That initial escape from Dortmund to Frankfurt gave me the confidence to go on adventures further afield & over the next couple of years, I forayed all over Germany by train. I went to Kiel in the north, to München in the south, to Hanover in the east & to Köln in the west – I even went to Zeebrugge, which was a good 8 hour trip, just to try some Belgian waffles. In fact I was sat in the station café in Zeebrugge when it was announced that the Berlin wall had fallen. And If I ever hear David Hasselhoff singing ‘Looking for Freedom’ again.
My bimbles increased dramatically when I then got posted to Berlin though. Following the 1948-49 airlift where British forces helped the West German population get vital food & aid, the Berliners agreed as a thank-you, that all Allied personnel were to be given free travel on public transport within the city, an act that was still in operation until the last troops left in 1994. So when I arrived in early 1992, I found I had a massive city full of history to explore & all for free. I remember looking at a map of the city on a wall at Spandau U-bahn (underground) station & wondering where do I go first. I studied the indexed list of stations, like a gambler would study a race list, in the hope a name would suddenly leap out at me. One station always did – Schlesisches Tor. This was mainly for the fact that the more I tried to pronounce it, the more I sounded like a very drunk Sean Connery. Before long, I soon discovered that the Zoologischer Garten was always a good place to aim for as the Kurfürstendamm, was just around the corner. The Ku-damm, as it was known to Berliners, was full of trendy designer shops, hotels, bars & restaurants, which was always worth a bimble, day or night. As my knowledge expanded, I started to use the S-bahn (overground train) to skirmish into East Berlin. Although the wall had only been down a few years, the huge act of modernising the city was well underway & it was sobering to see that so many buildings still had visible scars from the Second World War.
Eventually my army career drew to a close & although I left Germany behind, my enthusiasm for bimbling did not diminish. To this day I still get seduced by departure boards in railway stations & I still cherish sitting on a train, with my headphones on, just staring at the scenery out of rain-splattered windows. In a world that is so obsessed with connectivity & living life at warp-speed, the need to shut down the laptop, leave the phone behind & just go for a bimble, has never been more important. I would urge anyone to try it.
Slow Travelling Man 
Letters to the editor