When you travel by rail Europe-wide as much as I do (and also spend as much time debating rail policy in Europe as I do when I am not travelling), you end up with an overwhelming impression: cross border rail does not work as well as train travel within one […]
Dear Siim, I hope you liked my last e-postcard from Hendaye. Today I am writing to you from Göteborg, Sweden. I’m only writing this from the comfort of the train south of Sweden’s second city because I’m lucky – my train from Oslo arrived 2 minutes early, at 1038. Meaning […]
The theory of liberalisation of European railways is all very well. At one level the cross border service between København and Malmo, the Øresundstog, is a good example of it – a rail service running every 10 minutes across the bridge between Denmark and Sweden, and run by neither Swedish […]
Tomorrow is the last day of operation of the Benelux Train, an hourly Intercity service that has been connecting Brussels, Antwerp, Rosendaal, Rotterdam, Den Haag and Amsterdam since the 1950s. Philip Richards documents his three eras using it here, here and here, and Alex van Herwijnen will be on the […]
I will be making what should be a reasonably simple rail trip in early December – the 600km journey between Copenhagen (station: København H) and Oslo (station: Oslo S). So how do I do it? Well, it turns out that it is all nowhere as simple as it should be. […]
For good or bad we’ve had a glut of gripping stories this summer, those sit-glued-to-the-TV moments where everyone wants to know what’s going on. For me the Oslo / Utøya attacks, the London riots, and the rebel advance on Tripoli have been three such events. Only now there is a […]
I’m starting to write this blog entry at 2123 CET on 22nd July 2011. We have known for a few hours that twin attacks have taken place in Norway – an explosion in central Oslo and a series of shootings at Utøya, an island in Tyrifjorden to the north east […]
Forköpsremsor. The patter of winter tires on worn tarmac. Blåbuss 3 mot Karolinska sjukhuset. The absence of overweight people. Påfyllning. Drunken happy people on the Tunnelbana. People that say hello to you when you go to the till at a shop. Showers that allow you to set the exact temperature […]
Norway goes to the polls on 14th September and the election is being held at a time when Norway’s position in the world is in some question: what role for the oil rich country of 4.5 million people at the northern edge of Europe? The influence of the EU on […]