SURELY THIS IS A SIGN! I found an enormous sports bag ~ almost big enough to hold golf clubs and hence lots of German books and clothes ~ with trundlesome wheels on the bottom at the end of the next road along from me yesterday afternoon, so I thoroughly enjoyed trundling it behind me, imagining I was on the way to the Saint Pancreas International for the beginning of my Berlin expedition.
I know what y'all are thinking: Let's wait and see what actually happens. I've heard enough bluster and guff from this blogger to keep a fleet of hot air balloons afloat!Well I am going to Berlin. Berlin is one of my top three "most want to see" cities on earth, along with New York and Tokyo.
I don't know how on earth I'm going to get there, by the way. Not a single website I've found will sell me one all-in ticket London to Berlin return. I don't know why. Only last month I heard a government minister blustering about high-speed rail infrastructure. What's the point of all those whizzy trains and new tracks if you can't go where you want? I am NOT going by plane, unless I really have to. It's the stopovers along the way (and it's looking like Paris at the moment, with a €50 sleeper "couchette" each way, which would push the cost of tickets up to £170) that are half the fun. If I took the Eurostar out of London on a Sunday, I could see the Paris bird-market, which is amazing. All those feathery little pixies tweetling away on the pavements...
Today I found a book by my illustrious old German teacher, who (I found out years later) was being tipped as a potential Nobel laureate ~ until he died in a car crash in 2001. Austerlitz by W G Sebald. He was known to us at UEA as Max Sebald and he taught my German grammar class. OK, I seem to recall it might have been just once when the ordinary teacher was sick, but he did teach me German grammar!Click here for a beautiful blogger's writeup on the marché aux oiseaux in Paris ...
15 comments:
Well that's one step along the way! I haven't been to Berlin since before the wall came down
You went to Cold War Berlin??? Wow!!! Did you go to the Eastern "Sector"...?
I am hoping you get there. It should be a really nice trip.
I 'ope so too! Only death or nuclear holocaust will stop me!
hi geld,
i know u'll make it! u certainly will enjoy every minute.
i lived a couple of years in berlin. that was in 71 74. then it used to be a fantastic city.
since the wall come down a lot has changed. it's not any more what it was.
but even so, i go there when i can. my sis lives there.
take care
hugs ela
I would have loved to go to Berlin while the wall was still up... how amazing that would be!
I used to have a real thing about East Berlin and wanted so much to go there... then the wall came tumbling down, and I wish I'd just uped sticks and gone!
It's a shame, I have never been in Berlin, it seems to be such a nice town. It's on my travel list, that's for sure.
A pity that the bag you found was not full of £ bank notes !
hey that's a point; I haven't tried all the little pockets yet. There's room for a good €50,000 in there!!
Well you won't have to buy a suitcase for your trip so that will save you some money! :)
There wasn't a body in it was there????? I only ask because that 'spook' was found dead in a holdall wasn't he?
Gledds,
I always wanted to go to Berlin, too. It looks like the most interesting, artsy city imagineable.
Hope you make it there.
Love,
SB
AKELAMALU: I'VE still not checked the pockets! I'm hoping to find €1000000 in €500 notes!
SB: o I'll go. I've been wanting to go to Berlin for AGES. It really does seem ridiculous - all that German and then STILL not to set foot in Germany!!
ooo i'd love to visit Berlin - excellent!
I haven't been there since '96, but it's really worth a visit!
Transferring trains isn't that bad is it?
Last time I travelled by ICE (2005) it's max was 250kph, from Bremen to Munich, but maybe there are parts now where it can go faster :)
Swallow when you go through the tunnels, that way your ears won't pop :)
LETTUCE: I am hoping to go next spring...
ARJAN: changing trains is just annoying, but like I said, I'd like to do overnight stops in Brussels and Cologne anyhow to make the best out of being there. I've never been to Belgium. I looked up high speed rail on wikipedia and they said anything over 200kph or 120 mph counts by some definitions, which means Britain has 3 high speed lines: London to Edinburgh (East Coast mainline); London to Glasgow (West Coast mainline); London to Cardiff. But the only full-on high speed line in Britain at over 300kph/180mph is the Eurostar line St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel!
REENY: I used to have terrible trouble with my ears - for years on end - when I was younger. Apparently high speed railways have ultra-wide tunnel entrances so the train can whoosh in full-speed without blowing everybody's eardrums...
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