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European Safari Part 6

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We arrived in the land of the cabbage cocktail and had all day (first of three) in Saint Petersburg. What an incredible place. Concrete blocks of flats with crumbling facades interspersed with magnificent palaces (also some with crumbling facades with literally piles of shattered masonry on the footpath), incredible museums and gold onion topped cathedrals. Re the crumbling facades, this place was under siege by the Germans in WWII for over 2 years so there’s a massive amount of restoration work still being done and they’ve done a brilliant job so far. Also there’re more statues than you can poke a stick at. It’s a bit like Paris in a lot of respects with Russian service staff about as humourless as your average French waiter. Three days here so another dose of culture tomorrow (today) then again on Monday.

Had our first Russian meal at lunchtime which started with a tot of ice cold vodka (very civilised), a bit of salmon caviar (so it was imitation caviar in fact) and a glass of anti-freeze champagne. The floor show was quite something. The establishment was a theatre restaurant so we had two musicians, one playing a triangular 3 string guitar type thing and the other playing a piano accordion without the piano bit. It had buttons on both ends. The guitarist could have got a gig with any thrash metal outfit. His hand speed had to be seen to be believed. Slash reckons he can play fast (he said it in his autobiography). He’d be pushed to keep up with this bloke. I was seriously impressed.

As the Japanese eat sashimi, the Koreans eat kimchi and the Indians eat curry, so apparently the Russians eat beetroot soup or borsch as it’s called and we were duly served it. We then had beef stroganoff naturally (chicken stroganoff on day two). Apparently stroganoff was invented by Count Stroganoff’s chef on account of the boss running out of teeth and not being able to handle steak.
We visited two palaces on day one and also a fort in which there is a cathedral where all the Tzars are buried including what they could retrieve from various mine shafts of the last lot, the Romanovs (the computer just changed that to “aroma nobs” for some reason). Visited yet another palace on day two being the one where Rasputin was murdered plus a spectacular church (The Church on the Spilled Blood) built by Alexander II’s son on the exact spot where the old man was blown up by anarchists and bled to death. We also did a boat cruise which is always a good way to see somewhere especially somewhere with over 300km of waterways.
The opulence and frankly, sickening extravagance of the nobility in the 18th and 19th centuries (the child bride, she who will never go camping, thought it perfectly acceptable) gives you some idea why the peasantry eventually got the hump in 1917. Ultimately it was just one mob of nobility being replaced by another set of self proclaimed nobility, the difference being that the second lot didn’t have the fashion sense of the first although I understand Raisa Gorbachev made Mikhail’s Kremlin issue credit card smoke whenever they got anywhere where the shops stocked more than turnips.
We saw a statue of Voltaire in the Hermitage Museum – Catherine the Great’s winter palace in Saint Petersburg and now a museum that rivals the Louvre. Catherine bought all of Voltaire’s books, letters and other writings when he died. It’s kind of ironic that his complete works are here and he’s the bloke who said “I may not like what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it” (or something similar). Hardly the motto of the communists (or the erstwhile nobility) and not something Vlad subscribes to either I’ll wager. That reminds me of another Estonian Russian joke. Apparently speech was as free in the Soviet Union as it was in the USA. In the USA you could stand in front of the White House and shout “Down with Reagan”. Similarly you could stand in front of the Kremlin and shout “Down with Reagan” as well.

Speaking of Vlad, he figures prominently on souvenir shop t-shirts, in a very positive way as action-man in various poses. Maybe it’s the locals taking the piss but I don’t think so unless the country that gave us the gulag is more nuanced than we think. I’m only aware of one t-shirt “celebrating” an Aus PM. It says “F….k Tony Abbott” and was produced by a journalist for The Age newspaper in Melbourne. Incidentally, The Age is known locally as Pravda on the Yarra so it stands to reason doesn’t it.

We saw quite a few wedding parties on the first two days. There are so many great places for photos so the bridal parties were out in force. I have to say, as a confirmed male chauvinist pig (do femonazis still say that?), Russian girls are extremely attractive (think female Russian tennis players) whereas the blokes all seem to be pasty faced petrol pump attendants. Talk about punching above their weight. All of them.
Question – why do Americans abroad think we are even remotely interested in what they have to say? We are in the bar part of the restaurant at the back of the ship and are surrounded by shouting Yanks. STFU readily springs to mind. It is possible to converse and laugh without taking everyone in the post code into your confidence. The CB thinks I’m getting grumpy in my old age. I’m not. My tolerance for stupidity is just reducing. The people on the next table must be on party drugs.

 

European Safari Part 5

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It’s our one full day at sea today so we slept in, missed breakfast and headed to the bar at 11.30am ostensibly to “eat lunch”. Halfway between Gdansk and Tallinn, the sea is like a millpond and the sun is shining. If there are better conditions in which to sample the various beers on offer, I haven’t experienced them.

The daughter and son in law will be “enjoying” the WWE wrestling in Brisbane as I write this while we wrestle with the various cruise options next time round. Istanbul to Rome is winning by a half nelson and double overhead hammer lock with combined nipple twist at the moment. Hope fight night was worth it kids. Daughter bought son in law a “meet and greet” package for his birthday so he gets to meet his wrestling heroes. These guys wouldn’t have lasted a minute with the likes of Haystacks Calhoun, Killer Karl Cox and Cyclone Negro. Oh for the days of politically incorrect, good clean (apart from those bastards Skull Murphy and Brute Bernard) sporting fun.
Now in Tallinn. The first thing I noticed when stepping out into the morning air was a number of spires and a big chimney. The second thing was graffiti. It’s all over a large concrete structure which could be a remnant of the communist past so may be understandable to an extent. Then again it may reflect that this place has its fair share of morons just like we do. As we only have 36 minutes of free internet time left, I’ll probably never know.

Later that same day………

Having now done our tour of medieval Tallinn, heard the depth of feeling towards the Soviet system and seen the absence of graffiti in town I can only assume the graffiti on the low concrete bunker like structure near our ship is some form of protest. They really detest what the Soviets did here and have an endless supply of Russian jokes – Brezhnev began his speech at the opening of the 1980 Moscow Olympics by saying Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh before someone pointed out he was reading the Olympic Rings. Then his speech went for 45 minutes and was only supposed to go for 15. When he complained, the speechwriter said he’d given him 3 copies. And on it went. They used to joke people needed a visa to go to the beach in case they tried to swim the 60km to Finland.
Russian jets still buzz the place (12 times last week apparently) so Estonia couldn’t wait to join NATO. Putin has really got them worried by saying the worst thing that happened in the 20th century was the collapse of the Soviet Union; even worse than WW1 and WW2 apparently. Also he invaded Ukraine ostensibly to protect the local Russian population. The Russians in Estonia have told him they don’t want his protection thanks very much.
Humour isn’t just directed at the Russians but also at themselves. They see themselves as very self-conscious and shy (the tour guide certainly wasn’t – she had some ripper husband jokes, none of which I can remember). They say if an Estonian is an extrovert he’ll talk to your shoes. If he’s an introvert he’ll talk to his own shoes. Not a knee slapping rib tickler, I know, but they’ve got some catching up to do. Being a stand-up comedian in this part of the world (Scandinavia, Russia, the Baltic States and Germany) must be the toughest gig in show business.
Back to Tallinn. It’s a fabulous place and well worth a visit. The old town has bits that are 1000 years old. They have the oldest continuously operating pharmacy (1422??) and school (forget the date but it had a 14 in front I think) in Europe. We’d heard from a number of people who’ve been here that it was well worth it and they were not wrong.

It’s pretty cheap here also although since joining the EU and switching to the Euro, the economy has gone a bit Greek but they’re certainly not in that league yet and they’re doing better than Italy, Spain, Portugal and the other semi-basket cases in Europe. The point is, it’s quite a popular spot although the Russians have scared away some of the cruise boats. I have heard that it’s popular for buck’s parties. We did see one “Burlesque” venue and one massage parlour (no reference to “happy endings” though). So it looks pretty tame although the action could be taking place in the new part of town which we didn’t visit. In the Soviet era two things were absolutely taboo – religion and sex. You can imagine young couples sneaking off to the dark corners of a building that used to be called a church for a surreptitious prayer.

One more Russian joke. During the Soviet era you got to tell jokes three times. First to your friend, then to your KGB interrogator and then to your cell mate.

We have to fill in immigration forms tomorrow for Russia. On our European cruises we’ve visited Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Greece, Turkey, the UK, the Channel Islands, France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Germany, Poland and Estonia and this is the only time we’ve had to do this. Back in the day (when I worked full time for a living) we used to joke that the countries you least wanted to visit were the ones which made it the most difficult to get into. In my case that was India (it very much grew on me over time), Pakistan and Iran – at one point my title was Marketing Manager – Fundamentalist Islamic Republics. Anyway, we are very much looking forward to Saint Petersburg no matter how difficult Vlad and his hoods make it.

Just heard an announcement from the bridge for the crew. Some exercise or other. Anyway, the announcement was “echo echo echo…….echo echo echo……echo echo echo”. As the child bride pointed out, if you say “echo” more than once, it is. In the explanation of the above, the captain advised the pilot for Saint Petersburg would board the vessel at “stupid o’clock” which is apparently a nautical term for 4.30am. I’ll need to check this with our son the maritime expert

.
Goodbye Tallinn. We look forward to returning.

PS
Finally, we moved from the side of the boat to the open-air bar at the back to wave goodbye to Tallinn. Having had a few wines I needed to visit the convenience. It is such a bright, bright, bright sunshiny day (apologies Jimmy Cliff) that by the time I got to where I know the conveniences are, my eyes hadn’t adjusted and I couldn’t make out the little male/female figures stuck on the doors. I took a chance and got it right. On this ship that could have been seriously ugly.

European Safari Part 4

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We had a day in Berlin on Monday. Unfortunately the thing that stood out for me was that there is nowhere in the 3 hour drive between Wismar (where the boat parked) and Berlin, where you cannot see those bloody wind turbines. They are everywhere and have totally destroyed the German countryside. The day of reckoning approaches and sense will prevail, climate Nazis.
If you want to see the definition of the old and the new this is the place. It got hammered during the war so there are occasional old bits surrounded by lots of new bits. The Reichstag is magnificent but how it survived the war is hard to believe. Very old buildings are surrounded by recent buildings where architects have been given free reign. As you can imagine whole neighbourhoods were levelled in the war but they have done a great job rebuilding (they are Germans after all) . As you would expect, nothing funny happened in Germany. It’s not allowed.
Bornholm (Tuesday) is a sleepy island which is part of Denmark although it’s closer to Sweden. The German occupiers wanted to surrender to the Brits in WWII but the Brits had more important things to consider. Then the Russians arrived and bombed it for 2 days to convince them the frivolity of communism was the way to go. They took over then left after a year when even they got bored. Obviously it wasn’t considered a strategic piece of the Soviet Empire. And the comedy club was shit. So the Danes had their empire back – Denmark, Greenland and…..Bornholm.

Gdansk – what a brilliant place. It’s where World War II started when a German battleship went up the river and took out the armoury to commence hostilities. After Czechoslovakia and Austria gave up without a fight the plucky Poles resisted and the war started here with that engagement. Fortunately the Nazis were pretty lenient on building destruction (much less so when it came to people unfortunately) so the vast majority of Gdansk survived the war until the Russians arrived in 1945 when they destroyed 90% of the city. What can you say? Who’d want to look at a building from the Renaissance when you can look at a communist era concrete block of flats?
Great beer and some of the women here have the longest legs I have ever seen. High jump has to be the national sport. And if you want to discuss this topic further see me after class.
Met up with an Aussie bloke and his Chinese wife. His name is……if you guessed Bruce take your box and go to the front of the class. And Bruce comes from Sydney but lived in Kingaroy for some years so he and the child bride had some note comparing to do.
Back on the boat (Wednesday I think) having a burger and wine (mocktail for the CB) at the pool bar. One of the features of these cruises is that the general demographic is one that, how shall I put this, we aspire to in future years, as in, I hope to live that long. I hope I’m able to hobble around cobblestones with a walking stick and slow everyone else down when I’m 75. Anyway on this one there are some youngsters, even younger than us! And then there are those trying to cling to youngness. I said to the CB just now “look over your right shoulder and spot the boob job”. Not difficult to spot the woman with the softballs glued to her chest. I spotted them immediately they were made available for public display but I am very observant and it was just lucky that I happened to be looking in that direction.
There’s even a “Baby on Board” and we have one of those signs you see in cars stuck to the back of the boat.
There’s a lot of Aussies on this cruise unlike the previous ones. We were talking to one of the medical staff who was on cat herding duty (there’s a local tour guide and a ship person on each land tour to make sure no one gets lost or dies) for this morning’s Gdansk tour and she said they like the Aussies because we are so easy going. She is South African so I guess there’s a bit of synergy there. Some Dutch bloke (the accent is rather distinctive) was complaining bitterly about the paucity of juice glasses and coffee (it was being filled up) this morning. He can look forward to the waiters spitting on his food. Never forget, waiters and flight attendants are the most powerful people in the world.

We had to move away from the pool this afternoon because of the sun and because there is only so much naked flesh one can take. Softballs is still there but this is most definitely not a pool party in Kuta so there are no chicky babes wearing dental floss which is unfortunate for all of the young single men who might be on this cruise (none I think) but I’m not in the least bit interested – why would I be (this question is rhetorical in the extreme which means it’s a lie)? Softballs just left. Interesting contrast. It’s unfortunate if you’ve spent all that money on surgery which has no impact when you are standing up but makes you look like a lighthouse on the rare occasions that you are lying down in public.
And just to finish, those of you of a political bent may remember Paul Keating saying not to get between a state premier and a bucket of money. Well even though these cruises have pretty flexible meal times and it’s generally quite civilised, it has become obvious that you should not get between a pensioner and a free feed (sorry Mum & Dad). It can be carnage even though this is a rather upmarket cruise ship and not the Narangba Tavern.
Our one day at sea tomorrow is ahead of Tallinn so a sleep in tomorrow but we have a concert tonight featuring Chopin, Grieg and others (they are the only two I know). Not the actual Chopin and Grieg as they are dead obviously. But you knew that. Just got back. Brilliant pianist and violinist.

Till next time.

 

European Safari Part 3

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So that was Ireland – pubs, greenery, spectacular scenery and a propensity to exaggerate – on the drive over from Limerick to Dublin this morning there was a brown (tourist) sign pointing to “Barack Obama’s Ancestral Home”. Someone should tell the tourist board there’s no apostrophe after the “O” in Obama. And the old 6 degrees of separation lark is hardly a claim to fame.

Copenhagen is flat and expensive which is a bit disappointing. You’d think there’d be room for some compensation in the prices to make-up for the absence of relief. Luckily what they lose in hills they gain in water. And it’s no wonder prices are high if salaries are amongst the highest in the world which they brag about. Basic economics really. And taxis are more expensive than London although they did make us feel like we were in Brisbane. The two taxis we took were both piloted by Indians.
While on the subject of cars, there are not many – another reason taxis are so dear. They don’t make their own and the import tax is 180%. But they have more bicycles than people. This is all part of the Danish Government’s cunning plan to make Denmark carbon neutral by 2019. They mean carbon dioxide neutral of course otherwise they would have to kill half the flora and fauna including the people. What part of us (and all other living things) isn’t water and a minuscule amount of minerals is made up of organic compounds which are all various combinations of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. Governments everywhere blah blah blah……anyway, you know the rest. There may be a lack of cars but there is a plethora of boats. Not sure whether that’s factored into the carbon equation.

We did the sights from land and sea but very superficially it has to be said due to a lack of time. We saw the Little Mermaid of Hans Christian Anderson fame from every angle. It’s up there with the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa – somewhat disappointing in that it’s smaller than you’d think. They do however have a copy of Michelangelo’s David in bronze and notwithstanding the wedding tackle, it’s as imposing as the original.

It’s difficult to pigeon hole Denmark and the Danes. On the one hand they are up there with the wacky Swedes when it comes to sense of humour and their lack of imagination is epitomised by the fact that every king they have ever had has been called Christian but they did invent Lego. And they are quite proud of the fact that they produce more rubber tyres than anywhere else in the world, but only for Lego cars so the amount of rubber they use would be measured by the wheelbarrow.

Got on the boat yesterday afternoon. Went to our favourite bar – The Looking Glass – after dinner. We couldn’t go too early because there was a meeting there of all the single people on the cruise followed by a meeting of the lesbians, gays, bi-sexuals and transgenders (or LGBT’s in the vernacular) – I’m not kidding. Anyone who attended both meetings would have to be quids in you’d think. And I didn’t fall backwards off my seat like last time. Those who remember my blog entry Following the Wine Traders Part 1 will know what I’m talking about.

This morning, at breakfast a lady approached us and asked if we were Australian. It wasn’t because she heard us talking, it was because her husband saw us eating and remarked on the fact that we were both using our knives and forks properly. Had we been shovelling the food down they’d have tagged us for another nationality who I don’t intend to embarrass here. How’s that for a bit of pop sociology? I must say that my powers of observation don’t extend to that level of detail but the child bride did remark on the fact that a teenage girl in one of our Irish B&B’s was using her cutlery like daggers. She was probably crap at grammar and spelling as well.

Travemunde and Lubeck in Germany today. Lubeck used to be confined to an island back in the Middle Ages. There were 1800 people on the island then and 180 breweries. It must have been settled originally by the Irish. Back then the water was so crap (literally) you had to drink beer instead so the government paid for 3 litres per person per day. And in typically Teutonic organised fashion, for babies the beer had 0.5% alcohol and increased by 0.5% per year of age until it reached 16% – called Captain’s Beer. Now there is only one brewery left. Its original brick basement was constructed in 1225 and we had a beer tasting down there – superb stuff as you would expect since they’ve had a bit of practice.

Incidentally, there’s a big old disused brewery in Copenhagen which is pre, pre Carlsberg. One of the King Christians used to give his naval personnel 10 litres of product per day. No wonder the Danish navy’s halcyon days went out with the Vikings.

Back to Germany and whereas Ireland has its pubs and Denmark has its bicycles, Germany has its wind turbines. Seriously, these bird mincers are everywhere, onshore and off. I’m sitting in one of the bars on the ship and I can see dozens of them. I hate them with the same intensity I used to reserve for wheeled luggage.

I was going to sign off now but a rather large woman on the comfy chair next to the CB just farted as she hauled herself up. So I’ll close with that.

 

European Safari Part 2 – Ireland

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The first thing we did on landing in Dublin was pick up our hire car. That’s when things became amusing and bemusing. The vehicle check in guy told us 3 things – Ireland is well signposted, the Wexford turnoff is junction 7 on the M50 and call me anytime if you have a problem or just want a chat.
Taking the second one first, it wasn’t. Not even close. In fact after about junction 20 the M50 became the road we wanted by simply changing its name.

Regarding the first point, a typical conversation this week has gone like this :
Me : is this where we turn
Child bride : yes, we should have turned there.
Typically the sign you want to see is on the far side of the intersection so if you don’t have vision like superman you need a sat nav and we didn’t have one.
And we haven’t called him.
I could go on about the roads all day. They have N and M roads which are the good ones But they also have L roads and R roads. Perhaps left and right but sometimes L and R are on the same side of an M so I assumed they had 2 people naming them and they were going in opposite directions down the same road to save time. And how about hurtling down a motorway at 120km/hr (a civilised speed it has to be said – our nanny state should take notice) and being confronted by a roundabout. We also thought that all roads led to Amach until we realised this was Gaelic for “exit”.
A two lane road is only one and a half lanes wide but still has a white line down the middle so the buses and trucks know which side to be mostly on and the rest of us know which hedge to be in. But away from the touristy areas (where most of the traffic is) the two lane roads are three lanes wide so there is room to pull over and let impatient drivers pass. I could go on about the roads forever but let’s move on.

 

The weather’s been okay apart from day 1. The sun’s come out occasionally and……well it’s Melbourne – 4 seasons in a day but you can’t fault the Irish dedication when it comes to summer – blowing a gale and freezing cold but the kids are still in the sea and the blokes are in shorts and t-shirts because it’s July and therefore, by definition it’s mid-summer and sod the weather. As they say in Melbourne, so they say here, “if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute”.
Apparently one of the 99 things you must do before you die is kiss the Blarney Stone. We did. It’s been kissed by millions of others over many years (since 1800). I feel a cold sore for the ages coming on. Kissing the stone is supposed to give you the Gift of the Gab so this begs the question – why do women bother (sorry girls – couldn’t resist – see Addendum to Following the Wine Traders October 7th 2017) ?

 

Interestingly the initials of the Blarney Stone are BS and if you are speaking Blarney, you are in fact bull shitting. There is a connection there which calls into question the bull shit story about Queen Elizabeth I. You’ll have to google it. I think it’s a much more modern link.

 

Did the Ring of Kerry. In other circumstances that sentence would have an entirely different meaning but however you look at it, the scenery was up there with the most spectacular we have ever scene. Expected to see Braveheart and his hordes come sweeping down the hills – the movie was made in Ireland for all the sticklers. Lots of evidence of long since melted glaciers like in the Lake District (ex geologist speaking here) and not a Tony Abbott protester to be scene. Who was the bastard who canned the carbon tax two and a half million years ago and caused the world’s glaciers to melt? No more politics until next time, promise. Apart from a dig at those wind turbine monstrosities that litter (literally) the pristine Irish countryside for no good reason unless you like higher than necessary electricity bills. To get our history fix we stood where St Finbarr stood in the sixth century one morning at Gougane Barra so there are more important historical, moral, philosophical and sporting dilemmas to contemplate than a few useless wind turbines.

 

We stayed two nights in a remote area of the Dingle Peninsular at a B&B. There are two pubs across the road within a hundred metres of each other. That’s about as remote as Ireland gets. Got to love the Irish and their priorities. When we arrived I was met by the owner with a handshake, an introduction and a cup of tea. I have never encountered that level of hospitality in all of my travels – Camp Junction House if anyone’s interested. And if you want to see something incredibly spectacular, check the google images for Connor Pass, Dingle. They don’t entirely do it justice but you’ll get the idea.

We walked from the Courtyard B&B where we were staying in Bunratty to Durty Nelly’s pub. It’s about 400m and we passed two pubs on the way. In Ireland if you point in any direction there is guaranteed to be a pub within a few hundred metres.
Passed briefly through County Limerick into County Clare on our way to the airport. But brief is enough to justify reciting the best ever of those verses named after that part of the world :
There once was a girl from Cape Cod
Who thought all good things came from God
But it wasn’t the almighty who lifted her nighty
It was Roger the lodger the sod.
Ta daaa.

I’m sure there’s more but this is enough for now.
Off to Copenhagen tomorrow and an early start.

European Safari – Part 1

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A couple of years ago, the child bride and I did an expedition through the wilds of rural England and Ireland then slummed it round the Baltic on an upmarket cruise ship. Following is Part 1 of 7 describing our adventures.
Well the first stage is over. We left “sunny” England at sparrows this morning (Sunday), flew all the way to Dublin in cloud and drove down to Wexford in the pouring rain. But this is the start of stage 2 so back to the beginning.

After an uneventful flight from Brisbane to London we reached the threshold of Merry England, the immigration hall at Heathrow, and stepped into what can only be described as a zoo. I thought we were queuing up to board the arc. Thousands of people in a mile long queue that wasn’t moving due to a surfeit of processors – tea break I guess. Work to rule and all that. There was a bloke up the back doing a roaring trade selling seats in a Calais shipping container bound for Dover.

A nice touch in amongst all of this chaos is that immigration will process you as a family unit if you are travelling with someone. Consequently, when more immigration desks were eventually opened they were tied up for ages by roly poly, hirsute blokes in Bermuda shorts and polo shirts with their black bagged harem of 10, each carrying a child. Actually I’m exaggerating here. There weren’t 21 people at the desk in front of us. It was 16.
Anyway we eventually escaped to our hotel then picked up our car the next morning. We got an upgrade to a Jeep with all the mod cons – only had 5k on the clock and went like a scalded cat. This was deeply concerning to Nigella the sat nav lady. Plus the car kept telling me when to change gears. So I had Nigella constantly telling me to slow down and the car constantly telling me to change bloody gears. But we managed…..when I found the handbrake which was a button. So off to the Cotswolds.
Oxford was nice. There were cohorts of freshly minted graduates strutting around with proud parents and grandparents in tow. None of the current wave of idiotic political correctness was evident fortunately. I felt inspired….so we went to the pub – The King’s Arms obviously. And next time a Harry Potter movie comes on TV I’ll be able to say I’ve been to Hogwarts.
Bourton-on-the-Water was cute but odd – full of young Asians and old English. But it was a Tuesday so everyone between 20 and 60 was probably working in London or Birmingham (no, not really, that was a joke). Having been less than fully occupied in a vocational sense recently, the fact that people might be working has been a fading memory for me.

Stratford was next. Shakespeare right? Well yes but we found a pub that had been operating since 1594 – The Garrick Arms. That’s almost 200 years before Europeans settled in Aus. Love the history. Then we headed to Manchester and it was downhill rapidly (from our livers’ perspective) for the next few days.

Wednesday afternoon and evening with a cousin and his family was sensational except that the next morning we felt like we’d given Guns N Roses on tour a run for their money. Thanks everyone for never allowing us to have an empty drinking hand. Thanks a bunch.
Next was more great family hospitality from another cousin and family. First a trip to Blackpool to observe the cultural elite of the north-west (there’s my inner snob emerging). We went to the top of the tower which was quite a thrill. The last time we did that we lost any record of it when our camera was purloined in London by one of the south east’s cultural elite. And I can understand why the UK has got so good at athletics. Every second male wears a track suit although they do seem to all walk at quarter to three carrying a cannon ball in their shorts.
We talk about gentrification of tired old suburbs that have basically gone to the pack on all levels. My aunt lives in a street in a suburb that are now respectively the Park Lane and Mayfair of Wythenshawe in Manchester it seems. From being a focus of, as the bureaucrats would say, socio-economic under-achievement, you are now tripping over BMW’s and Mercs on the road and in driveways. The oligarchs have discovered the north west. What a turnaround in a few short years.

Prior to leaving my cousin lead the expedition to find the Hertz drop-off at the airport which had been cunningly hidden in another county.
Manchester airport and more bloody queues. At Air Lingus it was100m long with one check-in counter operating – ONE! After experiencing Heathrow then this I have come to the conclusion that the ability to queue is what made this country great. If the Brits queued like they do in a certain South Asian country there would be anarchy. And while shuffling interminably towards the desk I discovered that like many Asians, some Irish struggle with the concept of personal space. I guess it’s just their natural affection for people in general but what a nation of characters.
More to come.

Addendum to Following the Wine Traders

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Well, this will be the last journal entry for this trip before we fly home tomorrow. We’re now in London again and have just had our first pub lunch. We were here for 3 days 3 weeks ago but it was the 3 days leading up to the friendly between England and Scotland at Wembley. The pubs were full of blokes in skirts speaking a foreign language and Trafalgar Square was turned into a massive beer garden so actually getting through the door of a pub during those three days was somewhat problematic. Anyway, we cracked it today.

 


 Just had a nice relaxing three days in Switzerland, starting in Zurich and then 2 days in Geneva. I have never seen so much conspicuous wealth as in that place. Plenty of Rolls Royces and Ferraris with various Arabic (the most common language we heard while there) number plates. In Hong Kong, if you close your eyes and step out into the road you’ll either be hit by a Rolls Royce or by a taxi. Here it would be somewhat similar except for the taxis.

 


 The train trip from Zurich to Geneva was nice. I didn’t realise that all of the open spaces in Switzerland have been mowed. The whole place looks like a park. And the train trip reinforced something I have come to firmly believe since being here. For the best part of 3 hours, all the way from Zurich to Geneva, two young women across the aisle from us talked….and talked….and talked. In fact they did not shut their yaps for more than 5 seconds the whole way. It reminded me of when we were here 3 weeks ago and were queuing for the London Dungeons. We had to queue for about 40 minutes and two teenage girls behind us did not shut up for one second of that time. Two blokes can sit in quiet contemplation for hours without feeling the urgent need to communicate other than telepathically. Two or more women can’t….at all….ever. But if the word “like” was excised from the English language, 30 million women under the age of 30 would be immediately struck dumb. Do us all (as in us blokes) a favour girls and just STFU occasionally.

 


 It’s been a fantastic three weeks with only one thing left to do before we head home tomorrow. We are having dinner tonight with a good friend and her partner. She works for the same company I work for and he is Welsh so they’ve been over here frightening his relatives in the villages.

It just remains now to get home and see if the cats have eaten each other. We didn’t leave them to their own devices – they are being supervised so, you know, ignore the eating each other bit.

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.