20 Years On - Part 16 of Account of Travelling by Train Around West Germany and Austria

Fortunately I was able to get away from the holiday very quickly, but that meant I did not fully learn the lessons of what I had done wrong or that my holidays were always going to be blighted by things that were going to be unpleasant and cost more money. Reflecting now, I think I was fortunate that I had no money to go on holidays in the 1990s because I am sure that if I had done, I would have many more bitter accounts of this kind and I would have turned into an utter xenophobe as a result of such trips. Anyway, this was the last time I ever tried to go inter-railing.

Tuesday 6th September 1988
Today I woke early and walked to the station and was able to buy some more chocolate and the stamps for the last five postcards which I had written this morning to the Sussex family, Neil, Robin, Mark and Andrew M. there. I was able to catch the 09.08 train and it cost only DM32,-. I reached Oostende by 14.00 and caught the jetfoil for only £6.40. I was at Victoria by 16.04 British time and was home by 18.00. I then unpacked and sat around talking about my trip with Mum and Dad. Following that I watched television.


Weather: Sunny and warm.

20 Years On - Part 15 of Account of Travelling by Train Around West Germany and Austria

This was the day I swore I would never return to West Germany. I was so furious at the lost of my Inter-Rail ticket and the German bureaucracy that all the problems with the frosty reception I had often received came out at once. Ironically of course I would return in January of the following year, but I think this marked the day when any fantasy of ever living or working abroad or having a relationship with a European woman (and as a result of this trip, I began to start using the British distinction between Britain and Europe) were all ruled out. Of course I was going to experience far worse than this when I went to Köln for four months in 1989, which I did more to escape what I was having to put up with in the UK than because I was any kind of enthusiast for West Germany. I also realised that my attempts at speaking German, which had been a key motive for the holiday, were a farce as was to be proved in the examinations the following Summer. I stopped even bothering to try to speak German which made dealings with the police on this day very complicated. Trying to read the counter-foil which I had been promised would get me a replacement Inter-Rail ticket, the police, who seemed to have no other work to do, totally misunderstood the layout of British addresses and filled in their form saying that I had bought the ticket in the town of 'Travel'. One officer plaintively asked if I spoke even a little German and I said I did not and (accurately) that very few British people did. Given the size of the town they oversaw (135,000 people), popular with British coach tours through West Germany, they seemed incredibly ill-prepared for even this minor incident. I broke down into tears in the railway station when I was told I had to wait 3 days for a replacement ticket and was so angry with the elderly women who patronised me so severely about how there was no need to cry. I am still angered by the memory of their behaviour to this day. The people at the train office seemed startled that I did not want to stay in Würzburg and wanted to get out of the town as quickly as possibly. I could not have stayed anyway as there was a limit of three nights you could stay in a hostel and I had already used up one of them.



This day shook me clear of many of the delusions that I had been travelling under, but unfortunately not enough to avoid making many of the same errors and many new ones, the following year. It was also incredibly frustrating, because though Würzburg is a comparatively small place, I kept getting terribly lost and trying to get back to the youth hostel I found myself back at the square close to the railway station from where I had started out. I broke down in tears on the telephone to my mother, feeling I was trapped in something out of 'The Prisoner' television series.





Monday 5th September 1988

Today I woke up promptly and walked to the station where I found that I had lost my inter-rail card so I walked back to the youth hostel but could not find it, so I took my counterfoil to the station and they sent me to the police station where I had a form filled in which I took back to the station where they told me I would have to wait three days. By now I was annoyed and upset. I decided to catch the train to Köln and telephoned home. The fare was less than two days stay in Würzburg, DM85,- [compared] to DM120,-. I left at 12.00 and was in Köln by 16.00 where I bought presents - a coffee table book on the Rhine for Mum and for Dad a beer glass and a beer mug and an illustrated "The Communist Manifesto". I also bought some chocolate. Then I went back, unloaded all that and walked to the cinema where I watched "The Blues Brothers" which was excellent and cheered me up. I then walked back to the youth hostel.



Weather: Dull and rainy.

20 Years On - Part 14 of Account of Travelling by Train Around West Germany and Austria

Surprisingly, despite losing my hat and the rain, this holiday had gone quite well, but this was the day I lost my Inter-Rail ticket. Looking back it probably happened at the Residenz in Würzburg. The guidebook said I could enter the gardens at the rear of the building but two stroppy young grooms working physically barred me and shoved me back, saying I was going the wrong way.

Of course, not travelling by train that day, I did not know that the ticket was lost, but effectively that ended my holiday, though there was more rigmarole to go through before it was completely finished. Still being in Bavaria, I remember meeting two very frugal British women, annoyed that they had to hire bedding in the youth hostel and were leaving the town because of that. I thought it was a little extreme but advised them that if they found it such a problem they should get out of Bavaria for one of the other states with different rules .

My morning in Nürnberg shows the range of museum activity that you could engage in on a Sunday in West Germany.

Sunday 4th September 1988

Today I woke up promptly and walked into town as I had to do both Nürnberg and Würzburg in one day as everything in Würzburg is closed tomorrow. I looked around the German National museum, then went onto the town museum, Dürer's house and then the transport museum. Then I caught the train to Würzburg where I walked to the Residenz and went on a guided tour and walked around the gardens. The rooms were spectactularly decorated. Then I went to the youth hostel which I climbed up to and used the last of my film before buying dinner and coming back to sleep and watch some television.

Weather: Dull and mild.

Bridge in Nürnberg, September 1988

Statue in Nürnberg Market, September 1988

View from Residenz in Würzburg, September 1988

View of Church in Woods near Würzburg Youth Hostel, September 1988

View over Hills above Würzburg, September 1988

View across Würzburg, September 1988

20 Years On - Part 13 of Account of Travelling by Train Around West Germany and Austria

I certainly remember the train carriage filled with the solicitous elderly women. It was a good thing they were there as the sandwiches I had packed had gone mouldy and they gave me replacement food. Later walking through Nürnberg I had burnt up so much energy that I experienced what I now know was a hypoglaecemic attack, i.e. my body lacked sufficient blood sugar for the activity I was doing and I wolfed down the pallet of peaches one of the women had given me and the fruit sugar helped get me back to normality. I also remember being pestered by American religious people dressed in smart suits who seemed to haunt the railway station and you had to dodge away from.

As in Koblenz, the youth hostel in Nürnberg is in a castle with a great view down across the city. The medieval historic nature of the city is one reason Hitler used it for his rallies. In keeping with that I dined in a restaurant in a cellar. By the time I returned there in 2004 my knowledge of German had deteriorated so much I could no longer understand the menu, which had, however, changed little.

I remember on the tour of the castle, a local family: husband, wife and grown-up daughter taking around a British couple who in the UK would have been perceived as 'caravanners' wearing rather dated, dull, cheap synthetic clothing and almost 1950s hairstyles which contrasted sharply with the big hair of the two German women and very expensive designer leatherwear all their hosts had on. For some reason I remember the wife had a leather skirt suit with a nipped waist held with a bow at the back of the jacket, all very Eighties in style. The Britons almost seemed like their pets, being patronised and led around the place like children. I just wondered how these two groups of people had met because they seemed so different.

Saturday 3rd September 1988

Todau I actually overslept for the first time this holiday. I got up, had breakfast and talked to some Americans. I caught the train to Nürnberg at 09.20. The one [that left] an hour earlier would have got me there two hours earlier.

Just as an aside, here sitting in a train surrounded by three middle aged women - two Austrian and one German, all doing crosswords, those difficult arrowed ones without black spaces; German women seem addicted to crosswords. I also know now why there are so many cinemas in Wien - they are listed by district - because the television is so bad and boring.

I arrived at Nürnberg by 15.00 and walked quickly to the youth hostel which is just North of the centre, in another castle. After unpacking I went to the castle and had a guided tour, then I went out for a meal with Nick, an English cyclist, we had a tasty if basic meal - I had a hunk of meat, dumplings and salad. Then we came back to talk to two Finns before going to bed.

Weather: Dull, some rain.

Nürnberg Youth Hostel, September 1988

Nürnberg Castle, September 1988

Note the Bavarian Flag flying at half-mast

View across Nürnberg, September 1988

20 Years On - Part 12 of Account of Travelling by Train Around West Germany and Austria

My attempts at cycling in Vienna were terrible. I set off down a one-way street on the wrong side of the road (it was the first time I had not been a passenger on continental roads where they drive on the opposite side of the road to the UK). In these days no-one considered wearing a cycle helmet even in a city like Vienna. 'Brunn' means fountain in German and this was something common at the Schönbrunn (literally 'beautiful fountain') palace on the outskirts of the city.

Friday 2nd September 1988

Today I woke up promptly and hired a bicycle. I cycled off in the wrong direction at first but got on the right, if busy route to the Armoury war musem but it was closed on Friday. I bought some drink and biscuits and unsuccessfully tried to find the entrance to the Belvedere. I then went back via the city museum and dropped off my purchases. I picked up my kagoul and then set off for the Schönbrunn Schloß and walked around the gardens and had some lunch after which I cycled back into town. I looked around the market, Stephans Dom and then the Parliament and the Rathaus buildings in the pouring rain. I walked back through town where I bought some bananas and some chocolate before going to the youth hostel where I sat talking to two Germans about politics, having already eaten my dinner.

An interesting thing I noted was the number of Hungarians stocking up on electrical goods - hi-fis, stereos, videos and televisions and small shops selling all this stuff where the proprietors spoke Hungarian. I forgot to mention all the newspaper sellers who stand at the street corners in the afternoon and at night selling their city paper, dressed in bright red and yellow livery.

Weather: Dull in the morning, heavy rain by afternoon.

Entrance to Schöbrunn Palace outside Vienna, September 1988

Grounds of Schöbrunn Palace, September 1988

View across Vienna from the Grounds of Schönbrunn Palace, September 1988

Fountains in the Grounds of Schöbrunn Palace, September 1988

Avenue in the Grounds of Schöbrunn Palace, September 1988

Views of Park in Central Vienna, September 1988

Vienna Rathaus, September 1988

Austrian Parliament Building in Vienna, September 1988

20 Years On - Part 11 of Account of Travelling by Train Around West Germany and Austria

The thing that stunned me re-reading this entry is my admission of guilt as I have never fare-dodged at any other occasion in my life and knowing me in the late 1980s and how longer the guilt for wrongdoing lasted, I must have blanked this out. I could only imagine that it stemmed from not wanting to spend on a travel pass to go a couple of stops. There were no barriers to getting on the underground system though I heard subsequently that they introduced the so-called 'Black sheriffs' to catch fare dodgers so I was lucky to get away with it.

My memories of Vienna are of an even greater amount of simply walking around the streets and because of the cost of the place eating from sausage vans frequented by Hungarians. If I had realised it (and given that I had been studying East European history, I should have done) I was witnessing a symptom of the break down of the Eastern Bloc. Of the Eastern Bloc states, Hungary opened its borders earliest and allowed its citizens, who were comparatively wealthy compared to their neighbours in the bloc to travel into Austria to buy consumer goods, particularly electrical goods. I witnessed scores of Hungarians hurrying to their coaches with box after box of electrical items.

Austria was not in the European Community (as the EU was called at the time) hence the customs check when I left West Germany. I remember the train coming to a halt and having to get off and show my passport and then get on another train the other side of the barrier, far more stringent checks than I had faced crossing the Belgian-West German border.

The youth hostel I went to was not listed in the official guide but I had read about it in a guide book I had borrowed from a Canadian woman on the train. Two young women had sat down opposite me, the first, a German asked me in German to help put her rucksack up on the luggage rack. Then the Canadian came along and asked me the same in English and then we engaged in conversation, which visibly startled the German woman who seemed to have mistaken me for a German or an Austrian. At that time it seemed unusual, but since I have often been mistaken for something other than British, despite my poor ability with languages. Of course I always hoping for a kind of romantic encounter of the kind later shown in 'Before Sunrise' (1995) but of course was so inept at relations with the opposite sex that I would have not known how to handle it even if Julie Delpy in person had thrown herself at me. At the youth hostel I managed to get through a conversation in German with the woman at the reception and it was only when I spoke to myself in English when I forgot a word that she realised I was not German, probably because she was herself American. We switched to English which we both knew much better.

Running into eight people from my university course just about to leave where they had been sitting outside the gallery was typical of the unlikely things that used to go on in my life at the time. In Munich they had been compelled to sleep in a huge public tent on the edge of the city, constantly noisy with people coming and going. After Vienna and with no concern about damaging any potential career in the civil service they went on to Hungary and then Romania whilst I turned back to West Germany.

I must say that the crown jewels on show in Vienna far exceed the British ones and are a real 'must see' if you are in the city. I was annoyed that in trying to see the River Danube I missed the chance to see 'The Third Man' (1948) actually in Vienna where it is set as I only came across it as I was walking back having wandered far across the city. The ferris wheel is the one which features in that movie.

„“ is how the Germans put words in inverted commas and as you can see from these accounts, I was keen to affect as many German characteristics as possible in a way that now seems incredibly pathetic.

The building with the three round windows and a style which reminded me of Venice was the basis of the Merchants' Guild building in my novel 'The Karskoe Assassin' which I was just completing at this time. If you can tell the name of the building pictured or of the Italianate church close to it, I would be grateful .

Thursday 1st September 1988

Today I woke early and fare-dodged on the underground to the station. I then caught an almost empty (East German) train to Salzburg where I went straight through customs and then caught a train to Wien where I arrived at 14.00 and quickly got to the youth hostel by following two Finns. It is a small one, only 77 beds. Aachen had 170 beds, München, 510, and it is very friendly; cleaner and nicer than München, no curfew, 10.00 check out. There are four other hostels in town. Oh yes, I got my Austrian Schillings but I am having trouble calculating what they are worth. Nice views from the train.

I walked back into town and to the historical art museum outside which I met Richard from my History of Eastern Europe group and others from my university. The museum had excellent Egyptian and Classical items and I saw Rembrandts and Breugels. Then I walked onto the Imperial Palace - the Burghof and looked at the crown jewels and costumes. I then walked to the Prater Park, looked at the Ferris Wheel and walked along the very long Hauptallee. Then I walked back to the hostel and watched some chess. Everything here is so expensive - £0.75 for a can of Coca Cola, the museums are £2 per time. Whistle-stop tour tomorrow. There was "The Third Man" („Der Dritte Mann”) on at a cinema but I was too late and today is the last day.

Weather: Sunny and hot.

View of Austrian Countryside from Train Travelling Salzburg-Vienna, September 1988

Roof of St. Stefan's Cathedral in Vienna, September 1988

Entrance of Art Gallery in Vienna, September 1988

Entrance to the Residenz in Vienna, September 1988

Italianate Church Close to Karlsplatz in Vienna, September 1988

Entrance to Karlsplatz Underground Station in Vienna, September 1988

Building Close to Karlsplatz in Vienna, September 1988

Prater Ferris Wheel in Vienna, September 1988

20 Years On - Part 10 of Account of Travelling by Train Around West Germany and Austria

I think one reason for getting up so early was to miss the crowd trying to get breakfast. While I seemed to get on well with many people I met others were far more of a challenge. In particular I remember an Israeli woman who nagged me because I was not going to the Dachau concentration camp. I told her that having studied the Holocaust at 'O' Level, 'A' Level and as part of my degree programme, I wanted a break from it. She said that I had to have some sourness with all the sweetness of my holiday. I said that I did not come on holiday to be depressed and refused to speak with her any more. In general I came away from this holiday both irritated by Germans and Israelis, people from both nationalities seem to keep telling me I was doing things wrong and had no hope of ever getting them right. By the end of the holiday, I felt that not only did travelling reinforce prejudices but also created new ones and I swore off travelling again for fear I would end up a real bigot. Perhaps it is the difference of the British character to that of other nations that we try to be diplomatic and understanding but that does not shield us from people being very assertive about what we 'should' be doing.

I am glad that I did not go to Dachau despite the bullying. Given how churned up I get by discussion of any genocide, even individual stories from these events, I think I would have found it difficult to cope with seeing its presence for real. Sometimes you need the fuse in your system of being able to keep things a little at arm's length otherwise you freak out. Given my dalliance with suicide as it was, I doubt I could have coped. Going to a location like Dachau is something you need to think about a great deal and make the decision which is not going to do you harm. One can understand and oppose genocide without having to rub one's face in its traces.

I remember going to a strange art exhibition in the gallery at the Hofgarten which simply consisted of black and white photographs of different types of water towers. I actually came across a book of the photos for sale in a gallery in Köln the following year. You can see the photo I sneaked while inside the gallery in the collection below; I took it as I was amusedly incredulous that a gallery could show such things.

Wednesday 31st August 1988

Today I woke up early, showered and walked to the Nymphenburg Palace where I arrived at 08.00, an hour early. When they did open I walked around the house interior and then the very pleasant gardens and the four lodges - Amalienburg, Badenburg, Pagodenburg and Magdalenklause, having already seen the carriage/porcelain museum. I then walked back towards town taking the underground to the centre where I looked around the Frauernkirche and the München Stadt museum. I stopped for lunch before moving onto the Residenz and the Hof Garden and ending up in English Garden which was full of locals, many naked and also had a [traditional style Bavarian] band in a the pagoda. I had dinner and a litre of beer, then I walked back across town which took half-an-hour. I checked up on the train times for tomorrow, it looks likely that I will have to change at Salzburg. As the bureau de change is open from 06.00 (to 23.30) I will easily be able to get Austrian Schillings before I go. So far the plan is Wien, Nürnberg, Würzburg, Marburg, Kassel, Köln, Oostende, home or earlier if I run out of money.

Weather: Sunny and hot.

Roads and Ornamental Canal Leading to Nymphenburg Palace in München, August 1988

Front and One Wing of the Nymphenburg Palace, August 1988

View of Nymphenburg Palace Gardens, August 1988

View of Interior of One of the Lodges of the Nymphenburg Palace, August 1988

View of Ornamental Canal in Grounds of Nymphenburg Palace, August 1988

View of Another Lodge in the Grounds of the Nymphenburg Palace, August 1988

Doorway in the Residenz in München, August 1988

Folly in the Hofgarten in München, August 1988

Inside Art Gallery Close to Hofgarten in München, August 1988

20 Years On - Part 9 of Account of Travelling by Train Around West Germany and Austria

Before re-reading this I had forgotten how much competition there was to get a youth hostel place in Munich. The rules in the Land (province) of Bavaria were stricter than in the other parts of West Germany. In most areas people of any age could stay in a youth hostel, in Bavaria you had to be under 26. In most areas you could bring your own bedding; in Munich you were compelled to hire it. The youth hostel was well used and the dormitories were huge compared to the rooms I had stayed in up until now, leading many visitors, unfairly to a prison camp. I think this was partly because most German youth hostels were luxurious compared to the bulk in the UK. I had no complaint.


I travelled from Freiburg-am-Breisgau to München on a train which was run by the East German Railway service (ironically still labelled 'Deutsches Reichsbahn' on the carriages, literally 'German Imperial Way', the pre-war name for the German railways) and all the instructions were in German, Russian, French and Italian, not English. The attendant who turned the beds (three on each side of a carriage up the wall) back to seats and wall panels, wore a very naval looking uniform, she appeared like a rating from the 19th century. Unsurprisingly for East German staff they were very surly and had no interest in speaking to a non-German. Another thing new to a young British man was sitting opposite women in sleeveless or short-sleeved tops who had not shaved under their armpits. When the German singer Nina had appeared on television in the UK with her Number 1 hit, '99 Red Balloons' (1983) her unshaved armpits had raised much discussion but to be exposed to it across a train carriage left me uncertain where to look. It is funny these social mores, I probably would have been less embarrassed if these women had been topless.


I remember being impressed by Steve the American who was from, I think, Kentucky, and had studying engineering had come to West Germany to practice his German as he felt it would assist him in his engineering career. I remember Mark the Australian walked around the streets of the city barefoot.


Tuesday 30th August 1988
Today I woke up early and walked to the station along the quicker footpath route this time. I caught the train to Karlsruhe where I changed for a train to München. I stopped off in Karlsruhe where I bought some food. I arrived in München by 15.00. Then I walked to the youth hostel, already quite full. Within two hours, that one and the others, one affiliated and two non-affiliated were also full.


I met an Australian, Mark and we walked into the centre of town where we looked around some bookshops and at street-performers. Then we came back and I dried my washing at an excellent 24 hour laundrette. Then I cam back to have a beer. The youth hostel is rather rough. I am in a dormitory rooom which is rather smelly - forty people. There is quite a lot of complaint, but the town is decent. I went out again with Mark and an American, Steve, for some more drinks.


Weather: Sunny and warm.

View of the Schwarzwald Close to the Freiburg-am-Breisgau Youth Hostel, August 1988

Mural on Block of Flats in München, close to the Youth Hostel, August 1988

20 Years On - Part 8 of Account of Travelling by Train Around West Germany and Austria

When in my first year at university I had met a fourth year German language student (a British woman studying German as a subject; language degrees are four years rather than three as the students spend their third year in abroad) called Melissa and we had an ambivalent relationship. She used me at a party as a kind of shield against a very smarmy man called Tony and as a result I had my first real passionate kiss. However, as discussed before, I had no confidence in my abilities with women and did not know how to handle the situation. Melissa and her group of friends lived on the corridor in halls next to the one I lived on so they would often socialise with my friends as a group. I had not gone to university until I was almost 20, whereas most of my friends in my year were closer to 18, so in age I was not much younger than Melissa. She was a confusing character anyway, very flirtatious but then when you talked with her you realised she was very naive too and did not really realise what men expected from her given her flirtatious manner. Anyway, she had spent her year abroad in Freiburg-am-Breisgau in the South-West of West Germany and had mentioned she might be there in the Summer of 1988 and so I wandered around the town hoping that I would run into her and have some romantic encounter. It was wasted pining as when I met her at a party at her house in Herfordshire on the Saturday after I returned to the UK, it turned out she had never got to West Germany that year and instead had been in California. Anyway, she must be in her mid-40s now but I have not seen her for just under twenty years.

On the way to Freiburg-am-Breisgau in the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) I also remember meeting a strange young German man on the train who was obsessed with cows. He had a book of photographs of different breeds and travelled the country to see them. He spoke about slaughterhouses as one might concentration camps and he constantly extolled how beautiful cows were. The photograph with the bicycle by the tree was my attempt to replicate a similar arty poster I had of Oxford, but the light levels were really too low with all the rain to allow it to be successful.

Fabrikstraße means 'factory street'. The term 'yuppie' was very much in fad at the time and stemmed from the phrase 'young upwardly-mobile professionals' who seemed to be at the forefront of Thatcherite society. In Britain, München is better known as Munich, Wien as Vienna and Nürnberg as Nuremberg. In the end I did not get to Augsburg until the following Summer. At that time I returned to Freiburg-am-Breisgau too and found out that the rain on this visit had spared me the key problem of the youth hostel there, which is that it sits right next to a broad, shallow, fast moving stream and throughout the night (if the windows are open) you are kept awake by its noisy bubbling.

Monday 29th August 1988

Today I work early and caught the bus to the station. Then I caught the train to Freiburg. I looked around the cathedral and the old town, then wandered around a park in the foothills of the Schwarzwald. I walked through the rain to the youth hostel, through real yuppie areas of new houses and fancy schools, ironically called Fabrikstraße. At the youth hostel they did have [clothes] washing facilities but the dryer was out of order. I did the washing which was smelling terribly and also read "Newsweek" and "Time" lent to me by an American. I ate in the youth hostel for DM6,- and with no lunch saved me some cash. Tomorrow I think I will got to München probably via Karlsruhe. If there is no room I will go to Augsburg, and onto Wien and then back to Nürnberg.

Weather: Heavy rain, sunny and warm later.

Market Hall in Freiburg-am-Breisgau, August 1988

Decorated Doors in Freiburg-am-Breisgau, August 1988

Cobbled Street in Freiburg-am-Breisgau, August 1988

Note channels along road side to allow stream to flow through the city

Bicycle Leaning on Tree in Freiburg-am-Breisgau, August 1988

View across Freiburg-am-Breisgau from the Schwarzwald, August 1988

20 Years On - Part 7 of Account of Travelling by Train Around West Germany and Austria

It is interesting how I refer in this entry to my 'day off' and I think the fact that I treated the trip like a job or perhaps like those coach tours, 'It's Tuesday so it must be Munich' added to my sense of stress. Though as I note here, some inter-railers felt a need to keep moving, having 'been there, done that'. I certainly covered a lot of the sights of each town, to some extent, as noted before, to pass the time as well as out of interest. Sundays are the worst as so much is closed, though I was to find that in West Germany museums would often be open that day and people would visit them after attending church. I went to a much larger cinema and as noted here, was the only person at that screen and they ran the whole movie just for me. I had seen 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' in London some months before with a very pretentious friend who had forgotten his glasses (he was vain too) and so we had to sit on the very front row so that he could see it; finding it tedious I had slept through most of it.

I also remember trying to set off from the youth hostel in the morning and finding it impossible to find a road that took me out of the residential area towards the centre of town and having wandered around in circles along these roads, I finally gave up and went and did what most of the people at the youth hostel did and took the bus. In the evening walking back to the youth hostel I meant three French also staying there. I spoke to them in French but they told me not to bother, they felt there was no point as they knew they could speak English better. At the youth hostel it turned out they could not speak German and this proved difficult when they too tried to find the promised laundry facilities which did not exist and consulted with the youth hostel staff but refused to let me translate what the staff member was saying to them only in German either into English or French.

Nordsee, literally 'North Sea' in English is a German fast food chain which sells fish-based food which is very good. My taste in movies was clearly not to a high standard in those days, though I guess if you are trying to follow a movie in a foreign language ('Rambo III' was dubbed into German for the English-speaking characters) it is best to stick to one with monosyllabic dialogue.

Sunday 28th August 1988

Today is my day off, though I thought it might be boring, I am glad of the rest especially as the weather is so much better today. Mark & Helen could not understand why I would want to stay in a town which I had already been to and seen all the sights of. Anyway I woke up and took the bus part of the way and walked the rest into town, then walked up a different route to the castle. I finished the postcards to Elizabeth and home which I started in Mainz, having already written to Edward and Bob & Denise from Koblenz. I also wrote to Alan, the two Davids, Jason, Rodrigo and Mark F. I then walked back down and had some delicious tea and cakes in an expensive cafe sitting out on the pedestrianized Hauptstraße. I then went straight to lunch and had a Turkish pizza. I then sat waiting for the cinema in Hauptstraße.

I went to see "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" which I understood most of having seen it before, I obviously slept through far less than I thought. I enjoyed it more than last time, I almost think it is better auf Deutsch. Oh yes, I was the only person in that cinema. Then I wandered around and had an ice cream - today must have been quite expensive but probably the best day so far.

I checked on my camera and found that it was on ASA1600 and so I rushed around retaking shots of the castle. One lighting streak branched touching both sides of the valley. I then went back into the town and decided to watch 'Rambo III' as the German would be easier. I ate at a Nordsee. Despite being fast food they are solely German. I keep having to balance up between spending lots because I am on holiday and saving so I can stay longer, though I have been here a week. Economise for a couple of days. "Rambo III" was not bad, I thought it was funny when they had subtitles in German for the characters speaking in Russian. Then I came home through the university campus.

Weather: Sunny, a couple of thunderstorms (great lightning), warm.

Views across Heidelberg, August 1988

20 Years On - Part 6 of Account of Travelling by Train Around West Germany and Austria

One of the problems of travelling around on one's own is filling in the gaps in the day. There seems to be constant periods of waiting for places to open or to be able to eat and you become adept at sleeping in as long as you can after breakfast until the cleaners come and stretching out time sitting in cafes or in parks waiting. I also went to the cinema a lot and felt like an escaped prisoner-of-war as that was a tactic they used in order to find somewhere to sleep. To keep my rucksack light, I had not packed any fiction books, just my European youth hostel and the Michelin guide to West Germany which I must have read cover-to-cover by the time I had finished the trip. I learnt from this mistake and was grateful on future trips for having packed good books despite the weight. I never make friends easily and find it difficult to strike up conversations. I do find that as shown here in Heidelberg, that I run into British people I have met before, earlier on the trip. They are always couples and sort of take me under their wing, something I know Victoria Wood has parodied in some of her stand-up comedy. It is always odd being the third of such a group. It happened again in Venice in 2003 but by then I was more skilled at getting away from them. I have no ideas why couples feel obliged to do this and Mark & Helen even referred to me as the 'bad penny' as if they felt I was a pain. Perhaps they thought I was following them. However, with inter-railing as with any tourism, there were almost set stops along the way so it was quite likely, especially if youth hostels were to be your accommodation (and not every town has one) that you would meet again. As I did short hops each day, only 1-2 hours on the train, I would also run into people cycling between the towns especially down the Rhine Valley, when they arrived in the evening.

I remember the waiter, who looked like the actor Julian Sands, in the restaurant that I had lunch in, being so concerned about looking very formal, despite it being a cheap place and keeping his gaze aloft when not serving that it was very hard to attract his attention to ask for anything. The 'Comic Strip Presents ...' was a Channel 4 series of odd comic stories performed by leading alternative comedians of the time. I think 'The Supergrass' was the only movie they made. Fortunately, it was being shown in a tiny cinema which was like someone's living room and unlike most foreign movies shown in West Germany was subtitled rather than dubbed so I could just listen to the English.

I also remember Heidelberg being the place where I realised that my university's travel agents had badly misinformed me. I had asked them whether it was worthwhile getting an international student identity card and they said only if I wanted to take flights, so as I was going by train there seemed to be no point. However, Mark & Helen each had one and I witnessed it allowing them to get into all the museums and kind of places I wanted to visit at a discount rate, so poor advice made my holiday more expensive.

Saturday 27th August 1988

Today I woke early and walked to the station where I changed some money and then caught the train. I again met Mark and his girlfriend Helen. He stayed in my room in Koblenz. We arrived in Heidelberg about 10.30. It was pouring with rain but we caught the bus to the youth hostel and although it did not open until 13.00 we were able to leave our things and return to town. I looked around the Jesuit museum, the old library and the student museum. By this time the rain had stopped and after lunch I went to the Palatine-Electorate museum (Kur-Pfalz), then walked up to the castle where I looked at the Great Vat and also the pharmaceutical museum. I returned to the town where I went to the cinema and saw 'The Supergrass', a Comic Strip Presents ... film. By the time it finished it was sunny and so I walked to the youth hostel which, despite the listing in the guide, has no [clothes] washing facilities, so I will have to wait until Freiburg on Monday to do my washing. I have decided to stay here tomorrow, walk around, write my postcards and see a couple of films.

Another thing I have noticed about Germans is they like museums and long guided tours. The art galleries, as in Köln, have tours spending ages on each painting, so each member of the party takes fold-up chairs. Oh yes, my room overlooks the Zoo and the bird cage area has so much noise. Mark has ended up in the same room as me again!

Weather: Heavy rain at first, sunny later.

Shots of Heidelberg Castle, August 1988

20 Years On - Part 5 of Account of Travelling by Train Around West Germany and Austria

Arriving in Mainz, I encountered a problem which I have subsequently run into in many places. For some reason in many German cities as well as in Prague, people seem to assume I am a local and ask me directions. When I was in Köln the year after this trip one young woman got angry with me because I could not tell her which bus to get on to travel to the Television Tower. In Prague people just started speaking to me in Czech, a language I found impossible. I wonder what makes people select a particular person to ask directions from. I would imagine, a tall young man wandering aimlessly, was not the prime person you would ask. In London and Oxford people were so frightened of my appearance that they would avoid sitting next to me on the underground or in the cinema, but clearly the impression I give to Central Europeans is very different from the one I give to the British. Anyway, this was the first of many occasions when I encountered this problem.

I had been in the city about three hours when a middle class, middle-aged woman pulled up in her car and asked me directions to 'Weisse Linie Strasse', i.e. White Line Street; I have wondered in subsequent years if she thought I was a drugs dealer. In three sentences I told her I did not know, that I was British and had only been in the city an hour. She hrumphed and threw up her hands as if it was all my fault. Ironically later in the town centre I met a German man also staying at the youth hostel who was with a local German woman who spoke no English. I asked them for directions to a burger restaurant (I was on a tight budget). The man said he could not tell me as he did not know, I asked him to ask the woman to tell me in German where it was (left, right, straight on, were things I had done in my class aged 13) but through him, she refused, saying there was no point saying anything to me in German as I would not understand it. Exasperated I stomped off and found a burger place in the next street busy with black American service personnel and their families. You have to remember that British, American and French forces were still stationed in West Germany at the time and Mainz was in the American zone. The black troops did not do the sunbathing holidays their white counterparts did and you would offer encounter them and their families on holiday in the historic German towns.

In Mainz I changed the film in my camera and forgot to check the ASA (nowadays known as ISO) setting which meant that many photographs came out badly exposed. From the fact that the pictures seemed over-exposed (i.e. too much light had been let on to them) I thought it was because the built-in exposure meter assumed I had a different, less sensitive (ASA100 rather than ASA200) kind of film in the camera. Reading these entries, I see in fact the opposite had happened and the camera was set to ASA1600 (a highly sensitive film, so less light is allowed in) rather than the ASA200 I was using, but perhaps the dial not put back properly had been pushed back and forth in my rucksack to different settings at different times. I only realised the problem when watching a movie in Heidelberg set in 1968 and one of the characters put in a new film and checked the ASA setting. It allowed me to correct the setting and so enable me to take decent photos of the rest of my trip, which is far better than what I did on holiday in 2004 which was to take 36 photographs without any film being in the camera at all. These days digital cameras eliminate such errors.

The other thing I noticed while travelling around is mentioned in this entry. Ice cream parlours and fountains seemed to be everywhere and what struck me as odd was that the fountains were turned on and people ate ice creams while it was pouring down with rain.

Friday 26th August 1988

Today I woke promptly, and after breakfast at which I talked with two English - Mark & Helen, then left the station. I walked down the front way [out of the castle] with the Brazilian who had stayed in our room. We met again at the station as he caught the same train. I was in Mainz by 10.30 and walked around the market and the Gutenberg Museum. I then walked to the youth hostel but it was closed until 17.15 so I went back into town, I was able to leave my things at the youth hostel. I looked around the Zitadelle Park and the cathedral. I also had lunch and sat reading a while. Then I was interviewed [in English] by two girls about problems of the young in Mainz. I went back and checked in at the youth hostel and sat around writing postcards, having earlier bought some stamps. I had to go out for my evening meal so did a lot of walking today. I was lucky in that the others in my room - two Germans and a Swiss - spoke only a little English so I was able to practice my German. One thing I have noticed is that Germans like ice creams and also fountains, you can find them everywhere.

Weather: Changeable, some sun, some rain.

Exiting Koblenz Youth Hostel, August 1988

Note Brazilian Traveller Passing through Gateway

Mainz Cathedral, August 1988

Fountain in Mainz, August 1988