Travelling Hopefully

Subtitle: Let Me Tell You About the Boars and the Bees

There have been claims in recent years that bees are vanishing.  Apparently our stripy, buzzing friends have been making themselves scarce.  This is a total lie.  The bees aren't vanishing, they've all moved to Berlin.  Fortunately I'm quite partial to bees.  It's odd, if a fly were to crawl all over my glass while I'm drinking from it I would be disgusted but I have no such problem with bees.  In fact one of them actually fell into my drink without prompting anything more than concern that the little fellow might drown.

For the non apiarist Berlin still has plenty to offer.  I have totally fallen on my feet in regards to accommodation with my hosts turning out to be delightful and welcoming people.  Living in a flat where the owner has made all of the furniture out of recycled bits and pieces is quite interesting too.  I'm hanging out in Kreuzberg which is quite an interesting part of the city (fewer hipsters than around the centre and fewer murders than Neukölln).  Plenty of Turkish places to eat and at least one restaurant of every other nationality that has ever so much as dropped in on Berlin for a visit.  There's even a Sudanese restaurant.  The last time I looked Sudan didn't even have food.

I visited the holocaust memorial which is very modern, which is to say there is nothing to indicate that it actually relates to Jews or death at all.  It comprises a large area of different sized pillars forming paths you can walk through.  From a distance it looks like a maze, once inside it is actually rather creepy and foreboding which indicates that the artist did know a little about what he was doing although the effect was rather spoiled by the children playing hide and seek there.  Once through I succumbed to total tourist stereotypes and sat amongst the bees and had a currywurst.  Berliners seem quite taken with what is basically a sausage with curry powder on it.  They even have a museum dedicated to the currywurst which I made a point of not seeing.

After dining sumptuously on the local delicacy I strolled down the Wilhelmstrasse (with a silent nod to the memory of Erich von Stalhein) and then the Unter den Linden which was quite a disappointment as it is currently a construction zone.  I went past the Bugatti dealership to see what they had to offer.  The salesman liked me so much he offered to knock a million off the price of their latest model.  I told him I'd think about it.  While I was thinking about it I fled back to Kreuzberg where the presence of a Bugatti would prompt a police raid.

My hosts in Kreuzberg are an artist whose name is Jah and her flatmate Chris, Jah's sister's name is Yip.  I mention this so that when I say "Yip took me to the flea market at Mauer Park" you won't think I've lost my mind.  Helpful family members need not chime in at this point.

I have never seen a flea market that sells furniture before.  There was stuff a purchaser would need to bring a flatbed truck to haul away.  The best thing about the flea market was the karaoke.  An outdoor amphitheatre (on a modest scale) provides the setting for people determined to embarrass themselves in public.  The very first song I heard as we arrived was "Jessie's Girl".  I swear to god that damned song is following me around.  The most fun about the karaoke is seeing the performers really putting on a show.  Callum for example wasn't just a drunken yob from Glasgow who butchered "Proud Mary" he was a drunken yob from Glasgow who butchered "Proud Mary" while also performing, dancing, interacting with the audience and generally putting on a great show.  We applauded him like crazy.  Particularly when he accidentally danced on and broke the bottle of beer he was drinking from.

The next day dawned grey and wet so I took a bus tour of the city.  We rolled past the home of the German president and embassies from definitely more upmarket nations than the ones I had seen in London (I even saw the embassy from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg).  The Tiergarten is a patch of sort of forest in the middle of Berlin.  Apparently it has been maintained since ancient times as the Prussian kings liked to go boar hunting without travelling too far from home.  The guide on the bus assured us there were no boars there now although apparently there are quite a few in the forests around Berlin.  If, while strolling innocently in a forest around Berlin, one should encounter a boar apparently the best thing you can do is talk to it.  After first freezing to the spot of course.  Apparently the local boars have learnt to identify the sound of human speech and if you talk they will realise that you're probably something whose death would have severe consequences.  I got this information from a tour guide in the middle of the city, on the top of a bus, next to a park where there are definitively no boars, so you know it must be good advice.

Checkpoint Charlie is really just a checkpoint.  Basically a sign indicating that here would be a good place to stop if you didn't want to be shot by someone.  However there is a museum next to it dedicated to the Berlin Wall, the events surrounding it and people who succeeded (and failed) to get past it.  They were selling little bits of what was supposed to be the wall but since it came down two decades ago and millions of tourists visit every year I'm a little suspicious about that one.  Its rather like believing that every Victoria Cross is still made of bronze from cannons captured in the Crimean War.  I saw a part of the wall still standing and was a little let down.  In my mind I had imagined some huge medieval fortress type thing but its just a wall.  Sufficiently high so that people can't comfortably get over it before the border guards have had an opportunity to swing their machine guns round and that's about it.  The real barrier was in the bare "dead zone" behind the wall and the guard towers and dog patrols behind that.  If you actually managed to get as far as the wall you had actually got further than most.

For those of you who have read this post in an agony of suspense allow me to assure you that the bee that fell in my drink at the start survived and managed to struggle out of its own accord.

Travelling Hopefully

I've never been through passport control at a railway station before.  The experience was slightly surreal a feeling only heightened by the frequent announcements over the public address system that property theft was a priority crime for the British Transport Police.  "Oi constable, stop investigating that murder, some woman on platform 4 has had her handbag snatched."  They seem to be taking it pretty seriously though, the police I saw were wearing flak jackets and carrying automatic weapons.  Possibly Britain has some hard core bagsnatchers.

My Eurostar train was rather shabby looking on the outside (although its possible that "dirt" was simply their livery colour) but was very comfortable within.  After a brief trip through (and frequently under) the English countryside there was a period of darkness and then I was in France.  For the record France looks very like England only more French.  Shortly after entering France I entered Belgium.  Belgium seemed much like France only more, well you know.

Brussels was only an opportunity to get my Eurail pass validated, a process that took approximately ten seconds once I had spent twenty minutes looking for the ticketing office.  Like many major railway stations (and all airports) Brussels Midi is essentially a shopping mall and seems a little embarrassed that anything as plebeian as a train should actually be mentioned.  With my pass validated I hopped on a train to Luxembourg.

Luxembourg greeted me with a massive downpour, fortunately my hotel was just down the road.  A road that seemed to get narrower and more ill maintained with every step.  Finally I found my hotel (just past the strip club and across the road from the all night kebab shop) which turned out to be simple but perfectly comfortable.

The old town of Luxembourg is beautifully preserved and maintained a situation which is certainly helped by the fact that almost nobody lives there.  It has the Chamber of Deputies, various government departments and a dinky little palacette which is the official residence of the Grand Duke (the Grand Duke doesn't actually live there, its just his office when he's in town, which he wasn't).  The front of the "palace" is guarded by about half the Luxembourg army.  I took a photo of him as he marched up and down.

Luxembourg used to be a fortress with such massive and awe inspiring defences that one noted military commander called it "the Gibraltar of the North".  Another point of connection with Gibraltar is the fact that Luxembourg used to be ruled by Spain but isn't any more.  Luxembourg's fortifications were demolished in the 1870s as a result of the Treaty of London which required their destruction in return for the major powers guaranteeing Luxembourg's neutrality.  Two world wars later Luxembourg decided neutrality wasn't really helping them much and they joined NATO and raised an army (albeit quite a small one).  They have also started to rebuild some of the fortifications particularly the ones (as my tour guide informed us only half jokingly) that face towards Germany.

One thing it is quite difficult to see in Luxembourg is any Luxembourgers.  The entire country only has a population of half a million and 40% of them are foreigners.  Your chances of seeing an actual Luxembourger are probably only slightly greater than your chances of seeing a Monegasque in Monaco.  My tour guide was a Luxembourger so I can say I've seen at least one.  Incidentally the national motto of Luxembourg is "We wish to remain as we are" which is quite laudable but in my view implies a level of uncertainty as to whether others will in fact permit this.

Travelling Hopefully

The last of my British holiday is behind me now.  A whirlwind visit to Hampshire in the company of my ex-father in law was the last little item on my plate.  Naturally Herry lives in a ridiculously charming home, part of a converted coach house which is comfortably older than many countries.  He lives in the little village of Stockbridge on (and in some places over) the River Test.  Stockbridge is one of those places which seem to have been designed solely because they look good on postcards of rural England.  Ancient buildings, charming countryside, a well stocked river (best trout fishing in England Herry informs me) plus a marsh (which probably helped to limit urban expansion) and almost as many pubs as there are houses.

Herry lives in part of the old coachhouse.  Stockbridge started as a way point for herdsmen driving their herds (if they were driving flocks they'd be flocksmen wouldn't they?) to market.  The coachhouse made for a handy stopover.  It is more centuries old than I care to consider and according to Ayako has only one relatively easy going ghost.  Which is good because I am so tired of those attention seeking ghosts who toss stuff at you and make the walls bleed.  You're dead, get over it.

Herry was a more than charming host although it was amusing watching him attempt to explain the presence of a blond forty year old male with nail polish to his neighbours.  England has countryside, quite a lot of it.  In fact if you look in certain areas you could make a good case for claiming the island is deserted.  Trees, rolling fields of something (do I look like a farmer?) meandering rivers and very little in the way of actual dwellings.  Herry tells me much of the population lives in trees but I'm not sure I believe him.  I rather suspect that England is actually one massive housing development that is kept back from the roads in order to fool visitors.

In keeping with the accidental wildlife motif I seem to be following I can proudly claim I have seen trout in their natural habitat (water).  Wacking big trout they were too.  There were ducks swimming on the surface and I feared for their life.  Down in the marsh people were walking their dogs and grazing horses.  A cheerful sign warned people that if their dogs got in amongst the livestock they would be shot.  I asked Herry if horses counted as livestock but got an ambivalent answer.  Still there were no gunshots disturbing the crisp morning air so I'm assuming any irate farmers held their hand.

Later that day Herry drove me to Winchester (where my monstrously expensive train was leaving for London) and gave me a quick tour.  We visited his old school (somehow it doesn't surprise me to learn that Herry went to the same school as Sir Humphrey Appleby) and checked out the house occupied by the Bishop of Winchester.  As flats above the shop go its pretty good.

Tomorrow I leave on the Eurostar for Brussels.  In a rare fit of commonsense I have booked into a hostel across the road from the station and in the shadow of St Pancras hotel which I can only assume was built because the owner felt there weren't enough mock castles in England.  I can't imagine that it makes a profit but it certainly looms magnificently over the tube station and early morning rush hour.

Now all I have to do is wake up in time for my train.  If not I might be swimming to Brussels.

Travelling Hopefully

Freestyling this one.  Normally I write a draft and then transfer the result with appropriate polishing and removal of stuff that could get me sued onto this blog.  However the opportunity to use a real live internet cafe couldn't be passed up so here it is.

The last couple of days could be broadly described as improving my mind should that decaying organism be deemed capable of improvement.  I have been to Covent Garden (essentially a shopping mall), the London Transport Museum and (with my sister in law, Kei) the Tate Britain art gallery and the Victoria & Albert museum.  It also rained.  Not much, just enough to interfere with my washing.

The London Transport Museum has a fascinating story to tell but in my view not really enough space to tell it.  As one can imagine, trains, buses and stage coaches make for rather bulky exhibits and tend to clutter the place up if you don't have a lot of floor space.  In contrast two things which don't lack for floorspace are the Tate and the V&A.  Guided by my own personal Virgil I strolled through the Tate marvelling at things I couldn't create and probably couldn't really appreciate although I certainly did my best.  There were a number of paintings of the eruption of Vesuvius and at least one of Armageddon and at one point I'm pretty sure I got them mixed up.  I'm going to blame the artist.  All of them were pretty good though.

I saw at a conservative estimate about a third of what was on offer at the Victoria & Albert Museum.  Next time I come to London I'm going to have to book a room across the road.  There was jewellery, statues and my personal favourite plaster casts of some of the most incredible pieces of architecture and statuary you have never seen.  They have a plaster cast of Trajan's Column for gods sake (cut in half because even the V&A doesn't have a roof high enough to contain the entire column intact) plus a cast of St George killing a rather small dragon.  Kei and I agreed that if the choice were ours we would rather be known as "the Dragonslayer" rather than "the Large Lizard Butcher".  It just doesn't have the same cachet.

We enjoyed a late lunch in Soho.  Or at least I did.  Kei drank tea and disclaimed any need for food.  I spoke to her sternly about eating until she threatened to feed me something at which point I shut up.  In her defence she did pick up a pork bun from Chinatown later.

I keep tripping over embassies.  Usually embassies from very dubious countries.  So far I have encountered the embassy for Equatorial Guinea, Zimbabwe, Sudan (it appeared closed) and Venezuela.  All of them in much nicer parts of London than one could really expect their nation to afford.  Competition for a diplomatic posting to somewhere like London must be intense if only because it provides access to decent shopping and a functioning hot water system.  Exactly how much diplomatic interplay can Equatorial Guinea have with Great Britain?  I would have thought an email address would be more than sufficient.

Drinks with my host (and ex boss) on Friday with my current boss (over here to sort out details for our upcoming merger with SJ Berwin, its been announced so I'm not spilling any secrets) and a couple of my soon to be colleagues.  Topics of conversation encompassed work, nail polish, work, idiot partners we have known, work and hawala networks.  That last one was infiltrated by a young woman looking for a cigarette.

I promised Hampshire but sadly I cannot deliver as I haven't gone there yet.  I'm actually posting more blog updates than I intended (its easy when you don't concern yourself with whether you have anything interesting to say) so that will have to wait for next time.  Still really haven't worked out wifi yet but hope I will before I leave behind the helpful folk in England who have supported me so far.

Sky is grey and feet are sore so wandering back to sit down, drink coffee and read.  Getting a kindle was a brilliant idea.  So far I have only bought two new books that I now have to cart around with me.

Travelling Hopefully

I am in a house guarded by a lion.  Its a stone lion but that's ok because its a stone house.  Edward and Britt (plus their two delightful daughters Audrey & Evelyn) are perfect hosts and seem to be taking the presence of a wild eyed, travel stained interloper in their stride.  The house seems to have been designed by Enid Blyton with a full catalogue of twisting staircases, multiple stories, big old wooden doors and foxes in the garden.  Just to prove that last point a fox sauntered up the garden path and paraded itself before me just as I was looking out into the garden for foxes.  I haven't found the secret passage or the group of annoying adolescents (plus pet) looking for hidden treasure but it surely must be a matter of time.

Over the course of the next few days I managed to explore bits of London.  I toddled along to St Paul's cathedral where I wandered around guided by a magic talky box in my ear.  I can't say St Paul's filled me with a sense of the majesty of God but if anybody wanted to start a cult worshipping Sir Christopher Wren I might be persuaded to sacrifice a goat or two.  The interior of the cathedral is amazing; a vast, still space surrounded by paintings, mosaics and stained glass.  All very nice but to cap it off I wandered down to the crypt where a bunch of famous people are buried, or at least memorialised.  Wellington is certainly there although how they got his coffin in without a backhoe I don't know.  There was a cafe in the crypt as well because nothing makes me hungrier than being stuck underground in the company of corpse.

I had scones with jam and cream and was reintroduced to the British inability to provide a cafe at a tourist attraction that can provide anything like service.  I suspect the organisers thought something along the lines of "look you came here to see the damn cathedral, who cares if the service in the cafe is dreadful?".  Some people might think that the French provide worse service than the British but they're missing the point.  The French are trying to be unhelpful.  When the British girl at the cafe in the crypt tossed a scone in my general direction you could see that she honestly had no idea that scones could be served in some other way.  I asked for butter and she looked at me with such sincere perplexity that I started to think I would have to explain what butter was.  Another question I have to ask is, who has stolen all of Britain's teaspoons?  I will admit there are reasons why someone in a cafe might hesitate before handing me anything with an edge but I simply fail to understand the reasoning behind replacing teaspoons with a thin strip of plywood.  They're lousy at stirring and you can't fit as much sugar on them.

I had dinner in Kew with my beautiful and charming sister in law before wandering down to Hampton Court the next day to see how the other half lived.  The other half in question being Henry VIII and his court and how they lived was apparently, nervously.  They say that uneasy lies the head that wears a crown but that is nothing like the unease of the heads who lived near the crown wearer.  In some cases the head was lying some considerable distance from its body, a silent testimony to the fact that the concept of no fault divorce was still in its infancy.

Still to come; Rain, Covent Garden, London Transport Museum and Hampshire.

Travelling Hopefully

So my next few blog entries (how many depends on the frequency with which I can scrounge the use of someone else's computer) will detail my somewhat hapless attempts at tourism as I wander vaguely around countries other than my own.  Overseas travel is supposed to broaden the mind although I suspect it just as frequently reinforces prejudices.  My own travels will encompass Britain where I have friends, Luxembourg (for no good reason), Berlin, Prague and Vienna.  Hopefully I shall write something useful and interesting about each place although frankly I wouldn't hold my breath.

Air Travel or How to Cram the Frustration and Exhaustion of a Six Month Journey into 36 Hours

And so it begins.  Fortified by several cups of coffee from Velvet Garage I wandered along to Mascot in the hopes of flagging down a plane going in my direction.  Despite an absence of several years Sydney airport was pretty much as I remember it.  That is, it was Purgatory but it was the sort of Purgatory that makes one think a well managed Hell might be an improvement.

Airports are generally a bit of a twilight zone, they are one of the few places thousands of people go to in the hopes of leaving as quickly as possible, but Sydney airport manages to be utterly bland and simultaneously creepy.  One's first thought on seeing Sydney's gateway to the world is "How dull" followed rapidly by "I'll bet everyone here is a serial killer".

There was a time when you could turn up ten minutes before your plane took off and dash onto the flight.  Now one has to turn up about a week before the plane leaves and by the time the airline staff start permitting boarding they are mobbed by a crazed, red eyed gang one step away from cannibalism.

With the clawing, biting and trampling of the sick and the lame behind us those who survived took our places after first storing in the overhead lockers all the crap the airline staff had thoughtlessly left on the seats.  Stewardesses strolled back and forth handing out warm moistened hand towels either as a touching welcoming gesture or a gentle hint to keep our filthy paws off their nice clean aeroplane.

Preparations completed our aircraft lurched skyward with a thunderous roar and enough charred hydrocarbons to change the climate by a season or two.  I was on my way to England although rather to my surprise the first stop would be Bangkok.

Part 2

I'm writing this entry because I'm too sleep deprived to focus on the television.  Having ground my way through about a dozen episodes of the Big Bang Theory I am now at the point where it took me five minutes to figure out how to use my pen.  This is despite paying 22 dirhams for a coffee at Dubai airport.  I no longer even pretend to know what time it is or what day it is or what my name is.  I left my boarding pass on the plane and had to beg for another one before they let me back on again.  Otherwise I would have spent my entire holiday in Bangkok airport. 

By the time I got back on the plane in Dubai I was semi delirious and only keeping myself going by fantasising about the shower I was going to have once I arrived in whatever country was my destination.  I passed the time watching Star Trek: The Latest Milking For Money where the presence of Benedict Cumberbatch made up for the presence of everybody else.  By the time I had finished watching that and snapped out of the subsequent fugue state we were approaching Britain.

Two trains and a brief walk later I was banging on the door of my charming and gracious hosts where I walked in, grunted and dived for a shower.  Still the flight wasn't too bad really, yes it was wearying, ghastly and annoying but it was well within acceptable parameters for that sort of thing.  All in all I'm quite impressed with Emirates, it might become my new favourite airline if they don't lose my luggage or drop me into the sea on my way home

Another Silly After Action Report

It was 1941 and the World War 2 had got beyond the awkward teething stage and was well into adolescence.  In eastern Europe Hitler's allies Hungary and Romania geared for a brutal struggle to the death, with each other.  Showing uncharacteristic restraint Hitler refrained from banging their heads together but informed them in no uncertain terms that a war with each other was off the agenda for the foreseeable future (the foreseeable future reaching only to 1944 apparently).  However as a consolation he allowed both of them to join him in invading the Soviet Union.

Which goes some way to explaining why on December 20, 1942 the Romanians found themselves huddled on the icy winter steppe and watching with interest as approximately half a million well armed and motivated Soviet soldiers thundered towards them.  The Soviets may have been well armed and motivated, the Romanians were neither.  Most of them didn't have a particular issue with the Russians per se and their equipment was a lunatic grab bag from the United Nations second hand weapons bargain bin.

This then is ASL scenario AP45, Reaping Rewards.  A large and (on paper) quite well equipped force of Romanians attempts to defend a village from the vengeful Russian hordes who are attacking from the north and south.  I played this today at Bears with Ivan Kent.  Play history favours the Romanians two to one so we gave the Russians the balance (tanks get radios) and diced for sides.  I got the Russians and mooched off for a coffee while Ivan set up his defence.

To defend a straggling village of single story wooden buildings Ivan had thirteen first line squads (poor) and four conscript squads (really poor).  Backing up this pile of arms and legs were a pair of mortars, four light machine guns, two medium machine guns and a heavy machine gun.  In command he had a trio of officers, an 8-1, 8-0 & 7-0.  Also there was the ordnance.  The Romanians had really scraped around to put this lot together.  A 76mm Russian ATG, captured by the Germans and gifted to their Romanian colleagues.  A pair of old French 75mm cannon, an 81mm mortar and a 45mm ATG of dubious provenance.  Some concealment counters helped spread the love and make Ivan look strong where he wasn't.

To reclaim this little patch of the Rodina from the fascist beast (or fascist puppy in this case) I had two separate forces of lusty Soviet heroes.  Coming in from the north were eleven first line squads led led by a pair of officers (9-1 & 8-0) and toting some of the heaviest (and in the event most useless) support weapons known to man.  Three mortars, two 50mm and one 82mm plus a pair of medium machine guns, some lmgs and an anti tank rifle for reasons I can't quite fathom.  This was the anvil, arriving from the south was the hammer.  Ten elite squads, another mortar, a medium machine gun, a pair of lmgs three officers (9-1,8-1 & 8-0), two T-34 tanks and a KV-8 tank armed with a 45mm gun and a turret mounted flamethrower.

With a stream meandering across much of the southern part of the board approach routes were reduced to four,  Over one of the two bridges on elevated roads (affectionately known as shooting galleries) or around the edges of the stream at the eastern and western edges of the board.  In the north cover was scanty and my attackers would have to rely on the short range and poor firepower of their Romanian opponents to allow them to close the gap.

The Russian objective is three multihex buildings in the middle of the village and as far away from both entry points as is humanely possible.  Ivan had set up what looked like a spread out defence.  Obviously some were dummies and others were low rate speed bumps designed to induce caution.  They were partly successful in this.  Ivan's main defence was in the village proper and centred around the three buildings.  Delaying forces stretched to the north so that my guys there couldn't just waltz in.  In the south he had less room to manouvre as my tanks would eat up territory fast.

I split my northern forces into three with a pair of squads in the east to try and flank his defence (they didn't) the big mortar in the middle to try and hit some of his defenders (it didn't) and the bulk of the force in the west where a tree lined road offered a slightly covered approach to the village.  In the south I sent one T-34 with a pair of squads to circle round the east edge of the stream, boldly positioned a squad with the mortar to stroll straight down the elevated road and over the bridge (these guys survived the game without a scratch) and the other two tanks and the rest of the squads to skirt the western edge of the stream and hit the village from the southwest.

My plan, insofar as I had one, was essentially to hit him hard from two directions in the west while hopefully keeping him busy enough in the other areas to prevent him from reinforcing the main battle.  It didn't quite work out like that.  Ivan skilfully bluffed my northern forces with what turned out to be a collection of dummies and conscript half squads.  I was cautious when I should have been reckless and it was turn three (of my meagre six) before I had pushed them out and started on my way to the village.  Meanwhile in the southwest my attack had slammed straight into the toughest part of his defence.

Mind you I slammed pretty hard.  A T-34 and the KV-8 (each with a squad of troops clinging to the hull) roared up to the outskirts of the village, dismounted the troops by the simple expedient of rotating the turret and charged for his defences.  Being faster the T-34 was first on the scene and slid into bypass on a defended building hoping to clear a path for the infantry panting behind.  Imagine my surprise when Ivan revealed his 76mm atg in the next hex and proceed to take a shot at me.  Fortunately it bounced off my frontal armour (at point blank range no less), gaining rate Ivan fired again and missed completely.  Recovering from his shock at seeing an atg approximately six feet away my tank driver stamped on the accelerator and overran the gun sending the terrified crew yelping for cover.  Next turn the KV-8 added to the fun by incinerating a stack of defenders and breaking open the south west part of his defences.  My troops were coming up and a little more judicious sleazing had them in good position to advance towards the first of the victory buildings.

Ivan had had a shocking couple of turns, his defence in the southwest was shattered and I honestly thought that I was on the road to victory my shilly shallying in the north notwithstanding.  To add insult to injury the other T-34 approached the village from the south east and put the crew of a 75mm to flight after they broke their gun trying to kill it.  Little did I know that unread message in my mail box was from Nemesis.

As I readied for the final charge that would sweep all before it Ivan revealed his 45mm gun.  It was facing the wrong way so he had to swing it around to take a shot.  It promptly got a critical hit on one infantry stack and followed this up by breaking all the members of another.  Suddenly I had one squad dead and three broken from the eight that had attacked the southwest and the remainder being a little behind weren't well positioned to replace them.  To add injury to injury a surviving Romanian squad killed one of the T-34s with a molotov cocktail (although a second squad, attempting the same thing promptly set itself on fire).

I threw everything at that damned 45.  Mortar fire, machine guns, small arms, it shrugged off the lot and crushed anything that attempted to move.  The path was open but I couldn't take it.  With my southern attack floundering I paid more attention to the north (possibly I should have coordinated these, what do you think?) and realising I needed bodies on the ground in a hurry I started taking the risks I should have taken a turn ago.  It cost me a couple of casualties as I had to eschew finesse with time running out but I swept aside his blocking force and moved towards the village.  Sadly I was now desperately short on time.  The only good news was my surviving tank, operating pretty much alone as its supporting infantry was struggling through some of Ivan's speed bumps, managed to smash up the defenders of two of the victory buildings depriving Ivan of the services of a medium and a heavy machine gun in the process.  Ivan swiftly remanned the heavy machine gun but had to place his troops under the eye of the T-34 in order to do so.  An attempt to destroy the thing in close combat having failed Ivan couldn't reinforce his two abandoned buildings without getting his troops slaughtered so he concentrated on holding the one he still occupied.

With the last turn upon me I was desperate, finally some well placed prep fire had broken the crew of the 45 but it was too late for most of my troops to get to where they needed to go.  I looked at the positioning of my squads and his defences and formulated a final attack.  If all went well I would win.

All didn't go well.

Things started promisingly with my surviving T-34 once again mincing the hmg squad and removing at least one formidable threat to my assault.  Some desperate running, weaving in and out of buildings allowed me to occupy the two abandoned buildings but there was a single squad still lurking in the third and it was covered by a pair of squads in the building next door.  Dialling up my faithful KV-8 which had done stirling service on the barbecue front I sent it against the support troops, sadly at the last the flamethrower failed achieving nothing more than a pin result on one squad.  Then attempting to start the thing up again for a little VBM sleaze of course it broke down and sat stubbornly in the street looking helpless.  I tried, I got troops up next to the building, I got a squad into the building but I couldn't evict that last squad before time ran out.  Ivan's Romanians hung on by their eyelids for a well deserved win.

Kudos to Ivan for maintaining his good temper and personal morale when things looked bad for him in the first couple of turns.  Extra kudos for putting up with my hysterical swearing and threats of suicide when things looked bad for me in the next couple.  At the end despite some wild swings of fortune it came down to the last roll of the last turn and Ivan toughed it out for a victory.  I am now going home to ceremonially burn a certain 45L atg counter.