I’ve realised that now I am no longer using Twitter, there is no systematic overview of all the flow diagrams I have made over the years. So this is a post looking back over all the things I have diagrammed, and why! Please click on any image below to load […]
During my #CrossBorderRail project in the summer of 2022 I needed to take regional trains Badajoz-Merida and Merida-Madrid in Spain, and these trains require compulsory seat reservations. Buying a combined ticket and reservation online for these trains is no problem, but Interrail pass holders need just a seat reservation. At […]
Christian Drosten has today stated that the COVID pandemic is over, and the virus is now endemic. That has led, rather predictably, to the demand that all Corona protection measures be lifted in Germany – FDP Justice Minister Buschmann was the swiftest to make this demand today. But that COVID […]
Back in the summer of 2022 it was party time – almost literally – for passengers on German public transport. For the months of June, July and August it cost just 9 Euro a month, flat rate, to use regional and local public transport anywhere in Germany (basically pretty much […]
Meine Mastodon Feeds sind voll mit Fragen, wie das neue 49 Euro Ticket (auch als Deutschlandticket bekannt) für den öffentlichen Nahverkehr in Deutschland funktioniert. Deshalb werde ich in diesem Beitrag versuchen, alle häufig gestellten Fragen zum Ticket zu beantworten. Alle Angaben entsprechen dem Stand vom 26. Dezember 2022 – sobald […]
I was recording an episode of the Human Risk podcast with Christian Hunt this week – basically about humans and railways – and the conversation came back to what I think I ought to call the implementation gap in railway policy. “When I moved to München“, Christian was telling me, […]
One of the strangest experiences in my #CrossBorderRail trip this summer was as the only passenger on the Mons to Aulnoye-Aymeries train – it even features in my summary video. Given that the one I took departs Mons at 06:04 then I suppose that was no surprise. And then, as […]
Another day, another earnest column in a broadsheet newspaper listing the problems with Europe’s railways – this time it’s Die Zeit. We should fly less, we need more high speed trains, we need more night trains, plans for more have come to nothing, why is infra investment in Germany so slow, […]
There is no international railway line I have travelled more often than Bruxelles – Köln. A good part of my life since my teenage years on language exchanges in the mid-1990s in Verviers and Lahnstein, through to professional life today in my early forties as a self employed person living […]
Years ago I used to run a little parody account on Twitter. Nothing major, nothing dangerous – just gently joking about a European Commissioner. The bio even said it was a parody. And then, from one day to the next, the account disappeared. No warning. I contacted Twitter’s support to […]
For the period spanning roughly 2015 to 2019, Brexit was my prime political preoccupation. Analysing what would happen next, and doing plenty of media work about the twists and turns of the sorry saga. When Boris Johnson won the December 2019 General Election it was time to step away from […]
One of the most unpleasant episodes during my #CrossBorderRail project – where I crossed every internal border of the EU you can cross by train – happened at Frankfurt (Oder) in Germany on 24th June, when arriving from Poland. Already four hours late due to a problem on the Polish […]
