Germany

I'm back from my conference visit to Dresden in Germany. It was fantastic. We were shown great hospitality and everything ran very smoothly. Dresden airport was closed on the way in but it didn't cause the sort of chaos we would expect in the UK (on the way in and out the UK airports were hell. At Gatwick we were just making a transfer but they made us go out through security and then back in again! Why? We had our fingerprints taken and our shoes were scanned even though we had just come off an internal European flight. Dumb.). In Germany our train journey from Berlin to Dresden was superb. The train arrived on time, there were seats and luggage space, we had air conditioning and best of all the journey was smooth and silent, like floating on air. Why can't the UK get these things right? We had excellent meals for about 10 Euros (£7 or $14). Back in the UK we called into a service station on the motorway and were met with inedible and expensive choices of food. On the way out we spotted a car being broken into by two kids right across from the transport police offices where I spotted several cops sitting having a cup of tea as we drove past. The good thing about travel is it makes you realise how much better things are elsewhere.