I’ve mentioned a few times in recent posts, that I left my job in summer 2024, and planned to have a couple of months’ break before starting the next one – see, especially, the first section of my Lochnagar post for some more details about my ideas.
It always seems a little odd that for the first couple of decades of life, all the way through school and university, you get such long holidays, about a third of the year off; but then you start work and suddenly only get four or five weeks a year. Well, I thought, after six years of that I feel ready for something longer. Between jobs is the easiest time to get it, it seemed like it’d be financially feasible, so that was what I planned to do! Happily, I managed to get things lined up very nicely, leaving my old job in late August, and accepting a job offer a week later, to start in two months’ time. And I’m very glad I did so; I had a great time.
I did lots of travel during the break, but the travel was almost entirely outside the UK, I didn’t visit any new map areas, and so won’t be posting about my trips in the normal way. I thought, though, that I’d give the trips a separate post, so as not to leave readers in suspense!
In the end, I spent about five weeks of my break travelling over two trips. (And the other three weeks being fairly relaxed at home.) The trips were:
- The first was two weeks in Norway. I got a flight in to Tromsø in the far north, and made my way gradually southwards to Oslo on buses, trains and ferries over two weeks, doing various day hikes and visiting things on the way, before coming home.
- The second was an Interrail trip travelling around Europe by train: I flew back to Norway, to start the trip in Bergen; then travelled back home to England over two and a half weeks, with stops including Gothenburg, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Lübeck, Erfurt, Rome, Ravenna, Zürich, Nuremberg and Brussels – plus various mountainous spots in Norway and Switzerland!
- And at the end of the Interrail trip, instead of returning directly home, I went up to Scotland for a couple of nights, and met a few friends on my way back southwards to go home.
So, despite finding on my Cairngorms practice hike that I do think I’d be okay with a long-distance walk, I didn’t do such a trip in the end. I’d initially been thinking of the two trips I’d do as a long walk and an interrail trip; then started thinking about doing the long walk in Norway; but then – as described in more detail in the Cairngorms post – discovered that to do a long, connected walk in Norway among the scenery I was most interested in, I’d more or less have to do a long period of wild-camping, which I wasn’t especially keen for. But I’d got excited enough about Norway that I didn’t want to switch to a long UK walk, so did Norway and the Interrail trip instead. I don’t regret it, it was great; but I’d definitely still like to do a continuous long-distance walk sometime – i.e. longer than the ~1 week which is the longest I’ve done before. A future trip!
The level of detail in this post will vary; for some places I’ll just give a few photos, for others I may write in fuller detail. Still, despite that, I think it’s my longest post ever!
Norway
5th – 18th September 2024
The first of my two trips was to Norway. I’ve been to Norway once before, with my parents for a week in summer 2015, when we hired a car and drove, over two weeks, from Bergen to Trondheim. However, I’d been learning Norwegian for the last year and a half, so was keen to come back and see more of the country. I learned from my All Line Rover rail trip around Britain in 2022 that, when travelling alone, I really like travelling flexibly: maybe having a rough plan, but not booking anything in advance, being able to decide on the day what I feel like, do reasearch as I go and go to places I learn about that seem exciting. So this was the plan for my Norway trip: I flew in to Tromsø in the north of the country, and would travel gradually southwards over a couple of weeks on buses, ferries and trains; staying in places for as long as I wanted to!
Travel to Tromsø
Wed 4th – Thur 5th September 2024
It turned out that the cheapest way to get to Tromsø was to fly via Gdańsk in Poland, with an overnight stay in an airport hotel.
Tromsø
Thur 5th – Tue 10th September 2024
I ended up staying in Tromsø five nights, much longer than planned; doing day trips out most days. I was staying in the hostel there, which I really liked – very small, characterful and personal-feeling – and I thought was very good value for Norway, at about £20 per night. I really liked the city too; it’s just in such a pretty setting and so far north, but it actually pretty large and has plenty to do.
I saw the aurora, for my second time ever! (Once before in Iceland.) I’ve still never seen it bright enough that I can see the colours with my eye; it looked like grey ribbons to me, but I could see the motion, which was very cool. Will need to track it down again sometime on an even more powerful night.
Senja
Friday 6th September 2024
One day I got an early fast catamaran ferry (hurtigbåt) from Tromsø to the island Senja, got a bus to the base of the mountain Barden, and walked up it, then down the other side to the village Fjordgård. The weather was great, and the top of Barden was, maybe, the most scenic place I’ve ever been.
The fast ferries were fun! They were also excellently integrated with the bus timetable, so that I got off the ferry to see a line of buses waiting for various destinations; and in the afternoon my bus arrived at the ferry port about three minutes before departure.
Walk from Tromsø to Ramsfjorden over Bønntuva and Rødryggen
Sun 8th September 2024
A herd of reindeer walked right past me, only about 15 metres away! This was a one-way walk from Tromsø, with a half-hour bus ride back at the end.
Steindalsbreen glacier, Lyngen
Mon 9th September 2024
A long day trip out from Tromsø, a two-hour journey on two buses in each direction. The glacier was fun, but probably the nicest bit was actually just looking back along the sunny valley!
Harstad
Tue 10th September 2024
Finally leaving Tromsø after five nights there, I took the fast ferry south to Harstad.
Havila cruise-ferry from Harstad to Svolvær (Lofoten)
Wed 11th September 2024
One of the good things about booking nothing in advance and planning last-minute is that I could be responsive to the weather. During my time in Tromsø, I did the Senja walk on the day that seemed like it’d have the best weather, and stayed in town on the one rainy day. Travelling southwards, I had a rainy day in Harstad, when I mainly visited the Trondenes historical museum, aiming to keep what looked like the last great day of weather for the next thing: travelling from Harstad to Svolvær all day on the Havila cruise-ferry, which promised to be very scenic!
The Havila and Hurtigruten ferries operate the coastal route from Bergen right up Norway’s coastline to the far north, taking a week in total. It’s a useful ferry service; stopping at about 30 ports on its route, serving each port once a day, and able to take foot and car passengers. But it’s also a fun hybrid of this with a cruise – it has nice, hotel-like cabins; restaurants, lounges, a hot tub etc; and plenty of tourists book it as an end-to-end cruise.
Overnight trips, involving booking a cabin, were out of my price range, but I was on it as a day passenger for about 11 hours, from Harstad down to Svolvær in the Lofoten islands, which promised to be a really scenic section (though all of the route is really scenic), and was a much more achievable price at about £40!
It was indeed amazingly scenic. I passed a very pleasant day on the ship, just sitting around either in one the lounges reading, or out on the deck looking at the scenery.
Eating troubles
Vegetarian eating was a bit of a challenge in some places in the north of Norway. I was carrying all my stuff on my back every day as I travelled, so didn’t want to buy more than a couple of meals at once; but also wanted to only very rarely go to restaurants and so on for budget reasons; and only some of the time was staying in accommodation that gave me a kitchen. (I was using a mixture of hostels, cheap hotels, room-in-someone’s house Airbnbs, and campsite cabins.)
So I was mostly relying on supermarket sandwiches and so on, but north Norway’s vegetarian pre-packaged sandwich provision was severely lacking – most shops would have a fairly big display of packaged sandwiches and salads, but often none of them would be vegetarian at all. I didn’t have trouble getting enough to eat, but did end up having some, uh, interesting dinners…
Things got way better later in the trip though, once I reached Trondheim and Oslo – at that point there was a selection about as good as at home, I think, of pre-packaged veggie sandwiches/wraps. And one nice feature of Norwegian supermarket veggie food for me, though, was the self-service salad bars! We have these in some places at home in England, but they were way more widespread in Norway; and in places where there was one, it was nice being able to load up on a nice varied plastic bowl of different salads, pastas and so on.
Lofoten islands
Thur 12th September 2024
After my night in Svolvær, I had one full day in Lofoten, before I left on the ferry from Moskenes to Bodø in the evening. I tried a walk up the mountain Narvtinden, but turned around half-way up, because it was getting very windy, I could see a seriously steep-looking section up ahead and, though it was dry, the ground was a little moist and I just didn’t trust myself not to slip. The views were amazing from the point I got to, though!
Lofoten is of course famously beautiful, and at this time of year it wasn’t particularly busy. I had plenty of ideas for walks and, if the weather had been looking good, I’d definitely have stayed a few days; but it looked to turn, so on I went southwards!
The ferry trip from Moskenes to Bodø, back on the mainland, was a little “interesting”. A storm had come in in the evening and it was very choppy the whole way, and dark outside. I’m lucky enough to not really get seasick, and it being a late ferry, spent most of the three-hour crossing dozing in a seat. But I could hear people vomming regularly the whole way through…
Travelling from Bodø to Træna
Fri 13th September 2024
My next proper destination was the island group Træna, and to get there I took my first train of the trip southwards from Bodø to Mo i Rana, then a bus and ferry, arriving on Træna in the evening.
Træna
Sat 14th September 2024
I stayed the night, and spent the morning exploring, on the larger island of Husøya (pop. 400), which is small enough to walk right around (and I did). Husøya is pretty flat, and the view is dominated by the smaller but dramatically mountainous Sanna just to the west. I had lunch in a very nice little café, and got the ferry over to Sanna for the afternoon’s exploring, before travelling back to the mainland that evening!
On Sanna, there’s a radar station on top of one of the hills, and for access to it there’s a single-track road that ascends through the whole adjacent hill in a tunnel. I walked through it to, which was a very different experience – if I turned my headtorch off, it was completely pitch black and I could see literally nothing. And there were nice views down over Husøya and over to the mainland from the top!
Sanna also has the cave Kirkhelleren, which was really cool – both very pretty, and such boomy acoustics that I spent a while just sitting there singing to myself listening to it.
Nesna
Sat 14th – Sun 15th September 2024
In Nesna I stayed in a cabin on a campsite, which was nice. This seems like a great option for cost-effective accommodation in Norway. I paid about £52 for this basic cabin – two beds, a fridge, a table, electricity and heating in a little wooden hut; and you get access to shared kitchens and bathrooms. I would have done it more, but it didn’t end up working out in terms of the places I needed to stay.
At breakfast in my hotel on Træna, and again on the ferry to Nesna, I met a nice, older Russian man, who’d lived in Norway for decades, who invited me over for breakfast to his flat in Nesna, and took me for a short walk afterwards for a view over the town, which was very nice of him!
Short Hurtigruten hop to Sandnessjøen
Sun 15th September 2024
On my day on Havila to Svolvær, I had a great time, but didn’t manage to get into the hot tub, as they locked it off in the afternoon. So, on my short, one-hour hop on Hurtigruten from Nesna to Sandnessjøen, I had a mission to get in the hot tub. Success!
Train to Trondheim then Oslo
Sun 15th – Mon 16th September 2024
After Træna, I made a fairly direct journey south to Oslo: the evening ferry to Nesna, stayed there. Next day: Hurtigruten to Sandnessjøen, bus to Mosjøen, train to Trondheim. Stayed the night in Trondheim, did my laundry in a launderette, then got straight on the train to Oslo in the morning – I’d visited Trondheim once before, and wanted to be moving onwards! So it was basically a Nordland holiday, with a couple of days in Oslo at the end.
Oslo
Tue 17th – Wed 18th September 2024
My trip ended with a very nice two days in Oslo. My ability to understand the locals took a dramatic step up, as expected given that it’s Oslo-dialect that I’ve been taught. (I’d probably prefer to learn a different one, but Oslo-dialect is much more accessible resources-wise.) And it turned out that the Airbnb host whose flat I was staying in was actually a retired Norwegian-as-a-foreign-language teacher and was up for some chats, which was nice!
The Oslo historical museum was amazing, as expected for an early-medieval history enthusiast. I hadn’t considered that, of course, Norway is a big place that the Vikings brought all their loot home to, so unlike the Viking stuff you see in museums in England and Scotland, as well as actual Norse-y artefacts, there’s an amazing collection of pretty gold objects from all over early medieval Europe. I was amused by the quite viking-like ethos of how the objects were displayed – case after case full of really cool objects that would each have individual explanations in many museums at home; here instead sitting dozens to a case, and if you look up the descriptions in the booklet it just says something like “gold objects, mostly German”…
Returning home!
Wednesday 18th September 2024
That was it – a great trip! I got a flight home on the Wednesday, and had one day of rest before a short trip up to Scotland on the Friday for friend Geochunderer’s wedding – on which see my next post.
Interrail trip
30th September – 17th October 2024
After ten days back in the UK – which, other than the weekend up in Scotland for Geochunderer’s wedding, I spent mostly lazing around at home – I set off on my second big trip of my career break. For this, I bought a 22-day global Interrail pass, allowing me unlimited flexible travel on trains in Europe – the European version of my All Line Rover trip a couple of years before!
The plan was to fly back to Norway, and make my way gradually back to the UK, with lots of interesting stops and diversions along the way. Again, I had a rough idea of where I wanted to go, but was usually not booking things more than a day ahead, to stay flexible.
Interrail passes
Interrail passes – as ever, Seat61 has an excellent guide to how they work – are great. Mine was £490, working out to about £22 per day for unlimited travel, at any time of the day, without needing to do any pre-booking (other than for high-speed trains in the less pass-friendly countries). I’m very glad they exist!
The shorter passes can get a lot more expensive per day; the shortest pass (4-days-in-1-month) is £240, so £60 per day, but even that feels like it would often be tempting. You’d usually be able to save a fair bit by booking individual tickets, but for it to be any cheaper those would often all be saver-rate tickets for specific trains, and I might find the flexibility to be worth the cost. You get an “outbound” and “inbound” day when the pass is valid on trains in your home country too.
And those are the adult prices – for under 25s, it’s cheaper still!
Flight to Bergen, train to Geilo
Mon 30th September 2024
I started my trip with a flight in to Bergen in the west of Norway. Originally, my idea had been to pick up in Oslo, where I left off at the end of my Norway trip. However, on that first trip, I wasn’t able to fit in taking the train from Bergen to Oslo, which I really wanted to do. So Bergen it was!
Approaching Bergen from the west, some of the areas I could see out of the plane window looked really cool – like little outer suburbs of the city, spread out over hundreds of little flattish islands with roads and bridges snaking between them. I’ve been to Bergen once before, with my parents in 2016, but we didn’t go out in that direction. I’d like to see it from the ground sometime!
I didn’t hang around in Bergen, instead heading straight from the airport into the city centre on the tram, then getting immediately on a train on the line through to Oslo. I travelled through to Geilo, where I’d stay for the next couple of nights. The Bergen-Oslo line is famously scenic, and didn’t disappoint!
Geilo
Mon 30th September – Wed 2nd October 2024
I stayed the next two nights in this characterful little cabin on a campsite in Geilo. It was very convenient – nice and cheap, but also comfortable. It was an interesting experience having my own little mini-kitchen with electricity to power the fridge and mini-oven-and-hob thing, but no running water, so I’d go and fetch panfuls from the tap in the services block.
I’d managed to pull something in my back just the day before my trip was going to start, which was making a lot of motions uncomfortable. I therefore had a relaxed day the next day, just going back into central Geilo, having a short gentle walk along the lakeside, getting some lunch, then returning for a relaxed afternoon in my cabin – and doing occasional YouTube-derived stretches to attempt to sort out my back, which actually worked surprisingly well.
Geilo is a ski resort town in the winter, but was pretty quiet at this time of year. There’s a little park where they’ve assembled traditional wooden farm buildings, really solid and chunky, moved here from their original locations on farms in the area over the preceding decades, which was fun. I had a vegetable pizza for lunch in the chain Peppe’s Pizza, which I liked – I enjoyed the maximialist approach to amount of toppings!
Walk from Finse
Wed 2nd October 2024
The next morning, I took the train a couple of stops back along the line towards Bergen, to Finse, the highest station on the line, and did a walk for a couple of hours, out towards the hills and back again. It was very pretty!
In the afternoon, I got the train into Oslo, arriving in the evening, and booked into a cheap hotel for the night. That evening, I had my regular weekly Norwegian class on Zoom, which of course I usually do from England rather than Norway! I was travelling light so that I could have all my stuff in a backpack that’d be okay to wear for hikes and so on, so didn’t have my laptop, but joining on my phone actually worked okay, even using this slightly comical setup to make things a bit more ergonomic, to preserve my back by avoiding looking down the whole time.
Fredrikstad
Thur 3rd October 2024
On my way south out of Norway, I made a stop in Fredrikstad, a city with a very cool old town area that sits within a kind of half-star-shaped fortification on one side of the river – easily made out on Google Maps.
I got the bus southwards out of town, and visited the Hunnfeltene, an archaeological site with an amazing concentration of stone circles and other prehistoric remains – about eight of them just in this one field!
That evening I reached Gothenburg in Sweden, and stayed the night there.
Stockholm
Fri 4th – Sat 5th October 2024
I didn’t explore Gothenburg, but instead got a morning train to Stockholm.
I really liked Stockholm! I hadn’t looked it up at all before travelling, and had never been there before. Maybe it’s just the comparison with having spent so much time in Norway recently, which is not a place one goes for its characterful historic cities. But it was just a proper, characterful, historic European city centre; I feel like it would be just as good a weekend city break destination as Prague or Vienna or something.
It was a very sunny day, and I had a long afternoon walk around the city. I stayed the night in a hostel in the old town, which was nice; a small, friendly one.
Aside from walking around, my main activity was spending a lot of time in the Swedish History Museum – I got there about an hour and a half before closing time, but it was so good I had to go back the next morning to carry on! I think I’m just learning that I really love intricate old metalwork – there was loads of great prehistoric stuff, one giant Viking-era room, and one room entirely for gold. The migrations-era stuff was great, and there were lots of fun mixtures (and bad copies) of Norse-mythological, Roman and Christian designs. And runestones. Lots of runestones.
I left Stockholm that afternoon on a train to Copenhagen. I’d definitely like to come back and do some more Swedish exploring! I’d seriously considered going to Uppsala on my morning in Stockholm, but decided to prioritise going back to the museum; would still really like to see Uppsala though. And of course, there’s the rest of the country! It’s almost always the case that travelling adds more places to one’s list than it takes off, but it’s very strong on a trip like this, travelling so widely with only a short while in each place.
Train Stockholm-Copenhagen
Saturday 5th October 2024
For my afternoon train to Copenhagen, I bought a very cheap first-class upgrade, and enjoyed a wide seat and unlimited free tea and fruit from the tea bar! I spent that night in a hotel – actually pretty fancy, due to some last-minute deal – next to a station on the line from Copenhagen to my next destination: Roskilde.
Roskilde
Sun 6th October 2024
I visited Roskilde for one reason, and a very good reason it was too: the Viking ships! The Roskilde Ship Museum has five original Viking ships that they’ve dug up from under the sea and painstakingly put back together – and they’re just really impressive.
I didn’t get to see the Oslo Viking Ship Museum, the other item on the list of two places with amazing Viking ships, because it’s closed for refurbishment for several years, so I’m glad I got to go to Roskilde! There’s a lot more to do in Roskilde, including the C12th cathedral, which is huge and apparently very architecturally notable, but I carried on to Copenhagen.
Copenhagen
Sun 6th October 2024
I’ve sort of been to Copenhagen before, arriving there on an abortive attempt to travel to Norway by train in 2023, when I got all the way from home to Copenhagen, but arrived there feeling quite ill, found out I had Covid, and then got a flight home…
In a move that will surprise no-one given the earlier parts of this blog post, I did two main activities in Copenhagen: have a long walk-around exploring the city, and visit the National Museum of Denmark, specifically the prehistoric and early-medieval/Viking bits. Again, it was really good – all three Scandi capitals have a strong history museum game. Stockholm probably just wins out on the Viking-era stuff for me, but Copenhagen had the best prehistoric collection I’ve ever seen, it was amazing.
Something about the climate in Denmark means they have multiple pretty much fully-intact suits of Bronze Age clothing, which is amazing. I didn’t photograph it, but they had this wagons too – a giant, intricately decorated wagon, again impressively intact (though it’s a composite of pieces of two), from around the first century BC. There was lots of cool stuff about prehistoric trading links in luxury goods. And it’s fun that, runes aside, the late introduction of writing means that prehistory is so much longer in this part of Europe – so you get to see this cool overlay of stuff imported from areas I know from recorded history, and how it’s influencing locally produced stuff from a culture we’re reaching into using only archaeology and stuff.
At the time they had a specific Viking exhibition on, called The Prophecy of the Viking Sorceress in English, themed around the Völuspá telling of Norse mythology, and find of one burial which seems to be of a high-status völva – I don’t remember the exact argument but it seemed a pretty convincing case; she had things like a particular kind of staff and pouches of hallucinogenic herbs. It was… a bit of an interesting experience. Everyone was given a headset, and then the exhibition started with a series of dark rooms with big abstract/interpretive objects to look at while the seeress, speaking in your ears, told you about Norse mythology. And then at the end you came out into a big room with all the actual artefacts. Not sure the theatrics really did it for me, but the artefacts were good! It could have done with a bit more in the way of information on actual interpretation boards, rather than having to constantly be on the phone app to see descriptions of any items.
Ferry to Germany
Sun 6th – Mon 7th October 2024
That evening, I did a short train hop over the Øresund strait to Malmö back in Sweden, to get the overnight ferry to Travemünde in Germany. All went smoothly!
Lübeck
Mon 7th October 2024
After arriving in Germany, I spent the morning exploring the city of Lübeck, which had been on my list for a while. It was one of the most prominent Hanseatic cities, and has a great little old town – though, to be fair, there are a lot of German cities with great little old towns. Attempting to repeat my winning strategy, I had a nice wander around town, followed by visiting the Hansemuseum.
The wandering was nice – and I ended up doing so in the company of a French chap who was also touristing for the day before visiting a relative that evening, and spied me as a potential friend for the day.
The museum was a disappointment though – very light on actual artefacts, almost entirely little reconstructed rooms, scenes and interpretation boards. They even had reconstructions for all of the historical documents which, on inspecting the labels, you could see were just held in the Lübeck city archives, so whyever they couldn’t get the real things out I don’t know.
Erfurt
Mon 7th – Tue 8th October 2024
I needed to proceed southwards through Germany apace, it being a Monday that I arrived on the ferry – exactly a week into the trip – and I having agreed to meet friend Millicent in Rome on the Wednesday.
So that afternoon, I got the trains from Lübeck via Hamburg down to Erfurt, where I stayed the night. I feel like one of the main things to do in Germany is just wander around nice medieval old-town city centres, and I picked Erfurt just for being a convenient stopping point trains-wise while also looking good to visit – I didn’t really know anything about it before, other than it being the home of the tragic but darkly comic Erfurt latrine disaster.
The town centre of Erfurt was indeed very pretty! I stayed the night in a slightly odd place – a bunk in a shared room, but not in a hostel; instead it was one of four rooms above a restaurant, with just stairs to the street, a narrow corridor, and some bathrooms; no common area etc.
I had a wander around town in the evening, and again in the morning, managing to fit in visiting the cathedral. At about 11:30am on Tuesday, I got on a train to Munich, and ticked off one of my goals for the trip by having lunch in the restaurant car. German trains may have terrible reliability problems, but they are great on onboard facilities.
I had a bit of an odd train route from Munich to Rome. There is a NightJet sleeper train route that does Munich-Rome direct, so the convenient next step for reaching Rome the next day would have been to spend the afternoon looking around Munich, then get on the sleeper in the evening directly to Rome. However, the Munich sleeper was booked up, so I was booked onto the Vienna one.
My plan was to get a EuroCity train from Munich to Vienna, and get the Rome sleeper there. However, German train problems struck, with a delay on my Erfurt-Munich and more delays on Munich-Vienna, meaning that I’d miss the sleeper entirely if I carried on. I therefore cut out the big eastwards dog-leg to Vienna, and travelled, changing in Salzburg, to the Austrian town of Leoben, where I could pick up the Vienna sleeper a little later on its route. It worked out fine; I just spent two hours sitting in a deserted glass-box platform waiting room in Leoben, before getting on the sleeper at about 2145, instead of 1930 as I would have in Vienna.
Sleeper train to Rome
Tue 8th – Wed 9th October 2024
I’d booked into one of ÖBB’s mini cabins, little vertically stacked sleeping pods, which was a new experience for me. I really quite liked it! Comfortable and nearly as cheap as a shared couchette – I believe I paid a €40 reservation fee, to let me on using my rail pass. But private, so no having to be knocked/disturbed by strangers getting into and out of bed in a tiny shared space. Next time I’d book a bottom capsule rather than a top, because the back wall in the top capsules is a bit curved such that you can’t really sit up against the back wall, making it a less nice place to exist for the daytime section. But if your train is quiet enough, you can always go and sit in the comfortable seated car. I’d definitely travel this way again!
Unfortunately we had a huge delay. All was going well past our stop in Florence at about 7am, but between Florence and Rome there was some severe disruption, and I ended up getting into Rome at past 3pm rather than the intended 11am. The sleeper takes the classic rail network rather than the high-speed lines, which makes sense for an overnight route, since you need the time to sleep. But it is a little demoralising for the daytime segment, since if I’d got off at Florence and taken a high-speed train, I could have got to Rome for about 9am. Oh well!
Rome
Wed 9th October 2024
Arriving in Rome, I went to meet Millicent at his current home of the British School at Rome – not to be confused with the English College in Rome.
After a brief sit-down, we headed off for a long, slow, meandering walk through the historic city for about two hours as it got gradually darker, with Millicent pointing out various sites, which was great. I’d visited Rome before, which was great.
I’d been to Rome only briefly once before, in 2012, and all I really remember is the outside of the Colosseum, St Peter’s Square in the Vatican, and spending far too long in a very hot rail-replacement bus for the metro line. Millicent was, as ever, the perfect knowledgeable guide.
And after about an hour and a half we sat down for dinner in a restaurant in the old ghetto, which was thoughtful of Millicent to have planned. Kosher restaurants are a great way to make sure I don’t accidentally eat meat in a foreign city: go to a milky rather than meaty one, and I can eat cheese – definitely want to eat cheese in Italy – but can know that there won’t be any cheese made with animal rennet or anything like that. Which is always a challenge in Italy, where cheese being vegetarian is a lot less common than at home.
I stayed the night in Millicent’s flat, and both of us left in in the morning – he was actually catching a flight to the UK, and I got on my next train!
Ravenna
Thur 10th October 2024
From Rome, I took a high-speed train up to Bologna, and then a regional train to my destination for the day, Ravenna.
Ravenna is one of those places which has the great combination of having been rich and notable at an interesting time in the past, and then a bit of a backwater ever since, so all the great old stuff is just still here. Like how East Anglia is such a sea of little red crosses (indicating Anglo-Saxon churches) on the excellent Ancient Britain OS map. In Ravenna’s case, it was the capital of Italy for several hundred years in the Late Antique/early medieval/Byzantine period, and is known for its amazing collection of 6th- to 8th-century Byzantine mosaics. It did not disappoint; I think the Ravenna mosaics are probably my favourite human-built (i.e. not a landscape) thing I’ve ever visited.
There are seven buildings in – and in one case, just outside – Ravenna that have Byzantine mosaics in, and I got to six of them. So I’m giving you an assortment of photos – not covering every place, just some photos that stood out to out of the hundred or so I took!
I’ve seen lots of impressive things from the medieval and ancient past, but what was so striking about these mosaics was not just the completeness, but the colour. Normally, anything you see from the medieval past, especially in Britain, is pretty grey and faded if it has any colour at all – or if not, it’s fairly small. Don’t get me wrong, I love an illuminated manuscript or a little enamelled brooch or what have you plenty much. But seeing a whole room, or a whole giant wing of a church, that’s just covered in colours as bright as they day they were put up, is really something.
And of course the general thing of coming to the Continent from Britain of just how much older, and how much more impressive the old stuff is. If I want to see buildings from the 7th or 8th century at home I’m off to small plain churches like Bradwell-on-Sea or Escomb or Brixworth; or to the small surviving ancient corners of Canterbury Cathedral, Hexham Priory or Ripon Cathedral. Which I really enjoy: I love the early medieval things there are to see in Britain; it’s home and it’s what I’ve studied so it’s always going to be some of my favourite things to go and see. But also, it is just a radically different experience going to the Continent and being able to see the Ravenna mosaics, or Aachen cathedral or things like that.
I got to Ravenna in the late morning, spent all day looking around, stayed the night, and travelled off in the morning.
Milan
Fri 11th October 2024
Rome was the southernmost point of my travels, and so from now on I was gradually travelling back homewards. My plan for Friday was to head up into Switzerland, where I could have a couple of days before continuing on back into Germany. I wanted to cross into Switzerland on the Bernina line which gets to a very high altitude, which meant travelling from Ravenna westwards via Bologna to Milan and then, rather than getting on the fast trains north to Zürich, taking a slow line back eastwards (including, today, a rail replacement bus) to Tirano to get on the Bernina line.
I worked out I could have a couple of hours in Milan, and was feeling very enthused about Late Antique churches coming out of Ravenna, so headed across on the metro to see a couple of the city’s oldest churches.
Trains past Lake Como & the Bernina Railway
Fri 11th October 2024
From Milan I got a train along the shore of Lake Como, then a rail replacement bus to Tirano, and then the main event: crossing over into Switzerland on the Bernina Railway, the highest rail through-route in Europe with a maximum elevation of 2,250m.
The train had fully-opening windows, which was great for taking photos. And it was just phenomenally scenic, really!
I stayed that night at the Bernina Hospiz hotel, which has its own halt on the railway just past the line’s summit, and sits right next to a giant lake with snow-topped mountains all around. It seems like October is not a very busy month, because I booked one bed in a hostel-style room with six bunks, but had it to myself!
Morteratsch Glacier walk
Sat 12th October 2024
My rough plan had been to spend three days in Switzerland, probably staying in the mountainous region I’d entered through for most of that – to get to see lots of nice scenery and do some more mountain trains – before heading to the more northern, flatter area later, to head onwards to Germany and because I wanted to visit St Gallen. In the end, I ended up doing it a bit backwards, heading to Zurich on the first day, due to some constraints I don’t remember the full details of, but I think involved some accommodation being booked up, and some trains not running at that time of year.
In any case, on this Saturday, I made a couple of stops on my way up to Zurich, including this one just a couple of stops down the line from Bernina Hospiz. A shortish walk from the train station and back, to see the third glacier of my career break!
As one walked up the path, there were marker signs showing where the glacier ended in particular years, so as you approached, the years got later and later until the present, showing how much it’s receded. It was interesting how much it varied – there’d be periods of five years where it barely moved at all, and others where it moved a hundred meters or more.
Zillis
Sat 12th October 2024
A second stop that day was the village of Zillis, whose St Martin’s Church has a very fun medieval (C12th) painted ceiling – the entire ceiling is covered in little square painted panels. Some are biblical scenes, some fantastical creatures, …
Zillis is a short bus ride away from the nearest station at Thusis, and to my surprise the bus went through the very dramatic Via Mala gorge. The photo I got doesn’t do it justice, but the road is really clinging to the edge of a deep, tight gorge; and you can see the old road weaving alongside it, crossing on little bridges; it’s very impressive.
Zurich
Sun 13th October 2024
I stayed Saturday and Sunday night in an, alas, pretty big, nondescript and anonymous hostel in Zurich.
On Sunday morning, I had a look around the Swiss National Museum, which I enjoyed – though not at the level of the Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm museums earlier in the trip, which were amazing. I especially liked this display of hundreds of rings from across the ages, in little sections as diverse as “Etruscan”, “Palaeochristian”, “Renaissance” and “Art Deco”.
I then had some lunch in the amazing vegetarian buffet restaurant Hiltl Sihlpost – I’d been once before, introduced by a colleague of mine, on one of the two times in my life when my work has entailed an international trip! I love a good buffet, and of course this is just one where I can actually eat almost everything! It’s Switzerland so it’s very expensive; you pay by weight and my plate came to about £30. But for this, occasionally, I’d pay it.
St Gallen
Sun 13th October 2024
On Sunday afternoon, I headed over to St Gallen, to visit the Abbey of St Gall, and especially its library and associated exhibitions. The abbey is an early medieval foundation, and had strong Irish links for a lot of its early medieval history, being dedicated to St Gall, said to have been a 7th-century Irish missionary.
Its library is just one of the most important collections of medieval manuscripts in Europe, and just came up again and again back when I was a medieval studies student. I had fun kneeling at various manuscripts with my nose up against the glass, trying to make out words and sentences.
I particularly enjoyed seeing the St Gall Priscian in the flesh, a 9th-century Irish copy of Priscian’s Latin grammar, whose glosses – notes in the margins or between lines – are one of the main sources for the Old Irish language. They had the manuscript open to a page with one of the more fun marginal glosses – memmbrum naue droch dub ó ní epur na haill, translated as “New parchment, bad ink. O I say nothing more”. Not quite as fun as the “massive hangover” gloss or one of the full poems, but still very fun. And I was quite happy with myself for being able to work out/remember a few of the words before I looked it up!
Arosa
Mon 14th October 2024
For my last day in Switzerland I wanted to go somewhere where I could again take a train up to high elevation and have a walk around. I settled on Arosa, a town and (in winter) ski resort at the end of its own little railway line.
In Arosa village, I deposited my bag in a luggage locker – I have to say, ubiquitous luggage lockers on train stations is a big thing Swiss, German and Scandinavian railways are doing much better than excessively-security-concerned British.
I then took the first stage of the Weisshornbahn cable car part-way up the mountain of the same name, and had a very pleasant couple of hours’ wander up to the top of the Weisshorn, before getting the cablecar back down again.
Chur
Mon 14th October 2024
I stayed that night in Chur, which was a pleasant small town. The railway from to Arosa runs through the streets in Chur, which was interesting.
Nuremberg
Tue 15th October 2024
On Tuesday morning, I left Switzerland behind, and travelled via the eastern edge of Lake Constance – where I was briefly in Austria to change trains in Bregenz – and Munich to reach my next destination of Nuremberg.
I sought out a vegan döner kebab for lunch – despite there being plenty of kebab shops at home, Germany seems ahead on veggie ones so it’s on my slightly odd list of foodstuffs I like to seek out in Germany, along with the vegetable spreads they sell in the supermarket for having on toast at breakfast time, and chips in creamy mushroom sauce.
And then I just had a wander around town, looking at various buildings and inside a couple of churches and the castle.
The reason I came to Nuremberg in particular was to meet up with Helcistar, [1] whom I met several times in person many years ago, but whom I mainly know nowadays from reading each other’s blogs! I must also credit him in that I think it was his blog post about Ravenna that led to it being on my to-visit list – and I’m very glad it was. After my wander around town, he’d finished work, so we met up and went out for dinner in a vegan Vietnamese restaurant, and had a pleasant few hours together chatting.
Frankfurt
Weds 16th October 2024
For my final full day on the Continent, I was travelling to Brussels where I’d meet a friend in the evening, and had time for a couple of hours wandering around in Frankfurt where I’d need to change trains.
Brussels, and back to England
Weds 16th – Thur 17th October 2024
A friend I hadn’t seen in many years, let’s call her Blaise, lived in Brussels, so I’d arranged to see her that evening for dinner before I went back to England in the morning. We met up and had a very nice time over some stuffed pittas – I got the four-cheese one which was maybe a mistake in that it was stuffed with a monumental amount of cheese, about an inch thick of melted cheese inside this pitta. We didn’t take any photos, but it was good!
And then, on Thursday morning, the Continental section of this trip came to an end as I got on a Eurostar train back to London. But the trip wasn’t over yet!
Visiting friends before coming home
Thur 17th – Sun 20th October 2024
When thinking of options for what to do in my career break, one idea I had was to just spend a couple of weeks travelling around the UK, visiting friends I don’t see very often and going to stay with them for a few days each. I didn’t end up doing this of course, but I realised: my interrail pass comes with an “inbound” day that allows me to travel on British trains to get home. But I wasn’t aware I had to travel specifically to my home, rather than just to somewhere where I’m ending my rail trip. So I thought I’d take advantage of this to travel for a longer distance and get a free (outward) trip up to Scotland. I’d see some friends and travel home a few days later.
Up to Scotland, near Glasgow
Thur 17th October 2024
I’d be spending the evening with friend Geochunderer, whose wedding I’d been to just a month before, and lives with his new wife a little northeast of Glasgow. It might have been most efficient to take an Avanti up the West Coast main line to Glasgow, but I like an LNER, so after my morning Eurostar from Brusselss, I got a 10:30am LNER from London up to Edinburgh. It’s a 4h20 journey, and I spent £24 on an upgrade to first class via Seatfrog, so had a nice comfortable journey with an included meal, biscuits and a couple of cups of tea!
I then headed across to Glasgow and over to Geochunderer’s home station, and walked to his house – in map area 349, featured on this blog before – It had been raining heavily but the sun came out while I was walking, and I saw a really strong double rainbow!
I had a very nice evening with the two of them, even if Geochunderer was a little enthusastic with the new spice mix he was using in his bean chilli! They were leaving early the next morning, so I stayed the night in a cheap hotel in Cumbernauld, which I think is the very Travelodge I stayed in with Millicent and Vesper when driving home from the “Holy Island Trek” walk across Scotland we attempted in 2016; just under new ownership.
Edinburgh
Fri 18th October 2024
I’d arranged to meet my friend Little S next, in Edinburgh (where she lives, featured on blog before) in the early afternoon once she could get away from work. I headed over to Edinburgh in the morning, and took the opportunity to do something I’ve somehow never done before despite having visited a good seven or so times: I walked up Arthur’s Seat, a hill/mountain – hill-sized but kind of mountain-shaped – more or less in the city centre.
It was good! A bit of a variable day, mostly cloudy and very windy, but the views down over the city were great.
I then got myself some lunch and went into the National Museum of Scotland for a bit. I’ve been before and it is very good, especially (surprising no-one that I think this) the early medieval bits of the giant History of Scotland exhibition that winds its way up the whole five floors of the museum’s modern wing.
I met up with Little S at about 2pm, and we spent a relaxed rest of the day together – went for a walk, had some tea in a café, looked in a bookshop, and I made us some dinner in her flat – the first time I’d cooked in about 3 weeks! I stayed the night with her, then headed off back to England in the morning.
Nottingham
Sat 19th October 2024
I had one more person and place to visit before returning home, and in fact the fifth day in a row that I’d visited a different person in a different place – Helcistar in Nuremberg, Blaise in Brussels, Geochunderer and his wife near Cumbernauld, Little S in Edinburgh, and finally No Longer Hairy in Nottingham. I got the train down from Edinburgh to Nottingham (map area #260), arriving in the mid-afternoon – of course, the way the train network is set up meant it took me longer to get from Edinburgh to Nottingham than it would to London, despite it being about a third shorter a distance.
No Longer Hairy met me off my train, and we went for an idyllic walk under low afternoon sun in the Attenborough Nature Reserve, followed by dinner in a tapas restaurant, and then an evening playing board games with him and his mum at their house.
Home again
Sunday 20th October 2024
And that was it! On Sunday morning I got on the train back home. I actually went via London, and attempted to visit the British Museum, but the queue for non-pre-booked entrance was so long I gave up – oh well, I get plenty of chances to go there.
I got home in the mid-afternoon, after three weeks away. All done!
Footnotes
[1] I hope he likes his nickname, possibly ungrammatical Quenya though it may be.
Visiting all the maps! 