure as she thought we would be unable and unwilling to return to the scene of our demise. Packed up once again off we trumped, trumpetty trump trump to join the circus through the badly paved (i.e. non-existantly paved) streets of Dnipro. Upon entering the bar we were met with hugs and affection by our wolf pack of last night, some of whom we couldn’t actually remember talking to but must of been good craic. We ordered pizza then were ushered into the tiny concert room where the band were about to begin to play – but it wasn’t our boys! Never the less it was some great Ukrainian garage band pop punk with a few hot Ukrainian girls dancing and fawning over them, and us. It was at this point we encountered American Dave, whose reasons for being in the Ukraine were obvious given that his eyes hadn’t moved once from the front row of hot young wriggling fan girls (well there was only a front row in entirety due to there only being about 15 people there). We shortly figured out that these guys were only the warm up band and, pizza in between, next on were our wolf pack, we have nee idea what the band was called but they played some good tunes and the drummer had his shirt off, and Rob got some good call outs whenever they played GreenDay as they must of had great debates about it the evening befeor (no relation to Justin Befeor). Unfortunately our night was cut short by the arrival of our taxi to the train station so we said our emotional farewells and left halfway through their set, although Susan did get to nibble the managers epic beard. Sexy Jill and Stuart kindly accompanied us to the station and after some initial mix up going to the bus station we deployed the international sign language of “choo choo” and train wheel arm movements to indicate our destination and were still in plenty of time to deploy to the big supermarket, ATB, which astounded us with it’s vodka, juice and loose salad selections, all at very reasonable rates of course. It was also Stuarts last night in Dnipro so he was dragging around a very heavy basket of vodka and yet again Sexy Jill surprised us at the till with her generosity by not letting us pay and getting our train supplies for us with the excuse “When do you ever get a chance to live like a King? Let me be a King!”! Six star Trip Advisor review for The Hammered and Sickle! Will definitely revisit. We boarded our train to an emotional farewell and lewd gestures towards the couple and what they would be up to on their final evening together. So much for a nice nice t night train as our carriage stank of wii and was totally open plan with a load of Ukrainian and Russian men surrounding us with their smelly feet, heavy snoring and mobile phone music. We had thought buying the third class tickets would be fine after our experiences in Western Eastern Europe but this was a whole new dubious night train experience. We settled down on our table/bunk perpendicular to the window, feeling slightly jealous of all the guys on their longer, more luxurious horizontal bunks. Jill was worried we didn’t actually have a bed and would have to sleep across the table but Susan came to the rescue with her caravan experience, feeling very confident you could turn the table and chairs into a good bed (which you could, and it was easier than her caravan). Being the only ones sitting around talking (albeit quietly) at 21:30 instead of going straight to bed, we were immediately befriended by the beefy boys on the beds behind us, who kept coming over and sitting on the sleeping men behind them to talk to us., and putting pillows on their heads to stop them from snoring. Said lads didn’t say a word as obviously you get what you pay for (8 euro for an 11 hour journey) on a 3rd class sleeper carriage so this is what you expect. We finally managed to shoo them away after Dennis tried to eat the essential component of our sure fire whammy hit comic (as yet unpublished as unfinished), “Part Uuron, Part Crab Salad*” *Featuring Megan Fox, and we had finished the bottle of vodka anyway so what other choice did we have but to retire to our bunks and get that nice nice t night train sleep. Unfortunately there seemed to be a competition going on in the carriage as to who could snore the loudest. Jill was a trooper and joined in but Susan was a) too tall for the bunk, b) too full of vodka and alert to get among it so instead tried to pretend that she was in a cave of bears to get off to sleep and c) The Pickwick Papers. However bears don’t usually play happy hardcore on their phones, especially at 2am on a night train full of people as bears are usually quite considerate, so this meditation was quickly dispelled and a restless night lay ahead when bloody Dennis would not shut the hell up, the dick. Just as she got to sleep we were both rudely awoken by the conductor prodding us to get up as it was our stop. We had arrived at Odessa.