Author Archives: Julie Hunt

Day five: Poznan to Wroclaw

The trouble with deciding to spend a chunks of 24 or 48 hours in various places is you end up either having to carry everything with you or figure out places to leave them all morning or afternoon. I was lucky yesterday when I arrived in Poznan – my apartment was ready and I could just move in and go out. Today I left my luggage at reception…..

I had a train to Poznan at 16:44 which left the best part of an entire day to enjoy Poznan. I started it with running to the Zadka across the square for some fresh bread for breakfast, got packed up slowly and left the apartment and particularly the view very reluctantly. This apartment is too nice for just one night! Much too nice!

On the other hand, I did like the market square. So I walked down into the old town, in search of more old buildings and churches. I found the pink parish church, which was nice enough but so unmemorable I can’t even describe it. Then I found myself back in the market square. I found lots of places to sit in the shade, by a fountain just outside the square and soon it was 11.30. Now, the symbol of Poznan is a pair of goats which emerge from the tower above the town hall and butt heads twelve times at noon. I’d just been cheerfully thinking that there’s not a lot in the way of either tourists or tourist shops in Poznan but there they all are, standing in the shade opposite the town hall, cameras aloft. Oh, it’s all a bit of a drama! First the bell chimes twelve times, then a man with a clarion appears on a balcony and plays something that doesn’t sound entirely unlike the Last Post and then the goats appear. The whole thing takes about three minutes and some tourists, after waiting there for half an hour or maybe longer, get bored and walk away before the goats have finished. This astonishes me.

After that, I decided to wander east towards Poznan Cathedral. It’s on the other side of the river and there are a couple of other buildings in the complex, including a kind of half cut-off Gothic brick thing I’d really like to have seen inside. But the cathedral itself is another blocky red-brick thing that doesn’t look very Gothic from the outside but is interesting from the inside. It’s not as intricately detailed as the exhibition in Berlin but it’s still very pretty and very interesting. It’s got pillars that are part stone and part brick, endless interesting side chapels, some nice modern stained glass and – star of the show – a golden chapel. You can put 5zl in a slot to switch on the lights, at which point is becomes truly breathtaking.

Then I took a long stroll back via another long sit in the market square, a stroll back up to the park opposite the tower where I sat and enjoyed the duckpond and then it was time to collect my luggage and get my train. The train, according to the departure board, was from platform 11. Platforms in the station only go up to 6. Where’s 11? Aha, 7-11 are downstairs and outside. I couldn’t figure out how to get to 10 and 11 – I tried going up the steps back to the road and down the other side but that only took me to 10. There’s no connection to 11. Of course, it’s not as hard as that, there’s an underground passage joining 7 to 11 and all the others in between. Polish stations are weird – you have a platform number but you also have a track number. Seeing track 2, platform 2, track 3 on the way was really odd and took a moment to figure out. Anyway, the train arrived shortly after I did because Polish trains have a habit of stopping for an extended time at major stations – 21 minutes at Poznan and 15 minutes once we reached Wroclaw so there’s no need to rush to grab your luggage and jump off. It’s about an hour and a half from Poznan to Wroclaw and I had my own seat (unreserved this time, I checked several times) with a window, an empty luggage rack above it and air conditioning in the windowsill.

Smartphones have made the chances of accidentally jumping off in the wrong place somewhere between exceedingly difficult and actually impossible, which reduces accidental adventures but makes planned rail adventures much more efficient. I got to Wroclaw. I knew I needed to get a tram from the north side of the station. Seeing a sign for centrum, I followed it, only to emerge opposite Wroclawia, a big shoppipng centre that I knew was on the opposite side of the station. Turn round, march back through. There are ticket machines right at the tram and bus stops, so I got my 48 hour ticket, missed the 7 tram with a five minute walk and had to take the 8 with a 10 minute walk. The trouble was, the validator on the tram didn’t validate my ticket. Is it supposed to? It’s got a slot exactly the size of the ticket but when I stuck it in, it didn’t do anything. The internet says to validate them but it also says something incomprehensible about the linked payment card, which makes me wonder if I’m supposed to zap my bank card to validate my ticket – or possibly to pay contactlessly without meaning to. I’ll get on another tram tomorrow and try again.

Anyway, a ten minute walk took me to my apartment. That is, it took me to the restaurant right outside. I had quite detailed instructions including six pictures, making getting into the apartment a bit of a scavenger hunt. Clue 1: “right outside” actually means “opposite, on the other side of the road”. My apartment is on the third floor, keep to the left. That wasn’t so easy. Third floor? Up three floors I went and there was nothing but a blank wall on the left. I went back through my emails in search of an apartment number. Aha, number 5. Go to the door with a five on it. No key safe next to it and it didn’t match the scavenger hunt photo. It turns out you go up to the first floor and then step through into, effectively, the next building, and up some more stairs which run in the wrong direction up the middle of the building. But there it was – a door with the right number, a key safe and a piece of paper pinned to it which has the name of the apartment and the Airbnb and booking.com logos. I opened the key safe, unlocked both the locks and let myself into my next apartment. Not as nice as the one in Poznan, besides the difficulty in getting up to it. The view is over the courtyard where you access the backs of several similar buildings and the apartment is just one small room. It’s not unpleasant but yesterday’s was so much better. A waste to only spend one night there, I’m telling you.

Once I’d settled in, it was time to go out and refill my fridge. Yet again, there’s a Zadka every couple of hundred metres. Two blocks down is another Gothic church, and it was open at 7.30. It’s of a pretty similar type to Poznan’s cathedral, less impressive, but with better windows. Whoever presumably commissioned these windows after the war knew what they were doing. Oh, these are good windows! Lots of them are fire-themed and I swear one of them is things zooming around a burning Earth.

Right outside the church is Wroclaw’s market square – just as beautiful as Poznan’s, possibly bigger, and more commercial. Lots of tourists here. Tourist shops still open this time of night, packed pavement cafes and restaurants, banks and McDonalds, Burger King, Dominoes and KFC, all disguised as matching pavement cafes. There are fire jugglers and all sorts entertaining the tourists. Poznan but bigger.

So that’s my plan for the next day or two. Aqua Park, cathedral island and more time in the market square. I suspect my time in Poland is going to be a whirlwind of pretty squares and Gothic churches.

Day four: Berlin to Poznan

This was the other travel day that I was a bit concerned about. When I first had the idea and began putting the route together, back in March or April, there was a direct train which continued to Warsaw. Tht fr in advance was just too far to book, though, and by the time it was allowed, it had become a local train to Frankfurt Oder, on the Polish border, followed by the express to Warsaw, jumping off at Poznan. But a week or so – probably less – before I set off, I got an email from Deutsche Bahn saying that my journey didn’t exist anymore and to click here for alternatives. Do I even need to say that there were no alternatives?

No, there are always alternatives. I went back to DB’s ticket booking system and discovered that the alternative was to weave my way through Berlin’s public transport system, with half of the S-bahn in the city centre missing, to Erkner, at the far end of the S3. I could get on that local train from there to Frankfurt and then back on the original Polish Intercity that I’d originally planned. What I actually did would depend on where my local stop was, whether it was convenient, what the best route was from there and exactly which bits of Berlin were closed. My nearest station was a couple of hundred metres away at Naturekundemuseum, which is on the U6 – so much easier than taking the tram two stops west to Hbf and starting from there. I’d looked at my connections and I needed to be on the U-bahn by 8.45 to get to Frankfurt with enough time to not feel stressed and in the end, I was on it by about ten past eight. A few stops south to Friedrichstrasse, moment of “where is platform 6???” (DB helpfully gives platforms to save you the hassle of finding a departure board!) and onto the S3. Moment of doubt here because according to the signs, eastbound trains left from the left-hand side and westbound from the right but the eastbound Erkner train was on the right – agreed by both the electronic departure board and all the signs inside the train. By the time we reached Alexanderplatz, I was satisfied because there the signs were on the correct side – but the fact we reached Alexanderplatz at all said we were going in the right direction.

Erkner is right out in the woods. The electronic boards don’t bother listing half the stops, so at least twice I thought we’d reached the end of the line and we hadn’t. Then we came into platform 32 and I had to find the train on platform 2. Actually, the S-bahn lines are all numbered in the 30s and then down the side is the mainline station which may have more than one or two platforms but the Frankfurt train was waiting right there. I was expecting something like a slightly overgrown metro train and this was a full-size double-decker real train. Of course I sat upstairs!

It was only 35 minutes on the local train to Frankfurt. An easy transfer to the right platform and there sat the Warsaw Express, more than 40 minutes before it was due to depart. I was suspicious. The last time I got on a train that was waiting on the platform suspiciously early was in Helsinki and instead of ending up in the Arctic, I ended up going through the train wash and into the rail depot ten miles up the road. So I lurked. “See if other people get on” isn’t foolproof because that’s exactly what I did in Helsinki but it all seemed real enough. The signs on the train – at least on the outside – matched up and once I was aboard and looking dubiously at the signs in the corridor which gave nothing more than the date and time, I spied railway staff directing people onto the train and into the correct coaches.

You get assigned seats here, whether you like it or not. I was in coach 368 (why not just number them 1-4?) and seat 15. Polish trains, as far as I can see from this one and the one I got from Sopot to Gdansk a few years ago, tend towards compartments rather than rows of seats. My seat was by the window and facing forward and my compartment empty. I hoisted my bag onto the luggage rack, took out my phone charger and plugged it into the green-illuminated personal socket next to my seat and made myself comfortable. Not so comfortable when a large man with an even larger suitcase came and sat next to me. Nothing personal, that’s just his assigned seat. I was pretty convinced that suitcase was falling out of the rack and killing someone on the way, though. And then a couple with a kid came and filled up three of the remaining four seats and the last role was taken by a girl who looked far too young to be travelling across national borders – albeit Schengen ones – by herself.

We sat together on that train for the best part of half an hour before it finally set off – late. I can see no reason why a train that’s been sitting there for so long should be late departing. My compartment-mates had pretty much eaten their lunches before we left.

It was a little over an hour and a half to Poznan. Five or ten minutes maximum to the river that forms the border just here and then ninety-ish minutes of green countryside, wind turbines, builders yards, farmland and the occasional small town before we reached Poznan.

Poznan Glowny, the main station, was very busy. It was just after 12.30pm. I had the afternoon to explore but what to do with my luggage? As far as I could see, only four of the luggage lockers took cards and I had no Polish currency at all, let along coins. Well, my apartment is in the tower literally on the other side of the road so I’d go over there, see if I could get in (unlikely, two hours early) and leave my luggage if not. It turned out the room was ready – well, the cleaner was just leaving as I walked through the door. I’m on the 16th floor, overlooking the station, some of the more high-rise part of town and mile after mile of trees, chimneys and more greenery. 10/10 view. With only one night to enjoy my apartment – not only with a view but a fridge, a sofa, an armchair, a gigantic shower and a king-size bed (ok, it’s so big it covers the light switch and plug socket that are meant to be on the side of it), it seemed a shame to waste time there by going out and seeing Poznan but I had to go out and see Poznan. According to Google Maps and the cover of the book I brought with me (“A Chip Shop in Poznan” by Ben Aitken!), there was a very decorative town square.

It was about a 20 minute walk away, during which time I discovered that you can’t go 100m without coming across the next Zabka convenience store. And then the square was dead ahead and it was stunning. It’s four sides of tall thin colourful houses, exactly the sort you’d expect in an Old Town. All less than 80 years old, of course – like much of Poland, most of this square was rebuilt after being very literally flattened in WWII – but it’s still very pretty. There’s a fountain with a mythical figure in each corner and in the middle is the most spectacular town hall I’ve ever seen.

I was hungry. Producing a loaf of bread and a packet of cheese slices on a busy train is inconvenient and I’d left them in the fridge when I came out because I didn’t want to carry everything. There were cafes under big white umbrellas everywhere and I immediately decided I wanted to rest my feet, have a cold drink and eat some chips. Finding somewhere that looked like it might do just some chips was a bit of a challenge but the answer came unexpectedly at a Mexican restaurant – although they couldn’t bring themselves to do plain plain chips (“What about salt? Yes, absolutely, as much salt as you want). I had a seat, I had shade, I had a drink, I could see two sides of the square – and I was hassled by a wasp so much that at one point I accidentally threw my (95% empty) glass down on the table at it. I can’t bring myself to squish it but if wasps just went extinct, I wouldn’t mind.

A bit more time in the square and then I went souvenir shopping. I wanted some postcards and I wanted a badge for my camp blanket with a picture of the square on it. Or, as I searched the city fruitlessly, maybe just a badge of any kind. Poznan is big on magnets but non-existent on badges. In my search, I came across a great fountain, a big shiny glass modern thing in two halves that you could walk through, great for cooling down, some frescoes on a wall, a brick castle that’s actually an art museum and like everything in Poznan except Zabka, closed on Mondays. That was enough for the afternoon. I was hot and tired and ready to come home. My train tomorrow isn’t until 4.45 so I have plenty of time to read my guidebook this evening and see what else there is to see in Poznan but if I do nothing else, I’m satisfied to have spent an afternoon in that square.

I did pop out again. I searched the station for a souvenir shop. I didn’t search the big attached shopping centre but I suspect it’s not overwhelmed with rubbish souvenir shops. But I did want to get something else to drink, partly because I don’t have much and partly in the hope of getting a 1zl piece. Standing in front of a large bottle of orange juice, mentally calculating “if I give them this note, I get this change…” to figure out if it’s going to do the magic I wanted. And it did!

You see, opposite my tower is a little park and in the park is a duckpond. And at the top of the slope leading down to the duckpond is a dispenser for duck food, only you need to put a 1zl coin in. I was a bit worried, it being gone 7pm, that the machine would be empty and I’d have got my coin for nothing but it worked! Handful of birdseed! All the pigeons in the park running to me and then all the ducks on the pond paddling at me as fast as they can. Yes, ducks. It took a moment to realise it’s an entire pond of girl ducks and not a single boy in sight. Unless they’re not mallards and a species of duck that all look like female mallards.

Ducks fed, I came home, put my big bottle of orange juice in the fridge for breakfast (there’s a Zapka right outside so I’ll get fresh bread in the morning and check out just about as late as possible) and now I’m sitting on my balcony, listening to my neighbours playing Eminem and planes coming in overhead (at least, I think they are – I have no idea where Poznan Airport is) and writing this balanced uncomfortably on my knees.

Day three: Berlin but better

I liked Berlin more today. That’s partly because there was a cool breeze when I left the hotel, partly because it didn’t feel hot and sticky today even when the hot sun came out and partly because I didn’t follow the You Must See These Things rules.

First a croissant and some juice from the Rewe City at the station. It’s just about the only supermarket open on a Sunday so it was chaotic. Then I got a new 24-hour ticket but didn’t validate it – not when I’ve still got 40 minutes left on the last one! I went to Museumsinsel and sat on a bench under the trees overlooking the cathedral to eat my breakfast. The croissant tasted bad. Is it different butter? Lard? I don’t want to eat it. At last I pulled it out of the bag and looked at it. Filled with cheese – and ham!

The cathedral was closed to visitors until the afternoon, Sunday being a cathedral’s busy working day, so I had a look around. Two red brick spires caught my eye so off I went to find them, via a huge patch of construction work that doubled the distance. It’s a big red brick church, kind of square and angular but something about it appealed to me. The door was open and when I peeked inside, it turned out to be a free sculpture exhibition. I’m not interested in the sculptures but I was interested in the church. And it was great! For such a dark red angular brick church on the outside, it was all lightness and Gothic inside – cream pillars, huge expanses of stained glass, brick vaulted ceilings and every time you thought you’d seen every detail, there was another detail! Is it my favourite thing in Berlin or does Badeschiff still have that? I don’t know.

I strolled the long way round to the opera house where I discovered I was on Unter den Linden, the boulevard that ends at Brandenburg Gate, only I was at the opposite end. Then I think I got the u-bahn to Alexanderplatz. I’m not sure what I thought I wanted there – maybe to look up at the TV tower, maybe to pass Marienkirche, which is supposed to be Gothic but certainly doesn’t look it from the outside. Instead I walked down to the Rotes Rathouse which I also liked (I like red brick apparently) and then accidentally took the long way down to the river. Time for a boat trip.

There are hundreds of boats and companies but they’re basically all the same. I picked one because it was boarding there and then and you could buy tickets as you boarded. It had a retractable roof which covered the front and back of the boat but left the middle empty. There was a big black cloud behind us so I wasn’t surprised when it started threatening to rain but I was impressed by the waiter who pulled the cover over mere seconds before the entire black cloud fell onto Berlin. Five minutes later, the mega rainstorm was over, the sun came out and the roof was retracted again.

We floated five minutes up the river to see old Berlin, turned round and floated the other way to a little past the huge Hbf to turn round and come back again. I had vague hopes of getting into a bit of river that seemed a bit more untamed, like the bit down by Badeschiff where I’d seen plenty of boats yesterday but this was all quite calm river, other than the procession of tour boats. I noticed they all have their length written down the side and the biggest by far was Moby Dick, an actual shark-shaped boat.

I came back via Brandenburg Gate (quieter than yesterday but still surrounded by stuff) and the Memorial to Murdered Jews (interesting in itself but didn’t feel like a memorial; I wondered if there was a significance to the way it’s built that I and Wikipedia were both missing) and then came home because my camera and feet needed recharging.

While back, I checked to see if there were any Berlin essentials I’d missed and came across Liquidrom, a spa that thinks it’s a techno club. That seemed very Berliny so I reserved my space and I’ve written this sitting on its steps waiting for my time.

It was a spa, more or less. There are two pools and four saunas, I think – I didn’t go in the saunas. The main pool is underground, under a concrete dome, lit in shades of blue and green, with projectors splashing coloured light into the water and reflecting it onto the dome. It’s supposed to be a silent sanctuary except the music under the water but there are speakers above the water too and anyway, you can hardly hear anything over the water sloshing over the edge of the pool and into the gutter that runs around it, and the echoes of the splashing. There are hundreds of black and white pool noodles and you lie back in the water and listen to the music. It’s not techno. I don’t know what it is. It’s about as tuneless and pointless as proper spa music but with more saxophones and more bass.

The second pool is a small shallow pool outside in an enclosed garden. This is Germany. The sauna is textile-free and you can choose to be textile-free in the outside pool too, and in the various loungers and sunbeds around the pool and around the bar. Swimwear is required in the main pool, though. Entry to the saunas is €2.50, paid using your electronic wristband and then, yes, textiles off. So I opted not to sauna. Initially, seeing a tiny pool and a dark pool and a lot of nakedness, I thought the two hour slot was going to be more than enough but actually, it turns out I can lie in hot water for two hours very easily. I say “two hour slot”. You pay when you depart and the wristband knows if you’ve overstayed your slot and charges you accordingly, €2.50 for every extra thirty minutes, no fuss.

I stayed within my time, not least because I knew it would take at least half an hour to get home and I have an entire room to pack up ready to be on a train much earlier than intended tomorrow.

Day two: Berlin

It was a fairly grey day when I got up. I had some butter and chocolate yoghurt/pudding things I was hoping to keep cool but the air conditioning had decided at some point overnight that the room was cold enough and stopped (it wasn’t). I’d enjoyed how cold the room was last night but it was warm again this morning. And despite being grey and damp outside, it was also warm. I started with the u-bahn station around the corner to get a 24-hour transport ticket but the machine was out of order. Fine, I’ll do it online. But it wouldn’t work. Oh, that was frustrating. Eventually, I had to give up and walk in the direction of Friedrichstrasse. Down the road, I found another u-bahn station and that did have a working ticket machine. I validated it there and then, even though I’d had no intention of getting on the train by then, but since it was validated and my 24 hours had started so I thought I might as well use it.

Once I’d done my important shopping at Friedrichstrasse, I headed for Brandenburg Gate. There was a lot of very loud music from a big stage immediately behind it and lots festival stuff in front of it – fences, portacabins, generators, toilets etc. I managed to get through down the side but you couldn’t see it any better from the front. The festival was fenced off and evidently hadn’t started yet. I finally figured out what was going on from the little pink tents nearby for media and photos – this is Berlin Pride and it was today. So a glimse of Brandenburg Gate and then over to the Reichstag Building. Now, this was a bit unexpected. You always see the big glass dome but it’s actually surprisingly hard to see it – there isn’t a good angle from nearby and I haven’t found one a bit further away either yet. I might have quite liked to go up there but I didn’t fancy queuing in that heat, going through security in the heat or climbing a glass dome in the heat. It was hot.

I’d seen a u-bahn stop for Checkpoint Charlie while I was failing to buy a ticket so I took a couple of trains and found myself just round down the road. There are a lot of tourists taking grinning photos at the checkpoint and utterly oblivious to the fact that this is still a functioning city road. By now I was hot and thirsty and my bag, frustratingly, had split open along the top seam. This yellow bag has been an endless problem. It’s basically the same pattern as my green and orange travel bag but the green bag is in great condition, despite much heavier use than the yellow one. So I needed a needle and some thread and luckily there was the sort of shop that might sell such things right outside the station.

By the time I got back to my local station, it was pouring with rain. I scurried to the nearby Rewe for some fresh bread for lunch and then scurried home holding my bag together. I ate fresh bread and cheese and then sat and sewed my bag back together.

Because it was so hot, I decided there and then to go to the outdoor pool on the river so I booked my ticket and then decided to spend the afternoon having another go at Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag Building because they hadn’t captured my imagination in the morning. They still didn’t. But now Pride was started. I wasn’t surprised because I’d seen a lot of people on the tram and on the streets wearing rainbows, sequins, leather shorts and crop tops, so I strolled in. Nope, still can’t see Brandenburg Gate properly, but I quite enjoyed singing Queen, Abba and Atomic Kitten on my way down the road. Then back to the u-bahn and I headed for the pool. It was early but it was hot and Berlin was busy. The u-bahn was spectacularly busy. I’ve never been on a train where I’m literally squished between people so tightly that I can’t fall over even when people stand on my toes. I eventually concluded they were heading for the start of the Pride parade – having seen the kiosks and the street party, I’d decided there wasn’t any parade in Berlin but there was. Not that it makes sense to take the route they all appeared to be taking but they were clearly all going somewhere together.

After the chaotic u-bahn, I got on a bus because it was easier than walking a couple of hundred metres to the pool. It’s outside of the touristy part of Berlin and in a part that’s more what I expect from the non-touristy parts – the sort of Berlin that’s got loud techno music and warehouses and everyone’s dressed all in black. That sort of Berlin. The pool is sandwiched between two warehouses and uses part of one of them for its toilets. The changing rooms are four tiny cubicles up against the opposite wall and three blocks of tiny lockers. But I was early and the ticket is as much for access to the pool area as the pool itself. When I said “Oh, I thought there was a bar and I could sit and have a drink before it was time to go in” they let me in cheerfully enough provided I went to the bar. So I did. I was thirsty. It’s hot and I’d just been squished into a u-bahn train with at least a million too many people for its capacity.

Badeschiff itself is a swimming pool set in an old barge, floating in the river. The river itself is too polluted to swim in so they put in this pool, partly as an art installation and now it’s a favourite summer cooling-off spot. It’s got sand, so the bit I could see from the top, from my seat underneath a little balcony, was a beach club. Sand, a bar sheltered under the end of the warehouse, deckchairs and I could see a hint of bright blue over by the river. When the time came, I changed, stowed my stuff in a locker – I’d done the reading and knew to bring my padlock with me – and then went down to the pool. There’s an entire deck just covered with deckchairs down by the river and then a little jetty overhanging the pool. A sign said 24 degrees. Coldest 24 degrees I’ve ever come across. There are two ladders down to the water, where the top step overhangs slightly and between the overhang and my sunglasses, I couldn’t quite figure out where the water actually was. It looked a long way down. And it was cold! I managed to get down to the penultimate rung but I couldn’t just let go and land in the water. Instead I grabbed the side of the jetty and managed to swing myself round and down onto the ledge that runs around the pool. The pool is 2m deep but it has a good ledge on the long edges and a huge edge on the short edges. You can quite comfortably just sit there enjoying the sun, although if you sit on the edge of the barge, the lifeguard will object.

After five minutes, it stopped feeling so cold so I shuffled along to the big ledge at the end and perched there with my legs dangling into the depths and after another five minutes, I began to feel like I could maybe swim. So I slithered in and managed to make my way to the other end. It was cold but the more I swam, the less I felt it. In fact, eventually it began to feel quite comfortable. I would swim ten lengths. Then I’d actually been for a swim. Make it twenty. I had a vague memory of seeing that the pool was 33 point something metres long and so I sat in the shallows at the end and did some mental maths. A standard 25m swimming pool takes 40 lengths to reach a kilometre. How many in a 33.xxm pool? Call it 33. In fact, 32 is an easier number to maths with and whatever answer I came up with, I’d probably be doing more anyway. Ok, well, 10 lengths is 320m. 20 lengths is therefore 640m and 30 lengths is 960m. Only another 40m to that kilometre, so that’s a little over one length. There and back again, that would make up that 40m with metres to spare. 32 lengths to a kilometre. And so that’s what I did. And when I’d done it, I had a go at the maths for a mile. I can’t remember how many metres to a mile but if there’s 62 miles to 100km and I’d done 32 lengths… my maths ran out but I thought I needed another 15-20 lengths to get to the mile. My phone says I needed 51 lengths, so that’s another 19. I’ll bear it in mind in case I go again tomorrow.

I had a choice of ways home. I took the bus back to the u-bahn and decided the easiest way was to go to the end of the line at Warsaw Station, up to Friedrichstrasse and then two stops home. Scuppered, of course, by the entire s-bahn through the city centre being closed. By the time I was cursing Alexanderplatz, I could have been home if I’d gone much the same route I’d arrived. But I had a go on the tram eventually and got home feeling a little less refreshed than I’d been immediately after my swim.

So that’s my day. Not hugely excited by the proper Berlin tourist must-dos but I did enjoy my swim, even if my initial response to the water was “I’ve been waiting here over an hour and now it’s too cold to even get in??”. Definitely add Badeschiff to your summer Berlin must-do list.

Day one – London to Berlin by train in a day

It all started well enough. It turns out when they say to arrive at the Eurostar 90 minutes before departure, they mean it – I wanted to make sure I had time but no, check in doesn’t open for the 07:04 until 05:30, which at least gave me time to grab a baguette. Then they don’t tell you which platform until 20 minutes before – great fun when the 07:01 to Paris was going from platform 9 and the 07:04 to Brussels from platform 10, which meant every passenger in the entire station going up the same escalator.

The Eurostar was uneventful. Nice and smooth, nice big comfortable seats, my neighbour claimed to be confused about which seat was which, with the result that she was in my aisle seat when I arrived and quite happy for me to sit in the window seat. However, when we arrived at Lille, the people behind us departed, so I moved to the pair of empty seats where I could get my main bag down and get out my portable charger, which I had very wisely packed in the bag I was going to have relatively limited access to.

But we arrived in Brussels 11 minutes late, which didn’t give me time to get to the Cologne train. It was delayed by 99 minutes – good! Well, probably bad later on, but good for this connection. I had time to go back downstairs and get some food! Some cheese slices to go with that bread! It was only when I was sitting at the platform again, thinking happily that I had over an hour to sit and wait that I realised the train was due about 11am and it was 10.40. That wasn’t an hour and a half.

No. I was supposed to be on the on-time 10:25, not the delayed 09:25! Looking at the photo I’d quickly taken of the departure board, my train had been on its platform at the time I’d sprinted upstairs. Ok, well, I could still get on this train. I probably just needed a new ticket. Where are the ticket machines? Oh, online! Except it wouldn’t sell me a ticket because according to the system, the train had already departed. I rolled my eyes and looked at later trains. €210 for the next train, €178 for the one after. Well, that was annoying. So I went off to find a ticket machine. Berlin wasn’t under either trains or international trains, so I went to the office, who sent me to the international ticket enquiries, who heard my simplified story – missed the train, can I use this ticket on later ones? – asked why I was late in a tone that made me feel like a naughty passenger and on hearing it was Eurostar’s fault, sent me to the Eurostar desk to get a bit of paper that said it was their fault which would allow me to take any later train.

At this point, the delayed 09:25 was above my head, at its platform. But there is extra security on international trains. I’d already been through twice, trying to get to Cologne and now I had a chance of getting on a train and getting to Berlin before midnight! But this time they diverted me to security to put my stuff through the slowest metal detector.

I ran upstairs, pile of paper in hand, watch and bracelet in the other, clinging ato a large bottle of Coke and my hand luggage to see that the train was still there! I threw myself through the first door and then stood there, dazed and sweaty. First things first, put the watch and bracelet back on, put the paper away, get my breath back, look for a seat. And I found one! Two empty seats next to a table, facing backwards! And there was space in the rack not too far away for my luggage! I was on the train!

After all that, I was only about 45 minutes later, and technically an hour early, because I was on the 09:25 train instead of the 10:25 train and without paying a penny extra! I’m still holding my breath that I don’t get my ticket checked, though, because I’m not 1000% sure that “get on any later train” includes any earlier train. Or indeed, whether I’m supposed to be on the ex-Thalys Eurostar rather than the next ICE train.

Now, if you depart Brussels about 11.10 and it takes about two hours, what train might I be able to get to Berlin and what time might I arrive?

Once I was settled on the train, had eaten some bread and cheese, written all this, I opened a new browser window which gives me a little selection of news headlines, some relevant to my interests, many not. And at the top was major acts of sabotage across France. Now the vague announcements I wasn’t paying too much attention to at Brussels made sense! This train was delayed 100 minutes because someone’s gone out and destroyed three major rail lines across France! The reason my intended train wasn’t delayed was that it wasn’t coming from France. The reason Eurostar staff are handing out proof of delay without any checks whatsoever is because they know what kind of chaos they’re dealing with. Headlines say major chaos at St Pancras too, long queues, delays, some trains cancelled. It feels like I was only there five minutes ago but there was no sign of it at 5am. Still clock-watching, still no real idea what time we should be expecting to arrive at Cologne but will be much more comfortable when I’m off this train without having my ticket checked, despite the fact that I have a seat, a table and an empty seat next to me.

I made it to Cologne in one piece, and in time for the 13:48. After the chaos at Brussels, I was quite impressed to be only 63 minutes late and to not have to pay an extra penny. I even had time at Cologne to rush outside to take a quick picture of the cathedral. The Berlin train is huge and I suspect it’ll fill up a bit along the way but for now I’ve got my own double seat – strategically chosen to be the last to be filled. For one, I’m in the penultimate coach and for another, I’m at a seat without a table, facing backwards. People want tables and if they can’t get tables, they’ll face forward. Good view of the cathedral as we departed. And now to settle in for four long hours.

I kept my pair of seats to myself the whole way but the train was just hot enough and last night was disturbed enough that I kept falling asleep. 22 minutes to Bielefeld. Can you stay awake for 22 minutes? You don’t want to miss your first sighting of a place that doesn’t exist. And I managed!

We got into Berlin just about on time, although our ETA had been 5-20 minutes late all the way. Made it up somewhere. Then I had to get off the platform, figure out which square to start my walk to the hotel from and walk 10-15 minutes down the road.

There’s air conditioning! The table doesn’t squeal! The bed doesn’t curl upwards at the end! I have my own bathroom! Compared to the room over the pub opposite Euston last night, I’m in a palace! I ran back down the road to a supermarket so I now have food for the next couple of days and that’s plenty for today.

Dubrovnik: Saturday

No point in writing about Friday. I got to the airport via a big traffic jam – parking was before the worst of the jam but the airport bus wasn’t. Security was pretty painless and quicker than it looked from the jumble of people crammed in. The plane was delayed – flight information was pushed back about 20 minutes and when it was finally announced, it turned out the gate with a few empty seats where I’d spent those 20 minutes was the actual correct gate. We took a bus out to the plane and then had to wait on the bus for at least another ten minutes, staring at the plane in front of us that we weren’t allowed to get on. The flight was fine. I spotted Dubrovnik from the air – it’s actually surprisingly small.

The flight landed about half an hour late. All fine. It seems to be a pretty quiet airport, at least by evening. The official shuttle bus runs half an hour after each arrival – each scheduled arrival, it seems. We’d missed the bus for our arrival but the Munich flight was also delayed and so we got their official shuttle bus, all seven of us. Everyone else went off with cars or tour groups. It’s quite a long way from the airport to the town via what I suspect are some quite spectacular views if it’s not 10.30 at night and absolutely pitch black. Getting from the main road down to Dubrovnik old town is a bit of a mission, especially in a coach – those streets were not designed for coaches! Then up we went, back onto the coast road and down to the port. It was a 12-minute walk from the main bus station to my apartment, all uphill and I did start to wish I’d taken the private shuttle. Then I couldn’t get in. I’d picked it specifically because it has 24 hour reception but the door was shut and there wasn’t even any sign to say for sure that it was the right door. So I phoned them and Irina came down five minutes later to show me the way in via the garage. By this time, it was gone 11pm so I had a quick look around the apartment and went to bed. Had to be up early in the morning.

On Saturday morning, I had to be at the port for 9.30 for a day’s sea kayaking. That’s why I chose to stay here rather than in actual Dubrovnik. I didn’t want to be messing around figuring out buses at the crack of dawn on my first day with a strict deadline. But you can’t go kayaking all day on an empty stomach, so having arrived at gone 11pm, I had an alarm set for 8am so I could hop up to the next level to the nearest supermarket for bread and juice. This city – or at least this part of it – is all built on the side of a mountain, so everything is on “levels” and there are either steps between them or steep hills. In this case, it was steps. I got my bread and juice, had toast for breakfast, and hopped two levels down to the port. This was where I had my first real problem of the day. I would meet my guide “at the port”. Where at the port? It’s a pretty big place. I looked around for anyone in uniform but where were they likely to be? Where might they be expecting people to arrive? I lurked around the ticket kiosk and eventually decided the best thing would be to lurk by the boat. I’d looked at the boat info. I knew what boat it was and I could see it and surely I couldn’t miss the guide here. But by 9.45, just 15 minutes before the boat was due to depart, I was starting to panic. I got out my phone and was just starting to WhatsApp the company when I spotted two young men carrying two-part paddles which they put on the front of the boat. I stared. And then they stared back! This was my guide! I still don’t know exactly where he’d been waiting for me but I was found!

It was an hour’s ferry to Lopud, where we were starting our adventure and the ferry alone was worth the price of admission. The Adriatic is an amazing colour – bright turquoise in the shallows, deepening to teal and then to navy, and there are little rocky mini-mountainous islands poking out. We were actually only going two islands up and right up until we rounded the corner of Lopud’s harbour, we could still see the big bridge at the far end of the port that I can see from my apartment. We walked along the front to a kind of walled garden next to a church – was this once the graveyard? – and that was our base where we collected kayaks, got changed, put on spraydecks and buoyancy aids and then went across to the beach. We were actually two groups – the other group were kayaking and cycling but we were just kayaking. We went briefly through safety – not in the order I’d do it. I’d do “this is how to pop your spraydeck if you find yourself upside down under water” before “if you capsize, just hang on and I’ll sort you out”. The rest of the group were a family with two boys of roughly Guide age so they had two double kayaks, one parent and one child in each. I adjusted my footrests easily enough once I’d figured out how they move but the others struggled because there just isn’t room for a fully-grown man’s legs in the back seat of a double kayak and it didn’t seem possibly to extend the footrests enough with putting them halfway through the front seat. But eventually we got sorted out and headed straight into the harbour and across to Sipan, the next island. I’d measured this and from our beach to the little headland on the left-hand side is about a mile and a half. My legs went completely numb several times. They often do in a kayak. We had to dodge a lot of boats and bounced over some waves that would have terrified me just a couple of years ago – well, maybe three years ago.

Our first stop on Sipan was an arch which our guide – I never got his name! – assured us was absolutely safe and wouldn’t fall down on us. No, it probably wouldn’t but you never know, and I’m not trusting the geological opinions of someone who not only doesn’t know what kind of rock it is but has apparently never even considered that that’s a thing to know. Next we paddled back along the shore of Sipan, with Lopud looking across at us as if it wasn’t a mile and a half, and down to a cave. Here, we tied up the kayaks and jumped in the water. I wasn’t expecting this. They’d said swimming and snorkelling but I thought we’d land somewhere on a beach or shore and have a hour or two of free time, not “right, paddle up to me, jump out, swim away”. I opted to keep my buoyancy aid on which was a good idea because even in blazing hot sun, even the Med is cold enough to give me cold water shock at first. Once I could breathe properly, I began to realise that the buoyancy aid was making it really hard to swim so I took it off and actually, I worried for a minute that I wasn’t going to be able to stay afloat without it. I can swim. I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t swim. And apart from the few times I’ve capsized, either deliberately or because I’ve leaned away from waves and helped them tip me over, I’ve never been in the water with a buoyancy aid since I was a very small child with the otter suit. I declined to go into the cave, though. The entrance is basically a wild open version of Swildon’s sump 1 – a very short section of cave where you have to stick your head under water. I’ll bob in the cave entrance and assume it’s not going to fall on me but I don’t do sumps and if there’s one thing my caver brain has held onto for a very long time, it’s “cave diving is the most dangerous sport in the world”.

We got back in the kayaks somehow, minus the spraydecks, and paddled round the next headland to the little town of Sudurud where we had a reservation at a small fish restaurant overlooking the jetty. The adults had squid or tuna steak, the kids had spaghetti and grilled chicken escalope and I had bread and butter. More importantly, we had drinks. Our guide had suggested putting our bottles under the decklines where we could reach them during the paddle rather than sealing them in dry bags in the hatches but what that meant was that I ended up with warm pineapple tea rather than the juice by the time we reached Sipan. Fresh cold Fanta was wonderful.

By now the day was getting on. It was about 3.30 by the time we left the restaurant and we had to be back on Lopud to catch the 18.10 ferry. So we paddled across to Ruda, a small uninhabited island (mini mountain) just across from Sipan, paddled into a large sea cave with a huge hole in its roof, and then straight back across to Lopud. The weather was deteriorating by now. The channel betweeen Lopud and Sipan tends to be choppy but the wind was picking up and it remained choppy all the way in to the beach. It was a bit of a struggle. I didn’t see it myself but apparently our guide towed one of the doubles back the last bit. I knew they’d fallen behind and I knew towing was a possibility but every time I looked back, they weren’t being towed so I have no idea when it happened, especially as our guide was also towing an empty kayak from the cycling group. No idea what happened there either. We came across their guide trying to tie up three empty kayaks on a beach on Sipan, so ours helped out by taking one of us them with us. Where did the people go? We saw them coming back later, when we were all on Lopud, and they were carrying their kayaks into the base, so there goes my working theory that they took the boat home directly from Sipan.

Anyway, we got back with an hour to spare, and that was after we’d brought the boats in and got dressed. I went and got another cold drink and some chocolate and sat on a bench to do nothing in particular. By the time we got on the ferry, it was cold and windy and I began to wish I’d brough my hoodie with me after all. It had seemed unimaginable that I could want it when I set out in the morning and I hadn’t wanted it at 11pm the night before. But actually, the wind was blowing across from the Elafite Islands and as soon as the ferry turned parallel to the coast, the wind dropped and it was quite pleasant.

I made a stop at the big supermarket on the port (where I had to leave my backpack in the lockers!) because everything is closed in Dubrovnik on Sundays. Need enough food to get through to Monday. Then I came home, ate toast, had a bath and went to bed. At 11pm almost on the dot, a massive thunderstorm started. One rumble was so loud it had to be directly overhead but the next rumble turned into an enormous bang. The building had to be hit. Some building had to be hit, anyway. I went out on the balcony and looked but there was no sign of anything. I can only assume maybe someone was so startled by either the thunder or the lightning that they crashed their car into something? But I saw no sign of that either. Both BBC Weather and the Met Office were predicting at least 24 hours of thunder and lightning by that point and one of them was saying it would go on until at least Friday but this morning, it’s back to just rain and cloud and actually, although the sky is fairly white rather than blue today, it seems nice enough. Which is why I’m still sitting inside with all the doors and shutters open appreciating a cold breeze. I’m being lazy today. It’s been a long and busy couple of days and I’m on holiday.

Georgia day 9: conference day 2

Today is my last full day in Tbilisi and I have a suspicion I’m going to want to come back. I’ve done a lot, including quite a lot I wouldn’t or couldn’t have done on my own but there’s also quite a bit I haven’t done – the balloon, a boat trip, Narikala Fortress and anything outside of Old Town.

Anyway. Conference today started with a networking breakfast, which meant those few people who were capable of being up before 10am sitting awkwardly around eating croissants and some mysterious pastry with something mysterious on top. Session one was Travel Writing Masterclass which was more about pitching to publications and research trips. Session two was SEO – getting Google to notice the things you write, and that mostly went some way over my head. Session three was pretty much how to take photos and videos of yourself. I dithered over session four – do I do the SEO Q&A (nope, not after the morning SEO session), the practical solo photo-taking (… maybe not?) or the “What next?” about how to turn the ideas from the weekend into reality (that’s the one I went for). I had lunch in the upstairs restaurant, got some bread, requested some butter and ran outside to take a few photos of the view.

The day finished with two panels – the first on monetisation, which was mostly about putting accommodation affiliate links in the description box of your YouTube videos and the second was on creativity, which was a YouTuber and a TikToker talking about what you do when things go wrong or right, how you film things while also enjoying the trip and so on.

Then I came home, declining the gala dinner and big finish in favour of going to the sulphur bath. No 5 had a room for one at 9.30 so I paid my deposit, came home, ate some bread & cheese and packed. In half an hour or so, I’ll get up and go back down to town.

I was in room 4 and it had its good points and its bad ones. The bad ones were the squat toilet, the high edge of the bath, the heat of the bath and the atmosphere of being in a run-down school toilet. On the other hand, it was 70 GEL instead of 100/110, it had spectacular ceiings in both the changing room and the bath room, there was easily double the space there was in Chreli Abano, the lighting was bright – maybe over-bright – and the domed ceilings let in some fresh air – which meant they also let in traffic noise. I think of the three, I like the Royal Baths the best.

I came home just in time to catch the nightly fireworks at Narikala – I’ve heard them but never yet got up and gone to see. Probably a good thing, since my room doesn’t face Narikala. Tbilisi by night is pretty.

Georgia day 8: conference day 1

And today we come to the bit I’ve been very vague about since September. I am at a conference for people who do travel-related things. The people I’ve met today and the people who’ve been on the trips and tours all week are travel writers, photographers, film-makers, bloggers, YouTubers, Instagrammers, TikTokers and any other platform you can think to put something travel-related. All the tours have been included in the price of the conference ticket – that’s the trip out to the Chronicles on Tuesday, the Old Town tour, wine-tasting and lunch and the viewpoint tour on Wednesday, the enamel workshop, visit to the IDP village and lunch on Thursday and the cave town tour yesterday, plus all the drinks and meals I’ve skipped, plus two days of conference plus lunch and snacks and drinks over the weekend. A surprisingly affordable way to see a lot of Georgia! And what with writing it up here every day, I’m pretty confident I’m the first blogger to be producing blog content!

Today there were four sets of four sessions. I opted for the travel writing one in the morning, the Power of Narrative, constantly interrupted by an older gentleman who shares his name with a big fluffy naughty cat who seems to be a newspaper journalist, who kept pointing out far too loudly “We’re not fiction writers! We don’t know about things like the three act structure!”. A) Speak for yourself. I’m terrible at writing fiction but I’ve had a go and I know plenty of the mechanics and plenty of the theory B) can you really not see that/how narrative structure works in non-fiction? C) Will you listen to Alex and stop assuming you know better?

Before lunch and after lunch were two sessions on editing travel videos. I’ve been filming snippets of my trips since about 2013 but filming enough to put together and actually putting them together are two things I haven’t really mastered. Lunch was in either the upstairs restaurant or the downstairs one and took the form of a Georgian buffet – less pressure to eat all the things but also no cheese-stuffed khachapuri today! I had plain bread but I decided to be a grown-up and ask for butter and some was produced! So it was bread and water but at least it was bread and butter.

The last session of the day wasn’t a particularly good choice for my particular interests and the one I ended up going along to was “being a presenter”. If I’m going to stitch together my snippets, I may as well get some tips on how to explain to the camera what it’s seeing. I’ve never been a big fan of talking to machines, not since Alain Kamber typed, letter by letter “il faut un accent” during a language lab session back in 2005.

And that was it for the day. Actually, it wasn’t. At lunchtime, two of the staff came rushing over in great excitement because the finished enamel had been delivered and they wanted to see everyone’s reaction to opening the little bags and seeing our finished work. There were only ten of us but I was slightly amazed that armed with a name tag and an enamel pendant, they seemed to go to the right people without having to ask what our names were. That’s been a theme of the week. We’ve seen the same faces over and over again but no one can keep track of the corresponding names. Anyway, since I last saw this pendant, it’s been baked a few times, a few more layers of colour put in and it’s been polished and you just wouldn’t know that a couple of days ago, we were painting fine glass powder into raised outlines because they’re absolutely smooth and slightly domed and very beautiful. “Look what we made!” we all exclaimed but we have to admit, Ikorta did far more work on them than we did.

The big party is tonight but it’s been an intense week with lots of early mornings and long days and lots of food and wine and I’m staying in tonight. Straight home at 5.30 (well, got on the metro in the wrong direction because I wasn’t paying attention), got some more juice and I’m not even going for a sulphur bath tonight. Conference day 2 tomorrow, then the long ride home on Monday.

Georgia day 7: Uplistsikhe and the by-now-somewhat-expected lunch

Today was the longer trips out of town day. Ours was the closest, just an hour and a half away at Uplistsikhe, the Lord’s Fortress, a cave city dating back to the 4th century BC. From our point of view, we thought it seemed quite isolated but that’s because we know there’s a main road just a couple of kilometers away and a capital city of 1.3m people an hour and a half away but 2400 years ago, this would have been the big city.

Begin at the beginning. The other tours left at 9am and ours went at 10am. We had the tour guide Lela from Tuesday and there were two other people from the enamel tour yesterday plus a good handful of people I’ve either seen around or have been on other trips. We were in the small coach. When I arrived, there was a minibus and that seemed far too small to transport 25 people an hour and a half and back but luckily, that was unrelated and our coach turned up. We went up the main road, past Tserovani (and the big Carrefour and the Coca-Cola Georgia bottling factory) and then out to Gori, birthplace of Stalin. Should there be a museum about him? We discussed it, our guide discussed it and apparently the people of Gori in particular discuss it. I’ve been told “Did you know Stalin was born in Georgia? We are not proud” but the people of Gori have a slightly more complex relationship, given that he’s – in the words of my guidebook – “simply the only important thing to ever come out of Gori”.

Across the river, past the cows being watered in the shallows, round the bend and there we were at Uplistsikhe where Lela herded us and local guide Tamar explained what we were actually seeing. Uplistsikhe is long abandoned but it’s had two major periods. The first was in the few centuries BC. The guidebook says it was a religious centre by 1000BC but that seems a very long time ago. Second was in the medieval period before being largely destroyed in the 13th century. It’s carved out of sandstone and there are rooms and “hooks” and shelves and jails and wine cellars and drainage channels and fireplaces and all sorts still visible. Many of them have lost their roofs, either through age or through earthquakes or through using wooden beams to hold up stone second-storeys. Entrance is via far too many steps and then there’s plenty to scramble on, views across mountains and plains and rivers. Some of it was patched up by the Soviets, so there’s the occasional incongruent concrete pillar holding up the mouth of a stone cave and perched on the top is an ordinary brick-and-stone from somewhere around the 9th or 10th century. I’m astonished at places like Winchester Cathedral, built in the 1070s and even more when I find an actual Saxon church but here it’s quite normal to see a church built in the 4th or 6th century. Some of them have had a certain amount of renovation over the last 1500 years, new belfries or frescos or whatever but it’s kind of unimaginable that somethng that old is just part of normal life here.

We exited via a secret tunnel – higher but also shorter than we expected and with stairs running through it. I daresay it was carved by hand just like everything else but it really looks like it it was formed by swirling floodwaters. Very exciting finish!

Now, we knew a lunch was coming. Lela had mentioned the lunch and besides, by this point, we’d learned to pretty much expect it. I’d looked at the map and decided it would either be in Gori – that would make a certain amount of sense – or back in the same restaurant in Mtskheta as yesterday. I watched the blue dot as the bus left Uplistsikhe. I watched it take the road south of the river. I watched it bypass Gori. I watched Mstkheta get closer. I watched us leave the road and cross the river towards Mtskheta. We were dropped off in the same place. We walked down the same road, took the same turning. Yep, same restaurant. This time, because we were 25 instead of 10, we were seated at three or four smaller tables and instead of having two of every dish, each table only had one. It was still too much to finish but it was less overwhelming somehow, half the food split between six instead of double the food split between 11, even though that’s pretty much the same amount of food. I was quite pleased – the bread came out first and although it took a moment, the cheese-stuffed khachapuri appeared fairly quickly and with no toasting or explanations or everyone diving in to take photos and videos first, it was still hot and melty when it reached my plate.

It was much more efficient than yesterday. Some people ran out to see the cathedral, a few of us went down to the river (and then panicked when we realised the restaurant was empty – back up on the main street, we discovered the rest were only a couple of hundred yards ahead) and then it was straight back to Tbilisi. I’d checked the itinerary before we set out. 10-3 yesterday had become 10-4 by this morning and we actually got back at 5:45, which by the standards of the week was practically bang on time.

There were Friday night drinks across the river from Rose Revolution Square but I decided I’d rather come home, drink some pineapple juice, have a couple of squares of chocolate and go and have another sulphur bath. I wanted to try No 5 Bathhouse but they didn’t have a room until 11pm, which is a bit too late. Gulo’s had a room but it was 180 GEL (~£54) which was a bit too much. Chreli Abano is nice and is the popular one but I think the Royal Bathhouse was better value so that was my first stop after that. Yes, they had a room! It would be an hour. Actually, it would be 50 minutes. It was ten past eight and I was given a receipt for my 50 GEL deposit saying 9pm. What to do for 50 minutes in the Old Town? I know for many people the obvious answer would be a bar or cafe. Not me. Was it worth going home? No. Not walking up that hill twice in one evening. Sit in the waiting room? Ah ha! Go up the cable car! I still had my Metro Money card in my pocket so I paid the princely sum of 5 GEL (£1.49) for a return ticket. I’d already been up once in daylight but it’s definitely worth going up in the dark. I stayed long enough to see the Mother of Georgia statue (to be honest, best not viewed from directly underneath) and to take some selfies with the view. There are lots of little market and souvenir stalls along the path and they have some incredible lighting. You can take a selfie with proper good lighting and also the lit-up city behind and… actually, the effect is that you’ve photoshopped yourself in. I had to take some more further down where I was more silhouetted just because they looked more real. Then back down the cable car where I discovered it was 8:43. I’ve still not really got the hang of Georgian Maybe Time. They absolutely won’t be expecting me at 9 on the dot (they weren’t) but if I get there late, they might decide I’m not coming and give my room to someone else! And there are two major road crossings between the cable car and the bathhouse door. I had to get across Europe Square, which is actually a roundabout, and then across Vakhtang Gorgasili Square, which is actually four lanes of traffic with no lanes drawn on the cobbles. I got there in plenty of time. Even with the roads, it’s only 530 metres and I managed it in seven minutes.

It was the same room as yesterday and the same… I don’t know what the word is for the lady who’s on reception and shows you to your room and hammers on the door if you stay too long and shouts “Lady! Please!” when she wants you to follow her but I think of provodnitsa which is the lady on the Trans-Siberian who does much the same job. I thought I was wearing quite a distinctive hat but she clearly gets through a lot of people in 24 hours because once she’d showed me to the same room, she asked if I’d been before. Yes, this time yesterday. Dial 0 if there’s a problem. Lock the door. Check your watch. Jump in the hot water.

I want one of these in my house. This particular pool is about the size of a double bed and deep enough to stand up in and a really pleasant warmth. Yesterday I spent a lot of time gazing at the tiles on the floor and the side of the massage slab and took photos before I left. I know mosaic tiles are expensive but I could buy plain white ones and paint these patterns on them, couldn’t I?

It was 10pm by the time I was finished, the latest I’ve been out all week. It’s 11 minutes and a 27m climb back up the hotel, where I washed the sulphur out of my hair (there’s a shower in the sulphur room but you don’t want to waste your precious hour) and now I’ve written this, it’s bedtime.

Georgia day 6: enamel masterclass and an unexpected lunch

Yesterday, the unexpected wine tasting, lunch and the fact that the tour overran by several hours was a novelty which we all gossiped about. “Were you on the Old Town tour? What time did it finish?” “My tour didn’t finish until 7.30 and it included everything!”. Today this has all become established fact.

We started for the enamel masterclass a little after 10. We assumed it would be in town. I thought maybe it would be in the shop & workshop in the Old Town which we invaded yesterday but we headed north – and kept going. In fact, we went to Tserovani, half an hour outside the city. Google Maps labels this place a refugee camp. Guide Anna calls it an IDP village, internally displaced people. It was built following the Russian invasion of the region now called South Ossetia for the people displaced by the war. There are 2002 houses, 9000 residents, a school for 1100 children, a kindergarten for 250 small kids and a row of shops, pharmacies, banks, hairdressers and whatever 9000 people need for daily life. Every house started off exactly the same, from the floor plan to the cutlery but once people realised this wasn’t a temporary shelter for a few weeks, they began customising. Many houses now have extensions, gardens, garages, even the occasional second storey.

The studio trains and employs women around the village and also raises funds by selling the enamel jewellery, which is a traditional Georgian craft, lost for hundreds of years and now re-discovered and being revived. Doing it properly means spending four or five days cutting and soldering silver wire to make the frames, filling it in with glass powder, baking it and adding more powder, two or three or occasionally even six layers deep until the glass fills the frames, then it’s polished and finally it’s finished. We didn’t have time for that. We picked pre-made frames and just filled them with the first layer of colour. Over the next few days, the studio will do the extra layers and the polishing and deliver them to the hotel in Tbilisi on Sunday. We’re all very excited about that.

Enamel is fiddly. The spaces to be filled look a lot smaller once you’ve got the finest paintbrush in the world on there. Not that you’re painting. You’re just using the brush to dab the powder into place, without getting any of it in any of the other sections. If you do, you scoop it out with your brush and some clean water and replace it. Most of the white powders are actually reds and oranges, so there was a lot of “Is this white?” being asked around the table.

When we were finished, they all had their first bake so we could gather round and see how they looked. At first glance, while still hot, there’s a lot of dark blue and dark orange and you think that it’s all gone horribly wrong, but it cools quickly and the true colours start to come through. They’re all very pretty! While we were waiting, most of us had a look in the cabinet and ended up buying a piece. I went for a ring with pomegranates on. There are pomegranates everywhere in Georgia. On the streets, you’ll see piles of oranges and pomegranates waiting to be juiced or turned ito glintwein, which I gather is just Georgian for hot mulled wine.

By now it was gone 1 – the time we were supposed to be finished – and we still had a short walk around the village to come. Some people had a cookery class at 2. We said if we left by 1.15, we can still be back by two – at which point the guide put in “But there’s a lunch in Mtskheta. We can make it a quick lunch?”

It was not a quick lunch. It was a banquet. At least two of the other tours were also in the restaurant – which meant everyone was missing the cookery class if they’d had a tour in the morning – and it went on forever. Every time we thought we’d finished, another dish came out. I ate a slice of what I assume is cheese-stuffed khachapuri. It’s usually boat-shaped bread, filled with cheese and an egg on top and this looked very much like a pizza, only with the cheese inside the bread but I’m reasonably sure it was a Georgian dish and looking at the menu, cheese-stuffed khachapuri is the only one that seems to match what I ate. We also had two bottles of amber wine which is actually not much between 11 people, even if one isn’t drinking it. Since we’d absolutely missed the cookery class by then, we went for a tour of Mtskheta, where there’s Georgia’s oldest church. Well. It dates back to about the fourth century, or at least, a wooden basilica does. This building is much younger – built between 1010 and 1029, so during the reigns of Aethelred the Unready and Cnut the Great. It’s had some work done over the centuries. We had to cover our heads and put on tied wrap-around skirts. You’re not really supposed to take photos inside but the guide whispered that it’s ok as long as you’re discreet and don’t get in anyone’s way. This is where the royal families of Georgia were buried up until the monarchy was cancelled by Russia.

Then, at last, it was back to Tbilisi, arriving at the Big Bicycle at 5:22, nearly four and a half hours later than planned. Tomorrow’s tour is supposed to be 10-3. We reckon we’ll be back between 8 and 9. Right now I’m writing this up and charging my phone and having a snack. There may have been enough food to feed 30 (nothing gets binned in Georgia; if no one else will eat it, the street dogs will have an evening to remember tonight in Mstkheta) but I needed a little something by the time we got back. Plan for the rest of the evening: walk down to Abanotubani and see if the Royal Bathhouse has a room for 1 this evening. Book for Saturday if not and then try my luck at No 5 Bathhouse. I could do with a nice sulphur bath – not necessarily the accompanying traditional scrub – after the last couple of days.

I walked down to the bath area and was in luck – Royal Bathhouse had a room available in ten minutes, or however long it took to finish cleaning it. Now, it was 110 GEL whereas the one at Chreli Abano was 100 GEL. I declined a scrub (30 GEL here compared to Chreli Abano’s 20 GEL) but it was a much bigger room with a bigger and deeper pool and a large changing area with sofas and table. It was a little better-lit and the tiles were definitely prettier. Overall, I think it’s worth the extra 10 GEL, if you’re ever in the area. Walking back was quite good fun. Tbilisi is pretty by night. Apparently Georgia has abundant water-powered energy and so they put lights on everything and leave them on all night. The cable car has coloured lights on the bottom, the Peace Bridge gently pulses shades of blue, the fortress is illuminated, the TV tower glows purple, the restaurant and funicular are lit up and it’s all very beautiful. I came back, had some bread and butter and I think that’s about it for today.