Getting ready to leave Sydney
I haven't written much about the couple of weeks I've spent in Sydney. Nothing really exciting happened, apart from a trip home to see the kids (the Southern Tablelands were greener than I expected), a visit to CLUG another to SLUG, and a lot of time spent eating at restaurants on King Street in Newtown. I've decided that I like the Sydney train system, but not the trains themselves. The trains fall into several categories: Millennium trains: the standard one would expect from any world class train system. There are hardly any of these, but they're the only ones with screens saying what station is next, and are in a good state of repair. It seems that they're mainly devoted to the tourist-centric airport runs. Tangaras: about 15 years old I'm told. They're ok but nothing special. Craptastics: these are the ones older than Tangaras but with retrofitted air conditioning. They must be about 30 years old from the look of things. They're crap. Craptanics: imagine a Craptastic before it had the air conditioning retrofit. This is that train. At least you can open the windows, which helps let some of the reek of sweaty office workers and teenaged boys…