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 ...
Well that's one step along the way! I haven't been to Berlin since before the wall came down
ReplyDeleteYou went to Cold War Berlin??? Wow!!! Did you go to the Eastern "Sector"...?
ReplyDeleteI am hoping you get there. It should be a really nice trip.
ReplyDeleteI 'ope so too! Only death or nuclear holocaust will stop me!
ReplyDeletehi geld,
ReplyDeletei 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!
ReplyDeleteI 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.
ReplyDeleteA 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!!
ReplyDeleteWell you won't have to buy a suitcase for your trip so that will save you some money! :)
ReplyDeleteThere wasn't a body in it was there????? I only ask because that 'spook' was found dead in a holdall wasn't he?
Gledds,
ReplyDeleteI 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!
ReplyDeleteSB: 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!
ReplyDeleteI haven't been there since '96, but it's really worth a visit!
ReplyDeleteTransferring 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 :)
ReplyDeleteLETTUCE: I am hoping to go next spring...
ReplyDeleteARJAN: 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...