As some (many?) of the meeting-goers will have heard, I came by train to Malta. It was a long trip and while the trip up to Malta had its share of hiccups, the trip back required some major replanning.
First the trip to Malta:
I had planned to go to Malta by taking nigh train from Florence to Siracuse. I had two hours to play with from my starting point (Venlo) which I needed completey. 1 hour went away at my departure when the train to Germany was cancelled with nothing more than excuses. So I took a taxi which delivered me to Mönchengladbach, 2 minutes too late to catch my connection.
The second hour was used in Chiasso where the Italian train staff chose to be 15 minutes late. 15 minutes became 25 in Milano and I could kiss my connection to Bologna and Florence goodbye. Literally. I touched the train while it left.
Then while on the nighttrain crossing the strait of Messina I got a call from the ferry: they would run 1,5 hour late. Which made me arrive in Malta somewhere past 23:00. Thanks for the dutch guys who gave me a lift to the hotel.
The way back was a lot more "fun".
While at lunch on sunday I got a call. Again the ferry. As you may recall the weather wasn't too good on sunday, and the lady from the ferry told me they would not sail on monday (scheduled departure 6:45 and I was staying in Qawra...). Maybe they would do an evening schedule but I had to call them back around 15:00 on Monday to see whether or not they would.
But leaving late on Monday did not suit me at all. Anything later than 15:00 would mean that I could go to Siracusa but had to stay the night there.
So back in the hotel I went looking for whatever flight was available to mainland Europe. Because I had an Interrail card I really didn't care where the flight went, even something like Barcelona would be fine.
Possible options were Trapani (Sicily), but that too would pose some challenges getting home in two days.
Together with skathalder I found an Alitalia flight to Rome (the same he had already booked) for a reasonable price (still twice as expensive as when I would fly on thursday) so booked that one. And right with it I booked a night in a cheap B&B close to Roma Termini.
So next day I took a flight to Rome, in the taxi with skathalder and Crazy Bob noted down some
's from two Israeli ladies, missed the exchange machine at the airport Fiumicino (Rome), got three dots around Rome, went to Vatican City where everything was closed (past 19:00) so no notes there, saw Trenitalia at their best (the central server was crashed so the ticketoffice was closed and all the ticketmachines were either in a state of perpetual reboot, spitting out error messages or not responding at all), ate some of the best Pizza I ever tasted, took the first next day eurostar to Milano, saw some snow but not the bad weather that was on the news and came home safely.And because I now had 2 days of my interrail left and it was only valid until saturday, I went to Salzburg on Thursday and from there to Sankt Valentin, getting 4 more dots, exchanging a total of € 2100 (230x
, 1x 
and 9x 
), got 23 hits (of which 19 were moderated because hitting 20 UNC is suspicious in itself). I love the Austrian bank personel. Austrians are very polite as it is already, but if their biggest worry is "will my machine be able to hold 120 x "... Eat that HSBC Victoria 
BTW: I'll take the train to the Florence meeting too
