So why Birmingham and why Severn Valley Railway? Simply, the railway was on my list of ones to visit, and the Gala just happened to be close to my birthday - so why not visit. I knew Worcester was a population centre close to SVR, but on my list of places I didn't have anything else listed as being of interest to visit there. I considered doing a day trip to SVR and back from London - but it was a minimum of 3 hours in each direction and on a Sunday, the trains don't run early so I'd miss a lot of the action. I didn't look at the trip properly until the Tuesday or Wednesday beforehand (similar to recent other trips - are you seeing a pattern here?). Then somehow I found Birmingham wasn't that much further away and had much better train links. Once Birmingham was apparent in the equation, it all fell into place rather easily - Birmingham was definitely a place I wanted to visit, mostly if for no other reason than it was the city I'd picked out as my "Plan B" late last year in the event I decided I couldn't make London work. This was pre-job - I started giving some thought to what would I do if I could only get jobs where I couldn't earn enough in London to also save to travel (London is an expensive place to live!), so going somewhere else seemed reasonable. Birmingham was chosen for the following reasons alone - I looked at a map and saw it was fairly central in the UK, a place where you could easily get to most other places in the UK in a few hours in every direction; it was a large city, so good job prospects; it wasn't hugely far away from London, so visiting Jeremy & Rachel or London in general wouldn't be a problem; it had its own International airport, so I could easily fly overseas from there; but also it would take just as long to travel to Luton and Stanstead airports from Birmingham as it does from London, giving more practical choice for flights overseas. All of these things combined made Birmingham a better prospect than say Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow or Edinburgh. Other than that, I knew nothing else about the place at all so I was interested to see it for myself.
Three weekends for my Birthday. We had Belgium for the weekend before, and going out in London/drinks for my actual birthday. So what of the 3rd weekend? Well it was a trip away to Birmingham, and to the Severn Valley Railway for their Autumn Gala - after all, my birthday had to figure in steam trains somewhere, didn't it? So why Birmingham and why Severn Valley Railway? Simply, the railway was on my list of ones to visit, and the Gala just happened to be close to my birthday - so why not visit. I knew Worcester was a population centre close to SVR, but on my list of places I didn't have anything else listed as being of interest to visit there. I considered doing a day trip to SVR and back from London - but it was a minimum of 3 hours in each direction and on a Sunday, the trains don't run early so I'd miss a lot of the action. I didn't look at the trip properly until the Tuesday or Wednesday beforehand (similar to recent other trips - are you seeing a pattern here?). Then somehow I found Birmingham wasn't that much further away and had much better train links. Once Birmingham was apparent in the equation, it all fell into place rather easily - Birmingham was definitely a place I wanted to visit, mostly if for no other reason than it was the city I'd picked out as my "Plan B" late last year in the event I decided I couldn't make London work. This was pre-job - I started giving some thought to what would I do if I could only get jobs where I couldn't earn enough in London to also save to travel (London is an expensive place to live!), so going somewhere else seemed reasonable. Birmingham was chosen for the following reasons alone - I looked at a map and saw it was fairly central in the UK, a place where you could easily get to most other places in the UK in a few hours in every direction; it was a large city, so good job prospects; it wasn't hugely far away from London, so visiting Jeremy & Rachel or London in general wouldn't be a problem; it had its own International airport, so I could easily fly overseas from there; but also it would take just as long to travel to Luton and Stanstead airports from Birmingham as it does from London, giving more practical choice for flights overseas. All of these things combined made Birmingham a better prospect than say Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow or Edinburgh. Other than that, I knew nothing else about the place at all so I was interested to see it for myself. Day 1 - Travelling to Birmingham; City of Birmingham The day had a late start, since I allowed for a late Friday night for my IT Manager's birthday drinks - not that I did have a huge night out but it was pricewise better to do it that way as well - in fact it was really cheap to travel by train between London and Birmingham (or "Brum", as the city is known). The is at least 3 train companies running between them, with two from Euston - London Midland, and Virgin West Coast. London Midland was a little bit cheaper, but would take longer so I opted for Virgin - plus despite the fact people seem to prefer the London Midland trains, I actually prefer the Virgin Pendolino's which feel much more like a proper long distance train to me. Due to depart at 12:23pm, we did leave about 15 minutes late but still arrived earlier than the London Midland train I would have otherwise caught! upon arrival at Birmingham New Street, I walked a few blocks to the inner city hotel I was staying at, which I had found through Booking.com and had a last minute deal on. It wasn't the flashest of hotels - by that I mean it would have been flash in its heyday, but it hadn't really updated since then; but it had a charm of its own and certainly wasn't like the one in Brussels! I stayed long enough to drop my bag off, and then headed out. There was one thing I wanted to do above all others while in Birmingham, and that was see the City of Birmingham. The City of Birmingham is a locomotive, funnily enough - an LMS Duchess, the same type that I rode behind up to Carlisle and back at the end of January. There are only 3 of these neat Duchess Class engines left - one in streamlined form, Duchess of Hamilton at the National Railway Museum in York, which I'd seen; Duchess of Sutherland, which I'd ridden behind; and the other is City of Birmingham, preserved in its namesake city in the "Thinktank" Science Museum. So I went and visited the museum, as Science museums are quite cool in the UK in general and well worth visiting. Of course, I started with seeing the locomotive, which is displayed rather well and you can walk into the cab area to lave a look also. There are other examples of engines (engines as opposed to locomotives/trains) and vehicles from the Industrial Revolution until the present day - Birmingham was a very important centre during the Industrial Revolution, in fact perhaps even the key city at the beginning of all of it. There was more than that though - a whole floor practically devoted to the wonders of the human body and the technology to heal and mend it, as well as augment it; a section on animals, including the real skeleton of a Giant Deer complete with huge impressive moose-like antlers; and on the top floor, a Planetarium with other space-based exhibits. Entrance to the Planetarium was free, but you had to get a ticket for a show when you paid to get in as space was limited and demand was high. I had a ticket for the 4pm show, and when it started and I saw that it was about starsigns in the sky I didn't think much of it as I'd seen planetarium shows like it before or even better, plus it was being narrated by someone with a very monotonal American accent. However it didn't take long to suddenly realise that in actual fact this was a show about the Northern Hemisphere sky - not the Southern Hemisphere like I'd seen so many times before. It talked about how the Big Dipper and the Great Bear were the same thing, and how you could use the Big Dipper to point at Polaris, the Northern Star, and then started drawing out the different star signs in the sky as the sun passed them in the course of the earths orbit of the sun, and how that then correlates with astrology, and how because of the earth's wobble since astrology was invented the star sign dates don't match up with what you see in the during that time now. I'd heard these things many times before, but it never quite resonated the same and I now realised why - a lot of the stars simply can't be seen from the Southern Hemisphere, or at least if you can, its upside down. Quite informative - but not the most spectacular show. After the show, I was pretty much done with the museum so wandered around the city for a bit and found some spectacular red brick and terracotta buildings, including the Hospital - a lot of the city streets of Birmingham have these wonderful ornate Victorian buildings in this style and its quite different, certainly I haven't stumbled across anything like it in London. Then I headed to the Bullring, a big mall complex in the city centre where I knew I'd find an Ed's Easy Diner to have dinner at. I've had a bit of a thing for Ed's ever since me, Jeremy and Rachel went to one for dessert and I found they did Oreo shakes. They are an American-style diner sorts, and they do burgers and hot dogs and a few other things for mains. I got the "Burger of the Month" - an odd combination of beef meat patty, lamb meat balls, jalapenos, cheese and a few other things called "Great Balls of Fire". It was very tasty, when it finally came - I think they took too long as they offered me a refill of my lemonade glass on top of the normal refill you get. After that, was naturally an Oreo shake - using the birthday voucher I had for joining up with their club scheme. The great thing about their shakes is you get the shake in a glass, about the same size as you do at Denny's but then you also get the metal container which the milkshake was mixed in and which has another glassful's worth of milkshake in it. So you effectively get 2 Oreo Shakes, although this time there seemed to be extra and I managed to get 2 and a half which was extra awesome since I seemingly can never get enough of the Oreo Shakes! After dinner I was feeling a little bit exhausted (and full) so went back to the Hotel and laid up for the rest of the night, but also made use of the bath for a soak for a while - because why not? The bigger day of the two by far, and the day of the main event - visiting the Severn Valley Railway Spring Gala event. This heritage railway is one of Britain's more notable railways, and to get there I had to catch a train and travel for an hour to Kidderminster. But it was by no means an early start - for some reason, the first train from Birmingham to Kidderminster didn't leave until 9.26am. I did spend about 20 minutes between leaving the hotel and heading to Birmingham Moor Street station detouring through the city a little bit, ending up finding more red brick & terracotta buildings near where the other ones I'd seen the day before were. Not long after I arrived at Moor Street station than they announced the train might be late, or cancelled - the driver hadn't shown up for work. I was not going to arrive for the beginning of the gala anyway but I had planned on what I was doing initially when I got there, which depended on catching the right trains. In the event, the train to Kidderminster was late and not cancelled - and I arrived at Kidderminster in time to buy my all-day ticket and jump on the train that was about to leave without having a chance to get out my camera. There are railway galas all the time in Britain it seems, especially at the moment - there's one every other weekend. I could go to them all - but I wouldn't be able to get up to much else, and so I have to "pick my battles". The Mid-Hants Gala had been a good one to go to, because the variety of locomotives was good - this particular Gala didn't sound like it had the most appealing line up of locomotives to me, but it sure had the numbers - 11 steam locos in steam, 4 of them guest engines from other railways, and the mix was big and small engines. The headline guest locomotive was a WW2-era War Department 2-8-0, the last of its particular variant. Its a very austere looking engine, not surprising for a loco built during wartime in a hurry to work freight and troop trains in the UK & Europe and its not really my thing, nor were lots of the other engines but in the end the variety of different locomotives was quite neat. There are intermediate stations along the line which you can hop off at and get on another train as your ticket lets you train hop all day if you want, and I travelled the length of the line to Bridgnorth on two different trains and then slowly worked my way back to Kidderminster. The line is quite long - 26km - and as I discovered, the Severn Valley Railway really has its act together. They have a varied, scenic line; lots of different interesting things at the intermediate stations, including Cafe's or even Pubs (not an either-or situation either - Bridgnorth, the other end of the line has both a Cafe and a Pub) which were doing a roaring trade all weekend and must have earned an absolute bomb, even though their prices were quite reasonable; the train running was slick and was always on time, even with lots more trains than usual running; and the thing which got me most was the wonderful museum at Highley, mid way along the line. Not only do they have this huge, spacious building with some of the locomotives they don't use or aren't being fixed up on display (and looking spic-and-span at that too, except for the Black Five which was looking purposely sooty and used) but it has a number of shops, a big exhibition space currently depicting the SVR's first 50th years (including a mock pub, with a TV on the wall playing a video describing how the railway began with a meeting of like minded indivuduals at a pub) and upstairs was a cafe which then went out on to a huge balcony which faced the railway and gave great views of the line and surrounding area. So much so that over the course of about 2 hours I camped out at this museum, taking in the view and the passing trains when there was one to see from this upstairs balcony and in between looking around the museum space. No railway in NZ has anything like this museum, let alone all the other facilities the SVR has - the closest approximation to the museum in NZ terms would be Pleasant Point's Keanes Crossing at the present time. With such a great railway setup on a scenic line, the trains were in the end the icing on the cake. Not just the locomotives themselves either be they the running ones or the ones parked up on display, or under overhaul in the shed at Bridgnorth (which included "Taw Valley", the original Harry Potter engine that Chris Columbus rejected for the film as looking 'too modern') or the new builds nearing completion (a replica of "Catch Me Who Can" and a 3MT tank engine) but the carriage rakes being used as well. Some of the trains were long - 8 coaches long - but there was a wide variety of rakes which surprised me, as mostly I've only seen in person or in pictures British Railway Mk1 carriages in maroon, or sometimes in the Southern Green livery some wore. At Bluebell I rode in genuine Southern carriages, but Mid-Hants was BR Mk1's - here though, they had a rake of LNER teak bogie coaches and another long rake of LMS carriages as well as a GWR set, as well as a BR Mk1 set (which was in "Blood and Custard", probably the best looking of the Mk1 carriage liveries!). Needless to say I had the opportunity to ride in them all, with the GWR carriages not seeming too different to the BR Mk1's; the LNER set were nice with their somewhat Art Deco decor, although seemed a tad dingy despite the large windows; and I managed to score myself a 1st Class compartment all to myself in the LMS carriages, which was very ornate and comfortable. After arriving back into Kidderminster having thoroughly enjoyed my day, it was time to head back to Birmingham even though trains were still running on the SVR. Back in Birmingham, I got off at the Snow Hill station and walked across central Birmingham to New Street Station, grabbing some dinner to have on the train on the way and then awaited my Virgin West Coast train back to London. This train was absolutely full, and the trip was done in darkness and otherwise unremarkable - except for some football fans who were having a few beers and were discussing with each other the merits or otherwise of this team and that team. One of them particularly seemed to have a dislike of Arsene Wenger, which I found a little bit amusing - complaining that Arsenal fans were smug, and how he hates that the entire football world sees Mr Wenger looking like he's thinking and thinks "Ooh he's got a plan", arguing that he thought Mr Wenger didn't even think about strategy much anymore. His friends agreed saying they thought it was basically second nature to Arsene so he just did it automatically and didn't have to analyse it, which got the original guy worked up because thats not what he meant. He tried to win the argument my saying "Just because Wenger did some clever stuff years ago everyone thinks he's all that. I'm sure Jesus was the same, he did a couple of magic tricks turning water into wine and then everyone was all like 'Oh he's the Son of God and he can do everything' ". I'm not sure comparing Wenger to Jesus was quite the best way to get his point across somehow, but it sure was funny! A thoroughly enjoyable trip and although I might have approached it initially as "can't think of anything else better to do so might as well", I am super glad I made the effort. Birmingham is very nice - maybe not nice enough to entice me to shift there from London now that I'm settled, but if I wasn't settled I'd be giving some serious thought to moving there I would think. Besides, SVR is fairly close and I have discovered Tyseley, where one of the main line excursion operators is based is on Birmingham's outskirts - I would not want for steam trains there! I didn't quite understand how much of a gem Severn Valley Railway was until I saw it for myself - definitely a railway amongst railways. I certainly will be back, not the least for which is the Autumn Gala where they've already announced the headline locomotive - 70000 "Britannia", the big green engine from the Mid Hants Gala which would be impressive on the SVR, and the fact that it sounds like they are going to do night running as well which would be quite the sight. "Taw Valley" should hopefully be finished by then too, and the prospect of it teaming up with SVR classmate "Sir Keith Park" is also an exciting sounding possibility. I do feel like I need to visit the North Yorkshire Moors Railway now too, to compare it with the SVR. No doubt Birmingham will be visited a few more times yet, it seems an interesting place and the locals are friendly enough - I do quite like the particular "Brummie" accent too, its like one of the nicer English accents with a healthy dose of Scottish. Iit has occurred to me that some of the same qualities which made Birmingham a suitable "Plan B" location also make it a suitable staging point or layover place for other trips around Britain - the kinds of ones where from London after work you'd either arrive at your destination too late or can't make it there that night, but if you left the following morning it would be midday before you got there. Birmingham would prove to be a good place to layover for the night, meaning you could get to where you need to go the next morning much earlier - Northern Wales is a good example of this. Mind you, it wouldn't be the only city in the region like that. Things to keep in mind!
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So for the last week, all the news here has been buzzing with the impending Eclipse. At work, there's been a flurry of activity and concern about making sure the windows are covered during the hours of the Eclipse are covered so that people don't look outside and stare at the sun and damage them. All this effort started getting me a bit excited - we had a really good one in NZ in November 2012 (didn't actually think it was that long ago!) where it got quite dark during the eclipse during the middle of the day, and work had special stare-at-the-sun glasses to look at the actual eclipse in progress. Its cloudy in London today, can't even see the sun for all the cloud. But that's okay, they say the moon will cover 98% of the sun's disk so I can at least experience the getting dark part. I've decided to take photos using my cellphone's camera during the eclipse to show everyone how dark it gets. 9.12am The eclipse phase began about 20 minutes ago, so I found a window that looks down the street from which to capture the darkness of the eclipse as it happens. London quite likes its brick housing, doesn't it? 9.25am 10 minutes to go until the moment of full eclipse as seen from London. Not really looking any darker out there at the moment but a lot can happen in 10 minutes. 9.36am This is the time, or very close to, of the maximum eclipse as seen from London and the darkest its going to get. I had just come back from being outside searching to see if I could, in fact, see the sun in the sky - still nope. It was noticeably colder though, which the BBC website said it was going to be during the eclipse. But this is it, this is the eclipse! 11.13am The street back to normal about 20 minutes after the last phase of the eclipse had finished at 10.50am.
So there we have it. The Eclipse of the Decade... ...which was extremely underwhelming, and to be honest if you didn't know about it you wouldn't have noticed anything different. In fact if it wasn't for the cars being in different places, you could have sworn I used the same photo over and over again, right? To be honest my cellphone camera's auto-ISO probably adjusted the brightness of each of the photos a bit, but I hardly noticed it getting any darker - especially for only 2% of the sun supposed to be showing. Did get colder though. I liked the November 2012 Eclipse in NZ much much better. Clearly, London was not the place to be to see it! I've already mentioned in my last post that for my birthday I'm appropriating the two weekends either side of the actual birthday weekend in order to mark it. Its my 30th, after all - why not spread it out across 3 weekends doing what I want to do?
The fairly last minute trip to Brussels, Belgium was the weekend before - but what about my actual birthday weekend? It wasn't massive, but it was good and it was entirely London based. It really started Friday night after work when I attended my workplace's "Fizzy Friday" get-together and turns out despite me not telling hardly anyone, most of them knew or found out it was my birthday the next day - queue a whole lot of free drinks. I did get home before midnight, but had a bit of a sleep in and did not get up to much during the day as a consequence - ever so slightly hung over. Not that that stopped me from going out Saturday night on my actual birthday. The plan was myself and some of the guys from the IT team at work would meet up somewhere with Tom, the guy I work closest with in my new job (who will be referred to as IT Tom herein) and hang out with him and his other friend Tom who's birthday was the next day (not his 30th, in case you were wondering - referred to as Birthday Tom herein) and then head into Town later on in the night. But the plan was a bit loose, and would be formalized on the day. When it was formalised, I got a text saying we were meeting at Surbiton about 7.30-8pm and would go into town later from there. For some reason I thought Surbiton was a pub or bar - turned out it was a town on the outskirts of London - in fact right at the edge of the Oyster zone. Meanwhile I caught up with Jeremy for a few pints in Town, in an Irish Bar somewhere in Soho (Rachel didn't come because she had a bad headache) and when was asked what time I might show up in Surbiton so they could work out when to head for town, I told them that I was already in town and instead of me coming out to Surbiton it might be better for them to meet me in town when they got here. Seemed to be fine until an hour later when I got another message where I found out they were still in Surbiton and that our IT boss was now out in Surbiton too - realising that they probably actually aren't going to make it to town, but that my boss had actually made the effort to come out for my birthday I felt like I should actually go. Since Jeremy had work the next day, we parted ways and I caught a train from Waterloo to Surbiton. So about 30-40 minutes later on a fairly express train, I arrived in Surbiton. The next hour or however long it was, was a bit comical - turns out somehow the group had become split and peoples cellphones had run flat so they weren't quite sure who was were, and not long after I arrived started suggesting we should go to Soho, where I had just come from! Long story short we found the pub where the others were about 10 to Midnight, but that pub had already stopped serving drinks; after midnight struck we all headed for the train station to catch the last train into London to go to town, and then somehow the Birthday Tom half of the group split off and went into a Wetherspoons while we went into the Station and caught the last train back to London. We managed to get a few drinks from some places in London, but by the time we got to Soho proper it became clear to me that most places in London stop serving alcohol at Midnight; those that don't charge £20 to get in, which is about NZ$40. By the time we'd exhausted trying to find a place that was open and would let us in for free, it was 2am - the £20 cover charge places were going to close in an hour so it wasn't worth it and we called it a night, but it had been a pretty decent night and I didn't feel like I had had too few drinks! I caught a night bus back home, getting home about 4am and slept most of the morning away! May not sound like much, but I enjoyed it. About the only other thing of note, was one of my flatmate baking me a cake (or more correctly, Chocolate Berry Brownies) for my birthday which was very nice and very much appreciated! Remember how I said that I wouldn't be having any big travels for a while until the finances settled but some local/domestic trips should be on the cards in the near term? Well, that was and is still true. But that doesn't mean I haven't been eyeing up trips further afield - to make some of these trips happen at a good/reasonable price, you've got to plan ahead and book ahead. One of those trips - my "comprehensive" Germany trip - looks increasingly unlikely as too pricey as each day goes by, even though I've spent the last 2 weeks going over and over it to try and reduce costs. So I was getting quite frustrated on that front, and then some idle talk at drinks after work about shooting off to Paris on the Eurostar planted a few other ideas. Jeremy had his birthday that same weekend, and ended up appropriating the 3 days either side of it as designated Birthday events - the disastrous Arsenal vs AS Monaco game, followed by the much better Arsenal vs Everton game. If he could do that, why couldn't I appropriate the two weekends either side of my birthday weekend, which was coming up? So deciding that the weekend before my birthday was prime for a trip, I did some cursory research and booked it then and there that Tuesday night beforehand. So where did I go for the weekend? Brussels, Belgium. Why Brussels? A couple of main reasons - the Eurostar goes there, so I could finally travel on it and go through the Chunnel; and Belgium is the home of Tintin, and being in Brussels particularly I could go to the Tintin museum and related things. A train thing and a Tintin thing - two of my biggest likes, so makes a rather fitting 30th birthday trip, does it not? Almost like it was planned long in advance, but I assure it you wasn't - plus I had very little idea about what else to find in Brussels, as I knew stuff all about Belgium as a country either - its kind of one of those countries you know of, but always is in the shadow of the more prominent countries such as Germany and France. I knew they spoke French there though, but would discover the rest as I went along! Day 1 - London to Brussels After work on Friday 6th, instead of going home I went with my stuff to St Pancras Station to catch the 7.34pm Eurostar to Brussels. Checking in was fairly straightforward as was processing through security and border control; waiting in the lounge for boarding was the most tedious aspect, as it was very busy and there wasn't enough seats in the lounge. Upon boarding the train (seemingly later than usually happens), I found my 2nd class seat. Jeremy and Rachel had taken the Eurostar to Paris and back, and Jeremy had commented to me how since it was dark when they took their trip he couldn't tell when they were in the Chunnel but the trip was very smooth and the seat tray tables were big and awesome. During the course of my nearly 2-hour trip to Brussels, I discovered the trip was indeed very smooth; after a while I noticed we had been in what sounded like a tunnel for a while, and assumed we were in the Chunnel which was confirmed when the sound started changing, I looked up and saw us pop out of the French Chunnel portals; and the tray tables are indeed very large and rather awesome. I was now in France, transiting my way to Belgium. But it was dark and you couldn't see much - not that it mattered, I didn't want to know where we were in so much as how fast we were going as I knew we were now on the famous high speed lines of France. Across France, we averaged 290km/h but hit and exceeded the magic 300km/h a few times - the fastest I've ever been on a train yet, and I doubt that will get exceeded anytime soon. I was looking at the map on my phone and the thing that I particularly noticed was how quickly we zipped across the map - the train doesn't muck around, not at these speeds. We stopped at Lille, where across the platforms I got my first glimpse of a fabled TGV French high speed train. They do 300km/h right across France and are what the Eurostar is based on. The crossing of the border into Belgium was unmarked, except for my phone changing cell providers and the blue dot on the map suddenly jumping across the line. Arrival onto Brussels was on time at 10.34pm local time, an hour ahead of the UK. From here, things became a bit of a blur as I had to get to my accommodation before 11.00pm. When I booked my accommodation, I thought Brussels Central Station and Brussels Zuid/Midi were the same. A day or two later I discovered they weren't - Eurostar went to Zuid/Midi, my Hotel was near Central. the pitfalls of booking stuff without doing thorough research! No matter, I worked out I could get the Metro from Zuid/Midi to very close to my Hotel, and it would take 12min. So I raced off the train as fast as I could, found the Metro area in the station; worked out how to use the ticket machine to buy a one-trip ticket in a hurry; worked out how to put it in the turnstile machines and jumped on the first service going to where I needed to go. The Brussels metro is a very impressive, efficient feeling system - a mix of train and trams, underground and overground. Once off the tram, a quick walk and I was there - a shade after 11.00pm, but they didn't seem to mind. I had chosen the hotel because it was the cheapest option I could find for the central city, and had good reviews. It was good, I can't fault them on that - and I was expecting it to be fairly basic but for some reason didn't quite expect it to be as much as it was. Not so much that facilities were lacking, but moreso that the bathroom and shower was shoehorned into what must have once been a wardrobe space, and the single coat of red paint on two of the walls when the others were a beige shade of much thicker paint, and the whole appearance was a bit tired. I suppose the hotel was 2-stars after all - what they lacked in decor though they made up for in their bed making skills - those were some very tight hospital corners! Day 2 - Tintin, Comics and Getting AroundI did get a good nights sleep, got up and got ready for Saturday's adventures. First and foremost was a trip to the Musee Herge - the museum of Tintin's inventor. This museum wasn't in Brussels itself, it was in a place about an hour south called Louvain-a-Neuvre so I went to Central station, and went down to the platform a little bit earlier to watch the preceeding trains come and go and get my first look at Belgian trains. The platforms are underneath the station building, so its a bit like waiting for the tube and I watched the first train pull into the platform - only to realise it wasn't Belgian at all, this was a Dutch train heading to Amsterdam! The platform announcements were in French, Dutch, German and English in that order and the following trains were Belgian, then a high speed French/Dutch Thalys train slipped through and then my train came. I'd bought some train tickets online a few days before as there was a buy-in-advance deal where on weekends the return trip was free. I'd bought tickets for Louvain-a-Neuvre and Leuven, and been sent the PDF files. Having done much the same in Germany, I assumed it would be fine to show the tickets on my phone - but when the guard came round he told me off and said it was "obligatory" to print them off. Nowhere had I seen it say that on the website or the tickets, mind you the tickets were mostly in French. I also had to change trains at Ottignes, so at Ottignes I went to the station and takes to one of the ticket sellers what could I do. He said that there was nowhere in the station or nearby town to print it off, the only thing I could do was buy another ticket and then later claim back the cost of the original. Not really having much choice, I decided to do that. He asked where I was going - I pronounced Louvain-a-Neuvre as best I could - and he said the correct pronounciation of the first part of the name, which was said Louven. I got a return ticket back to Ottignes as that was slightly more than a one way, and then jumped on the next train to where I needed to go. The Guard on that train saw my new ticket and started asking me questions where was I going - a few questions later and me being thoroughly confused I actually read the ticket I'd just bought and saw it said Leuven, not Louvain-a-Neuvre - I'd been sold a ticket to somewhere else! Once the guard realised what had happened she wrote on the ticket, clipped it and remarked "You have paid too much for this trip!". No kidding. Finally getting to the correct destination of Louvain-a-Neuvre, it was a short walk through the fairly modern-looking town square and buildings to the Musee Herge, situated oddly above a park/woodlands area. I later discovered it's address was 26 Rue de Labrador - or 26 Labrador Road, Tintin's address in the books before he moves to Marlinspike Hall. It is a very new, oddly shaped building but the museum itself is fantastic, although strictly no photos inside. It looks at Herge's entire career, not just Tintin but since Tintin was about 70% of his total work, him and the other characters feature heavily and the free audio guide was very helpful. I got to see such notable things as original pages of early sketch ideas for Tintin stories which were not continued with (some being fairly well fleshed out); the actual last page Herge worked on for Tintin and the Alpha-Art before he died (leaving the story unfinished and on quite a cliffhanger too!); the scale model of the Tintin Moon rocket complete with interior Herge commissioned so his team of drawers would know exactly how everything fitted together when drawing up the pages; photos, documents and items which had formed the basis of certain elements in the books. A revelation to me was to learn how much Herge loved and was influenced by film - and discovering that the gorilla Ranko from the Black Island was inspired by the original King Kong movie which came out a few years before he wrote that book. A really, really good museum and a good museum shop too. But for the Tintin fan like me, what was there to buy there? I've got all the Tintin books, plus all the Jo & Zette ones - I don't need the earlier black & white Tintin stories which were later made colour. There is one "gap" in my Tintin collection - many years ago in Hastings I had the choice a few times of buying a new Tintin album or another Herge story, Popol out West. Tintin won every time and then eventually Popol disappeared never to be seen again - and I've since discovered that the print run for that copy of Popol was quite limited. They had Popol out West in the shop - but it was in French, and Black and White - not the Colour English edition I remembered. So, I left empty handed - but feeling rather satisfied. Time for lunch - there was a market, but the food was pricier than I wanted to pay; same with a few nearby cafes and takeaway places. Instead I found a mall with a supermarket inside and got something there, then hopped on the train back to Ottignes. At Ottignes I used a ticket machine to buy the one way ticket back to Brussels - I was not risking another "Lost in Translation" incident! Once back in Brussels, I managed to get the other PDF train ticket printed out at the Hotel and then headed to the Belgian Comic Strip Museum. Brussels is pretty big on its Comic Books and Strips, and why wouldn't it be when so many famous ones were born in Belgium - not just Tintin but The Smurfs and Dickie just to name some. This museum described a lot about the comic creation process, showed a lot of working material for lots of comics but I have to say I didn't recognize a lot of them and was surprised to find Asterix not being featured, although it is a French comic. The shop for this museum was a trove, but alas no Popol out West in English, only in French and B&W. I did find a lot of Bob and Bobette albums for sale - but in French so gave those a miss too. The third, and final thing for the day was to travel about an hour east of Brussels to Leuven. Why? For no other reason than my birthday dinner last year was in Wellington at a Belgian Beer cafe called "Leuven" where we ate fancy food and drank fancy Belgian beers. Why not have a fancy meal for my birthday (albeit "with my by myself") drinking fancy Belgian beers, in Leuven itself? It also had the added advantage that I'd get out and see a bit more of Belgium outside of Brussels as well. However, this trip did not have an easy start either. On arriving at the Central station at 5.00pm, I knew there was a train at 5.04pm leaving from Platform 5 - there was a sign on the concourse board saying the train at Platform 5 was going to Louvain and Leuven. Odd, but so long as it went to Leuven that was fine. But down on Platform 5 the sign just said Louvain - and in the scrolling text at the bottom, the last station mentioned was Louvain and no Leuven to be seen. The train arrived, people hopped on and at the chance of it not being correct, I jumped on and scrambled to try and find out what was going on. A quick google said that Leuven was in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium - then I looked up at the destination signs in the train and realised they changed between French and Dutch - Louvain and Leuven were one and the same, just the name in French and Dutch respectively. Suddenly a lot of the signs I'd seen earlier around the place made a lot more sense, and also the Louvain-a-Neuvre/Leuven ticket mishap earlier in the day. Turns out most parts of Belgium north of Ottignes, apart from Brussels speak Dutch and the rest is French speaking - because Belgium is a fairly new country which separated from the Netherlands and before that was a part of the French Empire. A surprise of note that I saw as we pulled into Leuven Station was one of the brand new Eurostar trains that are being built - no idea what it was doing there. After a quick look around the town square (where there was a small carnival of sorts) and with plenty of places to eat, I made my choice and went inside. I tried to use an app on my phone set to French-to-English to try and translate the menu, only to realise it wasn't working because the menu was in Dutch. The waitress pointed out shortly after that the english menu was at the back! Not that it mattered much as Mixed Grill seems to be the same between the languages, and I got a Westmalle Tripel for a drink - a 9.5% Trappist Beer I'd had before and quite liked, as well as being one of the higher-priced beers at 3.50 - that's about NZ$6, which is pretty damn good, right? The meal was excellent, and I ordered the most expensive beer in their beer listing (3.70) and a fancy chocolate ice cream sundae for dessert. The beer turned out to be a cider - a disappointment but probably a better idea than another 9% beer! It certainly was refreshing and the ice cream sundae was exquisite. Back to Brussels, and a wander back to the hotel - there was a late night Museum event on that night but I was feeling a bit worn out and most of the events at the Museums was more music and entertainment things, which I wasn't fussed with. Day 3 - Morning in Brussels and the Trip HomeAnother night's sleep, another day - but only half a day to spend in Brussels. I had thought about going to the main museum but after finding out at the Tintin Museum that the Arumbaya Fetish (a small wooden statue) from "The Broken Ear" was in fact a real item and it was in the Royal Museum of Art & Culture, I wanted to go see it for myself. It took a bit of pinpointing down - there are 4 separate museums under the "Royal Museum of Art & Culture" banner but the one I wanted was the Cinquantenaire, in west Brussels. I also wanted to try and see this Cathedral I'd seen in the distance, which I discovered was a Basilica and not a Cathedral - so I got a day pass for the Metro, which was slightly more than a return trip. I saw the Basilica first, then travelled to Schuman station where I walked towards a huge archway between two large buildings. The Museum was supposed to be here somewhere - but for ages all I could find was the entrance to the Autoworld Museum, and to "Expo14-18" which after having walked around the perimeter of that building I discovered it was the War Museum, naturally focussing on World War One at the moment. I ran out of cell data at this time and could not top up, so could no longer use the map on my phone to try and find it - I decided to walk around the other buildings perimeter and if I could not find it, I would go to Expo14-18 instead. I found it, went in and started walking around, going to where I thought the Arumbaya Fetish would be most likely and then around the rest of the museum after I couldn't find it. The museum is clearly an equivalent of the British Museum with many worldly treasures - including a lot of Ancient Egyptian mummies and I think possibly artifacts from Tutankhamun's tomb (there is a recreation of his tomb as well but it was not open) - and I dare say overall is probably better laid out and done out than the British Museum. But I couldn't find the Fetish - I had to ask someone - they directed me to the area where I went originally but said part of it was closed due to power issues. I went back, double checked what was on display and safely concluded that it was somewhere in the closed-off section - you could see some of the treasures beyond the roped off hallway but the Fetish was not visible from there. So that was disappointing, but there would have been no way to foretell that the Fetish wouldn't be visible during this trip. By now, it was midday - time to head to Central Station, and get some lunch. Which I duly did, visiting a McDonalds-like chain called "Quick" which was fairly unremarkable but was cheap. A quick walk around the corner to Brussel's main square, and then as I walked out I saw the Official Tintin store. Again, only the French B&W Popol out West. It was now time to head to the nearby road to catch the bus back to London. Yes, a bus - the trip over on Eurostar was not as cheap as I would have liked but was okay, but a trip back was more again and too much. Flights were also costly but a bus was affordable, even though it takes 7 hours from Brussels to London. I was also hedging my bets - the bus had two ways of getting from Europe to the UK - ferry or Le Shuttle, the vehicle service through the Chunnel. Either would be fine but I was hoping for Le Shuttle obviously. Plus I'd get to see more of Brussels on our way out of the city, and parts of rural France. The bus duly arrived, everyone put their bags in the hold, then fought for the door to get on but the driver had to check names and passports as people got on so in that respect it was somewhat futile. I got a seat on the right hand side of the bus as I'd hoped, which wouldn't have the sun streaming in on it - but the window had one of those graphic lattices on it so my view was somewhat obscured. The bus had started in Cologne, so the very front seats on the upper deck were already taken - such a shame! The journey from Brussels to Calais was fairly unremarkable, we stopped at Gent to pick up more people but that was it, and the countryside was flat and unremarkable; but it got cloudier and colder and then suddenly we were at the border controls for Le Shuttle. This proved a bit of a performance; first we proceeded through one set of gates, then to a pull-off area beside a 2nd set of gates where we had to hop off the bus with our passports which were then checked by French authorities. Back on the bus, up to another set of gates and pull off area where we were told to get off and take all our luggage into another building - this one the UK border authorities, where passports were checked again and some people had bags screened (mine wasn't). Back on the bus, drive to a ramp and we waited on a queue to drive onto the train, which we did. We drove quite a length through the big wagons, until glass doors unfolded before us and a shutter came down in between - and the bus stopped, now isolated in its own wagon although there are passenger doors in the glass doors. Not that that matters much for us - it's a big bus, clearances are very tight and the normal doors can't open inside the wagon! So I had the odd experience of sitting on a bus, giggling up and down as it sat parked on the inside of a train, doing 160km/h through a tunnel under the ocean. I could see a small window in the side of the wagon from my window - when it went dark, you could tell we were in the tunnel. It was a very smooth 160km/h when you think about it - apart from the occasional giggle and infrequent clickety-clack sounds against a low hum, there was not much to give any clues that we were moving. Quite remarkable too is the condition of the train - for having seen nearly daily use for 21 years the train doesn't look it or feel it, although the stainless steel exterior is not as shiny as it once would have been. Once the train arrived at Follestone, it was time to adjust watches to UK time (an hour behind the continent) and ride the last stretch to London. We arrived at Folkestone at 6.00pm and the bus was timed to arrive at 8.00pm but we arrived at Victoria coach station earlier at 7.40pm - I guess the variance is there so they can just hop on the next Le Shuttle if they miss one. A tube ride home, and my adventure was over. Summing UpSo overall, my trip was good, albeit brief and had a few hiccups along the way. I can now tick off Belgium and Brussels as places/countries I have visited, and even before I went I knew I'd be making a trip back at some point when the new Belgian Railway Museum eventually opens in September. I now have a few other things to go see as well, such as re-visiting the Cinquantenaire Museum for the Arumbaya Fetish and the Tutankhamun Tomb re-creation; but I also want to see the Expo14-18 exhibit, while a visit to Passchendaele elsewhere in Belgium will be a must as well. I learned a lot about the country as well - especially finding out Brussels is the seat of the European Parliament (and seeing some of those buildings), and that its a dual language country and not just French as I'd thought. The Tintin books had always originally been produced in French and only French, with English being the first translation of them into another language, so I guess in that respect its not surprising that I never picked up on the Dutch language aspect of Belgium - but I now recall seeing French and Dutch on Belgian beer bottles when we were in the Canaries, but thought the Dutch was German and wondered why some bottles had no French but didn't think any more of it. I was very impressed with the Metro system and the train system - both efficient and clean, but also showing lots of signs of heavy investment and improvement going on. Somewhat curious is the fact that Belgium has some high speed rail tracks but no high speed trains of their own - Belgium has shares in Eurostar and Thalys, but other high speed services are provided by two of the European rail heavyweights - France's TGV and Germany's Deutsche Bahn ICE trains. Brussels as a city comes across to be as a surprising mix of modern buildings alongside old, with few areas that seem to be purely old buildings - probably a legacy of the country suffering heavily in two World Wars. Because of this too, the city seems to lack a distinctive or cohesive image of its own - it just seems generic overall. I can't say I feel like I've properly seen Brussels, only a part of the city centre but it was a neat trip and place to go overall, and an enjoyable one for my birthday!
So with the trip to Brussels, I have pretty much conceded by comprehensive Germany trip is not possible because it simply costs too much - maybe next year or another time? I do have at least 1 overseas trip locked in and booked, I'm quite looking forward to but there are at least two long weekends before then, and it would be a waste not to do something during that time, domestic or otherwise... I catch the "Tube", the London Underground trains, to and from work each day - from South Wimbledon to Clapham South and return most usually, on the Northern Line. In the mornings I always am able to get a seat, since South Wimbledon is the 2nd stop on the line heading north, while going home (heading south) its more common that I will have to stand for part of the way (though usually I don't move into a seat when one becomes free, because its not far to my station by then). I have noticed its seemed a bit more hectic this week, in the mornings - particularly on the trains that go via Bank instead of Charing Cross. The train usually becomes standing room only by Balham, the stop before Clapham South and then there is always a huge queue waiting to get on at Clapham South itself - so many that usually, not all of them fit in the train and some wait for the next one. Tuesday and Wednesday this week, I took trains that were heading North via Bank and they were crush load leaving Balham - trying to get off the train was not easy at all, I had to push through people and I doubt whether anyone would have been able to get on. This is the first time this sort of thing has happened - though at least one of those mornings, I haven't been sitting in the usual carriage I sit in further near the back of the train. I sit in that car because it seems less crowded for more of the journey, as people tend to hang around the entrances onto the platforms and a lot of them are in the same place at each station - so usually, the middle of the train fills up first. Also, the car near the back is close to the entrance/exit to the platform at Clapham South so I get out of the station quicker.
This morning I was running a bit late for work, so I practically ran to the station and down the escalator; there was a train to Charing Cross in the platform so I jumped in the nearest carriage, and it was fairly empty for most of the journey. I managed to hop off the train without having to squeeze past people on the train for the door although there were still more people on the platforms than there was going to be room on the train. Very briskly walked to work (its about a 10min walk at normal pace), arriving at work just on time (my work starts at 8am), and then later in the day I saw this as the headline on the BBC News Website: Woman 'dragged' under Tube train at Clapham South station http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-31848111 This occurred at 8am - not very long after I was in the Clapham South station, for all I know I could have passed the lady either on the platform or as I went up the escalators or heading out the entrance. I don't think it was my train that ran the lady over, it would have been the following train or the one after but had I not run to South Wimbledon and jumped on that Charing Cross service, chances are I would have been on that train that ran her over or stuck on the train that was following. Still its a scary thought that I could have witnessed, or seen a part of this terrible accident - although luckily, the lady was okay. Still, a little bit scary - for the Arsenal game I went to with Jeremy and Rachel the other week, Rachel mentioned she went to get on a crowded train but decided it was too full and would wait for the next one, only to be shoved from behind onto the train along with some other people. Not hard for something to go nastily wrong when that sort of thing happens. As it was that day, I got off at Holloway Road before they closed the station (which they typically do on game days) and it was very much chocka-block - as was Finsbury Park when I went to go home. The designs of the station are fairly rudimentary but what are you going to do? you can't make the platforms any bigger, and besides only so many people can fit on a train at a time; you can't make the trains any bigger, both in size or length; you can't make them any more frequent at peak times as they're already at capacity. Do you limit the amount of people that can pass through the Oyster gates onto the platforms at a time? how do you control that, given people can access more than one platform and you have no idea how many people are down there at any given time? about the only thing they can do is introduce more of those glass platform edge barriers that have sliding doors which only open when the train doors do. Will they do it? I don't know. But I think I'm going to leave a bit earlier in the mornings just in case from now on, it should be that little bit less crowded too I hope... NOTE: For some reason when this post went up it chopped off half of what I wrote and it's taken me a week to realise it. Annoying! Sorry if it seemed a bit disjointed - because it was. Sorted now, I hope.
I visited a Travel Show this morning. I found out about it through the Kiwi's in London Facebook page, there were free tickets available so I thought it couldn't hurt to get one and if I don't use it, no worries. But I went anyway - deciding to get there when it opened at 10am before it got mega-packed. When me & Dion went to the Travel Show in Wellington in February last year (me for London, Dion for Canada), we arrived when it opened and by the time we left the place was so packed that you couldn't move around very easily - London's a much bigger city so it seemed reasonable to expect that the same would happen here. I'm not the kind of person the Travel Show people want at such an event - because I had no intention of handing over any money to purchase any of the trips at bargain prices then and there. Not the trips, anyway - I knew I could be tempted by cheap flights to places though and build up a trip from there. But the main intention is to come away with a tote bag (that they give you) full of "ideas" (more commonly referred to as brochures or catalogues). I may not decide to go on any of the advertised trips (I'm not saying that I won't completely, I might) but if nothing else they can give me ideas on what is possible, how best to get from A to B and where are good entry and exit points in a country or where best to base yourself for a trip as that sort of information is not necessarily easy to glean otherwise. Take for example my trip to Germany for the Harz steam trains, it was only by looking at the tour itinerary of a tour company that I was able to figure out Wernigerode was the best place of the 3 main townships the railway served - and after visiting, it is now clear to me by quite how much Wernigerode is THE place to be based if doing that again. Which leads me to my point, a sort of conundrum - any trip to anywhere for the first time is always frought with an element of the unknown if going somewhere by yourself or with others but they've never been there either. Basically, the first trip is always going to be a "scoping" trip and from that you'll get ideas about what you'd want to do next time, if its worth going back, and what to miss - it is never going to be a comprehensive "Been there, Done Everything" type deal. And until you go and see, you're never going to know if there is more to do or whether it wasn't worth visiting in the first place. A lot of the trips on offer at the Travel Show were, naturally, your Contiki and Topdeck type "tour around and see as much as possible in a short amount of time" where you get to spend a day or two tops in various countries - basically like a taster or sampler of what Europe or wherever has to offer. Or, in other words, a kind of comprehensive Scoping Trip. The problem? the price of these trips is fairly up there, its not cheap and for a decent one, you're talking 20-30 days or a little bit more. I'm working now - taking that much leave would really only be possible entirely in or around School Holidays, and realistically would have to wait till July/August. Not ideal for an initial Scoping Trip from where to base future trips from, because a lot of time has already passed for doing trips! I guess ideally, I would have had more money when I came over and done such a trip when I first arrived and not worried about looking for a job or any of the other stuff until the trip was over. Reality at the time seemed far more prudent to start job searching straight away when I got here and try and get myself sorted as soon as possible, and leave such trips as a fallback way of seeing Europe if it became apparent I couldn't get a job and my money was going to run out. I still stand by what I did - I think it was the most sensible and prudent thing to have done. Plus in the lead up to coming over here, a Contiki-type trip didn't really appeal to me as I had notions of hitting the ground running and being able to go visit various places already knowing what I wanted to see and what I didn't, which is still true to a degree but it would be nice to have some sort of perception where the nice parts of Europe actually are. Turns out you can only hit the ground running to a certain degree when going to places or in countries you have never been before - getting a feel for things is much harder when there's different languages and currencies involved. Nevertheless, I have brochures and catalogues to refer to now which helps a lot as the internet can be not so good at making things apparent about where is good to travel nor how best to get there - you have to go digging, but sometimes you're not sure what you're necessarily digging for or what to dig with. Because lets face it, with my eccentric interests conventional trips aren't necessarily going to take me to the places I want to go or the things I want to see. Back to the travel show - have to say it wasn't anywhere near as big as I thought it might be, it was even smaller than the show in Wellington last year my virtually any measure and mustn't be the only or the biggest travel show London has. There were two things which caught me by surprise at the show. The first was there were no airlines there at all, not one - at the Wellington show, both Air NZ and Virgin Australia were present with lots of flight deals along with Emirates, Malaysian Airlines and Korean Air having stands and deals. Although I didn't purchase my flights to the UK there, discussing the Virgin deals at the stand is how I hit upon the idea of flying Virgin Australia & Etihad over to the UK and also the idea of having a stopover on the way. There were lots of your Contiki/Topdeck type companies offering discounts for trips in the low seasons, when I pretty much can't get leave off for anyway. Another thing which struck me was they were advertising the usual destinations, but alongside those was Australia and NZ - just seemed weird seeing them but I guess it makes sense over this side of the world. Another thing I noticed - very few trips to Greece, but lots to Croatia; no Russia, but as expected lots of Turkey and a semi-surprise, a huge amount to Egypt. I keep forgetting Egypt is as far away from the UK as Turkey, but since Turkey just counts as part of Europe while Egypt is Africa, it keeps falling out of my radar which is stupid since I would love to take a trip there someday and visiting from the UK makes a lot of sense since there's a huge tourism industry leaving from here to there. I think I spent about an hour there before I decided there wasn't much point sticking around any longer. But I did walk out with the bag of ideas, which was the point of going. I do feel like I should have taken an NZ Contiki brochure just to see what was on offer for trips back home, and see what they get to see and what they miss out on - perhaps putting their trips through Europe in perspective. I doubt it would have made me homesick, that feeling hasn't really kicked in yet as I'm still able to keep in contact with friends and family back home and keep apace of what's going on. And speaking of home, I feel like I should mention Dion has chosen to pull the pin on Canada as it wasn't working out for him, not able to earn enough over there to fund his projected travel plans - he's back in NZ as of the 3rd March, where he can earn more for his travels in the next 6-9 months. So that's that - got a few trip ideas up my sleeve, let's see how that pans out? |
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A Kiwi out travelling in the UK and surrounding countries Archives
August 2019
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