Bookpacking’s Blog

Czech Republic; Prague-Dresden train EC170

Some things just have to be done. We’re sat on a Euro City train waiting to leave Prague for the former East German city of Dresden. Cued-up via YouTube is the classic Kraftwerk ode to pan-Europeanism, “Trans Europe Express”.

OK, so this isn’t one of those shiny new ICE trains (Germany’s TGV), but a red box of a locomotive with eight Hungarian carriages attached. But it’s clean and modern, and we can’t but help get excited about a train journey. Sentimental Journey, Brief Encounter, Casablanca; travel is romantic, full stop. But there’s something even more so about a train. The bus was going to be 500Kc, the train was only 600 and ran more frequently. So here we are riding along the Vltava with the pioneering electric rhythms of Germany’s most famous band.

And for extra novelty value (for a Brit at least) we’ve got ourselves a compartment. Remember those? Windows all steamed up from the days when diesel engines used hot steam to heat the carriages. One day last month, on a journey beset by problems, we sat on the platform at Doncaster while a useless tannoy mumble unintelligibly and harassed travellers asked hapless station staff the same question over and over.

Out of the gloom like a vision from the past appeared one of the rail charter trains that take enthusiasts up unusual branch lines or behind rare engines. Table lamps illuminated white-clothed tables through those steamy windows; it looked like the cosiest place in the world to be. And not for the first time we wondered about ‘progress’.

So as we travel through what was presumably the Sudetenland (annexed by Hitler), Dresden looms. The old “Florence of the Elbe” was completely devastated in WW2 by Allied incendiary bombs. My grandfather was in Bomber Command – the men who had the highest attrition rate, but were sidelined post-war as Churchill distanced himself from responsibility for “total war”: the deliberate targeting of civilians. And there’s a double irony in that my Grandmother was a fire warden in the blitzed-out Black Country city of Coventry.

Readers of Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five” can hear about the destruction of Dresden; or rather un-destruction – the action all takes place backwards. 25-35,000 dead in one night; bodies melting in pools of fat. Words are inadequate. Perhaps some things are so unreal that postmodern semi-sci-fi is the only way to make sense of them.

PS with regards to the old ‘Is the Euro making things more expensive’ chestnut: the Czechs aren’t in the Euro zone yet, but the odd tourist-related business appears to take it. The same sandwich was £1.20 in Czech Crowns at the train station, or £1.75 with Euros. This is a pattern you see all over. Where’s it all going, we wonder?

 Czech Republic; Prague; Kafka Museum

Kafka is often credited with having anticipated the totalitarian regimes of the 20th Century. Visiting the Kafka Museum in Prague, it’s easy to see why. The powerless individual helpless against an unfair and uncaring system whose decisions make no sense perfectly sums up the life under communism that one often reads about; everybody agreeing that the sky is green while staring directly into the clear blue.

Yet it was obvious that Kafka was a prisoner not of some external system, but of his own mind. As one display panel points out, he was never able to commit to a relationship because he was never able to “shake himself free of the rules he himself had imposed”. Just like one of his major writing influences, Flaubert, he also sought refuge in long-distance relationships and the abstract world of a love conducted by letters; where he could control things.

Kafka is yet another tortured artist who seems to prove the maxim that the best art comes out of pain. The allegorical Prague he dreamt up was composed of walls and boundaries which he had built for himself. Self-loathing and a hatred of his own body meant he was always held back. He found solace in the “Prague Four” band of intellectual friends, and gave himself eventually to his first love – literature.

He was the perfect example of the frustrated artist, driven to the edge of insanity by the mundane of a 9-5 that he hated. One of the sections of the museum is called “The Endless Office”. Anyone who has been in job that feels like a slow cerebral death can sympathise with that feeling of being trapped; a purgatorial paralysis of the mind and a overwhelming sense of stagnation. One of the displays refers to those “infinite” eight hours of the working day.

But if there is a hero in this realm of anti’s, it is Kafka’s comrade Max Brod. Nietzsche was dishonoured in death by a sister who manipulated his pre-life coaching message of liberation from the self (the “will to power”) to suit Nazi ends; but Kafka owes Brod a big posthumous debt. In life, Brod had recognised and nurtured Kafka’s superior talent. In death, Brod went against the wishes of his loved and respected friend, and bravely but guiltily disregarded Kafka’s request to burn his manuscripts. A tree fell in the literary forest; and thanks to Brod, we heard it.

 Hungary; Budapest; Terror House

History is very much alive in this part of the world. A couple of decades is nothing, and even if the teenagers of today don’t remember Communism, their parents do. And while some countries try to move on as quickly as possible, glossing over the past with a ’sleeping dogs lie’ attitude, others take time to remember what went before.

Contrasting with the Slovakian indifference we found in Bratislava, here the excellent Terror House museum not only commemorates the victims – it names the guilty. From the menacing Soviet tank which sits under victims’ mug-shots, to the chapel-like cellar which contains their names, the moving exhibition tells reminds us not to forget the victims of one of the Eastern Bloc’s relatively moderate regimes. The museum is situated in the very building where the Secret Police of both Nazi and Soviet regimes operated, and it rams home the point that Fascism and Communism were but different brands of the same kind of systemic oppression and control.

But surprisingly, another wall names and shames some of the torturers. Or perhaps that’s not surprising. Perhaps what’s surprising is that there isn’t more of this in the other countries we visited. Is this testament to the power of forgiveness, or an indication of unfinished business and a lack of lustration? Only time will tell.

Hungary; somewhere between Vienna and Budapest

As overhead screens drop down to start playing the passenger information video that precedes a feature film, the pretty Hungarian stewardess leans over. In perfect English asks if we’d like complimentary coffee, tea or chocolate? After a safety briefing she’d passed down the aisle with free headphones and while we’re plugging these in she returns with a thick and creamy hot chocolate.

Giving our arrival time in Budapest, she had told us the name of the man tasked with getting us there in one piece, but hadn’t mentioned our altitude. At a rough guess, we reckon we’re cruising at somewhere in the region of 8 feet. Hungarian carrier Orangeways is another new central European bus company giving planes and trains a run for their money. Last week Czech competitor Student Agency* took us from Brno to Bratislava in style, and tonight Orangeways quietly and efficiently whiz us from one former bastion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to another. Doubtless Austria’s OBB would have provided a smooth and comfortable ride too, but their trains would have cost 3-4 times more and taken just as long.

Their German counterpart DB is supposed to be buying the British government’s stake in Eurostar. Does National Express have anything to fear from foreign competition? Perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad thing if, in the free trade Euro-village, the likes of Student Agency and Orangeways became players in the UK market? Student Agency even give out free magazines and newspapers, and on both lines if you don’t like the film (broadcast in the local language and English) you can always listen to the in-cabin radio. They’ve even got Wifi on some routes.

One of the few things that gets Bookpacking really riled (enough to rip a bookmark in two; a card one obviously, not leather) is overpriced UK transport. Mega Bus have brought prices down on some routes with their no frills approach, and National Express (who also said goodbye to coach stewards a long time ago) offer Fun Fares which can work out at £1 per hour of long distance travel. French operator Veolia, which one driver told Bookpacking is owned by the French government, is already quietly expanding into the UK. But maybe a bit of this Hungaro-Czech style of coach travel wouldn’t go amiss. Orangeways and Student Agency have already named their crossborder operations using English words. Have pan-European brand name, will travel?

* open to all, though students are as welcome as anyone else

Find out more about the boozy bad boy Bard – the erudite egalitarian who celebrateshis 250th birthday today – on this Edinburgh pub tour for intellectual inebriates

A Man’s a Man for A’ That - Robert Burns, 1795

Is there for honest poverty
That hings his head, an a’ that?
The coward slave, we pass him by -
We dare be poor for a’ that!
For a’ that, an a’ that!
Our toils obscure, an a’ that,
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
The man’s the gowd for a’ that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hodding grey, an a’ that?
Gie fools their skills, and knaves their wine -
A man’s a man for a’ that.
For a’ that, an a’ that,
Their tinsel show, an a’ that,
The honest man, tho e’er sae poor,
Is king o men for a’ that.

Ye see yon birkie ca’d ‘a lord,’
Wha struts, an stares, an a’ that?
Tho hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a cuif for a’ that.
For a’ that, an a’ that,
His ribband, star, an a’ that,
The man o independent mind,
He looks an laughs at a’ that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an a’ that!
But an honest man’s aboon his might -
Guid faith, he mauna fa’ that!
For a’ that, an a’ that,
Their dignities, an a’ that,
The pith o sense an pride o worth,
Are higher rank than a’ that.

Then let us pray that come it may
(As come it will for a’ that),
That Sense and Worth o’er a’ the earth,
Shall bear the gree an a’ that.
For a’ that, an a’ that,
It’s coming yet for a’ that,
That man to man, the world, o’er
Shall brithers be for a’ that.

Never again during the safety demonstration will Bookpacking sigh internally: “And just when was the last time a plane ditched on water and people actually needed a lifejacket; indeed still had a head  left on their shoulders to pull it over ? Eh?”

A timely reminder that life is precious and can be taken away from us at any time. And, that we should always watch the safety demonstration…

Yours chastened,

Bookpacking

BTW info@bookpacking.com is working now. Apologies for the technical difficulties.

Poland; Krakow; Powstancow Slaskich Bridge

You can hear them now: “Poland? In January? Are you mad?”. But late on a Monday afternoon when most people are at work, Mother Nature presents us with an unexpected and utterly delightful moment of beauty as the geese splash across the ice-strewn Vistula in front of a setting sun. On a deserted footpath, heading back from Podgorze you can almost imagine that this picture has been conjured up just for you. Pure gold.

Poland; Krakow; Kazimierz

Sometimes when you’re on the road you find yourself with a ‘favourite bar’ within a day or two of arriving. Cult bar Alchemia has been the hit that our Polish recommender said it would be, but joint top is Mlecvarnia. Very impressed they were too, when we mentioned we’d found this arty little hangout.

In a side street in the bohemian Krakow quarter of Kazimierz, it takes its name from the place where the farmers would take their produce to sell to the state. Or not, depending on how well the shambolic communist system was working that day. Accounts from those days tell how, despite the food shortages, a farmer could arrive to (reluctantly, because he could get more selling it privately) sell his allocation to the state only to find the official buyer hadn’t shown up.

Like one of the writers featured in the book “Beautiful Kazimierz” we’re lingering over a strong cup of coffee during another lazy start to the day. After last week’s snowboarding in Zakopane, it’s nice not to be doing too much. Good coffee in the morning is one of those smells which reminds you it’s good to be alive. We’ve not always been the best at good coffee in the UK (putting it kindly) but maybe we’re catching it up. Black gold when it’s good, fools gold when you are given a bad cup.

Last night we sampled the delicious Krupnic (pronounced as it looks) in here, which is honey-flavoured vodka, washed down with the locals’ favourite lager Zywiec (pronounced Ziv-eets). Travelling hand-luggage only means no space for bottles, but with so many Poles in the UK it shouldn’t be too hard to find some back in London.