Ooh, much excitement. I’ve booked up most of my trip to Germany. I have to be in Munich for a meeting on 8th and 9th October, so have taken some extra days off work before and after and sorted out a route and some places to stay.

Eurostar to Brussels, first, on a Sunday afternoon - right after the show. I was trying to work a way through Paris but the continental trains seem to be more compatible if you head east out of London rather than south. I’ve trained to Paris several times before, anyway, so it’s fun to be doing something new.

One night in Brussels waiting for my connection, then a train down to Munich. It’s an eight-and-a-bit-hour journey and involves a change in Cologne, so there’ll be plenty of time for catching up with my reading and writing. I’m hoping I’ll be able to make some good headway with The Two Towers, but I’m finding it heavy going.

That gives me an evening free in the city before my first meeting the following day, and means I’ll be forced to either use my basic German vocab or starve.

So, two days of meetings, then another night in Munich before heading north once more to Cologne for two nights on the way back to Brussels and the Eurostar home.

Much cheered by the fact I managed to complete most of the exercises in the first section of my German text book on the train home, although it’ll do little to feed me while I’m away. It was the ‘me, my family, myself’ section, dealing with birth, death and divorce.

Hmmm…

Sent the last page of the next issue off to the printer this afternoon, so we hid ourselves in the pub for the last hour of the day and then headed off for an early train home.

I took advantage of the early evening to head out with the camera and take some pictures of red-sky panoramas. Concentated on the area around the World War Two radar tower in Great Baddow, its angular black metal form slicing deep dark scars in the sky.

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