TRAVELS WITH A BALLERINA - Day One: Amsterdam to Munich

Are you thinking of taking your daughter to ballet lessons? Beware! I did exactly that, sixteen years ago, because isn't that what little girls like to do? Or should I say, isn't that what little girls' middle class mummies like them to do? Those ballet lessons in the local community centre were the beginning of a long and sometimes tortuous, extremely expensive journey to where we are sitting now, aboard a train from Amsterdam to Munich for an audition with the Bavarian State Ballet. Who knew?

It is ballet company audition season and we have decided to save money and the planet and do it by boat and train. Rather than do it the way most of my daughter's contemporaries are (flying out and back over numerous weekends for selected auditions) we have decided to buy inter rail tickets and try and fit as many auditions and company classes as we can in to one trip. My husband called it the carpet bombing approach, an unfortunate use of phraseology when we are talking about Germany. It has been, and continues to be a logistical planning nightmare but fortunately she and I love a spreadsheet, especially if we can colour co- ordinate it and link it with a Google map with coloured pins. I last inter railed as a student with my then boyfriend but I was young and stupid then. No sleeping on beaches or train platforms for me this time. Sadly with age comes experience of the world and possibly a liitle more anxiety too. Oh for that naive belief in my own indestructibility again!

In those student days I did write a journal which I still have in a box somewhere, it makes fascinating reading now....well for me anyway. Now we are in a different millennium I have decided to journal our travels as a series of blogs, of which this is the first. I promise though, not to regale you with details of our every meal and cup of coffee.

We took the boat from Newcastle to Amsterdam last night and are taking the train to Munich today. Not much else to say really, other than the irritations of only 25 MB per day mobile Internet and isn't Holland flat?!

Photo to come when I can work out how to upload from iPad or get a hotel with free wifi to use
laptop!