This is a handy little booklet that I still carry around in my jacket pocket or the outer pocket of my camera bag, along with my mobile phone. Although the same information is accessible both ways, I often find it quicker and easier to use the booklet, rather than the Read More …
As a cyclist I seldom use the Métro in Paris, but in recent years I have had occasion to take line # 4 several times, mainly going to and from my hotel with my luggage or, once, going to the theatre in a torrential rainstorm. The trains on this line Read More …
This railway station was built in 1913 as the main station of the then-booming industrial city of Barmen, which had not yet been incorporated into the city of Wuppertal. The station had a large and elaborate entrance hall (on the right in the photo) with several ticket counters and extensive Read More …
In German there is an expression ‘über die Wupper gehen’ (= ‘to go over the Wupper’), meaning to die, like going over the Jordan or the Styx in other cultures and epochs. No one knows for sure why the Wupper was chosen for this expression, rather than some better-known German Read More …
In the spring of 2014 there was a brief flurry of media stories claiming that the new mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, had ordered a speed limit of 30 km/h (= 18.6 miles per hour) on all the streets of the city, excepting expressways. In one blow this would have Read More …
Wildbad has had a railway line since 1869, when the Enz Valley Railway was built to bring the rich and the powerful up from Pforzheim to the Wildbad spa. In the 1990s the German ex-monopolist railway DB wanted to shut this line down, but then it was leased by the Read More …
When I visited Besançon in May 2014 the new tramway had been installed but was not yet operational, as only two of the nineteen trams had been delivered. They were already doing some test runs, but I did not see any of these during my visit. The new tramway was Read More …
Like most French cities, Bordeaux had an efficient tramway system for over three-quarters of a century — from 1880, when the first horse-drawn trams were installed, to 1958, when the last of the 38 electric tram lines fell victim to automania. For the next 45 years Bordeaux was dominated by Read More …
Paris once had a well-functioning system of tramways (aka streetcars), but these were replaced by buses in the 1930s under pressure from the motor vehicle manufacturers and tire companies. The last of the old tram lines was discontinued on March 14, 1937. After that, Paris had no trams for over Read More …
If for some reason you can’t go by bicycle, for instance if you have a suitcase that is too big or heavy to be transported by bike, a good alternative is to take the bus. The advantage of the bus over the Métro is that to reach your bus you Read More …