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.

Fighting the crowds in Prague

Prague, Sunday

I must say that the Radisson SAS have really been very kind to help me get over my disappointment of yesterday. Alexandra even visits me at the hotel’s impressive buffet breakfast to ask how I am feeling. While I am sure they have had many guests in the past who have experienced similar problems, I am also certain I will not be the last.
Prague really must clean up its act or the golden goose will stop laying.
Every time I come here, I find the architecture jaw-droppingly amazing. The city has a lovely feel about it and the pavement culture is super. The tram and metro system is frequent and cheap, which is lucky, because a promised transport card from Czech Tourism hasn’t arrived and, being a weekend, can’t be sorted out until after I have left for Warsaw.
But August is not the time to come. The charm of Prague is completely ruined by the impossible scrum of tourists everywhere. Just like Dubrovnik, here is a tourist destination which needs moderation or it will completely spoil the reason people have come here.
I do make a trip up the old town bridge tower but, although it’s not late in the day, you can hardly move for crowds, so I decide to escape across the river to Mala Strana Park, to take the funicular railway to the top of Petrov Hill. There, the 60 metre-high look out tower, a sort of miniature version of the Eiffel, offers outstanding views across the city. But the locals and the tourists are already out in force and it´s quite clear that a long wait in the sunshine will be necessary. I consult my Time Out and revert to plan B, a visit to the National Technical Museum. Promising everything from steam trains to aircraft and even a coal mine, this looks very promising indeed. No tram or metro goes especially close and it´s a long walk up a steep hill to reach the museum. Which is closed. Zavreno. Geschlossen. Until 2010.
I repair to a local hostelry for a most pleasant and inexpensive chicken salad lunch, but, as I descend the hill, advise several other museum-bound tourists of the closure. I see some local supporters of Sparta Prague heading to the football stadium and I am very tempted to join them.
By the time I get back to Old Town the hordes have become more akin to a football crowd leaving a big match. It´s hot and it´s not at all enjoyable. I am wary of pickpockets and clasp my bag, from which I have put almost everything of value in the hotel safe, tightly to my body.
I escape to the backstreets, find some lovely arcades, lots of interesting-looking eateries and happen upon the Havelska market. When I was last here, it was a really nice place to go and buy produce. Now, like most of central Prague, it´s full of tourist tat.
I´m really disappointed with my experience. I like the place a lot. But on this occasion I´ve experienced the seedy side and the greedy side and that has, for sure, soured my view.
The saving grace, undoubtedly, has been the care shown by the staff at the Radisson who have been great. It´s refreshing to find personnel at a big hotel who really care about their clients.
I´m sure they will choose a different taxi firm to take me to the station in the morning.

You can see all the photos from my trip at: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/MDSouter/MikeSEuropeanRailTrip

Vienna to Prague

Vienna to Prague

Saturday

The Journey from Vienna to Prague is most enjoyable, despite the boarding chaos at Vienna Station. The world seems to have gathered on the platform. I seem to be the only passenger who has bothered to look in advance at the train layout, so I am waiting in exactly the right place. People rush on, realise they are in the wrong carriage, and try to turn round against the oncoming tide of humanity.

I wait until the worst of the nonsense is over and then calmly find my seat. By then, of course, the luggage storage is in a mess, so by careful repacking, there is plenty of space for my bag. In the middle of my organisation a German man remonstrates with me for not asking permission to touch his property!

I am impressed with the service on Czech Railways. A very nice and reasonably priced pot of coffee is served at my seat, announcements are in Czech, German and English and the restaurant car is very comfortable with a good choice of fare. I select ‘Grandma’s hearty vegetable soup’, followed by some pork medallions and roast potatoes, washed down with a glass of Pilsner Urquell. Good value at around sixteen pounds. We have crossed yet another international border and I have not been asked for my passport since leaving Spain on the overnight train. Why, then is there such a hassle at airports over the matter?

The train arrives in Prague forty minutes late, which may well be down to a major rail accident the previous day in which 10 people were killed. But, I am not even clock watching, it’s been a nice journey and I am totally relaxed.

At Holesovice Station, being used because Hlavni station is undergoing a major refurbishment, here are signs to the taxi rank, I check the guy has a meter and he hurtles to my hotel. He drives like a complete madman and I am somewhat flustered, to say the least, by the time I get to the hotel. Maybe that’s part of the con.

It’s the first time on the trip we’ve moved out of Euros. The meter says 600 Czech Crowns, he gives me a receipt and I get to reception. Then it dawns on me. I ask how much the 9 kilometre trip should have cost. I have paid twenty five pounds for a trip which should have cost about eight. My Time Out Guide says ‘Taxis have a well-deserved reputation for rip-offs. You are just about guaranteed to be overcharged’.

I am angry. More at myself than anything. I am a very experienced traveller.

The lovely Alexandra and Marketa at reception do their best to cheer me up, but it is several hours later and a lot of walking before I regain any sort of composure.

It’s not the money. It’s the fact I should have known and the absolute scandal that Prague Town Hall do very almost nothing to stamp it out. I think I am as wary a traveller as anyone, but when you see a price on a meter, you think it is right.

Anyway, that off my chest, I am determined I will go out tomorrow and see the better side of an architecturally awesome city which has, in the main part, really nice and friendly people.

Whistlestop Vienna

Thursday pm and Friday, Vienna

My lovely Innsbruck Guide, Elizabeth, told me that Austrian bureaucracy comes from the Germans and their enjoyment of life comes from the Italians.

The Fraulein on reception duty at Vienna’s 360 pound a night Ring Hotel has certainly studied the former characteristic and passed with first class honours. While I understand that hotels do not want people to leave without paying their bills, I am always astounded that they get away with their insistence to not only have your name, address and passport details, but want to charge your credit card up front too. The Ring wants a daily deposit of 100 Euros. I am especially annoyed because, in my case, I am here supposedly to give the establishment a good write up and feel the welcome is less than I would have expected. The PR lady apologises, then, to add insult to injury, makes some feeble excuse about a journalist who’d once emptied the mini bar and left without paying as being the reason the front desk were following ‘policy’.

Anyway, I am forbidden to use the mini bar, the telephone is barred and, if I want anything in the hotel, I will have to pay for it there and then.

As a small bottle of Heineken is, I later learn, almost a fiver, more fool anyone who uses the said mini bar or, for that matter, a hotel telephone. I use Skype on my laptop to call home for 17 Eurocents a minute, so, boo sucks to the front desk.

I must say the room is exceptionally well appointed, with all sorts of hi-tech things to confuse and entertain. I find it odd that the handset in the shower has not got a wall attachment on which to hang it and while I fiddle about with a myriad of gleaming knobs and buttons; I receive a soaking, fully clothed, by a large volume of water from a separate and very large overhead shower rose.

Fraulein’s revenge!

I decide that twelve quid for a club sandwich in my room is a bit steep, so I walk all of fifty metres to the local Spar supermarket and stock up with a pre-prepared egg salad, a freshly sliced fruit platter and a couple of beers; I have change out of a fiver. Advantage me. There’s even a knife, fork, plate and napkin provided in my room.

Game, set and match Souter.

I take a walk through the main drag and am hugely surprised by the graffiti, the number of vagrants, beggars and general riff raff. For the first time since I left home, I feel unsettled, ill at ease and clasp my bag even more closely to me. To contrast this impression, there are also vast numbers of veiled ladies completely covered in black, with only their eyes showing, darting in and out of the hugely expensive designer shops. It appears that Vienna is very much the playground of moneyed Middle Eastern Arabs. The Ring Hotel is owned by a Saudi Prince, so I am informed.

Down by the Danube canal, it’s a total contrast, with hordes of drop outs, drug dealers, alcoholics and other assorted society cast offs. Bizarrely, I feel much less at risk than in the centre of town, but I wouldn’t venture here in the dark.

I thoroughly enjoy the private dining facilities in my room and have a wonderful night’s sleep on a luxuriously appointed sheikh size bed.

My guide is art historian Alexa Brauner. But my brief to all the tourist offices on my itinerary has been clear. No museums, no art galleries. I want to see the unusual, the hidden spots, and the quirky.

Alexa sets off at breakneck speed, cramming what I was led to believe would be a full day itinerary into just two and a half hours. Well, it’s Friday and she has a two-hour drive to her family’s country home, west of the capital.

I am staggered by just how big Vienna is. There are over 1.6 million inhabitants and that’s projected to return to the previous two million by 2035. It appears that all the residents of the former Austro Hungarian Empire want to re-establish old connections with the place. Austria’s second largest city, Graz, is tiny by comparison, with around 280,000 people.

We take the underground to see the giant Ferris wheel in the vast Prater Park. This is the famous Riesenrad, dating from 1897, that has featured in films such as the Third Man and Living Daylights. There’s even a museum in Vienna dedicated to the Orson Welles’ classic, but, sadly for me, it’s only open on Saturdays. Alexa tells me there is also a museum dedicated to funerals and undertakers. Apparently, the Viennese are very keen on having a decent send off, so start saving early. Her own funeral plan was started by her mother.

The very efficient subway has five lines, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6. Line 5 was planned but never built.

Alexa takes me on a tour of lesser known Vienna at a canter, her eye constantly on the clock. The Naschmarkt is well worth a visit, with some really unusual stalls, including one that specialises in a huge range of vinegars. At night, the market’s restaurants are especially busy.

Nearby, a whole range of incredibly quirky shops and restaurants. My favourite is Gabarage, where former drug addicts, as part of a rehabilitation project to normal employment, make a wide range of useful objects from discarded materials. I am thrilled when Alexa propels me, by now almost at a gallop, towards her favourite coffee shop, the Café Sperl. I am gasping for a cuppa and am pleased to have the chance to experience somewhere rather less touristy than the over expensive tourist haunt of the Café Central. But, no, there are more shops to see, hills to climb, statistics to trot out. I wish I’d planned to stay the average 3 nights of the city’s 10 million overnight visitors. After this madcap circuit, I now need at least 2 nights to recover.

In the museum quarter, we stop at last for a much needed coffee. Alexa heads off for her long weekend and I limp a few more yards for lunch, seeing more city centre graffiti than I have seen in a long time.

The Glacis Beisl offers a very decent two-course lunch for just over six pounds, and I am lucky to get an outside table at this very popular local haunt, just at the edge of the museum quarter.

I spend the afternoon pottering the back streets, soaking up the atmosphere. While I know that every big city has its odd-ball characters, I am convinced that Vienna has more than most. There are substantial numbers of seriously weird looking people around, with dreadlocked hair, tattoos and strange body piercings. That’s even before I get to the Kalrlsplatz subway station where, Alexa has told me, most of the drug dealers hang out.

The hotel has a superb steam room and spa area, so I repair there to recharge my batteries before committing these thoughts to paper.

On completion, I look at the room service menu, fall off my wallet, and so return to Spar.

I am beginning to feel rather like an American tourist. Tomorrow will be Saturday and so it’s Prague.