Happy Birthday PTUA!

The Public Transport Users Association turns 30 this year.

Daniel Bowen has posted a video retrospective. Worth taking a look at.

There is no video of yours truly and for a very good reason...I come across terrible on TV!

Holiday Pics (1) - Berlin

Just for the record, some pictures of Berlin and comments to go with them.

Charlottenschloss, Queen Charlotte's palace. The Berlin answer to the Palace of Versailles, or so I have been told.

Having arrived at this location after circumnavigating the city I decided I wasn't really in the mood to tramp through historic buildings, so I basically took this pic then wandered off :)



At the Brandenberg Gate. Once upon a time in no-man's land between East and West. Today a pedestrianised area between the Reichstag and the cultural precint of Unter den Linden.

Outside the gate are some incredibly moving historical pictures of gate over the years, from the Napoleonic Wars, through to the Second World War, partition and finally re-uinification.

There is also a gift shop to the right of the camera selling similar items.


In the centre of the main shopping street of former West Berlin (a name something like Kurfurstendamm). The bomb-damaged old church in the distance (and the aesthetically damaged modern addition) is retained as a monument to peace.

To the left of the camera is the large KaDeWe department store and to the right of the Church in the distance is Zoologische Garten station. Once the commercial heart of West Berlin but now rather tacky.

To the right of the photographer is also a small supermarket that was selling the most amazing variety of fresh fruit (berries, plums, peaches, apples, bananas...) all incredibly cheaply.

Not the greatest photograph, but this picture of Fredrichstrasse in the East shows a remarkable comparision. This shot was taken only a few hundred metres north of the famous 'Checkpoint Charlie'. Once upon a time this was deep into Russian territory. Now, the booming nature of this part of town can be seen, with lots of new expensive shops, as highlighed by the Paris-based Galeries Lafayette to the right. Note also the street-centre entrance to the underground railway in the middle of the picture.

This picture is quite different. It shows the neighbourhood centre of Mexicoplatz, in the southeastern suburbs of Berlin. I got off a train here (the station is located diagonally opposite to the white car to the right of the photographer) just because it was so pretty.

There are a range of shops including small supermarkets, newsagents, hairdressers etc in the ground floor of the buildings. There was also a small bakery where I bought a sandwich and a coffee. I asked for a 'Milschkaffee', which I what I was usually drinking in such places, and the shop assistant was confused and went off to ask the manager how to make one. She then came back and pushed the button labelled 'Cafe au lait' on the coffee machine.

This sculpture had me singing "Emannuel Kant was a real piss-ant" for hours...

It is located in the Unter Den Linden area and is part of a series hightlighting German 'ideas' through the ages. Other sculptures I saw included a running shoe and a giant asprin.


Transport

You knew it was going to happen evenually, didn't you?

I'm just a tad annoyed at the light pole with the poster because it mucks up this otherwise good picture of a double decker bus. Buses are the main mode of road-based public transport in the western parts of Berlin. Both single and double decker buses are used. Services are frequent and just about all stops feature timetables and route maps for the area. A single fare system for all modes is in use: the system is zonal with (from memory) 1+2, 2+3 or 1+2+3 tickets available. Most intelligently, the buses supplement rail systems rather than competing with them. Oh yes, once validated there is no need to revalidate tickets.

In the east there is still a tram network. This picture was taken about one block from the Alexanderplatz station, one of the main stations in the east. You can see how remarkably narrow the trams are. Also noticeable is the delightful nature of the East Berlin post-war architecture.

This picture of a pretty S-bahn station was taken in the south eastern suburbs. It is hard to tell from this picture, but barely a decade ago the S-bahn system was run-down, using pre-war wooden rolling stock and running almost a ghost service. After partition, the S-Bahn was run by the (eastern) DR and was practically boycotted by residents of the west. Today it is quick, convenient and (mostly) modern.

That's it for the moment. Next time: The UK.

Back!

Yes, I am back and in one piece and just about over the jetlag.

I am obviously not a real blogger as I failed to post anything at all while away. Partly my excuse is that many of the places that I stayed didn't have internet access and for the rest, well I had better things to do! Also, to anyone who didn't get a message or postcard I apologise. On day 1 I managed to lock my mobile phone and on day 2 lose my diary. This meant that I lost lots of addresses and phone numbers too.

I am still planning a proper write up of the holiday, but this will take a while. In the meantime, here are some highlights.

Travel
For long distance air travel, business class is simply in a different league altogether. Lie flat beds make it possible to get a decent night's sleep and access to facilities like lounges (with showers), dedicated checkin and even sometimes dedicated security screening makes even airports bearable.

Places
Berlin is a fascinating city and rather different from what I expected (not that I really know what that was). From a city/social planners point of view it was interesting to see how swift changes in power structures impact on the built environment. Both the east and west were becoming run down (in different ways) as a new city centre was coming into being in the centre. Perhaps the most emotional part for me was actually walking past the legendary "Checkpoint Charlie". Somehow even the hordes of tourist buses couldn't dampen the fact that this was a very historical site and was, until very recently, the end of the world as we knew it. On a more pleasant note, it was a nice surprise to find that my very rusty high school German was adequate for getting around, once I had picked up a few basic phrases (like 'take away' and 'eat in please').

Wales was a real eye-opener too. I got off on a wrong foot with Cardiff (getting lost) but with that out of the way I could feel a little of the 'buzz' that is apparently in this young city. The countryside was the best, though. From solid stone towns like Machynlleth, through delightful sea views around Aberdovey through to the stark post-mining landscapes around Blaenau Ffestiniog where I sat in the sun in the town square on a Sunday afternoon munching a sandwich and listening to the local teenagers natter in their local dialect.

San Francisco was perhaps the biggest let down. Again I started off on the wrong foot, staying in a hotel in a particularly down-market part of town where you had to make your way past the beggars and homeless people to reach the tram and where the ride into the city centre took you past boarded up warehouses, cheap liquor stores and sleazy adult cinemas. Still I got to ride on the cable cars, take a ferry across the bay to Sausalito and of course take endless photos of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Food
Number 1 rule for the hotel-based traveller is to stay in places with breakfast. More and more are offering what I call a 'German-style continental breakfast' with bread rolls, cheese, cold meat and hard boiled eggs. This is a good start to the day. If you are forced to go out and find breakfast at 9 in the morning you will find that (a) cities don't look half cruddy at that time of the morning and (b) it is hard to find anything beyond coffee and a muffin - not exactly nutritious and filling.

It would have been great to stay in places with kitchens too, particularly in Berlin where I was simply overwhelmed by the variety and quality and cheapness of fresh food. Raspberries at 1 euro a punnet! Peaches at 1.50 a kilo. Steak at 9 euros a kilo! I also ate the niced nectarines in Cardiff where I gave in and bought 8 for 1 pound, which I carried around for a couple of days eating half and getting the rest squashed.

In comparison, it was hard to find decent food in SF. Not only was everything expensive but if it was possible to have anything less digestible I don't know what it was. A basic sandwich would have white bread, cheese, cold meat, soggy lettuce and mayonnaise. I eventually started buying things from Safeway but even here there 'chef's salad' was lettuce, carrot, cheese, ham, turkey and a mayonnaise-style dressing. About the only cheap thing was coffee and on one day I actually managed to overdose!

So it's back to work now, and tomorrow I'll go back to the gym and find out exactly how much weight I have put back on!