On a train to Dresden

This morning I am on a train to Dresden and it's like a train to parts of my past in the GDR - from Frankfurt through Fulda - where the German Protestant Kirchentag has its headquarters - and then into the East with Eisenach, Erfurt, Leipzig and then Dresden. So many friends I could visit, so many memories in each place but not quite enough time to stop off and enjoy some of my favourite cities ...
Just over 19 years ago we began our honeymoon by arriving by train in Dresden and ended it leaving on a train from Erfurt.
So now to the real work of the day which is to prepare a short presentation on the structures and vision of the WCC in German for the international committee of the Kirchentag.

Ferry cross the mersey ...

So this afternoon we took the "Ferry Cross the Mersey" to Seacombe Ferry and then the bus to New Brighton where there was a real seaside atmosphere. There were wonderful views on board the ferry and a great atmosphere with lots of families taking the journey across the water.
We had a lovely time sitting in Stephen's mother's garden watching Harry paint the gate and then eating with the family, admiring Tom's gardening and bike repairs, and Myra's delicious cooking. A gentle holiday sort of time. Wonderful.

English grafitti at the French bus stop

Look
If you had one chance
one opportunity
to seize everything you ever wanted
one moment
would you capture it?
Or just let it slip?
You better lose yourself in the music ...

On the wall at Ferney's Avenue du Jura bus stop - where there is more grafitti in English than in French!
(And yes I do know it's by Eminem)

My first ever blogpost from a high speed train

Dr B and I are sitting in the restaurant carriage of a German ICE train which left Berlin Hauptbahnhof and goes all the way to Interlaken - we'll probably get off in Olten or Bern to catch a connection to Geneva and then take the F bus all the way home. It's been a great time away and also the final phase in Dr B's healing process. On Monday he's going to go back to work, it will have been nearly three months. This week in Berlin has been a real holiday and re-integration to life for him and he seems to have grown in strength as the week progressed - being in his favourite city no doubt helped that, as did having the family from Merseyside with us, it was great fun.

As you can tell this post is really just an excuse to show off how totally connected we now are thanks to our splendid little vodaphone prepaid "surf stick" (I assure you that is a German word!). Bizarrely this German provider will not only give us good value 3G connectivity in Germany but also cheaper connectivity in France than any of the solutions available there. Sometimes cartel capitalism offers the consumer no choice at all and that's the case with mobile connectivity in France at the moment, so we are returning from Berlin with two of these surfsticks. However this is perhaps the moment to launch the campaign for a common European mobile phone with roaming at no extra cost.
You can find out more about sim card deals and options in various countries from a great blog on mobile connectivity here. The guy writing it has 8 sim cards just for Germany which seems a bit over the top to me, he even has one to switch on the heater in his car. Not something we need, we just take the bus.

Night train to Berlin

The stranzblog arrived in Berlin just after eight this morning. We set off on the night train from Basel and were served breakfast in our sleeping compartment which we ate watching very familiar territory go by - Bitterfeld, Wittenberg, Jüterborg ... place where I was living and preaching just 20 years ago. It was wonderful to be in the city so early on Saturday morning, really crisp and cold but also very sunny and very lovely.
So we have already walked along the Spree, been to the Hakescher Markt, Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate and more importantly had a deliecious brunch on Kollwitzplatz as well as visiting the nearby bookshop - (ok it's true I did not come away empty handed, more about that later.)
Tomorrow Stephen's sister Myra, her husband Tom and the three children will join us. These few days in Berlin are our rather belated 50th birthday present to her. We also hope that they are the beginning of the final phase in Dr B's recovery. Berlin manages to energise him so let's hope he doesn't get too exhausted.
Meanwhile on Wednesday a real gathering of the clans is planned as my mother, her sister Doreen and her partner Martin also arrive in Berlin for the afternoon. They are on a church twinning weekend near Magdburg. We are going to have to find quite a noisy cafe to be able to cope with all 10 of us for Kaffee und Kuchen that afternoon. Should be fun if we mange to meet up though.

What book should I read on the train to Berlin ...

So do I want to be pseudo intellectual, pure pretentious or just authentically myself in my choice of reading matter for my holiday in Berlin?
I suppose the choice is theology, poetry, biography or crime fiction - realistically of course I still have 500 pages of Stieg Larsson to read so I suppose that will win out in the end.
Really what I want is the one thing I don't have - a really great novel I haven't yet read. Any suggestions?

The transport revolution in the Pays de Gex

At the beginning of January we decided to really try to no longer take the car to work. Better for us - even if it is only a shortish walk to the bus stop it is still more than the 10 paces to the car - better for the environment. Since timetable changes in December there are now far more F buses and one in two of them goes up to Gex. The real change is the new bus, the Y which comes in to Geneva from Thoiry in France and then goes past the airport and out to Ferney. We can get to the airport and also on to other parts of the Genevan tram and public transport system in more varied ways. It is really changing things. The bad weather conditions didn't help the start of the new timetable and the Y is still having problems sticking to its timetable, it is still a brilliant improvement. A new P bus should also be starting soon, linking people in Prévessin up to the trams in Meyrin.
As a result we have not used the car at all since January 2. So now the big question, should we buy a new car (our old VW Golf has just come of age this month and is 18 years old) or should we try to organise our lives differently and just hire a car when we need one? Hmmm ... Can't change the world unless we try to change ourselves.
The bad weather also led to all kinds of buses from Lausanne and elsewhere being used on the Genevan TPG. Dr B is more than a bit of a transport spotter and gets quite excited about the different kinds of buses available. I just get cross that the order for the new F buses was delayed by our anti public transport regional council so we have rather a hotchpoth of buses at the moment, many of which seem to come from Paris. The local transport revolution in the Pays de Gex still doesn't seem to have tackled the major reason for delays though which would be to get buses which have doors that open and close properly!
You can keep up to date with all kinds of information you never knew you didn't want to know about public transport in Geneva on the Site non officiel des TPG.
This is all part of cross border cooperation within something called the PACA (périmètre d'aménagement coordonné d'agglomération!!) which is holding a public meeting on February 18 to look at studies about how things are likely to evolve in some of the Pays de Gex and the neighbouring municipalities in Switzerland. There are similar studies underway for the Geneva and neighbouring France area. Find out more here.

Off to Venice for Christmas

The Stranzblog is taking the train to Venice early in the morning. It's likely to be a watery feast and not just because of the canals, in Venice as in Ferney it is raining. The snow that has delayed our great new bus service these past few days is all washed away and a damp and not very frosty Christmas is in preparation.
Meanwhile my first reason to celebrate tomorrow offers six hours in a train, reading restaurant cars and relaxation. Let the holiday begin!

Glad tidings of great joy about public transport in the Pay de Gex

This Sunday the Genevan bus timetable changes and it will really revolutionise things for someone like me who does not drive. Today the latest Ferney Magazine had the complete new timetable, many more F buses - and every other bus will go all the way to and from Gex. This is brilliant - but even more amazing - we are about to ge the Y bus which will take us directly to the airport and to Meyrin and to Thoiry.
All that remains now is for us to set up a blog about "Les restos depuis les bus F et Y" - doing the research could be quite fun!

Talking the talk or walking the walk?

Way back when I started blogging (nearly two years ago) I was trying to not use air travel to see how long I could last out before professional and personal constraints made me take a plane. I managed just over two years. Cyprus was the first time I flew, last October - train would have taken me 4 days each way - and then things go quite airborne and I flew to Manchester and Liverpool in the first half of this year - though I also travelled to Rome and Bremen twice each by train.
My friend Simon Oxley (who used to have season tickets for both Servette and Manchester City and you cannot do that without some VERY serious air travel) has written a good post about air travel which ends "After all, who is going to take any lectures about climate change from air travel junkies?"
I've been thinking recently about how it is what organisations actually do that is a key part of their communication and Simon's post fitted in well with such thoughts. Meanwhile a comment on Simon's blog makes this suggestion about environmental accounting:

There is a way to deal with this of course and it's called environmental accounting. We're all used to the time that gets taken up at meetings with finance reports and accounts, not to mention the auditors who are checking the accounts. It's all very important of course as finance is a bedrock for any organization, and all organizations have a responsibility to ensure the money they hold in trust for others is appropriately and correctly used. But why is not an appropriate amount of time spent by governing bodies in their environmental audit of organizations? It doesn't mean stopping all travel or meetings of course - despite qualifying in a quiz as a "nerd" I firmly believe face-to-face meetings offer something that virtual teleconferencing never can. But it does mean asking whether travel/meetings are appropriately and correctly used for the world that an organization holds in trust for others - as well as the other potential sources of environmental irresponsibility - then having a proper strategy to deal with offsetting unavoidable environmentally-unfriendly activities: not by asking participants to consider making a donation to an organization, but by building this into the accounts and strategy of the organization as a whole. Of course people will complain that money for their pet project is "wasted" on such measures, but in years to come if we get that far people will look back and ask who anyone could have been so naive. And there is an additional add on bonus, as a genuinely environmentally-audited organization is then in a much better place to advise governments and others what they should do.

So do you walk the walk or talk the talk? I really must buy the worms for the wormery and stop using the tumble drier. I must also try to stand up for a more accountable approach to climate change within the organisations I work for - churches are good at talking the talk on this issue. Are we really willing to walk the walk?

Off to the Conference of European Churches Assembly in Lyon

My suitcase is packed and I'm about to set off for the assembly of the Conference of European Churches which is taking place just up the road in Lyon. I'm catching the train at 13.58.
Not sure at all whether I shall have time to blog much while there. The press room and youth desks are running a blog which has already started and we're also going to try and tweet the assembly which will be quite a challenge.

Suddenly noticing beauty

Waiting for the bus this evening I suddenly noticed how very beautifully formed one of the enormous pine trees was. The branches and greenery looked perfect against the midsummer late evening sky and the way the point tapered upwards just really pleased me aesthetically. I must have tood at the stop hundreds of times and not noticed that tree in that way before. So tonight I drank in its beauty and gave thanks that I had rather longer than usual to wait for the bus.
We want the world to change but often we need to change the way we see things.

Jean-Jacques Bauswein's 65th birthday

The Stranzblog is currently on holiday somewhere in the Jura near Champagnole to mark our friend Jean Jacques Bauswein's 65th birthday. It's a wonderful fun weekend with extraordinary cultural and not so cultural discoveries. We bought delicious home-made jam from two women who have set up a small cooperative selling fruit and aromatic plant products, grown either in their gardens or collected from the surrounding countryside. We visited Emmanuel Jobez' Villa Palladian in Syam, and St Claude's Pipe museum. We took the "train des hirondelles", relaxed, got to know others in the group, ate great food and then heard the answers to the quiz we were all supposed to have taken part in beforehand. Stranz/Brown incorportated got "nul points", but still got a prize. I have enough problems understanding cryptic clues in English let alone French.
There is no internet connection where we are staying so you are spared daily updates on our activities. This morning we got up early as I had to interrupt celebrations to lead worship for Pentecost in Ferney as several of our young people got confirmed this morning. It was powerful and moving to hear them confessing their faith, my colleague Bernard preached very well on the Emmaus Road text and afterwards we gathered for drinks and photos garden. I caught up with lots and lots of news from people I hadn't seen for many years, happy and sad stories vivified by the Spirit.
Meanwhile Dr B has been covering the big service to mark Calvin's 500th birthday from the Cathedral in Geneva. It was broadcast on Eurovision this morning. Must see if I can download it or watch it.
In a moment we will head back to the mountains for some wine-tasting before a festival meal at which Dr B will for the first time in his life wear a DJ and bow tie - yes this party even has a dress code. More when we're back and recovered from wine-tasting and assorted festivities. Photos will follow.

Yes it's official you can follow me on twitter

Sorry folks I have given in and am giving Twitter a go. I shall try and tweet in English and German this week from the Kirchentag in Bremen where there will be a world record attempt to tweet the whole Bible in German. Now in german I think that is zwitschern.
We'll see what else I manage to write. I'll be on my way to the bus stop by the time this gets posted, maybe I'll even manage to tweet from the train as there are now internet hotspots on parts of the German system. We'll see!

The ethics and politics of translation

There is something so satisfying about travelling by train, particularly through three countries and two capital cities. As usual in Paris I went to the wrong platform of the ligne D of the RER but I still made it to the Gare du Nord very easily to catch the Eurostar to London. The most stressful part of the journey was definitely the car journey to try and catch a bus or a tram. We forgot that when the snow falls Geneva becomes gridlock city. Five minutes later and I would have missed the train.

On the train I began reading Henri Meschonnic's Ethique et politique du traduire.
Just the title and the first page have triggered so many thoughts that I didn't get much further than musing, but I'm already looking forwards to the return journey on Saturday - just the chapter headings give you an idea - The meaning of the language not the meaning of the words, Why we need a bit of Bible in philosophy, Grammar - to the east of Eden, Religious texts in translation - God or Allah? and my favourite: "Embibler la voix" enbibling the voice ...
I realised that when translating the title into English something interesting happens that illustrates some of the points he's trying to make in the book - "The ethics and politics of translation" in English makes singular nouns into plurals and also turns the verb traduire into a noun. To me at least it immediately sounds more pragmatic and less philosophical than the French. This is a follow up book to an earlier one called La poétique du traduire - the poetics of translation.
On page 2 Meschonnic says:
"La poétique est aussi une éthique, puisqu'un poème est un acte éthique car il transforme le sujet, celui qui écrit et celui qui lit."
I love the idea of a poem being an ethical and transformative act and I read this just after having read this in an article by Alain Houziaux about Christian Bobin and his poetic prose:
"Le succès de Christain Bobin pose une vraie question aux Eglises: est-ce que, pour un large public, la poésie spirituelle n'assure pas aujourd'hui une fonction que les Eglises et les religions ne savent plus ou ne veulent plus assumer: celle de la consolation?"
As I read that I thought of Rowan Williams, theologian, church leader but also poet. I also remembered interpreting for Alan Falconer, former director of Faith and Order, and beingintrigued by his idea that perhaps what we needed to do to achieve deeper Christian unity was to read and write more poetry ...

It's been two years one month and 2 days

Since I toook a plane. However, today - my mother's birthday and German national day - I shall fly from Geneva to Amsterdamn in order to fly on to Cyprus on Sunday. I'm still a bit sad that I didn't make more of an effort at least to go one way via train and boat but it would have been five days travelling one way.
Anyway the weekI get back from Cyprus I shall be taking the night train to Rome again. I'm just hoping they get on and repair the channel tunnel quickly.

Greetings from Bremen!

I'm about to take the train back to Geneva from this lovely city in the north of Europe where I've been attending a planning meeting for the next German Protestant Kirchentag which will take place here from 20-24th May 2009.
Bremen with its international trading history, harbour and tradition as a city-state is an interesting place the church conference to take place and talk about globalisation.
It's also interesting confessionally as each local congregation decides whether it is Lutheran, Reformed or accepts both confessions. It's a much more lay led church than many of the Protestant churches in Germany so a good base for the Kirchentag which is a lay movement.
Anyway book the dates for the Kirchentag now and come with a group - just 340 days left to get organised - international guests welcome.

"Jamais sans mon département"

One of the games almost anyone who has travelled long distances by road in France has played is spotting the departmental number at the end of French number plates. Each French "département" - the county, maybe in English - has a number, allocated alphabetically from 01 for Ain (where we happen to live) to 95 for the Val-d'Oise - and traditionally the last two numbers of the car's number plate is the number of the department - our 17 year old Golf sports 01, but when we bought it, it had a number plate 59 (as we then lived in the Departement du Nord). What better way of passing the time on a long journey by trying to guess if 46 is the Departement of Lot or Lot-et Garonne, for example. Anyway, in the name of efficiency, the government is planning to replace the traditional number plate with a national number plate which would belong to the car "for life". I'm pleased to say that there is already a citizens' action group, "Jamais sans mon département" (Never without my department) which is mobilising against the proposal and has attracted cross-party support from the Communists to the ruling conservative UMP party, and now has its own Facebook page.

Taking the night train to Rome

I'm about to take the night train to Rome.
As I contemplate the voyage a whole panoply of possibilities open up to me: I'm sure it will be possible on the 12 hour overnight trip to read all of the books I haven't got around to finishing recently, revise my course notes, finish a translation, write up my paper for feminist theology and of course sleep and daydream and night dream ... and make enless lists in my head ...
Perhaps this is what they mean when they say travel broadens the mind - it fills your mind with the possibilities of life.
Tomorrow night Dr B will take the night train to Berlin so we are trying to keep European railways going by getting to capital cities other than by plane.

Public transport - things are getting moving

Picture from the SNOTPG - Site non officiel des TPG

Well this weekend sees a true revolution for those of us working in Geneva the No 5 bus will go directly to the airport, making it even easier to travel to distant places (btw it is now over 15 months since I flew anywhere). The new timetables comes in across Europe this weekend - one utter miracle is the French SNCF discovery (in Rhone Alpes anyway) of what the the Germans call "Taktverkehr" - no this is not about Germans being tactful but it is about trains running at the same time past each hour, so it looks as if we 're going to have a regional train to Lyon every two hours (supplemented by TGV's inbetween leaving in the more usual, less regular French way).
The other big news is that the Genevan Z bus is now going to go over the border, just like the F bus does to Ferney. There have been problems with this in the past because of the Schengen accords and the French Prefet of the Ain (the department we live in) actually once blocked a Swiss bus from Nyon from crossing the border into Divonne, saying it was illegal! Not great for the people trying to get to work.
Anyway the population in our region has been rapidly rising over the past decade and there has been a huge amount of new building. Meanwhile the right wing governed communauté des communes has not exactly moved fast to think about an integrated transport policy. For a while I got the impression that the policy was traffic jams and road deaths. So now it's really good that the Noctambus on Fridays and Saturdays will go as far as Gex, young people won't have to try and hitchhike home on a dangerous piece of road - and even we could stay in Geneva until after midnight. There's also an alternative Genevan public transport website which has a great video of the inauguration of the new tram and lots of interesting information and forums where people can rant about late buses and changes in the routes etc. It may be the place to start the campaign to get bendy buses on the F bus route.
I suppose you've guessed, I do not drive, hence my interest in public transport, just occasionally you may think I'm a train spotter! Anway if we're going to do anything about global warming public transport has to be part of it.