Train stations I’ve enjoyed

We all miss travel, even, oddly, people like me who had no travel plans. What a pleasure and privilege that was.

One my favourite things about travel is seeing different train stations (yes that was your nerd-ometer exploding). Many times I’ve got off a train and thought, ‘But couldn’t we just hang around the station for a while?’

Here are some I’ve enjoyed and photographed.

Helsinki, August 2002

Here’s youthful me about to board a train with my family from Helsinki to… can you see it on the screen? St. Petersburg!

I asked my brother to take the picture, not to record my baby face and single-tone hair, but that evocative destination. What a thrill – and one we miss out on in our island nation. Can you imagine showing up in, say, Cullybackey or Mullingar and the board saying ‘St Petersburg, Platform 2’? Or ‘Budapest’? Or ‘Beijing’? International train travel – wow! And no, the Enterprise doesn’t count.   

Antwerp Central, March 2003

This was my first encounter with the beautiful, high-roofed European train station, which simply doesn’t exist in Ireland. Heuston might be the closest. We were in Leuven, Belgium, for a week on a field trip as part of my Master’s. We had a free afternoon and some of us took the train to Antwerp. Great waffles.

A Paris metro station, January 2009

Obviously not one of my favourite stations, but a cool photo. It’s the symmetry of trains and trains lines and stations and platforms that make them so appealing. I can’t remember what station this was, but the escalators just kept going deeper and deeper. Terrifying.  

Tallinn, July 2011

 

I’d happily base all my holidays on the availability of miniature road trains. Long before I had kids, I would head straight for these. This one is in Tallinn, Estonia, which I remember because Wife left her bag, which had her passport, behind on the seat. We had to wait half an hour for the train to do another circuit and come back. The guide handed it to us. Phew! Suddenly, it was the best day ever.

Berlin, January 2012

If I could go anywhere tomorrow it might be Berlin. Not for the architecture or culture or food, but for the history and that weird atmosphere. I’ve been there twice for a few days, wandering those endless streets with Wife. I even listened to U2’s Zoo Station in Zoo Station. The top photo is the entrance to the U-Bahn station in Potsdamerplatz, an uber modern business and entertainment district near the old wall. The others are Alexanderplatz Station in the East, which turns up in The Bourne Supremacy and a classic novel called Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Doblin which I liked the idea of but didn’t make it past the first few pages.

Dorasan Station, South Korea (just about), November 2016

I got the amazing opportunity to go to a conference in Seoul. When it was finished, they took us on a bus tour of several sites along the edge of the Demilitarized Zone. This is Dorasan Station, purpose built during a thaw in relations in the early 2000s for a time when travel may be possible between North and South. Next stop, Pyongyang. Needless to say, it was eerie gazing along those untravellable tracks towards the North. But to be honest, silent and deserted platforms anywhere can be unnerving. Have you been to Portrush?

The Hague, September 2019

Here’s Den Haag Centraal, which I had the joy of visiting twice last year for some workshops. The trains come in on two levels. Two! Given my standard image of a train station is something between Belfast Central and Coleraine, this obviously blows my mind. I took this photo after I arrived at 9pm, eating a box of the best pasta I’ve ever had from a place just out of shot. I now remember that half hour I spent in the station as ecstatically happy, even though I know I was tired and little anxious about finding the hotel. Oh, and the guy on the piano was playing Good Save the Queen.  

Return to the garden centres!

A lot of people think garden centres are dull, bland, inoffensive places – selling ‘nice’ things to ‘nice’ people.

But there are so many other great things about them too.

They have delicious food. They often have play areas. If it’s raining you can stretch your legs and stay dry. And there’s easy parking. All boxes ticked.

I’m in the loyalty club. I am literally a card-carrying garden centre enthusiast.

Not long before the shutdown, I suggested we hit my favourite garden centre (Donaghadee, of course), and my seven year-old had a hissy fit: ‘You always want to go to the garden centre!’ (I reminded her she always enjoys it when we get there). Then, a swift mood swing later, she had fun listing all the things I’d bought in the garden centre.

There was a lot, and I confess it make me take a hard look at myself.

But the truth is, whatever street cred I used to have (none), the advantages pale beside my old person garden slippers, egg-shaped egg timer, cookery books, indoor plants, and bargain basket outdoor heater – not to mention, the calm and wellbeing I feel every time I amble between rows of flowers and high-end kitchenware.

Best of all, in a garden centre, the kids are – one of our favourite words – contained. No obvious dangers or escape routes, unlike the garden centre’s rowdier cousin, shopping centre. There’s colouring. There’s a kid’s lunch deal. There’s ice cream.

Will I bother going if the cafés aren’t open? I don’t know. But I’ve come to terms with the disturbing overlap between ‘places I like to go’ and ‘places middle aged women like to take their elderly mothers’.

Garden centre, really. Is there anything you can’t do?