Category: Travel

Stories from my journies

Ideas on the theme of ‘fun-for-free’

Hold your own mini-Olympics

We did this last weekend down at my grandmother’s house. We had had plans to go to the local river where there is a lovely beach but the grey skies put paid to that. Then from somewhere the idea sprung to mind of the five of us staying in and holding a track-and-field tournament.

We assembled the props: a parasol stand for a javelin; a boule for a shot put; an old plate for the discus; some beach bats for tennis; a rope between two trees for volleyball; and fruit packing cases for the dressage. My grandmother was the judge.

Poles were thrown; shots were put; a plate was smashed; points were won; tempers were lost – and found again with administration of tea; and medals were presented.

Next up – our own winter Olympics?

(The discus that got away – two others were not so lucky)

Learn to tight-rope walk

With a few props, practicing circus skills seems like something you can do pretty much anywhere. Here the prop was the rope that we had used for the volleyball net in our mini-Olympics. Pulled tight between two trees at about two feet off the ground, it was hardly death-defying, especially when, under my own weight, the rope stretched, lowering me to ground-level. I fear a lot more practice (using stiffer rope) will be required before I become a funambuliste.

September 6, 2011
A rockabilly festival and a 2CV convention – an extraordinary night out in rural France

At some point in the future I would like to spend some time living in the area of rural South West France where the French side of my family is from. The idea is especially appealing when on holiday in that part of the world. But I often wonder, what would day-to-day life be like?

During our recent stay at my grandmother’s house, we went out on a Saturday night. As I drove down the dark and empty Route Nationale, I thought, is this what a big weekend night out might feel like, somewhat downbeat about the prospect.

Our first stop was a community centre situated above our local river beach. We had seen advertised that there would be a night of live swing music. The roads en route had been empty, and the town centre equally so, so we were surprised to find the venue packed with groups of people of all ages eating piles of moulles frites around long tables. The band came on – a manouche ensemble – and they played a lively set, although my flip flops and the empty dance floor made me disinclined to want to bust out any moves.

On the way in we’d seen there was a campsite and we went to check it out. At the entrance were parked two 2CVs; another was parked in the car park. Unusual – almost like a 2CV convention I thought. Exactly like a 2CV convention it turns out: every car in the camping site was a 2CV. They came in all models and colours, with modifications, some in classic colours. Large groups of people sat around gas lights, or the full beams from the cars, eating and drinking together. 2CV drivers seem to be happy people!

Coming home we thought we’d check out the next village where we’d heard there was a weekend-long rockabilly festival. Not expecting to find much (I am ashamed to say – who am I to be sceptical?) we could barely enter the village for the lines of cars parked down either side of the busy Route Nationale – some even parked down the middle. We came upon the school field and found hundreds of people gathered wearing rockabilly finery, lit by the sideways glare of flood lights and the lamps of dozens and dozens of Harley Davidsons parked up in rows. In the big tent that rockabilly band was jumpin’, the crowds were dancing, and we dived in, flip-flops and all.

At the exit there was a souvenir stand selling posters and tins of the local confit de canard.

Every time I return to this part of France I find more and more things going on, and only partly I think, because I wasn’t looking hard enough before! And while there would be obvious differences between a night out there and just hoping on the Victoria line, there is plenty to do, and perhaps even more opportunities to make your own fun.

September 6, 2011
Hello St.Pancras

For all the publicity in London about the opening of the new Eurostar terminal at St Pancras, passengers leaving Paris on its inaugural day wouldn’t have been any the wiser. The lack of Parisian interest in the new London terminal was underlined by the ticket prices: while it would have cost me over £100 to book a place on a train leaving St.Pancras that day, the cost of a ticket in the other direction was just £29! I can forgive the lack of excitement from that end of the line however. When it comes to high speed train networks, France’s is in its late twenties whilst Britain’s is still teething.

Until yesterday, once the tunnel had been crossed and England reached, passengers were treated to a short stretch of tantalizing high-speed rail (the first part of the new link has been in use for some time now) before the trains slowed to a dismal trundle on the old line. Well, no more. Unfortunately it was dark so I did not get to see all that pristine Kent countryside that had seen routes for the line changed so many times. Before I knew it, a tunnel under the Thames, then we appeared to be over-ground and then back under again. We popped up for air again at what I guess was the building site for Stratford International before tunneling our way under North London. I remember five years ago a friend of mine living in Highbury had complained of rumbling under his basement flat for a period of about a week or so. He found out, from the council I believe, that those noises had been the tunnel digging machines digging those very tunnels that I was zooming through significantly faster.

The train popped of the ground one last time and we were cruising into the magnificently lit train station. Words do not do justice to what an amazing site the new station is. Passengers off the train for the first time on these platforms walked in eerie gob-smacked silence. The train shed, with its arches of ‘heritage Barlow blue’ which soar over the tracks to support 18 000 panes of self cleaning glass, makes for quite a destination. Indeed there were plenty of people there who had just come for the opening. At the end of the platforms they posed for photos beneath the 9m tall sculpture of a couple kissing. Europe’s longest champagne bar was not long enough to accommodate the masses who came to toast the new station.

I was grabbed for an interview by BBC Radio London who were broadcasting live from the concourse. I think I ticked a few of their boxes: not only had I just stepped off a train from Paris, but I was an enthusing engineer (and, as a bonus, someone whose father had arranged the medley of French songs played that afternoon by the LSO Brass section as part of the opening celebrations). On air, I was asked about how long it must have taken to paint the roof, a question to which I had no answer but assured them that it must take less time than that for the Forth Rail Bridge.

For me, St Pancras represents the first completed major engineering project university colleagues of mine have been involved with during their summer placements. St Pancras celebrates the engineering of a bygone era, is a fine example of how old can become new, and puts international rail travel back into the national consciousness. Not a bad start!

November 18, 2007
Au revoir Waterloo

Last Tuesday evening I bid farewell to Waterloo International, the last day that Eurostar will serve this station before it transfers to St Pancras ‘in the (other) heart of London’. Before I even arrived I had fears that the Eurostar staff had packed up and gone as all the signs directing travelers from the Underground up to the terminal had already been whited out. How wrong I was. I arrived on the main station concourse to the sound of live music and the sight of dazzling lights. In the sunken entrance level to the Eurostar terminal, a stage had been set up and a band were playing, none too aptly, “Waterloo Sunset”.

I am happy to admit that I am a station spotter and have long been. It is cooler than being a train spotter as you get to talk about architecture, your subject doesn’t move so you don’t have to stand their waiting for it, there are plenty of food shops so no packed lunches required, and you can wear any clothes you like. This last advantage makes the station spotter hard to spot. I have blended in all these years and have simply thought that I was alone in my pursuit, unaware that other station spotters were all around me. That is until that evening when they showed their true colours and, in droves, they headed down to Waterloo International to wish it farewell.

The police had crowd control measures in place to stop people pushing into the sunken entrance area. If your name wasn’t on the list (read, if you didn’t have a ticket) you weren’t getting in. By the time I got in, the show was wrapping up, leaving only video footage of the new station projected onto the wall. It felt like mass train station hysteria; one woman had a tear in her eye. Staff stood around beaming, journalists were interviewing. With all the publicity for the new St. Pancras terminal, international train travel has recaptured the public’s imagination. But from this train station 81,891,738 travelers over the last thirteen years have already trained it, internationally. And so one can understand people being sad to see it go.

But go where exactly? It is all very well to wish a station farewell but it is not going anywhere. What are they going to do with it? Scuttle it? The plan as I understand it is to make the platforms available for comunter trains to use. But what of the long arrival and departure concourses? When I was twelve or so, I saw an architectural model of the terminal with it’s snake-like blue roof. It is hard to believe that this structure will now lie largely obsolete.

The party was over on the other side of security (the real bouncers). The place has felt tatty for a while now. I can’t imagine the maintenance budget has been kept up in recent months. Shops lay half empty of stock which was annoying as I badly wanted an adaptor. There were girls handing out free cake. Just like at the end of a party.

The squashed arch roof of the Hauptbahnhof in Berlin

I rode the escalator up to the platforms beneath their wonderful blue roof. This Grimshaw structure arches over the three platforms. Like that of the Hauptbahnhof (photo above) in Berlin the curving roof is made from a squashed arch which means that the roof in both Waterloo and at the Hauptbahnhof can cover the tracks without having to rise to high. By contrast the un-squashed arch of St Pancras’ roof soars high above the cityscape. Squashing the arch induces bending in the structure. In both cases the structure follows the exact form of the bending moment diagram giving a very pure structural aesthetic. At the Hauptbahnhof the arch is four-pinned and symmetric. At Waterloo, the designers chopped a third off this symmetric arch, giving it its asymmetric shape.

With the fanfare far behind, I boarded the train and as we pulled out was reminded that it was not the station that was the problem but the line. As the train bumps through Vauxhall, the carriages bottom-out their suspension. We creaked round a sharp left turn and then screeched through Brixton, presumably deafening those on the platform. By Herne Hill, the train slowed further to skateboard speed. However, after forty minutes of this bumping and grinding, a reminder of what the new route will bring, as the the Eurostar joins the already-open section of high speed track and accelerates towards France.

And so Waterloo must close. I am sure that station spotters such as myself will get over it soon enough. The start of services to St Pancras, for example, might offer a suitable distraction. With this opening I am certain that a whole new generation of station spotters will be inspired into being

November 18, 2007
Iran diaries* – the omelette hall of fame

Every omelette* has a story to tell. The first omelette was in Istanbul. It was on a Wednesday morning, having just arrived by train by a round about route from Paris. I was due to be meeting Dan outside the Agia Sofia mosque at some point in the afternoon, but didn’t feel like sightseeing in between, so I installed myself in front of a tiny street-corner cafe and killed three hours explaining to the owner that I was vegetarian using freshly garnered phrases in Turkish.

Omelette number two was rustled up in Coffee Nadiri. After spending our first night in Tehran in a soulless 4 star hotel, we relocated to a much more friendly place down the road, hotel Nadiri. During afternoons and evenings, the tea room underneath is humming with young people. It is a pleasant respite from Tehran’s bustling streets. But if you are looking for a dose of coffee before noon then is to the sister establishment Coffee Nadiri in an alley around the corner that you must go. It is in this small tiled room that we first saw an omelette cooking technique that we would see all over Iran. Omelette was apparently the only foodstuff on Coffee Nadiri’s menu, and the smart khaki-trousered proprietor had all the components and tools laid out before him. Arriving at opening time, as we did, we got to see the chef/manager’s entire routine. After sweeping out the tiled floors and feeding the budgie, the delicious corrugated bread is delivered. The tea samovars are prepared (Dan will surely write his own post about the tea routine), tomatoes are diced and onions are chopped and the cooking starts. Into an aluminum pan goes butter, the eggs and the tomatoes. The pan is tossed about using a spanner and then when the concoction is just ready, the hot pan is put on a tray with a hunk of delicious bread. Simple but very tasty.

Omelette number three was out East. We had arrived in Gorgon and felt a long way off the tourist track. We had found the town’s bazaar and over the road a tiny cafe with a spiral staircase up to a balcony overlooking the market. By now we had our Persian ordering phrases down to a T, so to speak, and a tomato ‘kuku’ was sent up to us. Here, the same delicious corrugated bread, but this time accompanied by some raw onion. Eating the onion was a mistake – I didn’t speak to a girl for almost a week!

Omelette number four was part of a wonderful spread cooked up for us by Katy’s mother. We had met Katy and her family on the train down from Istanbul and they had invited us to spend several days with them in their home city Shahrud. We took them up on the offer, and Katy’s mum had plenty of time to cook up an unending supply of vegetarian food to expand our stomachs. The omelette in this spead is vegetable flavoured and situated over to the left. In the middle is a leeky rice dish. It is cooked in a butter-lined pan in the oven so that the outside forms a tasty crust. The whole lot is turned over when served up. Bottom left is a soft flat bread. It appears that when we crossed the mountains between Gorgon and Shahrud, the corrugated bread got left behind. Just off to the right is my favourite iranian dish, kashka bademjum. Bademjum is aubergine, and kashka appears to be untranslatable but available in Iranian shops in London I am told. Also of note is the bowl of green leaves at the top, made up entirely of fresh herbs. And in the jug at the top right, doukh, a sour yoghurt drink. We stayed with Katy for three days, and each mealtime, a spread of these proportions was unveiled. Quite incredible!

Omelette number four in this hall of fame was found in a posh hotel in Yazd. I say found because it took us a long time to track one down. We had been up early touring this extraordinary desert town’s streets before the tourist hoards hit and were suddenly hit by a burning hunger. But none of the restaurants we found would sell us anything vegetarian. We were directed down the street to a breakfast place that looked like it would never arrive. In the end we gave up and walked into the brand new and completely empty Hotel Dad. We asked the receptionist if an omelette could be prepared for us even though we weren’t guests. They were only to happy to pamper us and direct us to this enormous and empty dining room. There we sat for half an hour ( I am sure that they were waiting for the eggs to be laid ) while at least five different waiters brought out drinks and bits of cutlery one by one. Eventually, our food arrived, but rather than the queen of omelets that we had been expecting, a fired egg in tomato sauce arrived. I would say I was a little disappointed not to score an omelette but it was the tastiest fried egg in tomato sauce that I have ever had.

Omelette number five signalled our return to Europe. I had tried to return to the cafe in Istanbul where I had spent three hours ordering my meal last time. This time I tried to speed things up by showing the man a picture on my camera of the omelette that he had cooked me four weeks before, but he just didn’t get it and kept trying to take a photo of me instead. So it was that we had arrived in Budapest after two days of train through Bulgaria and Romania and were pretty desperate for an egg fix. Budapest being the train hub that it is, I had past through the city several times on my travels and without a map, I have always been able to find my way through the back streets to this luxurious breakfast place. That morning was no exception, and in travel-grimey clothes we sat amongst the well groomed and ate an omelette that must have cost more than all the omelettes we had in Iran combined.

Omelette number six was a rather sad affair. Not only was it on the last day of our trip, in Zurich, it was also rubbish. Just look at the bread! Give me Coffee Nadiri any day of the week!

*Being a vegetarian traveller in Iran is not impossible but it is not either. Omelette was about the best source of protein we could lay our hands on. Hence the obsession.

*posts about will also appear on the blog Tehran Taxi which we will soon have underway

November 1, 2007
With reference to the Edith Piaf song

October 20, 2007
Moet et Chandon vs Mercier

This weekend I took a visit to Eperney in Champagne where I found many of the caves that produce that region’s local tipple. I went on a tour of two champagne houses, Moët et Chandon and Mercier. During a visit to the first, we were assured of Moët’s credentials with stories of the fonder’s patronage by Napoleon I along with other impressive customers. We were led down into the wine caves, 25m underground and some 31km of them dug by hand into the chalk beneath the beautiful buildings above. Tipsy after a dégustation hosted by black clad experts, we were lead upstairs to the boutique where, surrounded by posters of the uber-glamourous drinking Moet, we were subliminally persuaded to buy champagne in bottles with unpronounceable names.

Then it was up the road to Mercier’s altogether less stuffy-looking building. If Mr Moët was the Wright brothers of champagne (in an incredible 2 for 1 offer) – making champagne in the early days, then Mr Mercier was the Richard Branson, joining the scene much later in the second half of the 19th century, but making waves for himself much later using clever marketing. He commissioned the Lumière brothers to make was to be the world’s first commercial. In another act of embracing new technology, he invited the willing and the curious at the Great Exhibition of 1889 to taste his brew while floating high over Paris in a tethered hot air balloon. But it was to be his 200,000 bottle barrel that stole the show. This enormous construction which took over ten years to build (and presumably to fill!). It was dragged to Paris by 28 oxen, requiring five bridges along the route to be strengthened and the purchase and demolition of several houses in order to make way. At the show, Mercier’s enormous barrel was a huge success, and he would have one the first place medal had it not been for a certain Mr Eiffel and his tower.

Mercier has long been pushing up grape vines but his cellars still have that technological flare: whereas the Moët tout guide was keen to point out the painstakingly laborious process of turning the bottles of fermenting champagne by hand, on display at Mercier’s was the cunning robot that did all this turning automatically; and rather than walking the galleries we were driven round in a lazer guided train. Now to my monochrome palette, the champagne at both houses tastes pretty similar (I’m no expert and I certainly couldn’t afford the bottles where the difference in taste starts to become noticeable) but Mercier’s trail blazing approach and embrace of modern technology caught my attention far more than Moët’s ‘natural ascendancy’ approach. And besides, who can beat a laser-guided train?

October 9, 2007
Finishing my course – travelling to Iran by train

Since my last post, I have been rather busy! The lack of posts on this blog since then can be attributed in part to the large amount of work my final year project has required in order to get it finished. The project has changed direction many times along the way and even the end point of the project had not been set until my final week at the company where I had my placement. But as of Friday it has all been wrapped up.

But it hasn’t all been work. In between we have managed visits to Brittany’s gale-force wind-lashed coast, Bratislava and Alsace as well as to marriages in the UK and Madrid.

And now the summer beckons. My plan is to travel with a friend from Paris to Iran and back by train. The route takes me from Paris via Strasbourg to Zurich and then overnight to Zagreb and then Belgrade. The next leg from Belgrade through Macedonia brings me to northern Greece on the second day. After a couple of days rest, the overnight train takes me to Istanbul where I will be meeting Dan for our onward journey across the Bosporous and into Asia. The direct train from Istanbul to Tehran takes three days. After two days crossing Turkey, the train reaches lake Van in the east of the country where we must board a boat across to the other shore where we pick up the train again down to the Iranian capital.

Once in Iran, we will spend three weeks visiting the major cities of Tehran, Isphahan, Shiraz, Yazd and Mashad before heading back along the Caspian Sea coast back into Turkey and back along the Black Sea coast to Istanbul and back through Europe.

So many people have asked me why Iran? The trip itself is the end product of an itinerary that looked very different at the beginning of the year. But my interest in Iran is manyfold. All I have read about the country tells me that it is a beautiful place with some unmissable places to visit. Iranian friends I have told about the visit are at pains to emphasise just how well we will be welcomed. And yet, this impression of the country is a far cry from that held by those who rely on western media for any ideas about the country. This difference in points of view is one of the reasons that I want to go to Iran and experience the country and its hospitality myself.

And why go by train? Well, apart from the enormous carbon footprint associated with flying, I find it hard to imagine going by any other means. The journey from Europe to Iran by land is one that dates back to the silk route. Travelling by land is a way of feeling physically connected to a land that in the press feels far away. Ok, so six days of travel is not exactly close, but these trains do go slowly! And I am looking forward to seeing how the landscape, climate, architecture, people and language change along the way. Flying can’t give you that.

I am also lucky that I have the time to make such a journey. The website seat61 and Thomas Cook international rail timetable are in part responsible for my choosing this route. It also turns out that I am taking the same route as that described in Paul Theroux’s Great Railway Bazaar in which he describes his journey to and from Singapore by train. He made his journey in the 1970s. Since then, a lot has changed along his route, and I look forward to comparing notes.

I will be writing up my journey on this website upon my return, and will be publishing it on this blog.

July 31, 2007
Things to do in Paris ⋕1: Go to Lyon

This Monday I did “le pont”, which is when French employers give their staff an extra day off between the weekend and a bank holiday, in this case, on a Tuesday. But rather than have a lie in I put myself on the 06h50 train to Lyon for a day in a city that I have wanted to visit for many years. France‘s first TGV line was built between Paris and Lyon linking France‘s two largest centres of population in just under two hours.

I had two sites of design interest on my wish list. The first is the awe-inspiring Calatrava -designed TGV station at St.Exupery, Lyon‘s airport. Trains running directly to the centre of Lyon do not in fact stop here as St Exupery is on the branch that bypasses the city and heads down to the Med; in order to get there I had to catch a train to Marseille and remember not to fall asleep. The station was conceived to fulfil three roles: as a show piece to mark the opening of the newly built TGV line to the Med, as an entrance to the airport and thirdly as a symbolic gateway to the Rhone-Alps region.

When I stepped off the train at 8h30, I was virtually the only person there and it felt I had the entire station in all its magnificence to myself. I took photos of the magnificent train concourse and of the arching atrium over the ticket hall, but it was only by sketching different views of the building that I was able to decompose the anthropomorphic structure and understand its underlying logic. In the end I spent the rest of the morning there and I hope you will see why from the photos that I will post over the next week.

I arrived in the centre of town about 13h00 with no map and no plan. I found a FNAC and bought a guide, and then made it my first task to walk up the very steep hill just next to the town centre and get an overview of the city. Lyon is built on the confluence of Soane and the Rhone rivers. The city centre is on the long spit of land known as the presque-ile which reaches out to where the two rivers eventually join. From the top I was able to see all this and beyond.

Then it back downhill and up again in the district called Croix Rousse. In this area was based Lyon‘s formerly booming silk weaving industry. The district is full of secret passages that link streets and buildings up and down the hillside. Unfortunately there was too little time to discover any and if ever I go back, a return to this fascinating area will at the top of my list.

Back in the centre, I positioned myself in a café in front of the Opéra de Lyon which had its extension designed by Jean Nouvelle. Unfortunately the building was closed for the bank holiday which was a shame as I would have liked to have taken a tour of the new rehearsal spaces at the top from which, the view is apparently amazing.

Late afternoon was spent drinking coffee with a friend in the town by the town hall, followed by a tour of the campus of the Ecole Normal Supérieure. The tranquil wilderness of the glade in the middle of architect Henri Gaudin’s plan for the school makes for such a pleasant respite from the hustle and bustle of the city beyond its walls.

As evening drew in, there was just enough time for a beer on a floating bar before the thunderstorms rolled in, forcing me to take shelter in a pizzeria opposite the central station.

I really enjoyed my visit to Lyon. It is a city that seems charged with youthful energy and it is in the middle of a region of France that I would really like to get to know better. My visit was rathe quick, but it will serve as a good taster for when I go back, for I am sure that I will do.

May 2, 2007
Flying the TGV from Paris to Strasbourg

It’s not just about the trains. It’s about the track, the gentle curves, the tunnels, the soaring bridges…

click this link to fly the route of the TGV Est Européen from Paris to Strabourg in 5 minutes, stopping at all the major bridges along the way, naturally…

April 5, 2007
Trainspotting: TGV at 578 kmph

Choose life, choose reducing your carbon footprint, choose highspeed train travel instead of flying

Thank you SNCF, for making trainspotting cool, at least for a day. Yesterday, a especially modified train with bigger wheels and go-faster stripes set a new train speed record of 578 kmph. The only thing that is faster on rails is the Maglev train, which doesn’t even touch the rails, and at that, only goes a few kilometres per hour faster.

It is fair to ask whether this record attempt was worth the 30 million Euro price tag. Travelling along France’s more minor train routes, there the decay and tattiness to be seen that is indicative of the large sums of money that have been diverted into the TGV programme. That said, France’s highspeed network is a great asset: where there are highspeed lines, flying simply takes longer. The development of the highspeed network has also pumped large sums of money into structures research, especially in the domain of bridge design. This record is in part another stage of that research process. The data recorded from sensors on the trains, tracks and bridges will help improve the understanding of these components under the intense vibrations that a train travelling at these sorts of speed can generate.

There is no doubt however that a significant reason for spending so much money on this attempt is the hard sell. France wants to export highspeed technology to South Korea and even to the United States. It is just possible that a train that travels at over 300mph is enough to make even the US, where internal flights rule the day, sit up and take notice.

Check out this trainspottingtastic coverage from France2:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8skXT5NQzCg]

April 4, 2007
TGV in 354mph record attempt – 1pm

As part of the preparations for the eagerly anticipated TGV Est-Européen, which will operate from June 10th between Paris and Strasbourg, the SNCF are hoping to break their previous high-speed train record. As might be expected, in France this is a media event. I heard it mentioned twice on the breakfast time news and it will be broadcast live on the lunchtime news. Read more here…

Also, I spotted this on the arrivals board last night at the Gard de Lyon. Anyone waiting for a friend on the 19h06 train might be waiting a long time…

April 3, 2007
Project update – meeting the architect and virtual handshakes + one for those who moan about London Underground

At the beginning of the week, the architects for the project that I am working on flew into town for an intensive week of meetings. Most of yesterday was spent shuttling back and forth between our offices and La Défense for meetings about the building’s structure. For me it was a great chance to get to know the project team before the video conferencing kicks off in ernest (despite Margaret Atwood’s invention that allows her to do book signings wherever she wants in the world from the comfort of her own home, it is still not possible to shake hands over the internet). For the moment there are still a number of questions to answer about the building’s facade but once those are answered there will be a rush to design the floor which, for the moment, is where my project is going to be focused. I therefore have the sense that we are in the calm before the storm.

During a coffee break, I tried to strike up a non-engineering/architecture conversation with the architects. Struggling fora topic, I suddenly remembered that my favourite US online radio station, KCRW, is broadcast from the same town as their headquarters. They listen to my favourite show in their office on the otherside of the world, every morning. Doesn’t the internet make the world small?

In other news, old calculations that I had made on the cost of another tower have come back to haunt me. It is not that they were wrong, it is just that I was suddenly required to present my results without any notice. I was therefore glad that I had left a decent paper trail so that I could quickly see how I came to the result two weeks ago. This is basically thanks to my new strategy: to date absolutely everything, to put the date in the name and print it in the header and to include a table of modifications for each time I use a calculation sheet. This may all seem obvious now but it wasn’t when I started off. I have since been asked to carry out a cost calculation on the tower that is the focus of my project. Since cost will be an important part of the choice of floor design, I will be able to tie the overall cost calculation into my project. And now that I have the method sorted, it hopefully shouldn’t take too long to calculate. The only trouble is… none of the floors are identical…

+ one for those who moan about London Underground – spare a thought for those who ride the L in Chicago – from a new blog find: Anonymous 1%

March 28, 2007
Tube Challenge – Project update: wobbly floors

Tube Challenge
I always dreamed of doing this when I was a lonely and boring teenager. All the tube stations in one day. Thanks to Mary for sending me this link from Jon’s blog. I will add this to the reasons to move back to London list, a list that I hope will soften the blow of leaving Paris in the autumn.

Project update
This is just the briefest of project updates. Things have been super busy recently in the office. Most of last week was spent researching how different types of floor structure vibrate when people walk across them. Unfortunately, the classical mechanical methods that we have been taught are not very useful for the design of office buildings as the calculations quickly become unwieldy and unreliable. Instead, the literature in this area gives empirically derived formulas for checking for excessive vibrations. The problem with these quite specific methods is that it is difficult to see how applicable they are across the board to other types of flooring. In the next few days I will be talking to the manufacturers of various different flooring systems to find out which is best suited to the building that I am working on. They will provide their own methods for checking for vibrations, but it would be nice if I didn’t have to rely on them to provide the method with which I will be testing their theory!

I have also been a little more involved with preparing material for meetings with the architects for whom, being American, it is useful to prepare stuff in English. All of a sudden, from languishing on the sidelines, I have been thrust into the middle of it all. That’s fine with me!

March 26, 2007
Womb with a view

Paris is slowly encircling itself in tramways. The latest tramway to open, connecting the disparate ends of several metro lines is the T3, which skirts inner Paris’ southern border. As part of the project, the RATP commissioned a series of art installations on or in the vicinity of the route. So it was with travel card in hand that I went, albeit a little too late, one Saturday afternoon, to see what I could see, so to speak.

The trip became somewhat of an art-hunt for all I had to help me was a cutting from a newspaper giving some approximate locations, and a metro map. Unfortunately, I was not able to experience the murmuring benches as the park they were in had shut. And I simply couldn’t find the installation called “Mirage” (even though Mary swears blind that she did). One of the best installations, in my opinion, was realised using just light. Where the tramway passes under the TGV lines coming out of Montparnasse, the bridge’s beams and columns are lit up in orange and blue at night time reclaiming an otherwise threatening space (and showing off the beautiful metalwork on the columns which must have been lost in darkness even during the day).

The tour finished with a sculpture on the middle of the bridge. This installation is by Sophie Calle and Frank Gehry (with RFR as engineers) and consists of a twisted metal alcove or shelter with a telephone inside. According to a sign inside, only Sophie Calle has the number and she occasionally calls the number and to talk with whoever maybe passing by. The sculpture is a a shelter from the wind, a womb high up over the river, isolated, yet connected. If you have a few hours to spare in the south of Paris, I recommend taking the time to take the tram.

February 21, 2007
Sofia

Thursday 2nd November

Regular readers of this blog may be either frustrated that I have not posted any entries recently. Or thy may think I got lost in Sofia and have never come back. But no no, all is well, and I’ve just been a bit busy. You know how it is…

So back to Sofia…

When I got off the train I was not really prepared for the crowd of people around the door all offering me help. Most were wearing badges that bore their photo and the words “Official Information”. Very convincing. Thinking that I could do without their help I bounded off down the subway into the quite overbearing and immense communist era station complex. Its enormous hall is decorated along its length on one side by a twisted steel fresco depicting eagles and stars and all sorts of Soviet fun. Accidently going to the wrong ticket counter (I was immediately buying my ticket to leave – not because I had already written off Sofia but because I was only meant to be staying one night there and I didn’t want to miss the train that evening) I was clearly identified as a lost tourist and was pounced upon.

Fair enough, I was a bit lost, and my new-found friend insisted on walking me to the international tickets booth, then to the currency exchange place when it turned out the ticket booth didn’t take plastic, then to his mate when it turned out that his mate offered a significantly better exchange rate than the official one, then underground to the locker room where I was shown a locker to put my stuff in, guarded by another of his mates. And then I was asked to give them money for their assistance. Aware that we were alone in this underground space, I didn’t really feel like I had much choice, but it is true that they had helped me find the things I needed in half the time it would otherwise have taken me. I agreed to give them some money but only upstairs as I needed some change (when I needed a one bulgarian monitary unit piece for the locker and only had a fiver, they had taken my fiver, given me the one and pocketed the difference!)

With so little time and no guide book, I reckoned upon doing little more than wander around the town centre and warming myself with regular doses of food and coffee. The centre is a twenty minute from the station along a bleak suburban boulevard. When the mobile phone shops gave way to important looking buildings with flags atop, I was reassured that at least I was heading in the right direction. Feeling the cold, I dipped into a shopping centre for lack of any other shelter. Though Bulgaria is not quite yet in the E.U., the western chains of shops are already well installed, from Miss Sixty through to Timberland and Zara, all of which was quite depressing to see especially when the products are being sold at Parisian prices despite the poverty I had seen coming into town. I quickly left.

Giving up the main streets, I found a friendly and, best of all, warm looking bar selling food. I was feeling low on account of the weather, the hassle at the station and maybe because of a touch of loneliness – nothing however that a beer and an enormous pizza for 1.50€ couldn’t fix. Recharged and re-inspired, I set off again into the snow that was falling thick but not yet settling. I walked through the beautiful houses of the embassy district, I resisted the temptation to buy an accordion from a man in the street, and sat for a while in the serene confines of the basilica.

In a leafy neighborhood bordering the centre I found a shop selling scarfs. Using my best Bulgarian (a language which is closely related to Serbo- Croat) I was able to ask for a scarf that matched my orange shoe laces. The shopkeepers were surprised to hear that it was colder in Sofia than it had been in Belgrade. That scarf however made all the difference, I was toasting!

When I did venture to take my camera out, it was in front of the beautiful state theatre. I was immediately pounced upon by a man who said he had seen me a few blocks back and had been following me to see if I could sell him any currency. It took my some time to shake him off. As night started to fall, I went back to the station, all the time paranoid that my friends from that morning had kindly taken my backpack off of my hands.

Of course, when I got to my locker, all my worldly goods were where I had left them. I later encountered the only tourists that I would see in Bulgaria: a group of Americans and Canadians who hadn’t even planned to come to Sofia. They had been on a night train from Istanbul to Zagreb and had been turfed off at the Macedonian border because they didn’t have the right visas. They had had to spend the night in a prison cell before being put on a train to Bulgaria where they were allowed without a visa.

My last act in as a tourist in Sofia was to buy a bottle of water, to understand the price as it was said to me in Bulgarian, and to manage to use up the last of the tiny coins rattling around in my pocket.

December 4, 2006
Belgrade to Sofia

Wednesday 1st Novemeber – Thursday 2nd November

Half an hour later than expected the Belgrade Sofia express night train creaked its way out of the station in the pouring rain. Out of the window I could see signalmen in their signal boxes crowding round televisions to watch the football. To save a bit of cash I had opted for a six-person sleeping compartment (compartments tend to come in twos, threes or sixes, with privacy varying inversely proportionately to beds). As luck would have it however, I had the entire six-person compartment to myself. I took pleasure in using all the little kitsch features in my moving hotel room for the night: the little hooks, reading lights, built in radio and light switches everywhere. Bizarrely I had to ask the attendant for permission to change bed even though I was the only one in the cabin.

I awoke at 4am to bright headlights shining into my cabin from both sides. I had forgotten to close my curtains, and dazzled by the lights, I scrambled to close the curtains without compromising my modesty. Anticipating that we had arrived at the frontier I lay there for some time, maybe half an hour, waiting for the border guards to come into the cabin to check my passport. Being quite drowsy it took me a while to notice the dull metallic clicking sound coming from outside. Finally I got up to find out what was going on. It transpired that my carriage was in fact stopped midway across a level crossing – hence the lights shining in from both sides. The train had hit a car which I could now see shunted over to one side of the road. The clicking sound was the sound of the alarm to warn people that train was coming.

I was able to ascertain that the while hurt, the driver of the car had not been killed. It was a rather unsettling spectacle. My mobile hotel room had unexpectedly arrived in their high street. I felt like an invader; a morbid tourist. There was little else to do except go back to sleep.

When I woke again it was eight and we still hadn’t crossed the border. The train cut its way through steep-sided valleys and as we climbed the rain that been falling since we left Belgrade turned to sleet. We arrived at Dimitrovgrad, the last stop before the border, six hours later than expected. There was little to distinguish this station from a goods yard save for the fact that most of the passengers on board got off here. Shuffling along the ground between the high-sided goods trains, the alighting travellers struggled with heavy suitcases in the sleet, which was now turning to snow – the sinister side of this spectacle didn’t escape me.

With the border guards happy, the train left an hour later towards the frontier. On the road that followed the tracks, a traffic jam of lorries stretched for what must have been several kilometres leading up to the customs point. Sights such as this demonstrate just how much easier trade must be within the Schengen zone. Finally we left the mountains of Serbia and made headway into the brownish high plains of Bulgaria, the rhythm of the rattle of the train on the tracks have changed when we changed country.

Apart from the odd isolated village and an enormous open mine, there was little to see in that barren landscape until the train started to approach Sofia. I could see the city appear on the horizon. First there were tower blocks, but before we reached these, the train went past fields just filled with rubbish. These fields gave way to ramshackle houses typically made up of a solid core supporting lean-tos and tarpaulins. The sight was quite unlike anything else I have seen in Europe. We went past train sidings where carriages stood with trees growing out of them. The train slowed and on either side I could see people walking along the tracks in the direction of the train. Seven hours later than expected, I arrived in Sofia

November 23, 2006
Belgrade – day 2

Wednesday 1st November
Having decided upon taking a detour via Bulgaria, I embarked upon finding out some basics about the country before my train that evening. My first port of call was the Architecture faculty where I met Barabara who was able to get me on line. An hour of searching yielded a map of Sofia city centre, a vocabulary list, an article about Bulgaria’s president (who if I remember correctly is the only democratically elected European head of state who has also been the king of the same countrt) and a key piece of advice from Barbara: in Bulgaria one nods to say “no” and shakes the head from side to side to say “yes”. This latter point proved a bit of a challenge for the old neuro-linguistic programing.

Later that afternoon we met Ana, and after some divine tasting cakes (that ensured I wouldn’t be eating again for at least two days) we scoured that capital for an English language guide to Bulgaria. The main shopping street’s many book shops are well stocked with lonely planets to anywhere you could think of – the Azores, Vietnam, Jamaica, Vancouver Island – everywhere it seemed except Bulgaria. It seemed extraordinary that I couldn’t find any information about the country next door! On the one hand, the prospect of going somewhere off the not-so lonely planet beaten path (as it appearded to me from Serbia) was quite exciting. On the other, it did leave me wondering why so few people, judged purely on the relative number of books detailing the deligts of other local capitals, seem to head next door.

My tireless and ever-resourceful guides took me on a tour of the disused dock area down by the river Salva just before it joins the Danube. The dockside buildings are in the process of being converted into super-trendy galleries and a bar. We had drinks on an almost floating bar – that is to say, it wasn’t floating but on dry land, but from its windows one might think one is afloat- the nearby real floating bar having been booked out for a private function. To help us believe that our bar was in fact floating, we drank coffee laced with booze. It worked.

By early evening, the cold dry spell had given way to rain. I tried to buy my train tickets to Sofia down at the train station, only none of my cards wanted to work. Ana was able to lend me the cash, but I was suddenly worried that I would arrive in Bulgaria with not a euro cent. I tried to do the sums in my head. With the 100€ in my pocket, I might just have been able to buy tickets to take me as far as Budapest from where I already had tickets home booked, as long as I only ate apples along the way. It didn’t bode well.

Luckily however, just when my worst fiscal nightmares had flashed before me, a cash machine finally decided to be nice and give me the dough. Stocked with food for the journey it was time to wait on the dark and dingey platform for the train to take me away. I was sad to be leaving Belgrade. I had had such a great time with my friends and I was in no mood to continue on my own. Ana and I plotted when we would see each other next. When we first met in Ljubljana the year before, it hardly seemed possible that we would meet again, such is the distance from the UK to Serbia. But with two visits to Belgrade since then already in the travel log, the city doesn’t feel that far away. Roll on our next encounter, Paris in the spring…

November 16, 2006
Belgrade

Tuesday 31st

I first went to Belgrade in this summer enroute to Greece with Mary so I already knew bearings in the city. After a very agreeable lie in I met Ana and Barbara for the start of a more comprehensive tour. We started in their favourite and super trendy coffe shop “Greenet”. We then made our way over to a street on which each of them, as part of a group project on their architectural course, had a house to redevelop. The street has some buildings which are derelict and some which are still inhabitted. The principal question was whether or not to keep any parts of the old buildings or to start afresh.

We continued through the neighbourhood. Belgrade has some beautiful old buildings, some of which are in desparate need of repair. It also has some quite oppressive concrete architecture in a greyey-brown darker than I have seen anywhere else. Down some more side streets and up to the Orthodox Church, the largest (or 2nd largest??) Orthodox church in Sebia. It is still under construction but we were able to stroll inside beneath its souring arches. It looks beautiful from the outside, but what is incredible is the sheer volume contained beneath it’s concrete vaults. Huge slabs of marble lay to the sides waiting to be bolted onto the walls. High above us, workers were busy in the dome above our heads. It was only then that I realised we had happily strolled into the middle of a building site with materials being moved around thirty metres above us and we had no hard hats. Still, if a lump of marble falls on you from that height, there is not a lot a hard hat is going to do…

We traversed back across town and back across the main shopping area to a much older part of town. Enroute we passed the site of another project site for the faculty of architecture. This time it was a busy junction with trams cars and people intersecting in a very tight spot. The project had been to untangle as best as possible the mess. From what Ana and Barbara said, there are a great many architectural contests in the city which must make Belgrade a great place to study architecture. Unfortunately only a handful of them are built as there is just not the money.

Ana had picked out a cosy restaurant for lunch. Ever since arriving in Vienna I had been a bit on the chilly side. I really hadn’t reckonned upon it being this cold, a symptom I suppose of the apparently mild autumn we have been having in Paris. As we ate we were accompanied by a traditional Serbian band comprising a clarinet, accordeon, guitar and double bass. The band would improvise on one tune, and then all of a sudden the accordeon player would change tune and a few moments later, the rest of the band would catch on.

I was left to my own devices while Ana and Barbara went to a design workshop. I spent some time rethinking my itinerary for the rest of the week. I had been due to take the train the next day to the Romanians mountains where I intended to do some hiking, but I was feeling more and more apprehensive about this plan. I was concerned about turning up in northern Romania and finding all the hostels shut. I was also a little nervous about the train connections I would have to make, including one change in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere with a two hour wait in between. With all this mind I had another trawl through the timetables and another plan came to mind. It was thus that I decided to go to Bucarest (not orginially on my itinerary) and to go via Sofia. The plan had the advantage that I wouldn’t have to worry about accomodation as I would be sleeping on night trains (ultra cheap in this region). There was also the added bonus that I could spend an extra half a day in Belgrade.

That evening we undertook a tour Belgrades night spots including a very cool cocktail bar hidden down an alley, up a stair case and behind a very plain looking door that you had to buzz to open before making your way into the brightly lit lounge. While Ana and I were up for a party, I think the rest of Belgrade went to sleep early that evening but that didn’t stop us having a great night chatting until the rather small hours.

November 11, 2006
Budapest to Belgrade

Monday 30th continued

When it comes to rail travel in Eastern Europe, Budapest is a hub, which is why this is the third time I have arrived in Budapest by train. I had tried to pick a train time that would have allowed me to have a cheap as chips massage at the thermal baths but it didn’t work out in the end. Budapest also seems to be where fast western european trains stop and slow eastern european trains start. Still on the “Avala”, I appeared to be the only passenger coming from Vienna who stayed on the train. I was accompanied to the border by a lady with enormous reusable tesco bags that seemed to take up half our cabin.

The train trundled south at a sometimes painfully slow pace. The line is only single track so numerous times we had to wait in sidings to let a terribly important train carrying logs go the other way. The platforms also seem to stop in Budapest: anyone getting off the train had to make an heroic leap down to the ground, luggage being caught by loved ones below. I passed time until the border in the luxurious and ludicrously overstaffed restaurant car. I was the only customer and as I drank my coffee, the head waiter, his assistant and the chef sat down to a three course meal on the table next to me.

I think that is in Asne Seierstad’s book “With Their Backs to the World” (that same author wrote “The Bookseler of Kabul”) that one the people featured quips that there must be more border guards patrolling the frontiers within the former Yugoslavia than in the rest of Europe combined. Becoming now almost a frequent traveller in these parts, I must be becoming familiar to many of them, although admittedly they are more likely to recognise me in my pyjamas as I always seem to cross the border in the middle of the night. These midnight border crossings come with a pang of fear that I am going to be kicked off the train for not having the right visa, despite that little access-all-areas purple book that I keep in my back pocket. Indeed last summer when we were travelling from Belgrade to Greece some Canadians were kicked off the train in the middle of the night at the crossing because they didn’t have the write paperwork.

This time however I was crossing in the middle of the afternoon and the whole experience was a whole lot less worrysome although the border guard did question me for some time on my reasons for going to Belgrade. Safely into Serbia, I transferred to the cabin of an elderly lady where I had spotted that there was a socket from which I could charge my camera. My Serbo-Croat is not that hot and she didn’t speak any English. Nevertheless we were able to communicate to some extent. I found out that she was called Elizabeth and was from Bosnia but was now living in Novi-Sad (of excellent music festival fame). I think she understood that I was an engineer. And when I told her I was going to Romania she started waving her hands above her head in alarm. It’s amazing how far you can get without words. (I later foound out that my Serbian is even worse than I thought: upon verification with higher authorities that evening, it appears that I had told Elizabeth that my name was English and I had asked her if she spoke Oliver. Oh well, at least I tried)

We said our goodbyes at Novi Sad, by which time it had already grown dark. There are not many lights in that part of the Serbian countryside and there was nothing but blackness outside my window. Whereas up until Novi Sad, I had always had fellow passengers and hence, somehow, their company, I felt quite alone on that last bumpy hour of the journey. Finally the train rattled its way across the Danube and slowly made its way into Belgrade station. There to meet me on the platform with warm embraces were Ana and Barbara. It had been almost a year since we first met on the IACES exchange to Ljubljana. After a year of promises to come and see them I had finally arrived in their home city, quite exhausted after twenty-eight hours of travel, but with still enough energy for some celebratory beers. Geeverli! (Ana, please advise on the correct spelling!)

November 9, 2006
Balkans by rail: Vienna to Budapest

Monday 30th October

I must have slept well in my reclining seat as I completely slept through Munich and Saltzburg, although I had been aware of many different people having sat beside me during the night. When I awoke the train – still the Orient Express – was pulling out of Linz. When I had gone to sleep I had been surrounded by people with coats pulled up over their heads to help them sleep but by the time we left Linz these had all been replaced by smart Austrian commuters tapping away at their laptops. It was all rather disconcerting. Between Munich and Vienna the train snakes along the foothills of the Alps, a beautiful site to wake up to. Leafy suburbs appeared and then Vienna rolled into view, looking pristine in the morning sunshine. With an hour and a half to kill I stretched my legs in the vicinity of the station. The first thing that stuck me was how cold the air was and I was cold wearing both of the coats that I was travelling with. Only they day before I had been in Paris wearing a t-shirt!

Wien Westbahnhoff is a bright and airy mordernist station with large windows that bathe the quitely ciruclating masses in morning sunlight. All around me seem very relaxed, almost noislessly moving from platform to platform. Time for a coffee and to stock up on provisions and then it was straight onto my next train, the 10am “Avala” to Belgrade.

In contrast to the western side of Vienna the landscape to the Danube Valley to the east is wide and flat. Between the capital and the border I saw hundreds of windturbines slowly turning over in the breeze. At the border with Hungary I caught sight of the river and on the opposite bank, Slovakia. On the Hungarian side of the border, the river continues eastward for about an hour afterwhich, then it makes a sharp right and heads south to the capital. By 1 o’clock we’ve arrived at Budapest Keleti station.

November 8, 2006
Balkans by rail: Paris to Vienna

Sunday 29th October

The Gard de l’Est is my favourite of Paris’ railway stations because of the desitnations on its departure boards: Strasbourg, Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna… and even, with a change of trains at the border, Moscow. This evening I left Paris on the first leg of another trans-European journey: to Romaina and back by train. It was five o’clock by the time we pulled out of the station on the Orient Express from Paris to Vienna.

The first few hours of travel were quiet and I dosed off as we pushed on east. Around 10pm we crossed the Rhine and continued into Germany. I tried to find the man with the trolley so that I could buy a sandwich. The conductor pointed to the cabin door on which I should knock. Just before I did knock, between the drawn curtains I saw a hand slide up a bestockinged leg, accompanied by shrieks of laughter. When I did knock on the door, the laughter became muffled and after some delay the door openned to reveal a sheepish looking man and woman sitting on either side of the compartment with the food trolley between them. I felt guilty for disturbing them especially since none of the food was vegetarian so I couldn’t buy anything anyway.

Back in the carriage a baby had been crying for some time, clearly not impressed by its mother’s best efforts to amuse it for the past hour. I retreated to the vestibule with the girl in the adjacent seat to gain some respite and to play a bit of guitar. No sooner had we started singing a song from the backpacker’s cannon of standards (surely a Beatles number. No tell a lie it was Mamas and Papas) did the mother and baby come out as well, followed by a little girl. The children where thrust into our care and their mother went into the toilet. I carried on playing guitar and the crying stopped. Evidently relieved, the mother took back her kids and returned to the carriage. Suzanne got off the train at Karlsruhe sometime in the middle of the night. When I returned to my seat, the cease-fire between mother and child seemed to be holding and I was able to go to sleep.

November 7, 2006
Getting ready for the off – Number Two

26th August 2006 I am on my way down to the south of France for the bank holiday weekend. This is the first time that I have managed to get down to Agen for a long weekend without flying. The difference is being able to stay the night in Paris on the way down. Having stayed the night somewhat fleetingly at the apartment – leaving before I arrived sort of thing – I had the chance to enact Phase 2 of the Move to Paris (the first being the random collection of posters, blankets and books last March described in a previous entry). In the end, I didn’t have the strength of character to take only my computer, underwear and a sharp pencil. Yes, in addition I packed a more predictable assortment of clothes and engineering notes. These were packed into my now-famous US Army surplus army bag. A bag of such enormous dimensions that if for some awful reason Mary and I get turfed out of our apartment, we could easily invert the thing and turn it into a three bedroom teepee on the Place de la Republique. While this bag presents tremendous advantages in terms of the sheer volume of stuff it can take, it is also impossible to lift when full. Presumably the US Army uses Hercules aircraft to move theirs. In March I had to rely on my own Herculean strength to carry that thing up the four flights of steps – sans ascenceur – to the flat, and compacted my spine in the process. This time I was more cautious and only half filled it. I had to leave out my pencil sharpener, which means my sharp pencil won’t stay sharp for long… And now I am zooming south on the train. They’re a sophisitcated bunch on the TGV (train de Grand Valise – train of big suitcase as I like to call it). Apart from the half of the occupants of the carriage who were asleep, the rest fell into one of three catagories: those who were reading a white folio french novel, those engaged in that French game – i’ve only seen it in France – where they have to fill in a completely empty grid with words, and the rest who were almost certainly students because they were copying out almost word for word notes from lectures, carefully underlining words in lots of different colours. No one was heard talking too loudly on their mobiles, and no one was drinking Stella. Bliss.

As I left Paris, I could see the tower who’s engineer is the namesake of this blog, somewhere in the mist. Later on, as the train approaches Bordeaux St-Jean station it slows to a crawl in order to cross the enormous truss bridge across the swollen brown waters of the Gironde. It was only recently that I discovered that this bridge was where Gustav Eiffel first made his name as an engineer in charge of this building site. Arriving at Bordeaux St-Jean, I was presented an exciting array of alternative destinations: the Basin de Arcachon for some Atlantic waves, Nice for the Med and Irun which is only one vowel away from one of my dream train destinations… Only last night I heard the story of two similarly train-minded friends who were enroute to Istanbul by rail. Initially flumuxed at not being able to find their train at the station in Budpapest, they found their single Turkey-bound sleeper carriage hooked up to a train to Bucharest. Their tickets matched the carriage number and so with a certain degree of trepidation they boarded the carriage which was empty apart from a conductor with whom they shared no common language. The next day, their carriage wsa unhooked from the rest of the train and left standing alone – tracks stretching out in either direction in the searing midday heat, Istanbul somewhere in the distance. They waited several hours with no information as to where they were, or when they were going to be leaving. It struck me as quite romantic. Now you don’t get that on a plane.

August 29, 2006
Getting ready for the off – Number One

This weekend is my last in London. I am away next weekend for the bank holiday, and the weekend after that it’s the big off. It has all come round much faster than I expected. Obviously, the biggest thing I need to sort out is packing. Sitting here in my bedroom – no, stuffroom would be a better name for it as there is only one bed in here but lots of stuff – I keep merrily imagining that it all might pack itself, Mary Poppins in the nursery style. It’s not, is it? Right. Well then, what to take?

Earlier this year I had had the opportunity to take some stufff out to Paris four months ahead of my move. Given that I was still going to be living and studying in London for four more months I tried to pack things that I definitely needed for my year abroad but didn’t need in the short run. What went was a motley assortment of blankets, posters, thick jumpers and books that are halfway down my reading list for the year. When I went over in the summer I came very close to taking my skis with me, for one it would mean less stuff to take out in September. It would also have appealed to my sense of humour to be travelling with a pair of skis during the July heat wave.

A very major concern is what to do with all my notes. The thought of going through them all in the middle of the summer holidays does not make me somersault with joy. In fact, the later I leave it, the closer I am to reaching the conclusion that all I need is my computer, a sharp pencil and clean underwear.

The other part of leaving is saying the goodbyes. Unlike my friend Chloe who is going to be in the Middle East for a year, I am only going to be across the water. There are places on the Metropolitain Line that are further from central London than Paris. And given the number of times that I have been to and fro this year already it really doesn’t feel that far. I don’t raelly need to say goodbye do I? But I know it doesn’t work like that. So yesterday the two of us had a leaving party. It was a really good afternoon and evening in a pub, but the ironic thing is that I am planning to see everyone that I saw yesterday again before I leave, thus adding to, not diminishing, the irreality of the fact that very soon I am leaving. Also, if I am going to see everyone again, how am I going to find the time to pack?

I say again, all need is a computer, clean underwear and a sharp pencil…

August 20, 2006