I am not sure this is #COVID connected (perhaps people don't need their cars?) but there seem to be a lot of abandoned cars on Berlin streets...
All my 📷 in a thread
Peugeot 206 in Kreuzberg, with weeds growing around it
VW Polo in Neukölln, with some moss growing along the windows
Fiat van in Neukölln, so filled with garbage it is not even possible to drive this one
Audi A4 in Neukölln. Not even license plates on this one, but it stood there for weeks. Leaves and grime piling up on it
Open Corsa in Neukölln
BMW 3 series cabrio in Neukölln, grime piling up under the wheels as it has not moved in so long
Weeds growing underneath this Lancia and this Fiat in Moabit
VW Golf without plates parked up on an urban street in Tempelhof
A Renault Megane cabrio in such a bad way and parked so long water leaks into the roof, in Neukölln
A Peugeot 306 without plates just south of Tempelhofer Feld in Neukölln
And these are just a few I have chanced upon in the past few months, without even really searching
The few times I have needed a car (from one of the car pools I am a member of) in Berlin, finding somewhere to park it has often been a nightmare
That's surely not helped by having cars *that don't move* occupying space on roads...
And that's before we come to the even greater problem of cars that don't move Monday to Friday and are only driven occasionally on weekends
I'm also struck by the incredible wastefulness of this - some of these are (superficially at least) decent vehicles
If cities are to have a serious discussion about use of space, and about reducing car parking spaces... one of the first things to work out is if the ones a city has are being used sensibly
Berlin's, I conclude, are not
/ends
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This morning I’m one of the first new regional trains Maubeuge 🇫🇷 - Charleroi Central 🇧🇪 #CrossBorderRail
It was a bit of a #fail at the station. I needed a ticket to Erquelinnes, the first station in Belgium. But prior to today trains from Maubeuge didn’t stop there!
Ticket machine ⛔️
Ask at the ticket office. “Le train ne s’arrête pas à Erquelinnes!” I politely told the SNCF employee that yes, it did stop at Erquelinnes. I explained the situation to the SNCB train manager and he laughed, confirmed it did stop there, and I bought the ticket online!
Delays in my favour. Maybe? S-Bahn to FFM Flughafen. Get a late running ICE to Köln Messe/Deutz there. Then try to blag my way onto a Thalys Köln Hbf to Bruxelles? It’s a long shot but it might work…
ICE 612 Frankfurt Flughafen to Köln Messe/Deutz.
This is why accurate live running data in apps matters. Were this not running 10 min late I’d not have caught it… but live data allowed me to plan a connection that’d otherwise not work
Already on the 2nd train of the day: TGV Montbard - Paris. All being well I’ll be in Denmark tonight… but that feels a long way off just now! #EGPCongress#crossborderrail
Across Paris RER Gare de Lyon to Gare du Nord, walk to Gare de l’Est (faster than changing into a Métro to Est) and it’s onto the TGV to Mannheim. So far so good, but I banked on this bit working 🙂 #EGPCongress#CrossBorderRail
Franco-German train service. Very French prices! And no, it’s too early (and expensive) for #beerontrains 😉
Jeez. It could take until 2025 until TGVs are approved for the line.
And the whole effing point of Stuttgart21 - of which this line is a part - was to create a Paris-München high speed corridor!
Really, how can everyone mess up *so badly*?
And to those going “yeah but there are few TGVs anyway” true, but so it goes on and on. International services are the lowest priority - even when *they were the stated rationale for building the line*