London felt different.

I had, essentially, kicked off my campaign on College Green (outside Westminster Palace) in March 2019. There were vivid signs of the raging open wound that the 2016 referendum had inflicted on us. It was a nation divided, there was fighting on the streets, it was Paris 1968 all over again [Calm down son, it wasn’t that bad. Ed].

Well, there was some gentle, very British, protesting and a lot of flags. We took pictures, chatted with protesters, sought reassurance from the police officers that were maintaining a watchful brief..

After London 2019 I set off for Brussels and my first trip to EU galactic HQ. You will remember how hilarious it all was – no! well, go back to the beginning and start reading this Blog again. From the start.

We were staying in the same hotel (somewhere in Islington) and quickly learned how different the world was. The establishment didn’t even have draft beer anymore, or proper bar staff (last time they were excellent). Either three years of Brexit had done for it, or the effects of the pandemic had eviscerated the once glorious Kings Cross Crowne Plaza. I was so concerned that (on my return north) I responded to a request for feedback with a rather direct input – I hope they will benefit from my advice.

One thing that is noticeable everywhere these days is the tendency away from cash. It is more to do with new technology (as our digital world accelerates towards bot-topia), and a reluctance to touch dirty cash, than it is to do with  Brexit. However, it is a relief not to have that annoying conversation with London cabbies:

What’s this gov! The cabbie intones in his best Dick van Dyke.

 Erm, cash …, I reply, patiently.

Is The Bank of Scotland a thing then. Do you Jocks have your own money now? he asks, amusingly.

No, it is Pounds Sterling. Just like The Bank of England, I offer, playing my part in this age old ritual.

This one says The Clydesdale Bank, where’s that! he exclaims.

Scottish bank, established 1838, I continue, still pounds Stirling I think you’ll find.

 So, he asks, what exchange rate will I get for this, don’t you have any real pounds. I don’t think I can take this stuff.

 Would Monopoly money suit you better, I mumble under my breath, we are near Park Lane after all.

Well, you get the picture. A familiar exchange for Scottish visitors to our great UK capitol over the years. I’m going to miss this, in a weird sort of way.

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What followed is difficult to summarize. We are still reassessing the damage to the UK. I had set out to document my journey through the Brexit years. I hadn’t expected to halt the process, or even affect the outcome of that decision. I hadn’t anticipated the whole world interfering with my little project – it struck me as bizarre in the extreme that at the very peak of my pootering years I would be grounded like a grumpy teenager. I had anticipated getting into all manner of hilarious jams, seeing new places (even as I could see less), meeting new people, I had anticipated continuing to construct a narrative that would show me as the plucky fool I was, and, I expected to be largely ignored, as most people were too busy to follow my adventures.

But here we are, two years on, we had all suffered a massive blow to our systems, the world was a much less friendly place, and, on top of it all, part of Europe was now at war.

Again, it is not my role to explain any of this. Suffice to say, much had changed as I decided the time was right to take up my rudely interrupted travels and see how much of Europe was still on speaking terms with the UK.

I would start in London, where I had ventured last in 2019. It seemed like this was the place that had caused much of the initial problem – they started it! It seemed like the best place to resume my fragile fuddle. I should have picked up my travels back in Poland, as I felt I hadn’t finished with the Poles and their crucial position on the border lands of both Europe and much of twentieth century history. No, London would do – if I survived I would be re-energized  and would see if I could manage the complexities of this new world. Then, maybe, a Baltic loop which would give me a chance to explore further.

I was ready to go, I had a new journey planned with a fixed itinerary that would take me to a couple of those remaining EU member states, I might even find time for some more ‘parliament selfies’.

I am raring to go, the time is right, and I’m fully  vaccinated!

If they can manage a successful return to full on Eurovision Song Contests, I could manage a gentle pooter around Scandinavia and the Baltic States.

Sure, some of these countries were abandoning years of neutrality and applying for NATO membership (Sweden and Finland), yes I risked being a bit too close to the Russian border when visiting Finland and Estonia – we had already had a couple of days in Saint Petersburg removed from our itinerary, and there was still the increased complexity of Covid-19 restrictions.

What could possibly go wrong.

Vamanos! Let’s go …

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Later that summer I was sitting in what was a small basement flat masquerading as a superior room in The Bank Hotel in a much lauded  ex fishing village in the East Neuk of Fife –  the room not me, I never masquerade as a small flat! The Guinness from the night before was lying, with the batter from my fish dinner, heavily in the pit of my stomach.

We had arrived in Anstruther courtesy of rain that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the tropics, it was Scottish weather at its most challenging: summer. As I clung to my seatbelt, peering  through the waterfalls on the car windows Mrs T negotiated the roads of central Fife. It should have been a straightforward journey. It was relatively straight until Mrs T threw away the script by taking a detour that took in Cupar, some quite pretty cul-de-sacs, an industrial site and ended up in St Andrews. Once in St Andrews, several miles north of our target, she picked a random lane and left the main road where all those silly road signs kept telling us we were probably lost. The extra hour probably served as a reminder that I was mortal, and gave me time to practice grinding my teeth and re-examining my lack of knowledge of the logic of others.

This was to be part of the Scottish Journey where I re-engaged with Fife. I had hoped that taking regular short trips into the kingdom would stir up memories of my earlier days, the first year of my fifty Scottish years. Maybe I could find something that would help me tell the story of that time. I can’t remember why I chose Anstruther, but it would have to serve as an opening salvo in a bid to get back to the seventies and my earlier self.

The Bank Hotel, for it had been a bank in a previous economic cycle, was on what passed for a High Street although it looked more like a short one-way lane glimpsed as we sailed past the front door, afforded us the opportunity to examine the crowds and the chaos of abandoned vehicles that was the harbour area.

I thought it would be nice and quiet, I mumbled still shocked by the terrors of the open road.

I think we need to turn round and go back the way we just came. I advised. Receiving the sort of response most of my helpful advice usually gets, with added vigour fuelled by the stress the poor woman was feeling by this late stage of the adventure.

Once we had established our bolt hole in what must have been the banks’ vaults, where generations of young assistants would fend off the amorous advances of generations of junior managers, I decided I required a drink, and she required some alone time. That was the start of the Guinness.

The bar was quite busy but the service was quietly efficient. I received another Guinness with an appreciative nod, and pondered the madness of sitting in strange places paying extra and suffering the loss of control that takes me away from the comport of my own home.

Dinner in the bar – for it was in the bar we were dumped, by the pool table and directly opposite the entrance through which a cold breeze deposited wet (nay, drukit) punters in alarming numbers.

I thought we might have been given a nice wee table in the dinning-room, I said, that’s why I phoned to make a reservation.

 Mrs T, who was in remarkable good humour considering the stress she had been under driving me around darkest Fife, said she was quite comfortable and reminded me that we would get to watch the first half of the quarter finals of Euro 2020 (now reaching its conclusion a year late) on the gigantic television above said pool table.

I supped my beer and wine and played with a Pittenweem Haddock that was clearly feeling the draft from the open door as it was buried under a thick batter that was acting as an overcoat. I’m sure it was very nice but gave up crunching my way through the heavy outer layers looking for fish and decided to chase the peas around the plate and content  myself with dipping the chips in the Mayo provided – the staff were very efficient.

We watched the second half of the match (Italy v Spain) in our room having procured a couple of bottles of beer and some coke to take with us.

We spent a few, very pleasant days enjoying the sunshine (the weather improved) and returned home happy at our modest efforts.

I’m going to write about my 1^st fifty years in Scotland, I told Mrs T but she seemed totally indifferent to the thought. Maybe it’s because half of that time had been before we met, I thought to myself.

Maybe we could get back to some sort of normal.

Maybe we could start planning trips to Europe, and further afield, I pondered. Maybe this poxy pandemic was over, I speculated …

but it wasn’t.

The hospital admissions started to increase as new variants (much more contagious than the original version) changed everyone’ s plans. Some folk managed to ignore the evidence and jet off to anywhere that would accept their cash – the usual suspects – but we stayed at home, took our medicine (various vaccines), and avoided crowds.

As I continued to attempt to recoup some of my, not inconsiderable, losses, and spend most of my time shouting at the television, the world kept turning.

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I worked my was round what felt like a Range Rover sized obstacle, a popular mode of transport in this quasi countrified horsy welly-bootie part of the country just a few miles north of the city. The vehicle stood astride the pavement outside The Hawes Inn. I was looking for the spirit of Robert Louise Stevenson (RLS).

Once I had manoeuvred my hazardous path to reception, requiring me to step out onto the public highway and the oncoming traffic, I asked to check in. This always causes some consternation. Sometimes the receptionist is gentle with me, intuiting my difficulties (made obvious, I would have thought, by my white cane), but most often I encounter individuals that are so board repeating simple instructions, and knowing the reception area better than the contours of their own face, that they fiddle about with their keyboards and demand that you sign ‘here’ and go ‘there’ not thinking that their pointed chin is no help to me. It always seems to involve me apologising a lot and staggering around busy areas attempting to enter cupboards, pull on closed doors or knocking over displays of tourist advice designed to catch the attention of sightseeing customers – because despite the fiction that you are their guest, and your comfort is important to them, you are just a sales opportunity; another mug punter, erm, I mean  customer.

This particular robot barely acknowledge my difficulties as he insisted I pay for my room before I entered his hallowed establishment – very unusual as most hotels bill you when you check-out. His directions to the general area where I might find my room lead me straight back out into the traffic, through a gate, and into what looked like a very soggy beer garden (it was pissing down it being summer here in Scotland). I was then forced to march up a long set of steps to a door with neither handle nor the various locks the receptionist had described whilst emphasising the critical information that they locked up at ten pm and one of the keys would open an outer door, if required.

Are you okay, came a voice from somewhere below me.

I’m looking for room number eight, I replied through the damp gloom

 Oh! you won’t get in up there, he offered helpfully, stating the by now rather obvious, I work here he continued rather superfluously.

Was he trying to reassure me or did he think I wouldn’t trust the sort of person who would hang about in a beer garden during a downpour.

I refused his offer of help out of shear frustration and, working my way back to the reception area via the pubic highway. I found the right set of stairs near the front door where I had clearly been directed,

Out the door and turn right, he had said and then watched me drag my case back over the threshold and out the front door.

The route up to room 8 was no less fraught – with half landings, narrow doors requiring a mastery of electronically triggered locks controlled by waving the barrel like device I had been given – the one that would let me in after 10pm, if required.

‘Room with a view of the Forth’, it had promised on the website. Well yes, technically.  I could see a bit of river and the supports for the Forth Rail Bridge but it involved peering out of very small Victorian sash window that steamed up almost instantly,  placed so high that my wife couldn’t see out. There was also the faux oil lamp at head hight that nearly rendered  me senseless every time I cracked my head on it.

I was exhausted. We had only travelled ten miles and I was in my own country where, give or take the odd twist of local colour, they spoke the same language as me. I lay down on the bed and had a snooze.

The plan had been to check into the room, go for a bracing walk along the esplanade, have a pot of tea and a scone in the lounge, then go back to the room to wash and prepare for the dinner I had booked via their website.

Can we have a drink in the bar before we go through for dinner, I enquired. This seemed to cause the young server no end of confusion. Obviously no one had ever asked her anything similar …

I started to remember that I had promised myself (and anyone who would listen to me) that I would only expose myself to this sort of ‘holiday’ once I was too old to make my own way in the world. Was this a sign, I wondered, are my wandering years over, is there any chance that I could be less snooty about these things …

Coach tours round the Highlands loomed up threateningly in my dreams that night.

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Nothing in my experience had prepared me for the events of the next two years.

I had returned from Poland in the early months of 2020, amid the newly unfolding repercussions of Brexit. As I sat at home typing up my notes and preparing for the next stage of my adventure – to include trips to the seven countries of the EU that would be new for me – the world crashed into a solid wall of restrictions brought about as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Stay at home!, our newly Brexited UK government exclaimed – and they were willing to enforce the command,

Don’t come near us, said the president of the USA (and others) we don’t want your nasty foreign diseases, as they suddenly realised that a globally integrated world made this sort of plague a little awkward.

As governments dusted off their pandemic plans and ignored the WHO advice the world pulled down its shutters and flying became more dangerous than it had been since the Orville brothers kicked it all off in 1903.

We were all in shock. Governments panicked. We were learning what it meant to be part of the Anthropocene – this almost felt something like the massive asteroid strike of sixty six millions years ago, now known as the Chicxulub Impact – you know, the one that caused a mass extinction, and probably ruined a few Dino Blogs [yeah, cause it’s all about you as usual. Ed].

I am not going to attempt to explain the period of maximum chaos that demolished our hopes for 2020 [Thank goodness for that. Ed]. Millions of words have been written already, smarter people than me are analysing and ‘learning lessons’, books will be written – I might even write one myself.

No, I’m going to stick to my general ramblings. I will present a few chapters that describe how I ventured out briefly in 2021 (by way of a Scottish journey) and then shut my front door, re-emerging sometime in 2022.

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Warsaw unravelled out of the darkness. Nearly everyone on the train stood up and people were pulling out cases and balancing themselves against the motion of the slowing train

Is this the main station, I asked, hoping some kind soul would assist me once again.

Yes!, replied a confident American tourist, as they dragged their case past me, and disembarked.

No, a young Polish man said, next station is where you get off.

Warsaw central was much more confusing than the German stations I had got used to. People looked disengaged, there was very little in the way of useful signage, and I felt a rising panic as I searched around for clues.

A couple of grumpy security guards sent me in roughly the right direction for a taxi and, as I set off, I quickly realised that I was leaving the light and warmth of a dim and chilly station for the real coldness and darkness of outside.

Remarkably, I was adopted by a little old Polish woman who decided that I was hopeless and, as she had time before her daughter was to pick her up, insisted on grabbing my arm and getting me into a taxi. I was spirited away before I could thank her properly.

As I was recovering from this generosity the Taxi driver said,

Cars not allowed in old town, I can not drop you at your hotel.

I had, of course, chosen the one hotel in Warsaw that was located in a different century. I had picked The Castle Inn (Swietojanska 2, Warsaw, Masovia) hotel because it looked like it was from an era I was probably wanting to wander about in, and it had a Chopin connection – this elderly scholar lark really needed reassessing. Who did I think I was – Thomas Mann, Hemingway, Chopin? It was ridicules, I was ridiculous. I was more Bill Bryson bluster than elderly European researcher.

However, the driver insisted on walking me to the hotel. He pressed an ancient looking bell press by a small door on the side of a building that I would never have found, and took me up the dark staircase (no lift, obvs) to reception, and helped me check-in. I thanked him and gave him all my money.

My room was like a garret. There was a small couch that doubled as a bed, a tiny TV with three wonky channels, and a writing desk – perfect for an elderly scholar.

My time in Warsaw was very pleasant. The main source of difficulty came from being in the old part of town (rebuilt at Stalin’s insistence, after it had been nearly totally flattened in the struggles of WWII). The pavements were narrow, the streets were cobbled and the main square in the pld town (where I was located) had steps in unpredictable places that tapered out to cope with the different levels around the square. It was quite difficult to navigate round the various hazards and the variability of the surfaces was reflected in the variability in the prices – I was shocked to be asked for eleven Euros for a beer at one establishment.

However, the point of this visit was to get my Parliament selfie, so I found a friendly taxi driver (Peter) and instructed him on the raison d’ětre of my mission. He seemed a bit surprised at my request but headed off into the newer part of town from the Taxi Rank which perched on the border between old and new.

He is a tourist, Peter explained to the two heavily armed goons who descended on us as I got him to take my picture outside a building that he assured me was as close as he could get to the Seljm. He doesn’t mean any harm.

If you don’t move now, barked one of the uniforms, we will arrest you both.

It was a brief visit and I’m still not sure how close we were to serious consequences (or to the parliament, for that matter), but Peter was certainly quite agitated and they probably all thought I was either dangerous or mad, or both.

The next day, having outstayed my welcome in Poland, I picked up the taxi that had been booked for me on check-out, at two o’clock in the morning. It was freezing cold and starting to snow. It was like a scene in a black-and-white Spy Movie (The wrier that came out in the cold!) – an escape from the Cold War Eastern block, as I scuttled across the dark old town square to my connection. To complete the effect the taxi flashed his lights to attract my attention, I was conspicuous by being the only fool out and about at such a cold dark hour.

However, the appropriately named Wizz Air whizzed me through Chopin airport and I was returned to the familiar lands of my domicile.

I didn’t have any issues going through the airport as the assistance in both Warsaw and Edinburgh took good care of me, despite me no longer being an EU European.

Once home I started planning my next trip little knowing what would descend on us all within the next few weeks.

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Having checked out Checkpoint Charlie in the pouring rain, and staring in an incident where a young woman in a Starbucks on Kurfürstendamm helped me find a Currywurst, I had identified my teatime target on what Google Maps laughingly call ‘a map’, but it turned out to be below ground level. I end up getting lost in the perfume department of a large retail store. And that is the short version of day two in Berlin.

The very next day I checked out of the lovely, but expensive, hotel where I discovered the cost of propping up their bar of an evening.

The date  was the palindromic 02022020.

I arrived at the Hauptbahnhof, the massive central station (located on Europlatz,  on the site of the old Lehrter Stadtbahnhof) in plenty of time, and set about finding my train. The ever helpful man in seat61 (seat61.com)  had advised me that, ‘Comfortable EuroCity trains link Berlin Hbf & Warsaw Centralna, 570 km in 5h30 …’, and I was travelling first class this time. All Berlin Hbf trains to Poland use the east-west platforms situated above ground level – you get an escalator up to the platform and find the spot where your carriage will stop (1^st class carriages have a yellow strip). As in most European train stations there is no check in, you just find your train and board it when it arrives (they check the tickets onboard).

For once, it all went to plan, although I did have a difficult moment with an unhelpful doughnuteer, who sold me an indescribable coffee and a sticky bun of uncertain nutritional value, and refused to make any concessions for my obvious inability to navigate the mysteries of the modern fast food franchise (I think this one called themselves Dunkin Doughnuts).

I found my seat okay and was immediately jumped by a very enthusiastic member of the on-board catering team who took my lunch order – I wanted a pork sandwich and a coffee, but not straight away,

Sandwich very small, he said. I  recommend traditional Polish dish (I imagine he had noticed I might appreciate something more substantial and I wondered if I should be offended, but dismissed this thought as pure vanity and sucked in my stomach a little).

I will bring in one hour, in Frankfurt, he concluded.

He had vanished before I could double check that I hadn’t ordered some variety of German  sausage.

The train was perfect, very comfortable, and as I hurtled through the increasingly grim looking countryside I remembered how far east Berlin was. The countryside was relatively flat and part of that hugely significant part of Europe that has seen much pain and heartbreak over the las few hundred years.

As I drifted off, waiting for my lunch, I recalled a France based friend cautioning me,  she said,

You sound very confident that the EU will let you in …

 I’m not worried about getting into Europe, I replied, it’s getting out that worries me.

Someone else speculated,  You will need a BLUE passport to get back!!!

 I hope not, I replied.

Plenty space in my garden shed for political refugees, reasonable rates, they responded.

As I drifted in and out of this, by now, mid-afternoon reverie, I suddenly realized that the ever busy Polish waiter must have forgotten about me.

I checked, he had forgotten about me.

However, he recovered his cool and, in a whirl of apologetic gesturing reappeared with a polystyrene box of, very greasy and stodgy. beef stuffed dumplings – the aforementioned and much anticipated traditional Polish food I assumed.

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