Stuttgart: - a city of viticulture

Though I am heavily pregnant and due to give birth any day now, it was necessary to travel to Germany on business, as I am trying to get my magazine set up with a German office along with all the necessary infrastructure, such as distributors (admittedly, this is less of an issue in the online age).  I am considering the question of which cities to site the premises in.

To me, transport connectivity is a big issue, as in spite of the internet revolution, the fashion business contains many aspects that just require people to be there in person.  Airport connections don't really cut it for a Frenchwoman, as the short working week means she needs to be productive all the time, meaning that if she travels as part of her job, she needs to be able to do work during the journey, i.e. on a laptop/tablet hybrid on a table.  It was therefore necessary to choose a city that is well-linked to France and other German cities.

One of the cities I am considering is Stuttgart.  Current direct journey times from Paris are 3h11m.  This should drop further when the Rastatt Tunnel is opened in 2022.  Frankfurt is 1h17m on the fastest services.  Munich is 2h13m, though this will drop substantially with the Stuttgart 21 project's completion and the new line to Ulm.

Berlin is 5h04m, though it admittedly has a long way to go before it becomes a fashion capital, even though it is full of the metro-trendies from my industry I detest!  The Stuttgart 21 project will convert the main station from a terminus into a through station and shift it underground and will be completed concurrently with the Stuttgart-Wendlingen-Ulm high-speed line.  When they all open in 2021, they are expected to reduce journeys starting in Stuttgart by around 26 minutes, with Frankfurt-Munich journeys (via the Stuttgart route) being about 3h00m instead of 3h37m.  The increased saving for through journeys exists because of the time penalty for turning a train around.

In addition to good intercity connections, Stuttgart also has a great metropolitan public transport network, focused mainly on the tram system, but it also has a rack railway and funicular railway as part of its urban transport system, as the city is built on a series of hills.  Being from Marseille, this is something I am used to: - the city is shielded by mountains that mean the city is 8.4 degrees Celcius in January, compared with 5.5 in nearby Aix-en-Provence.  Bilal is more used to it, given the years spent in La Savine, a high-up area of the city.  The city has a series of outdoor staircases, a bit like Los Ángeles.

The Romans quickly discovered that Stuttgart has a mild climate suited to viticulture (some vineyards are a few hundred metres from the main station), which gives it an air of sophistication, though not to the same extent as France.  Germany has a reasonably large number of wine-producing areas: - the Rhine and Mosel(le) valleys are often used for wine cultivation.  The custom in these areas is to pick the grapes when snow arrives, which gives an extremely sweet quasi-dessert wine flavour: - not very good to my way of thinking, being a sophisticated Frenchwoman, but ultra-sweet dessert wines work with a few foods, such as crème caramel and blue cheese (Roquefort being a well-known French example).

Stuttgart is the capital of the Baden-Württemberg state and therefore contains the state parliament.  It is also the biggest city in the state and therefore the place where things are happening.  It is also a huge centre for the automotive industry: - Porsche and Mercedes-Benz are based in the city.  As my readers will know, I am less enthusiastic about cars, given the increased difficulty of finding somewhere to drive at 320km/h (the LGV Est, Rhine-Rhône, Sud-Europe Atlantique and Bretagne), but these two brands have definitely succeeded in creating an image of glamour!  Certainly, Stuttgart is a very prosperous city and these brands reinforce the image of luxury living.

A French it-girl such as myself will always be on the lookout for good places to go shopping.  I haven't slowed down on shopping since becoming a mother, as motherhood is not the time to kick back, neglect personal beauty and end up looking ugly: - this is what silly Anglo-Saxon women do!  Stuttgart is not as fabulous as the best French shopping destinations, but there are some reasonable bargain basement offerings and entry-level international cuisine in the form of the Calwer Passage: - after all, if German women are aspiring to be impossibly perfect and dainty like we Frenchwomen, they have to start somewhere!  MDR.

We shall see if this venture into Germany is successful and whether a whole new country can be made aware of how impossibly and unattainably perfect we French women are (and ideally inspired to replicate our impossible example even though they will never reach it)!

Our son's first visit to Douentza

Bilal and I had unexpectedly busy Christmases with our working lives, meaning our holiday time was limited.  We thought things would be less busy in the new year, but they weren't.  Eventually, we decided we just needed to take a holiday and work things around them.  There is always the temptation to procrastinate with taking holidays, thinking that a less busy time will come.  Apart from anything else, my due date for our second child is not far off.  I have no doubt I will soon have another distraction, as Bilal is looking forward to more children after then.

The fashion industry is composed of some very self-centred people who often don't understand that life is not all about them and their whims, so many people in my industry struggle to understand why I am happy with this and insinuate that I am some oppressed wife and Bilal is a misogynist who just views me as a breeding mare.  Me personally, I like big men like Bilal (he is a very big man, MDR) who are into adult pursuits like raising a family, rather than little boys who eschew responsibility and play computer games.  I view it as very manly for a man to be very attentive to children: - Bilal loves to take our son with him everywhere he goes.  A depot environment is no place for a baby, so he doesn't take him to work (I am sure he would if he could, MDR), but Bilal takes him everywhere else, including the gym (in spite of what anyone thinks of the sight of a very big man pumping iron with a small baby a few metres away).

We decided to visit Douentza, the town in Mali he is most closely associated with, though not exclusively, being born into a nomadic Touareg family: - we tend to travel to rural areas according to where his family's livestock are located.  We are on holiday now, so as to avoid the hottest times of year.

I have my tablet with me and recently bought some equipment for satellite broadband (as well as photovoltaic cells), as we plan to make regular trips to Mali.  Bilal was slightly perplexed by this, as is generally quite happy to avoid contact with the outside world when in Douentza.  Also, he is not particularly communicative with people other than friends and family anyway.  Furthermore, he is very hot on privacy: - he will very rarely agree to photos of him or our son, the conditions being that the photos are only stored on a hard drive in our home not linked to the internet (Bilal is worried about hacking).  As a result, his relatives in Mali have no idea what our son looks like, hence why they are particularly keen to see him.

Douentza is not exactly a place where an it-girl such as myself can live a life of glamour and luxury and the travel arrangements in Mali are a world apart from France's fantastic TGV system, saddened as I am by the lack of political will to build a new Marseille-Nice line, as it would make it easier for many high-society girls such as myself to enjoy the glitz of the Côte d'Azur.  A girl such as myself always loves her manicures and pedicures: - opportunities for this are very limited in Douentza, except when women are being beautified for their wedding (when the whole town stops).  I still love it though.  Given the lack of glamour, the arrival of an it-girl such as myself with her returning-son husband quickly becomes the talk of the town: - Bilal doesn't particularly like this from what I can tell.  Men try and pretend they aren't inclined to look at a super-attractive girl such as myself by observing the custom of turning their back when an unfamiliar woman is present, but Bilal knows better, hence why he comes along with me in public.  You can't blame them for trying to be respectful towards Bilal by not ogling me, lol.

Mali is topographically flat and boring, but the area around Douentza is unusually varied: - it sits in a gap between two mountainous areas.  Bilal enjoyed climbing them as a child and we both want our son to grow up to be rugged, though with more finesse than Bilal (e.g. not referring to women as well buff wifeys, MDR).  I am definitely enjoying being back.  I enjoy climbing up the mountains.  Most people would find this difficult with a baby in tow, but Bilal seems quite happy to carry him and all his paraphernalia.  Anyway, for now, we are enjoying the holiday and anticipating what life will bring with our second baby.  Bilal is looking forward towards the birth and future children: - some people talk about trying for children, but Bilal and I won't need to make any changes, him being the energetic man that he is.

Moving purposefully

I read an article just now about how South Korea is planning to revive its non-stop Seoul-Busan railway services (these two cities are the country's biggest).  It said that direct services had existed, but were discontinued, though they believe the economics are now different.  This got me thinking about one thing that is great about France's high-speed network: - the extensive use of non-stop or "infrequent-stop" services with great journey times.  Great journey times are fundamental to a good railway system.  The service planning that SNCF is probably the greatest thing about our high-speed network: - French train journey times are fantastic.  A Frenchwoman loves to sit back, unwind and enjoy the moment, but she manages her time efficiently and therefore does not want to uselessly spend an unduly large amount of time on trains because of ridiculous service and timetable planning: - she doesn't like to rush, but she loves to move purposefully.  She doesn't want to be stuck on a train going nowhere, whiling away the time in long dwell times at stations.  This would deduct from the time she has to shop for the latest fashions and the choicest ingredients at markets.

Apart from a Frenchwoman wanting to move purposefully, SNCF is always in a hard-slog battle to compete with air travel, which is never easy.  On some routes, it is in the lead (Paris-Marseille TGV services have an absolute majority), whereas the Paris-Orly Toulouse-Blagnac air route is the most congested in Europe.  I guess this is due to the prosperity of Toulouse, the prevalence of its aerospace industry there and the extremely long journey times (5h27m direct, 5h24m with an interchange).  When the LGV Sud-Europe Atlantique and the Toulouse branch of the GPSO (Grand Projet Ferroviaire du Sud-Ouest) are complete, journey times will be 3h14m with a stop in Bordeaux and 3h07m without, which will hopefully reduce air journeys drastically.

I know this is comparing apples and oranges, but roughly equivalent high-speed journeys in Germany for instance would take a very long time because of very generous timetabling and stopping patterns that prevent various routes from being competitive.  For instance, Hamburg Hauptbahnhof-Munich Hauptbahnhof (admittedly with a few high-speed gaps, e.g between Würzburg and Nuremberg is about 780km, but the fastest direct service is 5h38m (5h36m possible with interchange).  It stops in Hamburg-Harburg, Hannover Hauptbahnhof, Göttingen, Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe, Fulda, Würzburg, Nuremberg and Ingolstadt.  I am aware that Germany's settlement pattern is very different (lots of medium-sized cities everywhere), but they have missed several opportunities for reasonable journey times, e.g. by not building bypasses.  Apart from the Coburg bypass on the Erfurt-Nuremberg route to be opened this year, I struggle to think of high-speed bypasses in Germany where the town centre station is also served.  Given that Germans dislike anything outside the ordinary as far as punctuality goes, timetable planning often involves very generous run and station dwell times.  Probably, when they are planning timetables, they probably say, "How long does zis journey take at line speed?  Five minutes?  Give it an hour and ven it arrives on time, we will say, "Ve Germans are so efficient!""  There are plenty of stations that appear to be useless for high-speed traffic, given the low populations they serve, one example being Siegburg/Bonn station.

Austria also doesn't seem all that concerned about journey times: - whenever new railway improvements come along that should improve journey times, they always seem to slip in some more stops or journey time padding.  For instance, I cannot understand the need to stop Railjet trains in Jenbach.  Given that: -
1) Innsbruck, the major population centre, has a population of about 130,000, compared to Jenbach's 7,000
2) The Neue Unterinntalbahn (New Lower Inn Valley Railway) allows Jenbach to be bypassed at 220km/h
3) The Railjet trains, having a locomotive configuration, don't have particularly good acceleration
It therefore seems wasteful to stop trains in Jenbach.  I believe the Austrians were aiming for "1-2-3" journey times from Vienna, i.e. 1 hour to Linz, 2 hours to Salzburg and 3 hours to Munich and Innsbruck.  It is anybody's guess how this will be achieved if they are still pursuing it.  However, they will face some competition from Westbahn, which is planning to operate fast services to Salzburg (2h10m, compared to 2h22m with Railjet services), with alternate services going onward to Innsbruck (not sure of the journey times).

On the other hand, the French network has bypasses aplenty and is designed around great journey times.  Cities with high-speed bypasses where town centre through stations are served from both ends that I can think of include Douai, Arras and Lyon.  The LGV Sud-Europe Atlantique to Bordeaux will also include them at Tours (half in service, used by non-stop Bordeaux trains), Poitier and Angoulême, debatably Châtellerault as well.  Currently, there are no non-stop trains running to Marseille (seasonal, I guess), but where they exist, they have tended to offer journey times of 3h05m for the 742km journey.  Similarly, though the Paris-Bordeaux services only run on high-speed line to just beyond Tours, they offer non-stop journeys of 3h11m, which will drop to around 2h when the LGV Sud-Europe Atlantique enters service this year.  I don't quite understand the lack of a planned bypass at Bordeaux, given the need for Paris-Toulouse journey times to be competitive and a bypass for Eurostar trains not stopping at Lille Europe would be good, as the line goes round three sides of a square, but RFF has generally been enthusiastic about building bypasses.  I am loathed to speak favourably of anything British, but the Ashford bypass is a fantastic feat of engineering: - the line goes underground as it approaches the outskirts of Ashford, stays underground a little way, comes up alongside Ashford International station and runs on a flyover through Ashford, allowing trains to pass through at 300km/h.  This means I can minimise the time I spend in the unsophisticated UK, MDR!

I particularly appreciate good journey times when it is necessary to receive foreign clients at the Paris office, as well as during fashion show season (I hope Marseille becomes a fashion capital one day).  Many foreign visitors come to Paris thinking they will find a quintessentially French city with the Eiffel Tower, people eating frog legs and snails, people wearing striped jerseys and berets etc.  The Eiffel Tower is there and isn't going anywhere, but with all the immigrants and the foreign cultures they inflict upon us, Paris is definitely not a French city!  Other nearby cities, though they have immigrants, don't have them in quite such large numbers.  When they ask to see a more French city, there are several easily available options, e.g. Strasbourg (1h46m), Bordeaux (discussed above) etc.

One day, I hope people will realise the value of great journey times and their contribution to making France great.