dormouse1953

Just received an e-mail from Deutsches Bahn telling my 10:32 train from Prague to Berlin was departing 31 minutes late. The message was timed at 11:06, and indeed, the train had left Prague station three minutes before I received the e-mail.

I'm on a train going from Berlin to Prague and the train has just gone through Losovice. Looking for that on the map, I realise I'm going past Terezin.

Went out for a meal this evening. A German pork dish called kassler. Very nice. It's amazing how much German beer I can drink when I've spent the day walking around Berlin in thirty degree heat.

The bill came. 36 Euro. I got out my credit card. They didn't take cards. I had exactly 36 Euro in my wallet. After leaving, I went to an ATM I remembered seeing just by the restaurant. I put in my debit card and a message about "Out of service" appeared in the window, then it went back to the Welcome screen. But no sign of my card.

I walked back to my hotel. I passed another ATM on the way and was able to get some cash out on a credit card. I found the number for HSBC and thought it better to use the hotel phone rather than use the credit on my mobile. But first I had to give the hotel my credit card to unblock the phone in my room. I got through to HSBC once I'd googled how to dial an international number from Germany, and stopped the card. They'll send a replacement to my home address. I couldn't persuade them to send it to the hotel I'm going to be in in Prague next week.

I wonder how much the phone call is going to cost.

Edit: 1/7/19 When I checked out this morning it was 10 Euro, not as bad as the $70 I think I was charged to phone my bank in San Jose last year.

 Yesterday I travelled from San Francisco to San Jose.

When I opened my e-mail yesterday morning there was a message from HSBC telling me to log in to internet banking for an important message.  Having no wish to connect to e-banking on an insecure hotel wi-fi system, I'd not brought the HSBC e-banking security device with me so I couldn't do that.  My worry was that they'd failed to take into account that I'd filed a travel plan with them before flying and they were assuming my card use in the US was fraudulent.

I travelled down to San Jose by train - only $10 for a 90 minute ride, which seems a good value.  Mind you, some of my fellow passengers were a bit weird.  I'd fallen in with an English couple travelling to Palo Alto but we were soon joined by a mad woman who was shouting out about how terrible gays were and were a danger to her son.  As I was reading A Very English Scandal about the Jeremy Thorpe affair, I was most amused by this.  There was also a guy playing very loud rock music on some portable device.

So I got to my hotel in San Jose mid-afternoon, unpacked and went to the convention centre and registered.  As I'd spent quite a bit of cash on taxi fares- it cost as much to get from my hotel to the station as for my entire train journey - when I saw an ATM in the convention centre I tried to get some cash.

It wouldn't give me any.

Assuming the worst concerning the e-mail HSBC had sent me, I tried phoning the number on my card.  But as it was outside office hours in the UK, all I got was telephone banking.  I've not used telephone banking for years and I couldn't remember my telephone banking number, so I got locked out.

I also more or less used up all my credit on my mobile, which I usually top up at an ATM. 

I tried phoning again this morning before going for breakfast using the hotel phone.  (The alarm clock in my room plays the sound of church bells as an alarm.)  I had a very long and occasionally confusing conversation with a woman.  Because of the time lag, we kept talking over each other.  One of the security questions was how much I'd taken out of an ATM on Monday.  I had the amount in dollars, she had it sterling, and neither of us knew what the exchange rate was.

Finally she was able to tell me there was no block on the card and her guess was that the ATM itself was faulty.  And, indeed, I've just been able to use the ATM in the hotel lobby successfully.

And that important message from HSBC that I'd received the e-mail about?  She read it out for me.  As I'd reached 65, my card protection details have changed. 
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 I'm in Paris at the moment, came up on the Eurostar this afternoon.

I'm staying in the same hotel I stayed in the last two times I visited Paris, near the Gare de Lyon.  I went out for a meal and when I got back there appeared to be a crowd gathered outside my hotel, and somebody addressing them with a microphone.  They were actually outside the bar next door and what was immediately obvious was three large sousaphones being carried.  A closer look and I noticed other brass instruments.

The receptionist in the hotel had no idea what's going on, but they are currently playing music outside my window.

Final part of my journey home. Never tried the Wi-Fi connection on the Eurostar before.

I should be home in a couple of hours.

I'm on my travels again and have been incommunicado for two days.

Checked out of the hotel Thursday morning and had several hours to kill before the ferry back so I walked around, bumping into other fans, and then ended up in a park overlooking the sea, reading Interzone. I then walked back into the centre, had a coffee and then picked up my bag.

I'd discovered that the ferry terminal is a lot closer to the hotel than I first thought. Indeed, all of central Helsinki is a lot smaller than it looks on the map. I realised it wouldn't take long to walk from the hotel, right through the city centre. It took about half an hour, but I soon realised how many pavements in Helsinki are cobbled rather than smooth. Important when you are wheeling a heavy case.

I didn't see any fans I recognised this trip, and my attempts to sit in the bar and go through my e-mail failed as the connection speed was pitiful. But I did manage to get to sleep this time, although I did discover that someone flushing the loo in the next cabin made a loud roaring sound that woke me up. Of course, waking up in the middle of the night and I immediately wanted to go to the loo, so I returned the favour.

The advantage of going in this direction is that the clock change meant I could get up early for breakfast. The disadvantage is that everyone else had the same idea. And why did people start to queue to disembark long before we docked. As I had three hours to get to Central Station in Stockholm, I waited until we were nearly docked before going to the cabin to get my bags.

It was raining slightly when we docked, but I decided to walk to the underground station and get a train to the centre. Although as I mentioned in a previous post, the direct foot route to the station involved a narrow uncovered aerial walkway, I knew a long detour at ground level. Probably added another 15-20 minutes.

When I got to the central station, my train was already on the board and I noticed that although my ticket involved changing at Lund to get to Copenhagen, the train went on from Lund to Copenhagen. I went to the ticket office to enquire about this and the clerk was quite happy to extend my reservation to Copenhagen when I thought to ask an important question. "What time does the train get to Copenhagen?" It turned out that by changing in Lund, even though there was ten minutes waiting for the train, it got me into Copenhagen five minutes earlier, which gave me ten minutes to get the connection to Hamburg. So I stuck with the original booking.

Ten minutes for the connection in Lund. Ten minutes for the connection in Copenhagen. What could possible go wrong?

Well, I got to Lund only two minutes late and my connection was on the board and due in on the same platform. However, it was marked as two minutes late, and that delay grew to about fifteen minutes. I got into Copenhagen about ten minutes after my connection left, just before six in the evening. Two weeks after missing a connection in Copenhagen, it had happened again.

I found the ticket office, which was busy, and also had a different queue for international travel. It was a take a ticket system, but there seemed to be no advantage in getting an international ticket as the same positions seemed to be dealing with both.

There was another train to Hamburg that night. The trouble was it didn't leave till 22:55 and got in at 05:28. But I had no choice and the new reservation was made. And I now had nearly five hours to kill in Copenhagen station.

I found an organic pasta place in the station. The guy who served me turned out to be from Leeds and I then found myself talking to an Irish woman whose husband was in Copenhagen to take part in an iron man contest. After that I found a seat and started to read.

Copenhagen station is a lively place on a Friday night. There seemed to be a fad for teenagers who had self-graffitied. At first I thought it was really bad tattoos, but I noticed it was on their clothes as well. I don't know if this is some Danish clubbing thing or something to do with it being Copenhagen Pride that weekend.

The train wasn't too crowded. There were a lot of early stops where people were getting off. But it was difficult to sleep and the guy opposite me snored loudly. He also wanted to stretch out his legs which meant I kept kicking him as I moved around. Finally he moved to another seat where his snores weren't so loud. I think I got some sleep.

The train actually got into Hamburg station just after five. Hamburg station and its surrounds look different at that time in the morning. I had a hotel booked and paid for, and it was just over the road from the station. There was the first glimmer of light of the start of dawn as I crossed the road.

They'd kept the room for me so I got about three hours sleep in a proper bed before getting up for breakfast. I didn't seem to be able to get an internet connection though. Then it was off to catch a train back to Cologne and the same hotel I was in the first day of my trip, seventeen days ago, which is where I am now. Back home tomorrow.

Sunday was a bit of a washout.

I had several hours to kill before going for the ferry and I had a vague idea of going to the Swedish History Museum, which I visited in 2011. I checked out of the hotel, dumped my bag and set out. I hadn't gone far before the heavens opened. I scampered back to the hotel and spent an hour of so trying to do the crossword.

By the time it had stopped raining, there didn't seem to be enough time left to go to the museum. I had a walk around before picking up my bag and taking a taxi to the ferry terminal.

Checking in for the ferry is all automatic, just type in your reservation number and code and it delivers your boarding card plus a card for the restaurant reservation. The boarding card had my cabin number on it, and it doubled as a key-card to the cabin. Once I'd boarded the ship, someone told me which lift to take to my cabin.

As the lift doors opened. Yvonne Rowse stepped out, the first other fan I'd seen on my trip.

My cabin was on the lowest deck possible, below the car decks and near the bow. It was incredibly small - there was barely room for me and my suitcase - and no Wi-Fi signal (which is why I was unable to write anything yesterday).

I went back up to the lounge level and found Yvonne in the bar. Three Dutch fans joined us during the evening. The Dutch appeared to be sharing a cabin and Yvonne said she was sharing a cabin with three other women she'd not met, who turned out to be of various nationalities. So they wanted to know who I was sharing with. As far as I knew, nobody.

I had my meal in the ship's Italian restaurant. I made the big mistake of allowing myself to be seated with my back to the porthole, so I kept having to turn to see anything interesting. It was a very nice meal, but I ate too much. So afterwards I went back to my cabin to have a brief rest. There was still no sign of anyone else there, and as the other bunk was still folded up against the wall and there was only one set of towels in the loo, I guessed (correctly, it turned out) that I did have the cabin to myself.

The five of us chatted for a bit, but we all crashed fairly early. There was another clock change during the night, so we had to get up early for breakfast.

I did not sleep well. The cabin door seemed to rattle a lot for much of the night. There were also noises above that sounded like all the cars on the car decks had come lose and were rolling about.

I got up and had breakfast. It was amazing how early people started queueing at the ship's entrance to get off, long before we were due to dock. I waited until the ship was nearly at the dock before going down below and getting my bags.

Yvonne was going to the main railway station and my hotel was not far from there so we shared a taxi to the station.

Much to my surprise, even though it wasn't yet eleven in the morning, the hotel had a room ready for me. I decided to catch up on my sleep. This being Finland, they have good black-out curtains on the windows.

I booked this hotel over six months ago, and I'd forgotten, if I even noticed, that it is a self-catering hotel. I have a kitchen in the room, and there is no breakfast provided. After unpacking, I decided to go out to get some stuff for breakfast. It had been pleasantly sunny when I set out, but when I got to the city centre it started to rain. And just as I was about to enter a supermarket, I bumped into four of the Cambridge crowd. They had had the foresight to wear waterproof coats.

It had stopped raining when I emerged from the supermarket. (I was asked if I wanted a loyalty card there, but somehow it didn't seem worth it.) I was about half way back to my hotel, far from any shelter, when it rained again, and it rained heavily. I was soaked by the time I got back.

In the evening, I decided to go out to eat. On my earlier excursion, I noticed a restaurant called the Ravintola. Then I noticed another of the same name and assumed it must be a chain. Finally I realised "ravintola" is Finnish for restaurant.

The restaurant I found was called the Zetor, which turns out to also be the name of a make of tractor, and there was a tractor in the middle of the place. The décor was that of an old barn, complete with chicken wire fences. The menu was done in the style of a newspaper and was in something like twenty languages. The food was very good.

Day three was the first day of any real problems in my journey.

I got to Hamburg station about 20 minutes early for my train but it was already on the platform ready for boarding. Turned out the train was crowded and there was an argument going on behind me over two groups who both seemed to have reservations for the same seats. When the ticket inspectors came round, it transpired that one group had a reservation from Hamburg to Oldenburg and the other from Puttgarden onwards. Puttgarden is the next station after Oldednburg and the last stop before crossing over to Denmark and you need a reservation to cross the border, which may have been why their reservation started there, but doesn't explain why they got on the train in Hamburg.

In Puttgarden, the train is put onto a ferry to cross over into Denmark and that is where the problems started. The ferry coming from Denmark had been delayed and we sat in the station for over an hour waiting for it. You have to get off the train whilst the ferry is underway, presumably to encourage you to use the shops and restaurants.

When we got back on the train and onto Danish soil, the train waited again, this time whilst passport checks were done. A guy near me, as soon as passport checks were announced, dashed to the toilet, which I thought was suspicious. Also, I thought, surely the Danish police are wise to that trick. Indeed they were. They opened the toilet and escorted him off the train into a building near the tracks.

The result of all this was that the train got into Copenhagen 90 minutes late. I was supposed to have an hour to wait for my connection to Stockholm, so I'd missed that. Passengers for Stockholm were advised to take the first available train to Malmo and get new tickets there.

There was a train to Malmo being held on the next platform over - still had to go up into the concourse and down to catch it, and it departed just as I reached the platform. The next one was 15 minutes later.

In Malmo, there were two separate ticket offices and I picked the wrong one first. At the second they gave me a reservation on the next train to Stockholm, but I'd just missed one and had nearly a two-hour wait for the next one. Also, they couldn't give me a through reservation, but two separate reservations in different carriages. For the first 90 minutes of the journey, I'd be travelling first class.

There's a food court in Malmo station and I found a sushi bar. I pulled a 100 krone note out of my wallet, one of three I'd found from a previous visit to Sweden. Turned out it was an old note, now withdrawn. I paid by card and then found an ATM after I'd eaten.

The journey up to Stockholm was four and half hours but uneventful. At one point there was a heavy storm, and I was suddenly reminded of the storm movement from the 3rd Symphony of the Swedish composer Kurt Atterberg.

Anyway, the train finally got into Stockholm about 20 minutes before midnight. Fortunately, my hotel was literally right next to the station and I was in my room before midnight.

Before going to bed, I looked out of the window to see what the view was like. Turns out this is a central atrium building, and the view is looking out over the hotel restaurant.

Set off this morning on the first stage of my trip to Worldcon.

I left home around 10:30 this morning. When I'm about to go on a long journey I usually have trouble sleeping the night before. This time I slept, but I had strange dream where I was travelling on a train wearing my pyjamas, only the train turned into an hotel room and I was locked out, still in my pyjamas, in the middle of the street.

When I was travelling across London on the tube, I saw a woman sitting with a guide dog. Only the dog wasn't moving and I realised it was a life-size toy dog wearing a guide dog harness. I did wonder if she had it so she could sit in the reserved seating, but I think it was sort of advert.

It was a fairly uneventful journey. The Eurostar left on time at 12:58 and got into Brussels at 16:08. As I was walking from the exit from the Eurostar platforms to the main concourse in Brussels, I saw a woman apparently collapsed by one of the shops in the arcade. I thought it might be a homeless person, but as I passed I realised it was just someone who had found a power socket and was using their phone.

I had a long wait for my connection to Cologne as it wasn't due out till 17:28, but I discovered that I'd booked a seat in first class. This meant a single seat to myself and complimentary coffee and a small bowl of diced melon.

I got into Cologne about 19:15 and quickly got to the hotel. I've stayed in this hotel many times before; it's right next to the station. I went out for a walk although it immediately started raining. I felt like a snack and ended up having some currywurst in a snack bar in the station. However, my attempt to order, "Eine Cola, bitte" was heard as "Eine Kolsch, bitte", so I got a beer and not a coke. I could live with that.