walkabout in london

As Wimbledon drew to a close for another year, I decided it was time to visit London. Touching down late on Friday night, I got the grand tour from Stansted in the North East to where Carmen lives, Wimbledon, in the South West. Similar to going from Melbourne Airport to Frankston, this took about an hour and a half.

After a justified sleep in on Saturday it was time to take "the tube" to see one of London's most famous sites: the Tower of London.

The Tower is not a single tower, rather it is a fortress (with 4 towers), surrounded by two defensive walls. The walls have many more towers.

The complex has plenty of strange, interesting and bloody-thirsty history to offer. Not only that, it also stores some impressive collections of historic weaponry: from suits of armour to bayoneted rifles.

A funny tradition at the tower, is that a minimum of six ravens need to roost in the grounds, otherwise legend has it that the tower will crumble and the monarchy will fall. Of course this is the first time I'd heard of ravens being crucial to the structural integrity of a building and the general well being of a family, but you never know I guess. Just to make sure the legend is never tested, they keep eight or nine ravens there. Not superstitious at all; just cautious. :-)

Of course to complete any self-respecting royal fortress, you require royal guards. The British have pretty distinctive royal guards too:

These lads were on their way to guard the crown jewels. And do the British royals have a lot of crown jewels? Yes.

That night it was time to change the scene a bit. From down town royal castles, to inner city Camden Town. We caught a Mexican wrestling (Lucha libre) show at the Roundhouse. Former railway shed, and then more famously, live music venue. These days it's been revamped into a theatre. The wrestling was a ridiculous, well choreographed show with oiled up men wearing masks. After the show we went back to the centre of London for a night on the turps.

We were supposed to have brunch on Sunday morning, but we scrapped that plan in favour of sleeping in again. Today was the main event: Wimbledon men's final. No, unfortunately I didn't have tickets, but being in London meant I could at least watch the final in daylight hours! True to form, it was raining by 1pm, and still raining at 2pm when the final was due to start. We headed into a sports bar, and settled for watching a very wet British Grand Prix.

Finally the weather cleared, and Federer and Nadal took the court for what was about to be an epic 5 set final. This being London on men's final Sunday, meant it wasn't going to be fine weather forever. Of course the match got interrupted again. When the weather forecaster said the delay would be at least an hour, we decided to head to Cynthia's, and watch the remainder of the final at her house. (We weren't even sure if it was going to be continued that day!)

The rest is history. The rain cleared, play continued, and Nadal broke Federer's five Wimbledon winning streak. We watched it in comfort at Cyn's place, eating some excellent sushi.

pining for the fjords

What better to do on Sweden Day long weekend, than to bugger off to Norway. Land of fjords, and the lovely Norwegian Blue parrot. My plan was to hitch a ride to Oslo, catch the train to Flåm, then a ferry to Gudvangen, a bus to Voss, and a train to Bergen. Stay a couple of nights in Bergen, fly back to Oslo, and then hitch a ride home again. Nice plan, but I had to make a few alterations along the way.

A friend from Swedish language classes, Marcos, works as an engineer for Volvo. He was visiting some friends near Oslo, and offered to drive me up there. Either half of Oslo commutes to Göteborg, or there quite a few others had the same idea. The traffic was quite heavy crossing the border.

We got to Oslo about an hour later than predicted by the Portuguese speaking GPS receiver. The awesome thing about Scandinavian summer is, however, it was only just dusk; at 11pm! I checked into my hostel and hit the sack, I was getting the early train to Bergen.

The next morning I had breakfast with some Norwegian troops who were also staying at the hostel. Breakfast was very Nordic: boiled eggs, cheese, ham and bread.

As I settled in on the train, I realised that I should travel this way more often. The train station was in the centre of town, only a short walk away from the hostel. There was no stringent security, the seat was large and comfortable, and of course the window is massive compared to an aeroplane!

Soon we were scooting through scenery that later, when showing Carmen the photos, she exclaimed that it must be fake, as if I'd made the photo up! I assure you it's real :-)

Unfortunately my pleasant train journey was interrupted by an announcement: The train is cancelled between Gol and Bergen due to fires in the mountains. This threw a spanner in the works!

The train company organised bus replacements, and gladly it was quite well organised. The buses were at the station waiting for us. Sadly I didn't get to the descend from Myrdal to Flåm, which is reported to have wonderful views, and for an interested engineer like me, also some interesting engineering to get the train down the steep decent. However, the bus ride did have it's highlights with some impressive hairpin bends in the road, and similarly steep descents. There were also a very long road tunnel. Twenty-four kilometres long. Until I just looked it up on Wikipedia then, I didn't realise that it is the worlds longest road tunnel! It's called Lærdalstunnelen.

Flåm was tourist central. Lunch was very expensive (but then, so was the rest of Norway). Surrounded by a number of snow capped mountains, and positioned on the edge of the water, it was very pretty.

I would have liked to spend more time there to climb a mountain or two. Instead I had to make a detour to a tourist office overrun by people from the cancelled train. The train wasn't running from Myrdal, or Voss, so no one could go to Oslo or Bergen from Flåm without catching a ferry or a bus. I opted to catch the "express" ferry to Bergen.

While it was labelled "express", the ferry still stopped at a few villages along the way, and took five hours to reach Bergen. When the countryside is as beautiful as World Heritage Aurlandsfjorden and Sognefjorden, there's no need to rush. Below is one of the villages we stopped at:

As you can see I fluked a sunny day. Western Norway is a bit like Tasmania: expect around 280 days of rain a year, and many more cloudy days on top of that. While it was a bit chilly in the wind outside on the boat, the days were warm and calm, with great visibility.

After a while I went inside and had a nap. At this time of year in Bergen, the sun sets at 11pm, and dusk lasts well past midnight, so I needed a daytime nap! Here's the view we were leaving behind:

No matter, Bergen was equally as good... but more on that later.

a netherlands teaser

This was always going to be ambitious. One weekend, three cities. Den Haag, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and a visit to Kinderdijk thrown in for good measure. It was good, tiring, and fun. And in the end it was easy to conclude: you've got to spend more than just a weekend in the Netherlands!

I arrived late in the evening on Friday, and met up with Carmen, Cynthia, and Roland. We had our own personal tour guide as Roland is from Rotterdam, but now lives in London. They'd been touring around before I got there, and so they met me for drinks in Den Haag after I arrived. Since the weather was good there were plenty of locals out drinking too. Den Haag has some old squares where you can buy drinks in the bars, and then take them out into the square which has tables and chairs set up. It's all very cool.

Saturday was reserved for Amsterdam. We took a canal tour that let us travel around the city at our own pace. We hopped off at the Rijksmuseum, home of many Rembrandt paintings. In addition to its' most famous images, the museum also documents a lot of the Netherlands "golden age": when trade, rather than a monarch or a religion, ruled the land; when the Dutch East and West India companies were trading and bringing back treasures from around the globe - either that or stealing them from the Portuguese!

The detail in the paintings surprised me. Some of the paintings depicted scenes with shiny metal objects, and the painter went to the effort of painting the reflection of other objects in the painting on the shiny surfaces. It made me laugh as I thought this must have been the equivalent of 18th-century gamers: always aiming to get more and more rendered realism, more pixels, more detail.

What better than to follow up a museum visit on a nice day, than with a walk in a park. With spring well and truly established, Amsterdam locals were out in force. It was so nice to see people cycling, lounging around, drinking, and generally not being in any kind of a hurry. Not hurrying also applied to the waitresses at lunch... slowest service... ever... Did we mind though? Nah, it was nice sitting in the sun.

It would have been nice to do what these locals were doing. Having wine and cheese in their very own canal boat.

The conundrum of the how long to spend at lunch - and when to get back on the tour boat to see more of the city - pushed us to keep moving on in the end. We sailed up to Anne Frank's house. This was a far more sombre affair contrasted with the Rijksmuseum. The later celebrated the Netherlands golden age, where as the former commemorated some of the Netherlands darkest years. The house tells the story of Anne and her close friends and relatives. It also explains the story of all the Dutch Jews. Of around 100,000 Jewish residents in the Netherlands, a puny 5,000 survived world war II. The quote from a holocaust survivor in the guide book accurately sums this up for me:

One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did but whose faces have remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is better that way; if we were capable of taking in all the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live.

First impression of the house is that it is bigger than you imagine it would have been. Then it dawns: this was Anne and her seven relatives and friends home/prison for two years straight. The windows were blacked out, so there was no sunshine. And when it all came down to it, after two years in the dark, they were betrayed and sent to concentration camps. So it goes.

By the time we concluded our lap of Amsterdam by boat the sun was starting to dip in the sky.

At night the landscape changes... to a wonderful shade of dodgy red. You may have heard of the Amsterdam red-light district. Well, it's not so much a district, more like... most of the alleys and lane ways in the centre of town. Fun. Strange. Dodgy. Tourist attraction. Drug dealers. Drunks. Tits.

We didn't stay too late in Amsterdam because we wanted to avoid having to catch the night train back to Den Haag (which stops all stations).

The next day took us to Rotterdam. The most modern of the three cities, mainly because the Germans destroyed most of it in 1940 when they invaded. This has liberated Rotterdam from heritage that might have stopped them building interesting looking things like these apartments:

Bizarre aren't they? I'd love to return and see more of Rotterdam's modern architecture. Time constraints meant we had to move on, catch a boat, and see the most quintessential of all Dutch symbols.

That's right, no whirlwind trip to the Netherlands would be complete without a trip to see some windmills. We visited Kinderdijk, a world heritage listed collection of 16 windmills including one we could go inside and check out 17th century engineering.

Ingenious design really: the wind turns the wheel, which turns a drive shaft through the middle of the building. This turns either a worm drive type arrangement, or a water wheel, to move water from lower ground to higher ground. This allowed the Dutch to move flood-water out of the fields into the canals and rivers quicker that it would naturally drain. Fields were back in production quicker after heavy rain. If only Australia had this problem! You can solve flooding with 17th century techniques, but there is no solution to drought.

All too soon it was time to head back to the airport, with a vow to return.

easter in latvia

Last Easter I was in Vietnam, which doesn't celebrate it, and so I had a bit of a short long weekend. This year however it's an entirely different proposition. Sweden celebrates Easter with eggs, bunnies and witches and the usual 4-day weekend. (This isn't quite as good as Norway which has a 5-day weekend, but never mind, four days is enough).

After chatting to a friend from work, Feodor, I was invited to go to Rīga, Latvia, with him and a few others. This is very Australian thing to do I think: hit Europe and waste no time in trying to see as much as possible.

A few minutes later I was on airBaltic's site I found what I was looking for: a 5kr flight direct to Rīga. Five krona is around $1, can't do much better than that! We stayed in the "Metropole" hotel, famous in Rīga for being the only hotel that stayed open through-out Soviet and Nazi occupations of Latvia. In fact these occupations of Latvia have not been as disastrous on the local infrastructure as has occurred elsewhere.

Rīga comprises of "Old Rīga" which is pre-1900's and "New Rīga" which is 1900's onwards. Old Rīga is world heritage listed as it has well preserved examples of buildings from the 12th to the 19th century.

After the advent of gun-powder, city walls went out of fashion. In Rīga they turned land freed up by this into a series of canals and parkland. So the old town is now surrounded by wide cobble stoned boulevards with trams rolling along them, parkland and canals. It really was a picturesque town.

Over the canal, and past the freedom monument, is New Rīga, which has it's own architectural delights. In the early 1900's there was an art moment called Art Nouveau, or really when you are talking about the German inspired version it's called Jugendstil. It incorporates lots of long flowing lines, flower-like designs, and in Rīga there are faces incorporated into the designs. An example of this architecture in Melbourne is the City Baths.

The weather went crazy over the weekend too, and put on a real show for us. It snowed like it was the middle of winter.

The snow only served to enhance the city's beauty further. Did it matter that I don't have any clothes suitable for snow? Not really - when the worst of the came we could always pop inside for a beer.

Being a Baltic state, Latvia has a reputation for cheap alcohol. Although it's far cheaper than Sweden (2 pots cost me $20 in Sweden last night!), it isn't any cheaper than Australia. One Latvian lats is equal to $2.5 - not very favourable for the Australian tourist. Not that it deterred us. Some good nights out were had :-)

a new year, a new continent

Europe? Yep. Sweden? Yup, for 6 months. A thank-you is first up. Thanks for work for sending me here (although, I still have to work ;-) but also in being flexible in allowing me to stick around until March so I could attend Lawrence and Michelle's wedding - which was an excellent event. Many best wishes for the future Lo and Shell.

Now I'm in Göteborg (Gothenburg), Sweden, which is approximately 15,000km from Melbourne. The furthest I've been from Australia to date! Realistically its about as far as I can go from Australia without coming back around the other-side of the globe! So, a new continent to visit: Europe.

Taking off from Melbourne I was apprehensive... I had an aisle seat! From my experience on Melbourne-Sydney flights, aisle seats were bad, as the food trolleys hit your arms and legs if they stuck out a little bit. Turns out that's just a Qantas thing, and I didn't get hit at all.

With a 25 hour trip ahead of me I planned to sleep, and sleep a lot. I didn't end up sleeping as much as I thought, maybe only half of the trip. I spent most of the rest of the time writing a document for my family describing how to fix the home network if a server or two died while I'm away!. Thrilling stuff. Gladly I had a business-class flight from Bangkok to København (Copenhagen). As we took off from Bangkok the pilot announced there were snow storms in København at the moment, but "these should clear up by the time we get there". These snow storms have not disappointed. It's been cold and snowy ever since! From København to Göteborg it's only 30 minutes by plane. We were shuffled onto a small-ish McDonald-Douglas MD-81 where the only difference between a business-class and economy-class seat was that you got a croissant for breakfast. We even had to walk across a frozen tarmac to get the flight. Before take-off the plane had to have its' wings de-iced by a special de-icing truck.

Now I'm going to get all fancy and multi-media-ish and have a video in the blog:

That's the landing at Göteborg. It looked very, very cool coming in over the snow. I also was able to take a few photos from the air of what might be considered to be a typical Swedish rural scene:

The snow is amazing. Being an Aussie, I haven't seen snow like this in a city before! Only on mountains and stuff. Of course the locals are ready for spring and are a bit annoyed with this cold snap - they'd already put their coats away for the season. Shops have also put away their winter stock (or sold out), which is a bit frustrating, I was hoping to buy some cold-weather gear here.

Due to the length of my stay I'm staying in a furnished apartment. It's very nice, and the location is great. It's located near the centre of town (approximately CBD to Carlton type distance in Melbourne terms). Göteborg has a wonderful public transport system including an extensive tram network. The town is small enough that there are no suburban trains, just buses and trams. I've got the choice of 5 different tram routes to catch to my place, and even more bus routes. My apartment is on the top story (the 5th) of the building and has a great view down towards a church:

As I'm writing this it's Good Friday holiday here and it's snowing again for the first time since arriving. The view up to the church looks a bit different when covered in snow.

This long weekend I'm heading to Rīga, Latvia, with a few other engineers from Melbourne. The engineers aren't in Göteborg, but I contacted them as I knew they were in Sweden and they already had this trip planned. It should be excellent. The entire centre of Rīga has been world heritage listed by UNESCO as the best example of Art Nouveau architecture. There's also cheap booze :-)

Sweden has a reputation for expensive booze. Now I'm not sure if the Australian dollar is unusually strong against the Swedish Krona, but really the prices are almost comparable to Australia. A pint in the pub on my first night in town was pricey at $10-ish dollars (but then in Melbourne it's not unusual to pay $8 these days). The bottle store was better $24ish for 12 bottles of beer. That's better pricing than Australia where a 6-pack is usually $15. Sweden has a tightly controlled alcohol market. The only way you can buy heavy beer, wine, or spirits is through a government owned chain of outlets called Systembolaget. The government says that "the monopoly is to lower the consumption and the damage alcohol does on the public health". Personally I think this is just crap, they run like a post offices: closing at 6pm on weekdays, 2pm on Saturdays, and not even opening on Sundays. Sure it might lower consumption but now they have to beef-up their customs operations to catch alcohol smugglers!

Anyway, it's Easter time, and sure these days you might be forgiven for thinking that Jesus was fluffy bunny that broke all biological rules to pop out a chocolate egg before being resurrected for a another public holiday (that makes sense right? :-) but here in Sweden, it's even more confusing. It still has little to do with Christian beliefs (*phew*). Children dress as witches because in Sweden witches flew off on broomsticks to dance with the devil at Blåkulla around this time of year. Nice eh? So now we have witches, broomsticks, chocolate, bunnies, eggs. But wait, there's more: they also add a liberal dose of brightly coloured feathers and cook heaps of marzipan. Yum Yum.

Did someone say Easter is a time for sober reflection? Not around me they didn't. *grin*

Oh yeah, better chalk up beer number 1 in the Swedish leg of the beer challenge. Well there was another one, but the photo didn't turn out well. I'll just have to drink that one again. Good times.

a weekend on halong bay

After spending a week inside a sterile phone exchange, it was time to escape outside. A tour to Halong Bay was booked for us by one of the local engineers. It turned out to be a very good choice! Although it was fairly expensive as far as Halong tours go, we were outside the area of extreme tourism numbers. Sure there were still other boats and people around but it wasn't too bad. Halong bay has many many limestone islands and at this time of year is cloaked in misty fogs.

Many battles have been won by the Vietnamese here, and I can understand why - it'd be very easy to hide amongst the islands and channels. More on that later. The bay also supports a whole bunch of fishing and industrial shipping:

In 1994, UNESCO classified the site as a "world heritage site", the Vietnamese people seem to be very proud of this. Unfortunately the combination of people living on the water, industrial uses, and tourism means the bay is polluted with rubbish. As part of the world heritage listing, the fishermen were ejected from the caves that they lived in. I'm not sure how long they had been living in the caves - maybe only since the Vietnam war, any longer than that and I would have thought that would have been part of the heritage. Anyway, when they were banned from living in the caves, UNESCO and the park management built them floating houses:

Overnight we slept on the boat, it was very comfortable! I had a king sized bed, and my own en-suite. All the islands in the bay ensure it is very protected from the any bad weather in the gulf, hence I couldn't detect any motion while sleeping (the boat had anchored too). In the morning the sun was shining through the clouds. I'd been in Vietnam for 7 days, and it was the first time I'd seen the sun! February through April in Northern Vietnam is characterised by its overcast days, and it was certainly living up to that. The bay looked even better with a bit of sunshine. Here's a photo of the sunrise that I managed to fall out of bed for:

The second day of the tour took us to one of the 300 known caves in the bay. This one was particularly big, and was used as a hospital in the Vietnam war. The bay itself has been used as a defensive position against ancient attacks by the Chinese and Mongolians. In the Vietnam war it was heavily bombed by the American forces because they knew there munition supplies stored in the caves. The caves provided enough protection however. The caves were explored by the French in the early 1900's as well. The following photo shows a mix of French and Vietnamese graffiti. Enlarge the photo to see the dates more clearly; 1901, 1906, 1907 and 1911 are all visible (although 1906 is partly obscured).

The tour included all our meals, which were quite nice. They provided us with many dishes per meal, which was great way to sample a range of local stuff. Some of the dishes I'd had with the local engineers during the week, but some were new. Sautéed squid is nice : )

The tour wrapped up at midday, and it took about 4 hours to drive back to Hanoi - of which I mostly slept. Sitting on a boat all weekend really takes it out of a wayfarer. More photos are in my Picasa album too, so have a browse around that. There's a really good one Mark took of an eagle. Mark's photos can be found on his Yahoo album.