The rum news was that the carriage next to mine – 271 – was missing. I say this not because I felt sorry for passengers hoping to get a seat on board carriage 271, but because it’s main purpose was to serve me my breakfast. They had forgotten to add the restaurant carriage. I had really been looking forward to this meal, as PKP chefs make a wicked ham and scrambled egg dish coupled with having excellent barista skills. Perhaps even worse was that I had no emergency rations (or even water) in my bag. It would be a day of fasting. The journey takes about 5 hours, so not the end of the world, but a useful lesson to me not to take it for granted where the next meal is coming from.

We chugged out of Hbf about 5 minutes late and navigated slowly through the maze of tracks east of Berlin. I actually managed to get some sleep for an hour or so, until we arrived at Frankfurt (Oder) – the Polish border. I continued to snooze, but after half an hour I noticed we had not yet moved. Out on the platform a few people were smoking and not looking like they were going anywhere in a hurry so I got out to investigate. I found a conductor (actually a conductress) who spoke some English, and the news wasn’t good. The train was due a crew change, but the crew had not turned up. We could be here for some time. I thought about this for a while, and decided to break the cardinal rule of long distance rail travel – never leave a train out of sight with your luggage still on board..

My plan was to take advantage of the delayed train and run a local foraging expedition to make up for the lack of scrambled eggs on board. Knowing I was about to undertake a high risk mission I explained my predicament to the conductor. She thought about it, and seemed to take quite a while considering how long she thought we might be here for without being very conclusive. I finished up by saying “You promise you won’t leave without me?” She smiled, looked at me with kind but I thought quite professional eyes, and said “For sure”.

So with a sense of schoolboy excitement that I was breaking my own rules, I found a cafe at the far end of the station and scored some fresh coffee and rations to last the day. In hindsight I need not have hurried, but it’s human nature not to want to be stranded – these are after all exactly the sort of railway events that I sometimes have nightmares about!

We got on the move again after a couple of hours. I could have actually enjoyed a full course lunch had I known. The new crew is Polish, and a bit like my crossing from Holland the other day, it would seem the crews to stick to their native country on the train, not crossing the border. The new conductorski spent quite a long time explaining or apologising on the PA system for why we were so late and hungry. I could not really understand a word, as we have now moved from announcements in three languages, to just in Polish.

The seriousness of the situation became clear a few minutes later when a nice Polish girl appeared with some PKP emergency supplies. Prince Polo wafer biscuits are standard first class fare, but this time a chocolate almond and a raisin cookie. Things must be really bad!

As the light faded we crossed the increasingly misty and frozen Polish countryside. I think I’m pretty much crossing the line of permanent snow now until I head south again in China. It’s not that cold here, but just enough to keep snow on the ground.

I’m hoping to arrive in Warsaw Centralina just an hour and half late this evening. It’s not been the perfect day on the rails, but it’s good to have a few things not quite work out. I feel this tests my confidence and resolve to stay positive in the event of a more serious problem.

As I write this blog I’m sitting in the Hopfingerbrau bar inside the station enjoying a Berliner beer and a pretzel. Looking out at people going about their business i can’t see anyone looking stressed or I’ll temperered. The design of the station seems to be having a genuine effect on the mood of the passengers and the quality of their experience.

I have enjoyed a short break here in Berlin. It’s my first proper visit in 30 years, and of course much has changed. My memories of the inter rail summer trip of 1986 are somewhat hazy, but I definitely remember taking a train through East Germany and the “Berlin corridor” – then spending a couple of days in West Berlin. My trip also included a day trip to East Berlin via Checkpoint Charlie. Call me paranoid, but I am sure that we were tailed for a few hours as we blew our compulsorily exchanged East German Marks on lunch and some schnapps glasses in a rather quaint but empty department store.

Today Checkpoint Charlie is just a tourist trap, but it’s good to get a context of the wall and the ghost stations on the U-Bahn in the area. Berlin has been kind to me. It’s the sort of city that welcomes visitors and looks after them. I hope to return here again soon.

I’m on the IC147 (Inter-City) from Amsterdam to Berlin. It might lack a glamorous train name, but it feels to me like a good one – taking a pretty direct route east to my destination in a little over six hours. I’m used to getting the night train out of Holland, so very much enjoying a daytime alternative this year.

The IC147 isn’t a (high speed) ICE train, but a modern and efficient inter-city express. In first class the carriage has mini compartments of six seats. This is an interesting alternative to the anonymity of the open plan that I’m used to in the United Kingdom. Here people introduce themselves and chat a bit more. It also gives me the very slight feeling of what it must be like to be a POW escapee. I assume this is because in my mind all the WW2 films I have seen involving German trains have carriages like this. To be fair, I think this layout was once the fashion across both Great Britain and much of Europe.

A quick trip to the “Bordobistro” carriage doesn’t disappoint – a full menu, and best of all icy Erdinger beer served in immaculate tall and gleaming branded glasses. The manager pops by my compartment every now and again to take my order – not on a tablet device, but hand written on a beer mat. Old school!

I wasnt expecting it, but at the German border the locomotive was switched from a Dutch railways engine to a DB Bahn loco. It takes just ten minutes to change the crew, change the loco and set off again. The German conductor is very friendly and enthusiastic about her job. She speaks at least three languages. I feel just like I did whilst I was in Japan last year – rather embarrassed that my own country can’t run a railway of this quality. There seems to be a totally different culture and passion for getting it right, but that’s probably down to decades of investment in people and infrastructure.

I spend a couple of hours in the company of a Dutch chap who looks just like Mick Fleetwood. It could of course be that Mick Fleetwood does a brilliant Dutch accent impersonation and was having some fun at my expense. Whilst on the subject of music, I hope you like the subtle homage of the title of this post to Gerry Rafferty and his epic 1978 album of the same name.