…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 and sunbathing. […]
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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 Johnson’s experience!) – that […]
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 going to […]
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 parents control their kids a bit […]
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, skirting […]
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 the right), making people […]