Number Seventy News

Horrors.  After spending two weeks in the country, back in August, not a single word has been said. So - a major task here.

Ferry from Newcastle to Stavanger / Bergen.  This is such a wonderful way to start a holiday - yet apparently not enough of us do it so DFDS has stopped the route from September.  There’s been a direct ferry from the UK to Norway for at least 150 years so this is an historic disaster.  The voyage from Stavanger to Bergen is a delight - weaving our huge ship between islands, looking down on people sitting on their verandahs, watching the speedboats leaping our wake, mountains in the distance, with still some snow in hollows on the North side.

Bergen - and a taxi driver who couldn’t find an address on a street right in the middle of town, who couldn’t certainly read a map and maybe couldn’t read.  But that aside, a nice flat just above the Floybanen station, and immediately above the best coffee bar in the world.  It rained, as it does Bergen, but stayed fine for a concert at Grieg’s house - Nils Okland, violin and a young piano player whose name I did know at the time.  Grieg had the most magnificent view from his house - west facing across a lake. The concert hall was set on a hillside and behind the stage a huge glass window gave onto a beautiful calm evening inlet of the lake. Magical. Music by Grieg, Ole Bull, and Okland.

Begen - Olso by Train. This is one of the great railway journeys of the world, a line constructed across the trackless wastes of the Hardangervidda and not finished until into the 20th century. It winds up from sea level at Bergen, through Voss to the junction with the precipitous Flamsbana at Myrdal and then over the top.  The trouble is that Norwegian Railways take the perfectly understandable view that it’s more important to keep the trains running than to provide dramatic views. The result is more snow tunnels than one would like, and a particularly long tunnel around the summit at Finse.  So it’s tantalising glimpses of bleak upland, sedge, tiny lakes, and glaciers.  Sorry to be ungrateful, NSB !

Seljord.   The purpose of going to Norway was to see friends, and our daughter.  After a couple of hours on Drammen station (NSB really has not got its connections right - in Germany the connection would have been 6 minutes) we travelled on to our friends on the banks of Seljord lake.  Highlights were an open air concert in the rain by the very accomplished Hardanger fiddle player of the family, umbrellas for performers, audience in the rain in the yard of a beautiful old lakeside farm.  And then the art barn in Seljord - my favourite exhibit a very cross young woman smashing bottles on an endlessly looped video. Trips through the mountains to the Dalen hotel (all wood) - still living in its glory days but taking half an hour to prepare a simple salad.

Around Tonsberg.  Enjoyable journey by car to a village near Tonsberg, where our daughter lives. A house in the middle of a forest of silver birch.  Excursions from here to Tonsberg - ancient Hansa port - modern glass library, most overstuffed second-hand bookshop in the world. Then to Verdens Ende - a promontory stretching into the Oslo fjord where there used to be a lighthouse - wind and rain, rain and wind - but very stimulating. Found a wonderful posh hotel that wouldn’t serve us coffee - but they did recommend a restaurant in a small fishing village which proved to be excellent, if with a most eccentric selection of music including hearty sea-shanties.

Oslo and the Jazz Festival. Oslo weather was on its best behaviour, so one could sit in the park on Karl Johann’s Gata and listen to New Orleans Jazz. Karin Krog and John Surman in the early evening - a delight to hear the grande dame of Norwegian Jazz and to watch John Surman really enjoying himself as a backing musician (with some solos, of course).  Later on, in a pub, the Ralph Alessi Quintet.  Too much waily waily soprano sax here - some nice phrases but no tunes, so not so much my cup of tea. Not my pint of beer too, at almost £6 a pint !  (And Tonsberg station charges you £1 for a pee). Next morning time to see the new Opera House - lots of external inclined planes so you end up on the roof - great views over the fjord and harbour.  Foyer restaurant looked really tempting but I really needed to go and sit in the Jazz cafe - so I did.

Stavanger.  So, by train to Stavanger (another hour at Drammen on the way).  Woods and lakes - and some sea views on the final section.  Stavanger is a European City of Culture this year but we were there on a Sunday so there wasn’t much culture on offer.  We did want to go to the art museum but a bus driver didn’t want to take us and a taxi driver had to have some coaching to get him there. It was actually only just over a mile from the harbour so we walked back.  Real highlight was the Hermeneutic Museum (fish canning) which revealed how massive the industry was in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with exports all over the world and most of Stavanger engaged in the business.  

And so, back to Newcastle. Apologies to any where that feels left out.

What a wonderful film ! It’s not really about who did what but rebuilding a relationship after 15 years, when one of the people is terribly damaged.  And Nancy, the town, looks OK too.

Two stations in Paris, about as far apart as Euston and St. Pancras  From England, you arrive in the far corner of the Gare Du Nord - a little enclave behind barriers to protect GB from unchecked foreigners.  On parallel tracks outside the frontier are Thalys  and TGVs to Belgium and Germany, and beyond that trains to the northern departments of France and to the teeming suburbs of Paris.  Outside, it’s very cosmopolitan; lots of groups of men to circumnavigate with your luggage on the gently downhill walk to the Gare de l’Est, about which more later. First, I must mention the Excellent Brasserie du Nord opposite the G du N.  Food at all hours, specialising in Oysters but of course plenty of other things, including a fabulous bouillabaise.  (Nicely old fashioned service, but not as quaintly typical asthe Brasserie de L’Ile St. Louis, where all the waiters are over 60, and flat footed, though the food is equally excellent.)

And so to the Gare de L’ESt which seems less brash than the Gare du Nord - whence long-distance trains to southern Germany via Strasbourg.  Just beyond the station, between it and the Canal St Martin, is the Jardin Villemin - everything you could want in an inner city green space - boules, tennis, play area for very little kids, where all the neigbourhood mums grandmas dads grandads gather on seats round the edge, playground for older kids, space to lie on the grass, and plants and trees and a view across the canal.  And just beyond that, on the corner of the Rue des Recollets, a really nice unassuming little bistro.  It’s the thing about great cities - round every corner some sort of delight.

We stayed in a small hotel on the Rue Chabrol; from the garret window of our room we could see the Gare du Nord straight ahead and the Gare de’Est. Just beneath our window, at the junction of the Rue de Chabrol and the Boulevard Magenta was a small covered market, including a most exciting fish stall.

If we hadn’t been so parsimoious when we built our railways, and only left enough height for a man with a top hat to stand up in an open third class truck, and only made our carriages as wide as a stage coach, then we could have had wonderful double decker trains as they do in Holland and France and Germany and Switzerland.  The Swiss ones seem the best designed - wider stairs and more room for luggage. And what a delight to sit so high above the countryside !

Lake Constance, or the Bodensee, lies between Germany and Switzerland, with a little bit of Austria at one end.  The Rhine flows in at the East, and out at the West, past Konstanz, and on to the famous falls at Schaffhausen.  Germans are inclined to be lyrical about the Bodensee, especially in Spring.  On our first visit in April, we were a little early, and this time, in July, a little late for the full beauty of blossom around the lake, but it is really, truly, stunningly beautiful.  We stayed in Uberlingen, which is off to one end, on an arm of the lake known as the Uberlinger See, but it’s a delightful medieval town with a bustling promenade on the lakeside and tour boats and ferries heading off in all directions.  Our hotel had an ice-cream parlour on the ground floor, and our room overlooked the lake - also the Promenade Festival, which we hadn’t known about, and which went on into the small hours.  It’s a good thing we sleep soundly and are tolerant of German oompah music.  (There’s also German folk music with accordeon, lederhosen and furry clogs).

Hire bikes gave us the opportunity to potter along to the stone/iron/bronze age village on stilts which is fascinating but you have to go on the tour and it’s only given in German - so learn German.  On to Meersburg - more delightful medieval buildings.

Main reason for being near the Bodensee was to hear daughter Beth sing in Haydn’s St. Cecilia Mass as part of the choir. The performance was in the Birnau, a stunning pink Baroque building high above the lake, flanked by vineyards, and inside a confection of glacial white marble, some coloured marble, fat little angels with golden flags and crosses, sad saints, precipitous altars - all too too much for mere protestants, let alone Quakers - but an absolutely stunning place to listen to Haydn (and one’s daughter too, of course).

Top tip:  German ice-cream parlours are the best - though  often run by Italians.

York to Southern Germany. Leave York 08.12, arrive Ravensburg, nearly at the Bodensee, at the other side of which is Switzerland, at 21.07 same day. Everything on time, too, at least until we got to Stuttgart, where everything was running a few minutes late, so our 6 minute change of trains was maintained (cross-platform, nice and easy)but then the Hannover-Munich ICE we were on as far as Ulm was further delayed and resulted in a frantic scamper around Ulm station where a 6 minute connection had turned into a minus 3 min connection - but they held the local train for us (and about 20 others). The Paris-Stuttgart TGV was impressively fast on the new line in France and again in Germany, and wound reasonably fast through the mountains to the West of Stuttgart. But not that impressed by the TGV on board catering - not much choice and malfunctioning microwave and grill. The Deutsche Bahn Bord-Bistro is usually better

Stuttgart to York. Leave Stuttgart 12.54, arrive York 23.12. And time enough in Paris to nip across to the Brasserie du Terminus Gare du Nord for a splendid meal - bouillabaise and Grimberger beer in my case. Even Kings X to York was on time - things may be looking up. I’ll let you all know after I’ve done York to Exeter return in a day in the near future.

Just a plug - a delightful small gallery, beautifully designed, that has really interesting exhibitions. Current one is Breughel to Rubens. Lots of excellent pictures, with Breughel’s “Massacre of the Innocents” the star. It appears at first sight to have rather few innocents being put down, but, as the informative caption revealed, if you look a bit closer you can see that the goat, and the sack and various other objects people are holding or sticking swords into used to be infants before they were painted over.  I’m not sure of the date or motive of the squeamish souls who did that.  And don’t miss the handles on the gallery entrance door - best ever.

The cafe does an excellent BLT - the shop doesn’t have anything any sane person would want to buy.

Well, actually, “Brrr  Paris”,  in that there was an extraordinarily chilly little wind whistling up the Seine and round the Tuileries and up and down the steps of the Metro (of which more anon).

Eurostar did its bit very nicely and on time - I must say St Pancras beats Gare du Nord for facilities, though both seem to think that Eurostar travellers have capacious bladders, in spite of all the on-station opportunities provided to fill them. Oh, and at Gare Du Nord, you just walk off the train and into Paris, while arriving at St. P you follow a circuitous route past passport desks (unpersoned) and customs (ditto).  I suspect it’s a way to make sure you pass the shops on your way out.

The Paris Metro has what seem to be quaintly old fashioned stock on some lines, though now all in smart green and grey livery, and a number of lines have the stock with supplementary rubber-tyred wheels.  I have always assumed these are for faster acceleration and deceleration - happy to have this confirmed if anyone knows for certain.  Cité Station, on the Île de la Cité is a gem - big globe lights on elegantly curved brackets, and then the access to platforms is down stairs in a huge circular, lined with steel, hole in the ground - the guts more on display than usual.

What did we do ?  Went up the Eiffel Tower at dusk - right to the top.  Main feature of Eiffel tower apart from the view is the queues.  But worth it. Feels a bit like clambering up the inside of the Forth Bridge must feel like - though the steel is a different section.

Good restaurants. “Au Roi du Pot au Feu” in Rue Vignon - huge hot pot.  “Au Lys d’Agent” on Rue St Louis en L’Isle”  - excellent lunch-type meals inc crêpes, and “Au Petit Bistrot” on the Rue Mouffetard - again, excellent food on a fixed price menu.  One other place we ate provided adequate food but it didn’t seem to bear a close resemblance to what we had ordered - but by that time we were desperate due to the time spent queuing at the Tour Eiffel.  (Did you know, by the way, that the Eiffel Tower comes out in sparkly very bright lights every half hour or so ? - it’s presumably to titillate the palate jaded by mere floodlighting).

As we know, there are shops for everything - there’s an Elvis shop in Paris, and in a shop called “La Droguerie” you can get a million and one different kinds of …..      wool !

There’s an absolutely huge record shop called FNAC in the Les Halles shopping centre - but Dussman in Berlin is better, to my mind.  From the -3 floor of the Halles shopping you go UP a couple of storeys to the Underground.

Oh, and Monet’s waterlilies in the Orangerie are just stunning.

The perils of one’s fifteeen seconds of fame ! You will see from the first post with this title that I was interviewed for a German TV station (based in Stuttgart) for a news item they were doing about the proposed privatisation of German railways. I was agin it.

Well, back in March I was contacted again by the same station, this time by a different reporter who was doing a documentary. Could he come over and interview me ? OK. He was going to be at Paddington. I managed to get an afternoon off and hurtled down by GNER which was only a very few minutes late and across to Paddington on the Metropolitan Line. There was the reporter and a film crew and we spent a very busy couple of hours interviewing me on why I thought rail privatisation the way we did it in the UK was a bad idea. (Incidentally, some jobsworth from Heathrow Express said we couldn’t film with his trains in the background without a specific permit even though we had a permit to film within Paddington station - neatly illustrating the point about the ridiculous fragmetation of the rail service). The film went out in the summer and I had about 6 or 8 minutes out of the 45. Much to my surprise, I was the only person they had interviewed in the UK.

What this does illustrate, apart from a rather sad eagerness to appear on TV anywhere in the world, is the weird world of the Internet. The initial contact was via Wikipedia, where a kind friend had, unbeknown to me, added a link to my website under the heading railway enthusiast. This then led to the second interview. So I end up as the voice of UK concern about rail privatisation on German TV ! I’m sane, my views are reasonably well informed, and I don’t look too nerdy, but it does make me wonder about the role of chance in the affairs of men.

PS. Any other media outlets wishing to hear my views are welcome to get in touch.

One of the interesting things about Washington DC is the variety of eating experiences you can have. (There is, of course, MacDonalds, but we didn’t have that one). What about buffalo shank in red wine, the perfect marriage of old world and new, gumbo from New Orleans, fried catfish ditto, mexican fast food at a chain called Chipotle, crepes and Chai Tea Latte at a hole in the wall sort of cafe which didn’t take cash but would take $9 off your credit card, mahi-mahi ( Pacific, I think, fish). And yes, there’s Italian and Chinese too, but the US does such good sandwiches and salads. And it’s all relatively cheap, especially with the dollar doing so badly.

[However, it takes a planet-destroying plane ride to get there so if you don't have a good reason, like very elderly relations to visit, I don't recommend going just for the food and the shopping].