High passage at Altenbekener Viaduct

Writing my blip journal in the train, is new to me. I have done a lot of writing in trains before....of course: lots of letters, concepts, notes, diaries etc. Writing with a pen. In shaking trains crowded with other passengers. But never before did I make a text that would be 'in the air' later on that same day. After finishing this journal I'm transforming it into Googledoc. That gives an easier upload after arrival this evening. This is my way of combining oldfashioned pen and smartphone-tech. See if this works for the moment.

Leaving your home for some period always implies a kind of cleaning and closing-rituals. Just a matter of caring for the next homecoming... But after turning the key,you feel: "en route, and adieu!" We walked down to the railwaystation, a fad sun tried to break the clouds, glowing through the crooked branches of a "Methusalem"-like oak. I will show its picture a next time.

The railway itself has been build in the first half of the 19th century. It connected Paris, Berlin and Moskau and halted in Altenbeken, not far from Karlshafen....Can you hear and smell the heavy steamlocs, shrieking wheels..? This grand history ended definitely in 1948, when the Iron Curtain cut the track into a double deadend, somewhere east of Goettingen. The beginning of a slow decay of stationbuildings, multiple tracks. Untill finally all the connexions are regionalized and simplified into modern local transport. Leaving much of the old architectures in decay or ruin.

New highspeed trains only halt in Altenbeken, where nobody wants to stay anymore. There is still a huge train-viaduct - build more than 160 years ago - it was bombarded in 1944 and ‘45, but since 1950 again in full function. I was happy enough to blip it through the front-window as we were going to pass over it. And finally this little travel-note: at a small railwaystation-building near to Karlshafen - out of service for years already, one can read in Gothic lettertype:

Difference of local time counter to Berlin-time "10 minutes"....

The traveller leaves his smartphone aside and searches his pocket for a old time watch to reset its 'big hand'. Then the steam engine-flute hisses. We are crossing the border to Ostwestphalia: “Bon voyage, Gute Reise, Good journey!..”.