damerell

I'm in Berlin. The Paris-Berlin sleeper is extremely civilised (in particular, they do not leave you in sidings and shunt goods trains past you CLONK CLANG CLATTER half the night), even if auntsarentgents did put the ticket down on the bed so it could fall under it immediately before Severe German Conductor Lady came to check it.

Berlin is also very civilised, with bicycles, metro trains, underground trains (some of which are elevated and outside!), busses, trams, relatively few cagers, and BEER at lunchtime. We are staying in a Big Gay Hotel... seriously, above the bed I'm sitting next to is a 6' by 6' painting of a muscular dude getting head from another muscular dude.

I have been to the German Technology Museum. German steam locomotives are very odd - they are bigger, because of the bigger loading gauge, but also the boilers are covered in pipes and other kipple (which British designers hated), and a lot of other stuff like smoke deflectors are a funny shape. Also there are some peculiar (to us) wheel arrangements - for example German Pacifics have the rearmost wheels a very long way aft.

They have other stuff besides trains but I didn't see much of that, notwithstanding the risk that the lovely waylay will conclude that I really am completely obsessed with trains.