I think my bum's atrophied. No, on reflection, I'm quite certain my bum's atrophied. Reading about the North German Plain for O-level Geography isn't a bit like travelling over it in a second-class German railway carriage for five hours. I don't understand how cultivated landscape can be so empty -- no people, no cars, no houses, no trees, no animals -- just these empty rectangular fields surrounded by tatty hedges. If they must provide seven hour non-stop train journeys, the least that they could do would be to provide some mountains to look at on the way. Perhaps a PanoRamaVision Lifelike Scenery Window, changed once an hour by a little man hanging by his toenails from the pantograph, would be more interesting.
It all began at that Mecca of railway stations, Manningtree. "Where?" I hear you cry in disbelief. Well, it's one of those places which isn't actually anywhere, it's just where three lines from nowhere in particular to somewhere else meet, and has about the same relation to a real place as a mathematical point has to a goddam full stop.
British Rail (you knew they'd come into it sooner or later, didn't you?) had dropped (dumped, abandoned) me at this lon/vely spot half an hour later than their timetable advertised. "Just cross the platform for the train to Harwich," they said, "You'll catch the boat all right".
As we drew into Harwich (Parkestone Quay) station the boat regally steamed out of the dock. I regally steamed along the platform into the station supervisor's office. When asked what I was going to do now, I restrained myself from answering that I was going to take a rail-tapper's hammer and lay about me to the detriment of British Rail, its buildings, crews, and other employees generally, beginning with the aforementioned station supervisor. Instead, I explained in tones of admirably suppressed hysteria that I could now not get to my meeting at Copenhagen in time since the next boat was due to leave twenty-four hours later, and what the boiled crimson carnation was he going to do about it?
Carefully disclaiming responsibility for my mishap by showing me the log of the call from Manningtree to say that there was no-one on the train for the boat ... he proceeded to phone his supervisor, and his supervisor's supervisor, who told him to hold on while he (the s's s) phoned his (the s's s's) supervisor's supervisor at London Liverpool Street to authorise BR's spending money on me.
By this time my purple apoplexy had given way to a more radish hue, and the previously fawning supervisor began to be amazingly practical, looking up boat and train times and costs, at the same time giving me a run-down on the general level of incompetence of the whole setup, and with his free ear listening to the multiple-level supervisory epic on the phone. After that it was all plain sailing (and railing). Ten o'clock boat to Hook of Holland, 7.16 train to Hamburg, wait forty-three minutes, train to Copenhagen. The amazing thing was that this would get me to Copenhagen only a few minutes late.
Or would it ... ?
The other occupant of my carriage was a Turkish seaman, travelling back to Hamburg. In atrocious German we conversed on topics as diverse as Turkish politics, the Common Market, and the status of "guest"-workers in Germany. All was well until we came to the German border. The passport-demanding man (apparently and unfortunately designated by his arm-band as a Train-Border-Shooter, unless my translation is at fault) was immediately (and not unreasonably) suspicious of the poor Turk, all of whose official documents bore different spellings of his names. In vain did he remonstrate that illiterate Dutch and German sea-captains had written his name wrongly; he was told that he must have wichtige papers. Somewhere in the middle of this contretemps the guard glanced at me and my proffered British passport, and waved it away. Didn't he want to know that I was smuggling dirty socks?
The Turkish sailor's luggage (which didn't seem to contain a wrestler's jockstrap) came next under scrutiny. Most suspicious of all was the fact that his suitcase contained ... a suitcase! This Houdini-defying contraption was finally opened and the luckless man's belongings deposited all over the carriage. His anomalous paper-status was further reinforced by the discovery in his luggage of another set of seaman's papers bearing yet another version of his name. I thought he would cry. If the guard had found any smuggled items I think he would have shot the Turk and cast his body out into the snow.
At last they half-accepted his story and he encountered the usual problem that everything out of the (inner) suitcase would no longer fit back in. I eventually sat on it while he hammered the locks into place with his shoe. This immediately branded me as an accomplice in the eyes of the guards, who demanded my passport, and, on the basis of the " ... she loves me, she loves me not, ... " principle, decided that I was at present both in Hong Kong and in the USA, as I had an odd number of entry/exit visas for each. It's lucky they didn't spot (or couldn't read) the Bulgarian visa ...
When this was all sorted out, the train set off, only forty-four minutes late. Observant readers will have recollected the figure quoted earlier of a forty-three minute wait in Hamburg, and even those with only one hand or hammer-toes will readily calculate that the connection didn't connect.
Ah well, Hamburg in mid-December with no Deutschmarks and no accommodation was what I had wanted -- wasn't it?
Please email me at: JLD1@cam.ac.uk if you have any comments.