Heathrow, you suck

two entrances, both poohy
I had the misfortune of landing twice in London, Heathrow. Both of these occasions the airport managed to befound me with its ineptitude. I won't bother with getting a non-partisan story on the matter, so you're going to get my biased opinion. The first was arriving in from Singapore in the Qantas 747 and arrive we did... and continue to arrive on the tarmac for 40 minutes while they tried to find a gate available to put us. The second was on the trip back from Amsterdam to London. We were stuck at Schipol airport for an hour becuase Heathrow couldn't get a slot for us to land. Well, you're probably thinking that these problems are out of their control. Well, maybe, but I don't really care. I'll just ignorantly berate and hopefully undermine their confidence in their system after reading this blog after which time they'll also come to the conclusion that us mere squash players aren't going to disable a plane with our rackets and not to put it in with the bags in cabin storage. It sorta reminds me of the Germans taking the Netherlanders' bikes to make them in to tanks during the second world war.

"Give us back our bikes" you can aparently still hear if a Dutchman hears a German tourist in the midst these days. Rumour has it that Germans try and speak Dutch when they're on holiday, so as not to be heckled.

I did a pilgrimage to a pasta place in Amsterdam on Sunday night to a place which had 5 euro pizzas and pastas - I couldn't resist. Before dinner, I had turned up on Hotel Amelie's doorstep asking for a bed and luckily they had obliged. It's definitely the friendliest of the hostels I've stayed in and reccomend it to anyone that needs a place to stay for a night/few.

Anyhow, back to the story (which I'm increasingly noticing I'm telling it like that movie... Memento... where you have to put the guy's story back from the end to the beginning. If you've seen it, you'll know what I'm talking about). I have to stay in London here to suss out a bank account and phone account before I start work. Any of you know know England will understand that it's frustratingly hard to get one. And get frustrated I did. I did enjoy (with my best wry grin) replying to them explaining how "EFTPOS" is coming soon and how it works with the comment that we've had it for 10 years or so in the colonial land. However, my tenacity looks like it's paid off and I'll hear in the next couple of days about my potential new account. For those who want to have a yarn, my new number is +447774512556.

Jaharmes is coming over to Strasbourg (not Salzburg as I mistakenly mentioned) in a day or so's time. I hope to make it over there and spin a few yarns with him, but it'll probably be after I start work on the 1st of October before I'll be able to make it to France for a weekend. Before that, I'll be in Amsterdam for some orientation mischef with the new employer where I expect there'll be bogwashes, beer and lots of misdemeanour in public in dark polar trenchcoats. Ok, that was an exaggeration, no _dark_ coats.

It's a bit late, so I'll hit the sack (2am at the mo) and hopefully post a nice chirpy update in a couple of days' time.

Bach to basics

I just can't wait pulling out the el cheesio blog titles, and hopefully this is the finest colby yet.

Embarking on the journey to Leipzig in the ICE or Intercity Express certainly showed off one of Europe's prowess of transport - the transcontinental trains cruising at 160 km/h. Due to some mix-up with the booking, or maybe the booking lady didn't like the look of me, I took a position on the floor in one of the carriages. I had decided to head to Leipzig for a couple of days to break up the hegemony of city life to head to.... another city. Anyhow, it was worth it.

On Thursday afternoon about 4pm I disembarked from the train to Europe's biggest Bahnhof - Leipzig Haupt Bahnhof. After sitting for a couple of hours, I couldn't wait to do more of the same in the hostel room. The Hostel Sleepy Lion was more than accomadating, and to its credit, it's the cleanest and cheapest hostel I've been in so far. More on the cheap later. The room was around the 18 euro mark, which is pretty standard for Germany, however it was the beer which caught my eye. All the large bottles (almost crate-bottle-like for you Jake the Muss fans) were 1.50 Euro. So, my penchant for a fine brew or two (from such places as the Chezch republic and Hungary) saw me undertaking a 3.30am retirement in the morning chatting with a bunch of school kids who were there on a field trip. And Europe, being it's liberal self there wasn't a problem with them smoking or popping out to the bar and marking mer and merryment.

The next day after a lazy arousal from bed, breakfast was served. I consulted the trusty Lonely planet for a suitable tour of the city to do in a day (I was heading out on Saturday morning at a frosty 8am, since the rest of the day the services were replaced by buses - it felt like the Johnsonville train line all over again.. I shuddered at the thought of buses and was happy at the compromise). After discovering that it's a pretty universal truth that a large number of second hand computer salesmen have the personality and approachability of a festering boil, I kept looking for a hotspot to absorb that the word was doing. No luck, I progressed on my Moses tour of Leipzig. The Altes Radt house was interesting, but being in 95% German didn't give me the full experience. Or was the experience not as good since it was in 5% English? Glass-content glazing aside, there was more than enough history of the area to keep me interested for a couple of hours.

Onward to Thomaskirche (Thomas Church) where J.S. Bach was musical director for several years and his statue outside the church shows him with his jacket pocket hanging inside out - he rekons he was always broke from the number of kids he was raising. At least his sense of homour. I wandered to the new Radt House (council chamber), then had a kip in the park for the rest of the afternoon.

I went out for a couple of beers with some people who had moved in to the hostel room, then headed to bed for an early night's rest (relatively). I just caught the train with a minute to spare before arriving at Berlin a couple of hours later.

I write this in Potsdamer place, which, the complex itself has two IMAX cinemas. Not sure if I've mentioned that already - the conglomerates who have interests in this part of town are Sony and DamlerChrysler and are trying to outdo each other with lofty and large buildings. I say this as the lights on the ceiling have changed from a magenta hue to a blue one. Next stop is a brisk trip on the U-bahn to the Zoot Woman concert. I have no idea what I'm doing tomorrow - I could be flying to Amsterdam or perhaps stopping off on the train to Dusseldorf for a night. It'll probably be one of two outcomes. One is that I've left everything too late and I have to take some scroungy expensive option, and the other is I pull finger now and book something. Oooh.. here's the desert menu.

Please step this way....

Buying personal hygene products at a large department store is a daunting experience. Especially when you're obviously a backpacker from both your smell and your oversized novelty backpack. They look at you with sympathy and shuffle you over to the "rite price" area.

Anyhow, I left after paying 40 NZD for a tube of shower gel and shampoo - both small and compact, just like the camp bag I was given.

Yesterday was spent wandering around the city just following our noses. It was Emile's last day in Germany, so he went off and did some of his own sights for the afternoon while I did some window shopping.

However today was a lot more eventful. After avoiding tours like the plague since I convinced myself that I'm above them, I went on a free 3 and a half hour tour of historical Berlin, and afterward it has changed my opinion about tours. I still don't see myself buying an SLR camera and fanny pack (bum bag) with loud t-shirts, but it gave a heap of background to what I thought was an otherwise big city. We did the tour of the Brandenberg gate, which was next to the highlight of the tour - the Adlen hotel where Michael Jackson hung the baby out the window. That was fantastic. After the historial "pause" of Berlin with the guide making wisecracks at the expense of the French, we charged along to to Jewish Memorial. The grounds have large uneven (deliberate) concrete blocks placed in a roughly ordered fashion, in order to look like a jewish graveyard with headstones/tombstones.

Also on the tour was Hitler's bunker..... buried under a carpark and apartments. There's no plaque or board indicating such a site. The idea goes that they didn't want a bunch of Neo-Nazis coming over (most likely from Christchurch) and making a shrine out of it.

Further wanders around the city included the something or other of Terror, lots of museums, a chocolate shop, a sandwhich bar with perhaps the only free toilet in Berlin (and even better, free drink refills). All the places that I went to you can read all about in plenty of other places. Things you probably won't read about is why the city smells like sewerage everwhere and I dunno if I'm being an obvious... Oswald, but since the city was built on a swamp, there are always problems with flooding and swerage so it's always like this. I'm also told that people say the smell of Berlin is unique and it's what keeps people here. Maybe....

My travels over the next few days are reasonably busy, which will include a couple of days to the southwest of Berlin to a town called Leipzig, then back to Berlin for a concert on Saturday, then a train or plane to Amsterdam on Sunday and stay the night there. On Monday, it's back to London to sort out some book keeping bizzo before I start work back at the coal face again.

Put your hands in the air; put your hands. in. the air.

After waking up at a leisurely midday on Saturday we thought we'd have a quiet day of walking around the city and seeing the sights. 10-odd kilometres later we had still only seen a tiny amount of the city. Most of the touring was in the style of following our noses, and that we did. Emile was wetting himself checking out the Audi and VW showrooms and I was busy having a nosey in the Hugo Boss shop and some bookshops. One thing that was obviously different with the Netherlands compared to Germany and that's the Dutch love to read. There is a bookshop on almost every retail block.

We wandererd along Under den Ligne and came across a big Jewish festival around where the war monuments and the Reichstag were. We decided to steer cleer since I was getting tired of kindly denying the chance of getting to know the big J some more. We did the walk around the Tiergarten (most of the perimeter) which is the largest metropolitan garden in Europe. I was asked for directions more that afternoon than the previous two weeks. Everyone from drunk Swiss tourists and one guy who looked as though his Prozac supply was on the blink and getting to Zoolische Garten station was the only thing holding him back from topping himself.

There were plenty of monuments around that we just saw and had no idea what they were, so Berlin is one city that I'd like to get a tour of, then perhaps spend enough time in the city in order to give the sights the justice they deserve. After we got back to the hostel we rested for a few hours before we headed to Tresor to see T. Raumschmiere live. On the way we stopped off for a quick look at a fragment of the Berlin wall next to Potzdamer platz which half of the impressive-looking place (do a google for it) is a Sony Centre outfit. We had to go there because Tresor wasn't opening until 11pm. Vive la Berlin and its night life!

Tresor was amazing. We hung around in a building which was a converted bank or vault. Emile got some photos which I'll put up on the gallery, but you walk down some stairs and if you imagine what a vault downstairs from 50 years ago would look like, this was pretty much it. Wrought iron rusty gates and concrete with old graffiti scratched and painted on the walls. This wasn't open for another hour or so so in the meantime we had a wander around. There was another room back upstairs which a dude in a flower dress was DJing some house music. Outside there was a huge chill-out area with water fountains, trees and tables to sit and talk while having a beer. We were told T. Raumschmiere wouldn't be starting till 4.30, so we had a good time sifting between the various areas until he started. His main attraction wasn't DJing (he's got his own band), so it wasn't as fabulous as I thought, but still worth it. The other DJ Aparat was well-worth it. All the artists are from the shitkicker label, so I think I'll do some shopping from there. We headed back some around 5.45 and tried to make our way home. We got lost, so took about 45 minutes more than we had hoped, but we stumbled upon a whole bunch more old stuff which I'll have to had a read up on and visit at some stage. It's the really old area of Berlin (that much I could recognise at 6.45 in the morning). We arrived at the hostel and the room-mates were just leaving as we were getting to bad. Unfortunately around 4.30 I was getting tired and I knew that if I had a bit of shut eye, it would be a matter of minutes before someone would come up and either offer me drugs and ask me where I could get some. Reglardless, I thought I'd give the snooze plan a go. Some concerned dude came up and asked me if I was tired. Yes I exclaimed, but realised that he was speaking German and asked for a bit of clarification on what "tired" meant: Coke. I replied with an unhelpful (for him) "Nein". I shoudl always wear a sign that says: "I'm ok, just sleeping" in several languages when I need some shuteye.

Unfortunately we had to check out of the hostel four hours later and move to a new hostel so bleary-eyed we headed to the artistic area of town which feels a bit like monmatre of Paris except not as clean. Before we would have a sieste for the afternoon, we found a buffet for 6 euro just down the corner and definitely ate till it hurt. There a few unsecured wifi hotspots which I'll scope out tomorrow and send this offline update to the world of etherpackets.

In about 75% where we went around the city, it smelt like a sewer. This was near Under den Ligne (the retail area) as well as most other places. It was like the whole city had its sewage system broken - not a Rotorua smell either. David, get Daniel over here to fix this place, pronto!

Ich bin ein Berliner

160Km/hr on a Sunny Sunday with a tail wind

The six hour train trip from Amsterdam which turned in to seven hours was reasonably uneventful. There's nothing like a good yarn to take home about how you were body-searched on the German border. Not even a flashlight, barking dog or sirn while they were checking my passport (which they did about half way through the journey in a small German town). The Polish guy next to me had his passport number checked over the phone by the local authorities. The trip was a bit more expensive than the French trains, but still not too bad for 60 euro. For some reason it's a bit cheaper to travel in pairs - about 25% off so I was joined at the hip for six hours.

Being the usual Chris that I am, I hadn't written down the address or phone number, or even the name of the hostel we were staying at, so I was banking on pulling my laptop out at the station and picking up some unsecured wifi hotspot and going for gold. Unfortunately no such luck would befall me and it was only pay-through-the-nose bizz. An internet cafe gave us the bizzo and we took the underground to where we had to go.


Put your hands in the air and give me all your money

The first thing you notice about Berlin, and I suspect everywhere else in Germany for that matter is that you can't pay for anything with Visa. No hostels, food, groceries or anything. It's like taking a trip back in time. There is a debit card you can use, but you need a bank account, so lets not even go there. The number of ATMs around the place is quite slim too. Most stations have them, but if you're not near one, you're usually out of luck. By comparison in the Netherlands, they are brilliant by comparison. They have chip cards which I gather are cards you can recharge with money and use for offline transactions. Everywhere there is a geltautomaat, there is a chipkart machine. They also charge you extra if you do human transactions, which, while being a hassle also helps to get rid of that dirty cash word. It's been a big hassle here without Visa in Germany so far, and it's going to take me a while to get used to.

The hostel where we stayed at was really low key. They don't allow smokers which while I thought would render the place desolate was completely full on Sunday night. The idea was to deter the undesirables. So smokers beware.. :) By about 7pm we were ready to devour some form of oversized dead animal, so we went to the local stereotypical German pub and asked for the large beers with our meal. We were brought the tourist size beers of which the glass is literally a foot high containing 10 centilitres of local ale. The food was ultra tasty and is obvious that the Germans love their meat, although I think I saw one vegitarian dish which had only one sort of meat with it ;)

Spending money the easy way....


Emile and I caught up with Guy (a friend of ours from Auckland who moved with his girlfriend to England). They were busy embarking on a mission of Verve Cliquot, and being already past the point of several times of the legal driving limit, I guessed that they weren't drinking for the taste. They were out to celebrate Juliette's birthday and by 400 euro later, I imagine they were doing it in the most English way possible. We wandered to a bar reccomended by the bar staff were we were, and after being there for a few minutes, we could tell that it was reccomended out of malice. The people were pretty trashy and the music was something from the viaduct in Auckland. He also told us that there was a bar that we should go to called Dunkin' Donughts, and being touristy and rather drunk, we didn't notice the humour of the local hospo workers. The Germans have a sense of humour alright.

The english went off for a kebab forage and we headed back home. A nice night in all but a sleep-in was in order but would pale in comparison for the following night listening to German industrial trance...

Let's play "spot the tourist" in Amsterdam

Today was the day for doing stuff. At least that's what Emile and I had boastingly proposed the night before. 1am and we were still listening to Mikey Havoc on bfm and typing emails. Not surprisingly we got at the train station around 11am for the mission to Utrecht. Xavier said we had to visit this student town, for both types of scenery. He wasn't kidding on both fronts.

We got the stoptrain (as opposed to the sneltrain). We tried to figure out the difference, and one would think that one goes faster than the other, but we still weren't able to figure out what it meant at the end of the day since they both went at the same speed.

When we got off after an hour train journey, the Utrecht central station was one big shopping mall. Meandering through the town was a great experience. Most of the cities in Holland are built around waterways, and this is no exception. Along the waterways below the streets, there are also footpaths just above the water. Shops open on to the footpath and recede back under the road (if you can visualise that). The netherlands' biggest steeple is in Utrecht, but was hard to get any happpy snaps of the church - not very photogenic (it wasn't smiling, and neither was the dude hanging on the crucifix).

We managed to see most of the city in four hours of walking around with a convincing poker face that we knew where we were going. Sitting in the sun on the side of a canal drinking a Hoegaarden was very refreshing. Might as well enjoy the summer while it lasts.

I headed back to Xavier's place and said see-ooo to him and jumped on the train to Amsterdam. Having a 70 litre pack on my back packed completely full and a 30 litre day pack on the front felt pretty sore once I was well in to the swing of wandering around Amsterdam looking for my hostel. Now I know what I would have felt like if I had joined the army and done basic.

The city has very nice architecture - lots of old stuff similar to Utrecht, but also lots of new stuff like Rotterdam. Unfortunately more tourists than both those cities combined. It didn't take long to spot them, or rather smell them. They all seem to travel/hunt in packs with number 2 haircuts and polo shirts while giving each other dead arms. After devouring some peas, pies and pud at the local Western pub, they'll head for desert to the red light district and have a feed of one of the locals behind the shop windows.

I've got a good list so far of the non-touristy areas, so hopefully I won't pollute the nice places tomorrow with my smell or foreign demeanour.

Before I finish, I'll comment on the Dutch here. They seem really nice; their english is generally good and they spend time enjoying life. It's a nice way to be, in my opinion. This is a general theme with Europeans I've found, however. If I could suggest one thing to them, and that's to change their train ticket machines so you can use paper money as well as coins. I'm a bit tired of paying 50 eurocents for a manual ticket purchase transaction. They also like dining late, which works well for me. There are plenty of restaurants happy to relieve me of my cash for dinner after 10pm.

Mission to Rotterdam

Today Emile and me missioned it to Rotterdam. A city to the southeast of Den Haag. Immediately after getting off the train we noticed the difference between there and the place we're staying at. The city, which was rebuilt after being given the bash during the war is pretty much a new city. It's always nice wandering around the city aimlessly with neither rhyme nor reason since you can come across some pretty nice places by surprise.

We did the touristy thing up the Eurotower which had a cheesy beetles tune in the background while it rotated around as it ascended up Rotterdam's tallest building. There were a couple of nice older buildings, but the main attraction as far as buildings go are the new wierd architectures that the Dutch have come up with. I'll put some images up in the next day or so. Emile liked it as much as Amsterdam, and to have been interested in donning the spandex and doing some cycle courier income.

One thing I'm loving about this place here are the Turkish Pizzas. Living in one of the cheaper socio-economic neighbourhoods, you get to experience plenty of ethnic kai, and one of which are the turkish foods. The kebabs are pretty standard, but the pizzas are pretty cool. For 1.50 euro (double for NZD) you can get a piece of pita bread with mincey stuff, sauce, onion, lettuice, and tomato and wrapped up for some serious power devouring.

Tomorrow is off to student-ville in Utrecht, then spending the next two nights in Amsterdam.

I'll leave Xavier (Emile's buddy who stayed with him in NZ for a bit) battling away with his bow-tie starting at 6am tomorrow for a bit of a sleep-in.

Den Haag days number three

I've just woken the third day of my travels around Nederlands. There are still lots of "j"s and "oooo"s in their language, but I'm slowly getting used to it. It even sounds nice to listen to - never thought that day would come. I'll get back to the Nederlands later on, but I'll prattle on a bit about what I've done so far.

After a 26 or so trip on the plane I landed at Paris, and got to grips with the metro I headed on out to the Monmatre area to crash at a backpacker place there. Contrary to what I thought, the Monmatre area isn't the prostitue area. Instead it's a quiet area in the 18th Arronissement of Paris that goes to sleep early in the evening and wakes up late which has its charm. If you follow one of the roads in an upwards fashion, you get to the Sacre Coeur which is the highest point in Paris. There are a couple of photos from the Sacre Coeur on the gallery. A lot of photos show overcast weather, which hasn't been uncommon since I've been in Europe. But you get those days about a third of the time.

I was crashing in a backpackers while I was in Paris (7 person dorm) and you can guarantee that anyone who walks in your room will either have an American twang or an Aussie accent. Met an engineer from South Australia and we missioned it around on the second day all over the place. It was good having someone else around to have a yarn with. When I met up with some American people who had moved over either for holidays or preparing to study in Europe somewhere, I had discovered that what we call a bum bag, they call a fanny pack. Those of you from Asia Pacific will have a bit of a chuckle on this one.

After the new mates I had met moved on, I went back to wandering the city on my own and came across what I think was described to me in my French class as the boubourg district in the northeast area of Paris in the 19th Arrondissement. While I was taking photos of the large looking arch with the Latin inscriptions, some guy told me to be careful with the camera. After indcating to all the women down the street overloaded with lederhosen and makeup that I hadn't noticed, he said that the women don't like getting photos taken. He didn't belive me when I tried to convince him it was the arch that interested me. Pottering around the 19th I came across the Museum of the Modern arts, which was closed, but the dude said the next morning would be a good time to visit. So I propped myself down on a seat and noticed that one of the cafes was offering free wifi access so I figured I'd take the liberty of sitting on a bench somewhere and getting back up to date with the rest of the world.

The metro system is really efficient, and litterally you can find a station at every block, or two at the most. The trip is 1.40 euro for as far as you want. The stations are clean, and there are plenty of people asking me if I speak english and wanting my cash. I reply "non" in my best french accent then charge off. I don't exactly feel like the Dhali Lama, but I figure out a way of justifying it to myself then move on.

I got the details of Yo, Corrine and Alex who are in-law family living in the Massif Centrale region of France. After catching the three hour train jouney down there (which arrived within ten seconds of when it said it would) I stayed with them for a few days. Their place is in a town called Ludesse which is probably like something out of father ted. The population is around 200 and it certainly felt that way. For any banking you had to charge to the next door town and even then it's only open on Fridays. Most of the towns there are about 400 years or so old. Yo is really in to his hang gliding so did the bold out there and checked out the countryside. Pretty impressive, especially being about 800 metres up - clouds are pretty close.

I missioned it up on the following Thursday with Matt to Paris on the train, then across to London. I found the best part of Lodon was leaving, so needless to say that the city was everything I thought it would be. I won't dwell on it that much, but I will say a couple of things. The effluent from the trains drains straight on the tracks and the who place generally just feels like molasses.

After a couple of days I headed across to Amsterdam for a flight that cost 18 pound return. After taxes it worked out to be 60 GBP/150NZD. I didn't spend much time in Amsterdam since I was catching up with Emile in Dan Haag which is about 25 minutes south of Amsterdam by train. As expected things over in the mainland are efficient and reasonably clean. On the gallery there are a few photos of the beach and I'll try and get some more of the city itself. It's quite a nice city and definitely very lively at night. We didn't leave till around 11 for dinner and some night life. I'm almost typed out, so I'll whack some more stuff on in a few days' time.

Gallery URL

For those of you who don't know, the gallery URL is:

http://timmy.ip.geek.nz/gallery/