Twenty-nine trains

Monday 17th February was the day we had to check out of the flat we'd rented in York and return to London. The agency told us that other customers of theirs hadn't been so lucky with their accommodation, closer to the river, and had had to be evacuated during their stay! The Ouse had risen further during the night but the sandbags were holding. Citizens of York are used to this.

We didn't visit any more museums unless you count Clifford's Tower that Emma, Peter and the boys explored while Chris and I had a drink at the Castle Museum's café once again. After removing our luggage from the flat, Chris nearly falling down the steep stairs with it, we met Sally and Rob at the library on Museum Street before crossing the street for a relaxed farewell lunch at Bailey's Café (stowing our luggage under the stack of highchairs at the back) where Jenny joined us too.

The central library in York (Wikipedia image)

Watching the departures board at York station

York station, the London train arriving.

The ride to London on train No. 27 went smoothly, with countless views of flooded fields through the windows. For a brief moment we spotted Emma's old primary school at Welwyn Garden City as it flashed past, or as we flashed past. You get to think about relativity on train journeys, especially when half awake at stations when a train on the opposite platform pulls out and you think it's your train that's moving instead. Einstein who lived in Bern must noticed that effect through tram windows. He confessed that in 1905 the Zytglogge, the clocktower in old Bern, had been key to his insight. We alighted at Kings Cross, deciding to continue straight on to Teddington, changing at Vauxhall, on trains 28 and 29, the last two of this trip, for a family supper at the Pizza Express. No such opportunity to cross town from the Ottawa airport by train, because that line won't be in operation for another couple of years, although there are plans for it, so I couldn't bring my total number of train rides to 30.

On the London train

Before flying home from LHR to YOW we had another day to spend in London, our job on Tuesday being to take care of the boys, on holiday from school, while their parents were at work. Chris ambitiously chose to take Alex back into central London for half a day, again by train, of course, where they walked across the Thames and the city from Waterloo to the British Library (close to Kings Cross, indeed) so that they could look at the original Magna Carta manuscript, and take in some British history while about it. A few years ago, Alex had been to Runnymede with his parents and me, so had also seen the spot where it was signed. Anyway, he and Chris were amused to see that the scribe of those days had made a mistake and had been required to insert some missing words at the bottom of the manuscript, not having access to word processors in those days. They also learned about the Papal Bull that refuted the Magna Carta declarations and imagined how the arguments were carried to and forth.

Meanwhile Thomas and I stayed at home and attempted to tidy up, a bit. An impossible task really, after the family's recent kitchen renovation, but Tom did help me for a while as well as playing, Tom still waving his Viking shield around after that stimulating weekend, before we made a sortie on foot to Teddington and from there on the bus to Kingston, so that I could buy him a new winter coat in the sales. His old coat, a hand-me-down from his brother, was extremely grubby after all the playground warfare and visits to parks, and was starting to fall to pieces. This proved to be a very short expedition because we found a suitable coat immediately, on Floor 3 of the always reliable John Lewis department store next to the bus stops. There was no more shopping done because I was allowing my grandson to make all the decisions that day and he wanted to take the next bus home as soon as he had acquired his new, seven pocket, fur hooded coat. All day long, Tom chattered away to me, mostly about the plot of the Avengers, about which he knows a great deal, even details about the actors in that movie series. Tom is an entertaining narrator; his narrative hops around, but he adds realistic sound effects and aggressive body gestures to his description of the battle scenes. "Oh, by the way," he adds at the end of this, "there's kissing in it too. Yuck!" Tom then imitates vomiting. "Eeuch! All the boys in my class close their eyes at those bits, but the girls think it's sweet." More vomiting noises. Thomas doesn't (yet) like girls.

On Wednesday morning we were up betimes to check out of the Travelodge before 7 a.m. and catch the bus to Heathrow, where we had a notably easy check-in because the airport turned out to be half empty. This was probably due to this winter's Corona Virus pandemic scare. The plane for our AC889 flight that day was half empty too, so the conditions on board felt more comfortable than usual. There was a delay while some cargo was removed from the hold; the pilots' weight and balance calculations required this action. Too light at the front, otherwise. If you ask me they could have moved some of us Economy passengers into the almost entirely empty Business Class seats at the front of the plane that we could see from where we were sitting, but that would obviously be against company policy, these days. Never mind; the flight was punctual and we had a passing view of Greenland's snowy mountains and coastline. What always puts me into a state of awe is the foam from the Atlantic waves, visible from 30,000 + feet, and the frozen stretches of sea around Labrador.

Perhaps because the descent affected my ears or perhaps just because it is generally less noisy in Ottawa that in London, I liked the quietness when we returned home. And the clear, clean air.

The Rideau River, mid-February, near our house

Weekend in York with family and friends

February 14th-16th

Our grandson Thomas in York, with Clifford's Tower in the background

Living room at the rented flat

On Thursday (13th Feb), I was lucky enough to get a key to the rental apartment we were using at the weekend, where there was room enough to accommodate six of us. It's called a "flat"; in my opinion it ought to be called a "vertical" because the accommodation is on four levels with long staircases joining them. The grandsons came up to join us from London with their parents the following day after work / school, and we met them off the train that evening at York station, waiting under the old signal that stands on the concourse there.

On Saturday we saw a good few more signals at the Railway Museum on the other side of the tracks. To my amazement entry to this museum was free of charge, because the exhibits there "belong to the Nation" as the man at the door explained. It was an obvious place to be on that rainy day (at the start of Storm Denis, the devastating successor to Storm Ciara), so we shared the museum's "sheds" with hundreds of other visitors, many of whom were three generation families as well, mostly from the North of England, as we could hear from their accents.

Chris and the other granddads were wallowing in the nostalgia of it all, remembering their train-spotting days as youngsters when the Flying Scotsman or the Mallard rushed by or pulled into a local station on the London to Edinburgh line. The streamlined, blue Mallard was the first locomotive to travel at more than 100 mph, and its record speed was 126 mph (203 kph). Sir Nigel Gresley, the designer of these engines, was a positively heroic engineer in those days. Chris lived within walking distance of the main line, so frequently saw the Edinburgh or London express go by.

With Jenny, Edith and Bertie, at our table,
photo by Fiona

In the evening (Saturday 15th) we had a party, meeting our long-time friends Sally and Rob, Jenny, Fiona and Bryony with her whole family --- Al and the three children, Arthur, Bertie and Edith. Together with our own three generations, that made 15 of us in all. Sally had booked a table for us at Carluccio's, my suggestion, right in the centre (opposite Betty's) and the management had the bright idea of seating us upstairs, thus keeping our excited group of children away from the other diners at the restaurant, with one patient waiter assigned to serving us. Obviously, the children wanted to move around during the waiting times! Arthur and Thomas, in the same school year, are exactly the same height, so it wasn't long before they were interacting with great glee, vying to outdo one another with their repertoire of jokes, riddles and brain-teasers. The middle generation, now in their 20s/30s/40s, exchanged stories of their working lives, and we oldies indulgently observed these exchanges, helping to keep the children occupied. An evening to remember, a very happy one, that we all hope to repeat before in one way or another.

Viking scene : a potter's shop in the Jorvik village

The queue for the Jorvik (Viking) museum near our flat had been too long on Saturday, so we'd resolved to try again first thing on Sunday morning, which we did with no waiting to get in, this time. Its famous back-in-time "train" ride in the museum reminded Chris and me of the one we'd ridden on at the wonderful Vikingaliv Museum in Stockholm last spring, but with more emphasis on how Vikings used to live in their permanent settlements (such as this 10th century one excavated on Coppergate in the 1970s) than on their explorations overseas. The scenes with their wax figures are so lifelike, with their eyes moving realistically and with barking model dogs, that some visitors never notice that one of the figures is a real human being, an actress playing the part of a girl on a boat. The ride is famous for its simulated old time smells as well. Conditions were clearly unhygienic and difficult in those days (a rat gnawing at the meat cut up by the village butcher, for instance), but Vikings had good survival skills and a well structured and regulated society, it seems. It was morbidly fascinating to see the skeletons that archaeologists had unearthed on this site, now exhibited in the museum. I have mixed feelings about whether real skeletons ought to be on display rather than buried in decent graves, but took a good look even so. At the end of the exhibition a young woman dressed in Viking garb was demonstrating the way their silver coins were minted, selling a few to the visitors, and a series of videos featured their musical instruments, bone flutes and such, and how they used to be played. Eight-year old Thomas didn't respond too well to this museum, being frightened by the not-quite-alive waxworks, I imagine, but cheered up when his mother bought him a (wooden) Viking shield which he wielded for the remainder of the holiday, carrying it carefully home with him on the train.

Sunday in York gave us two more big experiences, the full 4.5 km walk on the city walls taking in the town gates and the views of York's massive Minster, and across the bridges of the seriously flooded Ouse, and our third museum visit in that city, to the Castle Museum, where we also had lunch in the crowded cafeteria.

Rising floods in the city

Walking on the city walls in York

Mid 20th century British kitchen. This looked familiar!

We saw more or less everything there was to see at the Castle Museum, including two special exhibitions, one entitled 1914: When the World Changed Forever and one imported from Zagreb, about Broken Relationships, both of which upset us with their implications. Very well put together, though. The permanent exhibition took me back not only to my visits there with my sister when we were children on day trips from Scarborough, but also to the environments of my youth, seeing the museum's cleverly and painstakingly reconstructed everyman's living room, kitchen, children's bedroom, etc. of the 1950s and 60s with all those old artifacts retrieved from attics or junk shops. This made Chris and me feel as if we ought to be on display in some museum ourselves. Alexander pensively appreciated the things he learned there, and Thomas, on the reconstructed Victorian street "Kirkgate", solved a detective puzzle (called Catnapped) with the notebook provided and his mum's help:

A Victorian feline thief is on the loose at York Castle Museum this February half term and the Police need your help to put the hoodlum behind bars.

View of Clifford Tower from the Castle Museum,
with York's historic Courthouse on the left

In another part of the building we saw the primitive and claustrophobic prison cells in the basement beside the courthouse, where, for example, Conscientious Objectors were confined as a punishment for their attitude during the First World War. My mother's Uncle George was one such.

Sally and Rob joined us for the second hour of our visit to the Castle Museum and did the second half of the walls walk with us.

My goodness, I felt tired at the end of that day! We had done a great many steps without being aware of it, plenty of standing too; my legs ached. I got "hangry" before supper, and interrupted Chris' lengthy explanation and demonstration of his future presentation slides to Emma and Peter (who were asking numerous questions), and had to insist we immediately repair to a nearby fish n chips café for an old-fashioned, high cholesterol meal served with slices of white, buttered bread and a pot of tea. That too was something that brought back the past.

A full day

Flooded fields near York, seen from the morning train

Trains 25 and 26 brought me to Darlington and back on the Trans-Pennine line, to see my cousin Wendy and a relation I hadn't met before, Meg, our 2nd cousin, who drove all the way down from the snow covered Northumberland hills to Wendy's house for the occasion. Meg is the same age as my sister and her children are scientists, like mine, so we felt comfortable together. Wendy regaled us with tale after tale of family history including long-hidden family scandals. She can trace the Mitochondrial DNA line back to the early part of the 18th century, so we learned about our distant mother's mother's mother's mother and such people. Families were large in those days and some ancestors had more than one family. For us, the most interesting ancestral family is the one that Meg's grandfather and my / Wendy's grandmother belonged to (as fond older brother and youngest sister) which even in their day already spread to three continents, their extraordinary early 20th century lives being lived in northern England, southern Ireland, Zimbabwe (then known as Rhodesia), Australia and New Zealand. Our grandparents' sister Marie was married to James (Jim) Wilkinson, famous for having restored the library at Cork after the fire that destroyed it during the unrest of 1920. There's a picture of him on this page.

After my visit I carried away the manuscripts of original compositions for organ and piano etc. by my Uncle Frank (Francis Bishop) and a heavily framed certificate from the Chinese authorities of the 1940s in honour of my mother's cousin Douglas Hardy who had died during his service in the Friends' Ambulance Unit in wartime China. It is covered in vertically written Chinese calligraphy, which I must ask a native speaker to translate for me. I was handed some meaningful old letters and photos as well.

A Northern backstreet behind Darlington station

Sally met me off the return train; she'd parked at the station and drove me straight to her house from there, where I chatted to Rob as well and was served a most welcome supper. Sally particularly wanted me to share an experience she's been enjoying for the past three years or so. Not having performed music before, never realising that she could even sing at all, she bravely joined a local Community Choir and is now thoroughly involved, going to weekly rehearsals and singing in concerts: standing 2nd from left in the outdoor picture linked above. When she invited me along this week, I knew this would be a chance to satisfy my curiosity (I have another British friend who takes part in a choir of this sort) and to find out how it works. In spite of the relaxed atmosphere at the choir practice and the fact that many of the participants never learned how to sightread from sheet music, I was flabbergasted by the high standard of the singing and the discipline of this choir! It's directed by a musician called Jon Hughes, a post-doc of York University who is a gifted composer, conductor and teacher. He teaches Yoga as well and refers to himself a Sound Artist.

The warm-up exercises lost me when the others started on a rhythmic count, with claps for 3 and finger clicks for 6 on a rapidly rising scale: one-two-one-two-clap-one-two-clap-four-one-two-clap-four-five-one-two-clap-four-five-click, etc. Then we launched into a 4-part song with words handed out but no notes to read: The Grey Funnel Line. (The Grey Funnel stands for the Navy.) To remind each part-group of the line of music they were meant to sing, the conductor used hand gestures to indicate "up" or "down" (interval not specified) or "stay on the same note", while mouthing the words at us or singing along with the various parts. To my amazement, it worked. The choir had sung this before, mind. The next item was Mr. Hughes own, 3-part composition entitled Shell Prayer. This was a mysterious enough title, but the words were even more mysterious, being in odd, incomprehensible Latin. After much puzzlement on my part, someone explained to me that the lyrics simply consisted of a list of the botanical names of seashells found around the British coast, all strung together and sung at different pitches. He had written this as part of a musical project for singers and dancers in Cornwall, Shoreline, in 2016. We were instructed to work on the final four bar section of this piece, going "ru-di-ta-pes de-cu-ssa-tus" which is the Latin name for "carpet clam shell". It wouldn't have sounded as good in the vernacular. Some of the singers complained about the melody lines clashing, but this was deliberate, of course. "You can't have consonance without dissonance!" insisted Mr. Hughes.

After this peculiarity we proceeded to a more folksy-popular, sentimental number by Peggy Seeger: Love Call Me Home, and then it was time for the tea break. After tea and biscuits came the African songs: Shosholoza (which comes in the film Invictus) from S. Africa and a Zulu wedding song that's meant to "comfort a new bride" --- one of my fellow sopranos commented that this was probably the African equivalent of "Close your eyes and think of England!" The speculation got rather out of hand and had to be curtailed. I wrote down the words that I wouldn't have managed to memorise:

Hamba Lulu. hamba Lulu. hamba Lulu. hamba Lulu!

O Thula Thula animamele

I zinto zonke

O hamba Lulu, o hamba Lulu!

It was all off the beat in 5/4 rhythm, a call and response song. We sopranos had to come in on beat 5.

After that, the last two songs seemed relatively easy: a sea shanty that went Lowlands, my lowlands away ..., and the Essex song Bushes and Briars, that the British composer Vaughan Williams apparently heard sung by a folksinger called Charles Pottipher in 1903, inspiring him to make a study of English folk music.

Another flooded river

Tuesday 11th

Holy Trinity Church, Micklegate, York

Seascape by Henry Moore (1831-1895)

The River Ouse that flows through York is often flooded in winter; this week's floods are worse than usual, but so far not as extreme as the floods they had here in 2015. After walking through Micklegate Bar, the 14th century stone gateway to the city that stands near our hotel, and passing an old church with masses of snowdrops blooming in the grass around it. I crossed the Ouse Bridge and saw the high water again. My breakfast was at Betty's, the deservedly famous tearoom, although his morning I ordered a coffee and croissant with jam and butter + pain au chocolat, which came elegantly served on a tiered cake stand. I shan't be breakfasting here every morning I'm in York; that would be too extravagant, but today's a day for treating myself while Chris is busy at Day 1 of the annual SCSC conference which I dare say he is enjoying.

Continued later:

Alfred Wolmark

Today I visited the Art Gallery (for an exhibition of paintings of the sea), remembering having seen pieces from their permanent collection before, such as the "HANDS ON" busts (i.e. visitors may touch them) of Paul Robeson by Epstein and of Alfred Wolmark by Gaudier-Brzeska, "a daring and unusual sculpture", as its label says. The subject of the latter was killed in the 1st World War. I like John Piper's painting of the cliffs at Lulworth, too, which stands out from the other paintings on that wall. The gallery includes a recent painting (2017) by the Iraqi painter Mohammed Sami, entitled British American Scarecrow, symbolically political. Some ceramics by Picasso were on display, besides.

Landscape by John Piper

The Iraqi painting

After an exhausted lie-down at the hotel, I went out again to sit in the choir stalls of the Minster for the Evensong service, in which the boys of the choir in their smocked cassocks chanted the Psalms of the day, with very clear articulation and some relish:

O God, thou hast cast us off, thou hast scattered us, thou hast been displeased; [...] Thou hast made the earth to tremble; thou hast broken it: heal the breaches thereof; for it shaketh. [...] Moab is my washpot; over Edom will I cast out my shoe ...

Waiting for Evensong to start,
at York Minster

 The responses were sung in Plainsong style and the Magnificat and Nunc Dimitis came from Quinney's "Short Service". When it came to the Anthem for the day, the boys sang Mozart's aria Agnus Dei from the Coronation Mass, in unison, very musically. It does them so much good to learn and imbibe music of this calibre at a young age; they'll never forget it. The massive organ in York Minster is under reconstruction; the organist used a substitute one, not as resonant.

Then, blasted by the bitter winter wind and rain, I found Chris and some of his colleagues by gate-crashing their Drinks Tasting reception and exhibition; then we escaped for a Thai supper, Sally and Rob joining us once more. Monday evening we'd been at Los Vaqueiros, a Brazillian red meat restaurant with imaginative salads.

Storm Ciara and more trains

At Kings Cross

Yesterday in London was another dramatic weather day, under the impact of Storm Ciara, that affected the whole of Britain with gale force winds, high seas and floods. The usual Air Canada flight from Ottawa to London Heathrow was cancelled, although a British Airways flight came in from New York having made the crossing in record time, riding on the jetstream, about two hours faster than normal. I'd have preferred not to take that flight because of the 50-knot gusts at the destination. A ferry ship crossing the North Sea to Hull, had to abandon its attempt to dock in the winds and return to wait out the storm in the North Sea for eight hours. We shudder to think of the conditions on board that vessel. Trees fell across roads and railway tracks countrywide, rivers overflowed their banks and driving through the deep puddles between Teddington and Putney was a new experience for our daughter, a relatively new driver.

There wasn't room for me in her car; she was taking her dad and sons to Putney so that Chris could finally visit the site of the Putney Debates of 1647, with his grandsons, at St. Mary's Church, as he has wanted to do for some time. The birthplace of British Democracy! There's an exhibition about those historic days, and a video made in tribute to the original debaters, at the church.

From the 28th October to 9th November 1647, soldiers and officers of Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army, including civilian representation, held discussions on the constitution and future of England. Should they continue to negotiate a settlement with the defeated King Charles I? Should there even be a King or Lords? Should suffrage (a civil right to vote, known as the franchise) be limited to property-holders? Would democratic changes lead to anarchy? This historic event saw ordinary soldiers take on their generals to argue for greater democracy and provided a platform for 'common people' to make their voices heard. These debates, forced by the Levellers, paved the way for many of the civil liberties we value today. (http://www.putneydebates.com)

Trains No. 22 - 24 today. We're on our way up to York for a week. The first two trains took us across London: the reverse of last Thursday's route, but in less crowded carriages, this time. Kings Cross and St. Pancras stations standing side-by-side, we wandered around both during the long wait for our train to York. The futuristic canopy over the concourse at Kings Cross is a great improvement on past times. This journey is another one full of memories for us both, since we've been travelling up and down this line at various periods in our lives since the 1960s. In the mid-80s we lived in a house very close to the railway line, at Welwyn Garden City, and I used to take the children bird-spotting at Sandy Beds (Bedfordshire), a few stations further north, when they were young members of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, with a collection of wall charts, magazines and badges. A new landmark is an extensive solar farm just north of Sandy.

... Passing Grantham now, where my sister-in-law and husband Phil live. I just had an email to say they saw our train go through! (Later we received an email to say that it snowed immediately after our transit, with a picture of the white view from their window, Phil hoping for a snowball fight with the local kids!) It is now tipping with rain once more, although this morning dawned fine and clear, with the full moon still visible in the sky.

Near the Thames

By Teddington Locks

Wild cherry blossom

Crossing the bridge by the Teddington Locks brings us to the Thames Path through the fields to Kingston, the distance on the signposts being marked in miles, not kilometres. Having spent an hour watching our washing go round in circles at the "Bubbles" laundrette, we were glad to be out of doors. The was unusually fine for February in England: we could enjoy the warmth of the sunshine while sitting on a river bank bench, watching the dog-walkers and rowing boats go by. Cherry trees are in bloom. Houseboats are moored by the island, the view not unlike Impressionist paintings of the Seine. Once in the town of Kingston, we found the surroundings less soothing because several of the shopfronts are boarded-up, these businesses abandoned, something I've never before noticed in this prosperous part of the UK. "Economic uncertainty!" comments my son-in-law. 

Impressionist view, looking upstream at Kingston

To return to Teddington we took the local train for a four minute stretch that I'm not including in my tally of train-rides. Our daughter had a dentist's appointment, so our task for the afternoon was to fetch Thomas home, who is in Year 4 at Stanley Primary School and had been told to wait for us by the metal sunflowers near his classroom. About 1000 children attend this school and most of them had an adult picking them up, with other children in tow; we managed to find Thomas all the same and he led us home, knowing the way better than we did.

The house where our family lives is undergoing a kitchen renovation at the moment, with chaotic consequences, cornflakes, oil, cleaning equipment, the old fridge and so on all in the living room, Chris attempting to "debug the hardware" in Thomas' electronics kit that overflows the dining table, Alex (13, lean and tall, these days) wanting to show us his multiple electronic devices and tell us about his recent history lesson about the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Sarajevo in 1914, or his visit to a Spanish restaurant with his school's Spanish teacher, to learn the vocabulary, or his maths exam, or his part in the gangster musical Bugsy Malone.

At the garden centre

It is now Saturday evening. I have been weeding the garden, a real pleasure in February when the snow is knee deep back in Canada and the windchill today -30C. Emma and I spent over an hour at the local garden centre this afternoon while Thomas was at a "Nerf Gun" birthday party with other children from his class. He didn't want to go at all, at first, but changed his mind. I had no idea what a Nerf Gun was, but am now appalled to realise it is a plastic, mass-produced toy, shaped like a sub-machine gun, that fires plastic foam bullets at other boys his age (and a few girls). The children were divided into teams for this game. Emma and I were amused by the insistence of the long-suffering mother who had organised this party that we return to pick up Thomas no later than 4 p.m. She said it three times. When the party came to an end, we saw Thomas do a quick lap of the food table to snatch a last few bites, then come rushing out with chipmunk cheeks and plenty to tell us; he was handed a cone of sweets to carry home as well. Meanwhile, after working with his granddad to write a computer program in Python3, his brother Alex had spent the afternoon fast asleep.

Thomas (right) at the end of the party

Farewell, Europe!

Boarding the Eurostar for London
at the Gare du Midi, Brussels

As I start to write this, we have just pulled out of Lille-Europe station on the Eurostar from Brussels to London (our 19th train ride since I started counting), moving rapidly backwards through the French countryside, land of the trenches in the 1st World War more than 100 years ago. We just passed a little cemetery full of white gravestones which may have had something to do with it.
The weather is calm and sunny at last.

EU Parliament buildings from the
Parc Léopold

This morning after breakfast at EXKi on the rue Neuve, horrified by a family of beggars (refugees?) sleeping together on that scruffy shopping street, we left our luggage at the hotel and walked through the Botanical Gardens, the bottom end of which we saw yesterday, and then continued towards an important part of the city, the area around the European Parliament. We found the back entrance to the Parliament where school parties were lining up to go inside for a tour, and where other school children were playing games of basketball in the Parc Léopold. I found the street map confusing, lost my sense of direction again. There's another, more formal park opposite the Belgian Parliament, the Parc de Bruxelles., from which we found our way to the rue Royale and thence back to the Rogier district.

Back entrance to the EU Parliament

Belgian Parliament building

From the Place Rogier to the Gare du Midi was an easy short tram ride underground, now that we know how to get through the platform barriers. Where to tap the ticket is not intuitively obvious; we noticed that we weren't the only travellers to have trouble with this. There we went through the passport checks and left Europe; the formalities are still quite relaxed in spite of Brexit, and our British-European e-passports opened the gates automatically.

Paul Henri Spaak, Père Fondateur de L'Europe:
"This time, the men of western Europe

[...] have done something great, and what 

is remarkable and perhaps unique is that 

they have done is by renouncing any use

of force, any constraint, any threat."

On the 1957 Treaty of Rome

We have now reached the station at Calais, where three uniformed soldiers with automatic rifles appear to be keeping watch over the fences and tracks. Armed soldiers were on duty at the Gare du Midi as well. The fences are topped with rolls of barbed wire. A little boy in the seat in front of us is showing us his collection of toy vehicles ... and now we are in the Chunnel, 75 metres below the water's surface and already half way from Europe to Britain; I have put my watch back one hour. We shall surface at "Ebbsfleet International", a place that didn't exist when I was young, on our way to "Londen" (the display on the screen is still half in Flemish).
We're through to our homeland: more high fences all around us, and a white horse drawn on the chalk hillside on this section of the South Downs. It looks new.

In Brussels

But first, some early morning views of Köln and the cathedral that we briefly walked around after breakfast at the station, before catching our train. (I know that the photos shown here are very similar to the ones posted in previous posts in this blog, in 2014 for example; I think this must be the sixth time in my life that I have been in Köln.) Once again, we found the St. Christopher statue ...im Dom zu Köln am Rhein, that Heinrich Heine mentioned in his poem Die alten, bösen Lieder. Schumann set this poem to music for the last of his Dichterliebe songs.

Twin spires of the Kölner Dom

Kölner Dom from the back

The Rhine seen from behind Cologne's cathedral

The Eau de Cologne advert at Köln Hbf., seen from Gleis 5

Then we made our way to Platform 5 for the 09:43 train to Brussels (No. 18 on this trip). The announcements broadcast during this ride through Aachen and Liège were in German, Flemish, French and English. A fast (250 kph at one point) and comfortable journey, although I was disappointed that the window seat I had booked only gave me half a window. No matter, I had time to publish my previous blogpost using the on-board wifi.

Another frustration was that I had not paid attention to the map when booking our tickets to Brussels. We ought to have got off at the penultimate stop, the Gare du Nord (Bruxelles-Nord) which would have been just a short distance from the hotel where we're staying tonight. As it happened I made Chris wait till the final stop at Bruxelles-Midi, from which we had to catch a Tram (T3) from an underground platform there, to Rogier, only a seven minute ride, but unnecessary and entailing ticket purchase, ticket barriers, and the use of steps, escalators and lifts. Then we failed to find the hotel because of setting off in the wrong direction, but we did find a healthy cafeteria sort of place for our lunch.

The hotel is on the rue des Croissades ( = crusades) and has been here since 1901. It was called the Hotel des Colonies to commemorate the annexation of the Belgian Congo, which Chris thinks is one of the most horrific stories in history. The hotel's owners have reason to believe that during the 2nd World War (in 1944) Field-Marshall Montgomery typed his Christmas message to the British troops on these premises.

Hotel des Colonies entrance hall

A corner of the Grote Markt

We spent the afternoon exploring the centre of Brussels: the Grote Markt and its surrounding streets, getting lost between the rue du Chene and the Place Rouppe, then somehow finding our way to the Vieux Marché aux Grains where we sat at a table to share a gaufre de Bruxelles, a speciality waffle with a surfeit of cream, at a place called Le Petit Choux de Bruxelles. Then past the Place Ste-Catherine to the Vlaamse Poort (= Gate of Flanders). I'm mixing up the languages just as the locals do. The port continues for a length of the canal, with large boats docked on both sides.

Rue du Chene

Vieux Marché aux Grains from inside the Brussels Sprout café

The Canal de Charleroi

View of the "port" on the canal in Brussels

From the canal we found our way back to Place Rogier along a wide boulevard, busy with rush hour traffic. We walked past an unexpected, fenced field on which real sheep were grazing ... part of an educational urban farm.

We ate supper at a nearby steakhouse, have consumed far too much beef on this trip. The fact that we chose the wrong destination station this morning was reinforced when a short walk brought us to the Gare du Nord; we could see where the hotel was from in front of it. Oh well, we'd know another time, and Chris says he's glad that the friendly lady in the hijab, who helped us to get on the right tram at the Gare du Midi in order to make our way (back) here, probably felt good about her kind deed. The area around Rogier station with the illuminated hotels looks rather good after dark.

The entrance to the new Rogier underground station

View of our hotel from the Place Rogier

An exciting journey

The predictable cold front came through in the night, clearing the skies but lowering the temperature by a good 10 degrees. The storm flooded the rivers and brought trees down. We could see more of the lake, though, with Radolfzell's squatting stone man and waterbirds in the foreground.

Where we sat waiting at Singen station

When we reached the platform from which our train was supposed to leave, we found a notice telling us that the train had been cancelled due to a fallen tree on the line between Radolfzell and Singen. So what to do? Our connection to Köln depended on us catching that particular train. I hurried to the DB Reisezentrum where the lady at the desk told me that the replacement bus wasn't leaving for another hour, so our best option was to take a taxi to Singen ("or call for one") and try to rebook at Singen station. Only two taxis were lining up at the station. The driver of the smaller one refused to take us because he had other jobs to do. The driver of the minivan, a woman, kindly allowed us to share a ride with five other stranded passengers --- three schoolgirls and a friendly Swiss couple on their way home to Bern. We chatted to the Bernese couple as we rode along the sunny road and shared the cost of the ride with them. Singen wasn't too far. At Singen station we lined up at the office and got our tickets modified. The new itinerary required changing trains at Offenburg and Mannheim, instead of Offenburg only, and had us reaching Köln an hour later than planned, so that was fine.

Castle on a hill near Singen

Flooded fields

After sitting on the cold platform at Singen for nearly an hour we were glad to board the Schwarzwaldbahn train, a double decker which gave us great views from its upper deck. I don't remember ever having had such an exciting ride. The first part under blue sky took us past a series of little castles on steep, isolated hills and through pretty little towns, with free range chickens or pregnant goats in people's gardens. Then we started to notice the flooded fields and realised that they were part of the Danube that has overflowed its banks everywhere on these upper stretches. The floods were extensive. Herons stood at the edge of the fast flowing water, searching in vain for food. I began to feel alarmed that the rail track would go underwater, so close were the floods. Even on the top deck of the train, we'd be in trouble then. We managed to get through to Donaueschingen station with mere inches to spare, and then the clouds descended and a blizzard began. Beyond that stop, around Villingen, the snow fell so heavily we could scarcely see anything but whiteness through the windows. Then the storm eased off and the views were marvellous, white branches of fir trees, sloping white fields dotted with half-timbered Schwarzwälder barns and farmhouses. The young Danube was still rushing torrentially downhill; then we entered a series of tunnels and went round some long curves in the line (at over 2200 ft above sea level, according to Chris' flight app. which tracks our position as if we were in a plane!) and we were on the other side of the watershed, heading downhill, and following the River Riss instead, likewise flooding the fields. At an intermediate station we were at a standstill for about 20 minutes, anxiously checking our watches to see if we'd be able to make our connection at Offenburg.

Blizzard at Villingen

No problem, we caught the Berlin (!) train at Offenburg (Train No. 16) which we had to leave at Mannheim. With the disruption on the line we'd taken as well as considerable disruption at Stuttgart, something to do with the fire brigade, and floods near Trier, this was a very crowded train, but we not only found seats, we were able to buy sandwiches from the Bord-Restaurant too. At Mannheim we had to change to the train bound for Dortmund that would bring us to Köln (Train No. 17). Mannheim station has some significance for me. On the spot, when I was 16, with a family I'd never met before, with whom I was going to spend 3 months in order to learn German, I caught the train from Mannheim to Wiesloch-Waldorf, having travelled from London by myself. I met my host family for the first time very early in the morning beside the cross of the Bahnhofsmission on Mannheim's Platform 1. It was snowy then, too (in January 1968); they pulled my luggage to their house on a sledge.

The ride to Köln took us past the Frankfurt international airport, planes and control tower in sight through the window. The approach to Köln's Hauptbahnhof took us across the Rhine bridge with a view of the barges, the Kranhäuser and the TÜV tower. (Chris has worked with the people who work there from time to time.) Unfortunately it was raining again, so after we'd checked into our room at the Ibis Köln am Dom hotel, on the station premises, and had ventured outside for a short walk, we got wet again. We didn't have much time to spare because my friend Anne-Ute, a regular guest of the CFUW's Diplomatic Hospitality group and former member of my Deutschsprachige Konversationsgruppe during her three years in Ottawa, had invited us to her house for supper, and had promised to pick us up. And so she did, ganz pünktlich, with her daughter Janina in the car as well. We had a wonderful welcome at their house, meeting Anne-Ute's husband Reinhold as well. He came from nearby Düsseldorf; Anne-Ute was actually born at this comfortable house. It's a pity that it was so wintry while we were here, because her garden is lovely too, as we could see even in the dark. We were served a lovingly prepared supper with flutes of blue-tinted champagne to start with, and talked to Janina about the thesis she wrote in Konstanz (she'd lived near Singen, see above) to do with the analysis of micro-organisms in the Bodensee. She confirmed that the lake is getting cleaner and healthier, these days! At the end of the evening, instead of driving us straight back to the hotel, the two women took us on a tour of the city and its landmarks, Anne-Ute driving and Janina giving us an impromptu and very competent and interesting description of what we were seeing: the trade hall at Deutz, the medieval gate towers in the former city walls, the 1960s' opera house, etc. The best views were of the floodlit cathedral as we crossed the bridges back and forth over the Rhine.

Reinhold had strongly recommended that we see inside the Kölner Dom before leaving in the morning, and this is what we did, wondering, when we saw it, whether the nave was even higher than the one at Ulm. We found the "starke Christoph im Dom zu Köln am Rhein" that's mentioned in Heine's poem set at the end of Schumann's Dichterliebe song cycle, that my "Christoph" sings at home, but not the picture of Mary "auf gold'nem Leder bemalt" that's mentioned in another of those poems / songs. We are now sitting on Train No. 18, an international IC express that's rumbling through Belgium between Liege and Brussels, although I began writing this post during yesterday's train rides.