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on the ‘phone And regrettably, yet again I wasn’t assailed by any nubile young ladies.<\/p>\nThe magic of Colosseum Live seems to have worn off, unless it only works on board ships.<\/p>\n
Having frozen to death on the station at Li\u00e8ge 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.<\/p>\n
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 K\u00f6ln.<\/p>\n
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<\/strong> Germany) and then we headed off to grab something to eat.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n
