The annual timetable change brings new routes, headlines, commuter confusion and for some stations it is inevitably the end of the line. Curmudgeon runs his eyes over the ÖBB. Continue reading The ill wind that blows when the timetable changes
The curmudgeon bemoans entitlement and harks back to simpler days, when a foreign holiday was all about Pschitt and giggles. Continue reading When holidays were all about Pschitt and giggles
Make no mistake, the last few months have been a bit of a struggle for the curmudgeon. But with a bit of luck, he’s getting back on track. Continue reading Searching for certainty in times of uncertainty
A few days in Lincolnshire in mid-January were a necessary trip, but possibly not what the doctor might prescribe. Continue reading Some of you have never had it so good…
Carinthia and Styria and a stop in Semmering play host to the itinerant Curmudgeons. Fresh air, lake views and border incursions are part of a welcome change of scene. Continue reading Curmudgeon escapes the heat…
A tweet by the British Ambassador reminded me of a comedy of errors that happened when we holidayed in Tyrol in the 1990s.
Back then, we used to make accommodation reservations through the local tourist board. A phone call to them, back in the days when PTA (Post Telekom Austria) had a monopoly on voice services, was about ATS 7 a minute during the day (yes! Over EUR 0.50 a minute!) so it was no wonder that we would confirm by writing a letter and receive a letter back with a Zahlschein.
As the school year drew to an end, my wife bade a retiring colleague farewell at the end of a long teaching career, and so our thoughts turned to holidays. We’d decided to go for getting some down time, with fresh air, walks and scenery and decided to explore the Pinzgau and then come back through the Murtal. Continue reading “Curmudgeon heads to the hills.”
In the early 1980s, British Rail spent a lot of time and effort trying to shrug off a reputation for a lack of investment and the failure of its Advanced Passenger Train (APT) as well as heralding in the age of the train. Now disgraced “entertainer” Jimmy Savile advocated the advantages of cheap day returns and Intercity 125 services connected the main lines of the UK. After a descent into chaos, with privatisation of the railways in the 1990s and trains and tracks run with varying degrees of success and inefficiency by all sorts of companies and with varying degrees of bail-outs, the next step is a project called HS2, to bring Birmingham closer in terms of time to the capital, while Cross Rail or the Elizabeth Line will relieve pressure on the Tube and allow services to go through London from West to East in what is a landmark engineering project.
Continue reading “This is the age of the (privatised) train…”
I’ve become rather keen on the Schnellbahn of late. Some friends had always made Döbling to be “a bit out of the way” and “difficult to get to” by public transport. One laboured the point with his app, Qando, which looks very useful if you need to know if there is a low floor 38 tram coming any time soon, but systematically thinks the Schnellbahn … Continue reading The Schnellbahn gets a make-over
The Curmudgeon in the Cottage 