It begins!

The trip to Saigon begins!

Guten abend from Germany! I can’t believe this is only day 2. It has been a whirlwind of a start to the journey and this is the first chance we have had to blog – well that’s what you get for travelling through four countries in 2 days! We had a wonderful send off from St Peter’s Metro in Sunderland. The museum staff turned out to see us off safely, together with Councillor Spedding and photographers from the local press and Tyne Tees TV. A very exciting moment, after all the build up and preparation.

After we had waved goodbye to Sunderland, it was on to Newcastle Central to catch the GNER train to London. The travel team were finally alone together to collect their thoughts. Smudge the station cat had his photo taken in 1st class, looking very pleased with himself. He particularly enjoyed the banana from the breakfast buffet. Kate's mum joined us at York, for a good luck toast on the platform, then we sped on to London.

In London we lugged the heavy bags of camera equipment and kit through the Underground to the Eurostar terminal, where Mark Atkins from Eurostar marketing team greeted us. Time to make my first purchase of postcards for the S to S collection. After a moments panic when I couldn’t find my passport (I’m told it makes good tv but turns your hair grey) we boarded the train and zoomed towards Lille.

Only time for a quick bite in France (omelette and frites), so we quickly looked round then hopped on the train to Brussels. This time we used a trolley to save our sore backs and checked into the Continental hotel - only stopping to dump our bags before being taken for a Belgian beer by Kates friend. Back to sleep for 5 hours in the cheap and chintzy hotel. There will be sore shoulders tomorrow after lugging that gear!

Day 2 - 26th January 2007
No internet in the hotel, so no chance to write the first blog - so we got on with shooting and filming in the Grand Place, Brussels - fabulous architecture and lots of tourist tours. Their museum has a beautiful facade, with lovely long red banners - could see them on the Monkwearmouth Station columns, hmmm.....

Hotfooting it back to the station we missed our connection to Cologne by 30 seconds, too much to do and not enough time! It would have helped if the trolleys were waiting outside, not two floors away on the platforms.

An hour later we got going on the train, but it delayed our connection to Essen (Sunderland's twin city) until 6.20pm and after frantic phonecalls we arrived at a snowy Zechszollverein to meet Bertholt, our guide. The Zollverein is an Industrial Museum, on a former pit complex which closed in 1986, see www.zollverein.de. The orange glow of the escalator lights looked amazing in the dark and Bertholt took us up to the roof, with views of all the twinkling lights of Essen. Hopefully we will get to come back or do a museum exchange, as this was a jaw dropping site.

Tired now, we headed back to Cologne, getting back just in time to collect our left luggage at 9.55pm. A taxi ride to the hostel, and finally an internet connection to blog! But - after 2 and a half hours of struggling with connections and technological vices we gave up and went to bed. Finally - sleep!!! But at 3am four rowdy Moroccan boys, who we found out later had been partying in Cologne after exams, rolled into the dorm and woke us all up with their drunken antics. Oh dear, not much sleep for us intrepid travellers, wheres me ear plugs??? Wuppertal and Berlin tomorrow......