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Political Animal

Nov 14 • 100 tweets • 55 min read

I promised you an adventure!
What to do after #bus24, #train24? Well, you seemed to like little races round Europe, so just before 00:00 CET, I’m starting #Europe24, a challenge to see how many nations I can visit by public transport in 24hrs. Right now, I’m positioning myself…

First, I need to introduce understudy 🐢, Mrs Turtle, leant to me by my wife. If you followed #GoWest, you know Slow Travel Turtle disappeared somewhere in W Yorks. He’s regenerating, but for now Mrs Turtle is stepping in. The furthest she’s been before is Sainsburys. #Europe24

I also need to set out the #Europe24 rules.
✅ Start wherever I think is most efficient, at whatever time works best
✅ Passing straight through a country doesn’t count. I must arrive and leave on different vehicles (except 1st and last countries)
✅ Yes 🚄🚌🚃🚎🛳 No 🚗 🚕 ✈️

And I will be revealing my chosen starting point in a few hours time. #Europe24

There’s been some solid guesses on where #Europe24 will start. A few said Maastricht, which is *sort* of right. This gorgeous studenty city by the Maas is where I’m sitting right now. However, I’m going to buy myself 10mins by actually starting at Eijsden, 🇳🇱‘s southerly village.

This far, straggling corner of the 🇳🇱 is a really efficient place to start #Europe24, with borders on all sides. It’s a melting pot city too - Dutch architecture, cycling and cobbles, but Belgian hills rather than polders, and a southerly terrace cafe culture.

Anyway, it is an utterly gorgeous city - pushing the high bar for 🇳🇱‘s most lovely. It deserves to be known other than for a treaty and 90s Tory rebel MPs. It has the Netherland’s oldest bridge (a 13th century crossing of the Meuse, hence the strategic importance)… #Europe24

…one of the world’s most stunning bookshops inside a converted Dominican church… #Europe24

…and general delightful Christmas-ness, which is so tasteful that I forgive them for being in full swing in mid November. #Europe24

It’s pretty chilly, but that isn’t dissuading the huge student population from packing the cafe terraces, so Mrs Turtle and I are going with the flow, working our way through a ginormous Belgian (sorry!) cheeseboard. Mrs Turtle particularly likes the parsley. #Europe24

Maastricht seems to be the sort of place you randomly come across people doing photo shoots with white horses in the deserted alleyways of the old town. #Europe24

If you are into cycle infrastructure - and when it’s this good who wouldn’t be - Maastricht station’s vast underground bike park is god-tier. I really confused the nice chaps in the fully incorporated bike repair shop by just wandering down to have a look round in awe. #Europe24

Also just generally stunning: Maastricht station itself. The stained glass! The beamed ceiling! The balconies of far from obvious purpose! #Europe24

One of the joys of travelling by Dutch rail is the astonishingly good hot chocolate from the machines in the Albert Heijn station supermarkets. Had one so far today, but a bit devastated I’m too late for a second, when it will be most needed. #Europe24

Everything up to now was basically a prologue of me having a nice evening in Maastricht. Now we’re at our staring point: Eijsden, a bloated, prosperous village beside the Meuse, 10km south of Maastricht. The most southerly village in 🇳🇱 and some claim the oldest too. #Europe24

The west bank of the Meuse is Belgium. In daytime, I could tick country 2 off by ferry. It’s silent down here on the riverbank, apart from the muffled call of waterbirds, the clink of cutlery in a solitary restaurant, and the roar of heavy industry on the Belgian bank. #Europe24

Eijsden station has all the trappings of a standard Dutch halt: the standard Nederlandse Spoorwegen paving, bins, posters and cycle park. But it has the distinction, despite being in the Netherlands, of being served only by Belgian trains. #Europe24

Just the one patient passenger for the midnight train going anywhere (Liège-Guillemins, actually). #Europe24

And let’s start the clock on #Europe24! This is the 23:58 to Liège, spot on time, which in a few more moments will carry us over the border into Belgium and allow us to tick off one country. Farewell 🇳🇱! We’ve now got until 23:58 CET tomorrow to tick off as many more as we can.

You’d think that in a half Dutch-speaking country like 🇧🇪 , you’d cross from 🇳🇱 into a Dutch-speaking region. And normally you do. But just to emphasise the Latinate nature of Limburg, just here French-speaking Wallonia abuts 🇳🇱. So we go from Eijsden straight to Visé. #Europe24

Apparently the Belgian authorities aren’t keen on this little cross-border shuttle train, which gets used a lot to convey drugs from liberal Limburg to not-so-liberal Liége. It’s all very quiet on this train tonight, the cheery guard sporting the fine SNCB kepi. #Europe24

Liège-Guillemins, totally rebuilt to a design by Calatrava in 2009, probably has a claim to be Europe’s most distinctive station. It is awe-inspiring, fits perfectly into the hillside setting and is also always bloody freezing. #Europe24

The architecture also has a tendency to not sit well with the aging, heavily graffitied multiple units that shuttle too-and-fro from under its vast roof, including the lowly Maastricht train. The odd high-speed train graces it, and looks the part. #Europe24

Despite the rather unkempt appearance of many of their trains, the Belgian railways do have a sense of style - which other railway still uses the same, gorgeously simple Art Nouveau symbol they commissioned in 1936, by Horta-associate Henry van de Velde? #Europe24

Studies in levels of investment: to the rear, the terminus of my train from Eijsden. To the front, the total facilities for my next leg. #Europe24

And here is my small-hours chariot for the next leg of the journey, a Flixbus, part of a vast luminous green network across Europe. This particular one, the N831, is running from Amsterdam to Zürich. If it wasn’t for my rules, it could tick off 4 countries for me. #Europe24

It’s certainly cheap, and it provides a good way of using up the early hours, but I’m not going to call it comfortable. Especially as I’d been promised a double decker and had paid out a couple of €s for the front upstairs seats. The top deck has gone missing. #Europe24

The coach has skipped Bastogne - presumably there are no booked passengers - a town I primarily know through a range of fascinating pronunciations in American war films. We’re climbing through the dark, wet, ear-popping Ardennes. Without a view. #Europe24

We’re passing Arlon, which means we’re in Luxembourg. That’s Luxembourg, Belgium - an underpopulated, relatively poor province which is larger than actual Luxembourg and became Belgian in the Third Partition of Luxembourg. You know another the other two, obviously. #Europe24

Now, at 02:37, we really have entered Luxembourg, Luxembourg (on our way to Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Luxembourg). Country 2, Belgium, ticked off! 🇧🇪
As the coach will drop us at a distant park & ride at 3am, time to fire up the bike sharing app. Each bike gets reviews. |#Europe24

Slightly confused as to why the park & ride the coach has arrived at is named after stock powder (P+R Bouillon), but glad to be off that crowded, baby-crying Flixbus a little early. Now, in search of a bike to get me to the railway station! #Europe24

Based on the reviews on the app and the level of charge in the power assist, I think I want bike number 11. #Europe24

Someone has baggsied the front seat after being stuck in the luggage hold of the coach for the last 2 hours… #Europe24

The electric power assisted bikes from the vel’OH! scheme certainly help with Luxembourg’s hills. The country of Luxembourg has the most cars per capita of any nation. At 3am, excluding dust carts, I saw one moving car. #Europe24

Went the slightly long way round from Bouillon to the station to get some views of the old city above the Alzette Gorge. As it had stopped raining. 🚴 #Europe24

…we’re soon arriving at the fine early 20th century railway station, built when Luxembourg was in the middle of getting rich off an iron boom. Getting rich seemed to agree with the Luxembourgers, so they kept on with it. #Europe24

And that’s the bike returned with a good review, to encourage others to swipe right on vel’OH! number 2021. #Europe24

We’re at Luxembourg railway station, but not back on the rails yet. Railway geography gives poor Luxembourg-Germany links, and economics mean there are lots of transfrontalier commuters from Germany, so the 🇱🇺 Railways run an express bus to Saarbrücken. Even at 4am. #Europe24

Famously, Luxembourg has made all its public transport free. Except the bits I’m using. The Flixbus obviously costs, and the Saarbrücken bus is €5 to cover the bit in Germany. Though that is down from €9. And a day hire of bikes is €2. Pah. #Europe24

This is a much quieter, altogether pleasanter bus than the one for Liège. Someone is looking decidedly sleepy after the excitement of cycle rides. Jealous. We’re turning east here just before we reach the French border. That’s for later. #Europe24

04:27, and we leave a long tunnel under Markusberg and leap the Mosel valley on a viaduct, crossing into 🇩🇪. Country 3, Luxembourg 🇱🇺 is done!

Appropriately, we cross the border by the 🇱🇺 village of Schengen. This challenge wouldn’t work without the eponymous accord! #Europe24

70 minutes after leaving Luxembourg, we arrive non-stop into Saarbrücken, having played with the racetracks of the autobahn along the Saar valley. Saarbrücken is a classic west German conurbation of 1950s universal architecture, having been flattened the decade before. #Europe24

The Saar flows gently. The parallel autobahn not so much. Had I done this between 1945 and the ‘little reunification’ in 1957, it’s hard to know what I’d have ticked off: the Saar Protectorate, with it’s own currency and football team, 🇩🇪 or 🇫🇷, who largely ran it? #Europe24

It’s a very brief visit to Germany, so we must take out pleasures while we may - namely a still-warm bretzel from the station bakery. The need for sustenance was getting pretty desperate by this point… #europe24

Now, that connection onwards, did someone say ‘international tram-train’? #Europe24

Yes, they did say that. 🚋 In 1997, probably sick of the halfhearted effort that passes for a peri-urban rail service when run by the French, the Saarbahn started running trams through Saarbrücken city centre and then onto the railway line to Sarreguemines in France. #Europe24

06:08 and the tram-train crosses the Saar to enter France 🇫🇷, completing country 4: Germany 🇩🇪. #Europe24

Then it’s a quick skip through the subway at the permanently under-refurbishment border station at Sarreguemines onto the regional train for Strasbourg. At 3 minutes between tram and train, it’s v hard to know if this is meant to be a connection. But it was vital for #Europe24.

These TER Grand Est trains (they are called ‘Fluo’s, because every region of France has to call their trains a silly name) are lovely, but the line south of Sarreguemines is painfully slow, presumably in a poor state. Turtle would cover the ground more quickly. #Europe24

Always astonished by how early French school children are on the move. It’s not even 7am and this is clearly becoming a school train for the small towns of the Sarre valley. #Europe24

A grey dawn comes suddenly to the Rhine Plain. We’re a packed commuter and school train now, luckily with just one more stop to pick up at before Strasbourg. #Europe24

The disarms Schwarzfeld mountains seem to be almost on fire. #Europe24

The sky got better, staining the waters of the Marne-Rhine Canal. The train got later. I had thought my 12-minute connection at Strasbourg would be safe enough. Now I’m worried. #Euro24

The happy moment when your connection itself turns out to be a bit late, so all is well. For now. #Euro24

Those who followed me on #train24 will know my love of these semi-retired Corail carriages. No longer forming top-rank expresses to the Mediterranean or the Massif Central, they now just shuttle to-and-fro along the Rhine plain from Strasbourg to Basel. #Euro24

Interesting fact 1: I was feeling quite sleepy, then I fell up the steps at Strasbourg in front of 2 armed soldiers. That really wakes you up.
Interesting fact 2: French trains run on the left, except in Alsace, where the railways were built during German occupation. #Europe24

The Vosges summits are pretty sharp today, as we race south, 15 minutes late. If this train sticks to a 15 minute delay, all will be fine. #Europe24

Morning mist still sitting in the vineyards below the hanging wine villages of the Vosges. Who needs Babylon, or Machu Picchu? #Europe24

Mrs Turtle is a little unhappy - SNCF turning round a late-running train short of its terminus looks likely to end up knocking one country off our total. Just going to have to decide which is our sacrifice. #Europe24

Today my train will not be leaving St Louis. Or rather, it will, but in the wrong direction, back to Strasbourg. Having survived lots of tight connections, am going to be messed up by missing a 30-minute connection. Harrumph. Never mind, we push on… #Europe24

On the plus side, I’ve got to wonder what on earth this is on the wall of St-Louis station. #Europe24

I’m not as warm to these trains as I was back in Strasbourg. Here comes the one half an hour behind to pick up the refugees from our cancelled train. #Europe24

But it’s 09:38 and we’ve completed France 🇫🇷- country 5 - and we’re into Switzerland 🇨🇭. Mrs Turtle is going excited because I’ve told her we’ll pass Basel Zoo in a moment and there might be a rhino. #Europe24

Alas, that sort of day. The rhinos are inside. #Europe24

I am, of course, obliged to share with you the joys of Basel’s station hall… #Europe24

And now, in further SNCF strangeness, my Swiss Intercity to Zürich has been replaced by a TGV, which was presumably in the wrong place. Main implication - it doesn’t have a restaurant car. Boo. #Europe24

Autumn done properly, for mile after mile. #Europe24

Mrs Turtle has taken to passing time in the tunnels by using the table lamp as a sunlamp. Have sought to discourage. #Europe24

Over the Aare, Switzerland’s longest river. And also Switzerland’s oddest coloured river. #Europe24

The mobile leafpeeping continues. #Europe24

Arrival in Zürich, railway capital of the world. Other than Tokyo. I wasn’t supposed to be stopping here at all, but suddenly have half an hour, which is both annoying and pleasant. #Europe24

Heiße maroni and trams. Hallmarks of a civilised nation. #Europe24

Rather lovely on the banks of the Limmat, a few steps from the Hauptbahnhof. (Why is Hauptbahnhof abbreviated to Hbf in German German, and HB in Schweizerdeutsch?) #Europe24

Next train: a very smart new double deck Intercity unit heading south west for the Graubünden. #Europe24

Which most importantly, has an upper deck restaurant car. For elevenses. #Europe24

Beside the long long Zürichsee #Europe24

Yurts, boats and mountain views at Wädenswil #Europe24

Yes, I’m having cheese again. So judge me. Or stop me going to cheese producing nations. #Europe24

Approaching the southern end of the Zürichsee, where the commuter land peters out #Europe24

The wild, rocky Walensee, quite the contrast to the Zürichsee. Many of the hamlets on the other bank can only be reached by boat. #Europe24

Just, you know, scenery. #Europe24

Off the train at Sargans, a junction town of rail/valleys, and into the bus station/station square, where the bright green express bus to Vaduz waits to connect with the train. Slightly unfortunately, for English speakers, the principality’s buses are called LIEMobil. #Europe24

It’s 12:45, and we’re crossing the young Rhine, to complete country number 6 - Switzerland 🇨🇭 and into dinky Liechtenstein 🇱🇮. A country that survives on banking and false teeth, and was the only post-war country in Europe to vote its monarch full veto powers. #Europe24

🇱🇮 basically consists of a flood plain along the right bank of the Rhine, and a fearsome mountain wall behind it. Though it looks less fearsome in its autumn colours. #Europe24

You get off the bus at Vaduz Post Office and immediately there’s the castle, home of the Prince, perched above you. Interestingly, if the Jacobite claim succeeded, the UK and 🇱🇮 crowns would unite in a few years time. Easy, we have the same national anthem. #Europe24

Vaduz must be the cleanest place on earth. Easy when your population is that of an English council ward. As a connoisseur of parliaments, I also think it has the world’s ugliest - the think that looks like an IKEA playhouse. #Europe24

Mrs Turtle is very taken with Vaduz Castle and would like to marry suitably so she can live there. #Europe24

Now onto the bendy bus out of town towards Schaan and Feldkirch… #Europe24

The gap between Vaduz and Schaan is about 50m wide. Schaan is significantly larger than the capital, and has one of the 3 railway stations in 🇱🇮. My original plan was to catch one of the few trains, (the voters voted against improving them), but I’ve missed that. #Europe24

At Schaan’s weird circular bus station, everyone going to Feldkirkch rushes off to get on the 14 - a much faster service to the Austrian metropolis. Kindly, the driver has held the 2-minute connection despite the 11 being a few minutes late. Everyone’s grateful. #Europe24

We’re paralleling the Rhine for now, looking across it to the Appenzeller Alps in north-east Switzerland. #Europe24

It’s 13:47, and that’s country 7, Liechtenstein 🇱🇮 ticked off. Now into Austria 🇦🇹!
There’s a surprising amount of border paraphernalia still at the 🇱🇮/ 🇦🇹 border, but in reality it’s the Swiss border, as they do most things, esp foreign policy, for 🇱🇮. #Euro24

Feldkirch, stuck right at the western end of Austria, feels distinctly bürgerlich… #Europe24

In 1915, James Joyce, fleeing Trieste for neutral Switzerland, was almost arrested as a spy at Feldkirch station. Apparently, this inspired him on how to conclude Ulysses “Over there, on those tracks, the fate of Ulysses was decided in 1915”, he said. And it still says. #Europe24

From Feldkirch, we’re on a proper long-distance express train, a Railjet (flagship of the Austrian railways), which once a day links Zürich and Bratislava, across 4 countries. This’ll be my home for quite a few hours now, as we cross the Alps and head for lower Austria. #Europe24

Industry and snow-capped peaks together, as we climb the Lutz valley, past the Rätikon range, towards Bludenz. #Europe24

Now passing the fine pyramidal peak of 2000m-Steinwandeck as we climb towards the Arlberg pass, a key east-west crossing. Britain once had its eyes on it as a route to Egypt. #Europe24

The Arlberg is a wonderful route, the powerful electric locomotive silently and easily pushing the long train up the fearsome grades, the Alpine scenery of meadows, villages, woods and escarpments sailing quietly by… #Europe24