Wet wet

Green, green and wet

It is raining in Hamburg. It is raining and cold everywhere in northern Europe as a low over Sweden brings polar air and rain.

I will be spending most of the next two days on trains, travelling towards warmth (hopefully). Today I take the train from Hamburg to Salzburg, which has affordable accommodation within easy reach of the station. Salzburg is one of those rare cities where the area around main station is pleasant rather than seedy so it is a good stopover point. (Munich is also pleasant but absurdly expensive.)

On Monday I take another train, this time Austrian and climb over the Alps to Graz then on to Maribor in Slovenia.

The whole train trip is costing the grand total of 45 Euros - a 'Slovenia Special' offered by German rail. (www.bahn.de is a great site to use to plan your travels). The ticket allows for stopovers of 48 hours so you can take a break.

The Maribor Music Festival begins on Tuesday. With luck the rain will have passed by then.

Getting around Paris

Someone told me recently they had been to Paris 30 years ago and had
 decided then that they never wanted to return.

Looking back down the stairs
I have just climbed up .....

 Perhaps they tried taking their luggage on the Metro system, because that would put anyone off. The Paris Metro is a really good system of interconnection lines with excellent signage but there are a great many stairs to climb or descend and very few aids. Sometimes there are escalators but as often as not the are out of action.  It would be a nightmare with a pram and impossible with a wheelchair. It is also impossible with heavy bags and I saw a lot of tourists struggling with luggage on my way into the center of Paris from Gare de Lyon. Some were sitting defeated half way up or down long staircases. People with heavy luggage are advised to take a bus instead of train, but you have to do a bit of research to find that out.

For the fit and unencumbered the Metro is fantastic. It is on time, regular,  fast and efficient. It connects with the bus system and lets you use the same ticket for everything. You can even get off, run an errand then get back on again. I think tickets must work for a certain amount of time but I haven't figured out what the length of time is yet.

Where there is a junction in a corridor on the way to a particular Metro line and you have to decide which option to take there are lists of stations where each of the trains will stop, so you can check you are on the right path. (Despite all this assistance I have taken the train in the wrong direction several times. I tell myself it must have something to do with being in the wrong hemisphere!)
The stations distribute very handy free  maps showing all the transport options and marking significant landmarks. It's as good as a purchased guide book for helping you get where you want to go.

Goodbye Switzerland, hello France

My stay in Switzerland was a short one, just four days, but long enough to get over jet lag as well as hear two fantastic concerts. The weather was 17C one day and 30C the next, which was perhaps the reason so many people there seemed to have colds (including two staff at my hotel  - and now I have it as well).

Jurgen from the Rinderberg told me it had been a very hot summer and that the glaciers you could see from his restaurant had receded remarkably.

Typical Swiss house
drawn from the train

Farmers were working hard making hay during my stay. Where tractors would be used they were but as I swung up to the Rinderberg by gondola I noticed people mowing steeper slopes with hand held machines. There were also a lot of folk turning the grass by hand. That is hard work. In Switzerland you have the feeling that very little is wasted.  In some inaccessible wooded places along the rail track I noticed sticks sorted by size and neatly bundled.

Both trains down the mountain from Zweisimmen to Bern then along the flatlands between Bern and Basel were empty in comparison to the very fast train from Basel to Paris. I had 4 minutes to change trains. Unfortunately the Swiss don't have those information sheets every German station has that show where each carriage of the train stops but I was lucky and I still had one minute to run down the platform to my carriage. The train was so over-full that it would have been impossible to get through the carriages to my seat had I squeezed into any other carriage.

Luggage piled between seats

On the website they say seat reservations are obligatory but there seemed to be a lot of people without seats, or who had to vacate them when others with a reservation came to claim them. Luggage was piled high in the entry gangway, (not just a couple of bags, but lots of cases and boxes and bags stacked up to the roof) between seats and in the overhead racks. But whether we were sitting or standing, the train got us and all our luggage to Paris.

Pills for breakfast

Today Black Caviar (the horse) was racing at Randwick for perhaps the last time in its career. There has been so much hype about it that when I saw the woman in the big black and white hat on the early morning train I knew where she was going. She had a pretty black and white skirt, black heeled shoes that looked a little precarious, a small black clutch purse and the racing guide.
"Fancy needing only such a small purse for a day's outing", I thought with some admiration as I watched her take the seat next to mine. 
When I next glanced her way I was startled to see she had taken a large hand full of pills from her small purse and was slowly and deliberately swallowing them one by one while sipping from a boxed chocolate drink. Each pill was a different colour - they looked like vitamin and mineral pills. It used to be said there would come a time when people would be able to live from pills alone, so perhaps that was breakfast.

On the train

46C in Sydney

Holy moly ... we are being cooked alive.

46C in Sydney today

I was in Sydney this morning ... it was searingly hot. It reached 46C by 2:30 although thankfully I was nearly home by that time. As the (thankfully air-conditioned)  train traveled very slowly along the Hawkesbury River I wondered if the heat was causing problems and crossed my fingers, hoping there wouldn't be a problem that would trap us in a hot train for hours. Looks like I was one of the lucky ones.

From the Sydney Morning Herald:
"Transport problems
The record heat across the city triggered multiple failures on Sydney's train system as steel wires buckled and a hose used to run a key signalling system melted.
There have been at least three equipment failures on the CityRail network on Thursday afternoon, triggering widespread delays across the city as train commuters swelter in air-conditioned and non-airconditioned carriages.
At Dora Creek, on the Central Coast, the heat caused an overhead wire to buckle onto a train at about 1.30pm. About 250 passengers were trapped on the train for about half an hour, until CityRail could organise another service for them to switch to."

Now I am back home and it feels like  ....  like an oven. Everything is hot. The floorboards are hot underfoot, the window panes (even in the shade) are very hot to touch.  Luckily I left the shades down and the curtains drawn at home and it was only (!) 37 inside when I arrived back.

Austrian/Slovenien border

From the window of the train

This is the border between Austria and Slovenia, between Graz and Maribor a train ride of something over an hour. . 

At the border the train stops for some time; perhaps they change engines. This visit I had to change trains, from the red and white Austrian rail carriage into the Blue and white Slovenian one. The steps of the Slovenian train were high off the ground so people were lifting children up and heaving up baggage after them. I sat looking out the window thinking how these national borders affect the people who live near them. Now there is little difference between the two countries, but not so long ago this was the start of Soviet influenced Europe.

My train companion

People often sit in the train from Sydney with their baggage beside them instead of on the floor. As the train fills up the bags get shifted, as mine did yesterday when an elderly fellow sat down beside me. He looked (and smelled) like a street person and as soon as the train started he began to talk. The young girls across the aisle glanced over at me with commiserating looks but we had not gone very far before I discovered my companion was both intelligent and companionable.
My companion talked about his two wives, his life as a country rep, his four daughters. I even learned the part numbers of various car components.  He would be good at winning quiz games I told him and he said that he sometimes gets up to a million dollars on Who wants to be a Millionaire "But they can't hear me even when I yell at the television!"
Now and again he said, "I have to talk to keep myself awake you know and when we get to Woy Woy I will stand in the gangway so I don't miss the Gosford stop."
I eventually asked him how old he was.
He said, "I am a 1930 model" then looked me square in the eye and guessed exactly the year I was born.
I was surprised and he said "Oh I am never out by more than a year!"
He said he volunteered at the local op shop. He didn't say he was lonely, but I could feel it and I asked when his second wife had died. 
"Three years ago," he said softly and sadly. "I really loved my second wife."
Then he said "You know I need to get a co-habitor again don't I? I like talking to someone intelligent. I hate being bored"
"Oh nowadays you don't need to cohabit," I responded. "You can live in different places and still be companions."
""Oh no," he said. "I don't like sleeping in a cold bed."
The trip seemed short and we were soon at Woy Woy station. I stood to get out and he stood to wait in the gangway, backing into a corner in a shy sort of way. I nodded my goodbyes.
I doubt I shall never see him again, but I think I will remember him for a long time. It takes courage to live on.

Train to Sydney

Back to reality ...

... and back on a on the early morning train to Sydney. If you close your eyes it feels as if you are whipping along just like German trains. When you open your eyes you realise sounds can be deceiving and in fact you are trundling along... probably as fast as the tracks will allow.

Views from the train

In Austria the mountains south of Salzburg are high and craggy.As you travel north past the Chiemsee lake near Munich you can still see the Alps, but further north ....
just south of Fulda the hills are rolling.
South of Hamburg the highest things on the horizon are windmills.
PS Click on the images to make them bigger.

The Train From Frankfurt Airport

Hawkesbury River

New South Wales has some hidden gems and one of them is the southern part of the NSW Central Coast. It is only and hour north of Sydney by train and the journey is a very pretty one. This is the view from the train along the Hawkesbury River.

Austria, then Slovenia

Traveling south from Salzburg the train is only about 3 carriages long so it travels quite fast up and up over the alps.
Past houses with balcony boxes full of geraniums and characteristic overhanging eves and past lots sawmills and of piles of logs.
At one station there is a house that has been painted as if for an art school exercise, with the picture becoming ever more digitalised. I thought of my art school colleagues and smiled.
Eventually the train stops at a small station, a couple more carriages attached and then it takes off in the reverse direction whizzing downhill on the way to Slovenia. At the Slovenian border the train sits for twenty minutes. It bumps and jolts (perhaps they change the engines?) before taking off at a much more sedate pace, past countryside which is lush and green. Slovenia.

On the train to Zürich

Weisel is 5km from the Rhine at Kaub and this 'castle' which was built by a local nobleman to collect money from boats using the Rhine. Those not wanting to comply were diverted into a side water until they changed their minds. Was it a tax or water piracy?
School holidays and the train was full.
My water bottle.

Pictures from the Hamburg S Bahn: Video

The wonderful music on this little movie is a piece by Brahms called Feldeinsamkeit. It is freely (and legally) available for download online.