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Nicky Gardner

Nicky Gardner unravels some of the background to today’s announcement that a rail company will launch an express InterCity bus service across the German-Polish border.

The 1519th issue of the Thomas Cook European Rail Timetable is published this week. Few titles run to so many editions, but few document something as fluid as rail and ferry schedules. Every month a new edition of the book plots the routes of new trains through Europe, revealing new departures and lost connections.

Platform Four in Tallinn station: the train to Narva rests in the sunshine. An odd selection of shopping bags, magazines and items of clothing scattered on plastic seats are evidence of people having made a claim on a particular space on the train. One person has left an umbrella, another a melon and a third seat is occupied by a plastic chimpanzee. Their respective owners stand on the platform until it is evident that the train is about to depart.

A few days ago I travelled by train from the Berlin suburb of Lichterfelde to Ewell in England, just south of London. In total I paid €55 for the entire 15-hour train journey of 1393 km. Looking at the different fare components, I see that I travelled across Germany for less than one cent per kilometre.

"April is the cruellest month," wrote TS Eliot. Not so in southern Sweden, where March can be much crueller than April. This is the season when winter's icy hold on forests and lakes is challenged by slowly rising temperatures. Thick lake ice turns to milky cream, while the thaw makes forests utterly impenetrable.