Virgin vs First

Earlier today I was asked in a Tweet where I stood regarding the franchise on the West Coast Main Line.

There has been a lot of press coverage over the decision to award the franchise to First Group over the incumbent Virgin Trains, with the whole process looking like the Government have awarded the franchise based solely on the amount of money that was being offered without taking into consideration that this has not always worked in the past.

As my travels show I am a fairly frequent traveller on Britain’s Railways, and in addition to my journeys on trips I also commute to work by train and regularly travel for work, so have a fair breadth of experience on the niceties of the various train operating companies.

Personally, I am disappointed that Virgin has lost the franchise.  Whenever I’ve travelled with them for work the service has always been excellent, and even on my travels they have scored highly, with just one journey being marked down (and re-reading my review I was probably being a little over harsh with them.)

Virgin does have its faults.  I’m a Virgin Media customer for broadband and TV at home and at times I would happily wrap the telephone cord round Richard Branson’s throat, their service can be patchy and unreliable and when things go wrong they take ages to get fixed (so, in summary as useless as BT)

I always preferred HMV to Virgin for music and if you gave me a choice between BA and Virgin Atlantic I would probably go for BA.

So I’m not enamoured with the Virgin brand, but their trains are something different.

When First ScotRail totally failed with the sleeper service it was the Virgin trains staff at Stafford Station who helped calm everyone down and try to make onward arrangements.

You always get the impression that Virgin train staff actually enjoy their jobs.

That’s not to say that First Group services are all bad.

From recent experience First Hull Trains is an excellent service and I’ve not really got much to hold against First Transpennine express.

First Great Western, when things are working fine, are great – but when they start to have wobbles, you can see how little backup there is.

First ScotRail in general are good, but again, when things go wrong they go spectacularly wrong.  Twice I’ve had the sleeper fail on me and the number of times I’ve had other trains cancelled is pretty high.

Then there’s First Capital Connect.  And this, I think, is the one that really does make me scared for the future of the West Coast Main Line.

I use the Thameslink service quite a bit and it was always pretty useless when it was run by Go-Ahead.  West Anglia Great Northern was regularly called We Are Going Nowhere when it was run by National Express.

These are pretty low baselines to start from, so it was with high-hopes that First Group was awarded the combined Thameslink and Great Northern franchise.

Sadly, from a dire service they’ve actually managed to make it worse.  First Capital Connect is an example of how to run trains for profit rather than customer service.  The trains are dirtier, the carriages more uncomfortable than they were before.  The number of trains they allow to run around absolutely covered in Graffiti that other companies clean off is amazing, it’s almost like they don’t care about the customer experience.

I’d like to think that if First Group do get the franchise that they will bring the Hull Trains level of service to the West Coast, which will match and possibly slightly better Virgins.  However, I fear that it’s three years of First Capital Connect levels of service before First Group do a National Express and decide they can’t be bothered any longer, throw the keys back at the government and walk away.

GNER was an excellent service, they overbid, cut and became so poor that they collapsed and the franchise had to be re-let to National Express who over bid, cut and then walked away from the service.

You would have thought after that the department of transport might have learnt some lessons.

I’m not going to refuse to travel on the West Coast if it is run by First, but I will be quick to complain if the service is anything less than Virgin’s standards.

And yes, I have signed the petition to get the whole fiasco reversed.

Loving the lingua franca

I’m sitting in the bar of the hotel listing to an interesting conversation between a restaurant customer, the lady on reception and the hotel manager.
The conversation is a discussion over whether the hotel should be charging for parking for someone who is just dining in the restaurant rather than staying.

What’s most amazing is that all three are having the conversation in a language other than their mother tongue.

The customer is French (he has stated this fact on at least four occasions “at home in France we do not charge to visit the restaurant”), the lady on reception is Polish, the manager, judging from the accent (and the name on the duty manager board) is German.

Yet they are all having this conversation in English, which means I can listen in and enjoy a rather pompous customer being brought down a peg or two.

His general complaint is that in France you are never charged car parking to visit a hotel restaurant, and has finally escalated to the statement that if the hotel was run by a proper hotel chain this wouldn’t happen.

I’m trying not to laugh, as I’ll give the game away, as I can clearly see both the receptionist and manager are about to leap on this open goal.

It’s at this point I suddenly realise that perhaps English has become a little too pervasive.  The fact that it was automatically the language of choice for the customer when travelling abroad, and the fact that the hotel staff are fluent leaves me feeling a little thick.  After all, I can barely master please and thank you in Polish, let alone attempt to defuse an annoyed patron in another language.

And the punch line.

The hotel is part of the Accor chain.  France’s largest hotel chain

Globalisation in action

With the flexing nature of the borders in this part of the world Wrocław has lead an interesting life (being Breslau for a significant part of it right up to the end of the war)

Today it’s a confidently Polish city, but everywhere I looked I caught glimpses of other cities.

Heading in on the tram we went past a block of buildings with a Nordsee fish bar and Rossmann chemists, both big German chains, and then a little further on a Marks and Spencers next door to a BP garage with a large sign pointing to the Tesco Express on the edge of town.

Oh, and there was a Carrefour.

…due to a fault on the train which cannot be rectified at Aachen

Perhaps the next time my journey to work is disrupted due to a “Failed train at Balham”, I’ll be a little more understanding.

I always thought failed train was a euphemism for “you know what, we can’t actually be bothered”. The sheer number of trains that appear to fail in South London on a daily basis had me wondering how our trains can be so bad, when, for example, the German’s are so reliable.

Except, I found out today, they are not.

Whilst I was sitting on my train in Aachen station waiting to head back to Köln there was a train on the adjacent platform.

It was already 10 minutes late and getting later by the minute, which I’ve discovered is not as rare occurrence as one might have thought on German railways.

After another couple of minutes a member of staff could be seen kicking at something underneath the doors. He stepped back, looked at it, kicked it again, stepped back and repeated for a good six or seven times.

He then walked away and a couple of minutes later returned with several other members of staff. They all took it in turns to kick whatever it was underneath the door, then tried opening and closing the doors.

There was much staring and pointing, and then a decision was made.

30 seconds later there was the sound of an announcement being made in the train, within a few more seconds everyone on board the, pretty busy, train got up and disembarked.

I think that officially makes it a cancellation?

A Rome from Rome

I’ve just been out for a wander on a balmy summer’s night.

Walking round by the Imperial Baths, with the large ruins, able to visualise them as they were nearly 2000 years ago when new, with the Cicada’s defying any noise abatement instructions in the greenery around, I can realise why this part of the Roman Empire must have felt just like Rome.

I’m sure that’s could never be said for the poor legionnaire on a nights sentry duty up at Hadrian’s Wall hoping for a quiet night from the Picts.

It really was a cold winter

It’s the very end of July. Eight months ago was the beginning of December (now there’s cutting edge fact for you!)

Last December was cold, it was very cold, in fact across Europe it was a freezing month, the fourth coldest ever in Germany and the coldest since the early 1930’s (Source)

And now, eight months down the line, it really is starting to show.

Because, when the snow cuts the power off, and it’s cold and dark…

I think Germany’s aging population statistics are about to take a significant spike.

What’s odd, is that the UK had an equally harsh winter, but there are far less heavily pregnant women walking around than there are in Germany.

And I thought they were law abiding

I’m finding I’m having to reign in my natural instincts as a Londoner when it comes to crossing the road.

Usually, if I’m at a set of lights and there’s nothing coming I’ll cross. Yes, I’m fully aware that’s against the green cross code and I should wait for the green man, but who does.

Well, in Germany, the answer is everyone. As I’ve mentioned before they’ll wait even if there are no vehicles in any direction for miles, wait and wait until the little green man appears and only then will they cross.

Up until today I had assumed that this compliance with traffic signals was across the board. Certainly I’ve never seen a driver jump the lights or speed through on red.

But then three times in the space of an hour I witnessed cyclists jumping red lights.

This leads to an important question. Is it something about cycling that make people jump the lights?

Or given that cycling is not the world’s safest of transport modes does it automatically mean people cycling are more likely to take risks?

And let’s face it, there’s nothing worse than the look of utter disapproval from an elderly German lady when you have cross the completely empty street on a red man.

Bruggeitis

It’s an unfortunate condition, only suffered by a few places, but most have a severe case.

Unfortunately, Heidelberg is one of them

The symptoms of Bruggeitis are pretty clear, during the day your streets are awash with thousands of tourists clogging up the pavements, stopping en-mass at every notable sight in the town. Of an evening you return to a quiet existence with just a few people walking the streets.

Whilst Bruges has probably the worst case of this ailment, Heidelberg isn’t too far behind, and Wednesday’s would appear to be a particularly bad day with hundreds of tourists off of river cruises wandering around the town centre following their tour guides.

All I can say is they are missing the best bits. Of an evening, when the day trippers have gone places like Heidelberg and Bruges become much more interesting as you can see everything without falling over tourists.

That’s the sound of A. J. P. Taylor spinning in his grave

OK, I’ll admit that I’m being a bit of a history snob about this. I’ll admit that there are a lot of complexities to the nationhood and status of the various islands and bits of islands that make up the British Isles. I’ll accept that the various royal families of England and Scotland can get a bit confusing.

However, it still doesn’t stop me grimacing when I hear other people making some quite interesting “factual” statements about, what we’ll generalise as, “British History”

The tour guide round the castle today was talking about the Elizabeth gate, erected overnight by the Prince Elector to impress his 19 year old bride Elizabeth Stuart. She was the Granddaughter of Mary Stuart (Mary, Queen of Scots).

The tour guide then went on about the part of the palace where Elizabeth lived and described it as “fitting her as it was in the English style”. And I know with that statement a small part of Alec Salmond dies. Technically it’s true, it is in what is called the English style, and with her Dad having been King of England as well as Scotland, she may well have felt more English than Scottish, it’s just deep down, this bit of the castle looks more like Linlithgow palace near Falkirk than anything I’ve seen in England, so I’d say it’s more in the Scottish style, fitting her ancestral roots (though trying to explain the difference between England, Scotland, Britain, the UK etc. would take several blog postings, so instead you could watch this short video)

The comment by another tourist that Mary Stuart (Queen of Scots) was married to Henry VIII had me wanting to hit my head against a brick wall. Not because it was wrong (which it is), but because it was backed up with the authority of – it was in a mini-series I watched last year. This same tourist then wondered how it was Henry kept managing to attract all the ladies given how fat an ugly he was.

Yes, I’m happy to take it as read that by the time he died Henry was a particularly unpleasant human specimen (look up Wikipedia for the full gory details), bloated, gouty and partly responsible for sowing the seeds of sectarianism in the UK. However, prior to the over indulgence he was, by most historical accounts one of the most eligible and handsome royal bachelors in all Europe. But again, because the mini-series had only portrayed him as this overweight tyrant (obviously married to Mary Queen of Scots at the time), this tourist felt it was perfectly acceptable to try and correct her friend when she queried it because – it was in a factual mini-series I watched last year, so it must be true.

If the walls of the castle at that point hadn’t been 21 feet thick and likely to cause lasting injury, I would have been tempted to bang my head against them until something broke.

Cover blown

I was doing so well, I was blending in, I was being mistaken for being German.

And then I fell to an elemental mistake…

I’d booked my tickets online in advance and printed them at home. The tickets were all in German so that wouldn’t be the give-away. All you have to do is present your identification, in this case the credit card they were booked on.

And that’s where my cover was blown. I’d forgotten across the front of my credit card, in very big, very obvious letters, even larger than the MasterCard logo is the name “Amazon.co.uk”. Not “Amazon.de” not “Amazon.com” but quite clearly ein Engländer.