How many hostels have this sort of view? The Alcazhar is the new home of the army museum.

There’s always a tension, when you’re on the road a lot, between being adventurous and risking disappointment, and playing it safe by going for the tried and tested. Do you go for the sheep brains and expand your culinary horizons, or do you play it safe with the pizza that you’re really craving?

Just as waking up in a strange place every day – this morning a youth hostel inside a castle – is both exciting but eventually draining, so food is an area where novelty sometimes needs to take a backseat to a big slice of ‘I know what I like’ satisfaction.

For whatever reason, be it chemical or psychological, I particularly enjoy Spaghetti Bolognese al fresco in the sunshine. As outdoor vices go, it’s pretty minor and every so often I indulge it.

A few weeks ago I was in Toledo, in Castilla La Mancha, the heart of Don Quixote country. This is the part of central Spain where Miguel de Cervantes’ legendary hero tilted at windmills in Spain’s most famous literary export.

In an unlikely coincidence, the literary light of Cervantes who lived, died and is buried around Madrid’s Plaza Santa Ana, was extinguished on this date in 1616 – the same day as England’s Shakespeare. 23 April is the Unesco-designated ‘International Day of the Book’.

After spending a night in the imposing castle San Servando in the historic ‘City of Three Faiths’, where coachloads come daily to pay homage to the talent of El Greco, I was keen to get back to Cervantes’ native Madrid to max out my time in modern-day Malasana.

I needed to eat quickly before descending the new lazy-tourist-friendly escalators to the revamped bus station and an hour-long long tri-axle bus back to the big city.

Leaving the tapestries and azulera of the Santa Cruz museum, I stopped to take a picture of some American kids from Ohio – home of the other Toledo – in front of the Cervantes statue that looks east from this strategic hilltop  location over flat plains ideal for donkey-based adventures.

Stepping through the arch behind his bronze head and into the plaza, the yellow arches of that omnipresent slice of high-calorie Americana reminded me I’d not had a ‘junk’ burger for a long time.

I pondered it, briefly; but in a country where Menu del Dia means all three courses and a drink for as little as €9 – how can anyone but the most additive-addicted food junkie justify €6 for a plastic patty?

Moving into a little alley around the corner, I thought I’d played it smart choosing a restaurant out of the sun and consequently ignored by my fellow tourists. A few tables full of Spanish – locals I thought – seemed like a good omen.

Then I saw the teenage statue sat in front of a computer at reception. Arms folded, she stared down at the keyboard with an expression that wavered between sadness and outright anger. This was one terminally fed-up small town girl.

Mocking her misery, the Eurythmics sanowng on the radio: “Hold your head (movin’ on); keep your head up (movin’ on)…” Sweet Dreams are obviously not made of long afternoons working in your mother’s guesthouse.

And then the spag’ bol’ (as it’s known in UK where even fully enunciating abbreviations is a bridge too far for the time-pressed Brit) arrived.

Now I found myself staring down with a similar scowl. Like a rescue chopper pilot searching for debris, I scanned the waves of Agent Orange sauce for any sign of meat that had survived kitchen disaster. But the sickly-sweet sea washing over cheap pasta was decidedly empty.

Cursing myself for being tempted by the red “Coke and…” menu sign that led me to waste €6 on this dismal destruction of a classic dish, my only consolation was that I had exercised some measure of consumer autonomy by opting for Sprite.

Spanish cooking is not terribly adventurous; I had turned my nose up at menus displaying such uncontroversial dishes as roast chicken and pork to play it safe. But I had still been disappointed. This wasn’t supposed to be how it works?

Just before the doors closed on the next bus to Madrid, two Japanese girls got on and sat next to me. Opening a familiar brown bag they started to very deliberately chew on buns that were bigger than their delicate hands.

Slowly they savoured what is arguably America’s most famous export, as their lunch spread its instantly recognisable smell all along the bus. Damn, those burgers smelled good.

Plane crashes involving famous people, from Glenn Miller to John Denver and the Pakistani General Zia-ul-Haq, often invite speculation and conspiracy theories. And today’s incident could not have happened in a more contentious location.

Katyn is where the Soviet NKVD continued their assault on anyone who might lead an independent Poland by killing 15-20,000 of their officers during 1940. A wicked web was subsequently woven by Stalin; the Kremlin made a concerted – and four decade-long – effort to pin the blame on the Germans.

As exiled Polish generals in London asked where all their men had gone, Churchill attempted to play down their fears and keep them on side, whilst – it would appear – having a reasonably good idea exactly what had happened to them. This, along with the even bigger ‘betrayal’ that was the Yalta Conference ‘carve-up’ of postwar Europe, still rankles with some older Poles today.

And it was not until the post-Perestroika 90s that Russia finally admitted what many already knew. An official apology is still awaited, though some in Moscow accuse Warsaw of using this issue as a political football.

History in this part of the world is always selective, as a brief dip into any forum discussing Polish/Russian/Ukrainian relations quickly testifies. ‘What about the Russian and Ukrainian POWs who died in Polish camps,’ counter Poland’s neighbours?

But to the families – those tiny pixels that comprise the big picture – of the Katyn dead, this notorious obscenity still carries enough emotional and historical weight for them to fill trains heading east to a special service to remember the dead.

The invitation from Putin to the Polish leadership to this weekend’s commemoration ceremony was seen as a step in the right direction to finally healing this wound.

Today’s plane crash seems initially to be an accident – the importance of the occasion to the national memory may have encouraged the pilots to push their luck in bad weather instead of diverting – but the image of Putin’s Russia abroad means that any incident on its soil is automatically examined for the hidden hand of the security services.

Statisticians would doubtless be able to explain how the chances of this crash occurring on such a portentous date and in such a controversial location are not as remote as we might think.

But as the names of the politicial and intellectual elite who died are confirmed, once again Poland has lost a good chunk of its leadership in a lonely forest in Western Russia.

And after 70 years, as a Radio Poland survey shows the younger generation’s interest in an official Russian apology waning, Katyn has reasserted itself as a place to be forever associated with Polish national tragedy.

"We are all staying," says the squat banner just off Friedrichshain's Rigaer Strasse.

“Refugees welcome, tourists f*** off,” said the massive banner dominating the courtyard. This is the less than subtle sign outside the Subversiv squat bar, just off Brunnenstrasse in Berlin’s fashionable Mitte district.

I had just crossed the road from the bar at 183 Brunnenstrasse where a couple of young Lithuanian guys who lived in this long established squat were happy to chat about communal living as they served me a large beer for a single Euro.

If the streets of Central and Eastern Europe are that much colder than their London counterparts, then the bars and cafes seem to be that much warmer. The window in the door was steamed up with condensation as I opened it, exposing myself to a wall of heat and sound from the informal gig that was climaxing inside. At the bar, the atmosphere was distinctly frosty.

Was I, clearly in my 30s, too old? Was I too touristy or ‘square’ in my distinctly mainstream Berghaus jacket? A sullen barmaid served me with the minimum level of speech possible; while her expression shouted contempt. Shrugging it off, I settled into a leather armchair just as the band laid down their instruments, took a bow and joined the drinkers.

Berlin is famed for its alternative scene and the creativity that comes from eschewing commerce, living cheaply, working less and using that free time productively. Some squats, like Yorck59 utilise that excess energy to run creches and workshops. There are anarchist libraries in Friedrichshain, free cinemas in Mitte and stimulating debates in Kreuzberg. But there is a darker side to this disdain for authority and the formal structures of the state.

Car burnings have become increasingly common in Berlin; to the point where there is a website where you can keep up to date with who’s burning what, and where.

Some of these attacks exemplify the stereotypical clash of societal archetypes: black clad ‘anarchists’ on the margins set fire to SUV’s or luxury saloons of ‘greedy capitalists’. Or at least that’s the thinking; no-one’s quite sure who is behind it, in an evolving city of immigrants where anonymity is easily found in post-Wall empty spaces and parallel communities.

The default word for a journalist when writing about these matters would be ‘shadowy’. It has been hazarded that some of the attacks are simply bored teenagers jumping on a bandwagon of rebellious pyromania; this theory has been fuelled by the fact that – while DHL vans have been hit because of the company’s involvement in warzone logistics – some of the targeted vehicles have been modest saloon cars.

Berlin knows all too well the physical effects of polarisation. It has suffocated under the inevitable consequences that arise from extreme modes of thinking.

From the violence of 1919 to the Nazi clampdown that ended the Weimar era and all that came after, fascists and communists have wanted to impose their own ‘right way’ of doing things on a more moderate population. Today, with liberty very much on offer again, Berlin is still attracting radicals.

Like so many of the walls outside, the inside of Subversiv bore messages that paid no mind to concepts like advocacy or made any attempt at subtlety. “Smash Capitalism,” – a slogan now so ubiquitous and empty of meaning that it has no power to shock – said one poster. Trying even harder was “F***-off Mitte,”; translated into several languages, it was a reference to the gentrification of this part of the city centre (Mitte means middle or centre).

Smash, break, destroy; the lexicon of the ideologically bellicose was everywhere I looked. If you subscribe to constant sum theory, you can dismiss this as merely the Yin to the dark Yang that lurks outside the city; in places where it pays to be white and not to attract attention and where a clash or principles can lead to more than a strained atmosphere at the dinner table.

But all I could see were keen new recruits for the party Party, clambering over unread history books to sign up for the next crusade.

Earlier that week I met a woman in Friedrichshain’s squat-mecca Rigaer Strasse. A poster highlighting DHL’s role in Afghanistan was stuck to the wooden fence of the illegal trailer park opposite the flat she had just left. I asked her about the squatting scene, and what she thought about all the posturing that so often goes with the urban politics.

After establishing her liberal credentials – she approved of the trailer camp her balcony overlooked – she said she thought many of the angrier young men and women were just striking a pose.

“It’d be okay if they took some of these alternative ideas and made less drastic – but longer lasting – changes to their lives. But for some of them it’s just a phase. They’ll leave and become lawyers or business people or whatever.”

I love the alternative scene in Berlin. I like the fact that loud voices affirm there is more than one way to live your life; that you can say ‘no’ to the painting by numbers one-size-fits-all consumer society. But the irony of calling for freedom and tolerance, while using violence to impose your value system on others, seems sadly lost on some.

If owning a small hatchback is a crime in Berlin, then despite a new twist on the rhetoric or a new design for the wrapper, depressingly old patterns in human nature are repeating themselves.

Of course, in Berlin the prism of the past insinuates itself into more narratives than it should, daring commentators to make crass comparisons or draw overly dramatic conclusions. Burning a few cars does not equate with the burning of books on these very same streets.

But both find their roots in a righteous anger that seeks to dictate its worldview to those who are ignorant or ‘lack consciousness’.

A kissing couple landed heavily on my armrest, oblivious or unconcerned by my own arm and the beer it was connected to. I felt suddenly weary. It was time to leave the realm of the renegades and head back to the Karl Marx Allee flat I was staying in.

Squatters in yuppified Mitte, and a moderate in a Stalinist showpiece; we had all found a space in Berlin to lay down our contradictions for the night and sleep.

Onwards and upwards: Bratislava embraced the Euro at the start of 2009

Ironies abound in postcommunist Europe. In 1989, the Poles led the backlash against four decades of planned economies. Hungary was the most liberal and capitalist country in the Soviet sphere at the time and pulled the rug from under East Germany with its border relaxation. While in Prague, the memory of 1968 drove many a Czech to the streets to call for change.

Yet today, none of these countries are in the Euro. I was travelling in the region this time last year: in Poland the weak Zloty meant everything was cheap for me. In Budapest an economist turned tour guide bemoaned the fact they had fallen so far behind their neighbours, and that endemic corruption persisted. And a Czech receptionist gave a ‘what can you do’ shrug when I asked why they still used Crowns in Prague.

So it seemed ironic that in Slovakia they had just introduced the Euro. Visiting Gdansk, I had felt nostaligic, remembering old tv news images as I toured the Solidarity museum. In Budapest, I had been both moved and wow’d by the ultra-modern House of Terror with its juxtaposition of Nazi and Soviet tyranny, and pictures of those it directly accused. And in Prague, I had pondered the overt partisanship of the Museum of Communism.

So when I got to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia since it parted company with the Czechs in the ‘Velvet Divorce’, I was looking forward to seeing their equivalent. Instead, I left the tourist information office stunned not by powerful images or moving testament, but by indifference. “That was all up in Prague,” I was told, when I asked where their revolution museum was.

Bratislava's Communist-era UFO Bridge by night.

Talking to locals, it seemed that they felt themselves sidelined in the past, living in the shadow of ‘that lot in Prague’. That month, they had joined the Euro and were getting on with EMU (European Monetary Union) apace. There was EU investment and a modest tourist industry that – while acknowledging with its slogan “Little Big City” that it would never compete with Prague or nearby Vienna – was feeding a building programme and encouraging public art.

Naturally, the Eurozone is a double-edged sword. The recession, coupled with the strength of the pan-European currency, has deterred Polish and Russian visitors to the Tatras ski-zone this winter and taken the shine off the Slovakian Euro’s first birthday party. And of course, I heard the usual complaint that everything had gone up in price since it was introduced.

But as I watched the sunset in the chic bar atop the ‘UFO’ bridge, with monolithic mass-produced ‘Panelka’ flats on one side and skyscrapers with giant Euro logos on the other, it was obvious to which direction modern Slovakia looks for inspiration.

All content © Bookpacking 2009

Chaos in Kent, but all quiet on Southeastern's Javelin at St Pancras.

I first took the Eurostar from London to Paris in the late 90s. An hour or so after departure, I asked the guard about the engineering works that meant we were reduced to a tedious trundle through Kent commuter stations en route to the Channel Tunnel. Knowing the potential of these tri-voltage trains, this seemed to be the equivalent of test-driving a Ferrari in a pub car park.

“Oh, it always goes this speed,” was the cheery reply from the guard, as we continued our slow progress through the Garden of England. If you can remember the planets blurring outside the cockpit window when a spaceship accelerated to ”light speed” in Star Wars, this was the sensation I experienced in milder form when we eventually switched to SNCF track at Calais. The flat fields of the Pas du Nord lost their resolution as the driver was finally at liberty to throw that magical throttle lever forward.

Things have improved on the UK side, thanks to High Speed One (HS1), the fast track between London and the Channel Tunnel. Central Paris is now 2h 15m from a rejuvenated Kings Cross. But I wasn’t expecting too much when I took Southeastern’s high speed Javelin service to Dover during Christmas Week. The cold snap was causing chaos; it was just after the Eurostar Christmas debacle when two French guests at our house had endured an overnight ordeal under La Manche.

During the 20 minutes or so that it takes to traverse the ‘Chunnel’, I find it best not to ponder the weight of water over one’s head in this engineering marvel. Trapped there on trains all night, without power in some cases, passengers became hysterical. With a metaphorical Gallic shrug, and displaying admirable sang-froid, our guests had tucked into their beer and made the best of it.

But all was quiet when I arrived upstairs at the Southeastern platforms in St Pancras. The sleek class 395 electric unit that waited was capable of 140mph, though according to this Evening Standard article they will cost consumers significantly more while delivering minimal benefits.

But as the virtually empty train pulled out of St Pancras International, the acceleration pushed me back into my seat and – despite our scheduled Stratford stop – after only 16 minutes we were admiring the spectacular Queen Elizabeth II road bridge as we crossed the Thames at Dartford.

Sat across from me, a man on a mobile phone recounted his own trial by train (that same day, on a different route, but in the same area) as he explained to his significant other why he wouldn’t be home for some time; and why he might need to be picked up from a neighbouring town.

He had attempted the same coping strategy on the Javelin as our French guests on the Eurostar, but the lack of either buffet car or trolley meant no consolation in beer. This seemed to be the worst aspect of his day, though perhaps it was just salt in the wound.

Javelin appeared to be living up to its name. My fellow passenger had briefed his partner and resigned himself to a teetotal transit. With the smell of new plastic in our nostrils, we sped through the night on the new track that makes this high speed running possible. Alas, appearances can be deceptive.

The ‘permanent way’, as it’s called, played its part; a combination of continuously-welded rail that spells the end of that clickety-clack signature sound, and sophisticated signalling systems that keep large 140mph objects apart. But our train developed a fault and we lost 20 minutes waiting in the Ashford area.

Yet again this winter, the words ‘travel’ and ‘chaos’ find themselves sharing headline space in British newspapers. Granted, Ukrainian trains have experienced difficulties this week, but they have much colder temperatures to contend with.

Swiss trains seem to ignore snow; and while HS1′s eventual arrival merits praise, Adam Ant was still topping the charts here with songs like Prince Charming when France’s TGV was already topping 200mph (1981). Ugly systems not ugly sisters are the problem for the British travelling public. A happy ending to this enduring winter tale – of transport woe – seems a long way off.

Belgrade graffiti on Kosovo's 2nd anniversary of independance: commemorating the Battle of Kosovo and rejecting the EU.

Today is Christmas in places like Russia and Serbia, even in certain homes in Romania. In fact anywhere there are members of the branches of the Orthodox church that subscribe to the Julian calendar.

This time last year, in Poland’s Zakopane, I was turned away from a restaurant because it was already full; a roomful Russians in traditional dress were enjoying a festive dinner. I was disappointed; it would have been a fascinating insight into a culture we know so little about in the UK. And probably a good booze-up to boot.

Perhaps it was naive of me to expect festive cheer when I  clicked onto the Balkan Insight news site today. While working over ‘our’ Christmas, in an anonymous Dortmund hotel room I had caught a glimpse of a news report about Serbia applying for EU-membership. It was another milestone along a road still being built; one which climbs painfully from the nadir of civil war there and UN/EU paralysis here, and presumably leads to the heights of European integration.

Despite the odd reference to ‘enlargement fatigue’, accession is sometimes presented as an eventual given for this region, even for such politically divided states as Bosnia. Serbia’s transition from enemy to potential ally in such a short time must baffle EU-aspirant Turks.

Yet today, Christmas for many in that part of the world, I found an all-too familiar mix of gloomy stories on Balkan Insight that paints a  different picture to the smiling politicians I saw on German TV. Serbia and Croatia were threatening reciprocal war crime suits, the province of Vojvodina (home of the popular Exit festival) was seeking greater autonomy from the former; while nearby even Greece was arguing with Macedonia over the latter’s name.

In Bosnia, it was hazarded that some of the war criminals who had actually been tried and convicted were serving out sentences in virtual apartments, located in prisons sympathetically staffed by friends, family and former colleagues. Switching to Radio Free Europe’s site only found me this article about Moldovans arguing over the Gregorian and Julian dates for Yule.

Back on Balkan Insight, Christmas itself had been hijacked for political purposes. Serbia’s president Boris Tadic had flown to a Kosovo monastery to spend Christmas in a territory that his country still claims as its own. More sensationalist headline writers have already suggested Vojvodina is the new Kosovo; the symbolism of Tadic’s visit was clear. He was all for Kosovo entering the EU, it was reported – as part of Serbia.

This winter in Bosnia, several people told me that the NATO bombing had not ended the war – it had merely frozen the front lines. This is a rather gloomy perspective though it echoes Winston Churchill’s comment that “The Balkans produce more history than they can consume.”

Consumption of a different sort, through EU-facilitated prosperity, would at least help to keep a lid on. But even in the governments of Bosnia’s better off neighbours, the TV smiles mask grievances – recent and historical – that may take more than treaties and trade to address.

"Good luck": from Newcastle to Nachterstedt, miners needed plenty.

Nachterstedt is a small and unremarkable village in the former-GDR, with nothing to it but a few hundred or so houses and a nearby aluminium plant. Or so I thought, until a little searching on the internet threw new light on this part of Saxony-Anhalt and its effect on the literary community of the old East Germany.

My home for the festive period would be a hotel that was a former miners recreation centre. A large rock outside bore a crossed hammers symbol and the miners greeting of “Glück Auf” (“Good luck”), and the interior’s predominantly brown colour scheme hinted at a more industrial and austere past, the type more easily imagined in grainy black and white.

Inside an echoey room with retro chandeliers, a large painting showed a colliery at full pelt, smoke belching from the surrounding chimneys. Brown is a recurring motif within the GDR; this area had been at the heart of the GDR’s lignite mining and lignite is also known as ‘brown’ coal. Rock samples in display cases showed other precious minerals that the ground here had also given up.

Now that mining had finished – like the hotel owner’s former job in a television factory it was no longer economically viable in the newly-united Germany – an aluminium factory was the main employer, carrying on the blue collar tradition.

Coming from a mining town in the North East myself, and being of an age where I could still remember the working collieries that dotted the region, it all felt strangely familiar. In Leipzig that November, it had occurred to me that my fascination with the GDR was in part due to memories I carried of the 70s in industrial northern England.

When I saw faded pictures of workers in dated garb, I saw in them something of my own family. For 1989 Leipzig, read Sunderland 1979. Standing in the grand function room, I imagined my grandmother hiding behind the curtain at a Durham miner’s gala slyly drinking the spirit slipped her by Manny Shinwell, the famous Labour MP and minister.

But Nachterstedt had also invegled its way into the annals of GDR popular culture, albeit in a very small way. Coming across a reference to The theater of Heiner Müller by Jonathan Kalb on the web, I discovered the “Nachterstedt Letter”. This was an articulate – perhaps too articulate – call from the workers of the People’s Brown Coal Factory of Nachterstedt to the authors of the young GDR in 1955. They called for the writing of the day to show what was happening in the factories; so that the workers could recognise themselves in art.

Since the Soviet heyday of socialist realism, the worker had symbolised the industrial future that was going to guarantee the well-being of all in communist states. Whilst accepting that factory work does not exclude an interest in the arts, it is not hard to imagine this letter having some sort of official inspiration in its call for writing for ‘the people’.

Muller had responded with Lohndrucker, known as The Scab in English. Taking its inspiration from the GDR’s first Stakhanovite, Eric Garbe, it looked at the different reactions inspired by the productivity record-setting ‘hero-worker’. Lauded by the state for their contribution to the collective’s economic output, they were loathed by some colleagues who saw them as making a rod for all their strained backs.

This revelation that the workers were apparently highly culturally engaged would have appealed not only to the SED and all its party members, but also the romantic in the artist. After all, it was a lack of ‘consciousness’ that permitted the bourgeoisie to flourish not so far away over the internal German border (Innerdeutsche Grenze).

According to Kalb, other writers had responded to the call by making ‘field trips’ to the factories to see how the ordinary man lived. The Bitterfelder Weg was the name given to the state cultural programme launched in 1959 that aimed to get workers writing themselves, as Sozialistischer Realismus was pushed towards its logical conclusion.

But although more than 50 years had passed since this letter and brown coal mining had finished in Nachterstedt, it had left a less abstract legacy that only recently came to light. Earlier this year, researching the role of Leipzig’s Nikolaikirche in the 1989 revolution, I discovered the celebrated church had attracted not just those who had filled in the Ausreiseantrag – the application for a prized travel permit to go abroad – but also environmentalists.

Local beer Hasseroder at the Hotel Zum Schwan, once a miners recreation centre.

Brown coal is low in quality and high in sulphur, associated with the acid rain that blighted industrial centres of the GDR like Leipzig. Trees were bare, by all accounts, and fish struggled in poisoned lakes.

Today, Saxony-Anhalt makes its money from chemicals and any remaining brown coal is left where it lies. New lakes have been formed in some former mining areas by the flooding of opencast sites, providing recreation facilites for locals and tourists alike. ‘Remediation’ is estimated to have cost over €8bn in the ex-GDR. But this summer, a shadow hung over these lakes, a consequence of the scarring and pitting of the landscape and the spoil heaps created by so much dug out debris.

In July, three Nachterstedt locals died when their houses slid into the lake after a landslide (see analysis here from a professor based in England’s Durham, where the Miners Gala still runs every July). Mining was always a deadly game, but long after the the pit gates have closed this hazardous enterprise can still take life. As other villages with manmade lakes wonder how safe their houses are, little Nachterstedt has once again been in the spotlight in the former-East Germany.

See this New Statesman article by one of the Hidden Europe authors on the same subject.

The view from the shop floor.

If the first fall of snow brings the annual ‘Britain’s grinding to a halt’ frenzy of national self-recrimination, and the first wave of Train Operation Companies-directed frustration; then January brings the annual fares scandal as the TOCs raise fares using figures which leave the inflation rate behind like a stranded passenger on a lonely platform.

This year, the media reports that some (regulated) fares have actually dropped – albeit minutely – because of inflation. Others, namely deregulated fares (off-peak or leisure travel) have risen by as much as 15%. One might think Germany’s efficient network of ICE trains would make for a high price tag, but the BBC states we have Europe’s “most expensive” railways here.

London has finally seen the rolling out of Oyster on most national rail overground services in London. The previous lack of ticketing integration has been farcical in an international hub that promotes itself as one of the world’s leading cities.

The tube network is biased to the north of the river; many areas on either side of the Thames depend on trains. So, seven years after the cards were first introduced, this further ‘Oysterisation’ is most welcome. Again, TOCs have come in for criticism over the delay in implementation.

Here too though, the good news is tempered by rises of 3.9% in tube fares and a massive but barely remarked-on 20% increase in the bus flat rate. If my basic economics is right, that’s roughly ten times the rate of inflation.

Once a pioneer of railways, Britain is now paying the cost as aging infrastructure and Victorian-dug tunnels perpetuate historical bottlenecks on a system that is a victim not only of its own success, but also years of underinvestment.

A combination of political and logistical shortsightedness, combined with greed and vested interests meant that the country’s railways received neither the attention nor the money they merited.

While politicians call for us to travel in the most ecological fashion possible, train companies continue to price us off their services; despite the public subsidies they still receive. Such contradictory signals threaten to derail a greener future for mass transport in the UK.

Walthamstow Marshes: tranquility is a relative concept in London.

New Year’s Day is a good opportunity to take stock with a cobweb clearing constitutional. Leaving my Clapton base and heading away from town rather than towards it, I found myself on the Walthamstow Marshes with crowds of well wrapped-up couples and families who had the same idea.

The scene by the River Lea was typical of a London park. Despite the open fields and stillness of the water, there was movement all around. Groups tramped by on land, while planes made a gentle curve in the icily-clear air as they turned to the west to make their final approach to Heathrow. National Express trains for Chingford and Stansted Airport shuttled over the embankment that partially hid a giant gas storage tank, mixed liveries at once exemplifying transience while  also suggesting reincarnation.

Long grass poked through the unbroken ice of the marsh ponds, but on the river a couple of swans surveyed the towpath as they patrolled in ‘line astern’ like warships on the Suez. Any territorial pretensions were soon abandoned though, as they made a wide berth for a narrow boat. Easing to one side to let it through, their brilliant white plumage – officer dress for fowl – contrasted sharply with its drab coat of battleship grey primer.

Lea Navigation narrow boat: life on the edge of Zone 2.

A hundred years ago here, on July 13th 1909, walkers, boaters and even swans would not only have enjoyed better weather, they would have been privy to a small piece of aviation history. The skies which are so busy now would have been empty then; but hopping along in the fields would have been an aeroplane that – while resembling something that Dick Dastardly would fly in the cartoon series known to many as Catch the Pigeon – was nevertheless the first British-built machine to make a powered flight.

Alliot Verdon Roe was the dogged designer from Salford who planned and built the triplane (more info here) in question. Six years earlier in 1903, the Wright Brothers had made the very first powered flight at Kittyhawk, whileB in 1906 it was a Romanian who made European history.

But perhaps Roe’s biggest contribution to British aviation was indirect. He went on to found the Avro aircraft company the following year, ahead of the Great War and the start of  aerial warfare as we know it. Less than a week ago I had found myself at the Mohne Dam in Germany’s industrial Ruhr, made famous in the Second World War by the exploits of 617 Squadron, AKA the ‘Dam Busters’. It was the advent of the Avro Lancaster heavy bomber that made possible the delivery of Barnes Wallis’ famous – and very weighty – bouncing bomb in May 1943.

Seagulls on the River Lea: the wonder of flight.

It was also Lancasters that dropped the incendiary bombs on Hamburg that same summer.  It’s said that this busy port, with its concrete U-Boat pens and vast bunkers suffered more than Dresden. But somehow it didn’t achieve the notoriety of the city that features in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five.

Immediately prior to my walk, I had read Marione Ingram’s horrific memoire of the Hamburg raids while flicking through issue 96 of Granta. Siphoning off more than their fair share from a reservoir of good luck that so many others had been unable to tap into, her part-Jewish family not only survived the raids but avoided impending deportation, presumed dead by the authorities.

Had my own grandfather, a rear gunner in Bomber Command, taken part? It seemed unlikely, I knew he flew Wellingtons, a type designed by Barnes Wallis. But one never knows. Bar a remark about hosing out the remains of colleagues, he had chosen not to speak about it. Not for nothing was his favourite film The Quiet Man.

New Year's Day: a space for reflection.

Families, aeroplanes, fire, water, Hamburg, the RAF and the Dambusters’ March – this bizarre soup sloshed around in behatted head as I (over)thought associatively in the open space of reflection that is New Year’s Day. I pondered the interconnectedness of modern history and the weight of the knowledge it brings. That gas tank would have been a Luftwaffe target here too. Why them, not us? Why then, not now? Is survivor guilt possible at so many steps removed?

The incomprehensibility of that generation’s experience, which – fuelled by reading and scrutinised by a vivid imagination -  only become more impossible with every new story heard or new fact discovered, overwhelmed my brain. That, thoughts of the unforeseen consequences of inventions, and the results of accidents of birth.

Is there such a thing as a collective psychic memory store that, when the atmospherics are right, we can tune into and hear the cries of souls gone before? Certainly I have heard deceased loved ones in the wind; and visiting Poland’s Krakow the mournful wail of Klezmer spoke of an anguish that was than more than sentimentality and transcended mere time.

Glibly giving thanks for being a child of the 70s, I gave a mental nod to my grandparents. Loss is infinite, but we can only move in one direction: forward. I watched the logical conclusion of this momentum: children by the river who will remember not air raids but Olympics. Turning my bike, I turned my back on deeds done and dusted, and relatives who cannot be willed into re-existence.  Cycling home I imagined a man on the grass, on a summer’s day in 1909, who just wanted to fly.

Back in the day: SF's sea lions on the purpose-built loungers.

I’ve written much on this site about the 20th anniversaries of events in Eastern Europe, as communism crumbled and the Iron Curtain was swept aside. But on the West Coast of the US, this winter marked the 20th anniversary of San Francisco’s deadly Loma Prieta earthquake.

This being SF, the anniversary was commemorated in an upbeat way with The Big Rumble: a week of events “designed to connect our communities with preparedness resources”. Raising awareness was the name of the game in a city where the question is not ‘if’ but ‘when’.

So only two months later, when the famous sea lions of Fisherman’s Wharf departed en masse, you can’t blame some folks for wondering if the animals of Pier 39 knew something the human residents didn’t. Shades of the ravens leaving the Tower of London, to some.

The pinnipeds (finned mammals) were originally viewed as a nuisance, till it was realised that they were a tourist attraction. Their loud yelps, as they lounged on specially built rafts, could – at least until December – be heard from some distance.

They announced to the Alcatraz-bound that the bay was almost in sight where Otis Redding did his sitting. Looking down from the Golden Gate bridge, you’d sometimes see their heads pop up near a container ship heading for the massed cranes of Oakland.

The official explanation is that the wildlife show has moved to warmer waters in search of food; they’re expected back in the spring. But you can bet a lot of San Franciscans will be taking a second look at the Big Rumble information they picked up in October.

Postscript: SF’s Sea Lions spotted near Oregon coast.