Robert Hampton

Another visitor! Stay a while… stay forever!

30th September 2015

Frühstück, Mittag- und Abendessen
Posted by at 9.05pm | Out and About | No responses

For past travel blogs, I have done a chronological account describing what I got up to. It was exhaustive – practically every minute of last year’s Berlin trip is accounted for – and exhausting to write. This time I’ve decided to try a different approach by writing a series of posts, each themed around a particular aspect of my visit.

First topic is one close to my heart (and stomach): food! If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve probably seen some of these pictures already.

I was fortunate to have Boris with me as a guide. No wandering around looking for somewhere suitable to eat, as happened when I was in Berlin alone. Boris knew the places to eat and as a result I enjoyed some delicious meals.

We had breakfast in Schweinske, a chain of restaurants found across north west Germany. From the breakfast options, I opted for Die große Sause, a delicious offering of bacon, eggs, ham and cheese, alongside bread rolls with jam and honey. It was delicious, so much so that I had the same thing again the next day.

Breakfast

Read the rest of this post »

28th September 2015

Hamburger Helper
Posted by at 10.05pm | Out and About | No responses

Regular readers of this blog (if there are any left) will know that I have a bit of a thing for Berlin. I’ve visited there twice, and I want to go back. It’s the most exciting, cosmopolitan, liberal city I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing.

However, it turns out that other German cities are available. My friend Boris was returning to his native Germany to celebrate his birthday in Hamburg. Would I like to come along, he asked. The chance to visit a new city with my own personal tour guide? I hesitated for approximately 9.5 nanoseconds before saying “Ja!”

So, on the evening of 17th September I found myself at Manchester Airport waiting for a Germanwings flight. I arrived far too early for the flight, but I didn’t mind, as Manchester is a massive, sprawling terminal and I was grateful to have the time to saunter gently from the railway station to security to departure lounge.

Germanwings use fun-size aircraft on the Manchester-Hamburg route, with just four seats in each row. I was perturbed by the cabin crew’s insistence that I put my wheelie case in the hold – I don’t like parting with my luggage – but it arrived at the other end without incident.

Hamburg Airport is connected to the city’s extensive S-Bahn system.

Hamburg S-Bahn

One change of train later and we were exiting the U-Bahn at Lohmühlenstraße, where we promptly got lost, wandering around the grounds of the nearby St Georg Hospital for a good 15 minutes or so. The rumbling of my wheelie suitcase probably woke up every patient. We eventually had to retrace our steps to the station, then take a different route to our hotel, the Relaxa Bellevue. It was late, and we went more or less straight to sleep once we’d checked in.

Next morning, we ventured out of the hotel and across the road, onto the shores of Lake Alster to admire the view.

Hamburg Lake Alster

I had a feeling that this trip would be very nice indeed.

9th November 2014

Berlin, Take My Breath Away
Posted by at 12.18pm | In the News | No responses

Imagine you’ve just arrived in London, after getting off a train from the provisional capital, Manchester. You get on a Northern Line train (Bank branch) at Euston. After King’s Cross you hear an announcement that you are about to leave the Western Sector. The train proceeds, but it doesn’t stop at Angel – it crawls through the platform at walking pace, enabling you to peer out at the dimly lit station. It is dusty, derelict and dimly lit. You can just about make out some guards standing at the platform exit. They look bored, but the guns they are carrying are still intimidating. The pattern is repeated at Old Street, and Moorgate.

Finally, you reach a station that is open – at Bank you alight to change onto the Central line. You take a wrong turn and find yourself heading for the exit, only to find your way barred by a border guard. You don’t have the right papers, of course, so you turn back and return to the platform. This time you were lucky; you could have been arrested for trying to cross the border.

This is the daily grind that Berlin’s U-Bahn passengers faced during the Cold War. The division of the city between 1961 and 1989 sliced through the public transport network, leaving it very much a Tube of two halves.

Read the rest of this post »

8th January 2014

Greatest Hitz
Posted by at 8.37pm | Gay, In the News | No responses

The English Premier League almost got an openly gay footballer today. Unfortunately, newly out of the closet Thomas Hitzlsperger – who has played for Aston Villa, West Ham and Everton, as well as representing the German national team – retired from the game in August 2013.

Still, Hitzlsperger’s announcement, in the German newspaper Die Zeit, was a welcome surprise. He said he wants to “advance the discussion about pro athletes being gay”:

He said homosexuality was mostly “simply ignored” in professional football, as many players refused to talk about the topic. Certainly, no other German footballer of his caliber has ever spoken so openly about being gay.

The comments have predictably caused a minor frenzy in the press, with tabloids and broadsheets alike leaping to cover the story, as well as the Liverpool Echo and TV outlets like the BBC, CNN and Sky Sports News. As with Tom Daley last month, a sportsman coming out is still big news, but the time will come when it genuinely is a non-issue. Personally, I’m more fascinated by the fact, revealed on his Wikipedia page, that he speaks English with “an unusual Brummie-German hybrid accent”.

The footballing world still doesn’t seem to quite know how to deal with the gay footballers issue. The FA, never particularly brilliant on diversity issues at the best of times, recently managed to appoint a man who thinks homosexuality is “detestable” to their equality board. Meanwhile, we are all looking forward to the 2022 World Cup, to be held in a country where Hitzlsperger (and Anton Hysén, and Robbie Rogers, and me) would face up to three years in jail. Hopefully, Hitzlsperger’s announcement will help to focus minds on the issue.

Generally, however, the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive, with the great and the good and Joey Barton of the footballing world taking to Twitter to express their support.

Saying something nice on Twitter is totally different from the bantz-filled dressing room, but I hope other closeted footballers (we know they’re out there) will be encouraged by the response.

I do have one regret over this whole thing; one which my friend Scott shares:

But that’s a minor quibble. Herzlichen Glückwunsch, Herr Hitzlsperger!

30th June 2013

Ich möchte mit dem Zug fahren
Posted by at 8.57pm | Trains | 1 response

DB locoI’ve become rather addicted to The Man in Seat Sixty-One, a comprehensive web site containing a phenomenal amount of info on train travel worldwide. A lot of the data has been gleaned through the author’s own personal experiences, so it contains advice that the official railway web sites do not reveal. I’ve spent quite a lot of time over the past week or so clicking through the various options available.

International train travel is, of course, slower and usually more expensive than getting on a plane, but much more environmentally friendly, infinitely more exciting and with less chance of being groped within an inch of your life by some burly security guard (which may or may not be a plus point). Of course, cheap flights have opened up new travel opportunities, and that’s not to be sniffed at, but there’s definitely something to be said for the journey being part of the experience.

I want to get out and see more of the world, and if I can indulge my rail enthusiast side as well, even better. Therefore, I’ve been reading through it and compiling a shopping list. So far, here’s what I have:-

Amsterdam by train and ferry
Greater Anglia, Stena Line and Nederlandse Spoorwegen offer a through ticket between London and Amsterdam via a ferry, with prices starting at just £45 one way. I’ve wanted to visit Amsterdam for ages, and throwing in an unusual train journey would add to the fun. Save a spacecake for me!

Berlin by sleeper train
Berlin is brilliant, as I discovered during my visit there last year. It’s easy to get to by train as well. I want to go there again, and I could get there by taking the Eurostar to Paris, then getting Deutsche Bahn’s City Night Line overnight sleeper service. This train, consisting of modern sleeping compartments, leaves Paris at 6.45pm each evening, arriving in the magnificent Berlin Hauptbahnhof at 8.30am the following morning. By booking in advance a sleeper compartment can cost as little as €104. Wunderbar.

Coast to Coast across the USA by train
This is the biggie. A four-day trip by Amtrak from New York to San Francisco via Chicago. It’s expensive (roughly $900 if I want a sleeper compartment), but looks like it would totally be worth it. I mean, just check out the scenery! Also, I could pretend to be Jessica Fletcher on Murder, She Wrote (she always seems to be taking Amtrak trains and encountering shady characters). And of course, the cities at each end (New York and San Francisco) have their attractions too.

I hope to do at least one of the European trips mentioned above some time in 2014. The American voyage is a more long-term plan – there would be a lot of planning (and saving of pennies) needed. I just hope I can get there before the Republicans close down Amtrak forever, as they keep threatening to.

In the meantime, I’m looking forward to my next railway adventure – travelling to Scotland on the Caledonian Sleeper with my friend Ian. I can’t wait – although I’ll have to, because I’m not going until September.

4th January 2013

Ring In the New Year, Wring Out the Old

Hampo in front of the Berlin WallA little later than planned, here is a look back at the preceding 12 months, as seen through my jaded eyes. As January began, I wrote a blog post looking forward to the treats that 2012 held in store. How did the year pan out? Let’s have a look…

The year started on a downbeat note for my family as we mourned my dad’s sister Betty, who had been a part of all our lives for as long as I could remember.

The government announced that High Speed Two, a new TGV-style railway line, would be built to link London with the Midlands. Middle England quickly took up against the plan, as Tory MPs lined up to denounce the line that was due to slice through their constituencies. David Cameron had succeeded in alienating his Conservative base, and it would not be only time that happened this year.

Web sites participated (or didn’t) in a protest against SOPA, a draconian anti-copyright law in the US. Elsewhere on the Internet, Twitter caused a minor kerfuffle by announcing that it would censor Tweets on a country-by-country basis.

Read the rest of this post »

30th June 2012

Berlin Loose Ends
Posted by at 11.51pm | Out and About | 1 response

We’ve come to the end of my Berlin blogs. By way of a final flourish, here are some other things Andrew and I saw while we were there. They cannot justify a blog post on their own, but I’m bringing them here together for your enjoyment.

Berlin bears

Berlin’s symbol is a Bear (the animal, not a large hirsute homosexual gentleman, although there’s plenty of them around too) and these large statues, each uniquely decorated, are dotted around the city. Did the Liverpool Go Penguins team draw any inspiration from this?

Berlin Bear Berlin Bear

Read the rest of this post »

22nd June 2012

Don’t Hassle the (Tempel)hof
Posted by at 11.05pm | Out and About | 2 responses

Berlin Tempelhof (former airport)Berlin is well provided for in the airport stakes. Our easyJet flight touched down at Schönefeld Airport, just outside the city. There is another airport at Tegel, in the western suburbs of Berlin.

The two airports are required due to Berlin’s status as an important European destination, but they’re also a relic of the city’s division. During the Cold War, Schönefeld served East Berlin, while Tegel was for West Berliners. One of the final acts of stitching the city back together will be to concentrate all flights on the Schönefeld site and close Tegel. In fact, the new airport was due to open during our stay and – had things gone to plan – we would have been one of the first passengers to use the airport on Sunday 3rd June. My travelling companion Andrew, a committed aviation enthusiast, was immensely disappointed when a series of cockups postponed the airport’s opening to March 2013. To add insult to injury, the free tourism brochure left in our hotel room was filled from cover to cover with articles expounding about how great the new airport terminal was going to be.

Berlin Tempelhof (former airport)Until 2008, Berlin had a third airport – Tempelhof. Opened in 1923, it was one of the oldest airports in Europe, possibly the world. It became famous during the Cold War when, in 1948, Russian troops prevented access to West Berlin, forcing a massive airlift operation. US planes, carrying food and supplies, landed at Tempelhof Airport as often as every three minutes, beating the blockade. The US Air Force maintained a base at Tempelhof until 1994.

Tempelhof closed in 2008 as part of the process of consolidating all Berlin’s air traffic on one terminal. In the long term, the whole area will be redeveloped, but plans have been put on hold due to the current economic crisis. Rather than let the runways and taxiways stand idle, however, the Berlin city authorities have had the smart idea of opening the huge site up to the public as a park.

Read the rest of this post »

19th June 2012

DDR you having a laugh?
Posted by at 10.49pm | Out and About | No responses

DDR Museum EntranceAs mentioned previously, Andrew and I had a couple of hours to kill between buying our Fernsehturm ticket and actually being admitted to the tower.

Luckily, just around the corner is another attraction, the DDR Museum, dedicated to all things East German and packed with artefacts from the 51 year history of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. We dutifully rolled up at the entrance and paid our €6 entry fee.

Life in East Germany wasn’t exactly a bowl of Kirschen. Democracy was non-existent, the state infringed onto most aspects of people’s lives, the press was dominated by Government propaganda and the Stasi would round up anyone whose political attitudes were “incorrect”. Nevertheless, there is a certain level of rose-tinted “Ostalgia” for the old days. The DDR museum caters to that, although it doesn’t gloss over the less savoury aspects either.

Read the rest of this post »

11th June 2012

Ich gayer nach Berlin
Posted by at 7.56pm | Gay, Out and About | 2 responses

Naturally any visit to Berlin would not be complete without sampling its gay scene. While the days were spent sightseeing, most nights Andrew and I ended up in and around Fuggerstraße.

The gay district is not just big, it’s open and in-your-face in a way I’ve never seen before. A giant rainbow flag hanging outside Nollendorfplatz U-Bahn station indicated that the city cherishes its gay community. And the welcome extends beyond the immediate area: we found this poster in a bus shelter in a random suburb.

Respect Gaymes

There’s no ambiguity whatsoever about the nature of the area. Rainbow flags hanging from various poles (stop it), shops selling all sorts of… interesting stuff.

Read the rest of this post »