The Sleeper From Munich To Paris
It takes over ten hours, but as I wanted to be back in London in time to get to Ipswich for the Hull game on Saturday, it was the only way I could do it.
I had booked the sleeper on Deutsche Bahn’s excellent web site at bahn.de. I had a self-printed paper ticket, that worked well. These are some of the pictures I took on the journey.
We arrived in Paris on time at 09:30. I had slept reasonably well.
Passing Naval Battles
We were continually passing the locations of famous naval battles. Mostly, where the British gave the French or in later times, the Germans a good kicking.
As we passed through the Bay of Biscay, we passed Quiberon Bay, St. Nazaire and Aix Roads, although we were well offshore.
And then after Corunna, we passed Cape Finisterre, where two battles were fought in 1747 and one in 1805.
Later of course we passed Trafalgar and actually went into Cadiz, where Drake famously singed the King of Spain’s beard.
The Language Rules In Quebec
There is a big row going on in Quebec about the use of the proper language in an Italian restaurant. It’s here in the Guardian. This paragraph shows the pedantic nature of the language police.
After a five-month investigation into an anonymous complaint, Massimo Lecas received a letter from the board telling him that his establishment, Buonanotte, had broken the law by including the words “pasta” on the menu and “bottiglia”, the Italian word for bottle, instead of the French word bouteille.
It sounds like several Italian restaurants, I have been to in the UK, the Netherlands or France.
I have only been to Quebec once and wouldn’t go again.
I don’t speak French well, but I can read it pretty well, as I’ve spent a couple of summers in the South of France and have also read some of the James Bond books in French.
But I found the French in Montreal very difficult and I never worked out how to use the public transport, as there is no English translation. It was almost like going to Wales and finding everything in Welsh. Even Paris, which last time I looked at the map was in France, is a city, where instructions for public transport are in multiple languages and in that respect it is much better than London.
But the main reason, I won’t go, is that I found on that trip it was difficult to stay gluten-free. In fact, I got glutened for the only time in recent years. It was mainly because the good restaurant I ate in, had probably used oven-chips, which are coated in wheat to make them crisp.
Some years ago, I used to own a hand tool company. We sold in numerous countries including the United States and France, and then had an enquiry from a distributor in Canada. They would take the product, but the product leaflet would have to be in perfect Canadian French. French just wouldn’t do! So at some expense we got a French Canadian translation and the product was duly launched in Canada.
Some time later, we had an urgent order from France and sadly we were out of French leaflets, so we told them, we did have the French Canadian version in stock. So we faxed one to France and the French said that the leaflet was rather quaint and a good laugh, but that it would do to fulfil the urgent order.
There’s no doubt that French Canadians are much more bothered about their language than the French.
Perhaps though some Canadians are also a bit touchy about English spelling. I once flew to the States sitting next to a secretary at the New Zealand High Commission in Toronto. She had to be very careful she didn’t use American spelling, when writing to some English-speaking Canadians, as otherwise they’d return it with corrections.
The Phone Problems Of The Channel Tunnel
Years ago, I met the guy, who had project managed the installation of the telephone system on the Channel Tunnel. It wasn’t as simple as you’d have thought. I remember one problem he outlined in particular.
Say you are an engineer, customs officer or whatever, employed by the Tunnel and because you are French, you live in France, but your major place of work is on the British side. You want to make a phone call to your wife, husband or partner, to say that because of a problem, you’ll be late home for supper. Obviously, the same problem would apply to British employees working in France.
So is your call home a local call, which it would be if you lived and worked in the same country or an international call, which of course would be at a higher rate.
The solution was to make for telephonic purposes, the Channel Tunnel, its own country.
The guy who managed the installation was British, but he had a French-speaking mother, so BT probably made a good choice, as to who managed the installation of a rather complicated project.
The White Cliffs Of Dover Have Moved To France
According to this article in the Metro, if you use your mobile phone on top of the White Cliffs of Dover, you may get charged as if you’re in France.
Landlord of the Coastguard pub and restaurant on the beach Nigel Wydymus, 53, said: ‘We are a little telecommunications enclave of France here.
‘It did not cause a huge amount of trouble for a few years with mobile phones because you got a message saying welcome to France but since smartphones have come in it’s more of a problem.
No-one has checked, but I wonder if you’re on the French side under the cliffs there, you might find the British signal is your phones preferred choice.
i do remember, when I would fly back in my Cessna from France, I was quite surprised at how far beyond the French coast, I could pick up a UK signal. Not that I made a call, as I probably needed two hands to fly the plane, but some of my passengers did. And of course that was well before smart phones.
And We Think We’ve Got Nimbys!
This article on the BBC’s web site shows that nimbys get everywhere, even in Italy. But it is a fascinating article about a rail tunnel between Italy and France. Christian Fraser, the author, puts this case in favour of the tunnel.
The pro-tunnellers employ a mixture of hyperbole and hard-nosed economic home truths as they argue for the project. The Atlantic will reach out to the Urals via this new link, they cry. Freight trains will zoom to and fro, boosting the shambling economies of southern Europe. Of greater interest to British tourists – skiers like me – is that the journey time from London to Milan will be cut to just six hours.
With those against as follow.
The naysayers insist that the tunnel will be an ugly, expensive white elephant. They point out that the existing trans-Alpine road and rail routes seem to cope very nicely, thank you. They claim that projections of traffic were drawn up 20 years ago and are hopelessly out-of-date. And they are worried about potentially dangerous minerals that are buried underneath the mountains being released into the air and water.
Hand on heart, even the keenest of protesters would struggle to claim the Susa Valley was an area of outstanding beauty. A narrow pass, it is already crammed with the clutter of human development – a motorway stalks across the valley floor on gigantic stilts, elevated above railway lines, quarries and factories.
But he also describes the action taking place.
In Italy, they have lobbied tenaciously – and at times violently – in their fight against the rail link between Lyon and Turin. Some 400 people were injured in clashes with the police last year when the tunnel site was first fenced off.
I know that area reasonably well, as I’ve driven through it and flown over it in a light aircraft several times. It is one of those areas, where if asked to dig a tunnel, your first action would be to ask if there was an easier route.
I don’t know the economics of this rail route, but I suspect that in the future some route will be completed to allow passengers to take the train from London and Paris to Rome or Milan.
And Now The McCamembert!
This product (?) is being launched in McDonalds in France and the row is reported here in The Australian, although I first saw the story in The Times.
It’s certainly one, I won’t be buying as camembert is not one of the cheeses I like. But I haven’t been into a McDonalds except for a Coke or some fries for about fifteen years.
The Other Side Of French Horsemeat
We may get worried about horsemeat appearing in burgers and lasagne, but I don’t think that those like me, who choose their food with care, have much to worry about, as I said here.
But one point about the French and horsemeat has been quietly forgotten. The French, like we do, love their heavy horses. And coming from Suffolk, you don’t forget that horses like the Suffolk Horse are on the endangered list. Quite frankly, they are just so expensive to keep!
The French have a pragmatic solution to keeping their heavy horses alive.
They eat them!
I remember an article in the equine press some years ago, which said that the French heavy horses, were in much better health than the British ones, precisely because of their role in the meat trade.
High Speed Trains Compared
out of curiosity, I thought I put the various speeds and size of some of the high-speed trains in Europe.
Fyra – V250 – 8 car trains seating 546, running at a maximum speed of 250 km/hr.
UK – IC 225 – 9 car trains running at a maximum speed of 225 km/hr. Although they are limited to 201 km/hr. because of signalling.
Eurostar – 373 – 20 car trains seating 750, running at a maximum speed of 300 km/hr.
ICE 1 – 12 car trains seating 743, running at a maximum speed of 280 km/hr.
ICE 2 – 8 car trains seating 391, running at a maximum speed of 280 km/hr.
ICE 3 – 8 car trains seating 441, running at a maximum speed of 320 km/hr.
Although, they are all different, it’s surprising how with the exception of Eurostar, they are all fairly shortish trains.
The IC 225 is slower, but also as they run on normal lines with other traffic, and generally stop a few times on their journeys out of London, their performance isn’t as slow as you would think.
It may lead you to the conclusion, that on shorter high-speed services with stops, 200 km/hr may well be fast enough.
But as the French like to show, there is quite a lot of pride, that your trains run very fast. But then France and Spain are probably the only countries in Western Europe, that have the space for long high speed lines.
We have had only a few details about HS2, the line from London to the Midlands, North and eventually to Scotland. They seem to be planning for speeds of up to 400 km/hr., but how much is that to just prove they can do what the French do?
Putting an engineering hat on, it’s well known that the faster you go, the more energy you need and the more noise and damage to the track you make. And if you go at 400 km/hr instead of 200 km/hr, you don’t do the journey in half the time, as you have to accelerate and brake for longer.
We also get the old chestnut, of why don’t we have double-deck trains like they do in many places on the continent. Having travelled on a TGV Duplex to the South of France, I am very sceptical about them on short high speed distances, as loading and unloading can be a nightmare, given the excess baggage people take with them these days.
So I am veering towards shorter nimble trains with superb acceleration. Taking the HS2 route to Birmingham, which has two stops between Euston and Birmingham, they might even be as quick as a faster heavier train.
But then the trouble with a slightly slower service, is that it doesn’t polish the egos of politicians, who love to say they have things like the fastest or biggest in the world.
Obviously, past Birmingham, where there is more space, the service could go faster towards the North and Scotland.
You have to remember that most of the saving in journey times from high speed trains come from taking a direct flat route. Brunel and those that built the East Coast Main Line, knew that and were able to create tracks that now allow trains to run at 200 km/hr. The West Coast Main Line had to be threaded through country estates of the landed gentry and over quite a few hills, so it is much slower.
Looking at my target of Fyra, the Dutch don’t really need a 400 km/hr. line and in fact, limit the speed of trains to 300 km/hr., although they’re not going as fast as that yet.
So there would appear to be good reasons for not building short high-speed lines capable of 400 km/hr. But by all means build them capable of 200 km/hr.
The Anonymous Widower 