highlights and lowlights of our summer travels

ten highlights
1. Bergen, Norway – a truly beautiful city with views from everywhere. Fjords, majestic mountains, sparkling water and the lucky sods who live on mountainsides with magnificent fjord views. How could you be anything but relaxed there?
2. Bitterballen, wine and the wonderful bar and barman at the Radisson in Amsterdam
3. Martini at the casino in Monte Carlo
4. Coastal views in Villefranche and along the Riviera
5. Mountain views in Switzerland
6. Food in Budapest – probably the best in Europe – a real surprise!
7. Wine in Provence
8. Amsterdam – we had some lovely moments there and finally got to see all the places I’d heard so much about over the years
9. Shanghai Chinese restaurant in Berlin where we spoke English, German and Chinese variously depending on which waiter was looking after us
10. Japanese art restaurant in Rothenberg, Germany


ten lowlights
1. Scandinavian trains which were variously 4 hours late, 40 mins late and 1 hour late.
2. Train toilets
3. Couchettes
4. Trains – they’re crap throughout most of Europe
5. Being ripped off by taxi drivers in Vienna and Amsterdam
6. Expense of food throughout Europe, but most notably in Scandinavia in general and Stockholm in particular.
7. Our first hotel in Bergen – we ended up paying for that rat trap as well as the ritzier accommodation we quickly booked as an alternative.
8. Endless restaurant touters on Vaci Utca in Budapest
9. Food fodder breakfasts in Stockholm
10. Stuffiness indoors throughout Bavaria

bergen and the last few weeks

We pulled in to Bergen at 9pm after a gruelling 33 hours on the trains. The trains throughout Scandinavia are absolute crap! We spent 1.5 hours sitting on a track in the middle of nowhwere with no aircon and no opening windows in 30 degree heat. Just to add a bit more spice they locked the dunnies! After 45 minutes the passengers revolted and finally the staff relented and opened the train doors. People leapt off the train with many disappearing into the bushes for a quick squat. And that wasn't even the worst of it. Couchettes. Don't get me started on couchettes! Anyways, where was I? That's right. We arrived after 9pm, more than four hours late, and found our hotel locked. We eventually dug out a phone number, contacted someone and got a key. We opened the door to what had been advertised online as an internet lobby. In reality it was a dirty, run-down, paint-peeling-off-the-walls, narrow corridor with a couple of filthy Ikea chairs and no power points. We looked up at the stairs at the end. Hmmm. No lifts. Okay, 9:30pm, no shower for days, tired and pissed off after a grueling train trip, but stairs, we can do stairs - even with all our luggage! It was only when we were on the third floor that we realised that our room was going to be on the fifth floor. Well our room turned out to be a cupboard with a double bed and a 1 metre by 1 metre bathroom with a toilet almost directly below the shower. Laugh was all we could do. So we did. Then we showered, went out for a pizza and stopped by a 5-star hotel where we booked ourselves in for the rest of our stay in Bergen.

Bergen Harbour


Fjord Cruise




From Bergen we headed to Stockholm where the food is more expensive than anwywhere else in Europe. We paid 16 euros each for a glass of house wine! It was a very nice glass of wine, but ... that's like $26AUD each! We stayed for a couple of rainy days and then decided to move on to Copenhagen. We packed our bags and headed off to the station where we queued for two hours to be told that the 12:17 train to Copenhagen was fully booked, as were the 5pm train and the 12:17 tomorrow. However, we could take the 5pm the next day and we were lucky because although there were no sleepers or seats available, we could have a couchette! Lucky? Couchette?!!! So we promptly headed over to the internet cafe at the station, booked two train tickets from the station to the airport and two seats on a flight to Amsterdam. A few hours later we were in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam is my mother's home city. So we checked out Vondel Park, her old house and some of the locales I'd heard about over the years. We did the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum, visited a few coffee shops, where you could get all manner of things, but not a decent cup of coffee, checked out the redlight district, walked the canals and bridges and generally enjoyed ourselves before heading off to our last stop - Frankfurt where we booked ourselves into a Kempinski hotel and lapped up the luxury before heading home.

bridges

There's been a bit of water under the bridge since the last post. We've moved on from waterbound Venice by train. We spent a wonderful few days in Vienna. What a civilised place that is. It's like a perpetual lazy Sunday. The transport system is great and there aren't too many cars on the road. Interestingly the buildings aren't very high. St.Stephan's church towers over the surrounds. It must've seemed an awesome structure to the locals all those years ago.

I was just about churched out by the time I saw it, but St.Stephans still managed to leave a huge impression with it's magnificent gothic interior. What a sensational piece of architecture. We took the mandatory visit to the top of the building. I can't remember ever being so terrified! We got out of the elevator to find ourselves on scaffolding which you could look right through to the ground so far below! I walked around gingerly for a bit and then headed back to the elevator only to find myself in a queue stuck on the scaffoling waiting. I had visions of the scaffolding collapsing and me clinging to the side of the building. I decided right away that I wouldn't be brave and try to cling on for life, I'd just accept my fate as I let go. Well, the scaffolding didn't collapse and I didn't need to make such momentous decisions. The elevator eventually came bringing me down to safety; my heart still pounding.

We then ventured into the catacombs below the church to see the macabre sight of thousands of skeletons of plague victims who'd been tossed down a hole, from the street above, into the catacombs back in the 1600s. Apparently way back when ... the stench got so bad, that they couldn't hold church services anymore, so they had to seal the catacombs for years!

After Vienna, where they can't make a decent martini - but that's another story, we jumped on a train to Budapest where we were ensconced in an apartment on the Pest side of the river where the Blue Danube certainly isn't blue!

From Budapest we moved onto Berlin which we loved and then on to Hamburg which we didn't exactly fall in love with, but where we entertained ourselves by searching out all the Beatles' haunts.




We checked out the Bambi Kino where they lived and several clubs where they played including the Kaiser Keller and the Indra. From there we drove down to Nienburg where my family hails from. It was interesting to see the area, the house my family lived in and all the old streets and haunts they talked about over the years. It's a lovely town on the River Weser. Then it was on to Bremen and a train to Norway. Norway. It's lovely and Bergen IS the most beautiful city on the planet.

rocket man

The sound system was excellent. The lighting was very pleasant at times. They were the high points of the Elton John concert we saw in San Marco in Venice last night. Even though it was a solo performance it consisted of thumping piano and shouting voice most of the night. There were some pleasant sounding interludes, but they were few and far between. My expectations weren't all that high, but even so, they weren't met.

Venice is an interesting enough place to spend a few days with it's narrow streets, market squares and complete absence of traffic.

Our travels have taken us through a few places of note starting in Paris, moving on to Provence which was just gorgeous, then onto the Riviera (sensational), Tuscany in Italy (beautiful) and Switzerland which was just picture post card perfect. Then on to South Germany / Bavaria which I didn't enjoy much at all. We stayed in an old walled city on the Rhine. The accommodation, restaurants, shops and hotels were all stuffy inside despite the lovely weather outside. There were doilies, rugs, mats, seat cushions, curtains and worst of all plastic flowers everywhere. Internet access was just about non-existent. It really wasn't my cup of tea. The funny side of it was falling into the Rhine - well done me!

Well I've done a bit of griping ... so what are the highpoints of the trip so far? It has to be the fun of learning the signage and some basic transactional language in each country, as well as the scenery a lot of the time. Then there's the people you meet, whose company you enjoy briefly before parting never to see them again.


Lourmarin in Provence - a lovely spot to spend a week

The view from our hotel in Villefranche on the Riviera

Interlaken in Switzerland is beautiful from any angle


Despite my griping about Bavaria, the Rhine cruise is wonderful

I was surprised to find that I really enjoyed the Night Watchman tour in Rothenburg (another plus for Bavaria!)

Venice reminds me of the 1995 Kevin Costner movie, 'WaterWorld.' It was always a bizzare place to build a city!

new bank story

First our last 500 Dh gets eaten by an ATM. Then another bank stuffs up our credit cards so our holiday spending money is severely curtailed. As if that's not enough. I realise that we have a bit of headroom on our Aussie Citibank card which I haven't used for a long time. I put it into the Citibank ATM to do an account balance and ... the machine eats the card and spits out a message telling me to contact my branch to sort it out. My branch is in Aus!! I ring up Citibank, they have no idea why the ATM ate my card. There is no problem with the account, but it's okay, they can organise to have a new card sent to me within 10 days. Sigh! Problem is I'm leaving in two days. Is the universe trying to tell me something?

banks

Three days before pay day. We're down to our last 591 Dh. We pat ourselves on the back pleased that we've managed to pre-pay so much of our upcoming holiday and still get through the month. A job well done!

Well, we ARE in the Emirates and things don't usually go as smoothly as we'd like. And of course ... things didn't go as smoothly as we'd have liked. The first ATM apologised for being busy and not being able to help us now, and it politely told us that we could try again later. So we tried the next machine and it gave us the same message. We lumbered up to a third machine, did a balance check and were notified that our balance was 91 Dh. A phone message confirmed that 500 Dh had just come out of our a/c. The only problem was that we didn't get 500 Dh! A call to the CALL centre told us that we'd need to go into a branch to fill in a 'dispute form' which we promptly did only to be told that we'd be notified of the result in about two weeks. Fan-bloody-tastic!

Anyway payday came and went and our coffers were spilling over with money when lo and behold 500Dh mysteriously appeared in our account. I was very pleased to see it because in all honestly I didn't think there was much chance of ever seeing it again. However, with full coffers, the 500 Dh was not nearly as welcome as it would have been just before payday.

During that same few days we tried out our shiney, new visacards that we had just organised with a different bank for our holidays. We're off on a grand tour with no idea of how much it will cost. We figure we'll have just enough or we'll be just a bit short. So we decided to get ourselves a credit card so that we could have the odd splurge if we felt so inclined, and in particular we wouldnt have to curtail our holiday if we'd wildly underestimated the cost. We left ourselves plenty of time to get the cards because of course, we ARE in the Emirates and ...

We tried our cards out in a store in Dubai only to have them rejected. So we later rang the bank and were told that we had cancelled our cards. We very politely insisted that we hadn't in fact cancelled them! The bank finally acknowledged that it was a bank error. For some reason they decided that they'd better close the accounts because they'd been 'opened in error.' Luckily though we didn't need to worry because, and I quote, 'No problem. You apply again and you have new card.' Never mind that last time the process took five weeks from go to whoa! We thanked the CALL centre operator very politely and went into a branch to see if they could help. The girl at the helpdesk looked completely unmoved by our situation and told us she couldn't help and that we'd need to ring the CALL Centre. I bit my tongue and insisted that she ring them which she did promptly handing the phone over to me! Sigh!

We rang the CALL centre back a couple of times and got different people each time who each had a slightly different version of what had happened and what needed to happen next, but all involved a suggestion that we simply apply again! We have one slim chance of being able to pull something off and get our cards reactivated, but we are reliant on one contact's assurance that she can sort it for us.

So that's our current situation. We're off on holiday in a week and a bit and the credit cards that we thought would give us peace of mind on our holiday, have turned into a royal pain.

Don't you love banks? Breathe deep Aussie, after all, you ARE in the Emirates ...

alain (de botton)

Alain de Botton raises some interesting points in his beautifully written book, 'The Art of Travel.'

He starts off by talking about anticipation being all-important. In the past my travel has involved booking, jumping on a plane and seeing what's out there. Of late, my well-travelled neighbour has planned/helped me plan trips. I've been stunned by the amount of work she puts in, and also stunned at the outcome.

Clearly, thinking about which parts of a city you'll visit, which attractions you'll stop off at, what the 'must do' restaurants and venues are and thinking about the location of the accommodation all help to ensure a fun trip, but most importantly they whet your appetite. She helped us plan a trip to Bangkok. The outcome was that I hated it and loved it at the same time. Interestingly the bits I loved were the bits I'd probably never have found if I walked in with my old 'let's see what comes' attitude. My impression of the city would have been quite different. I enjoyed the planning and the anticipation, and the trip itself was greatly enhanced.

Botton also talks about two different views of travel itself, both of which ring true. One is that if you're moping around and unhappy, you won't enjoy the trip because the fact is that when you go on a trip, you bring yourself with you! The other side of that argument is that on a trip you are out of your normal environment and your old patterns. You can reinvent yourself. Both views seem to me to be true.

Another issue he raises is the romanticisation of travel. We sometimes have wildly inflated views of the thrill of what we'll experience. When the reality doesn't live up to the dream, we can pretend it did. This is the approach that the French novelist, Gustave Flaubert writer of Madame Bovary, apparently took. Or we can reflect on our expectations.

I haven't got to the end of Botton's book yet. I'm too busy planning our European extravaganza. Only 21 sleeps left. Whoo hoo!

difference between a laptop and a macbook

I published the previous blog from K's Macbook and noticed a difference post-publishing. When I publish on my laptop the pics remain a reasonable size when you click on them on the blog. However, from a Mac-published blog, the pictures are enormous when you embiggen them.

Given that I've been in danger of tossing my laptop out the window on several occasions recently, I decided I'd never talk to it again and would use the Macbook from this day forward. Everything on the Macbook is in the wrong spot. I feel quite dislexic at times. Even the mouse behaves differently. I guess I'll get used to it and even figure out how to publish pics that don't require a giant screen to view them in their entirity.

trip to Fuj

We set off on an overnight trip to Fujairah last weekend and came home via Dibba. Some parts of the trip were sensational. The first pic is dried out palm fronds that have obviously been growing out of this ute!


In a previous post I mentioned the camel hazard on the road to Fujairah. They are likely to step out in front of speeding cars at any time. Here they did just that. The car in front of us stopped to let a camel by. It was just outside the town of Al Madam. Luckily we, and they, weren't going all that fast! Note the three camels on the other side of the road! Glad no one was driving in that direction at the time.


Building in progress on the outskirts of Fuj.


The beach scenery outside Fuj is pretty.


Sunset in Dibba


Mosque in Dibba



Sunset over an industrial area outside of Dibba



City in the sticks 1 & 2 (In Australian English 'in the sticks' = in the middle of nowhere!)



Houses in the desert

May day

May Day has a long history. I remember, 100 years ago when I was young, reading about girls dancing around poles adorned with long, colourful ribbons. May Day was a pagan celebration which, like many, was picked up and adapted to a Christian ritual. In my lifetime though May Day was always workers' day. There were marches through the city of Melbourne celebrating workers' rights.

The workers' marches began in the US in 1986 and soon turned into bloody clashes between workers and police. The actual catalyst for the marches though was an event in Melbourne in April of 1856 when stonemasons downed tools and went on strike for an eight hour day. They achieved their goal and battles ensued in other industries and workplaces around the globe. A speaker at the 1901 May Day celebration in Melbourne talked about 'the worker being an abject slave who was downtrodden and oppressed both by capital and the government.' Nothing new here! Another speaker talked about the 'abominable deluge of infernal rubbish' produced by the press. At uni, also a hundred years ago, I had cause to look at many old newspapers. The standard of writing was quite different, but in many ways it had an air of innocence. The 'infernal rubbish' produced back then had nothing on the 'infernal rubbish' we get these days. (How is Madonna these days? And Kylie?)

The 1901 meeting in Melbourne expressed solidarity in the aim of having industry owned and run by the people, to have fair wages for all and to bring an end to militarism. More than a hundred years later none of these things has happened.

I can't see it being in place a hundred years hence either!

pics around al ain

The first two pictures are of houses facing out to a carpark in Al Jahli. The standard of housing gets a lot less salubrious than this for some workers.




These next few shots are of the desert out past Jebel Hafeet and a couple of shots of the mountain itself.





These last few are more shots of Sanaiya; the industrial area.

trekking Europa

It's the end of another week ... and only 63 sleeps until our European trek. We've organised a week in each of Provence, Venice and Budapest, but we'll play it by ear/budget for the remaining weeks. We've pencilled in a few days in the south of Germany and a few days in the north with no firm plans. Apart from that I'm torn. I want to go in two directions; one to Greece and Cyprus, the other to Holland and Belgium.

It's sad really that I'm concerned about such matters when the news is full of price rises for basic food items and the devastating impact that'll have on millions. There are probably billions of people who'd trade places and take on my problems if given a chance.

I know that I'm very lucky to have the opportunities that I do. I daily see the contrast between my life and that of the shop keepers and labourers here.

sight seeing in Al Ain

You've got visitors coming into town on a whirlwind tour. Where do you take them?

1. The Al Ain Museum - My social buddy took me there when I first arrived and I enjoyed it. The static exhibits are a bit the sameish, but they're okay to poke around for a while. I really enjoyed the videos though. They're quite long, but they are an interesting account of the history of the area. The nearby oasis is worth a walk through if it isn't too hot. And then there's the markets opposite.

2. Jebel Hafeet - That's an obvious attraction with the obligatory stop off on the way down at the Mercure for a coffee or a meal.

3. Green Mubuzarah - (how do you spell that?). It's a picnic area with running hot springs. Interesting.

4. Airport Road - There's the road out the back of town and the road to the airport. They're pretty stunning on a first viewing. Well the airport isn't stunning, but I like the plane sculpture on the roundabout; particularly when the water is running. There's quite a variety of desertscapes in a small area too.

5. City Centre - the look of the shops, particularly in the backstreets is fairly interesting.

6. Roundabouts - Can you do a tour of the roundabouts? Seems a bit boring, but I'd actually like to do a roundabout tour and take pics of each roundabout. Have them all recorded before they disappear. I"m sure I'm not the first person to think of that. There are probably several people with lots of roundabout shots and a few with a comprehensive collection. I wonder if anyone has a pic of the clocktower roundabout before it was dereoundabouted.

7. Camels and Building Site - Apparently if you go out on the road to Jebel Hafeet and Green Mubuzarah, but don't take the hafeet turn off, you end up on a road out the back of the mountain that has wall to wall camels and a huge shopping complex that's under construction. Why would they build a shopping complex out there? It's the middle of nowhere. Either it's a completely hair-brained scheme, or it's a good example of forward planning.

8. International Hotels - for a coffee and dinner. There's the French Bakery.

9. The Zoo - haven't done the night walk. I wonder if that's still on, or if it's getting too hot.

10. Malls - yea. I guess.

11. Cinema - There's the one at the mall and there's the one at the Rotana. Why don't they have a gold class cinema? I like a bit of pampering every now and then.

12. Palace Museum - that's an interesting look at how life may have been in the past.
...

I guess there's more, but I've run out of ideas for the moment.

not before time

A few days ago the Gulf News carried this story. Yay! I'm happy.

'Al Ain Municipality bans smoking in all public places
WAM
Published: March 31, 2008, 15:21

Al Ain: Al Ain Municipality will ban smoking in all enclosed public places as of April 15, according to an administrative decree issued by Awad Khalifa Bin Hasoum Al Darmaki, Director General of the Municipality.'

city centre

The city centre can be scary. While most roads in Al Ain have three car lanes in each direction, much of the city centre is older and less planned than the newer parts. There are many narrow two way streets with one lane each direction. Toss several double parked cars into the mix and you've got a scary scenario at busy times of the evening. It's not a place I like to be at certain times.

However, the city centre does have some charm too. The coloseum roundabout is stunning, the lanterns on the flyover are pretty and there are bits of beauty dotted here and there.

Sanaiya

Sanaiya is an ugly place and scary as all %$#@! It's an indsustrial area full of poorly paid, overworked guys with little or no education. Men outnumber women 1000 to 1. However, that's not why it's scary. It's the driving ... probably that's a result of the testosterone. Cars and oversize trucks compete on the roads dodging and weaving. Groups of male pedestrians criss-cross the road any time they see half an opportunity. It's a battlefield and I always breathe a sigh of relief when I'm safely out the other side!





The buildings are mostly old and run down and were poorly built and conceived in the first place. Sanaiya is a 2 minute drive from Ramsay Street where many of us-mob, who came in July last year, live. Despite its ugliness though it does have a certain charm. Somewhere in the shapes, colours, sounds, squalor, danger, fading signage, sand and mountain-backdrop there's something likeable.

man-eating mozzies

There are giant man-eating mosquitos in Al Ain. I've never seen such big ones. They're quite easy to see and swat, but there are sooo many of them. We had to leave the classroom the other day to get it fumigated because we were all chatting away and simultaneously swatting mozzies. Apparently the college is being fumigated over the weekend and the surrounds are being 'fogged.' I hate to think what 'fogged' might mean. It conjures up visions of giant DDT clouds.

I keep wondering what diseases the beasts are carrying. I'm told that malaria disappeared from this area in the dim and distant past, but I'm also told (lots of rumours flying around in Al Ain) that if you are diagnosed with malaria you are refused treatment if you claim you got it here. However, if you got it in another country, you'll get treatment. I've heard of problems being legislated out of existence and of unemployment queues being substantially diminished simply by redefining terms. Simply refusing to acknowledge a disease as being away of getting keeping the records clean is another lateral thinking approach!

bizarre news stories today

A story I spotted in a Brisbane paper today about an incident in Florida, USA - Stingray leaps on to boat killing woman. Stingrays don't leap out of the water and attack people! That's just ridiculous! What was the ray thinking? They're only supposed to attack when they're under threat. A woman sitting in a boat shouldn't be a threat. How bizarre.

And one from a Melbourne newspaper - Infected Australian computers fetch top dollar. Say what? Apparently if you infect 1000 Aussie computers with viruses, you can score $100 USD from Russian bad guys. UK computers are worth $60, US computers $50 and Spanish computers $25. Why is anyone paying for this and why are Aussie computers worth more? Apparently the computers are being hijacked for mass-mailing SPAM. Aussie computers are hot property because Aussies are the slackest when it comes to protecting their computers so it means their computers can be hijacked longer than UK, US or any others.

And finally, Perth man sells life on Ebay. A man in Perth is selling everything on Ebay including his home and all of its contents as well as his car, clothes, introductions to all of his friends and even a trial at his work place. Apparently he's recently separated from his wife and he's not happy with his life. He's going to sell everything and start again.

road to Fujairah

We jumped in the car with the duo (T & C) yesterday without any particular plans. The car took us to Fujairah where we visited an old fort. The drive off the main road and up to the fort was a bit hair-raising given that it was a narrow road with lots of blind corners and we were armed with the knowledge that others are quite happy to do 140 kms on roads like this based on the assumption that there couldn't possibly be other cars around. We managed to get to the fort and back without mishap. The road took us past a new village that noticeably had one mansion and lots of dorm-like housing for workers. We continued along the road to the fort and ducked around the back where we were greeted with stunning scenery. There's a wadi rich with plant life and a hillside opposite dotted with caves.

Furjairah itself was interesting to see. There's a really weird seaside picnic area with multiple drive-in booths with individual shelters for cars alongside seating for 8 - 10 people. It was a little reminiscent of drive-in movie theatres back home. The place had a forlorn feeling of a bygone era. It looked like it would have been a happening thing in 1963. Other parts of the town were quite modern with high-rise buildings and international hotels.

On the trip home we headed back on a new road that is totally unsigned. It runs from Kalba through to Al Madam. It's a regular freeway with two lanes in either direction and is fully paved; an easy drive. There are a couple of tunnels along the way and some wonderful mountain views. Parts of the road have attractive fencing and footpaths which is quite strange given that it's apparently in the middle of nowhere.
There are a couple of government buildings and some very swish looking housing dotted here and there, but otherwise nothing.

One thing noticeable on other roads on the route was the free roaming camels. There were many on the sides of the roads. Two steps to the side and the'd be right in front of the car. From what I can gather this used to be quite common all over the Emirates, but it is unusual now. Rumour has it that if you hit a camel, you are liable to pay the owner the price of the beast. Rumour also had it that this was a bit of a racket in the past when unscrupulous owners would lead their old or sick camels onto the road and wait.

two things I hate about Al Ain

The weather is beautiful again today. I've got the windows and doors open and there's a gentle breeze. I live close to a small store which is very convenient at times. However, I've got a couple of gripes about it all.

1. Why do delivery people turn up to the store at all times of the day and early evening leaving their truck engines running for up to half an hour at a time? The noise is horrendous and the contribution to excess engergy use and to air pollution can't be good! Not to mention noise pollution ... even after closing our double glazed windows the noise is disturbing.

2. Why do customers think it is reasonable to drive up to the shop and hoot their horns? When he's there the guy working in the shop rushes out to assist them. Is it really too much to get out of your car and take 6 steps into the store? Why do people think it's reasonable to have the shop guy at their beck and call? The hooting is annoying especially when the guy isn't there (he's often out on his bike making deliveries of water, gas or other items.). It seems that a locked shop door isn't enough of a signal and people sit there hooting for several minutes before they finally give up and tear off down the street; often at break neck speed.

The delivery truck that prompted this entry has been making a racket out the front for 40 minutes now.

Just as I hit publish, the driver got back into the truck ready to take off. I caught the culprit on camera albeit through the flyscreen!