Travel

Following the Wine Traders – Part 4

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Just about to leave Seville for Madrid then Zurich tonight. Got off the boat yesterday morning and headed into town to a hotel for an extra day here.

Seville is a magnificent city with all of the monuments you expect from an old city. It also has some relatively new ones including all of the pavilions built for the 1929 and 1992 World Expos. The 1929 Spanish Pavilion is incredible. For a start it’s huge but the attention to detail has to be seen to be believed but then that’s a fairly common trait from Roman times through the Dark and Middle Ages and the Renaissance right up to a few years ago when we were introduced to the joys of graffiti and “just in time” buildings (building unions notwithstanding) with lots of glass and straight lines. Gone are the days when an artisan spent most of his life chiselling out a few statues on behalf of the church. Religions should go back to doing this instead of running political campaigns. By now you will have realised that I tend to stray into these philosophical and political discussions when there is not a lot else to report.

The Spanish Pavilion has been used in 52 movies including Lawrence of Arabia and, believe it or not, the 5th Star Wars movie. It was also used for the old Clint Eastwood / Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns which were filmed in Spain because there is a desert nearby – in the middle of Spain.

One interesting thing I almost forgot is that we passed through a lock on the river outside Seville. Was a bit of a damp squib actually because the river levels were almost the same either side. I didn’t notice any change but someone told me it was about a foot. We then turned around as the river narrowed and reversed up the river to the dock. That was interesting. I guess it’s easier to drive straight out with a full load.

Just before the lock we passed through a lot of rice fields which were being crop dusted by a gang of John Belushi’s it seemed. How they didn’t prang into each other is beyond me. Maybe they do, they just didn’t do it while we were trundling past. One of these clowns actually buzzed the ship. I was sitting on our balcony and this plane was coming straight at me. We were very close to the back and this plane went past us level with me and metres from the back of the boat. And he dipped his wings a couple of times as he went past. In Australia they’d have had the airforce after him (do we still have one or did Rudd sell it?). In Spain – mañana.

Sorry for the stream of consciousness this post has become but I keep thinking of things.
We are in the cruise company club and they had a club cocktail party a few nights ago which was basically an advertising opportunity. They presented an award to the most frequent cruisers – two blokes who have done 38 cruises and were two of the 100 or so (out of about 600 total) who stayed on the boat for the next leg to Rome. Considering the line has only been around since 2001, that’s pretty impressive. One of them must have invented something for them to have the time and money to do that.

That’s the end of our Southampton/Seville journey. More countries and things crossed off the bucket list with many more still to go and a determination to not let other things stand in the way. I’ll regale you with tales of later cruises….later.

Cheers

Following the Wine Traders – Part 3

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Well, we’ve just left Lisbon and are on our way to the last stop (Seville) of this cruise. We did an organised tour yesterday then walked up to the Castle of St George this morning. There is a Portuguese version of this name which I will get wrong if I try to write it – I could go back to the room and get a brochure but I’m writing this in a bar so you get the English version. The castle like most of them round the world, is on a hill and it’s not a small or gently sloping hill so we certainly got our exercise today. And the streets can be as narrow as one person – easy to defend but rubbish in an earthquake and they had the mother of all earthquakes in 1755 which destroyed two thirds of the city and killed 60000 people. Anyway, the castle was well worth the visit. Been there since the mid 11th century although archaeologists have found evidence on the site of people from the Iron Age – 700 BC.

Last night was White Night, a typical cruisey thing – everyone wears something white (lucky I bought that t-shirt in St Jean de Luz) and eventually gets whipped into an all singing, all dancing frenzy by the manic cruise director. It wasn’t bad actually in a, how shall I put this, “gay” sort of way. Amazing what you’ll do with a skin-full so there we were doing all the arm movements for YMCA and I Will Survive and singing along to Ricky Martin songs (I was miming – don’t know any Ricky Martin songs apart from “Doing the something something”…promise). Would have preferred to be on the stage than in front of it. They got together all of the musicians who perform in various parts of the ship and all of the singers and went for it and I have to say they were very good – great musicians and great singers. So even though I would have preferred to be on the stage, I wouldn’t have qualified.

I have to tell you about Captain Johannes (not really Captain Stubbing for all of you under the age of 40). He is Norwegian. We’ve all heard of the wacky Swedes and their riotous sense of humour. Well if this guy is representative of their culture, the Norwegian police force must be run by the Keystone Cops, Billy Connolly is the Minister for Culture and making whoopee cushions is the Norwegian version of Ikea. When we left port today he came on the intercom and said “Good afternoon everybody, this is your designated driver here. As we leave, the ship will be under the control of –insert female name because I forgot – our apprentice officer. It’s her first time to do this so we have painted a large red L on the back of the ship to warn other ships in the area”. And then 20 minutes later when we had to stop and flush all of the jelly fish out of the cooling water intakes (to stop the engines overheating) he came on and said, “- insert female name because I forgot – has asked me to tell you it wasn’t her fault that we had to stop”.

And now I can’t get that bloody Ricky Martin song out of my head.

Until the next instalment,

 

Following the Wine Traders – Part 2

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Greetings once again from the Love Boat or the SS Startled Face.

We left Bilbao yesterday and on our way out of the harbour Captain Stubbing advised us that the swell was going to get increasingly stronger on our way to Lisbon. Consequently I woke up at about 3.00am this morning gripping the mattress and trying not to fall out of bed. This was not another “bench” episode as I’d been asleep for hours – promise. In fact yesterday was a pretty easy day. Couple of wines at lunch time, couple of beers in the afternoon, couple of gin and tonics with dinner and a couple of scotches before bed. Pretty much an alcohol – free day really.

Something we learnt when we were in St Jean De Luz is that they are famous as fisherman, having hunted whales in the 17th and 18th century as far away as Newfoundland. But they were also famous as pirates. Apparently the French king was happy to give them privateer status in return for 50% of the booty. And they attacked British ships. They never told us that in the history books. It was all Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake and how useless the Spanish and French were. But then again, they may have been lying.

Bilbao was a revelation. As some of you may not have heard of it, it’s in Spanish Basque Country, not far from the French border and was famous for producing steel. It is now a haven for architects. You’ll see some incredible buildings in amongst the obligatory history and 12th century cathedral. And it has a Guggenheim Museum which is magnificent. There are three Guggenheim Museums in New York, Venice and…….Bilbao (???).

So the city’s done a good job creating new industries as steel went backwards and their unemployment rate is significantly lower than the rest of the country. Notwithstanding we did see a number of now obligatory (in Europe) wind turbines at the end of the harbour – monstrosities that need subsidies of $500,000 per job in the renewable energy field and destroy another 5 jobs along the way. They put billions into this at the behest of the greenies so no wonder Spain is an economic basket case. Enough of the rants.

After we turned left and headed down the Portuguese coast to Lisbon the swell got to 15 ft. But it was going in our direction so we could to surf the last 300 miles.

This is our second and last full day at sea out of 12. The great thing about these cruises is that you stop almost every day but a day to chill after a lot of walking and happy snapping is welcome. Also, I’ve had a chance to scope out the clientele and have concluded there are no gangs of geriatric Man U or Millwall supporters on board so I am proudly wearing the Manchester City shirt I purchased at the City shop in Manchester. And I found out their official nickname is actually The Citizens and not The Blues. You wanted to know that didn’t you.

It’s now 2.30pm which is almost beer time.
Back soon.

 

Following the Wine Traders – Part 1

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The first of a series describing a trip from Southampton to Seville by boat.

I’ve had two attempts at starting this missive except this time its daylight and the rum bottle is now empty. Part of the deal on this ship is that you get some free bottles of booze. I’ll start on the scotch tonight and the vodka later. The gin probably won’t figure unless I can locate some tonic.

I am looking out over the bay in St Jean de Luz. It’s a beautiful spot just down the road from famous playground, Biarritz. We’re in Basque country which isn’t a country as such (try telling the Basques that and see how far you get) and neither is it France or Spain (technically we are in France) according to them. I’m sitting on our “suite’s” (this ship doesn’t have “cabins”) balcony back at the ship after a trip up La Rhune (you’ll have to look it up) this morning. The two things to note about this place are that it’s high so you can almost see the coast through the haze and you can stand with one foot in Spain and one foot in France. Technically, there are a few hundred kilometres of border where you can do this but the photos in this spot are rather spectacular (apart from the aforementioned haze).

We got on the boat on Friday in Southampton after a great couple of days with relatives in various parts of north west England. First stop was Guernsey where we met up with more relatives who knew the lay of the land. Actually, all they really needed to do was point us at a decent restaurant with a spectacular outlook and they achieved that admirably. We had a long boozy lunch after about five minutes of sightseeing. Laughed ourselves stupid, some of it at my expense as I had fallen backwards off a bench (thinking it was a chair….no really) the previous night on the boat. This sent the staff into a blind panic because I don’t think they had lost a guest for weeks.

Incidentally, with all of these family reunions I’m reminded of our family get-togethers in Brisbane. Can’t imagine what it would be like with all of them together in the same place at the same time. Near death experience I expect and we’d certainly need a much, much bigger fridge.

We did Bordeaux earlier in the week (after Guernsey and before St Jean de Luz) and went to four or five wineries. I have new found respect for French red wines which I had previously considered somewhat insipid – red cordial without the impact. Either I was drinking the wrong ones or the “complexity” was beyond my primitive palate but this new found respect will be reinforced regularly from now on. We saw an olive tree at Chateau Pape Clemente that was planted in the year 206 (that’s not a typo). This is what we love about Europe. As the name suggests this winery was owned by a pope – Clement the 4th (or 5th) in the early 1600’s. Catholics drink – who knew?

The child bride and I had a go collectively, at ordering lunch in French while in St Jean de Luz. It was good. I had fried rubber and mashed gravel and Jan had seaweed ice cream and a piece of wood. We tried ( and failed) to find a restaurant with an English menu (and this is a tourist Mecca) and only managed to find a book on the area written in English as we were walking back to the boat, having looked unsuccessfully for two days. The French determination to make French the universal language continues apace.

When the CB finishes washing the salt out of here hair we’ll need to make a crucial decision – which bar to go to. Life’s tough.

Security Schmecurity

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I’ve often wondered why some airlines get security to check passports at the boarding gate and some don’t. Do those that do think we bluffed our way through immigration? Do they think that having got into the airport and therefore out of the country I’m going to sell my passport to some homeless person or criminal who resides in the airport and must also have bluffed their way in? Maybe some passports expire between checking in and boarding the flight although that’s a seriously long connection time.

So not only do some places make it difficult to leave (although I think multiple passport checks may have more to do with where you’re going rather than where you’ve been) I have actually seen people trying to negotiate their way into a country. I saw a family of Sikhs in animated discussion with an Indian immigration desk official one night – much arm waving, finger wagging and raising of voices on both sides. They were carrying non-Indian passports but had apparently overlooked the requirement to spend some money on an entry visa. How they got that far I’ll never know as the conclusion of the saga was played out in a room elsewhere in the airport. But as I was standing behind them in the queue I got chapter and verse of the first stage of the negotiation.
And a longer than normal trip through officialdom.

While on the subject of security, have you ever checked in, gone through immigration and customs, discovered you haven’t put a baggage tag on your hand-carry which must be stamped at the gate before you can board (very officious I know but such are the ways of some countries) and returned to get one? Remember, you have left the country once through immigration. I had occasion to do this once so walked back through customs and immigration to the check-in desk, got a baggage tag and walked back through immigration and customs completely unmolested. Unbelievable. I suspect things have tightened up a tad since then.

In a similar vein, a few years ago I worked for a large Brazilian company and so was required to visit head office in Rio de Janeiro occasionally. Now travelling in and out of South America is a challenge at the best of times and requires patience to accommodate long flight delays, agility when required to consider all available options and put together an alternative itinerary on the run and deep (corporate) pockets to take advantage of any of those available options.

I sat on the Rio tarmac (actually in the plane which was stationary on the tarmac) for about 4 hours once while the flight crew tried to get someone to fix the plane’s weather radar. It was late at night and no one came so I missed my connection in Buenos Aires and resigned myself to another night in Rio. The ground crew off-loaded us and escorted us through the dark and deserted terminal, back past the unoccupied immigration and customs desks and out to the front of the terminal where buses were arranged to take us to hotels. We, the passengers (and crew, I guess) had left the country earlier that day and were still officially outside the country when we came back in late that evening. Mañana.

You’d think in the circumstances that there would have been fairly stringent controls on our whereabouts and some rather definite arrangements for our return to the airport and escorting back out of the country. But no, not the case. Without some rather stern discussions with the desk clerk in our hotel (which was about as far away from the airport as it’s possible to be and still be in Rio city – western part of Barra if you know the place), resulting in some phone calls to the airline to remind them to send transportation for the 15 or so people from the flight in that hotel, we may have been there a bit longer.

We arrived back at the airport with not much time to spare but with no one to meet us so we approached the check-in counter and the clerk waved us through a gate which bypassed the formalities and we were back airside in no time. Easy as that. It’s harder to get through Mount Isa airport in outback Queensland.

So when I hear of airport security snafu’s, am I surprised? No, actually.

Getting the Bump

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Have you ever been bumped? Not like being bumped when someone walks into you although in this day and age there are too many people who walk around staring at their phones and rely on the few of us who don’t to avoid walking into them. I’ll let you in on a secret – occasionally I do. Walk into them, that is. After all, someone has to. I could be a bus so in reality I’m saving them from themselves. No, I mean bumped off a flight.

If you fly often enough this is inevitable. Back in the prehistoric days when travellers were required to reconfirm flights at least 3 days before flying, this was a regular occurrence. Certainly it was for me. I’d do a week long trip that would involve maybe seven or eight flights. As if I’m going to be ringing China Airlines in Seoul to confirm I’ll be on the flight from Kaohsiung to Taipei on Thursday. Fortunately reconfirmation is no longer required so the possibility of being the bumpee is significantly reduced.

That’s not to say it doesn’t still happen. Consequently one needs an array of weapons in one’s armoury to counter this possibility and regain your seat. Where and when these weapons should be used is a matter of personal choice because circumstances change, obviously.

The least effective and least assertive is resigning yourself to joining the other poor saps on stand-by. I am aware of circumstances where rather unscrupulous travellers have pretended to be someone they know who is confirmed on the flight, ringing the airline and cancelling that person’s booking and thereby moving up the waitlist. If this manoeuvre can be combined with an agreement with the unscrupulous booking clerk to place you at the head of the waitlist prior to exercising said manoeuvre, all the better.

One of my favourites is “I have an international connection”. This has limited efficacy if you are flying into an airport with no international connections. Also, when stating this it is not necessary to go full indignation. That will come later in more suitable circumstances.

One I have used on a number of occasions is “I am a guest in your country” and at the same time trying to convey an air of superiority and importance. It helps to be wearing a suit and tie and have many old baggage tags stuck on your luggage. This doesn’t work in places like Australia or the UK where people who work in the service industries don’t know the difference between being a servant and offering a service. Any sort of air at all will immediately throw the check-in person on the defensive and you’re more likely to go on a no-fly list rather than get a seat on this particular flight. This theme will be revisited in the future when we discuss flight attendants across a range of airlines.

A variation on the above theme which can be quite effective is “I am a guest of your government”. This works particularly well in countries where governments have been known to be rather nasty to their citizenry on occasions. And if you’re selling coal like I was, to a government owned power utility or steel mill, it’s technically correct. In the places where this tactic has been known to work, it can be complemented by an appropriate dose of indignation.

If none of these have worked and the blood pressure is causing your ears to move in and out you still have a plethora of options, namely threats, lies and bribes.

“I’ll have your job” qualifies as a threat and a lie and only works in the most unique circumstances like when the airport manager is standing next to you. Frantic lies like dying relatives or multimillion dollar deals at stake only work in certain places if accompanied by an “incentive”….. so I’ve been told. Never seen it done though. Okay, I’ve seen it done on a train. You might “incentivise” the check in person to give you the “last remaining seat” which happens to be in first class. This is when you discover that some airlines number their seats differently as this particular first class seat is designated 47D and it’s the middle seat in the smoking section despite smoking having been banned many years before.

Notwithstanding all of the above a smile and patience work equally well.

Whoops

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If you asked the average Ellen DeGeneres audience or a random selection of current Ivy League college students in the United States to raise their hand if they knew that Vienna is the capital of Australia, I bet half of them would.

I see an Airbus A380 threw a shoe somewhere over the Atlantic yesterday. That’s pilot lingo for a catastrophic and explosive engine failure. Actually I made the “lingo” thing up. Fortunately these planes have three spares so despite an unscheduled pit-stop in some godforsaken, frozen wasteland called Goose Bay in outback Canada, just up the road from Mud Lake, all’s well.

What is the connection between these two statements? You may well ask. It may take me a little while to get there but here goes.

One of the many dates I chose to start writing my travel book was July 1st 1992. This date was very marginally auspicious because my flight had just touched down in Tokyo. Nothing special about that you may well posit, but the particular airline which was benefiting from my custom that day was rather infamous at the time for bits falling off their planes. It was and is one of the largest airlines in the world which was just as well because they regularly needed to replace parts which they kept losing, in-flight rather alarmingly. Nothing serious like a wing you understand, just the occasional door or engine or wing flap. This did however raise serious issues of safety like do I keep my seatbelt on and go out with the seat or should I attempt to grab whatever is locked down before being sucked though the rather disconcerting hole in the fuselage. So surviving this flight was for me, rather auspicious. I resisted the urge to belabour this point by making an “I survived the ride on Flight—— “ t-shirt.

The airline is question was an American airline and not long after the date of my safe arrival in Tokyo, a number of American airlines began pulling out of the Australian route. There’s a joke there that Australians will understand and Americans won’t. One airline remained loyal to the trans-Pacific corridor and here’s where we link the first two apparently unrelated sentences in this piece.

Despite the fact that most Americans don’t know where Australia is, back then their planes could find us by following the debris trail across the Pacific. Ta daaaa.

Currying Favour

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Did you hear about the Indian who ate too much curry? He fell into a korma.

Indian jokes aren’t quite as prevalent (outside India) as Irish jokes or Polish jokes or blonde jokes but they exist and they’re all as funny as that one a few lines up. Actually, that’s an Indian Dad joke.

Notwithstanding the just demonstrated joke standard, Indians do laugh. A lot. Especially when their cricket team is stitching up an opposition which just happens to be Australia at the moment. There is nothing worse than negotiating with a room full on Indians at the same time as their team is murdering yours. I’ve been there. It was inevitable as I’ve been to India around 90 times. I used to keep a travel log recording all of my overseas business trips and was up to 78 in 2003 when I stopped counting. Consequently, I’ve seen a lot of the place – good and bad. A lot of my future stories will feature various aspects of the place so I thought I’d start with all the good things I can think of. Here we go:

• The waiters are more polite than they are in France.
• In hotel construction more time and effort is spent on the bar than any other room in the building.
• Women and girls adorn their long hair with flowers.
• The beer is getting colder.
• Waiters show you the label on a beer bottle before they pour it for you.
• Ambassador cars are cute relics of motoring’s past and are safer than armoured personnel carriers.
• There are no high speed car accidents but unfortunately the roads make up for this.
• There are fewer plane crashes than there are in the USA.
• India produces a lot of Miss Worlds and Miss Universes.
• If there’s a cricket test match occurring anywhere in the world it will be on TV.
• The food is great.
• Breakfasts are fantastic.
• Beer goes great with Indian food.
• I heard a man in an Indian bar say “Beer drinkers make great lovers”.
• On my first trip there were two TV channels. Now there are about 2,000.
• There are more newspapers than TV channels.
• Newspapers tell their version of the truth without fear….
• On my first trip there were two beers. Now there are a few more.
• Notice how I haven’t mentioned the wine.
• After all of those trips I now enjoy arriving in India more than I used to enjoy leaving
• Sexist comment alert!!!! Trigger warning!!!! (this is an example of a sarcastic put-down of political correctness) On some airlines, Indian flight attendants are extremely good looking. The females that is. I’m not qualified to comment on the males.
• The Taj Mahal.
• The child bride likes India and wants to revisit which is more than I can say for some countries we won’t mention here (yet).
• Communications used to be crap which was kind of nice if you wanted to disappear for a week or so and blame the phones.
• There are lots of new airports. The stories I could tell…..
• Here’s one of them. Getting through immigration (either way) used to be the slowest in the world except for Iran where immigration’s computer actually was a large filing cabinet (going back a bit admittedly). It’s now improved in India. I haven’t been to Iran for a while.
• The cashews are bigger than anywhere else in the world.
• Everything is cheaper except real estate and anything associated with a decent hotel room.
• You can always get a lift home on New Year’s Eve.
• Mobile phone usage used to be less ostentatious and inclusive (if you get my drift) than in Hong Kong. Alas…..
• Elephants.
• The three women in C.A.T.S. (you’ll have to look it up) were cuter than Charlie’s Angels.
• Indians are friends for life, even if you don’t like them.