just about 30min after emerging from the english side of the channel tunnel we are at the new eurostar terminal london st pancras international. it’s rather an improvement over weary and tired waterloo international — all airy, light and pleasant. once out of the eurstar platform we require a moment to take our bearings, then decide against taking a taxi and instead go for the hammersmith & city underground line to paddington station — which works out rather well until we reach edgeware road where even the mumbled and garbled tannoy announcements do not manage to bring light into the murky affair of the hammersmith & city line not going any further.¹ following the example of our co-passengers we quickly switch to the circle line train pulling up on the other side of the platform and get to paddington station with plenty of time to spare…

… which we spend getting our britrail travel passes validated (quite a bit cheaper than getting direct tickets), play a round on the cash machine (we do win big time again this time), get some fruit salad from marks & sparks, a guardian (lots of paper for £1.50), and finally board our train to cardiff. the weather has improved decidedly: no more of this continental rain! form the look of it, it has been dry for quite some time.

while i’m writing the blog, the train is going at high speed through the english country side, heading west. the WLAN manager keeps detecting and loosing WLAN cells, some with “interesting” names — i wonder whether anyone has ever done WLAN cell ID advertising? the way it would work is by changing your public WLAN name to advertise your product…would probably turn out to be quite annoying.

we get to cardiff an hour late! as usual, the british rail network is being refurbished during the weekend: meaning that our train is not going via bristol but instead takes the scenic route.

cardiff central is a nice victorian remnant of a station. outside it’s just construction, construction, pubs full of cardiffians (?) watching the beginning of the euro cup 2008 (even though neither england nor wales nor scotland is playing…). the taxi takes about 20min to get through the traffic-jammed streets and we realize that annedd lon guesthouse is located on an A road, oh dear…

…luckily though it’s (a) very well insulated towards the street, and (b) our double room is towards the rather quiet back. all in all a rather nice b&b

next: off to one of the recommended pubs in the neighborhood to have some dinner

our “suite” at the hotel buchholz turns out to be an excellent choice: we have a very good night, everything is just perfect. breakfast is served in the breakfast room on the ground floor and is just great, we even get another round of tea (and very good breakfast tea it is!).

when paying our bill, the manager and i have a little chat and it turns out that she is — from wales! what a coincidence! she gets all excited about us going by train to st davids and even offers a bunch of tourist brochure (which i politely decline, we are, for once, trying to travel lightly — i hope that trick with the woollen underwear will really work out the way mrs d insists it will…).

when we get to cologne station it transpires from a look at the monitors that the ICE international to brussels seems to have a slight indigestion: it’s billed as being 10min late. hmm. mrs d spends the time buying some earplugs (claiming that i snore at night — who believes that?), i acquire today’s edition of the süddeutsche zeitung and die zeit, and we then make our way up to track 5 to check on our delayed ICE…

…to our surprise we do see two ICEs. one is going to amsterdam, the other one tells us via its LED display that it intends to go to brussels. the platform monitor, though, tells us in no uncertain terms (”nicht einsteigen” — “do not board”) that it disagrees with the ICE — which is backed by the fact that nobody has entered the train and there is a rather large crowd still on the platform. eventually we learn that the ICE from frankfurt does really do have some problems (something wrong with the frankfurter sausages it had last night? that last bottle of beer gone bad?) and is going to be swapped for another ICE “soon”…

…which does happen and we board our train to brussels and leave with about 15min delay. the belgian countryside, which we soon reach, is boring as ever and it’s also raining as ever. somehow this part of belgium is not very motivating and i end up hoping that all the rest of belgium is a more uplifting experience. our train makes good on the 15min delay and we reach brussels with just being 5min or so late. nice. boarding the eurostar is the same spiel as ever — only more and more people seem to have sussed that this is a very nice way of getting from germany to london: about 80% of the ICE from cologne is queuing at eurostar ticket control (german rail does not issue tickets with a magnetic stripe, so the control has to be done manually), eventually we are through, have our baggage x-rayed, show our passports to UK border police (who have a booth at the eurostar terminal in brussels and, if i remember correctly, in paris as well) and then board our eurostar to london at 11:40 and leave brussels at 11:59 on the dot.

travelling to the UK on board a eurostar in first class (we managed to book early enough to get a Deutsche Bahn London sparpreis at €400.00 return for two, less than €600 for “cheap” flights to london) is a really pleasant experience: shortly after leaving, you get champagne —

…give me champagne when i’m thirsty, give me a reefer to get high¹…

— followed by a decent lunch and coffee afterwards. at the same time we are hurtling through belgian, french, and (once we are through the channel tunnel) english countryside. this year is the first time that we travel on the new highspeed link all the way to london st pancras international (which has taken over from london waterloo as the terminus for the eurostar line) — and (it’s now 12:34) we are due to arrive at 13:03.

all in all a very pleasant way of travelling: lots of space, good wine and food, you get to see the country side, your souls has more of a chance of travelling with you and doesn’t have to catch up as much as when your are going by plane. plus, eurostar is travelling CO2 neutral now.