Sunday Afternoon Back Home in Malaga; Taxi Scams Two and Three

They say once bitten, twice shy. After my experience of rogue taxis in Prague, I spotted the taxi scam at the Saint James & Albany Hotel a mile off. I asked reception to organise me a taxi to the station. Moments later, Romain, the young concierge, told me that it had arrived. I was about to get into the car when I noticed it did not have a ‘Taxi Parisien’ light on top, nor a meter. I asked the driver how much the fare would be. He said €40. Having checked with the taxi which brought me to the hotel, I knew this to be a complete rip off. I asked the concierge why he had not got me a normal taxi and he told me that none was available and that the price being quoted was ‘the normal price’. The driver, realising that he was losing the job, suddenly offered to do it for €20. At that point, I went in search of the duty manager, to discover that Romain had already realised the game was up and alerted him.

I am sure that by the time I make my formal complaint to the Saint James & Albany Hotel General Manager, Romain Allard, the night manager and young Romain the concierge will have concocted some story to protect their shameful scam.

But it is disgraceful that a reputable hotel allows this sort of thing to go on and I will be making the point strongly to both to their senior staff and to Great Hotels of the World who market this hotel.

Interestingly, it was the same night duty manager who, supposedly, was going to report the problems with noise on the previous night to the general manager. I will also be making sure he did. Just for the record, the normal taxi that took me to the station charged me €11 and told me that, far from there being no taxis available, there were nine showing as free in the immediate vicinity of the hotel. He said that companies like Capital Shuttle would give €10-15 in commission to the hotel staff for each job. Such scams are nice little earners indeed.

Dinner on Elipsos was very good and I shared a table with an elderly Argentinean Couple and a GP from Birmingham whose Spanish made mine look positively fluent!

Taxi scam number three came en route from Chamartin to Atocha stations in Madrid. The driver, Licence 02698, Registration 2046 DXD kindly offered me a non metered journey for €30. I insisted on the meter and the fare was €14. The relevant Madrid authorities will be told.

I was early at Atocha station, so managed to get an earlier train and RENFE kindly upgraded me free of charge to Club Class as First was full.

As the lovely AVE High Speed train reached 300KPH after leaving Cordoba, I turned on my iPod and selected classical shuffle mode. How weird that it should come up with Memories of the Alhambra.

Clearly, it’s journey’s end.

From Lille to Paris

Saturday lunchtime, Paris

Laurent and Maryse treat me to a farewell meal in Lille, par excellence. Their friends Denis and Sylvie run the excellent ‘Le Champlain’ restaurant. We have the ‘Menu Gourmandise’ which is truly wonderful. I have rather neglected France in recent years, but am reminded of the excellence of the cuisine. It’s not just the décor, the presentation of the food and the ambience. It’s the careful selection of the wine to accompany each course, an unbelievable ‘chariot de fromages’ and a hostess who pays attention to the tiniest detail. The evening is spent speaking French which, I am sure, has improved in only 24 hours, but for a time I even manage to speak some Spanish with the restaurateurs’ daughter, who has recently returned from Mexico. Why Denis has not been awarded a Michelin star is a complete mystery to me, the quality of his cooking and the flair of the presentation of the dishes is truly sensational. I am sure that, at le Champlain, I have experienced one of the top five meals of my life.

After breakfast, I bid farewell to Manou and Andreas on the Lille Flottante. The dinosaur has doubled in size overnight, so it’s perhaps just as well; I am not sure if the barge will have room for me tomorrow!

Lille Tourism has really excelled. Their final port of call for me before I leave for Paris is a visit to ‘Les 3 Brasseurs’. This is another Lille success story. In brief, daddy sold his brewery, which includes the well-known Pelforth brand and he, with his two sons, now run a chain of 33 highly successful micro-breweries cum restaurants. Each pub produces its own beer which of course cuts down hugely on delivery costs! The regional boss, Laurent, is from Rouen; he is impressed I know so much about the place but I confess that I was for many years an enthusiastic member of the Norwich Rouen twinning association.

I’ve largely been left to my own devices during this trip, but the businesses I have visited in Lille seem keen that their PR people should be involved in everything. I am flattered by their hospitality but, as someone who specialised in the craft for many years, I sometimes get frustrated when you ask the interviewee a direct question, full eye contact and all, and the PR person pipes up with the answer!

This is not the case with Myriam from Les 3 Brasseurs. Laurent, she and I, together with Stephanie from the tourist office, have a silly lunch making up slogans for the company´s marketing. As Myriam is drinking what I describe as a ´Ribena beer for kids´, cherry flavoured, Laurent suggests ´My Cherry d’amour’, which I think is brilliant. I have come up with ‘Toulouse Ma Cherie’, which perhaps does lose something in the translation. Myriam, who came up with ‘Happy Beers’ Day’ last year, is not quite as enthusiastic about our excellent suggestions as are we chaps. But Laurent and I have, strictly for research, been sampling the products.

Lille is very popular with Brits, especially since Eurostar got faster; London is now only 80 minutes away. One on four of Lille’s tourists are from the UK and, even with the economic downturn, the city has seen a growth of visitors this year.

As we leave the restaurant, it starts to rain. It’s the first I have experienced since I left Malaga three weeks ago.

The TGV from Lille to Paris takes just one hour. At peak times, there is a train every 30 minutes. I am sad I can’t spend longer on it. It is a relatively new one and a lot better than some of the French high speed trains I have experienced.

At Gare du Nord, the rain means a huge queue for taxis and, together with my arrival time, the cancellation of a proposed tour of Paris by electric bike. Olivier from Paris Charms and Secrets rings me to discuss rescheduling but has not contacted me again, so I guess that’s a no-show, which is very disappointing.

My Paris hotel is the Saint-James and Albany, part of Great Hotels of the World. It´s got a great location, within a few steps of the Tuileries Gardens. August is holiday time in Paris, some bosses are away, and I think the left hand and the right hand are somewhat disconnected. Maybe my view is jaundiced by being kept awake in my supposed ‘quiet room’ until half past midnight by an over-amplified jazz band in the lounge bar three floors below.

Breakfast is taken in a very attractive, but acoustically very noisy, crypt; my omelette takes an eternity and then arrives without any mushrooms, which they don’t have. A kitchen in a quality hotel without mushrooms? They will be running out of white bread for toast next!

The high-spot of my trip to Paris is a wonderful tour of the city in a Citroen 2CV. Now of course I love the deux cheveux; my very own 22-year old Didier is currently in storage in Norfolk and much missed. My driver Vincent is new to the beast. He studies applied maths, which is quite clearly no help at all when I am trying to convert my miles travelled by rail into kilometres. Just weeks into his summer job, he was caught in the 2CV jumping a red light and had to pay a fine of €135 as well as losing 4 points. I think it´s terribly funny but Vincent is working over the summer to earn money, not to pay fines, and it still hurts.

The trip in Geraldine, with roof down in glorious late-summer weather is brilliant and Paris Authentic´s trips give me a perspective of the city I have never had in all my years of coming here.

My heavy case is packed for the last time. Tonight, I rejoin the Elipsos tren-hotel for the overnight journey back to Madrid. Having learnt from my first journey, I have prepared a little overnight bag for the compact cabin and will put my enormous case into the luggage van. It will be nice to be pampered in Gran Clase shower-equipped cabin and enjoy an excellent a la carte dinner as the train speeds south towards home.

In a little over three weeks I have travelled 5683 miles and visited 14 cities in 9 countries. Every train has left on time and the only delays were due to a serious train crash in the Czech Republic. I have not shown my passport since the last Elipsos overnight train from Barcelona to Milan and have not had any hassle from security checks (and none at all) since I checked in for my first AVE at Malaga.

The biggest challenge has been the booking of actual seats and I do think some of the supplements for making a reservation have been outrageous (For the half hour trip from Brussels to Lille I was charged an extra €20).

It´s been a wonderful experience, required a lot of planning, but it´s been worth every moment.

European Rail travel has truly come into the 21^st century.

Lovely Lille

Thursday afternoon, Lille

I have discovered a tiny chink in the Hotel Amigo´s otherwise impeccable armour. Sir Rocco Forte needs to know that they have run out of white bread for toast. I’ll have to make do with brown, crusty, six-cereal or a whole menu of other breads and pastries. But there is definitely no white toast left for breakfast today. Just as well the big boss chef is away researching new recipe ideas and ingredients in Sicily. Otherwise, someone would be baking white bread as a punishment!

I am surprised to discover that the TGV from Brussels to Lille is going all the way to Perpignan. I am on board for a little more than half an hour, although the Dutch teenager beside me, Rick, is travelling all the way to the south of France on his own for a holiday with a friend and his family. At sixteen years old, with ambitions to get into Oxford or Cambridge, I can only marvel at his excellent English. French too, if it comes to that.

I have little time in Lille to draw breath. The Tourism Office has sent both Christophe and Stephanie to meet me, there being several exits at Lille Europe station. They have a grand plan in which I am to cook lunch, then eat it. I make various jokes about dustbins and having to find a restaurant afterwards, but Reginald Ioos at the newly-opened L'atelier des Chefs is a very forgiving chef and talks me through everything. It´s a great idea. They provide the teacher, ingredients, utensils, facilities and someone to do the washing up and you cook yourself a meal. At only seventeen Euros, it´s a bargain and great fun. Reginald, who worked at the Sheraton at Heathrow Airport, tells me that the concept has also been taken to London and Paris.

Six of us use the finest Sabatier knives to chop courgettes, tomatoes, onions and various other vegetables into little centimetre-sized cubes to prepare a Provencal dish. Then there is some salmon, lightly fried in olive oil then cooked in the oven. Reginald, a local chef, even says that Malden Sea Salt is the best in the world. An even bigger surprise than a French chef recommending something British is that my self-prepared food is edible!

Without time to digest lunch, I have to report to ´Station Oxygene´ near the Lille Citadelle to meet my guide, Yves, and to take a tour of the city by Segway. No, I didn’t know what one is either. I can only describe it as a two wheeled vehicle with a little platform on which you stand while holding onto a long handlebar. They are electrically powered, gyroscopically stabilised and you can learn to drive one in ten minutes or so. It´s a great way to see Lille and Yves, an architectural historian, has a wealth of information. Unfortunately, halfway round the trip, one of the four thousand pound vehicles develops a battery fault and we have to return to base.

I award a gold star to the holidaying Bruno Cappelle of Lille Tourism for his choice of accommodation. He has risen magnificently to the challenge of finding me somewhere different to stay and I have been booked into or onto, I am not sure, the ‘Lille Flottante’, a B and B barge. Owner Manou has lovingly converted the 38 metre long Belgian former cereal barge into a luxurious home, with three letting bedrooms. In my cabin, I have high-speed internet, a top of the range shower that punishes you from all sorts of angles, complete with multi-channel radio, my own fridge and not just satellite TV, but a choice of dishes pointing in different directions. I am worried that I won’t have enough space for all my luggage, but the room is more spacious than my bedroom at home. It even has a bed that does all sorts of electrically-controlled manoeuvres but I am too scared by Manou´s warnings of what to do and what not to do to try it. Lille Flottante is truly wonderful although, even as a Naval Reservist, I feel there’s a little bit of an overkill of the nautical nick-knacks. It´s very highly recommended as somewhere special to stay in Lille and, with tough wave-proof and windproof windows, totally tranquil. I learn later that she and her 10-year old son, Andreas, have come back specially from a camping holiday in Austria, to host my visit, which is a reflection of the level of care and hospitality that is offered. There’s a project underway in the kitchen to grow a dinosaur to six times its´ original size, but I am assured there is no reason for concern.

I have an extremely pleasant surprise, when Roland Chretien and his wife, Marie, who rented one of my apartments in Spain, kindly and unexpectedly, invite me to their lovely home for a meal. They are already treating me to an evening meal at their favourite restaurant Roland and I have to sample a couple of Belgian beers en route and I have to visit a florist to search for a suitable bouquet of flowers for my hostess. Roland is especially generous with his wine, cooked lovely foie gras, followed by lamb and I am delighted to say that my French improved dramatically by the glass. At least I think it did.

The Tourism Office has clearly checked up on me in advance of my visit and their concern about my need for my first decent meal in weeks has clearly been paramount in their planning of the trip. I report to Meert Patisserie, one of the best-known in these parts. France, to my mind, does cakes and pastries better than almost anywhere and this one is rated highly by the locals.

Olivier, my host, is busy serving customers and meeting suppliers and doesn’t have a lot of time to speak to me, but I manage to see their tea-room expansion which opens next month and sample one of their 50 types of tea and one of their renowned vanilla-filled waffles. They are actually a bit sickly to my taste, but it is said that local lad General de Gaulle was such a fan, he had regular supplies secretly shipped to England during the war.

Francis Holder had to take over running the Lille family bakery, Paul, at the age of 18, after his father’s untimely death. The company now has 430 shops worldwide. Delphine Lacroix, the publicist from Paris, seems rather surprised that I have never heard of them; I tell her it´s clearly the fault of the PR people!

Sebastien Cuvelier, the regional director, gives me a great tour of a bakery and explains the company’s original philosophy. In simple terms, white is boring and unhealthy. The staff have to learn their BRAMS, which, translated, means to say hello, use eye-contact, say good bye, thank you and smile. All good customer care stuff. The tour is mostly in French but, after last night’s wine, I have more confidence in my own ability and am doing remarkably well. I think.

After an excellent lunch at one of the Paul restaurants, which include the opportunity to try some lemon and raspberry tarts to die for, I am equipped with a 30 Euro 2-day Lille Pass, so I can see around town and use the public transport. But I need to write my diary and sort out photos, so seek out the sanctuary of my lovely floating accommodation and a nice cup of English breakfast tea.

The dinosaur is coming along nicely and not causing any problem, so Manou leaves me in charge of the barge while she goes off with Andreas to play ping pong. I tell her I am taking the boat to Paris, which, she says, will take me two weeks.

But she gets her own back. She shows me the alarm for the bilges. ‘If it goes off, you are sinking. Enjoy.’

Well I am.

Brilliant Brussels!

Tuesday 10pm Brussels

It´s been a brilliant day – and I have no hesitation in naming Brussels as my favourite city of the trip so far.

Of course staying at a hotel which is reckoned to be one of Europe’s top 10 may have something to do with it! I have no reason to dispute the accolade, the Hotel Amigo really is very special indeed and they do everything you ask almost before you have requested it.

For the record, the rack rate of my Executive Double Room is €800 per night; I am told that, primarily being a business hotel, you’ll get it a lot cheaper at weekends.

Extras at a hotel of this level are of course pricey, the excellent buffet breakfast, for example is €30. It´s also the first hotel on my travels that actually charges guests for internet access - €20 a day – whereas the trend now seems to be to offer broadband access as part of the room rate.

I’m disappointed to discover that Tony and Cherie Blair may have been in my bed, among a literal Who’s Who of celebrities who have passed through. He, reportedly, changed his choice of hotel when Jacques Chirac decided to stay here!

I haven’t realised quite how perfectly placed the hotel is until I venture out of the door for the first time this morning. The view from my terrace is the back of the town hall which itself forms part of the splendid Grand Place.

Much of the success of today must also go down to the wonderful way in which my guide for the day, Benoit Hellings of Brussels Tourism, rose to the challenge of supplying a programme which is different. Although from the south of the country, Benoit has adopted Brussels completely and indeed seems to know most of the locals.

Our first port of call is truly extraordinary. We take a Metro, using the Brussels Card which gives 24 hours of unlimited travel and museum entry, to the Plaster Casting workshop of the Royal Museum of Art and History. This is now one of only three such places in the world which produces classical statues from really old moulds. It´s bizarre to see the constituent body parts scattered about; while we are there, finishing touches are being put to a giant statue of Hercules destined for a University in Houston, Texas. I am blown away by the workshop, a very special treat indeed and something I can commend wholeheartedly to you as something unusual to do.

Benoit thinks that a Brussels Bike will be a good way of getting about. It´s a great system, mirrored on the successful scheme in Paris where you can pay for a bike and pop it back to a rack when you are finished with it. We cover a lot of the city that way, seeing more things in a few hours than it would be possible to see on foot in a couple of days.

What is especially nice is that we see the REAL Brussels, lots of nice cobbled streets, secret corners, markets, just a lovely tour. The Mannekin Pis is not officially on our tour, but we pass by the crowds of tourists snapping each other in front of the diminutive little statue. I am told that an official from the town hall is responsible for the variety of costumes that appear to amuse and entertain.

Benoit chooses an atmospheric little restaurant, L’Achepot, in Place Saint Catherine, to take lunch; judging by the number and variety of eateries, Belgians enjoy their food. The meal is innovative and excellent.

Today, Belgium is playing in the football semi finals in the Olympics. A giant screen has been erected in Grand Place and Benoit somehow persuades his boss to allow me into his office to take a picture of the event. It must be the best office view in Brussels.

Although, the factory is closed for a holiday, Benoit has persuaded one of Belgium’s top chocolatiers, Laurent Gerbaud, to open up to show me round. Laurent is a truly innovative guy, clearly more interested in the art of his craft than the commercial aspect of the business. I am concerned that the last British journalist Benoit took to meet Laurent, ended up in a relationship with him. I make him promise that I will not suffer the same fate. Thankfully, it´s not a problem. Laurent and the lady from the Guardian are very much the happy couple. Laurent demonstrates the different types of chocolate; his is much more expensive to buy wholesale. He loves playing around with flavours; ginger and apricot are my favourites, although I could have opted for black pepper! His products are available in the UK, including over 100 Waitrose stores.

Benoit has to go off on other business and leaves me to my Brussels Card. I have a lovely time pottering about and just soaking up the atmosphere. Importantly, I have to visit a laundrette we have spied on our cycle tour and adjourn to a local hostelry for a small beer our two while my smalls are being washed, rinsed and tumbled.

So what does a travel writer do in his luxurious suite in one of Europe’s top hotels of an evening? Why, his ironing, of course, a board and iron having been obligingly supplied by housekeeping.

Thank you Brussels, I am left wanting more. There is no greater accolade I can pay than that.

A Marathon from Denmark to Brussels

Tuesday 6am, Brussels

The breakfast chef at the Saxildhus Hotel hasn’t shown up, so, there is still no hot breakfast an hour and a half after breakfast service should have started and many of the other items in the buffet are still being brought out of storage. On checkout, the receptionist can’t find any note that the tourist board is paying my bill and is rather intent on ensuring that I miss my train.

The first 3 and a quarter leg to Hamburg is on the nice DB German Railways, ICE, and then I transfer to a dreary old normal DB train for the 4-hour haul to Cologne. I am booked into a compartment which turns out to be crammed full, so I learn from my earlier experiences and set up camp in the open compartment immediately adjacent to the Bistro car.

I’m looking forward to the 2-hour journey from Cologne to Brussels, because it´s to be on Thalys, the Belgian equivalent of Eurostar. While the train is fast and the first class seating is comfortable, the carriage is dirty and, like Eurostar, is long overdue for refurbishment.

The advertised snack turns out to be a choice of hot or cold drinks, no spirits, and a packet of Tuc biscuits or a chocolate bar. Dinner is, I am told, served between Brussels and Paris. Which is after the vast majority of the passengers, including myself, have got off. The only bit of interest on the journey is a lively altercation between the guard and an American backpacking couple who’d got on at Liege and who ´didn’t know that they had to pay extra to travel on Thalys´ and who were resisting paying the supplement or the reservation fee. An awful lot of rustling of le Figaro during that little lot, I can tell you.

I’m expecting Brussels, the capital of Europe, to have a glitzy station to rival that of Berlin. I’m in for a disappointment, if not a shock. The three stations in Brussels are shockingly out of date and the Midi Suid Station where I alight is clearly not in a part of town I would wish to linger at night.

I’ve visited the Hotel Amigo seven years ago when it became part of the Rocco Forte Collection and I’ve been looking forward to returning. It´s so close to the Grand Place that it´s almost in it. The sort of place where, by the time you have paid the taxi driver, your bags have already disappeared off to your room.

I’m met by the hotel’s Assistant General Manager, Delphine de Kinder, who gives me a guided tour of my accommodation, together with a map and compass. Well not quite, but the place is certainly bigger than my little Spanish apartment. Rather better furnished too. It´s so high-tech that I have to summons the maintenance man to show me how to operate the TV remote control.

He gently points out that I’ve been trying to operate the television using the one for the DVD player. It´s the first time in over a fortnight that I have managed to catch a glimpse of the BBC´s Olympics coverage.

I’m delighted to discover that the bed is a true King-Sized, unlike many I have experienced on this trip, which are simply two singles pushed together with two single duvets. This has lovely crisp sheets, plumped up feather pillows and a full sized quilt.

I’m delighted that Thalys hasn’t fed me, because Delphine very kindly invites me to dinner in the hotel’s Ristorante Bicconi.

I’m so busy taking photographs of the crudités and pesto dip and the excellent Terre di Ginestra Sicilian wine that the starter course of succulent grilled scallops arrives, so I have to persuade the waiting staff to leave it for me to try. After a really tasty and well-presented steak main course, Delphine and I decide to order the Pistachio Soufflé, only available if two want it. Well, it´s a great choice and simply divine, darling.

The meal, wine, service and company is excellent and I have no trouble in collapsing into my luxurious bed for the sleep of the righteous.

Delightful Denmark

Sunday Evening, Kolding, Denmark

I must confess that I have been dilatory in completing my diary. Copenhagen was such a rush on Friday and then I set off to Kolding on Saturday. Yesterday, two weeks of travelling finally caught up with me and I took a long afternoon siesta, followed by an early night.

But, batteries recharged, I have had a really good day and have just uploaded my photographs of the past 48 hours.

I hadn’t realised that regular readers of the blog don’t see the attached photographs when the email arrives. To remedy that, just log on to http://mikesouter.blogspot.com/ and you will see the whole thing. To see all of the photographs from the trip, go to http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/MDSouter/MikeSEuropeanRailTrip

I am just a little bit concerned when I reach Copenhagen on Friday when the taxi driver advises me to be careful with my wallet. It turns out that the Tourist Board has booked me into a hotel right in the middle of the red-light district! But the Mayfair Hotel has actually been very nicely refurbished and although the bathroom is not big enough in which to swing a cat, it has the advantage of being able to wash your hands and clean your teeth while sitting on the loo. A nice touch is that they offer guests afternoon tea, which is when I first get a proper eyeful of ´Copenhagen’s ´Legendary Gentlemen’s’ Club’ right across the street.

I haven’t got much time, so set off at a brisk trot to Tivoli Gardens, the Town Hall Square and various other touristic landmarks. The city is busy and has a very continental feel to it. I like the atmosphere very much but have to keep my wits about me to avoid being crushed by criss-crossing bicycles. Amsterdam is the only other European city in which I have experienced bicycle traffic jams. The Tourist Board has kindly given me a Copenhagen Card, so I can whizz around to my heart’s content on the very integrated public transport system. A bus ride takes me to Christianshavn, which my Rough Guide suggests the hippie colony of Christiana is a ‘must-see’ before the authorities finally give it the chop. Even skirting round the edges makes me feel uncomfortable. But the area with its waterways and tourist boats again reminds me of Amsterdam.

In the supermarket to buy a gift for the Danish family who have kindly invited me to dinner, I see folk who make the oddballs in Vienna look pretty normal. Outside, high-school students are gathering in colourful groupings to celebrate the start of the new term. So I pop into Copenhagen’s new Metro both to seek sanctuary and also to try it out. There are only two lines and no drivers; there are plans for a complete new circle line in the future.

At the very modern Fields shopping centre, I again discover just how expensive Denmark has become. In one shop, a teenage male assistant is struggling to gift-wrap a parcel while the queue builds at the till. He is relieved of his wrapping responsibilities by an even younger female member of staff who completes the task with a flourish and a Danish jibe or two at the young lad.

I am met at the Bella Centre Metro stop by Crisanta, my hostess for the evening and her daughter Tiffany. It´s lovely to be welcomed into a Danish home and we have a splendid evening with her husband, two sons and two dogs.

Having been up since 5am, I decide that sleep is a rather better option than the Midnight Tivoli fireworks and Crisanta very kindly drives me back to the hotel where I collapse into the very comfortable bed - without any thoughts whatsoever of a venture across the road!

I have toyed with the idea of nipping across to Sweden to add another train journey to my collection, but decide that it´s a bridge too far and opt for my original plan of the 0918 to Kolding in Jutland.

The train is really busy and I am amused when an elderly lady incurs the wrath of her fellow passengers by using her mobile phone in the quiet carriage. If only that rule was respected in the UK.

In Kolding, I am about to clamber into a taxi when the driver tells me that my destination is actually in the station square. I have stayed at the Saxildhus Hotel many moons ago, but arrived by car and so probably didn’t realise its’ proximity to the station.

Quite clearly the hotel has seen better days. The brochure blurb says ‘furnished in accordance with today’s standards’ but that is complete tosh. It’s clearly not had much money spent on it for years and the place is falling apart. If I was Sir John Harvey-Jones or some other business guru, I’d probably say it can’t survive without a serious cash injection. However, they kindly offer to do my laundry for me, without charge, which is something none of the five star hotels has offered.

I remember Kolding as a pretty and quiet little town, with a great castle. But it´s gone completely to pot. The town is in a disgraceful state. There’s graffiti and litter everywhere, weeds growing out the pavements and an air of teenage rebellion abounds. There’s clearly been a seriously riotous Friday night party and there is broken glass, discarded beer cans and pizza wrappings everywhere. Yet there’s no sign whatsoever of anyone cleaning the place up. The area around the Castle is especially bad and I am appalled. The locals just seem to be getting on with their Saturday lunchtime shopping as if they don’t notice a thing.

Deciding that Kolding has been a bad choice of destination, I set off bright and early on Sunday morning for Esbjerg. Well, my rail pass won’t last forever!

Last night was the climax of Esbjerg’s Festival Week and there is rubbish everywhere. But there’s an army of cleaners sorting it out; although picking all the bits up by long-handled pincers instead of using a machine seems to be a very inefficient way of doing it. The statue of King Christian IX has been completely wrapped in cling-film, either to protect him from damage or maybe it´s some Danish Royal fetish? After the Mosley case, I doubt the News of the World will want to know my revelations.

The impressive 1897 water tower is not open at the advertised 10am, so I repair to the nearby pleasant natural auditorium overlooking the port and have a morale-boosting chat with my friend Carol in Norwich and pass on greetings ´to everyone who knows me´.

Finally, the water tower is open; the young lad at the door is clearly suffering from the excesses of the party last night and looks dreadful. When I finish taking photographs and enjoying the view from the top of the tower, he is nowhere to be seen.

Esbjerg has a lovely feel to it and, with signs to the Harwich Ferry outside the station, East Anglia feels very close. But there’s another train to catch.

I visited Vejle as a Royal Navy cadet in 1971. I’m delighted to find that the train has originated from Hamburg and is the same extremely smart German Railways ICE train I used on Friday. I feel a bit of a fraud getting my free coffee and snack, having just had an apple and carrot (absolutely true) from Danish Railways on the connecting train from Esbjerg.

Vejle is lovely and could teach Kolding a thing or two about smartness. There’s no graffiti and hardly a piece of litter anywhere. I visit the port area, literally on the edge of the town, where HMS Scarborough ´parked´ all those years ago. There’s a lovely walk beside the river back into town, with, on my right, wild flowers, apple trees and reed banks to enjoy. Plus the town sewage works on my left.

I love the splendid Danish design work on the Bryggen shopping centre; unlike Kolding, Vejle seems cared for, with no sign of rebellious youth. Well, it´s maybe a bit early on a Sunday for them to be up and about?

The ICE takes me back to the Kolding and, being a decent chap, I decide to venture back into the town centre to give the local mayor another chance. But he’s blown it. The rubbish is as bad, if not worse, than it was yesterday. But I do visit the excellent Koldinghus castle and marvel at the superb collection of Danish antique silver. In the splendid ‘Ruin Hall’, there’s a special Lego weekend. With the factory just up the road, I am sure they are given as many bricks as they can ever use.

I’ve made the most of my short time in Denmark. It’s a country I really do like a lot. I love the flags on poles fluttering outside the houses and the welcoming candles in the windows.

But I do wonder where all Kolding’s money has gone to let it become such a state?

Tomorrow, the longest daytime journey of my trip. I’ll be travelling for nearly eleven hours to reach Brussels, with changes in Hamburg and Cologne.

Clearly, another early night is required.

Berlin to Copenhagen

Friday Lunchtime Lolland Island, Denmark

I am well in time to catch my train from Berlin to Hamburg. The taxi driver seems to be having a race against his early morning colleagues while simultaneously bidding for his next job via a computerised gadget on his dashboard.
Berlin Central Station continues to impress me, this time with a luggage trolley that has a zigzag device on its’ frame which allows it to be taken on an escalator. The designers at the new Hauptbahnhof have really thought about the pain of travelling with luggage and it´s the easiest door to train transfer I have ever done. My main bag is showing some wear and tear, mainly from the excesses of dragging it over cobblestones in Prague to evade rogue taxi drivers and I am slightly concerned that it will disintegrate before I return home. I wish the same fate on the rogue taxi!
On that score, I have been told that my ‘News of the World’ type photographs of the bad man and his car have been passed to Prague Town Hall and I look forward to hearing some news.
I find it odd that be-suited German business men are arriving to board the first-class train to Hamburg juggling McDonald’s takeaway coffee and Egg McMuffins, along with their FT Deutschland and their laptops. Clearly they have no class, especially as there is a restaurant car on the train.
The ICE, Inter City Express, of German Railways is a very classy bit of rolling stock, by far the best-equipped train I have been on since leaving Spain. It´s beautifully fitted out with leather seats, glass and wood panelling and shiny chrome fittings, very stylish indeed.
The change of trains in Hamburg is easily achieved using a luggage trolley and a couple of lifts although the platform is packed with blue-shirted and rather muddy Swedish scouts heading home after a water jamboree.
The guard on the train to Copenhagen, another stylish ICE, is more involved with customer care than the collection of tickets. He distributes newspapers, vouchers for coffees and a snack in the bistro, refreshing towelettes plus little packets of ‘Knusperkugeln’. These turn out to be rather like Maltesers. He tells me that the ICE has a maximum speed of 230 Km per hour, around 150 MPH, good by British standards.
I am as excited as a schoolboy today because, for the first time in my life, I am to go on to a ferry on a train. It is of course an entirely routine affair, but, in the UK, the channel tunnel deprives us of the experience.
It’s a somewhat surreal sitting in your luxurious train while it boards the ferry, with juggernauts moving either side of you.
We are not allowed ‘for safety reasons’ to stay in the train during the 45 minute journey, so I enjoy a peaceful and excellent luncheon in the Scandlines’ a la carte restaurant, a most useful travel tip taught to me by a Norwich solicitor friend. Not one Swedish scout to be seen!
With no passport control or customs to endure, we have crossed the Baltic Sea to Denmark where I’ll have a very quick tour of Copenhagen this afternoon before heading westwards to Kolding in the morning.
I also have a dinner appointment with a lovely Danish family who rented my apartment in Spain earlier in the year and who are keen to entertain me.
I wonder if the children would like some Knusperkugeln?

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Beautiful Berlin

Thursday Evening, Berlin

Berlin’s new central station, the Hauptbahnhof is just amazing. Gliding in there from Warsaw’s dilapidated old Soviet-era monstrosity is such a contrast I stand in awe at the sheer scale of this temple for trains. Different lines, main, underground and commuter criss-cross through this extraordinary glass edifice and I stand in wonder for fully a quarter of an hour before venturing forth to find a taxi to my hotel.

Great Hotels of the World have kindly booked me into Hecker's Hotel, just a few steps away from the famous Ku-Dam shopping street. It´s small and friendly and the reception staff are probably the most welcoming I have had so far on this trip.

The local tourist board has planned a very full programme, so there’s only time for a quick shower and change before I am whisked away by Henrik, the boss of Urban Insider tours and his friend, Sasha. Henrik, a 33 year old Swede, spent several years in the UK and Spain before deciding that Berlin is the place for him. Now, he specialises in showing off some of the special places of the city he clearly adores. Sasha’s a local boy, who for 14 years grew up in that strangely divided city before the collapse of the wall.

The duo wax lyrically about the enormous changes since unification – this is, they say, the most liberal and ´happening´ city in Europe. I like their style. We have an excellent Gazpacho in one of the Gorilla chain of natural fast-food restaurants before crossing town to the up and coming Mitte District to have our main course in a somewhat bizarre courtyard run by an organisation called the Zagreus Project. This is an eating-place for those in the know, but you have to be a member and ´rent a chair´ to keep everything legal and above board. The guys are very disappointed when their choice for pudding, Cookies, with its entrance tucked away near the dustbins underneath the Westin Berlin, is closed, so we repair for cheese and dessert to the ultra-trendy Solar, 17 storeys up above the city and accessed via an external lift.

It´s an amazing introduction to Berlin and I take my hat off to Henrik for his unique and refreshingly lively tours.

The breakfast buffet at Hecker’s is, by far, the best I have had since I set off from home. I am, it has to be said, not a fan of buffets, especially ones where hot food sits for hours and is not regularly refreshed. But this is all top grub, with an excellent range of very tasty breads, fresh juices and fruit plus a chef on duty to cook to order. It’s so nice to have coffee that is freshly made rather than several hours before.

My first port of call turns out to be a huge disappointment. Clearly there has been a breakdown in communication at the Berlin underground tour office. I take a 45 minute subway journey right across town to visit the WW2 underground shelter, to be told by a frosty-faced fraulein at reception that the tour is full! This despite the confirmation email between the tourist office and her boss. When she, very reluctantly, agrees to let me join the tour, one of he colleagues, a really officious school-prefect type, tells me very sternly that I cannot take any pictures. Really useful for a press trip! So my supposed 90-minute tour consists solely of an in-depth study of the ladies latrines before Miss Jobsworth decides to exert her enormous authority and demands to see my press credentials. At that point I give up.

So there’s an unexpected opportunity to use some of Berlin’s excellent public transport network for a couple of hours and I take full advantage. After some obligatory tourist-type visits to take some photos for this feature, I find myself in the Hackescher Markt, where I find myself in the authentic and very good Vivolo Spanish restaurant. It´s a lovely area to read my ´Berlin in My Pocket Guide book and enjoy a tapas or two.

My afternoon programme is sensational. The Trabant car was once almost the only car available to East Germans, but there are now very few around. Entrepreneur Rico Heinzig has snapped up 60 of the 26 horsepower cars and runs ‘Safari Tours’ around the cityand in Dresden. My guide, Simone, surprises me when I am told I have to actually do the driving! Luckily a Trabant gear box is not dissimilar to that of my Citroen 2CV, so I don’t disgrace myself. Simone and I have great fun while she chatters away on a walkie-talkie link to a Canadian family travelling a few metres in front of us, in a stretched-lino version of the car. It´s a complete hoot and chatty, smiley, Simone totally restores my faith in the German female species. Afterwards, we are shown under the bonnet, where a gravity-fed fuel tank comes complete with a dip stick to check levels.

Simone also directs me to the nearby Bob Box Off store, which serves excellent copy and has some really tasteful quality souvenirs. Two metres in front of the shop, a row of cobles mark the line of the Berlin Wall and a few hundred metres away, there’s the last remaining section. We are near Checkpoint Charlie which, for some reason is a huge tourist attraction. Don’t bother. It´s crowded, the area is full of tourist tat, and there’s actually very little to see.

I want to go up the Norman Foster designed dome at the Reichstag, the German Parliament building, but the queue stretches forever, so I skirt round the back of the Brandenburg Gate and have a lovely walk beside the river to pick up my subway home at the wonderful Central Station.

Berlin has certainly got my vote for the most impressive city f my trip so far. I haven’t been here since just after the fall of the wall, but the change is just incredible – and clearly continuing.

Yet, surprisingly, Berlin is a very affordable capital city. Eating out is very reasonably priced, apartment rents are very low compared to many other cities, and there is a real feeling of confidence.

Henrik and Sasha are right. Berlin really is a happening place.

Tomorrow I set off (at 0718 am!) for Hamburg and Copenhagen, before turning south for home.

On the Poland Germany Border

Wednesday 4pm

Approaching the Polish-German border

I go to bed early and sleep wonderfully in the most comfortable bed I have had so far. In the morning, I am relieved to discover that my washing is nearly dry and I’ve discovered that the trouser press in the Radisson has got a built in ironing board with an iron attached, so I set to. I sometimes wish that people who design ships´ cabins and hotel bedrooms could be let loose on our homes. They just seem to be SO clever at fitting things into little spaces.

Over an excellent breakfast with an extremely tasty freshly cooked omelette, I meet with another Agnieszka, this time the hotel’s PR lady. She tells me that some Warsaw taxi drivers have a similar reputation to the ones in Prague. Once bitten, twice shy, I make sure that the receptionist books me a reputable firm. The girl tells me the price should be ‘a maximum of 25 Zlotys’ (around six pounds) but the man agrees to charge me 15. The meter actually shows 10, but what the hell.

I go in search for a plan of the train, so I can position myself near to the carriage listed on my ticket, but I can’t find one. Although most of the announcements on the platform are in Polish, the international nature of the train means that a tape-recorded voice informs us in which sector of the platform each carriage will be and there’s a massive scramble as half of Warsaw realises that they are in the wrong place. Luckily, through a combination of luck and experience, I have guessed right.

Agnieszka has told me that ‘the train is lovely’ but six of us are squeezed into a compartment and I go in search of rather plusher accommodation. The restaurant carriage is split into two with only 3 passengers in the 10 non-catering seats. At Poznan, a lot of folk get off and I am left with half a carriage all to myself, apart from an occasional staff luncheon.

Poland has not been cheap, but the Polish Railways Restaurant is not overly-priced and, as a result, very busy. I am surprised how many people the waiter allows just to have a coffee, thus blocking up tables for genuine meal takers.

I am half way round my circuit and reflect that I haven’t been on a really high speed train since arriving in Barcelona. In fact the only one I have seen was an Italian-built Pendolino, like Virgin use, and that was in the Czech Republic.

So far, the Eurail/Inter Rail pass has worked extremely well although it´s nigh on impossible to make a reservation on a train via the internet, although everybody assures me it is theoretically possible. What happens in practice is that the English bit of the foreign railways´ web sites runs out at that point and you go round in circles. So, to avoid endless queues at stations during your travels, my strong advice is to plan well ahead and book both your tickets and your seat reservation through an agency who can handle everything.

The Polish countryside has been lovely, very agricultural with freshly-harvested fields and lots of forests and rivers. I am reminded often of the landscape in the film, ‘The Great Escape’.

Today’s diary is being filed early, courtesy of Mr. Vodafone’s 3G data card for my laptop, because the Berlin Tourist Board has put together what looks like a fascinating and very full programme which starts soon after my arrival with a ‘private walking and gastronomic tour’. If you can’t wait, check it out at www.berlinagenten.com and www.gastro-rallye.com, which, I must confess I haven’t yet actually done myself.

Wonderful Warsaw

Tuesday, Warsaw

I’ve had a dreadful night´s rest! If it wasn’t the crashing of bottles into the skip in the courtyard or the bin men at crack of dawn, it was the noisy waste disposal device on the loo whirring into action.

I have had less than four hours sleep, but, wide awake at 5am, at least there’s plenty of time to read some of the plethora of leaflets Warsaw Tourism has provided and pick a few personal favourites to add to the grand tour.

There’s a clear sign at breakfast that the ´Horrible Harenda´, which is the name I have dubbed my accommodation, has not yet woken up to the post-Communist era. The scrambled eggs are finished and the girls on duty cannot be convinced to provide any more. So I tuck into tomatoes and toast, Spanish-style and jolly nice it is too.

My guide, Agnieszka, has brought her 18-year old daughter, Ana, with her. Ana, who, like her mother, speaks excellent English, turns out to be Poland’s third best hammer thrower at junior level. I later feel her upper arm muscles and realise what it takes to send the Scottish-invented device nearly 51 metres.

Our first port of call is to the right bank of the river Vistula, to the Praga District. This is where Roman Polanski filmed ´The Pianist´, which I vow to look at again when I get home. I am shown a 100 year-old Russian vodka factory, which closed only last year. Apparently, a Russian soldier was given half a litre of liquor per day.

Of course Poland has had more than its fair share of conflict and the Jews suffered terribly during Nazi occupation. It brings you up short to be told that six million Poles lost their lives in World War Two, half of whom were Jews. At the former Gestapo Paviak Prison, you can see part of the ghetto wall and a memorial to the 30,000 who died while incarcerated in that dreadful place.

Ana is off tomorrow to Tel Aviv on a student exchange scheme; there’s still a strong feeling in Israel that Poland was as much to blame for the holocaust as the Nazis, so there’s a lot of bridge-building still to be done.

Almost the last thing the Nazis did as the Russians moved in was to obliterate everything of any value or history in Warsaw.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed by the endless list of horror statistics, I ask Agnieszka to lighten up a bit. Having just scratched the surface of man’s inhumanity to man, I just can’t imagine what emotion I would feel if I was ever to visit Auschwitz.

Stalin gave Warsaw the ´Palace of Culture´ in 1955 as ‘a gift from the Russian people’. There was quite a debate as to whether it should remain after Communist rule ended, but it´s certainly an impressive reminder of that era of history.

I want to go to a market and have mentioned one I found in my guide book. My two hosts look at each other and Ana tells me a truly horrific story about the place which I shan´t repeat here but persuaded me that it was certainly not to be included on any itinerary. The market is in an old stadium, built by the Russians in 1954 but hardly ever used and now about to be flattened in preparation for the European Football Championships in 2012.

I hadn’t realised that Chopin grew up near Warsaw, being the son of a French father and Polish mother and there is much celebration of him in and around town.

Agnieszka tells me a little bit about Polish politics. Apparently, in a play of words on part of their surname, the Kaczynski brothers who were President and Prime Minister until one lost his position in last year’s election were known as Big and Little Duck. The new Prime Minister is called Donald…..

Today, there’s concern here that the leaders of Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Ukraine and Estonia have all flown in the same aircraft to Tbilisi to show their solidarity with Georgia against Russia.

Agnieszka has of course saved the best till last. The restoration of Warsaw Old Town from rubble is nothing short of miraculous. Most of it was completed in the early 1950´s, but it took another twenty years before the Communists would sanction the building of the Royal Castle. What works for me is that it looks completely authentic, where it could have been rather more Disneyesque than even Donald Duck.

We eat an excellent dumpling lunch in lovely surroundings near the Barbican, the name for the double walls which surround the old city. I am intrigued by the name, because I did much of my formative drinking at the Barbican in Plymouth. An investigation of word origins is clearly called for.

Ana disappears off to buy her Israeli host a present and her mother and I take a trip to the Polish Versailles in the enormous Lazienski Park. My lack of sleep and the fact that the rush hour has started combine for me to call an excellent day to a close.

There’s good news too from Warsaw Tourism. They have relocated me to the SAS Radisson and my bags are already there. Joanna has queued personally at the station to get my seat reservation for Berlin tomorrow, so she wins a fistful of gold stars for excellent service.

The Executive room in the Radisson has even got a kettle, the first one I have so far encountered this trip. (I am in fact equipped with a travel kettle and universal sink plug, both of which I regard as indispensible travelling companions).

One challenge on this trip was always going to be the washing of clothes and I am delighted to find a washing line in the shower. Although I hate hand washing, it´s the only practical solution on this trip, some hotels charging ten pounds a shirt for their laundry. As I hang my last shirt up, the line breaks and everything lands in the puddle on the floor below.

Ah happy days. It´s clearly time for a swim in the pool downstairs.

Prague to Warsaw

Tuesday 1am, Warsaw

Mad scramble this morning to catch the train. I was told that the Warsaw train would leave from Holesovice Station where I had arrived, but it turned out that it was leaving from Central Station. I got there with 3 minutes to spare and then couldn’t find the platform. Nightmare! As it happened, the train left 10 minutes late anyway, so I would have had time to arrive in less of a fluster.

One bonus was that at Holesovice, I saw the bastard who’d conned me over the taxi fare on arrival, so I discreetly took photographs of both him and his car, which I will pass to Prague Town Hall and the newspapers there. Might not achieve anything, but it sure makes me feel better! (He´s the one in the blue t shirt).

The train journey was scheduled to be 9 hours, but it was an hour and a half late, so it was a long old haul. Mind you, by the time you have had coffee, lunch and an afternoon tea, the journey does pass quite painlessly.

My reserved seat was in a corridor carriage which wasn’t all that busy. But four female American teachers talked incessantly. Four hours without drawing breath. God it was a pain. But, on reaching the Polish border, a new compartment carriage was shunted onto the front by the new locomotive and I relocated there, like Lord Muck, in glorious isolation.

The route took us past the site, near the Polish border, where there’d been an awful train crash a few days ago. A motorway bridge collapsed on to the line and the express train smashed into it. What a mess. But the delay, at that stage, was only half an hour or so.

The Polish countryside struck me as fertile and flat, with a lot of trees and dense woodland. From the train, you could see lots of folk on bikes pottering about the countryside. Interesting to see a fair few freight trains as well. There are lots of buildings in poor states of repair; clearly there’s still a lot of work to do on the Polish economy.

Joanna from Warsaw Tourism had very kindly arranged to meet me at the station, but Warsaw Central is a maze of escalators and we didn’t manage to meet up. The Harenda is pretty naff, by far the worst hotel I have stayed in a long time. No lift, which is no fun with three weeks worth of luggage to cart up several flights of stairs. The room is poky, has no air conditioning and it´s about 26 degrees Celsius. There is one of those loos with a device that chops up the unmentionables that suddenly starts churning and making you jump. Out the back there’s a bar and a skip for bottles. You get the idea. Probably why it´s 1am and I am still up writing this.

I did pop out round the corner for something to eat. Warsaw has got a lovely feel to it and the little restaurant was very nice. I am very much looking forward to seeing the place in the morning.