Noo Yawk

If the building we were staying at was a bar, then you could definitely call it a dive bar. It's kind of cheap and nasty, the doors were never built to close (they're actually too big for the door frames), and one neighbour got into an hour long screaming match with the super about the heating, which is, admittedly, somewhat erratic.

Steam heating is something I've never seen before, there are pipes that run into the apartment and at certain times start pumping out steam (the pipes are meant to radiate some heat too). There is no real way to predict when the heating will kick in. Sometimes you can come home to a sauna, sometimes there is no heating at all.

Still, with a fresh coat of paint and freshly polished floors, the place is actually somewhat okay. Although next to the bus station, the 7R stands for rear and so it's actually really quiet.

We're two blocks from Times Square, which is handy for when we want to stroll to the local cinemaplex (with a mighty 25 screens) and last night saw the really masterful new Kaufman movie - Synecdoche, New York (highly recomended). We're also within strolling distance of Hell's Kitchen which features lots of interesting restaurants, and the night before last we had some tasty Ethiopean dinner, which features a unique pancake bread (Injera) that you eat the curries with.

Around Times Square are The Tourists, which we can sometimes avoid being grouped with by the non stop array of people selling tours and sketches and tickets, etc. Tourists all walk about with a kind of nervous sluggishness, they are generally much heavier than the NY locals, who stay thin by a combination of walking, taking subways (in which there are no escalators that work) and by yelling at each other.

The typical NY local is stylish, but in a deliberately casual way. There is a sense of non-conformity compared to the classical European styles of Germany. One suspects however, that this non-conformity is merely an illusion as the number one activity without doubt is consumerism, either in a buying or selling capacity.

Compared to my memory of NY, people have had the wind knocked out of them by the latest financial woes, which they are all taking pretty hard. Reviews for theatre have mentions of "lovely and upbeat, particularly in these times", and people do NOT seem to have that typical upbeat attitude and instead can be overheard muttering about how much money they've lost.

Everything bad aside, New York is still a great city. If you like people, are interested in everything that people do, then NY is the place to be. There is so much richness just in the street, in the subways, as people publicly live their lives and interact and the countless wonderful strange moments that you get to witness are the things you remember. People here are not so reserved, and there is a kind of honesty in that.

Oh, and before we perpetuate the myth any further, there is indeed good coffee to be had here. We found, just down the end of our street, a perfectly boheme cafe that serves killer lattes with their funky music and cupcakes - The Cupcake Cafe. But even in a typical European/Sydney style cafe like this, they still cater to the local tastes with their self service coffee cart - serving off course lovely Americano (yeargh) style coffee...

New York New York

I was a litte apprehensive arriving in New York as I had very low expectations of the apartment we had rented and the neighbourhood it would be in. I have been pleasantly surprised about the the apartment, it is a teeny tiny one bedroom even smaller than our studio in Sydney, but very functional and clean. The only downsides being that we are on the 4th floor of a walk up building and the bed is not big enough for the two of us. We had to go to Kmart and purchase an air mattress and are now sleeping in separate beds, which kinda suxs. As for the neighbourhood it's about what I expected but maybe not so scary. It is a lovely neighbourhood, we are right next door to at least two adult video stores and as a pleasant extra surprise, a large parole office to which ex-cons must make their weekly reports. On the bright side a pretty major subway stop is only three doors down and we can basically walk to all the action. Once you are inside the apartment you really forget how seedy the outside is. Our super Wilson and his wife are very friendly and helpful even when we constantly interrupt his tiling efforts and walk all over her mopping the floors with our dusty shoes.

We have now been in the city for almost a week and we are really trying to get an authentic New York experience. We have spent most of our days exploring the numerous boroughs, eating bagels and trying to find a decent cup of coffee. Funnily enough Starbucks coffee is near to the top so far, which is lucky since its on almost every street corner. Other New York experiences we have had include: doing our washing at the local laundromat, baking apple pie, going for a jog in Central park and catching subways everywhere.....oh and SHOPPING! You will be pleased to know that I have limited myself to 4 pairs of shoes so far. The terrible exchange rate is putting a dampener on things though.

New York really is one of the most interesting cities I have visited mainly due to the diversity of people that live here but also due to the difference in all neighbourhoods. You get a sense of the lifestyle the people lead just by walking around and listening to the snippets of conversation and other body language. In our neighbourhood we really need puffy jackets and baggy pants to fit in. While I'm not sure this is a place that id choose to live in, there is a certain energy that consumes you just being amongst so many people and listening to the sirens and horns echoing down the street at any time of the day or night. Rush hour is times ten and not just on the street, forget about trying to buy anything with out having to join a queue that loops around the entire shop, they even have people whose job it is to hold a sign indicating to shoppers where the end of the queue is. Amongst all this chaos there is the park where one can go to get away from it all. Its so peaceful although totally overrun with squirrels. They are everywhere and not at all timid like I thought they would be.

So on the whole we are having a great time figuring this city out and try to determine if it is somewhere that we might like to live, so far im still undecided. The way the dollar is going we may have to. Hope everyone is well we are missing you all!

Irish Road Trip

We had hired a car for a four day road trip and set off from Dublin on Sunday morning, not having a good picture of how long it would take to cover distances. In the event, we were given a car that had been seriously battered about and had very uncomfortable seats, which meant that driving was not especially efficient or comfortable.

We had set out to the south from Dublin, and reached the lovely town of Enniscorthy by the time we decided to stop. We found a B&B with a WW1 theme - rifles, recruitment posters and newspapers from the era - but the best feature was the view across the river and the two main bridges across the town.

Since it was Sunday, the town was basically closed. Dinner options consisted of a choice between fried chicken, pizza or hamburgers. I chose a hamburger from a place with people that were playing pinball and the sense that the past twenty five years still hadn't happened. It was like an Australian fast food place from the depths of childhood memories.

The interesting thing about Ireland for an Australian is the sense that Australia is more or less a continuation or Ireland in another country. The people are MUCH friendlier though, and the countryside is unique. Once you get out of Dublin, the country opens up and becomes wonderful.

But the culture seems about the same, the pubs identical, and the things which are different such as the eloquent and preppy Trinity culture are still vaguely familiar from popular imagination of how university is (if not in fact). Even a lot of the urban landscape seems constructed by the same companies and designers.

Irish breakfast the next morning introduced me to soda bread and white pudding - the first consistently delicious across Ireland, the second a mixture of lard and oatmeal and not a particular highlight. We visited Vinegar Hill, the headquarters of a failed southern rebellion, and then set out for Kilkenny, which had a nice castle and cathedral (we came to find that ALL towns in Ireland have a nice castle and cathedral, a fact seemingly not lost on some other towns, who began combining and multiplying their castles and cathedrals, presumably to distinguish themselves). Along the way we got lost and discovered that Irish road signs are generally good in the countryside, but somewhat inadequate in the cities, with the street signs placed against the far wall rather than on a pole, which means that they are hard to see and actually invisible at night.

Jan had given us a GPS device with a map and this proved helpful. Later it actually made all the difference in the world on our nightmare Dubin re-commute, which came later as part of our Journey From Hell.

After Kilkenny came Cork, and this city was really fun. I guess any town with a large student population just becomes fun, albeit in a drunken kind of way. We stayed this time at Garnish House, a B&B that is trying to rewrite the B&B experience (but not the prices). You get welcomed with afternoon tea and the full attention of the host who talks about what you should see, gets out maps, tells you about Cork, and helps you to plan your next day. Then you get a room that is as nice as a hotel room, if not better, and then the next morning you get Breakfast Extravaganza, starting with fruit, local cheese, ham, salami (all interesting and delicious), followed by porridge with Baileys, followed by an extensive list of choices from a hot menu and then, a final course of pancakes!! (Needless to say, Jannie and I only managed fruit and eggs, to the disappointment of the host, who was tried to persuade us by saying he could give us "just one small pancake", after everything else.)

And then it rained. In a big way.

We struggled on to Killarney, where we found another B&B and just went to ground, trying the local stouts and Irish Stew but otherwise not doing much. Jannie bought a scarf.

The highlight of the next morning was an abbey that (along with everything else in Ireland) had been sacked by Cromwellian forces and never rebuilt. It was GRAND to wander around the ancient ruins, which were still largely intact.

By lunchtime it was time to head back to Dublin, at which point began the Journey From the Depths of Hell (okay, slight exaggeration). The big problem with driving in thick heavy rain in Ireland is that you can’t see anything (including signs) and that tractors and farm trucks drive on the highways (oh, and there are no overtaking lanes. By none, that means zero. Oh, and there are no shoulders either, so trucks can't pull over). So it would be good for a little while, but then we would get stuck behind another truck or tractor, before overtaking it or having it turn away. Sometimes this would take a while. And then, almost immediately, you could get stuck again.

So not much fun, but still infinitely better than Dublin at rush hour, which is when we arrived. We got to the west side of Dublin at around 5 PM and had been told that we couldn't take the perimeter freeway to the north west airport side unless we had bought a sticker for the toll (this proved to be false as you can buy one afterwards). So bravely and foolishly, we plunged into the depths of Dublin only to find complete and utter gridlock. It took 3 hours to drive to Jan and Jaime's house, and it was only with the aid of GPS that we could navigate as the street signs were all rendered invisible by darkness and the light in the car wasn't working either to see a map. Dublin is not an easy city to drive in even without traffic, and since it is cut in half by rivers and canals, crossing at the bridges in rush hour takes great, deep patience. Other highlights included driving the wrong way down one way streets and missing critical turns that required doubling back though interminably long and crowded routes, all to the sound of Jannie's cries of "I can't see the maps!" and "This stupid GPS is losing itself and is a pile of @#@#!".

If that wasn't enough, there was a big hurling match on and of course we drove right next to that as well. There were more people than cars on the road, creating a new kind of gridlock.

We got to Jan and Jaime's house to drop off their maps and GPS and were in such a rush we didn't even leave a thank you note (BTW, thanks heaps!) as we had to get to the airport and return our car before getting charged a late fee. After driving all day our patience was shot and we didn't get to sleep before 11, which was bad news as we had to get up at 4:30 for our red eye flight to Germany. Once we had boarded this flight (and only just did we make it, we were rushing about like headless chooks through the many long lines and then the endless Dublin airport and basically got to the plane with no time to spare) we were told that the flight was delayed an hour due to wind in Germany.

We got to Germany only to find the thick rain had followed us there too so we didn't do much while waiting for our 5PM flight. This flight was largely uneventful except we were both tired and grumpy and I managed to spill someone's wine all over an elderly irritable German when I put my seat back. Then, when we landed for some reason we had to sit around on the tarmac for an hour waiting to get off. The lights were all off and all the announcements were in German only and so Jannie was on verge of nervous collapse by the time we finally got off, only to find more gridlock in the immigration lines. Finally, the next day, we arrived at our apartment only to find nobody there and so we had to wait around another hour for that.

So basically travel can be less than fun, and while each thing individually would have been fine, all this collectively over 48 hours, and throwing in only ten hours sleep, it can really suck.

But two good nights sleep later we are in good spirits again, with clean clothes, and enjoying NYC to the max...

Dublin

We arrived in Dublin at around 10pm after almost an entire day of travel and a flight delay of about 45mins. It's just lucky we had such a restful sleep the previous night because we where exhausted! After stepping off the plain we caught a taxi to Jan and Jaime's place in Raheny (north of Dublin city). It only took about 15mins to get there, even after the Taxi driver made a couple of wrong turns. The first two observations we made about Ireland is that everyone is very helpful and polite and the street names are REALLY confusing even for locals. Jan and Jaime's house in on Grange Park Cres which should be easy enough to find except that in the same area will be Grange Park Close, Grange Park Street….you get where I'm going here right? Anyway the taxi driver was really nice and waited till we knocked on the door to check that we had the right house.

We hadn't seen Jan and Jaime for about six months so it was fun catching up again. We ended up staying up past midnight catching up which I must apologise for as Jaime had to get up pretty early for work the next day.

Jan and Jaime were both working on the Friday so after a bit of a late start we headed into Dublin city. Luckily Jan has a pretty flexible job and was able to catch the train with us and point us in the right direction. We made plans to meet up for dinner and proceeded to spend the day looking around the city. We met up with David (my cousin) for a coffee and in true Irish style we spent the rest of the afternoon in a pub drinking Beer and Cider (Bulmers is everywhere in Ireland much to my delight) when it started to rain.

After a pint and a half of Bulmers we met Jan and Jaime for dinner at a lovely restaurant where we drank two bottles of delicious wine. Those of you that know me will know what a cheap drunk I am so you can imagine how fun I became after all that! After dinner everyone decided that they needed more alcohol so we went to a pub for Guinness and a water for me, by this stage I was a little worse for wear but a fun night was had by all. Thanks again Jan and Jaime.

The only things we managed to do on Saturday were to sleep in and to see Trinity, where we saw the book of Kells. Then we went back to Jan and Jaime's yummy home cooked roast chicken and a movie night consisting of the hilarious Hercules Returns and oh so serious Michael Collins.

A big thanks to Jan and Jaime for there hospitality and everything else...see you in New York!

Berlin

I thought Berlin was an amazingly rich and interesting place to visit. We were there for three nights, two of which were at a former monastery turned youth hostel, the third at the decadently luxurious Steigenberger, which came as something of a relief as something licey, something bitey was eating me alive and Jannie was complaining about the 75 stairs and (gasp) no lift.

Our Mexican friends, Alex and Claudia, were in Berlin at exactly the same time as us and we ran into them again on the train from Prague, although there was a scramble for the seats in the sole first class carriage and we ended up sitting in someone else's reserved seats by mistake. Alex and Claudia fixed the problem by removing the reserved indicators, thereby ensuring that their seats were "free". We followed suit as a joke just before the rightful ticket holders rolled up to claim their seats. In the Mexican stand off that ensured, Alex and Claudia held their ground and won the seats, while we went to the other end of the carriage (after all, the aggrieved party were Aussies too).

Anyway, there was so much to do in Berlin and we only scratched the surface in the time we had. I don't believe that we would of run out of new things to experience if we had been there a month.

On the first day we went to the Technical Museum (which is enormous). War is so tied into German history that the museum sort of mirrors the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, for example with the intact (Australian) Lancaster bomber in Canberra and the crashed remains of another Lancaster bomber in Berlin. There were WW2 rockets, jets, fighters and trains, all along with suitcase making displays, brewery displays, and the trains, oh the trains. I guess about fifty locomotives and train carriages are all on display, including one used to transport people to the concentration camps that you could walk into.

Anyway, we left only when we were exhausted and there were still more things to see. After drinks that night with A&C in a Mexican place at Potsdamer Platz, we went the next day with them to the Hamburger Bahnhoff which is now a modern art museum for yet another massive museum experience and some really excellent modern art. There were extensive exhibitions on Beuys and Warhol and then a selection from their permanent collection on a theme of deconstructionism in a series of galleries the size perhaps of Central railway station in Sydney. After seeing the Biennale in Sydney, it was so very refreshing to see modern art that was good. We left again with sore feet, but in excellent spirits. A barrage of deconstructive art leaves one seeing the humour in all things.

So the end effect was that or five star Steigenberger experience was one of recuperation and to finally have a Good Nights Sleep. The next day we spent in travel, meantime wishing we had done these things as well, as we trained it to Frankfurt to catch the plane to Dublin...

Praha

While agreeing with all of Jannie's sentiments about Prague, I would just like to relate an observation about the city and my favourite Kafka novel, The Castle. As we all know, Kafka grew up in Prague, and it is above the city that indeed stands an imposing castle, although not one in the classical sense, one of thick walls and turrets, but one of a very definite aloof grandeur.

Leading to the castle from "Charles' Bridge" is a very steep, windy road, lined with shops and from which the castle seems close, but elusive as it continually disappears behind another shop, and in fact vanishes somehow just at the very end.

One can easily imagine Kafka, struggling with tuberculosis, making his way up this long and arduous road, and getting the inspiration for his masterpiece.

The other observation is that the Castle, while grand from a distance, is indeed somewhat plain from the inside, and actually quite hollow. The inner courtyard is barren, its emptiness entirely hidden from the outside. Like biting into a limp apple, the beauty of Prague lies in the imagination.

Why does everyone love Prague?

.....that it wasn't at all what we were expecting. This is a difficult post for me to write as I feel I don't really understand Prague at all. We were there for four days which right now I feel was too long. I was very excited about the prospect of visiting this city as I have never heard anything less than glowing reviews of the place, so you will understand why I feel quite strange about writing that our experiences were not really that great. Don't get me wrong Prague is a beautiful city and I feel that perhaps 5 years ago it would have been fantastic. However now it is overrun by tourists to the point of exhaustion and the Czech people are not happy about it. If you don't speak Czech they people are extremely unhelpful and will rip you off at any given opportunity. They will add a 20% surcharge to every meal after already adding a 10% service fee. I can only speculate that this 20% is for being a foreigner! Having said that its not that expensive (about the same as Sydney prices) but the food is not very good and the service is worse, so it's kind of just annoying to get ripped off.

On the bright side the scenery is beautiful, the castle was amazing, i only wish we could have gone into the church but the line was way too long....damn tourists! On the third day we decided to try and find more of what the real Prague is all about and headed to a town about a 15min tram ride away. The people were a little friendlier here and the food looked better which was a relief. We also managed to stumble across a concert in one of the bars that was being given in aid of children with Epilepsy. It was great the music was good, even though we couldn't understand any of it and they even sang a few English songs. A good time was had by all. Especially the really drunk girls dancing 80's style!

If it wasn't for the last day I would have left Prague extremely disappointed but as it stands now I think it was an interesting place with a lot to offer if you speak the language and actually may come good in about 5-10years when the people learn to cope with tourism, I certainly wont be back before then.

Oktoberfest

I liked Munich - with lots of parks, bike paths, trams and of course so much fresh and delicious beer. (So cheap incidentally - a six pack from the supermarket is 3.5 euro and a 5 litre keg is 8 euro!)

So even though it was cold and windy I came to think that it was an interesting place. We were there for two days and staying at a place near Oktoberfest, and it was chaos. Everywhere gets booked out months before, and the place was absolutely overflowing with people. The hotel seemed to fall apart while we were there, with lifts and doors to the breakfast room rendered inoperative - presumably after two more weeks of Oktoberfest the place is in ruins.

Anyway, Jannie had a cold and felt "terrible" as she frequently liked to tell me, so we didn't really get into the drunken Oktoberfest atmosphere as we might have. It's hard to get a table unless you have a reservation (i.e. work for a company that reserves tables) or plan to stay there all day from the opening at 10:30 in the morning. Some people clearly took the second option and so extreme drunkenness was the norm by 4:00 in the afternoon, when the party really starts to take off. Five thousand people dancing on tables, singing German songs, all while carrying enormous glasses of beer, creates a unique spectacle.

When the waitress brings you the beer, she asks if she can keep the change, and so when everyone is drunk by that point a waitress could probably make 30 euro per trip to the bar and back in tips, which is undeserved, since she spills most of it on the way by carrying the glasses at an angle (although of course carrying ten steins is still moderately impressive).

We managed to avoid a hangover the entire time in Munich, was is an achievement, and managed to get on the Prague train early enough to get a seat, which was another achievement b/c it was extremely full and people were lying around in the corridors, drinking, of course, more beer.

We met a lovely Mexican couple on the train, Alex and Claudia, which made the long train trip a pleasant breeze and even though the Police became intensely suspicious by Jannie having two passports (and no arrival stamp) we managed to get to the Czech Republic safely, only to find...

One Week Later

My flight from Sydney was on a new double decker A380 and flying economy felt like business with all the entertainment options. They even had power points, which I didn't use because I was too busy watching Peep Show, Family Guy and Flight of the Conchords!

For some reason I had been led to believe that Frankfurt was dodgy, but it seemed fine and I had a great time while waiting for my flight to Malta the next day. The local speciality is apple wine, which nobody is supposed to really like, but I do for some reason, and all the local drunks in the bar were both dubious and impressed.

I think I need a sign that says I speak no - as in NONE - German, as everybody just assumes I am fluent and are asking me for directions and expecting me to observe the complicated German societal observances, of which I am sonorously unaware (I find it difficult even to switch on the lights over here).

Anyway, Malta struck me as a totally unique place. The cars zoom around the narrow laneways that were built for horses, and the houses are all sandstone, which means that they are mildly colder in the harsh summer heat, but can also corrode quite easily and seem to be continually being rebuilt. Plus, the houses can take some time to clean, with our hosts spending two days cleaning per week (!).

The landscape is rocky, to say the least, and the rocks are generally gathered to form rubble walls, but there are still plenty of rocks left over. Even the fields where crops are grown are full of little rocks.

We were staying in Gozo, the less populated of the two islands that form Malta. The airport is on the main island, along with the capital, the factories and most of the people. Gozo is more rustic, and the only means of travel between the islands is a car ferry that costs 5 euro per passenger, and means a trip from Gozo to the capital by bus and ferry takes around two hours, which we discovered on our first (and only) bus trip.

Valetta, the capital, is an all sandstone fortress city complete with invasion bells that nevertheless still seemed to be captured by any European power that gained ascendancy in the Mediterranean. There are a lot of steep stair-cased streets that really shouldn't have cars driving down them, but they still do anyway. In some ways it was a city as interesting and unique as Venice.

On day two, we explored Gozo, exploring the Citadel, which, in the sixteenth century fell to the Turks who enslaved all the inhabitants of the island (except for 40 old men as stipulated in the surrender conditions). We had local wine, tomatoes, cheese and olives in a really FRESH and rustic lunch that seemed to come from another era.

We also went to Ramla Bay which is the nicest beach in Gozo and Malta, and has golden sand like at Narrabeen. Walking there, Jannie saw many things to be scared of - which is an achievement given that there are no poisonous snakes or spiders on Malta.

On our final day we went to Malta to see an airshow and have lunch with Jannie's cousin Joe and fiancé Lisa. The airshow was mainly British and was reasonably loud and dangerous looking. The afternoon highlight was visiting Paceville, Jannie's namesake town and full of modern shops and bars.

Back in Frankfurt we found an early prelude to Oktoberfest with a bar full of crazy friendly drunk Germans that were celebrating Oktoberfest and feeling sociable. And then Munich and Oktoberfest washed away all sins in a sea of beer...


Here's Jannie doing an impression of a typical German