South for the winter

I never stay in one country for a long time. It gets boring. I like to move on, see new places, and meet different people. It's a good life, most of the time. When I need money, I get a job. I can do most things - hotel and restaurant work, building work, picking fruit.

I like to go south in the winter - Cyprus, or perhaps North Africa. Life is easier in the sun, and Northern Europe can get very cold in the winter. Last year I was in Venice in October. I did some work in a hotel for three weeks, then I began slowly to move south. I always go by train when I can. I like trains. You can walk about on a train, and you meet a lot of people.

I left Venice and went on to Trieste. There I got a cheap ticket for the slow train to Sofia, in Bulgaria. It takes a day and a half, but the express was too expensive.

The train left Trieste at nine o'clock on a Thursday morning. There weren't many people on it at first, but at Zagreb more people got on. Two girls went along the corridor, past my compartment. They looked through the door, but they didn't come in. The train left Zagreb and I looked out of the window for about ten minutes, then I went to sleep.

When I opened my eyes again, the two girls were in the compartment.

'Hi!' they said.

'You're American,' I said. 'Or Canadian. Right?'

'American,' the taller girl said. She smiled. 'And you're twenty-three, your name is Tom Walsh, you've got blue eyes, and your mum lives in Burnham-on-Sea, UK. Right?

'How did you know all that?' I asked.

Jennifer Bassett

2. Говорение.