Going home

Friday September 25th
This is another day to forget, the day of 5 trains.
The first train is from Berlin to Cologne
The second is Cologne to Brussels
The third is the Eurostar to London
The fourth is St Pancras to East Croydon
The fifth is East Croydon to Oxted

Then it's just the taxi home.

We were up well before 7, as our cases had to be packed and ready to collect outside our rooms at 7.45.

Berlin station was no problem this time, with no crowds of coaches and hordes of demonstrators. We were in Cologne after lunch, where we had over an hour to wait for the train to Brussels. This was late, but it hardly mattered as we then had over an hour to wait for Eurostar when we reached Brussels.

Eurostar was on time, and we found our seats. But then we were told that the tunnel had a power failure so nobody knew when we could set off. We were served dinner anyway - we were travelling First Class, so you get a tiny meal. You also get wine, and the staff were so anxious to keep everybody happy that the wine flowed like water, so everybody got very jolly. In the event, we only had to wait an hour, so we were in London by 9pm, which meant home by 11, after 15 hours of travel. I just fell into bed.

This is a very boring post, so here is a cheerful photo, which I meant to post but never found space for. Probably only people of a certain age will recognise it.



Did you guess right? It's a statue of Peter Falk as Colombo, with his trademark cigar and untidy Mac, and it's in Budapest. I had no idea that Peter Falk was originally Hungarian. You live and learn! It's quite close to the Danube, so a lot of tourists come to visit it, and as you can see, they all stroke the dog. I rather like the fact it isn't on a pedestal but just on the street, looking like a person who inadvertently just turned to bronze.

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