Updates

Hi there, readers

This post is a miscellany of news, principally updates on previous posts and responses to comments on them.

First, I should welcome all my new followers: thank you for your faith in my future posting, though I'm afraid I can't promise anything more frequent or interesting than what's already here. I'm far more likely to be busy commenting on your posts than writing my own!

Second, health - more specifically, the state of my back. The sciatica finally sorted itself out in early August: I found that I needed fewer and fewer painkillers each day, and I haven't taken any since mid-August at the latest. However, I still get the occasional twinge if I bend too far the wrong way, for example, and the sensation in parts of my right foot is still not normal. So, after a certain amount of NHS bureaucracy, and the exercise of my own well-practiced ability to procrastinate, I finally had an appointment with an NHS physiotherapist about ten days ago. Somewhat to my and his surprise, it turned out to be a neighbour of mine - so, as I observed before I left, "there's no escape": whenever I bump into him outside our houses, he will ask how I'm getting on! In the event, there wasn't any actual physiotherapy (though there was quite a lot of hands-on diagnosis): the recommendation was that I should try to improve my posture, especially when sitting at a computer screen, given how much of my time I spend doing just that. *sits up once again*

Jay asked whether my backpack has a waist belt: it does, and I do normally use it. I'm fairly sure I was using it in June. This time round, I'm hoping that I will not already have an episode of back problems in progress before I set off, and I may well try to get the waist belt a bit lower down than usual - around the hips rather than the waist - so that the load goes more on the pelvis and less on the back itself.

Third, holidays. I'm now expecting to be away a couple of days more than previously indicated - I have a friend in Jena, in eastern Germany, whom I haven't seen for a while, and who can let me stay for a night on my way back from Slovakia. So the plan now looks like this:
- Fri 8: fly to Cologne (Germany)
- Sat 9: organised railway tour around the Cologne area
- Sun 10: Cologne - Linz (Austria)
- Mon 11: Linz - St. Pölten (Austria)
- Tue 12 to Thu 14: touring from St. Pölten
- Fri 15: St. Pölten - Prievidza (Slovakia), possibly via Budapest (Hungary)
- Sat 16, Sun 17: two days' organised railway tour in western Slovakia
- Mon 18: Prievidza - Prague (Czech Republic)
- Tue 19: Prague - Jena (Germany)
- Wed 20: fly back from Nuremberg (Germany)
As usual for my touring holidays, all this travel will be by train, in this case making use of an InterRail pass. There's a range of these, giving more or less unlimited rail travel in individual countries, or across the whole of Europe, for various periods. For people not resident in Europe, there's a similar pass called Eurail.

As previously indicated, I don't expect to have internet access at any point during the trip, so no e-mails or blog posts or comments. I'll try to catch up as quickly as possible after I get back, but it may take a few days.

At this point, I should (rather belatedly, I fear) thank naturgesetz for his suggestions for places to visit. I'm not following any of them up for this trip, because the middle section is aimed principally at visiting railway lines in Austria that are thought likely to lose their passenger services in December. Some of these should run through some quite scenic country, and I suspect that there are some interesting historic towns along the way too. However, I will bear them in mind for the future: Bamberg was already on my list to visit, given its architectural heritage and place in German brewing culture, and, having passed through Würzburg several times, it looks well worth a visit too. Germany was a country I ignored for many years, but I'm coming to appreciate its virtues, and I'd like to see a lot more of it.

Take care

Mark