In case there are any followers of mine based in Brussels: on 28th January I am discussing the future of railways in the EU at an event in Brussels

Informal event, and there is even beer

Come along!

https://beersandpolitics.com/rail-for-real-how-can-we-fix-eu-crossborder-railways-in-2025/

49!

Germany has been controlling (some of) its border crossings for 2 months now, and has managed to find 49 people in that time on the border from Luxembourg https://infos.rtl.lu/actu/luxembourg/a/2249562.html

That’s FEWER THAN 1 A DAY! For ridiculous cost employing police to do these controls! 🤯

Regardless of what you think of the ethics here this is an insane waste of money

#Schengen

Final #caturday for a while as I’m away the next 5 weeks. Josette guarding Villa des Roses earlier (and yes we still don’t have enough roses but we’re working on it… they grow slowly!)

Also for context: having been pretty much only on French trains the past month, today I’m travelling Ravières - Strasbourg - Offenburg - Berlin, tomorrow Berlin - Büchen - Lübeck - Hamburg, and Wednesday Hamburg - Köln - Paris - Ravières.

A lot of km on German railways.

So rather than slamming Deutsche Bahn (which is a German national sport), I’m instead praising what I miss about DB when I’m in France

Long sausage #catsofmastodon

This was important enough to merit a sort of Brexit diagram. Simple though. #Threads

Lazy #Caturday here in Ravières

Enough for today... My mapping of all of Europe's rail borders is progressing slowly

Grey: I've not been
Pink: went there this year
Orange: been at another time

And the icon determines what sort of border it is

Today I've plotted a lot of tramways and narrow gauge international railways

Zoomable map: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-all-the-borders_838780#6/51.283/14.637

Just been at a thoroughly perplexing meeting about transport policies and Berlin’s re-run Abgeordnetenhauswahl in February

The 9/29/49 Euro Ticket sort of shock to transport ticketing is the only major change since the election in Sept 2021, but no one has any coherent thinking about how all this is going to impact the election and campaigns

So moss is a thing on Mastodon (or #mosstodon more appropriately). And I’m currently in Ravières in Bourgogne 🇫🇷 and here there is a lot of moss. I’ll post more next time I’m walking in the woods!