Stephen Berman <stephen.berman@gmx.net> writes:

>> Could you, please, start Emacs from gdb? When it is stalled, interrupt
>> it, and show the backtrace.
>
> Here it is; I hope it helps shed some light on the problem.

It does, indeed:

> Lisp Backtrace:
> "dbus-call-method" (0xbfffc504)
> "byte-code" (0xbfffc5b0)
> "dbus-ping" (0xbfffc844)

So for whatever reasons, one of the three dbus-ping calls in
tramp-gvfs.el hangs (for the default 25 sec timeout of D-Bus calls).

Could you, please, check the following patch? It restricts every
dbus-ping to 0.1 sec. It will still leave a short delay for you, but
this might be tolerable.

Best regards, Michael.