the Grand Tour blog

The Berlin WiFi Problem

Well, the last post was a bit of a damp squib! It was meant to be the start of a series of posts from these few days in Berlin. But the WiFi in my apartment has decided not to work for some reason, so this post comes without photos over the telephone system.

Neither the iPhone nor iPad will connect, though both were fine on Sunday when I arrived. I've tried all the normal fixes on both devices. It's particularly frustrating not least because I spent good money on an iPad Camera Connection kit to enable me to blog with photos from my compact camera (the DSLR uses CF cards, and anyway I shoot RAW + JPG and I'm not sure what the iPad would make of that).

So as I did last May/June I shall have to try to post retrospectively. Apologies.

Looking Back at Technology

Up at 06:30, some technical issues with the WiFi, a little bit more diary and into breakfast 07:35 – these buffet style breakfasts always seem to take so long as one goes backwards and forwards to organise the plate and the coffee and the forgotten utensils – then on the U6 (five minutes away) to Hallisches Tor. Walked along the main road by the canal rather than change to the U1 for one stop, though it wasn't quite as pleasant and isolated as I thought it might be, to arrive at the Deutsches Technikmuseum (German Museum of Technology) at 09:30.

Berlin's answer to London's Science Museum, the Technikmuseum started life as a transport museum but has since expanded into other areas. And it shows: the two original engine sheds are crammed with huge steam locomotives and reconstructions of the way the different classes used to travel, in a variety of rolling stock, spanning a large chunk of the history of the railways. The large New Building has well-presented displays over several open floors covering German aviation and shipping.

But the Computing section was quite restricted (reflecting the relatively small German computing industry perhaps), though it claims the world's first programmable computer, Konrad Zuse's Z1 from 1938, a floating-point binary mechanical calculator which read instructions from a perforated 35mm film; a late 1980s reconstruction, built by Zuse himself with a small team, is on display. Apparently the original never worked well due to a lack of mechanical precision.

There is a small section on print – not a patch on the specialist Museum of Printing in Liepzig of course – and on papermaking, and I was particularly interested in the collection of sometimes weird and wonderful typewriters. The large Photography section is excellent, but I felt the dimly-lit film and cinema display on the top floor was rather dry. Whatever any shortcomings, it's a huge museum and it was difficult to do it justice in a few hours. I came out feeling somewhat overloaded with information and images at 13:45, after four and a quarter hours, and I hadn't even tried to look at Road Transport in its nearby but separate building.

iPhone Network Issues en route to Bonn

After four train journeys - First Capital Connect in the UK, then Eurostar, Thalys and Deutsche Bahn - all four of them running late, I've finally arrived in Bonn for my first night's stop. Staying at the excellent Hotel Mozart where I stayed two and a half years ago on the Grand Tour; they remembered, which was nice. It's good to be back.

But a minor panic on the way as the iPhone resolutely displayed "No Service" throughout my interminable wait between trains in the less-than-exciting Brussels Midi station. When it still failed to find a signal as the train crossed into Germany I rebooted the iPhone and all was well. This is the second time in two months that I've had to reboot to fix a signal problem (the first time was at home in the UK): a bug lurking somewhere perhaps?

Typepad app updated

At last the Typepad app for iPhone has (yesterday) been updated to version 1.2, which among other things seems to have fixed the scrolling text bug I mentioned in the last post (and which I reported back in March).

And if this sentence appears in a new paragraph, they've fixed the paragraph break issue as well. UPDATE: Yes it does, so they have! Thanks Typepad.

iPhone, blogging and Orange

Thought it might be worth blogging about blogging on the move. I had far less Internet connectivity on tour than I expected, and certainly all the recent posts have been direct from the iPhone over the mobile network. There's always the concern about the cost of data roaming – and we've all heard horror stories of people coming home to huge bills – but the iPhone Typepad app that I've been using seems very efficient and a blogpost (like email) is only a few KB of data. The iPhone records the amount of data sent and received, and I've been keeping an eye on the total. Provided I don't open Safari there isn't a problem, and I keep data roaming switched off except when I need it. 

I've been working hard at using the larger horizontal keyboard of the iPhone, which is much faster than the small hunt-and-peck vertical keyboard, but prone to a lot of errors; thumbs are big clumsy things! But I'm getting better. 

The main problem with the otherwise very effective Typepad app is that there is a bug which prevents the text scrolling properly, so on any post longer than ten iPhone lines the last line gets lost off the bottom of the screen. My solution was to draft longer posts in the excellent Notebooks app and then copy and paste it all into Typepad. The other issue is that it posts as plain text with no obvious way to break paragraphs, hence some rather long paragraphs from me until I could get to them for a bit of editing. I think the solution, which I'm trying with this post, is to include the appropriate HTML tag. [UPDATE: No, this is not the solution!]

Finally, for the three weeks I was in Italy I found myself connected to a number of different phone networks. Almost all the time the iPhone showed full signal strength, whether I was in the city or out in the country on a regional train, and never once did I see it indicate 'No Service'. In common with many people on Eurostar, I imagine, the first thing I wanted to do on emerging from the Channel Tunnel and getting back on my home network was to phone or text family and friends. Not possible, unfortunately, as there was zero or intermittent signal almost all the way into London. Pathetic!  Wake up, Orange, install some infrastructure!

Wireless-less in Vicenza

Or to be precise, I can connect to the hotel's WiFi network but can't get the login screen which would allow me to use the Internet. Which is a pity as I wrote a long report about Venice last night but then couldn't post it. I'll have to sneak it into its time-slot later [which I have now done; see below]. And it looks as if blogging from now on will have to be by iPhone, probably until I get home.

Bologna arrival

I am now installed on the 7th floor of the Best Western Hotel in Bologna. Arrived here feeling very hot and sticky after fighting through the Bologna rush hour in the bus – and before that fighting in the chaotic station to find the loos, buy a bus pass, try to check some bus information but failing – and waiting at the bus stop as it started to rain. There is much hooting and crazy Italian driving at the busy junction below. I have air conditioning, but I think I shall die of dehydration if I leave it on overnight, so I may have to put up with the traffic noise.

Everything in the room is perfect, and bears the hallmark of many focus groups. I have a sewing kit, a bath cap, a sponge shoe cleaner, three biscuits, two tea bags, two stirrers in sealed bags, one shot of coffee whitener, three towels of different sizes, some bathroom scales, and not quite enough room to lay out my suitcase.

I also have a wireless internet connection, so for the first time on the trip I can post to the blog from the computer; all the earlier posts have been from my iPhone. But the internet connection is one of the awful hotel systems that require constant logging in through a special webpage, and won’t allow me to use my SMPT server to send email. I can read email without difficulty.

Catching up: regular readers may notice that I’m starting to ‘back fill’ a few posts where it’s been impractical to post from the iPhone at the proper time; that really is quite hard work! That will probably continue, on occasions when I have a proper connection. I feel it’s best to try to keep reports in chronological order.

Check list checking

A week of final preparations, adding things to my multiple to-do lists as fast as I check them off. Confirmed all the images have been transferred to the computer from the Nikon D300 and P5000 memory cards, backed them up and deleted everything from the cards. Charged the camera batteries. Finalised the printed backup information and tickets, and taped it all in two envelopes under the lining of the case so it doesn’t get left anywhere.

Fiddled with packing, though some difficulty making final decisions on clothing. And no way I can carry the Epson P2000 [a portable disk for image storage] as backup, so I'm a little concerned in case anything happens to the PowerBook. I guess I’d just have to shoot JPEG only, not RAW+JPG as I normally do, and probably buy more cards.

Phoned the hotel in Milan to say I will be arriving late; the train is due in at 10:30pm, and I’m told that some TGV-Artesia trains can run quite late. Relieved to hear the hotel has my reservation – I’d had a slight fear I would arrive in the middle of the night and they’d know nothing about me!

On Grand Tour 1 I carried the Rough Guides to Germany and Austria, but never referred to them except to look up restaurants a few times. And the books are heavy. So this time I’ve scanned the restaurant pages for Bologna, Florence, Rome, Lucca, Venice and Vicenza; no problem with copyright, I think, as this is strictly for my personal use. Adjusted the scans, saved them as JPGs and also combined them into a PDF for easier 2-up printing (which I almost forgot to do).

Transferred the restaurant JPGs to the Files app on the iPhone, together with a PDF of the Cremona-Busseto-Bologna train timetables from Trenitalia. The timetables now show fares for these regional trains – just €2.80 for Cremona-Busseto. Files was behaving itself, and not causing the Mac Finder to hang as it has ever since I upgraded to the full app; I did quit most other applications on the Mac first, which might (or might not) have made a difference.

Even spent some time relaxing in the sun today, between sorting out paperwork and fettling the suitcase.

Enough planning already!

Updated the Highlights list with the latest bookings, plus details of Roma Pass etc., Rome bus and metro tickets, and Florence free-entry locations. Printed all modified pages, 2-up. Added the bookings and a couple of other times to the Itinerary and printed a final copy. Made sure I have backup copies of the most important stuff to bury in the bottom of the suitcase. Electronic copies of almost everything on the iPhone.

That's it: the end of planning. I've probably done too much and I certainly don't feel like doing any more!

That iPhone power adapter

A while ago I posted on the impossibility of buying, in the UK, Apple's neat continental power adapter for the iPhone. But now I have one, many thanks to a friend in France. It's certainly a slimmer and more pocketable thing than the UK charger combined with a converter:

The price, of course, is pretty outrageous, and much of it must be due to the comprehensive packaging:

But it's nice to get these things right. And I know I'll appreciate it when on tour.