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.

In passing there is a very high profile campaign at the moment warning visitors about the dangers of buying drugs on the street. As I understand, it’s a batch of dodgy white heroin as a substitute for cocaine. Even my bus driver tells me to go to a coffee shop for my drugs. If only she were to know that the purpose of my visit to Amsterdam was in fact Trans-Siberian exploration…

I spent much of the day on a few fairly mundane housekeeping tasks. These included using my new VPN app on the iPad to download the penultimate episode of “The Apprentice” (this possibly needs a whole post as much to my amazement, as its a bit of tech that works), uploading various blogs and treating myself to a rather fiery and pimped up Nasi Goreng “Nonya” in my favourite Malay place at the back of the red light district.

Amsterdam has been rebuilding its historic station for a long time now, and from what I can see it’s almost complete. What I discovered today is that it presents its best side to those using platform 2, the line that serves the German high speed trains to Frankfurt. Here you are treated to a choice of nice bars and coffee shops as well as a small but comfy first class lounge, all just a few feet from the platform. Perfect! In fact if you were new to Amsteram CentraaI, I would suggest just you forget about the rest of the station and hang out on platform 2 until your train is due to depart. Elsewhere in the station there is now a piano in the main concourse (which is free for anyone to play) and an ever wider choice of slightly weird Dutch snack foods in plastic boxes.

On the equipment front, the first thing I have to report is the joy of wheels – eight of them actually, four on each of my two bags. Unlike last year (looking like a deranged pack animal carrying a huge duffel bag) this time I glided onto the MV King Seaways at Newcastle. Minor safety tip – no parking brake, so need to be careful on slopes, especially station platforms!

My new big case looks a bit flash, so a quick search at Customs, and a lift right up to my Commodore Class suite. Complimentary mini bar, wifi, walk in shower and breakfast in my cabin. I’m being spoilt ahead of a more simple life on the rails..

This ship is not that big, but has done a good job at isolating the “Geordie Shore” set from the more mainstream passengers. The best defence of all is the glass security doors that keep the party goers well away from my deck of the boat (think “Titanic”!). You only realise what a lucky escape you have had when you share the shuttle bus with them from Imjuden into Amsterdam. I think that I am fast becoming an official grumpy old man.

I meet people that I would never normally come across when I travel. In the morning I found myself cruising the canals with a Brazilian football player and his close flag waving entourage. You might know that I’m not big in terms of football knowledge (or speaking Portuguese) but I gathered that his team are playing the Germans next week. I didn’t mention the war, but wished him “good luck”. He gave me the thumbs up sign and smiled at me before he headed off. He obviously didn’t know that was the oldest trick in the book and would have given the game away in “The Great Escape”!

My mood was considerably lifted at lunchtime with the chance discovery of a Nonya restaurant with food so authentic I felt like I had actually sailed to Penang last night. This reminds me to tell you that I tried out my Mandarin language skills at a rather good Chinese restaurant in Newcastle last week. Not a word I used made any sense to the staff, so I’m keeping my brilliant “Point It” picture book close by at all times..

I’m spending the rest of the day hanging about here dodging bicycles before I head over the bridge at Arnhem tonight en route to Warsaw. Let’s hope that it’s not “A Bridge Too Far”! (I had to get that in – now ticked off my list of “favourite film blog bingo”!)

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