Category Archives: western europe

Iceland day 4(?): to Grettislaug

I can already hardly remember what I did today. I started at Hverir, the campsite on the tomato farm with the greenhouse-common room and the polytunnel tent shelter. I knew I wanted to wend my way north, to arrive in Akureyri either Wednesday evening or sometime on Thursday, and take a bit of time to explore the north instead of ploughing my way straight across it, so the original plan had been to go to Blonduos, which is a bit of a service centre with a river flowing through it. However, that was only two hours away from Hverir and there wasn’t a whole day’s worth of interesting things to see on the way.

Interesting thing number one was Grabrok a trio of roadside volcanoes. Stora Grabrok has steps and a boardwalk around it so you can walk up to the crater and then all the way up and around the rim. I’ve done it twice before but the novelty of casually climbing a volcano by the side of the road doesn’t wear off.

Stop two was at Thingeyrar – there are benefits to typing this on an actual keyboard but I can’t make the special characters, like the thorn that Thingeyrar actually begins with. Once upon a time, the bishop promised God he’d build a farm and a church here if He’d end a famine and when the famine ended, the bishop built a whole monastery. The monastery isn’t there anymore; only a black basalt 19th century church, which is usually locked (the key holder was lurking outside last time I was here but not today). However, monasteries being historically centres of learning and intellect and whatnot, this is allegedly where a lot of the sagas were written. Written down, I should say. They were passed on in the oral tradition for hundreds of years before being written down, apparently by these monks (and Snorri Sturluson of Snorralaug, which I mentioned yesterday, who was definitely not a monk).

Third stop was indeed at Blonduos. I’d run out of juice and plastic cheese slices and I needed more cheese before all my bread goes out of date tomorrow. This was lunchtime. No point in stopping yet. I carried on, the long way round, to Varmahlid. Not much to say here, it’s a little junction of the Ring Road with the road that heads up to the fjord, but it’s another small supermarket if you need one. I bought chocolate here once. I continued up the fjord. I had a plan by now. I would go up to Glaumbaer, a traditional Icelandic turf house and farm. These things look a little bit ridiculous – a row of pointed houses built out of turf with wooden fake fronts on them, like life-sized elf houses, but this genuinely was how they were built. Iceland has been short on wood ever since the first Icelanders came over in the 10th century and cut down all the trees for houses and boats and discovered too late that they don’t really grow back in these conditions. So turf houses. This one dates back to the 18th century but was used up until the 1940s. Some of the doors open onto small self-contained rooms – the smithy, store rooms etc, but the last door hides an entire house, connected by dark turf corridors.

I’d been thinking that ever since I left Hverir and the valley between Borgarnes and Husafell, the tourists had basically vanished. There are “undertaking” lanes at junctions and down south, these have “do not stop here” signs on them to tell clueless tourists not to park in them because they’re not stopping places. Those signs vanished ages ago. Well, it turns out all the tourists are at Glaumbaer. I want two seconds in each room to take a photo of the room but you can’t get it clear of tourists for long enough. I stood in the Back Door (mill/store room etc) for months as first the Polish tour group milled gormlessly around, then the Italian one (who grabbed everything hanging from the wall, despite the two rules being “don’t touch anything” and “don’t take flash photos”, and then the French. Two seconds.

My plan was to drive up to Saudarkrokur, which is the next biggish town, up to Grettislaug for a dip in a Saga pool and then back to Saudarkrokur to camp but as I made my way up, I realised there’s no point. I spend my days realising I don’t need this much time to get to Akureyri so why not save the 20km drive for tomorrow and just camp at Grettislaug?

Grettislaug, as I said, appears in the sagas. Grettir the Strong was on the island out in the fjord, for reasons I’m unclear on right now. He swam the 7.5km back to the mainland and was so exhausted he needed to sit in the hot pool to recover. My kind of Saga hero. The hot pool is now two hot pools and there’s a campsite right there, with a little cafe/indoor space that’s open until midnight. So I sat in the pools for an hour or two, went for my walk around the cliffs to see the black sand beach and now I’m taking advantage of the wifi to write this. I might go back in the hot pools later on (although it’s 9.30pm right now) or I might go in them early in the morning.

Actually, let’s write it. I found a space. I climbed into the back and read a book and had an early dinner of bread and cheese. Then a van pulled up next to me. In a large field with less than a dozen vehicles parked in it, it parked six feet away. Are you joking? I said. But I ignored it. Then the next time I looked up, they’d put up an awning and were pitching a tent underneath it and the guy ropes for that awning were literally under two feet away from my van door. What I should have done was stumble out and accidentally trip over them all. What I should have done was drive away in a fury ensuring that I snagged their ropes on my wing mirror as I went. What I actually did was employ my best bad language and slam all the doors pointedly as I left the van, went round to the driver’s side and removed myself to the other side of the field. I do make a point to head for the cafe via the path right next to them and literally step over their ropes to get there, though.

I don’t know exactly what my plans for tomorrow are – to Akureyri or near Akureyri, depending on what it’s like at Hauganes, I think.

Iceland day 3: to Kleppjarnsreykir

I got up in quite a leisurely way today, trying to get my swimming stuff dry-ish in time to be waiting at the activity centre for 10am. It’s only a five minute walk but I drove – I wasn’t sure what time they’d want me out of the campsite so I thought it would be best to move the van just in case.

There were six of us loaded into the minibus and driven to the top secret location of the Canyon Baths. Apparently some tours park a little way down the hill and make you hike up to the gate as well as 64 stairs down into the canyon but Freyr took us right to the gate. There are some rustic changing rooms with warm showers (pull the rope to start the water) but no shampoo, conditioner or soap is allowed because the only drainage is back into the river.

There are two baths. The upper one is about 37 degrees and is called Hringur (inspired by Snorralaug, 20 minutes down the road at Reykholt and during the conversation in which Freyr wrote down these names for me, we established that I have read Snorri’s Edda – for interest in Iceland, I was secreted a little cube of obsidian from the canyon. You’re not allowed to take rocks but I think you can be given them). The lower one is called Urdur, which is one of the three witches past, present & future but I don’t have enough internet to find out which one she is right now. Urdur is 38-39 degrees, although I think it was actually a bit warmer than that.

Then there’s the glacier pool, where the river pauses in a little pool before continuing down and out of the canyon. If we were brave, this is probably about 8 degrees this time of year. I think most of us dipped in it and one person actually swam in it. I did three dips. My first was about half a second, the second about a second and the third I stayed in long enough to bob up and down a bit. The baths are literally in the canyon – a narrow basalty scree-y canyon too narrow for the sun to reach Urdur before about midday even in July, so no more sunburn! We had about an hour in the pools and then it was time to return. Left to my own devices, I could have stayed twice as long but it was enough to not feel like it had been a flying visit.

I had lunch in the van back at the car park at Husafell and then dithered what to do next. My half-formed plan was to camp at Varmaland but that’s only about 45 minutes away and it was only about 12.30. Ok, maybe I’ll start making my way north a little way ahead of schedule. I’ll meander my way up, stop at Bifröst to climb a crater and see how far I fancy driving. Stop just down the road at Deildartunguhver because you can never see Europe’s biggest hot spring enough times. And then I talked myself into spending three hours at Krauma, the baths fed by Deildartunguhver. Hands up who didn’t see that coming? Yeah, everyone except me.

By the time I emerged, it was raining. Well, I wasn’t climbing any volcanoes in this. Do I go back to my original plan and go to Varmaland? Or go to Borgarnes, which has a nice swimming pool and some big supermarkets, since I’m almost out of plastic cheese slices already? I looked at reviews of both campsites. My previous experience of Borgarnes is that the campsite is literally just a field. The toilets have never been unlocked when I’ve stopped there, which is why I’ve always ended up moving on. Varmaland’s reviews weren’t a lot better, although the village swimming pool is right next door. And then… why am I dithering? Literally across the field is Hverir, where I’ve camped twice before. It’s a tomato farm and restaurant and one of the greenhouses has been converted into a really hot common room for campers. I could dry my swimming stuff, sit inside, pop into the restaurant for a Fanta and otherwise escape the rain without going to a campsite that has, at best, mediocre reviews.

So here I am, getting gently toasted by the hot pipes in the common room (the other end was a greenhouse last time I looked), drying my swimming stuff next to rather than on the pipes (the pipes are just too hot to put anything directly on) and occasionally playing with the black cat curled up on a chair behind me. She likes the warm pipes nearby and she loves to have her ears scritched. She’d clearly been out in the rain – she was definitely damp around the edges when I arrived but she’s nice and dry and soft now and fast asleep with all her legs stretched out in different directions.

Tomorrow I go north to Blonduos. It’s just a small town with a small supermarket and I’ve stopped for fuel plenty of times and vowed to camp there. Admittedly, every time I’ve driven through it, it’s been a sunny day and it looks like a little bit of soft green Icelandic paradise, so I hope the rain stops by tomorrow.

Iceland day 2: to Husafell

I got up far too early, because I was awake, and went back up the road to Geysir. I’d failed last night to get there after the tourists so let’s try to get there before them. For the record, they really start to appear around 7.30am. I got some pictures of Strokkur without a ring of people, at least.

Breakfast wasn’t really breakfast – a piece of Toblerone to keep me going at Geysir and the remains of the star crisps when I got back, just while I waited until it was allowed to drive around.

I drove the ~2km up a gravel track to Hauladalur’s church and then strolled down to Kualaug, the little roadside hot (warm) pool. Only 2km from a few hundred tourists who had no idea this was here, sitting in the warm water, listening to the birds – the only peaceful private pool I’m likely to find in the next two weeks.
My plan to drive to Laugarvatn to get some proper breakfast was delayed by a detour up a rougher gravel road to Bruarfoss, which is quite a spectacular waterfall. Somehow a canyon has opened up in the middle of the river, which now pours down into it from both sides. The canyon continues once the water has fallen – a split level canyon! The water in the lower canyon is a spectacular bright turquoise. Tourists, meanwhile, have interpreted the multiple multilingual “DANGER! DO NOT GET TOO CLOSE TO THE WATERFALL!” signs as “please feel free to paddle in the shallows”.

I got cereal and a baguette at Laugarvatn and ate half of it as a late lunch before heading to my 1pm booking at Hvammsvík. It’s lovely on a quiet winter morning and it’s nice now but I definitely prefer it when there aren’t 20 people in every single pool. On the other hand, they don’t bring out the paddle boards in winter. Because the water was so calm, I was allowed to paddle all the way out to the little island – nervously, though, because there were a lot of jellyfish.
When I’d had enough of Hvammsvík and eaten the rest of the baguette, I drove to Husafell, which meant two rough gravel roads over the mountain and then much confusion at Husafell – it’s a kind of country estate, Icelandic-style, which means the hotel runs everything, including the campsite.

Iceland day 1: to Geysir

Travel blog written on a phone in the back of a campervan so I’ll keep it short.

Train out of London 9:05. Back to the car park to pick up my luggage and then back to the airport – on the fifth bus! The first four were three drop-off only and one pick-up bus that was too full to stop. Bearing in mind I had to get the bus to South Terminal, the monorail to North, check in an enormous bag before going through security and time was ticking, I was grumpy about this. Step out in front of the bus until it lets me on, that kind of grumpy.
I finished at check in by 11:01, after waiting around ten minutes – everyone in front of me was slow! On the other hand, I got to, though and out of security in three minutes flat (thank you, fast track!) then I had 55 minutes to wait for gate announcement. Naturally it was at the other end of the airport.

Flight was uneventful except that it was too cloudy over Reykjanes to know if we even went over the volcano. Luggage was waiting for me as I approached with my trolley – actually, I had to run before it got away.
Van pickup required me to go to the rental care shuttle point even though Go wasn’t on the board. We were shuttled down to the office and then… things were slow.

I drove my van past the eruption, stopped at a handy place on the old road that’s now a scraped-out car park for curious tourists, continued along the south coast, saw the volcano erupting on the horizon (including orange fire!) as I approached the Fagradalsfjall car park. Onwards to Hveragerði for food shopping and then another hour to Geysir, all the better to see geysers without the bus loads of tourists.

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.

Finland: May 31st

I’m at the airport. I’m at my gate. It’s 2:31 and the flight is at 4 so I’m pretty comfortable that I’ve made it in time and I’ve had lunch on the other side of passport control and bought korvpuustia.

I got up, did my packing, returned my bottles to K-Market and used the euro I got for them to buy some more cheese for today’s lunch. It’s not as good as the cheese I had last time.Then I took my luggage to the lockers under the station and went out in Helsinki. I wanted to go down to the harbour, walk around the island and see the icebreakers. They’re very impressive. Finland claims to have built 60% of all the icebreakers in the world and to have designed 80% of them. It was breezy but there was a little bit of park opposite the big ships which was fairly shaded and that was nice for a while. Then I sat outside Allas again. Bit more souvenir shopping, found the big food hall, sat on the sculptural thing and looked at the harbour from that side and then decided it was breezy and chilly and time to find something else to do. I’d considered Seurasaari but Google Maps said it would take about 45 minutes to get there and with only three hours, it didn’t feel worth it. I took the tram back to Lasipalatsi and went in the Forum centre to look at – and not buy – anything Moomin-related, then I went downstairs to McDonalds and had a small chips partly because I fancied some and partly as a reason to drink the entire bottle of Fanta I kind of wished I hadn’t bought last night. Then I reclaimed my luggage, found the I train and came to the airport. I’ve done the rest – security, lunch, korvapuustia, gate.

I’ve made two studies while I’ve been here. The first is of Marimekko. I conclude that the clothes aren’t worn that much, not by people who are out and about in the city centre anyway, but lots and lots of people have the bags. Lots of them are plain black bags with the name all over the strap. Lots of them are more tote bag-shaped, with the name written all over them. I’ve seen a few in the colourful patterns but they’re definintely in the minority.

The second, obviously, is of the language. I’ve not done a lot of speaking Finnish – I’m still not big on speaking at all – and I tend to panic when faced with Finnish, even though I’m quite capable of asking “Anteeksi, puhutteko te englantia?”. But I can pick out words I recognise and occasionally that’s enough to figure out roughly what’s being said. At least, I caught enough words when the plane landed to realise that they were talking about the local time and temperature. I can read a little bit as well. Not books or magazines but signs and the sides of buses and so on. If I was going to say it out loud, I can put together little sentences about what I’m doing. That’s all I really wanted from Finnish, to get to the point where I can see something other than vowels, double letters and umlauts. The Swedish still makes more sense than the Finnish but I’ve been trying to make an effort to ignore the Swedish and pay attention to the Finnish.

Moi moi. Se on ohi. Tee se uudelleen!

Finland: 30th May

I started today with a tiny revelation: the easiest way to get to Lidl for my fresh breakfast bread is to walk down the road and along instead of up the road and along as the bottom end of the road is flat. Then I wanted to cross some more things off my to-do list.

First, Uspensi Cathedral. The 7 tram takes me directly from just up the road to Senate Square and then it’s a short walk across to the cathedral. This one was more what I expected. It’s small, both cathedrals are very small, but it was decorated more or less how I’d expected. Lots of saints, lots of lettering, lots of patterns and colour. Then I walked back up to the nearest tram stop and took the 4 north to the Church in the Rock. I knew it was out of the city centre but I hadn’t realised it’s only three or four stops from the central station. It’s not exactly in a cave, as some places would have you believe. There’s a big dome of rock in the middle of a square with Art Deco apartment blocks on each side and the church has been dug out of that, with a big copper dome over the top held up by concrete supports. Yes, it’s in the rock but effectively – at least as far as the rock is concerned – it’s entirely open at the top.

I took the tram back to town for a little souvenir shopping, mostly for postcards and stickers for my scrapbook although I also invested in a sauna cover of my very own. Then I walked down Esplanade and stopped in the park for an ice cream. When I’d eaten that, I continued down towards the harbour where there were boats doing sightseeing tours. Well, that was on my list so I got on the first one, a city tour leaving at 1.30. The inside was pretty much full but there were only two or three people sitting outside on the top deck and the ladies who were selling tickets assured us that the clouds were disappearing and they had blankets. I claimed a blanket before I’d even picked a seat and was glad I had it. It was chilly on the water, even before we set off, and we hadn’t left the harbour area before it started to rain. Well, I’d say “‘drizzle”‘ but the few raindrops were the big heavy kind. Not enough for those of us on deck to take cover but enough for us to pull the blankets over our heads. By the time we’d made our way out past Sirpalesaari and seen Loyly in the distance, the rain had stopped and we could feel the warm sun again. We went past Suomenlinna, under the new bridge and past Laajasalo and Kulosaari and then did a big circle around Mustikkamaa, the leafy island where most of the embassies live, past Korkeasaari and round to Katajanokka. From Korkeasaari yesterday I’d seen a fleet of large ferries moored off Katajanokka and wondered about them. Now I discovered they’re actually Finland’s icebreakers, who don’t have a lot to do this time of year. As we headed back into the harbour, a freezing wind came up. I wished I had another blanket. Ten more blankets. Funny how the temperature skyrockets when you’re back on dry land.

I walked home (I hadn’t measured any walking today and needed my 2km) to finish off my bread and butter, dump my shopping and pick up my jacket ready for that trip to Suomenlinna I keep saying I’ll do. This was helped immensely by the walk back from the harbour only being 1.9km. I needed to go out to do my extra mileage! So at last I made it to Suomenlinna for a proper late afternoon/evening there, without the worry about the wind warning or the giant threatening cloud. I sketched the swimming bay, ate a korvapuusti I bought yesterday, panicked that the Tallinn/Stockholm ferry was going to plough into the island at speed, finally found the King’s Gate, discovered that Strava didn’t record my walk around the island properly and finally got the 8.40 ferry back. Then it’s five or ten minutes up the road to the tram stop, ten minutes for the tram to arrive and it delivered me to the top of the road.

Tomorrow I need to be on the airport train by about 1pm so I’m going to leave my luggage at the station again and decide what to do later.

Finland: 29th May

Breakfast this morning was (slightly stale) baguette left over from last night before going up the road to get the tram to the station where I had to find the 16 bus out to Korkeasaari, which is the island with a zoo on it. First Helsinki bus, discovery that my cardboard five-day ticket has some secret electronics inside it as it makes the ticket reader ping when I hold it against it, and twenty minutes through some very cobbled streets and some open roads only to discover, as I crossed the bridge to Korkeasaari, that the cathedrals are just a couple of hundred metres away. There’s a new bridge being built and I later found a sign explaining all the works: in 2027, they’re planning to open a new light railway which will run along the bottom of this island, connecting it directly to the city centre. I’m not entirely certain why this light railway means Korkeasaari is getting its own tram stop but whatever, it’s going to get easier to get there.

I was expecting something more like an Alpine wildpark, a semi-open place where mostly native animals roamed and the shores of the island were always visible. And there were bits of shore, mostly roped off because of nesting barnacle geese, but it felt a lot like a normal zoo. There was a tiger and three camels and some wallabies (these come under the title kengurut in Finnish) and monkeys and moose-like things and yak-like things and everything you’d expect in a zoo except elephants and giraffes. It’s a labyrinth and between the rocks, the enclosures and the trees, it’s mostly very easy to forget you’re on an island rather than just in a zoo on land as normal.

I didn’t take the bus all the way back to the city centre. I hopped off after about four stops and got the metro back instead. Not because there was any particular reason to, just because it was a method of transport I haven’t used yet. It turned out to be a good idea – I spied some empty seats from the platform and when I went to sit on them, I discovered that some of them were empty because there was an enormous black and tan dog asleep under them. He looked up when a small poodly thing boarded and had a good sniff but stayed down and stayed quiet and when it was out of sight and he’d sniffed enough, he went back to sleep.

Back at the station, I got in a bit of a tangle about finding a tram down to Senatintori, Senate Square. It would have been quicker and easier to walk. Trams leaving from the central station, I think, take a bend around the shopping centre to get to Aleksanterinkatu and so go in the opposite direction to the one I expect. I got there eventually. This is really Helsinki’s main square and it seems the done thing is to sit on the steps up to the cathedral. So I did. It was a warm day (I went out in shorts!) but it’s breezy and apparently the steps are immune to breeze. It’s the warmest place in Helsinki to sit and the stone is warm from the sun as well.

I wanted to go into the cathedrals. The white one is Helsinki’s main Protestant/Lutheran church. It’s a big white confection with corners and domes and gold and it is utterly underwhelming inside. Even St Paul’s isn’t as bare and boring. Oh yes, you can see the inside of the five domes but they’re all sponged in pale blue with no decoration at all. Uspenski Cathedrall, the big red Orthodox one, is closed on Mondays and still apparently the place to have your Helsinki photoshoot. As I walked around it in the hope of figuring out which door is in use, I spied the shop/pier on Korkeasaari through the buildings behind the cathedral. I compared the distance to the distance back to the main station. If you could walk on water, it’s not more than a mile away. Easily walking distance. But you have to go around the edge of the bay and you have to walk through a giant construction site and so taking a bus right out of the city is still the best way to get there.

What else was on my to-do list? The big wheel. That’s just down by the sea. I’d go and see if I could get on. No reason why not – it was going round and with no one on board. Surely SkyWheel couldn’t say “too busy, come back in 45 minutes”? They didn’t. They gave me a ticket – an actual ticket, not a receipt! – and sent me round to the queue, which was the two groups who’d been in front of me at the ticket office. We had our photos taken and I must remember to download my photos, and then I boarded from gate 4.

I had no idea how many times we were going to go round. It seemed to go pretty quickly and I was glad, and not surprised when we went a second time. Not surprised at the third. I was surprised when we went round a fourth time, though. Obviously I had a cabin to myself so I could hop from side to side depending on what I wanted to see. Views over the bay and out to Suomenlinna. Eye-level views of Uspenski. Birds-eye view of Allas Sea Pool. I saw the hot tub down below and finally found the sauna cabin four or five in front of me. I think I’ve had enough sauna but if I was here with a few more people and it was worth the money, I’d definitely go for the sauna/hot tub/SkyWheel package.

By now I was hungry and tired. I wanted some food and I wanted to swap my shorts for trousers so I could go over to Suomenlinna for the evening again. I took the tram up to Stockmann and did a little shopping – ok, I did a little wandering around feeing that this place is too big and too expensive and is full of things I don’t particularly want to buy anyway, but eventually I found the big gourmet supermarket hiding on the minus second floor and stocked up on bread, drink and korvapuustia and came home.

I knew what would happen. I ate my bread, I charged my phone, I changed into my trousers and then I lay down on the bed to wait for the bread to settle down and here I still am. I am never getting up at 2am for a flight again. It just isn’t worth it.

What are tomorrow’s plans? Well, I still have plenty on my to-do list. Uspenski and the Church in the Rock are the main things to cross off. I might go over to Seurasaari but I’ve been there before and with limited time left, I might find another island, or go to that beach, or find another sauna. Can I be bothered with another sauna? Carrying wet swimming things around just to sit in a small room that’s too hot? I know and appreciate that it’s a Finnish tradition but I really prefer the Icelandic tradition of sitting in warm water. That’s virtually unknown here. I wish the nice pool up the road was open because that would be the perfect last-evening thing to do. Maybe I’ll go back to Suomenlinna tomorrow night.