I was dirty, smelly, hungry and somewhere beneath all that, suntanned. It was the end of an Inter-Rail (欧洲旅游火车通票) holiday. My body couldn’t take any more punishment. My mind couldn’t deal with any more foreign timetables, currencies or languages.

“Never again,” I said, as I stepped onto home ground. I said exactly the same thing the following year. And the next. All I had to do was buy one train ticket and, because I was under twenty-five years old, I could spend a whole month going anywhere I wanted in Europe. Ordinary beds are never the same once you’ve learnt to sleep in the passage of a train, the rhythm rocking you into a deep sleep.

Carrying all your possessions on your back in a rucksack (背包) makes you have a very basic approach to travel, and encourages incredible wastefulness that can lead to burning socks that have become too anti-social, and getting rid of books when finished. On the other hand, this way of looking at life is entirely in the spirit of Inter-Rail, for common sense and reasoning can be thrown out of the window along with the paperback book and the socks. All it takes to achieve this carefree attitude is one of those tickets in your hand.

Any system that enables young people to travel through countries at a rate of more than one a day must be pretty social. On that first trip, my friends and I were at first unaware of the possibilities of this type of train ticket, thinking it was just an inexpensive way of getting to and from our chosen camp-site in southern France. But the idea of non-stop travel proved too attractive, for there was always just one more country over the border, always that little bit further to go. And what did the extra miles cost us? Nothing.

We were not completely uninterested in culture. But this was a first holiday without parents, as it was for most other Inter-Railers, and in organizing our own timetable we left out everything except the most available sights. This was the chance to escape the guided tour, an opportunity to do something different. I took great pride in the fact that, in many places, all I could be bothered to see was the view from the station. We were just there to get by, and to have good time doing so. In this we were no different from most of the other Inter-Railers with whom we shared passage floors, food and water, money and music.

The excitement of travel comes from the sudden reality of somewhere that was previously just a name. It is as if the city in which you arrive never actually existed until the train pulls in at the station and you are able to see it with your own tired eyes for the first time.

【小题1】What does the writer mean by “this way of looking at life” in Paragraph 3?

A．Worrying about your clothes.	B．Throwing unwanted things away.
C．Behaving in an anti-social way.	D．Looking after your possessions.

【小题2】Why did the writer originally buy an Inter-Rail ticket?

A．To get to one place cheaply.	B．To meet other young people.
C．To see a lot of famous places.	D．To go on a tour of Europe.

【小题3】What the writer liked about traveling without his parents was that_____.

A．he could see more interesting places	B．he could spend more time sightseeing
C．he could stay away from home longer	D．he could make his own decisions

【小题4】What does “it” in the last sentence of Paragraph 6 refer to?

A．A name.

B．The city.

C．The train.

D．The station.