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.

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.

Like a bus - you wait ages for a blogpost and then several come at once.

I'm not actually deluding myself that anyone is waiting for me to post but I can't resist some kind of pun or whatever.

First to distract any readers there might be from what's to come - here's a pretty view of the Fernsehturm.

On the way back from looking at this we had to sit on these, again on the U5 - but I'll be kind and put it behind the break...

Just when you thought it was safe to go back onto the internet...

you come back to find that I've been travelling by train. Again. What can I say? I love them.

And even though this has now morphed into a blog about public transport seat covers - which in NO WAY makes me into some kind of nerdy geek, by the way - I hope it's still vaguely interesting. (yeah, only to public transport seat covers geeks. - ed)

The Europeans...

Although the UK likes to pretend that Europe is a place far, far away, it is still - geographically speaking - European. Thus, here are some European public-transport seat covers.

Regional train between Erkelenz and Aachen. First class.

Those NZ public-transport seat covers in full

Well, maybe not in full, but I have some new pictures with which to wow you all. Remember, this from the town that gave us the beautiful green fern cover that I posted before.

Number 1:

The blog goes international!

Thanks to Rory over at the Wellington Boots blog, I am now able to share with you the wonder that is a New Zealand bus seat-cover!

This one is lovely, far superior to anything I've seen over here, and I have to admit to not a little jealousy. Note the lovely shading and use of colour (not least because Green is My Favourite Colour and The Best Colour In The World Bar NONE)

It also displays a rather lovely touch of pride in the fern which is something most of us will recognise in the Silver version as worn by New Zealand sports teams and most of their army units.



Now go back and compare that with some of the designs on German busses. How much more relaxing to sit among the cool, green ferns than surrounded by what can only be described as the result of a deranged mind (thinking specifically of the kindergarten-stylee scribbles featuring parachutes).

Day 24 - Friday, 6th August 2010

We're all going on a summer holday...

Well, I don't know about you, but this was my last day at work for two whole weeks. During which it was hoped that we'd be able to get a car, which would have made this my last day of commuting by public transport.

Alas and alack, it's not to be as the chap who is selling us the car is away on his hols. Oh well, I can manage a week or two more on the train/bus combo as long as I have an end in sight.

As Friday dawned bright and clear, I decided not to be fooled by appearances and zipped on my fleece before leaving the house. I also abandoned the idea of the early train and went for the usual one at 07:18. And again, yaay, it didn't let me down and everything went swimmingly.

This afternoon I abandoned the idea of the bus and took the offered lift from my colleague who dropped me at Mönchengladbach station and I got the train home from there. It was bright sunshine and very warm, which meant the fleece went into the basket and I cycled home in the lovely weather.

Ready for two weeks jollies.

Now, we'll be using public transport during this time so I may come back and leave a blog entry or two detailing delays and groovy seat covers along the way.

The woman on the Willich omnibus

I want to be a bus seat cover designer. Really. When you see these you will wonder what the qualification for that particular job is. I can only assume that, actually, the designers of bus seat covers are really employed by the automobile industry in a bid to drive people off public-transport and into car-ownership. (see what I did there?)

I'll ease you in gently with something pretty calm. The front is slightly jazzy, and the back is plain grey. They are made of a different fabric than the train-seat covers, very coarse and itchy. This was the 87B from Anrath station to Anrath church one morning.



The next one defies description, but I'll give it a go. The theme is transport, possibly holidays since, although it looks like something from the fevered imagination of a Jackson Pollock admirer, it is possible to discern an aeroplane and something that could possibly be a beach-ball. Actually, even the bastard lovechild of Stephen Fry and Clive James could not do this seat-cover justice. Prepare to be astounded - and my apologies, probably the general awfulness of this seatcover put me off a little and it's slightly out of focus.



This one could possibly have been inspired by Picasso. Or maybe not.



The next one has too much blue. And possibly too much red. Definitely the overall effect is too much. And didn't really help my bad temper - this bus was ten minutes late and the seat covers contributed to the light raising of my blood pressure. If you look very carefully at the bottom left of the picture you can see a little lad's bike. He was so funny talking to his mum about how he was going to ride round the park that evening that even I managed to have my mind taken off the sheer awfulness of those horrible seat covers.



For the next one all I can say is this: someone got PAID to make this? Really, there is a reason that the bus company name is shown in this design - in mirror image but who on Earth could possibly imagine what it is?



And finally. My favourites. Not only does this mad bus have seats in the front half that can accommodate one person and one extra buttock (because, obviously, there are a lot of people here with three-buttocked bottoms) but the seat cover design is like little planets. Or Smarties. Or M&Ms. Or maybe it's just a load of balls.



(That's quite enough seat covers, now. - Ed.)

Those train seat covers in full!

So, here they are then. Those seat covers you've all been waiting for! And if you look carefully you'll see that the only one I've described in detail is described totally badly and incorrectly.

Let's look at that one then, and get it over with. It's a jazzy, modern design which seems to be on the newer trains. Usually I see them on the Aachen-Duisburg train in the morning.



The next one is one of the older versions, green is a much more relaxing colour to look at, and the headrest parts are a faux-leather (or horrible plastic) kind of thing.



Finally the seat covers on the spiffy double-decker trains are a relaxing but horribly bland and boring grey/green affair.



I suppose I should be glad that there are a) seats and that b) they are not all slashed up.

The bus seat covers are way more jazzy and therefore get their own blog post.

Day 20 - Monday, 2nd August 2010

I woke up this morning... got out of bed...

This week the Gruesome Twosome are at home with their dad who has a week off, so I decided to take advantage of our new hours at work (7am~4pm) in the hope of getting home an hour earlier.

Which meant that 05:00 ("what does the '0' stand for?" - yep "Oh my god it's early!") saw me falling out of bed and into the shower in the vain hope of waking myself up enough to cycle to the station. Actually, it wasn't as hard as I'd anticipated and at 05:45 I was on the Shiny New Bike, with my Shiny New Lights working away, zipped into my fleece and pedalling away.

The first thing that struck me is that it was very very quiet, but that as I cycled down the endless road to the next village I was overtaken by six cars - usually when I go an hour later it's a maximum of two. The next thing I noticed was that there were an awful lot of crows around, but almost no other birds. I think the herons have gone since I haven't seen them for a while, but there was a huge buzzard in that field today so that might have something to do with their absence.

The other thing I noticed, sitting on the steps to the door of the flat behind the Greek restaurant in town, was what looked like the owner, rather the worse for wear. He waved as I cycled past and I couldn't help but wonder how long he'd been there.

I had time to stop for a coffee from a kiosk opposite the station, and the rest of the journey went like clockwork. Just the same as every day but with fewer people - presumably because it was so early. The journey home, typically, was messed up by the 71 bus being very late, too late for me to even think about walking to the next stop in the hope of catching the 87. So I waited at the stop for the 38 and read a goodly chunk of my Jeeves and Wooster book.

And now to the exciting part of the blog.

I've been assiduously photographing the seat covers on bus and train, usually to the bemusement of my fellow passengers. If I can work out how to upload them, they will be in a blog post all of their own especially for the poster to my previous blog entry who called me an anorak. Indeed.

Day 19 - Friday, 30th July 2010

Friday on my mind

Today could have been a challenge but in the even it went very smoothly. In the mornings I've been getting on the train at the back so there isn't so far to walk when I get to Anrath. Lazy, I know. It was chilly this morning which meant that I got my fleece out for the first time since winter.

I also, for the first time since I started cycling, I called in at the bakery for a coffee on my way to the station. Feeling like a real commuter, well a commuter from film or TV, I sipped at the coffee and waited for the train. Which was punctual. In the name of research I started photographing the seat covers today - which seemed to amuse my fellow travellers.

They were, in fact, an amusing bunch today. One chappie was trying to engage people in conversation and offering them winegums. Typically, everyone refused and tried not to meet his eye.

Coming home arranged to get a lift with my colleague again as it was month-end and I wasn't sure what time I'd get out of the office. As it happened we got out of the office early. 'Early' for month-end, that is. For a Friday, gone 6pm is pretty yukky.

For the record I also photographed the bus seat-covers and during next week there will be enlightenment.

Day 12 - Wednesday, 21st July 2010

Bergfest!

That's German for we have reached the summit (of the week) and it's all downhill from here.

This morning - no issues with transport. This evening - no issues with transport. A bit of light drizzle on my way back, but I had a waterproof jacket, although, to be honest, I didn't really need it.

So today I thought I'd do a little bit of pondering the designs of the seat covers on public transport. I sure do know how to have a good time!

On my morning train, which is vaguely modern, the seats are covered with a royal blue plush affair. But not just royal blue. There are navy blue squares - about 1.5cm square, all over the royal blue about 1cm apart. Now, I'm not a fan of blue. In fact, out of all the colours it's probably my least favourite. Mostly because when I wear it my green eyes look blue.

But it's not an offensive design, although the scratchy plush material does get very warm on hot days. The bus companies, however, really go to town on their scratchy plush material. The first one this morning had a grey background, graphite sort of colour, with splashes and squiggly lines in red, green, blue (dratted royal blue again) and yellow. Jackson Pollock, though, it ain't. It is just the sort of horrible design that looks like someone was trying to reference Pollock, and then failed spectacularly. At least I'm only on that one for 5 minutes.

The second bus, though, if possible was worse. The same scratchy plush material. The same basic grey background. But, for some reason, the name of the bus company was the design - and it is MöBus. Like that. Written Vertically on the seats. Just say no, folks!

The return buses were similar to the not-quite-Jackson-Pollock design, but muted colours instead which made it less offensive. and the train home was one of the spiffy double deckers with a very pale grey-green sort of design. And it wasn't quite as scratchy. Which is good because I fell asleep and it was digging into my cheek the whole way home.