… that 17.4 million people in the UK actually voted to deprive themselves of the right to do what I and several other people are doing right now.
But Hans, my friend from Munich, and I are currently sitting in a room in a hotel at the back of the railway station in Köln and tomorrow several others will be joining us.
And apart from the odd partner or two, we are all British from all different parts of Europe. It’s been so long since we’ve all seen each other that we’ve decided to have a weekend together and catch up with what we’ve missed for the last two years or so.
And so this morning, having almost fallen out of bed (I’m not used to sleeping in a single bed) the first thing that I did after the alarm went off was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.
And make the most of it because I’ll be too busy over the next couple of days to type out any dictaphone notes.
To start off, we’d been all rounded up in Crewe. They had started from the west side of the town and were pushing everyone out to the east. I’d set off eastwards and as I was going down Earle Street past Prince Albert Street there was a little girl skipping whom I vaguely knew She shouted out that she’d been chased away from her house as well. Then another girl who was older, probably about 12 or so said so had she so I told them both to come over here and we went arm-in-arm skipping off out of town. As we arrived at Winterley it was starting to become night and cold. We saw a horse blanket in a hedge and I was thinking of grabbing it to cover us at night but the older girl said that they were still civilised people at the moment and didn’t intend to resort to stealing unless it was a last resort and they wanted to push on as best as they could normally. I replied “yes, but we’re going to be pretty cold tonight” but they said that it didn’t matter. It was what she wanted to do. The 3 of us carried on heading out towards Sandbach
And then I was with a girl last night – a girl who was rather like someone I knew from a while back but was much more friendly and lively and enthusiastic. She’d been collecting some kind of toys that you make scenery with, they use for scenery. One particular one that she had mentioned was something like 3 children in a kitchen, like dolls’ house furniture and people, that sort of thing. I can’t remember ho it had all started but she went off to do something and then the suestion of this dolls’ house stuff came up. I thought that this would be a nice thing for me to buy her for Christmas, some more stuff like that. Then she came down with some of the clothes that she had, a kind-of silk dressing gown and some nighties. I told her that she had some lovely clothes. She said something about what should she do with them so of course I said “you should just hang them on the wall for everyone to look at when they come in, some kind of sarcastic response but I was being funny. She smiled and laughed. It seemed to me that here was someone with whom I could have a really good time, a really pleasant and happy relationship. It looked as if things were going my way.
Eventually I went outside to go for my train. And I’m glad that I packed a sweater because not only was it freezing cold, it was now snowing and it looked as if it would stick as well.
At the station I popped into the Carrefour for some breakfast and then caught the train to Leuven For reasons that relate to my various return trips, I had to break my journey at Leuven so I went to the little supermarket at the back to buy some supplies, and then while I was waiting for the train to Liège I treated myself to a piping-hot coffee
And I can’t say that I didn’t need it
The train was a push-me-pull-you and wasn’t all that full so I had plenty of space to spread out But no power on the train so I had to listen to Colosseum Live
The magic of Colosseum Live seems to have worn off, unless it only works on board ships.
Having frozen to death on the station at Liège for 15 minutes the German ICE train pulled in and I could scramble aboard. Plenty of room on board until we reached Aachen when suddenly it was swamped with people and we were crowded in like chickens in a coop.
But having said that, the German expresses are super-comfortable and I hope that the next generation of French TGVs will be like this, although one power socket between two people is not the best way forward. Luckily I had first dibs so I could read about the excavations of a Neolithic burial site in Kent while Hawkwind and I stomped all our way to Köln.
Hans’s train was a few minutes late so I had to hang around for a couple of minutes while they took his driver out and shot him (this IS Germany) and then we headed off to grab something to eat.
Finding the hotel wasn’t easy. There’s one right at the back of the hotel but they couldn’t find our reservations. Eventually it turned out that there are two with the same name within 300 metres of each other and it was the other one that we wanted.
They couldn’t find my reservation either but then a problem that I’ve noted over the past ever so many years ever since I’ve been using this booking agency was resolved. For some reason, they have my given name and my family name reversed.
Once we’d dealt with that, things were fine. But I’ll need to remember it for the future because it explains several difficulties that I’ve experienced in the past.
The Wyndham Tryp Hotel is expensive but this is a city centre hotel in one of Germany’s major cities and it’s within staggering distance of the station and all amenities so all things considered it’s good value and I’ll stop here again if ever I’m this way.
Now that I was properly clothed for sub-Arctic conditions, we went out for a long walk around the town, stopping for various coffees, a vegan Thai meal and even a slice of vegan apple pie as we wandered around in a snowstorm and finally ended up back at the hotel where I’m staying for a couple of nights.
There’s been a football match on the internet this evening so after the final whistle I’ll try to catch the cached programme and hope that my computer has the processing speed to stream it. It won’t stream the live broadcast but then steam-driven computing, even with the 1TB SSD that I fitted a while back won’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
If not, I’ll have an early night ready for the hordes of people tomorrow. And maybe a snowball fight or two if this weather doesn’t improve.
Our trip down the Rhine on a pleasure cruiser looks as if it’s a non-starter anyway. Not much good of you can’t see the river bank due to a raging blizzard.
