Traveling is the ruin of all happiness!

The title is taken from a quote by Fanny Burney who was actually talking about how dull other buildings are once you have seen what Italy has to offer. The part I've selected seems to sum up my regular commute, especially just lately when the German rail network hasn't been living up to it's fearsome reputation for punctuality.

Getting around

I've written before how easy we found it (outside of rush hour) with our bikes on the trains. But it's not just the trains that are set up for bikes / pushchairs / wheelchairs. The buses, as they are in many other countries, are very funky these days. First of all they have the double doors half-way down the bus which open wide enough to allow a passenger to get their bike, pram or wheelchair onto the vehicle. Secondly they have a hydraulic tilting action so that when the bus is at the stop it tilts towards the pavement so the step up to get on the bus isn't high.

Those are not the carriages you're looking for

So day 3 of my life as a reborn train commuter went well in the morning. The trains were on time, the bus was on time and it was warm and sunny and I got a fair amount of Economics for Dummies read. Not that I understood most of it, but it shows willing, doesn't it?

Rollin' rollin' rollin'...

Carless for a week now, I have survived two days of commuting by bike, train and bus and in contrast to the last time I did this it is working out very well.

Monday morning dawned bright and clear, so I jumped enthusiastically onto my bike and peddled off to the station. Since the last time I was a member of the train commuting fraternity I am now equipped with a smart phone. With the Endomondo app so I am now able to race myself to work every day if i want. It turns out that the station is 3.55 miles from my house, and I cycled it on that first enthusiastic morning in 20 minutes and 50 seconds.

Testing, testing... can anyone hear me?

It's been a while since I blogged (discounting the threat this morning to inflict something other than seat covers on an unsuspecting public) and I need to find out how to upload photos. Yes, my old brain has forgotten.

A touch of déja vu? Here we go again.

And here we go again! 4 years after the sad demise of Super Punto, the replacement car (the not so super, but totally huge Octavia) died on us. Followed a few months later by our other car, an 8 year old Golf Plus. It requires rather a lot of work, which will cost rather a lot of money, so while it is in the VW garage it's back to the bike-train-bus combo for me.

Berlin, Berlin

As if to prove myself wrong (that I'm not a geeky transpotter) here's a cute train we saw at some S-bahn station (on the way to a fabby and marvy John Mellencamp gig)