Dear Violeta, I have had plenty of time to contemplate this postcard to you. Most of the day in fact, as I’ve wasted that long trying to get to the bottom of what ought to be a rather simple cross-border railway problem. Later this week – on Thursday 8th October […]
Dear Violeta, Since my postcard from Forst (Lausitz) in December I’ve travelled the length and breadth of Germany by rail (even stopping off to hear you speak at the Schwarkopf Stiftung in Berlin), and today I am sending you a virtual postcard from Mannheim. I have no idea whether Franz […]
Dear Violeta*, I’m a regular long distance rail traveller, and when things used to go wrong with EU-wide rail I would write postcards here on my blog to your predecessor, Siim Kallas. You can find old postcards from Hendaye, Göteborg and Liège. This is my first postcard to you, but […]
Dear Siim, I’m writing to you today from Liège. In one way this is a surprise, in that I am not supposed to be in Liège, but judging from experience I suppose it was inevitable I was going to have to write to you from here at some point. I […]
Dear Siim*, Although we have never met, you seem familiar to me. I follow all your upbeat reports on Twitter about the bright future of European rail, and your great liberalisation plans, and investments in trans-European networks. Well Siim, for me as a traveller, I’m not feeling it. I am […]
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 this […]