The
thunderstorms which swept through during the night had wakened me briefly, but
they had left the summer morning air with a wonderful cleanly-washed feeling.
The sun was shining and the pleasant fresh warmth promised to become close and
muggy later but that didn’t worry me. By the time that later came, I’d be gone,
flying nearly a thousand kilometres westward to Ireland.
The first
stage of the journey was by rail; from my home town Remscheid
to Düsseldorf, with a change of train in Solingen.
The highlight of this is the crossing of the Müngsten Bridge,
the highest steel railway bridge in Germany. Remscheid
and Solingen
are both built on hills, and you can see one town from the other, but they are
divided by the deep valley of the river Wupper. You look 350 feet down from the
train at the river, winding its way through a densely wooded canyon. A
magnificent sight on this fine morning, with wisps of water vapour lazily
writhing above the water. The bridge itself has a something of a sinister
reputation locally as a popular attraction for desperate people, planning to
end their own lives.
I change
trains in the Solingen
suburb of Ohligs. Like both the other two cities in the so-called
Bergisch-Metropolitan-Triangle, Wuppertal and Remscheid, it is an
amalgamation of various pre-existing smaller towns. Solingen
is known as the “City of Blades” and has a
tradition of steel and cutlery making going back for many hundreds of years,
with an historical reputation comparable only with Sheffield and Toledo. Ohligs itself is
on the border between the old Duchy of Berg and the Rhineland
and has, if the truth be told, more a Rheinisch
than a Bergisch character.
Historically, the Rhinelanders have a reputation for being relaxed, laid-back
and fun-loving, while the inhabitants of Berg are more frequently described as
being dour, taciturn and serious. It is, perhaps, not entirely coincidental
that the Reformation made a lot of ground in Berg, while the Rhineland
remained largely (if generally unfervently) Catholic.
The journey
from Remscheid to Dublin
is one I’ve been doing three or four times annually for the past years, ever
since my parents moved to Dublin.
As the train moves smoothly towards Düsseldorf, I find myself thinking about
how routine it’s become for me. I was twenty one years old before I flew for
the first time; now it’s just part of my life. But the world has changed in the
past thirty years.
The most
basic defining fact about Ireland
is that it is an island. This has always made it harder to get to or leave than
countries with land borders. In my youth, the most common way to and from the
country was the “boat” across the Irish Sea to Liverpool
or Holyhead. I’ve taken the boat too, often enough in my youth, crossing
England to take yet another boat to finally reach the continent, where the way
generally continued by train.
I realise
that it has been quite a few years since I took a long train journey. There’s
something lost there, for I find rail travel more comfortable and relaxed than
flying. You have more room, you can look out the window and watch the
ever-changing variety of towns and countryside, you can get up and walk around.
You’re more inclined to get into conversation with your fellow travellers – or
perhaps I’ve just become older and more taciturn. But that loss of relaxation
is what you exchange for that most highly rated modern commodity, time. To get from Remscheid
to Dublin by
train and boat would take a couple of days; the way I do it now, I travel from
door to door (including all the waiting at airports) in less than six hours.
Though,
even in terms of relaxation, I have nothing to complain about. I do this
journey so often that I have long since personally optimised every phase of it
and, from the moment I arrive at the first railway station, I have moved into a
personal, time out mode. I know where
to get tickets, which platforms to go to, where to check in, etc., and all this
stuff runs semi-automatically. So I have the inner space to just enjoy the
feeling of being on the move, without pressure.
My flight
is from Düsseldorf International Airport,
the third biggest in Germany
after Frankfurt and Munich (though it will
probably be relegated to fourth after the new single Berlin airport finally gets up and running
next year). Düsseldorf, with a population of just under 600,000 isn’t one of Germany’s
biggest cities, but it’s one of the most successful. There are various reasons
for this, one of the most important being the decision by the western allies
after the Second World War to make it the capital of Germany’s largest (by
population) province of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Düsseldorf
has an intensively competitive relationship with Cologne,
just a few miles farther up the Rhine. Cologne is bigger and
over a millennium older, having been founded by Agrippa, the faithful adjutant
of the Emperor Augustus, while Düsseldorf isn’t mentioned historically until
the Middle Ages. Cologners tend to regard Düsseldorfers as parvenu and claim that the insecurity resulting from this is the
reason why the residents of their rival city are so concerned with status,
fashion, and being “in.” Certainly, the Königsallee
(popularly known as the “Kö”), the
premier shopping street in Düsseldorf, would claim to compete with New York’s
Fifth Avenue, or the Via Condotti in Rome, and you might be forgiven for a
feeling of taking the tone of the place down if you find yourself driving down
the Kö in a car which isn’t a
Porsche, a Mercedes, or a BMW.
Düsseldorf
and Cologne
both have their own varieties of beer. In Düsseldorf it’s a dark ale known as Alt, while in Cologne they brew a light, lager-type beer
known as Kölsch. It’s more than your
life is worth to try to order an Alt in
Cologne, while
the Düsseldorfers generally say that Kölsch
is a liquid which passes unchanged – apart from the temperature – through
the human body.
With its finely-tuned
consciousness of chic, Düsseldorf is,
inevitably, a major centre of culture, although here there is also a keen
rivalry with Cologne.
One of the city’s most successful cultural exports in the past thirty years is
the cult band, Die Toten Hosen (literally
“Dead Trousers,” the phrase being a slang expression meaning “nothing going
on,” or “boring.”), who play a good-humoured form of punk rock, often with a
healthy dollop of social criticism thrown in.
Air travel,
as I’ve already mentioned, has changed considerably in Europe
in the past couple of decades. The key phrase is “low-cost flying.” Whereas
thirty years ago flying still had a cachet of being a bit exclusive, it has now
become affordable travel for the masses. Part of the philosophy behind this is
the optimisation of every element of every element of the process and the reduction
of the fundamental fact to its minimum, the flying from A to B. The basic
flight price – on a route where the size of the planes and the frequency of flights
have been carefully analysed to ensure that the vehicles are always well
occupied – is kept as low as possible. Everything else costs extra; luggage,
meals and drinks on the plane, choice of seats, often even personal
checking-in. One of the most successful of the low-cost carriers is the Irish
firm Ryanair, with its spectacular in-your-face Managing Director, Michael O’Leary
(if you’re interested, you can watch him outlining the company’s philosophy
here).
Fortunately, I don’t have to travel with O’Leary’s firm, who are pretty
ingenious at thinking up new methods to make you pay extra (they don’t fly from
Düsseldorf, claiming that the landing charges there are too expensive) – as the
pressure of competition with them has forced to Irish national carrier, Aer
Lingus, to go low-cost too, so that I can generally get a return flight from
Düsseldorf to Dublin for less than US $ 150.
“I used to
think Genitalia was an airline until I discovered Aer Lingus,” some comedian
once commented. Personally, I’d prefer sex to flying any time. To be truthful,
I find flying both boring and frequently annoying, uselessly annoying. It
starts with the security check. Even today, years after the ridiculous measure
has been introduced, there still seem to be passengers who haven’t realised
that you’re not allowed to carry liquids onto the plane. It doesn’t matter
which queue I choose, I always seem to finish up behind the lady who wants to
bring her shampoo, face-cleaning fluid and Chanel No. 5 in her hand-luggage and
engages some bored, underpaid security worker, who only speaks broken German,
in an interminable and increasingly bad-tempered discussion. Forget it lady,
ditch your Chanel or get another flight!
But even in
the world of proposed extra charges for using the aircraft toilets, Aer Lingus
still retains some of its old charm. The flight attendants are always very
friendly and helpful, and they still offer a warm traditional Irish breakfast,
with sausages and rashers, black and white pudding, fried tomato, potato cake,
brown bread and butter with orange juice, coffee or tea. It’s not free of
course – though, on reflection, it never really was, after all, it was all part of the princely price you paid for
your ticket – but at € 7.50 it’s still a bargain. As I usually take the morning
flight, and only drink a cup (or two) of coffee before leaving home, it has
become another ritual of mine whenever I take this flight.
An hour and
a half after taking off, we land. And now, another aspect of low-cost flying
really comes into its own for me. All the cheap carriers make you pay extra for
checked-in luggage. I have become expert at travelling light, carrying everything
I really need in my hand-baggage. And so, only ten minutes after the plane as
stopped, I saunter past the people standing hypnotised at the baggage carousel,
waiting seemingly forever for their bags to be spewed up out of the innards of
the airport, down the green customs line and out of the airport. A little more
than five hours after leaving home, I’ve arrived. Now there’s just the short
bus and car trip to my parents’ place.
It would
have taken me just as long to drive from home to Berlin
or Munich – and
would have cost me just as much. Funny old world, isn’t it?
This little piece from the Toten Hosen is a love song from an extremely jealous lover, who first offers to kill himself to prove his love ... and finally decides to kill both himself and his girlfriend.
This little piece from the Toten Hosen is a love song from an extremely jealous lover, who first offers to kill himself to prove his love ... and finally decides to kill both himself and his girlfriend.
Pictures retrieved from:
Ach I hate travelling by plane these days. Luckily my last few excursions have been by train. Paris is so easy to get to by Eurostar from London and the security checks are reasonable
ReplyDeleteThe Stuttgart Antiquarian Book Fair is well worth visiting. I truly enjoyed the one and only time I attended way back in 1983.
ReplyDeleteYikes, Yikes, Yikes. My geography is totally embarrassing. Truly amusing. Back to school with you my man
ReplyDeletenice contents to read here. keep up the good works.
ReplyDeleteNot only has travel become wildly expensive, but flying in the US stopped being enjoyable about a decade ago. You make it sound like it could still be fun in Europe.
ReplyDeleteI hope you'll enjoy yourself all the way there and back.