Tag Archives: Europe

New York

Trying to be clever, I tried staying in Brooklyn. All I managed was to disconnect myself for the few days I was in New York. Brooklyn, another city over the water. Each morning I tried a different way to make the junction to Manhattan between early morning and reality. Up before dawn in the odd haze of jetlag, until the point where everyone else’s day started, the quiet of the city waking up to the clamour of rush hour.

The first day was easy enough. I pointed myself in the direction of Manhattan and walked, over the Manhattan Bridge, and on into the city. Shudderingly noisy with subway trains passing next to me, the bridge is  a walk that goes on forever on a morning when I felt like I had forever. Then bagel and coffee stops once things have opened, and on up towards Union Square. An urban hike. Suddenly I was there.

The second day was September 11 which gave an obvious focal point to the morning. The great light memorials had pierced the sky as I was sitting on a sidewalk table the night before. A view to note, a great and brief few minutes of New York life. Not mine, but I don’t half love it sometimes. Dawn broke as I was crossing the East River. Ground Zero was solemn and busy, and leaving it to hike north up Greenwich Street I saw a driver stubbornly ignoring police instructions, determined to make the hook turn a policeman was insisting was not going to happen. I swapped comments with another observer of this scene, a man who had the easy-going bonhomie I love in Americans. I felt like I knew him quickly but I could never. 

That evening I was uptown, looking for the Metlife scene captured by Neal Adams on the cover of Batman 251. I found it, and the strange alternate reality of the Upper East Side. Same island, but that’s it.

The day of going home meant easing off on the walking just a touch and cycling over Brooklyn Bridge. My main excitement came with a visit to Broad Channel, the strange linear village just past Howard Beach – JFK on the A Train. I had wondered about it so often but been scared to ride beyond my stop to get to it. Then I did, and found an island, a place not really like New York, interesting and melancholy. The subway ride over the water was strange, like floating. Broad Channel melted away once I was in the international quarters of the Departure Lounge, watching the last of the sun before coming home. More corners of New York, more undefined things I want from it and cannot name or have, the moments within Marquee Moon, the Ramones, and all the things I never find.

Hamburg and Stockholm

As my train from Brussels idled into Cologne I thought my connection for Hannover had departed. No rush to go and see. To my mild surprise it was still there but behaving oddly. One door was open with people still filing on board. Every other one was closed. Knowing that 30 minutes after this was a direct train to Hamburg, my final destination, I let it go, after having helped someone else on board without following them. It was a 4am start kind of moment. 

On the later direct train the rest of Germany stretched north into a slow afternoon, industrial cities giving way to vast stretches of countryside, a procession of rivers crossed on high bridges. It came as a surprise then that on arriving in Hamburg I immediately began to panic, wondering what I was doing there, what I would do, and how I would escape that night, even though the night train was quite clearly booked for four hours time. It helped to sit and eat, and even have a beer, though the dream-like evening I had in Altona two years ago would not and could not be beaten. This time I waited in a fret at Hauptbahnhof, willing my train to arrive from Berlin, which it did. I boarded with a contingency of excited English clergy. We made our way with some delays (atonement breaks?) to Stockholm, which I didn’t care much about but took as an excuse to fret further. 

Stockholm on a cool and grey morning merged with an afternoon event, which became a late summer evening chance to swim in the harbour, quiet and solitary with an almost-unconcerned eye on my belongings by the waterside. The sun was hanging in the sky looking wonderful and half-hearted. I felt miles from the city, quite lost in its maze of islands and cycleways, but oddly never far from where I had started. Delayed coming home, it is the memory of the water that remains.

Zagreb to Zurich

Croatia Airlines OU491 from Heathrow to Zagreb being late and annoying seemed to lead to the journey being one of those. I couldn’t find the car picking me up because I was looking in the wrong place, then the car park barriers wouldn’t come up, so it was 2am by the time I got to sleep, and I woke not really knowing where I was, why the alarm was going off or what I had to do next. So one day kind of bled into the next morning, one of those tourism conference days where the best things happen outside the room, and the whole thing is eye-opening as to how world-wide what I do can feel, when it often feels more one-dimensional.

 I headed out into the still-light street and mooched around a bit, liking Zagreb, which gave the impression of looking nice, in a slightly shabby way that made it seem like a less fancy-pants Austro-Hungarian hangover than others. 

From there it was on to the station, with angst more reasonably in check than it is for a flight, especially when the train is already in position an hour or so before departure. The station was a nice enough place to hang around, with a busier feel than, say, Athens or Sofia’s termini, and right in the middle of things especially during rush hour. The train carriage hostel appeared to have closed for the season. While this was nice, the absence of anyone to direct anyone to the right place on the train was slightly disconcerting, but it all seemed to work out ok, and we left very promptly on time. I was surprised to see that within 20 minutes of leaving Zagreb we were in Slovenia, just over the border, having a wagon change, always a deeply silent experience but, in this case, an encouraging one..

Our train rolled on through the long night of little sleep. While I had a ‘private’ cabin (all that 120 Euros could buy, good deal for a long journey and accommodation) this wasn’t a sleeper cabin, but a six-seat compartment with a sliding door lacking a lock, no curtains or bedding. Sleeping wise, you could lie down on either side, and I used my bag as a pillow. Light streamed in from outside and the carriage was noisy. The private bit was open to interpretation, as on several occasions passengers looking for seats came in and tried to sit down. I was happy to insist the old couple went off to their reserved seat, when a teenage girl asked if she could come in for one stop between half midnight and 1am should go elsewhere I felt ungallant, and in hindsight should have been accommodating. DuoLingo German did not allow me to get far into this question before she headed elsewhere. 

Crossing Slovenia and Austria, adding and removing locos and car-carrying wagons with frequent long pauses wasn’t a recipe for a smooth night’s sleep, or very much sleep at all. I didn’t mind too much and enjoyed strolling deserted platforms in the dead of night. At Villach a kind of NIghtjet party, with Italy, Germany and Vienna-bound services congregating for a conga of shunting and loud chat between Austrian Railways staff. 

Along the way there was the odd glimpse of river, of the lake at Zell am See, occasional church towers and Alpine-style houses. No car headlights, a few passengers getting on and off. It was magic. I did doze off between around 4 and 7, waking with a jolt with an announcement at Feldkirch that was seemingly designed to stir all aboard for the 7-minute crossing of Liechtenstein. There was no loco change for crossing one of the world’s smallest countries. Does Liechtenstein even exist? The Alps sat for much of the early morning draped in cloud, with fangs of rock emerging from where the mist hadn’t sunk. Sort of Autumn, or just a continuation of the soggy summer that’s been everywhere. The Swiss frontier was both more of the same and a suggestion of the effortless efficiency that takes over when you’re on a train there.

Somewhere that does exist is Zurich, and I was glad to be back again in what is one of the best places to spend a couple of hours. The sun was out here. A few lungfuls of clean air, a stroll down to the Limmat, a  reviving swim of great and complete loveliness. There’s no time to spend much money on any more than coffee and sandwiches and my third borek in 24 hours. Borek was not getting any less enjoyable. I might switch to an all-Borek diet, a kind of Super-Borek Me experiment. 

From Zurich, the speed-demon TGV Lyria thundered to Paris in little over four hours. I took a bike to Gare du Nord, feeling guilty that such a wonderful city is becoming one long winding lane to change stations, but also loving the feeling of familiarity. I was home in 22 hours, only leaving the rails for that cycle section. 

Marseille, Nice, Genoa

Another early start from London, in the dark until the tunnel and then the familiar emptiness of the north of France. It was exciting and a little hair-raising to cycle between stations in Paris and land in good time for the onward Marseille service. I could have made a Nice direct earlier, but then I wouldn’t have walked a few paces in the windy Mediterranean loftiness around St Charles station, which managed to encapsulate the petit-grot I thought of when I thought of Marseille. It felt exotic and unusual enough to want to return, but not enough to make me regret passing through this briefly. As with seemingly every journey on French trains I was unable to use the ticket barriers and ended up walking through behind someone else. There’s never anyone to ask and no-one cares, plus I always have a valid ticket, but if I were an older passenger, or a more uncertain one I think I’d become a nervous wreck quickly.

Leaving Marseille for Nice our TER train was made up of nostalgia-inducing compartments, much like the Zagreb-Zurich train. Without reservations, mine filled quickly with people and luggage. An old French lady began chatting to me and I got a few words out, but an equally ancient Indian couple, who spoke no French, needed to displace her bag and I found myself mediating, and then chatting with the man of the couple. He turned out to be a former Army captain, author of a book on how to win in business using the lessons of the Indian Army, and was interested in every aspect of British politics and life. So thoughts of checking on my own homework when writing up this route for a recent book went out the window, and instead I explained Brexit, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Rishi Sunak and seemingly dozens of other topics. Possibly the longest conversation I’ve had for a few years. It reminded me of my own visit to India, and made me want to go back.

Nice’s Gare de Ville is a stately place with an ambience of grand touring Victorians, but that was about the size of the appeal of the city for me. A storm had blown in, knocking out much of the fun of rambling around. There was a distant sense of the ancient city in the pastel-walled lanes of the old town but I could hardly find it. My hotel was empty and charmless, places to eat were either rain-drenched tourist places or nice-looking but expensive neighbourhood haunts that didn’t jump to welcome a lone male entering nervously. Would I welcome me into such an establishment over my sophisticated and regularly-visiting neighbours? In the end I went in mild desperation but also a touch of contrary excitement for Hippopotamus, the French equivalent of an Aberdeen Steak House, pretty good and pretty good value. Really it felt like there was nothing to wait around here for.

By the next morning the storm had cleared, trains had resumed and the last of France ran away to the south-east. My journey to the Italian border was a commuter service through the broader metropolitan that stretches almost uninterrupted from Nice to Italy. Most of the train was heading for Monte Carlo, whose station was fancifully built into a mountain even though it didn’t look like it needed to be. The water around Monaco was full of yachts, and the tower blocks clinging to the hillside looked as ridiculous as the streets beneath them promised to be. West and east of there the towns were smaller, with breathtakingly-located houses mixed with more humdrum signs of everyday life. It must be unbearable here in the summer, full of prats farting around with their phones. A vast cruise ship dominated Villefranche sur Mer’s otherwise lovely aspect. The sun glinted off the sea passing the small beach at Roquebrune. 

On sections of this trip I played back a journey I made when interrailing, along this coast on a dream-like summer’s night, my companion rewinding and playing the same song over and over to burn the moment into their memory – I hope it stayed like it has for me. And sorry about other aspects of the trip, and other things too – I didn’t always get things right then, as now.

Travelling past Menton with no fanfare at all we arrived in Italy, to Ventimiglia, a definition of run-down looking lovely, with the backsides of buildings hanging over a high point of the town, with orange and red buildings and the tower of a church. The lower part of town, like much of what came further down the line, was low-rise, post-war and facing the sea. Italians are laid-back  but also uncompromising in lifestyle – so long stretches of beach are not of great fascination. But it’s also not everyday I get to ride a train like this through a part of Europe that’s new, so, very good and thankful for that. 

Coming into Genoa at journey’s end was the start of a working weekend, and it was a jolt out of the solitary headspace of travel to be in whatever work mode, looking for my hotel and looking at a press trip-type itinerary. Before that, walking into Genoa was a surprise. It felt much older than I’d expected, once inside the still-visible gateposts of the old city there was a souq-type atmosphere, a mix of Italian street scene and north African hustle-bustle, almost like Marrakesh’s lanes, or Lisbon’s Alfama district. There appeared to be a large number of heavily made up women dressed for an evening out at lunchtime, which being dim took me some time to realise that there was a large number of street walkers out and about. Genoa is and remains a port city first and foremost. It was quite confronting to walk along narrow lanes with this side of life being lived in front of me. My hotel, one of many converted medieval and renaissance palaces I’d visit over that weekend, was located off one of the main drags, facing out onto the city’s vast commercial port. As I checked in a vast cruise ship arrived into the city, its temporary inhabitants being bussed off I assumed to the Cinque Terre. It was like staying behind the curtain.

Two days in Genoa were spent in the company of tourism officials, who were very kind hosts and rightly proud of what was beautiful in their city (a lot). The street snack of focaccia covered in pesto was green, greasy and tasty. The highlight was a visit to the apartment home of one man whose bedroom was covered in frescoes and put in the shade many galleries I’ve visited. He invited everyone to lie down on his bed and take in the view. I bet that’s worked for him a few times in the past. Out of his lounge window was the stripey city cathedral, with late Roman statuary staring out at soggy passers-by. I got a window into the relaxed, civilised and old-world life of this city, a little out of the way of the rest of Italy, with this port-city window on the world kind of feeling. 

After all this I wanted to go home, I was scared for no good reason I wouldn’t be able to. I had three different routes planned to try and make it possible. I hated the one I’d chosen but it got me home the quickest so I did it. With minimal fuss, my Sunday morning flight took off and banked away from the Ligurian Sea. Now I am looking back and the views were fine.