Jon Worth

European, originally a Brit, became German, moved to France. Runs #CrossBorderRail project, writes a newsletter about railways. Green, lives happily without a car Normally stuck on a train, stuck in a village, or escaping either on a folding bicycle

Analysis

Driving more nails into the Schengen coffin

It's not France and Italy this time, but Denmark, driving more nails into the coffin of Schengen, Europe's border free system, at least in spirit. Danish Finance Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen, as reported by BBC, said: We have reached agreement on reintroducing customs inspections at Denmark&

Analysis

Bringing German cycle culture to the UK

I've spent the past 10 days in Berlin, ostensibly for a half marathon and an IT/politics conference... but as I'm sure anyone who reads this blog can tell, my mind works in strange ways and makes odd connections. So here's a blog entry

Analysis

Eurostar rebrands - suppose I'll get used to it

So my favourite rail service - Eurostar - is being rebranded. The old E* logo, in use from the start of the service in the mid-1990s, is to be replaced with a silver 3D logo, dark blue background and a yellow caps sans serif font. There is also an adaption

Analysis

Topic 1 for NL-UK dialogue: rail tickets (London-Bruxelles-Rotterdam)

I'm lucky enough to have received an invite to The Apeldoorn Conference on UK-Netherlands dialogue, taking place 6-8 March in Rotterdam. An easy and high speed train journey - perfect! The route is Eurostar to Bruxelles Midi, then Thalys on the new HSL-Zuid to Rotterdam Centraal. Total journey

Analysis

Köln-London €66.50, or Bruxelles-London £121, booking today on exactly the same trains - odd, no?

Above are screenshots taken within the last twenty minutes (i.e. between 0900 and 1000 on 18th November). The first is for prices for a ticket between Bruxelles Midi and London St Pancras, second class, non-flexible, for the morning of Saturday 4th December. The second is from the ticket I

Analysis

Photo intermission - autumn in East London

Skyline from my window All of the following pictures are along the Hertford Union Canal and Regent's Canal, between Victoria Park and Limehouse Basin. All photos are Creative Commons / Sharealike licensed, and high res versions can be downloaded from my East London set on Flickr.

France

Paris, 114 km

The early spring sunshine is setting behind a straggle of clouds strewn across the agricultural plains of that non-descript part of France somewhere between Bourgogne and Paris. In the blink of an eye we’ll be looping around Paris and heading north to Brussels. But before that, a pause, for

Analysis

The hypocrisy of Europe’s railways: some observations after a journey from Brussels to Germany

In the January edition of ‘Mobil’, the magazine of Deutsche Bahn there’s a picture of Guillaume Pépy (head of SNCF), Rüdiger Grübe (chair of the board of Deutsche Bahn) and Yoshio Ishida (president of UIC) beaming at Gare du Midi, Bruxelles, in front of the Climate Express, a special

Guides

Dive Lake Malawi

It was one of the most unusual work assignments I've ever been given: 3 days working in Lilongwe, Malawi. But it would be mad to fly to sub-Saharan Africa without enjoying a few days off too. Lake Malawi is supposed to be one of the best freshwater dive

Analysis

In the grip of Star Alliance

‘Breakfast?’ Breakfast. What. Just about off to sleep in a tiny Air Canada seat. Airbus A330-300, modern, very little space. Grumpy staff. It’s morning. Sun over Scotland somewhere. In flight maps not working – what good is that for the son of a geographer? Get a second breakfast from passenger

Analysis

Body Mass Index airline seat pricing

An article at Boing Boing caught my eye today - that United Airlines wants to charge obese passengers for two seats. The argument is a simple one: if you're too large to fit into a seat you have to pay for a second one as you are inconveniencing

Analysis

Farmland the game: not only Ryanair has problems with scantily clad women

Mary Honeyball MEP has rightly been having a go at Ryanair about a charity calendar the airline has been selling that contains air hostesses in various states of undress in their aircraft. You can read Mary's posts about that case and make up your mind about it; frankly

Quick takes

DB Schenker takes to the rails in the UK

It was a small flash of white on maroon, but it meant so much - the DB Schenker logo on the side of a Class 60 UK railway engine somewhere between Chesterfield and Derby on 3rd October, out of the window from my Sheffield-London train. If anyone can help improve

Analysis

London-Sheffield for an early meeting: how hard can it be?

I need to get from London to Sheffield on 3rd October and I ideally need to arrive by 0900. Shouldn't be too hard? Think again. Maybe I am just too used to Eurostar that can get me from Brussels via Lille at 300km/h and allow me to

Analysis

You know you have a problem with your main airport when...

...you can make jokes about Heathrow Terminal 5 in adverts in German in the magazine of the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. Translation: "Sorry, our advertisement is still stuck in Heathrow Terminal 5". The deckchair seems to make reference to the famous anti-German Carling Black Label advertisement about Germans and British

Analysis

Customer service - how you should do it

I've been so frustrated in recent weeks by a complete lack of customer service in all kinds of places I've been - Coditel and UPS in Belgium, Thomas Cook Airlines in Canada, BAA at Gatwick (on my return from Canada - not as severe as Boris

Analysis

Riding the Railroad

The cloud sits heavy over Albany, NY and drips of rain slide down the windowpanes of the coach windows of Amtak train 69 "Adirondack" bound for Montréal. After a nightmarish bus journey in the opposite direction this is much more civilised. I wonder whether the border crossing is

Analysis

Brussels - St Pancras - Gatwick - Montréal and onwards

Eurostar terminal Brussels on a Friday morning, 0830. Why so many people? Apparently it's normal a stressed UK Borders passport checker informs me. Coach 17, filled with doddering pensions and Flemish children. Why can't Eurostar do a business standard coach? And why can't Flemish

Analysis

Thalys via Paris: it's the planes and the second seat that are the real scandal

From the start of the French Presidency of the EU (1st July), a 300km/h Thalys train is going to be hired to transport MEPs and EP officials from Brussels to Strasbourg for the monthly plenary sessions. Sounds like a reasonable idea - via the high speed line towards Paris,

Analysis

Swedish rail transport and the market: twisted signals

So private train companies cause more crashes do they? That's the message being put out by SEKO, the Swedish trade union of Service and Communication Employees. They use the image above, with the slogan 'Mer konkurrens?' (shown as a small version in the image here to

Analysis

Brussels - London - Berlin - London - Brussels - London - Brussels

I'm on the road for 10 days, doing all kinds of website work and running training courses. I'll blog when I can, but don't expect any detailed analysis of European politics in the next few days... Plus I'm in Berlin now, my

Analysis

Carbon neutral year? Well, lower carbon at least

I like to consider myself as being reasonably environmentally friendly but I've not been as systematic about it as I might have been until now. So 2008 I'm going to do better... 1. All electricity at home is green electricity, supplied by Lampiris and I have

Analysis

The unique challenge of a Belgian junction

Belgium is one of the last places where the priorité à  droite rule still applies to traffic (more from Marko and Expatica) - i.e. when on any road you should give priority to traffic joining from the right. If you're on a major thoroughfare and there'

Analysis

Eurostar grandeur

My Eurostar leans into a curve as the twinkling lights of Calais disappear into the distance, accelerating into northern France. With the dark of an autumn evening outside the window only the dull reverberations of the air on the carriage walls convey the impression of speed. Yet only forty-five minutes

Quick takes

The 0805 to St Pancras International

I was on it - the first ever 0805 Eurostar train from Brussels Midi to London St Pancras International on 15th November, the 2nd day of operation of the new high speed line. The line itself is relatively unexciting - a quick dip in a tunnel under the Thames at