Honestly, it's a disgrace - both the insane price differences between plane and train at some points, and the also insane booking procedures in some cases.

Imagine that you'd like to go to, well, let's say Cambridge. That's a bit of a way, yes, but... it would be perfectly possible to do it by train. Quite nice, even, if you happen to travel on a day where you can catch a night train. I'd go to Munich in the late afternoon or early evening, catch the night train there, sleep my way to Brussels. There a little breakfast maybe, then onto the Eurostar to London St. Pancras, and after that it's just a half-hour hop to Cambridge with National Rail.

Easypeasy. Except... well. I can even find the connection I'd like via the bahn.de portal (that is not always the case with more complicated connections), but I can't book it, probably because they are out of contingency tickets for either the ÖBB nightjet or the SNCF Eurostar. So I'd have to book everything separately, which means there's no automatic possibility to take a later train if one of the booked ones is delayed.

It also means making accounts at four different companies, and booking everything separately, which is probably (though not guaranteed) more expensive than having a single thingie. 

While on the other hand, if I'm to book a flight... that is done very quickly, very easily, even if it were with a change somewhere. And it is still ridiculously cheap (thanks to the still ridiculous minimal taxing done on some of the flight stuff). 

So not only is the plane much faster in this case, it is also cheaper, and you have actual hassle and trouble to book a train. Grrr. 

(As you can tell, I am not amused. Even though, in this case, it will probably end up being the plane anyways because of it being much faster, I would really like the two possibilities to be a little more evened up, regarding the ease of booking and the price.)

There's a German saying that goes "Reisen bildet" - travelling will make you more knowledgeable.

Well, this is certainly true for me and this last trip to Switzerland. You see, I have been there before, and I had noticed that the Swiss have different wall outlets for their plugs, but I had only brought the nice slim very versatile "Euro-Stecker" before: 

...and I had never run in any problem with that.

This time, though, I brought my laptop. Which doesn't have the "Euro-Stecker", but the larger, round "Schutzkontakt-Stecker" - and that's a different type. I had assumed that it would also just fit into the outlets, with its two prongs in about the same width and the same constellation as the Euro type, but, alas, the outlets that were available were all a recessed spot. And the form of the recess was, of course, the shape of the normal Swiss plug.

The German Schuko plug is too fat for that. 

So I was dashing off on the quest to find a different cable (since the trefoil connector is the same), but they had none. And then, the technic guy turned up with an adapter. I wasn't in the room at that time, but I imagine the adapter was procured, happily attached, and then it was found that it was what the Swiss call a "Fixadapter".

Which means that it is designed to turn a German-style electrical thingummy into a proper Swiss electrical thingummy. It is to be attached and never ever in the life of the device removed again.

So basically, I left my computer unattended in a Swiss conference room for a few minutes, and it went full-on native! Well, at least the end bit of it did. The one closest to the plug.

Fortunately, this cable is easily replaced (I have a temporary, borrowed replacement as I type this), and it meant that the presentation went well with no fear of running out of battery.

Also it makes for a very funny story, I have learned something (Reisen bildet!), and for my next foray into Switzerland, I have the proper plug!  

No more blogposts for the rest of this week, as I'm in beautiful Italy to teach at the Winter School for Textiles organised at the University of Padova. If you're curious and want to read more, you can do so in Italian here. 

On the journey back home from Uppsala, I stumbled across a nice and helpful website if you're planning to travel by train: zugfinder.net. It lets you search for a specific train (like, say, the EN 346) and shows how much and how often that train was delayed in the past 30 days. That could have been very helpful indeed for my plans!

You can also see what train is where just now, in case you are looking for a specific one. 

I've had a wonderful, if quite short, time in Uppsala at the Material Literacy workshop. It was planned as a rather short stint, but ended up being even shorter due to a massive train delay. Fortunately I could follow the part I'd have missed otherwise on Zoom! 

It was wonderful to meet some old friends and colleagues again,  and meet new people. There were fruitful discussions and lots of looks in detail at wonderful textiles. Hopefully there will be more on the topic of material literacy - I think it's a very helpful term for being able to read objects, and having some properly structured, thought-out lessons or schooling on that will surely be very useful for many people.

We finished with a little excursion into the church museum, and I was very happy to see the Golden Gown again.. It's been so many years since I was there last.

On the way back, there was time for a short stroll through Stockholm (well, some of it!) and a bit of food shopping before going back in the night train. I managed to find a nice small Christmas market there, so back at home, we were able to enjoy some freshly imported ostkaka:

I had not heard of that before coming across it on the Christmas market, but I got to try it there, and it was very nice. It's served warm, with the option of adding whipped cream and jam or something fruity, which we did when we had it here. Definitely recommend it!

The way back had just a little delay overall, so I was home in the afternoon, one hour later than planned originally. Now there's no travel until the end of the work year... which is also nice. There's a stack of things waiting to go to the post tomorrow morning, and I'm looking forward to doing some maintenance work during the winter break. The cat also approves to have her cuddle spot on the desk appropriately staffed again!

Have I blogged about this before? If so, please forgive me. If not, enjoy the fun that Chronotrains brings you -  a website where you can state a place of start and a time and then see how far you can get by train, in that time. 

I can get, for instance, to the very south of Denmark in just under 8 hours. Or to Den Haag. It's quite fun to play around with, and sometimes very sobering how much possible distances depend on the network you have access to. (And for really long trips, I usually prefer a night train, even if that takes longer - because I never count the time that I'm sleeping as full travel time...

The thing about a medieval-style Great Wheel? It's really Great, as in Large. Looking at images, the wheel appears to be really huge, compared to the spinners. And when one thinks about it, that is sort of understandable - after all, the aim is to get a lot of twist quickly, and there are no gears involved. So the size difference between the wheel and the disc on the spindle (often called whorl, but I find that confusing) has to be as large as possible.

When I built my reconstruction, I was thus looking for a size that would compare to the illustrations we have, and of course with a look at its intended use - demonstrations. Which meant it also had to come apart easily, and the single pieces had to fit into the car. 

Which they do. The wheel itself has its own special spot right under the roof, where it's built to fit perfectly:

The board end in the foreground belongs to the bottom (main) board. The rest is one box with the small pieces (like the wedges, drive band, and spindles) and one pack with legs and the holders for spindle and wheel. 

So now I just have to add the rest of the equipment, and we're ready to roll!

(Ingelheim. Sunday. See me there if you can, and say hello!)