I shall be flying to Prague on Friday morning, from where I will travel to the town of Liberec to attend the IJK, the world Esperanto youth congress, which runs between Saturday 18th and Saturday 25th July. Babel and I are heading to Prague for a spot of sightseeing that weekend, before catching a bus to Warsaw on the Sunday night and from there heading on to Bialystok by train. Bialystok is the location for the UK, the World Esperanto Congress 2009, and we will be there until Saturday 1st August, at which point we have a rather complex journey home via Wroclaw. If you can’t figure out why this is complex, try looking at a map of Poland If all goes to plan, I will be home again on Sunday 2nd August… home for a very brief interval, I hasten to add, as I am going to Austria on August 8th

I’ve been planning this for so long that I’m starting to feel rather excited now, but this week I’ve also started feeling scared. Having organised it all myself, I’m worried that something will go terribly wrong and we’ll get stranded somewhere random, unable to speak a word of Polish…

Wish me luck!

This time I learnt from my mistake in Hungary and managed to force myself to write a paper diary as I went along. I spent most of the holiday feeling utterly exhausted, and so some days I may have written less than others, but I certainly have enough to go on for my blog without the painful wracking of brains which I had to subject myself to after the IJK

It all started on the morning of Tuesday 26th August. I had had no hand in booking the flights, and so I was pleasantly surprised to discover that our plane was leaving Birmingham at the comparatively civilised hour of 9am, and so with online check in the night before, it wasn’t necessary to get up until 6 We flew with Swiss, which was quite a novel experienced, accustomed as I now am to flying with budget airlines. I initially tried to refuse the offer of a drink, being unwilling to shell out extra cash to an airline once I am sitting in a plane, but then my sister reminded me that a cup of coffee was actually free, as was the raisin bun which I was presented with. The latter was somewhat of a mixed success as I don’t actually like raisins; I spent a happy half hour attempting to extract crumbs of bun from around the offending fruit, but before I got two thirds of the way through I lost motivation and surrendered the rest to my sister.

The aircraft actually arrived ten minutes early in Zurich, and in true Swiss style we weren’t allowed to land but were forced to circle until our appointed time. The people behind me made a terrific fuss about this and started telling stories about aeroplanes which had circled round airports and never been given the go ahead to land, with the result that the engine ran out of fuel and the aeroplane simply dropped from the sky, exterminating everyone on board. I seem to be condemned to sit in the region of nervous flyers this summer They should have stopped moaning and looked out of the window. Zurich is actually an exceptionally nice airport to circle around. Whilst the city itself lies in the comparative lowlands of northern Switzerland, from the air you can often see further afield to the Alps themselves, which is always a spectacle worth seeing. Furthermore, the city is built on the shores of a significant lake, and whilst I’m not a big fan of the Zuerchersee up close, from the air it’s really quite a pretty sight

Zurich airport is wonderfully designed, and in fact I think I have to award it the prize for being the best situated airport I have every been to. After a baggage reclaim as efficient as one would expect from the world’s most orderly country, we merely had to stroll through customs and descend on an escalator to the railway platform to make a swift connection into the city centre. Certainly not the hour hike to which one is subjected at Frankfurt, and the transfer time to the city is a mere ten minutes (cf Munich 50 mins).

Once there, we took the opportunity to stock up on some food. Zurich is a city which I struggle to love, despite how high it habitually ranks in sruveys of the best place to live in the world. The city centre to me lacks character. There is admittedly a certain thrill to be gained by walking down Bahnhofstrasse and knowing that beneath your feet lie cellars and cellars of gold ingots, but on the surface Zurich comes across to me as a place which lacks soul. There are too many banks, which don’t impress me at all, and too many posh shops, which impress me even less. Yes, the lake is pleasant from a distance, but to be honest in hot weather I think it smells a bit whiffy and it certainly isn’t going to win a prize for being the cleanest stretch of water in Switzerland. As for the river… well, any time I walk out of the station and into the park which lies along its banks, I kind of feel like I’m going to be mugged. There are a lot of slightly strange looking people in Zurich – far more shaved heads than one would expect to see in a cross section of society – and I can’t help feeling that there is a very strong fascist undercurrent…

Perhaps I’m being unfair, but it doesn’t even have a Pizza Hut to recommend it now that Pizza Hut Switzerland has gone bust, and so it was on this occasion that we elected not to venture beyond the doors of the Hauptbahnhof. Whilst my family busied themselves with choosing vile looking sandwiches full of gherkins, I headed off to a little stall which was selling rather attractive slices of pizza, and had a chat with a delightful little man who upon learning I was British, proudly informed me that he was a Liverpool fan, despite “you’ll never walk alone” seemingly being the only words of English he possessed

Our route first took us on an inter-city express bound for the Swiss capital, Bern. The journey between there and Zurich is surely the most uninspiring in the whole of Switzerland. The landscape is so flat you could be forgiven for thinking you were in Holland, and everywhere you look are the ugly blemishes of industry; power stations, business parks, factories. Fortunately for me, I was in so much pain taht I didn’t actually care. The sudden onset of my time of the month explains why I had been somewhat tearful the proceeding weekend, but why this month should prove to be so much more drastically painful than last I have absolutely no idea. I had had the foresight to pack some tablets, but these were in my toileteries bag which was at the bottom of my suitcase, which was in turn wedged at the bottom of a luggage rack – in short, inaccessible So instead I concentrated on breathing exercises, and found distraction in an argument with my mother about the gherkin in her sandwich; apparently she hadn’t known there was a gherkin in it when she bought it, and it didn’t go down too well when I stated that I’d bought pizza specifically because I knew there was a gherkin in the sandwich. I should apparently have informed her of this fact, despite the fact I didn’t know she didn’t know, and it was news to me that she didn’t like gherkins anyway…

Interlaken and Lake Thun

Eiger

Interlaken is thus where the “real” railway ends. From the little station known as Interlaken Ost, small rickety trains depart on what I believe is a narrow-gauge line bound simultaneously for the two opposing destinations of Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen. Woe betide the traveller who speaks no German and ends up sitting in the wrong part of the train. At a village called Zweiluetschinnen, a name which I once thought a dreadful German tongue-twister but now find quite pretty, the train is randomly uncoupled and the two resulting segments set off up different valleys. The local geography is such that two small rivers, the Weisse Luetschine and the Schwarze Luetschine, both fed by the glaciers of the high Alps, have formed two different valleys before coming together and joining up at the aptly-named Zweiluetschinnen in order to flow onwards into the lakes. You may think that you have never heard of the Lauterbrunnen valley, but in fact you probably did as a small disgruntled child in a geography lesson – it is widely acknowledged as being one of the world’s most perfect examples of a U-shaped valley, and for that reason textbooks on physical geography abound with photos! No matter how many times I see it, I never cease to be amazed by the way the sheer vertical rock of the valley sides and the myriad of waterfalls which pour down them.

Our route, however, lay inside the other valley and towards the small mountain village of Grindelwald. There were times when I thought the train wasn’t going to make it as it somewhat painfully ascended the 500m or so necessary to reach the terminus station. Grindelwald is quite literally the end of the track, an elevation of just over 1000m giving it a comparable altitude to the top of Snowdon. Having visited the location several times in winter, I was not at all prepared for how different and how beautiful it would look in summer. Situated in the shadow of the Eiger and other impressive peaks such as the Wetterhorn, the views just from the main high street are truly stunning

Our first taks was to find the offices of the company from whom we were renting the chalet. After only a couple of wrong turns we achieved this, and were promptly greeted by a helpful woman who very kindly volunteered to give us and our luggage a lift to our appartment. I say very kindly, because it soon transpired that what was described on the internet as having a “central” location was actually a 20 minute slog uphill from the town centre Having arrived, we discovered that the cleaner had inexplicably left the wrong key in the door, and so we had to sit on the terrace for ten minutes whilst the lady returned to the village to swap it. It was certainly no hardship to wait outside and contemplate the Eiger, and time passed very swiftly.

Once inside, the chalet proved to be as nice as I thought it bloody better be given how much we were being charged for it. It appeared to be the second home of a rather wealthy English family who had furnished it with bathmats from Harrods and china from Villeroy and Boch. My sister and I, by virtue of a bit of careful suitcase manoevering, managed to secure the only bedroom with a kingsize bed, and that substantially lessoned the pain of sharing over the days which followed

Me on the balcony of the chalet

The short answer, is that I was bullied But more accurately, I allowed myself to be bullied, which is not quite the same thing. I have a friend who completely despairs of me in a fashion sort of sense, and is on a crusade to make me take a deeper (or should that be shallower?!) interest in clothes. I have repeatedly told her that her attempts are doomed to failure, but she was rather upset when we met up yesterday lunchtime, having been given a pay rise which was far below inflation, and in order to distract her from crying and using up the stock of tissues which I desperately needed to combat my hay fever, I told her that I urgently needed to buy a new swimsuit and that I required her assistance in choosing one.

The fact that I could do with a new swimming costume was not entirely a lie. To say it was urgent was perhaps a slight exaggeration, but nevertheless the email confirmation I got about the IJK the other day reminded me that I needed to pack a swimsuit and that mine is a trifle old. That is to say, I bought it when I was 11 and needed a navy one for going to secondary school. It’s done pretty well to last 13 years, but the problem is that in that period I have changed shape slightly and so it’s long since ceased to fit terribly well It wouldn’t be impossible to wear it in public as it fortunately doesn’t have my 25 metres badge sewn to it, but it is a bit boring so I was planning to buy one which fitted and was a nicer colour. If swimsuits last me on average 13 years, I figured I could afford the expense.

I wasn’t, however, prepared for two things. The first being the distinct lack of swimsuits in the shops. When I say “swimsuit” I mean a nice one-piece sort of thing which covers as much of me as possible. My friend did give me a funny look when I expressed an intention to buy such a thing, and she proved to have a point because pretty much the only shops where we could find that style were old-people-shops, and generally involved all sorts of strange contraptions and padding for holding in bits of you that might otherwise stick out. Hmmm. Further, when we did find suitable examples, they were all in the region of £25. Call me mean if you like, but I’d deem that expensive for a pair of trousers, never mind a flimsy little thing I’m only going to wear once a year.

It was at this point which my friend decided to drag me kicking and screaming into Primark, where she promised me that I’d be able to find a swimsuit for under £5. It seemed like an attractive proposition. We located the swimwear section, and I was favourably impressed by the prices… but less impressed by the fact that I couldn’t find any sufficiently decent styles Are one-piece swimsuits really so out of fashion with the under fifties?

In order to placate my friend, I therefore eventually agreed to buy a bikini (note that by the use of clever wording, I only agreed to buy one, not wear one) on the condition that the cost did not exceed £3. She found me one for £3 exactly which is blue and not bad as these things go, but nevertheless I am most definitely not a bikini sort of person. I’m of the firm impression that one should only expose so much flesh if one has a totally flat stomach, and my own stomach is most definitely not flat, nor likely to become so in the near future. I refrained from making that point too strongly, however, as my friend’s stomach is somewhat less flat than mine and she apparently wears such garments all the time So yeah, for the first time in my life I am the embarrassed owner of a bikini, a fact which I shall refrain from mentioning to my mother as I think that she might have a fit To be fair, it does actually fit perfectly well and appears to have been designed for a flat chested person which is always a bonus I think, however, that on the balance of probabilities it is far more likely to languish in my sock drawer than be taken on holiday, and that I will still be calling on my trusty 13 year old costume To be honest, I am still a little luke warm about the idea of swimming in a lake anyway. I don’t like the idea of being touched by a fish.

What hadn’t occurred to me at the start of my lunch hour was that once I allowed my friend to get me into Primark, it would be rather a mission to get her let me out again. A slip of the tongue revealed the dreadful truth that I do not own a pair of shorts. Apparently, I can not go on holiday without a pair of shorts. I pointed out that I have been going on holiday in a very fulfilling manner for a good 12 years without owning a pair of shorts, but this didn’t appear to register with her. Shorts, it seems, are essential in order to prevent my legs from overheating, so off we went to find some.

Primark actually didn’t appear to be doing a very extensive line in shorts, once we ruled out those which were in fluorescent colours. I’m sorry, I refuse to wear fluorescent colours, as they significantly hinder my chief aim in life of nobody noticing I am in a room In the end, we found a grand total of one pair of shorts which were in a size eight. They’re a rather unpleasant sludgy khaki sort of colour. That is to say, I find it unpleasant but apparently it’s a perfectly normal colour for shorts. Now I whilst I object to shorts on principle because I dislike showing any leg whatsoever, I might be induced to wear some if it really was terribly hot, so long as they were sort of nice and loose. I wasn’t able to try these on in the shop because it was so busy and our lunchtime was limited, but when I got home I found these shorts were actually quite tight. Not tight as in they don’t fit on the waist – they do indeed fit perfectly – but tight as in tight on the legs which is clearly the style. Taking into account that, and the fact that they really are very short, I am failing to see an opportunity I am going to have for wearing them and am consoling myself with the fact that they are only £2

I was also made to purchase a skirt. The skirt is a similar sort of colour but is highly preferable because it comes down almost to the knee and so leg showage is minimised in an acceptable manner. Despite the fact I never wear skirts, I might conceivably wear this one I also got a top which is actually very nice despite the fact it has flowers on, and I thus will wear. I was forced to buy another top too – a loose smocking sort of affair in a style which I really can’t see the point of. I objected to it so strongly that in the end my friend gave me the quid back for it to shut me up I can’t imagine that I am ever going to go anywhere so warm I will want to wear a blouse which is so floaty there’s actually room for two of me in it, but I think I will keep it in case I ever have the misfortune to fall pregnant. It is the sort of style which would be admirable for wearing whilst pregnant!

Other than that, I just got two T shirts of a reasonably nondescript nature, apart from the fact that I don’t like T shirts which have straps rather than sleeves. What is the point? If you wear a bra, you look daft because everyone can see your straps. If you don’t wear a bra, you look daft because everyone can see you’re not wearing a bra. Admittedly you could fork out for one of those bras with see-through straps, but I drew the line at that! So, erm, I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with those either. But all in all, I got an awful lot of clothes for twenty quid, which is it would have cost me for a swimsuit alone elsewhere, so I’m starting to think that Primark may in fact have advantages.

When we boarded the flight, there were a few minutes of utter chaos. The reality of the situation was that the Stuttgart passengers were gatecrashing the Hamburg flight, but no one had taken this into consideration when allocating the seat numbers. Consequently, my seat was double booked and I had to wander aimlessly down the plane until I found another one which looked randomly free. It was one of those tiny little Embraer aircraft which only have one seat on the left hand side of the aisle, and so I was able to sit in antisocial peace on my own

The captain was a very nice man, and apologired profusely for the confusion. Methinks he was pretty hacked off himself as nobody had properly explained to him or the air crew what was going on. I later found out from the air hostess that the first she’d heard of it was when she got on the plane. To be honest, they all sounded as fed up with their employer as I was.

Anyway, the plan was to head to Hamburg first and then sit and wait on the tarmac for a bit before flying on to Stuttgart. The pilot seemed a bit worried about this as it would normally be illegal for him to fly internally between German airports; the company only has a licence for certain routes. The air hostesses were also a bit worried about the legality of it, something to do with the number of hours they were supposed to stay in the air…

In a bizarre twist of fate, I suddenly realised that I knew one of the air hostesses! That is to say, I didn’t recognise her in the slightest, and was beginning to get annoyed when she came round with the drinks trolley and was doggedly pushing me to have a cup of coffee, despite my protestations that I didn’t want one. It’s a good job I don’t have a temper, otherwise I might have told her where to stick her overpriced filth. As it is, I’m a timid weak-willed sort of person and I eventually agreed to buy one on the grounds that refusal was becoming embarrassing. It was only when I reached for my purse and she whispered that no, it was on the house, that I saw her name badge and realised I went to school with her. Actually, I sat next to her in A Level Geography for two years and used to lend her my notes But to be fair, that does make it six years since I last saw her and in the intervening period she had grown a fringe.

At any rate, I had a free cup of coffee and later got passed a free bottle of water prominently labelled “crew only” which was very kind of her and caused the couple on the other side of the aisle to glare at me viciously I take back some of what I said about Flybe, because she and the rest of the crew were all very nice, and whoever’s fault it was, it wasn’t theirs.

It being a bright sunny day, the flight was pretty nice. As we took off I had a great view of Birmingham city centre and could even make out the tower of Old Joe, the university clock in the distance. The approach to Hamburg was also very enjoyable as we came in low over a massive river which I assume was the Elbe. We sat on the tarmac for 45 minutes while the baggage of the Hamburg passengers was unloaded, and we also acquired a new load of passengers whom the aircraft was supposed to be taking back to Birmingham but who were due the surprise of a little detour via Stuttgart. Meanwhile I was feeling awake enough to read, and skimmed through one of the pile of Esperanto magazines which flood through my door ever since I joined TEJO. This one was a little surprising. An article about a group of Japanese people who find cleaning toilets a semi-religious experience, and another about a town in Poland where some school children had beaten up their English teacher. I was surprised to find a very nice gentleman whom I had met in Southport not falling far short of praising this as a victory over linguistic imperialism. After that I decided a bit more normality was in order and went back to Engleby, which is good but potentially very dark.

Anyhow eventually we took off, eventually we got to Stuttgart where it was a horrible cloudy day, and here there was a further commotion because the German authorities boarded the plane and requested everyone get off, even those who were intending to stay on for Birmingham. Everyone was most put out by this, including the cabin crew. Stuttgart is only a small airport though and by the time all this had been resolved and I had got through passport control, I was pretty chuffed to find my bag had already been offloaded and was sitting all on its own on the baggage carousel

Sadly I’d just missed the hourly bus to Tuebingen but there was the advantage that this gave me time to search out something to eat. I ended up with a Pizzabroetchen and a Vanilleschnecke from the airport bakery, and headed outside to get some much needed air whilst I waited for the bus. There is an excellent bus service which ferries people between Tuebingen and the airport in less than an hour, which is quicker than the same journey by train. The road journey is significantly prettier and more exciting too, although I was worried that even armed with a timetable and an email of instructions, I might fail to stand up on time to get off at the correct stop for my sister’s suburb. I sat right by the door just in case.

I needn’t have worried though because everything went according to plan, and having got up at the hideous hour at 4am I finally arrived at my sister’s flat at half past one. By this time I was in a tired sort of daze and had I not been so pleased to see her, I would certainly have fallen asleep. As it was we had some bread and cheese with coffee, and I started to feel a bit better I was disconcerted when sitting in her kitchen to look out the window and see a cow walking past But there is a sort of farm behind the accommodation block and now the warm weather is here they have released the cattle to graze

We headed into town on the bus in order to do some shopping. It’s Fathers’ Day next weekend and so I thought maybe we should take the opportunity of being together in the same country to get a joint present. This was a bit of a race against time, because no shops open at all on Sundays and they mostly close at five on Saturdays. Also, there aren’t really many shops in Tuebingen at all. In the end we went to the famous Gummi Bear shop, which sells gummi sweets in every shape and colour you could possibly imagine. I wanted to buy myself a bag of gummi cocks but in the presence of my sister didn’t dare In the end we settled for a box of sweets for my dad in the shape of a car, which looks quite cute That mission accomplished, our next task was to buy some peppermint flavoured Rittersport for my mom.

Rittersport is the only famous brand of German chocolate of which I am aware, and they make it in a factory about twenty miles from where my sister lives. Its uniqueness consists of the fact that the bars are always completely square, which is apparently because they were initially designed as bars which would fit into a sportsman’s pocket (hence the name). It now comes in a variety of different flavours, all with a different colour packaging, and is quite delicious. I wouldn’t choose it over Cadbury, but as far as I am concerned Cadbury is sacred, and I would choose it over Lindt, which I really don’t think is that nice despite how much people always go on about it and how much it costs. The nicest flavour of Rittersport is the mint, and until very recently it used to be obtainable from the foreign section of the posh food hall of Rackham’s in Birmingham. Recently, however, they appear to have run out, hence my mother’s request that we bring her some back. This should have been a simple request to fulfil, but was complicated by the fact that because there are so many different flavours of the chocolate, the first three shops we went to didn’t have the mint We obtained it in the end though in a little chemist where there was a big poster over the display saying, “Ich treibe Rittersport”. I thought that was quite witty

By this point the shops were closed anyway, so we decided to go for a bit of a walk. We climbed a hill which lies just behind the city centre and on which the poshest and most expensive houses are built. The majority of the most imposing houses belong to the Burschenschaft but please don’t ask me to explain who they are, because I scarcely understand it myself. They are slightly frightening anyway, and there was one particularly intimidating house we went past which had a red carpet leading up the steps to the door whilst either side of the path was lit with flaming torches Trying not to catch anybody’s attention, we progressed up the hill and after climbing through a small wood we emerged into a large clearing with a tower. The tower looked rather like it might once have been used as a prison, on account of the narrow barred windows. My sister said she thought it had been built by Kaiser Wilhelm, but when she said that I don’t think she meant one of the German rulers but rather one of the local kings who continued in existence here long after the country was allegedly united.

The tower was locked up and so we couldn’t climb it for a better view. Instead, we headed back down the other side of the hill, through some fields of peculiar German sheep and alongside a little river into the town centre. I had already arranged with my sister in advance that for dinner we were going to go to Neckarmueller, an historic brewery on the banks of the Neckar and my favourite restaurant in Tuebingen.

The Schnitzel there is really very good, and they serve Apfelschorle in big tall glasses as if it were beer One of my sister’s flatmates has just started working there and I feel sorry for her because she’s allowed to carry people’s food but not to bring them their bills, and so she misses out on all the tips Anyhow, after that we felt like pudding so wandered round Tuebingen in the twilight for a bit until we found a place that was selling the most delicious icecream I’ve had in ages. That was followed by a Latte Machiatto in a nearby bar. I don’t know why none of the coffee houses in England serve Latte Machiatto, but in Germany it appears to be everywhere. It’s a strange sort of concept, being essentially indistinguishable from a normal latte but served in a glass beaker with no handle and a straw to drink it with. It takes a bit of getting used to, drinking hot coffee with a straw, but it’s actually rather fun

I was fairly exhausted after all my travelling, and retired to my hotel before eleven. The hotel, being honest, leaves a lot to be desired. I had a bad impression of it the first time I ever saw it with the word “Fremdenzimmer” stencilled on the side in huge letters. Fremdenzimmer, it just sounds a trifle unwelcoming The girl who checked me in was unwelcoming to say the least and refused to accept that I was correctly pronouncing my own name. One of life’s phenomena which I have never understood is the peculiar perception the Germans have of English vowels. It matters not which part of Germany you visit: uniformly across the whole country, Germans are convinced that the English pronounce u as a and a as e. Hence the German word Handy, their mistaken impression of what the English call mobile phones, is actually pronounced Hendy, which they fondly imagine is excellent British pronunciation. Similarly when speaking English they talk about “a cap of tea”. What you and I might imagine was a cap, that is to say something you might wear on your head, they would call a “kep”. The Queen is not affluent, but effluent, and so on.

That aside, the main objection I have to the hotel is how incredibly dark it is. The corridors have no windows and are lit by the sort of lights which only come on when you are standing underneath them, with the result that you have to walk through a darkened passage which becomes illuminated just five seconds too late. The rooms themselves are also incredibly dark, being lit by one solitary sixty watt bulb on the far wall. I was enjoying reading Engleby so much that I wanted to get through another chapter before I went to bed, but the light was so poor that I event admitted defeat and went to sleep.

The breakfast buffet in this establishment is also not going to win any prizes. The orange juice is watered down so much that it more accurately resembles squash and there is no cereal, the choice being between muesli and muesl. I am also slightly disconcerted by the fact that I have never stayed there and not been the only person eating breakfast. It was, however, only forty euros a night, and so it’s not fair to complain

Having packed my walking boots, for Sunday we had planned a more ambitious walk. My sister had obtained some walk leaflets from the local tourist information office and we decided to combine two of their suggestions to make a longer walk of just over fifteen miles. Having finally succeeded in convincing my sister it didn’t make sense to attend Mass, we made an early start, and after the thirty minute walk from where my sister lives to the town centre, began to walk through the western outskirts of Tuebingen and ascend a hill known as the Kreuzberg. It was a baking hot day, but the walk was very pleasant and the exertion of walking uphill was relieved by the frequent patches of wooded shade. When we temporarily emerged from the trees there were some beautiful views back towards Tuebingen and the Wurmingen Kapelle, and thanks to the excellent written directions we soon arrived at a picturesque little village called Hageloch

Hageloch appears to boast only one eating establishment, which was nevertheless absolutely lovely and the woman there presented me with the biggest and most refreshing Apfelschorle which I have ever drunk in my life. We were tempted to stay and eat there, but eventually decided that we didn’t have time and needed to press on if we were going to stand any chance of making the necessary bus back into town.

Now, the second walk we were trying to complete started at one end of Hageloch, and we were quite definitely at the other, so my sister had a clever brainwave that we could climb up a hill through some apple orchards and eventually intercept the woodland path we were aiming for. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and we quickly climbed up through the beautiful orchards and reached the woods. The problem was that once in the woods there weren’t any helpful footpath signs, and we weren’t entirely sure where we had come in. We had a look at the map over lunch and were confident we had it sorted, so strode out at a brisk pace for half an hour or so, making the features on the ground fit with those on our walk instructions. After a while, however, we were faced with incontrovertable evidence that we weren’t actually where we thought we were, and were faced to retrace our steps in the hope of finding some sort of landmark which might correspond with the map.

Things were rather fraught for a while. I was rather panicked that we would be stuck in a wood forever and I would miss my flight back home. We walked for twenty minutes down one path only to find it come to an abrupt end at a precipice, and we had to walk all the way back again. At one point I caught a glimpse of a huge brown beast running through the forest towards us and screamed rather loudly on the grounds that it looked suspiciously like a wolf. Closer inspection, however, revealed that it was just a deer

My sister has her gold Duke of Edinburgh Award and is actually pretty good at map reading, so before long she managed to get us back on track, and we eventually arrived at a pretty place called Schloss Hohenentringen. The castle was very attractive indeed and probably worth seeing, but it was so incredibly busy on a sunny Sunday afternoon that I just wanted to get away from it as quickly as possible. We proceeded to climb down a narrow valley and into the village of Entringen proper. As we walked down the main road towards it we began to hear ominous rumbling noises behind us, and it soon became apparent that a particularly vicious thunderstorm was hot on our heels. We just made the village as the first drops started to fall and sought refuge under the porch of the Rathaus until it calmed down enough for us to find the busstop. There was rather a long weight for the bus, with the result that we didn’t get into town until half four, barely giving me time to get back to my sister’s, grab my stuff and make my connection to the airport.

I managed it somehow though and the goodbye was mercifully short, although I did as ever end up crying slightly. The journey back to the airport gave me time to reflect. Sometimes I wonder what we’re doing, tying ourselves down to a long term residence in England by talking about grown up things like buying a house. The quality of life seems so much better on the continent in so many ways that it is difficult to come up with justifications for wanting to live in Britain. Life in Britain always seems rather like a grey existence, making the most of the moments which fall between the general unpleasantness. I think I might rather live abroad and have a dead end job and struggle for cash than stay in England with a career and a mortgage. But I am probably romanticising it out of proportion, and of course life can be crap everywhere. I just know that if I ever end up single, I won’t be hanging around.

The journey home was totally uneventful, despite the fact that I was put sitting in row 13 I arrived home after 11, utterly exhausted, and not looking forward to my six am start for Bolton

I am particularly excited about going to the Bernese Oberland. As a rule I wouldn’t have chosen to go somewhere so frequented by British tourists, but I am hopeful that by the end of the summer a lot of them will have gone home. I have been to Grindelwald before, several times, but only in winter and so it is hard to imagine what it will look like without a thick covering of snow.

We used to go there at New Year when I was younger, for winter walking. We didn’t used to stay in Grindelwald, which is an expensive ski resort, but in Interlaken, which was cheaper. It’s only a short train ride to Grindelwald from there though, and we used to go quite regularly to use the cable cars. There is one gondola called Männlichen, which is the longest in the world, and there is another called First which probably has the most beautiful view I have ever seen. I burned all the skin off my nose on First once, having gone up without sun cream by mistake, and half my face disappeared beneath an ugly blister which took a lot of explaining once I got back to school

Above Grindelwald sits Kleine Scheidegg, a tiny hamlet of four buildings directly below the infamous north face of the Eiger. The Eiger is, I think, the most inspiring sight in Switzerland. Or possibly the second most, if you’ve been to Zermatt and seen the Matterhorn, but I haven’t The mountain is, in fact, just below 4000m, and thus dwarfed by the Jungfrau and the Mönch, the other two members of the trio which makes up one of the most formidable sights in the Alps. Nevertheless, it is still awe inspiring to stand beneath the notorious Nordwand which towers for nearly 2000m in an uncompromisingly vertical manner above Kleine Scheiddegg. In German they actually sometimes call in Mordwand, because of the number of people who have died on it.

These days, of course, you can actually go inside the Eiger as part of the Jungfrau railway. This amazing piece of late nineteenth century engineering takes passengers from Kleine Scheidegg to just below 3500m at the Jungfraujoch by means of a steep tunnel within the Eiger Nordwand itself. This is officially the highest you can get by public transport in the whole of Europe, and it certainly beats the 50 bus Whilst most of the journey takes place in the pitch black of tunnels only a few inches wider than the trains, there is a stop partway up where braver types are allowed to exit the carriage and feel their way along dark labyrinths until they are confronted with the world’s most amazing window; a sheet of glass inserted in the North Wall of the Eiger, looking out to the valley beyond. The hole, and a second one higher up at the Eismeer, were blasted into the mountainside during the construction of the tunnel for the purposes of removing rubble. These days they serve not just as a useful gimmick for the tourists, but as a route by which attempts can be made to rescue mountaineers in difficulty.

It will be nice to go back to Switzerland I’ve enjoyed more recent walking holidays in Germany and Austria, but Switzerland is so much more organised. The trains are truly amazing and the food is delicious, even if the people do speak an incomprehensible language and everything is rather pricey. Having spent the weekend looking at holiday apartments, my mother finally booked one earlier in the week. It looks absolutely lovely, 122 sq m with no fewer than three bathrooms There’s been a slight hitch though in that she thought it was within our budget, then it turned out that she was quoted a price in Euros rather than Swiss francs because it’s let by a German property firm. Plus when I looked at the photos on the web it turned out the two main bedrooms have double beds, which is fine for my parents but slightly less fun for me and my sister who now have to spend ten days sharing

I’m totally not a fan of the exchange rate situation at the moment. Last time I went to Switzerland there were 2.4 CHF to the pound, now there are barely two. As for Euros, I’ve always done currency conversion in my head on the basis that a Euro is two thirds of a pound. Not any more it isn’t; as of this morning Oanda puts a Euro as worth 78p

CH, by the way, are not only my initials but also the country code for Switzerland, should you ever find yourself needing to know that in a pub quiz. It stands for Confederatio Helvetica or something like that, which is what the Romans used to call it I think it comes from a tribe of people called the Helveti, although I couldn’t swear to it…

It’s just occurred to me that I will be going to Switzerland much sooner than I expected, because it’s only two weeks until I go to Geneva I seem to be having a mental block which is preventing me from thinking of Geneva as Swiss, something to do with it being on the wrong side of the Röstigraben

I got to work on Monday morning, opened by bag to extract my list… and, after a prolonged period of frenzied searching, discovered that I had accidentally put it in the shredding bin

I have spent the rest of the week desperately trying to recreate it, but despite my best efforts I can’t get rid of the nagging feeling that something terribly important is slipping my mind

Most of my organisational efforts at the moment are directed towards trying arrange various holidays. There is much debate ongoing in my household at the moment as to the location of our annual family holiday. We have ruled out Germany, on the grounds that after a year spent living there, my sister would prefer to go somewhere different. I am trying very strongly to also rule out Austria.

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to go on holiday to Austria. The problem, however, with Austria is that there are no direct flights to any airport in the country from Birmingham International. For reasons which are to me unfathomable, my family refuse to fly from any other UK airport, and thus the only way they are prepared to get to Austria involves flying to Munich, then travelling onwards by train. We have done this two years running and it was perfectly fine but, to my total horror, flights to Munich during the first week of September are currently selling at £244 PER PERSON!!! :SHOCKED: There are limits to what I am prepared to pay, and that grossly exceeds them.

I have therefore, I hope, succeeded in steering the family towards choosing a holiday in Switzerland. Flights to Zurich are expensive, but considerably cheaper in comparison and I guess it’s all relative At the moment I am engaged in singing the praises of the Bernese Oberland in the hope that we might even be able to fly to Geneva. I wouldn’t ordinarily want to visit the Bernese Oberland during high summer, due to the excessive numbers of English tourists who frequent villages such as Wengen, but I reckon that by September things will have calmed down and it might be more bearable. The transfer time from Geneva is 4 hours (cf Zurich 3 hours) so personally I would take an Easyjet flight to Geneva and bring a book to read on the train. However, I fear that my chances of convincing my family that this is a Good Idea are probably regrettably slim. They’ve only ever flown with Easyjet once, and they seem permanently scarred by the experience

If that doesn’t work, I am contemplating a level to which I never thought I would have to stoop: suggesting we book through a Lakes and Mountains brochure I haven’t been on a holiday out of a brochure in the last ten years and never again expected to have such an experience. But for me, the main point about holidays this year is that they need to be cheap, and if we could find a deal in a brochure totalling less than buying the flights and accommodation independently, then it would appear to make sense…

In fact, I have a personal holiday of my own to Switzerland planned for next month, and I seem to have a surprising amount of things to organise in respect of that. I’m going to Geneva, hopefully with my boyfriend, for no very good reason at all except that I wanted a holiday and the Geneva flights were cheap. Well, my boyfriend isn’t really very interested in holidays, preferring to go to Esperanto meet ups with large groups of friends instead, and so I’ve agreed to go along to one of those this summer to be accommodating. I’m sure it will be very interesting, but it isn’t my definition of a proper holiday; quite apart from anything else, for me a holiday is a private time, not one where I have to be surrounded with lots of other people who I may not desperately like, and so I wanted us to do something different together as a couple as well.

It’s only four nights, so I’m hopeful that my boyfriend will be able to survive it When I originally had the idea, I wanted to take him to Munich on the grounds that that is probably my favourite city of all time, and one where I know lots of nice places to eat and drink, as well as hotels for €30 a night. However, based on the flight prices discussed above, that was not to be and so I decided to go for a destination which neither of us had ever tried before. I spent several happy days playing with the Ryanair and Easyjet websites, compiling a shortlist of all the cheap flights at appropriate times, before I whittled it down to two realistic possibilities; Geneva and Linz. I was quite interested in Linz, but my boyfriend pointed out that that involved flying from Stansted, whereas there are flights to Geneva from Birmingham/East Midlands, and so it was that I booked return flights to Geneva without knowing anything about the city at all.

They were very cheap flights; £100 in total for return flights for both of us

That sorted, I felt highly optimistic regarding my chances of organising the world’s cheapest budget holiday. My hopes were cruelly dashed when I eventually got round to looking at accommodation websites for Geneva two weeks later. OMG Having temporarily forgotten that I was going on holiday to the most expensive country in the world, I had banked on being able to get a room for €30/night as in Germany and Austria. I looked everywhere. I researched the red light district and googled one star hotels in the sleaziest areas I could locate, but the best I turned up was £60 a night for a double room with no bathroom and no breakfast

Close to despair, I took the trouble to look at a map and realised that Geneva was actually on the French border. A bit of sophisticated googling found me a hotel for £40 a night in the nearby French town of Annemasse. I was tempted to go for it, but had reservations which I spent several days agonising over. Annemasse is linked to Geneva by train but the trains do not go into the main station, but rather an obscure suburban station called Geneve Eaux Vives. Looking at a map of Geneva in a book shop, this turns out to be a considerable way outside the city centre, necessitating a tram ride with two changes to get anywhere interesting. Hmmm

It was at this point that I first became aware of a place called the City Hostel. As a rule I had been excluding youth hostels from my search, firstly because there seemed little point taking my boyfriend on holiday if we would then have to sleep in a well-behaved manner in separate bunk beds, and secondly because you generally have to be a member of some sort of youth hostelling organisation, which I am not. The City Hostel, however, is an independent concern and has affordable, twin bedded rooms. Admittedly, the accommodation looks rather basic. Actually, mega-basic! From the photo on the website, the rooms look like a narrow strip just wide enough to contain a bed. The bathrooms are shared on a corridor someone, and you get two singles rather than a double, so it’s hardly a luxury option. It is, however, remarkably cheap by Geneva standards, and it works out around £20 per person per night, assuming there are no dramatic shifts in exchange rates

I did some more extensive research on the internet, reading every single review I could glean from Tripadvisor and elsewhere, and no one seemed to have a bad word to say about it. Well, a few people have complained that the curtains on the windows are too thin, so there could be some problems sleeping. The major thing that impressed me though was that pretty much every review I saw described is as “clean” and certainly none described it as otherwise. I waivered backwards and forwards between the hostel and the more comfortable hotel in Annemasse… and in the end I took the plunge and went for the hostel. What swung it for me was that I read on the website that all guests get a travel card which gives them free travel on the Geneva public transport network. If we’d stayed in Annemasse I think we’d have had to catch vast quantities of trams and pay for them all, so this seemed like the best bet

Now there are two major things I need to sort out; the money, and what we’re actually going to do. Money is something I have an unfortunate tendency to agonise over. I want to pay the hostel bill in cash so I need a certain amount of francs to cover that, and then I obviously also need money for three meals a day, plus additional drinks, any trains we might decide to cash or entrance fees we might have to pay, maybe a bit left over to buy some books. I don’t want to end up in Geneva without enough money and have to take more out with my card because Lloyds TSB are now officially the worst bank for screwing you over with foreign charges. But on the other hand I don’t want to end up with too much currency that I have to change back because you inevitably lose a fortune on it. Added to which, I want to get a few Euros too, because some of the things I’m contemplating doing involve crossing the border, but then if I spend a day eating in France, that means I need less Swiss francs… hmmm, it’s doing my head in a bit at the moment! I have, however, discovered that my bank and the post office are using the same exchange rate but only the post office are charging additional commission on top of that.

In terms of where to go, I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to get to grips with Geneva. I really desperately want to purchase either the Lonely Planet or the Rough Guide to Switzerland but have so far managed to prevent myself doing anything quite so extravagent because at 15 quid they nearly cost the same as one of my flights! Ideally I need to go to the library and photocopy some stuff, but I haven’t managed to work that into my schedule yet. Initially I had absolutely no idea how on earth I was going to pass three whole days in Geneva, but the more I investigate the area the more I feel I could actually stay there three weeks and so I’m going to have to be quite strict with my choices.

The major attraction of Geneva is obviously the massive lake, which at some point we will definitely have to go on a little boat on because I get dead excited with water Then there’s the UN and Red Cross headquarters; the Red Cross has a museum which everything I read tells me is the best museum in Switzerland but I still feel a bit sceptical about whether I want to add it to my itinerary. There is a massive park in Geneva if the weather is nice, as well as some botanical gardens and things. It is also possible to get a bus into France and go on a cable car up the mountain which is next to Geneva, but I haven’t as yet been able to ascertain whether that will be open and safe at avalanche time. It isn’t terribly high, less than 1400m, so perhaps You can also get a bus to Annecy which I’ve read described as the most beautiful city in France, but I’m not sure… There are so many things you could do in Switzerland, get a train to Bern for example, which has the added attraction of bears and German book shops

In any case, I am getting rather excited And it was all totally under control until I lost my list I did think about asking for the key to the shredding bin and seeing if it was still in there, but the bin is actually as big as me so it didn’t feel worth the humiliation

Actually I’ve just thought of a point I’ve missed off the holiday part of that list. Learn French

I arrived at the airport far too early and was surprised to find it empty. On reflection I suppose it isn’t wholly shocking that multitudes of people do not choose to fly at 7am on Saturday mornings in November, but it was a refreshing change not to have to queue for check-in and to walk straight through security. There were no queues for the internet terminals either, and a great deal of my time and small change suddenly seemed to disappear down a black hole, so that I scarcely had time to swallow a cup of coffee and a chocolate cake which I didn’t actually want before my flight was ready for boarding.

The aircraft was also peculiarly empty, with the result that I had an entire three seats to myself and avoided the necessity to make small talk with a random businessman. The flight passed relatively quickly whilst I tried to avoid choking on the Lufthansa regulation cheese sandwich and attempted to telepathically absorb as much of my German grammar book as possible without actually opening it. I did genuinely mean to read through it and refresh my memory because I feel like my German has been somewhat neglected of late, but there is something mesmeric about travelling which means I just want to sit and stare blankly out of the window.

I guess the great thing about being on a plane is that you’re not supposed to be doing anything else. I mean, there is very little you can actually usefully do in that sort of environment. And thus you have no qualms about giving yourself that rare permission to do nothing except be, and that can be rather enjoyable. It always interests me to discover what sort of thoughts come unbidden into my mind when I relinquish control of it. Today I ended up contemplating those dreadful three weeks over the summer when my boyfriend split up with me. I think that I came to it via the thought that the last time I was on a plane was one of the happiest days of my life to date; coming back from a holiday in France with him, which had initially been a little awkward due to our not-exactly-a-couple status, but which was perfected on the final drunken evening when he told me that he wasn’t going to leave me and start a new life in Korea. Now life is on an even keel again and August is at a safe distance to be contemplated without tears. And yet at a distance, as I discovered somewhere above Belgium this morning, it is even more frightening that it was at the time. As I ran over each encounter, each conversation, each argument, I was struck anew by how tenuous the happy ending actually was, and left almost breathless by how the pain of what might have been almost was.

I wasn’t particularly daunted arriving at Frankfurt airport by myself, having been there several times before and thus feeling fairly confident that I could navigate my way through it successfully on my own. This confidence proved to be misguided. I believe there is a gap in the market for someone to start selling guide books to Frankfurt, preferably complete with several maps. My first aim was to find baggage reclaim, which seemed a modest sort of goal for someone who has just arrived at an airport. I found myself directed down a maze of corridors and escalators, which culminated in an enormous and disorderly queue for passport control. German officials are very hot on the control aspect of passport control, and on a prior journey I have actually been reprimanded with “Nicht laecheln!” (“Don’t smile!”) for daring look cheerful during such a solemn ritual.

Eventually passing through this, I narrowly avoided being shepherding onto a connecting flight to New Delhi and proceeded to walk what felt like several miles down a rather chilly tunnel. I find long hikes in airports rather tiresome, but the admitted advantage is that if you do finally have to good fortune to arrive at a baggage carousel, your bag has not only long since been unloaded from the plane, but has already done several laps on the conveyor belt and is started to get out of breath.

Baggage safely reclaimed, my next goal was to make my way to the station, and so I was cheered to see a sign with a train and an arrow on it. Following this hopefully down a very steep staircase, I found myself in an unpleasant-looking underground subway. It felt like the sort of place where something dire was always on the verge of happening, but never actually did, probably as a result of the surfeit of policemen who seemed to be frequenting it. Walking past an Irish pub which looked like if you entered it you might never be seen again, I followed a series of further train pictures and was conducted round in a large subterranean circle before proceeding back up another escalator which returned me to the level where I had started. Resisting the temptation to reclaim another piece of baggage, I became entangled in a queue of people waiting to fly to Tel Aviv and in an attempt to at least not end up there, I started walking in a direction in which train arrows were not pointing. Curiously, I promptly found myself in the airy and spacious glass-roofed station building which I had been expecting to see all along.

Fortunately I had had the sense to buy my ticket online, and so was spared at least one further trauma. All that remained was to sit and wait for my train, a wait which was much shorter than I had anticipated after so much unexpected and time consuming exercise. The journey from Frankfurt to Stuttgart was very pleasant, on a big intercity express. I was surprised how quickly we got out of Frankfurt and into the surrounding countryside. It was a shame that I didn’t have time to stop off in the city itself, which from my limited acquaintance with it seems like a fascinating place, but time was so short that it was imperative to press on to Tuebingen.

Sadly there was a fifteen minute delay in Mannheim whilst we waited for a late incoming train from elsewhere, and so I arrived in Stuttgart two minutes too late for my onward connection. Looking at the departures board I realised that there was another local train leaving in five minutes and a rather undignified sprint enabled be to reach it seconds before it pulled away. Collapsing in a hyperventilating heap in the bicycle compartment, I was immediately interrogated by the inspector, who was upset by the fact that my ticket was specifically valid on the preceding train only, and therefore not on this one. There followed an interesting discussion as to whether or not the fact that I had missed the preceding train was the fault of Die Deutsche Bahn and whether I therefore had the right to expect to be compensated for my delay by being allowed to use the next available train without paying a fine. The inspector didn’t appear wholly convinced by my rather incoherent and breathless arguments, but in an uncharacteristic display of German flexibility, he agreed not to arrest me on the understanding that I stayed in the bicycle compartment and didn’t cause an obstruction. Bicycle compartments are not very comfortable places to sit but I was anxious not to be delayed by the hours of German form-filling bureaucracy which would ensue if I was done for Schwarzfahren (travelling without a valid ticket) and so I readily agreed. I spent the rest of the journey trying very hard to look like a bicycle. The journey was mercifully short and so by half past one I was standing on the platform at Tuebingen and wondering if that rather grown-up looking young lady who was standing a hundred metres away staring expectantly at the swirling mass of passengers, could actually be my little sister.

It was, of course. She looked different though to how I remember her looking when she left home to go and study in Germany three months ago. She seemed taller and thinner somehow, her hair was surprisingly long and she was wearing more make-up than usual. When she caught sight of me she ran towards me and hugged me, which was somewhat of a shock since we never traditionally go in for that sort of thing in my family. A pleasant shock, though…

And so began a weekend which, if truth be told, consisted largely of eating and drinking. First stop was my sister’s flat, which I have to say is both the largest and the cleanest student apartment which I have ever seen in my life. To be fair she has moved into a block which has just been extensively refurbished, and so it stands to reason that the kitchen is clean and bright and shiny, but I was impressed that the inhabitants had kept it that way and that there wasn’t as much as one piece of unwashed up washing up on the draining board. That’s Germany for you I guess! One of the conditions of the tenancy is that you make a cleaning rota and the caretaker can apparently request to see it at any time if he requires proof that your cleaning is not sufficiently organised.

From there we caught a bus into the town proper and headed to a little bakery where I had the first of the ten Latte Macchiatos which I managed to consume within two days (there’s just something so exciting about drinking hot coffee out of a glass with a straw) and something called Flammkuchen which I believe technically are from Alsace and consist of a pancakey sort of mixture with pizza toppings. It sounds a bit unusual, but is really really nice

That fortified me for a strenuous afternoon’s sightseeing in Tuebingen. My sister gave me the guided tour, which actually didn’t last that long because the place is much smaller than I expected.

That is to say, the actual town is a fair size in terms of outlying suburbs but the actual centre, the Altstadt, is rather compact and doesn’t have a terribly wide range of shops. In terms of the chain stores which you might expect to see in any European town these days, I saw H&M, The Body Shop and Benetton; that was it. I assume there must be a MacDonalds somewhere, because I can’t bear to believe that there still exists a spot on the planet which true civilization has not yet reached, but I regret to say that I didn’t actually see it with my own eyes.

Tuebingen is also rather hilly, far more so than I expected, and so I found myself getting somewhat out of breath from time to time as my sister, now accustomed to it, charged off up the hill to the Schloss ahead of me. When or why the castle was built I really can’t tell you without consulting Wikipedia, but it was suitably picturesque and the view from the ramparts was very pleasant even on the dull, grey sort of day that we had. I was a bit surprised to discover that in the area where the moat must once have been, a large group of people were practicing archery at very high speeds. Being somewhat unnerved that one of them might inadvertently hit us in the eye, we made a hasty retreat and went for a walk down by the river.

The river Neckar flows through Tuebingen and is very wide, although it doesn’t appear to be terribly deep. In the summer people punt up and down it in strange little boats not quite like the ones which they have at Oxford, but by November all these had been safely stowed away somewhere and I didn’t get to see them. It was quite a strange feeling for me to stand on a bridge and look at the Neckar. For a start I confess to being a bit of a geek about rivers; I get awfully excited every time I go to a new city which has a river, even if the river is fairly minor, and if a place I go to should have a famous river running through it then my excitement is very intense indeed. The first days on which I saw the Inn, the Rhine and the Danube stand out for me as important events in my life. No really, they do As for the Neckar… not the world’s most prestigious river and one that perhaps few people in England have ever heard of. I know I had never heard of it, aged seventeen, when a certain someone described it to me for the first time. It is a long story, which is not ever going to be told on this blog, but I once had an emotional attachment to the town of Heidelberg, through which the Neckar also flowed, and so I spent many years dreaming on a day when I would finally stand on a bridge and look at it.

It is strange how we finally get the things we wish for. I have now fulfilled my dream to see the Neckar, even if I have never been, and probably never will go, to Heidelberg. And actually, I must say I have seen better rivers!

That said, it is hard to get the full impact of the thing because someone, at some unspecified point in history (this being the narrative of my sister, of whom history is not her strongest point) collected a big pile of rubble from somewhere (no idea where) and dumped it in the middle of the Neckar. Well, not just dumped, but sort of flattened out and put earth on top of and made into a big long promenade, a quasi-island in the middle of the river, with tree planted on it, and benches, and statues. Die Platanenallee, they call it, and it would be a rather pleasant place to walk a dog, if you happened to have one, which I never would, being scared of dogs.

Down by the riverside there is a sort of tower, in which died a famous German playwright called Hoelderlin. My sister informed me of this in a solemn sort of way and did my best to look suitably impressed and not like a very ignorant person who had no idea who an evidently highly important German literary figure actually was.

“What was it Hoelderlin actually wrote, again?” I tentatively asked her after ten minutes or so of fruitlessly mulling it over in my mind.

“I have no idea,” she confessed, “but I’m sure he was someone important”.

Far more exciting than the demise of poor Hoelderlin then, is Currywurst. Now I confess that I have never eaten Currywurst, nor seem likely to, seeing as I have a strong aversion to curry. But I mention it here because Currywurst has recently taken on a strange sort of significance in the Tuebingen psyche.

For the past few months, an anonymous graffiti artist has been walking round the town in the dead of night and using stencils to spray peculiar slogans about Currywurst on any available space. This being Germany, I think people paint over or wash off the slogans as quickly as possible, but I still saw quite a selection of random phrases, Currywurst wider Krieg (Currywurst against war) being the most frequent. According to my sister, only a few weeks ago a rival artist has started spraying similar messages about Falafel. Falafel aendert sich nie (Falafel never changes) could even be seen painted on the side of poor Hoelderlin’s tower. I confess to not understanding this craze in the slightest, but my sister claims Falafel is Turkish and thus thinks the messages may have some sort of racial undertones.

Before night fell I went to check into the hotel where I had reserved a room for the night. The staff were Eastern European and had not very talkative, but the room was adequate considering that it was setting me back less than thirty quid including breakfast. The only annoyance was the lack of sufficient light to read, but seeing as I wasn’t going to be there long enough to actually want to read I can’t really complain

We soon headed out to sample the delights of the Tuebingen nightlife. There is a rather nice pub-like establishment down by the river called Neckarmuller, which specialises in different sort of beer, served in big tall glasses which look like vases for roses with exceptionally long stems. I had one of the nicest Schnitzels I’ve had in a long time, despite the fact that it was served in a beer gravy and I don’t like beer in the slightest. There was a variation on Spatzle as an accompaniment but it was completely different to the sort of Spatzle which I’ve had before; far more pasta like. My sister and I both fancied a pudding but unfortunately all Neckar Muller had on offer was ice-cream and it felt a bit too cold to experiment with it. We resolved to leave and go elsewhere on a quest for cake.

This Quest for Cake turned out to be resemble the Quest for the Holy Grail in far too many respects. As the knights of the Round Table had no idea where they might find the Grail, so were condemned to wander aimlessly through the dark forests in search of adventures, so we had no idea where in a small German town one could reasonably expect to find light refreshments of the cake variety being served after seven pm in the evening, and thus condemned to wander aimlessly up and down the hilly side streets. Mirages of cake appeared in front of us, always visible but never quite attainable due to bakeries being shut and what not. We contemplated going into a restaurant and asking if we could skip the starter and main course and just take dessert, but in the end we chickened out and had a coffee, before heading to a bar to drown our sorrows in Gluehwein.

The Gluehwein had cherry juice in it and was rather delicious. Sadly it also had cloves floating in it, and cloves being something I would rather not have to swallow whole, no other course of action was available than to try fishing them out. This proved to be difficult enough sober, never mind an hour or so later, and it’s probably a good job most of the people in the bar were German and hopefully too rusty on their English to understand our paranoid exclamations of “There’s something hiding in my drink! I know it’s there, I just cant find it!”

Breakfast at the hotel came too soon and proved to be rather an embarrassing affair as I was the only guest partaking in it. Having got up and checked out early enough to attend half nine Mass down the road, it transpired that half nine Mass had actually been cancelled, so we had a long and rather chilly walk into town on time for eleven.

My sister sort of insisted on going to Mass, but to my mind it wasn’t a very pleasant experience. Unfortunately it was a special youth Mass which meant the prayer books had inexplicably been removed. Without the words, the only responses to the German Mass which I was able to muster were Amen and “und mit deinem Geiste”. The elderly lady sitting next to me evidently thought I was a heathen and halfway through asked if she could have my hymn book seeing as I didn’t seem to be making much use of it. The normal course of the Mass was interspersed with random interludes of children singing American gospel songs. It was difficult not to crack up when they burst into a rousing rendition of “Swing low, Sweet Chariot” just before the sermon; that strange way Germans refuse to believe that English people do not render the letter a meant that they kept singing about a “cheriot”; and the whole spectacle just seemed completely incongruous with the very Germanic surroundings.

The ordeal over, I expressed the desire for more cake which led to a minor dispute with my sister over how cake is defined. When I said I wanted cake I meant something along the lines of a pastry; something light, without vast quantities of cream, which I could eat without spoiling the dinner I had spent most of Mass fantasizing about. My sister, on the other hand, seems to have adopted a more continental attitude of defining cake as a sickly gateau-like substance, and this led to disharmony over the sort of cake-establishment we wished to grace with our custom. In the end we both ended up with doughnuts we didn’t want, and moved straight on from the cafe to the pizzeria where we had already agreed to eat.

We must have sat there for two hours or more, talking about this and that. It was so nice to get the chance to talk to her properly again, and it brought home to me how much I miss her. It had got to that awkward time where we were both silently counting down how many hours we had left. We had a desultory walk round the town once more to point out a few lesser sights I might have been forgiven for missing first time round, then found another cafe in which to sit and try and pretend I wouldn’t be getting on a train in ninety minutes. And in the end I was glad when it was time to catch the eye of the waitress and leave, because there is only so long I can keep up bright conversation for whilst trying very hard not to try.

It was very strained on the platform, we both focussed on talking about something totally and utterly pointless (my boyfriend, in fact ) and then the bright red train became visible at the end of the platform and we both burst into tears and hugged each other.

The journey back, which I had almost been looking forward to, being quite a fan of travelling, turned into a bit of a nightmare. The train to Stuttgart was fine. It arrived on time and I managed to run across Stuttgart station once more and make my connection with about sixty seconds to spare. The ICE to Frankfurt, however, left something to be desired. For a start, the entire train appeared to have booked their tickets online. Now this is in principle A Good Thing. I had booked my ticket online too, and received an email telling me that I would be sitting in carriage 23 and giving me a seat number. The problem arose from the fact that a hundred other people had also received emails allocating them seats in carriage 23, they all seemed to be boarding at Stuttgart, and train carriages are too narrow to allow two people to pass in the aisle way. It seemed that everyone with seats at the top of the carriage had got on and the bottom and vice versa, with the result that there was a very ugly and ill natured traffic jam in the middle and I’m not exaggerating if I say the train was twenty minutes into its journey before all were comfortably seated.

There followed ten minutes of peace and quiet, then an announcement that we were on the outskirts of Mannheim. The train stopped, and vast quantities of people who had only just found their seats jumped up assuming we were at the station. A few minutes later there was a further announcement asking everyone to sit down and not to leave the train. Confusion reigned before clarification came in the form of another message on the tannoy. The train had broken down, something wrong with the brakes, and we were going to sit here until someone could come to look at them.

I started to sweat. I was still half an hour’s journey away from the airport and I had been allowing myself exactly two hours to check in and navigate my way back across that maze. A slight delay was not a disaster, but every minute it went by took away a minute I could afford to spend wandering round in a lost bewilderment in an attempt to find a check in desk in Frankfurt airport.

The minutes ticked by. Announcements came thick and fast. No one could be found to mend our train. Someone had now been found. The problem was not very serious, the train could be repaired on the track. The repair would take five minutes. Just another five minutes ladies and gentlemen and then we’ll be moving. We thank you for your patience. And so on and so on. Meanwhile the conductor sprinted up and down the carriage like a frightened rabbit, trying to field questions about what would happen if people missed their connections to Amsterdam. Further polite announcements were made via loudspeaker, which basically amounted to the fact that anyone who had been trying to get to Amsterdam was screwed.

As for me, I was still in with a fighting chance of making my flight, so long as everything went smoothly. Quite clearly when faced with such a circumstance, things elected to go anything but smoothly. Exiting the train, I was quite pleased to see a sign pointing to check in after only two minutes walk. Less pleasing was the fact that only two check in staff appeared to be on duty. I felt myself lucky that I was somewhere near the front of the queue but it turned out to be fairly irrelevant, as the queue declined to move an anything beyond snail’s pace. The passengers from hell appeared to be checking in at one kiosk and were having a lengthy fight with the check in girl about whether they should or should not have printed off their own e ticket prior to arriving at the airport. Check in girl number two noted this and evidently decided it was time to call it a day, closing up her desk. A small riot nearly ensued when the passengers from hell were finally processed, and a pilot then jumped the now half a kilometre long queue and checked in before us. So many irate Germans waving passports is quite a frightening sight, and it soon inspired Lufthansa to locate the extra staff which ten minutes previous it had sincerely assured us it did not have.

having checked in literally the minimum hour before my flight, I had thirty minutes to find my gate. Sound doable? I promptly abandoned all hopes of finding a toilet or a place to buy a drink, and devoted all my energies to navigating. Things seemed to be progressing well, I got through passport control with less of a wait than one normal is subjected to at Frankfurt, and arrived at security check number one. For reasons I don’t quite understand, anyone flying to Britain has to undergo two identical security checks before they are allowed to get on a German plane.

Concentrating intensely on not smiling, I managed to bundle my coat, scarf, belt, phone, passport, pedometer and small change into a tray at an acceptable speed and felt rather proud, until I got reprimanded for putting my bag directly onto the conveyor belt and not in a tray on the conveyor belt. Naughty me! I avoided being taken into a little booth to be searched by a very unattractive armed policewoman, and began to redress myself whilst waiting for my bag.

My bag didn’t come. It took a few minutes for this to register, and then I became rather anxious. I noticed that it had been isolated over to one side, and that a number of people were alternating between staring at it and pointing at me. What on earth could be wrong? I was hit by the sinking realisation that I had left an empty bottle of apple juice in the side compartment. Could this be what was causing such a stir?

Eventually I was approached by a rather daunting official and asked to confirm that this was my bag. Having done so, he asked me to unzip the side. I did so, already forming the necessary German apologies for having forgotten the empty bottle, when I discovered to my surprise that this was actually the side with my purse in.

“Open your purse!” the German commanded, and I duly did so. He peered at it crossly, and informed me that I was carrying a suspicious number of Euro coins.

???!!!

Okay, so I did have quite a bit of small change, because I still haven’t quite got my head round euros and so prefer to also pay with notes for the sake of speed and convenience. But I didn’t have an excessive amount, it being only an average sized purse, and so I was rather nonplussed. I started to regret having admitted to speaking German, because I think sometimes they let you get away with more if you put on an act of being English and stupid. All in all I was detained for fifteen minutes while I struggled to convince the Germany security team that there was no sinister motive in me attempting to carry a moderate quantity of 5 cent pieces out of the country, but in the end I succeeded and started to move towards my gate with a slow jog. I had around ten minutes until boarding!

By virtue of my extraordinary sense of direction (?) I ended up at security check two just as my flight was called for boarding. I was somewhat apprehensive that I would have to justify my coins all over again, but luckily there was only one man on duty and he seemed far too preoccupied with the Polish passport of the lady in front of me to care about my collection of coppers. Phew! I literally ran onto the bus to my plane with thirty seconds to spare and that was it, one adventure successfully concluded

Now I can’t wait until next weekend, when I can do it all over again!