Lack of Evidence

Yes, I know.  After five weeks I've still not posted any photos.  Rest assured, they're coming; I've been working on it.  I needed first to nail down the software for my photography workflow, since the digital darkroom requires a lot of organisation.  I decided on Adobe Lightroom.  I also have been trying to recover the shots of the bullfight from the corrupted card; unfortunately, no luck as yet.

Once my additional 1GB RAM and new solid state, lightning fast hard drive arrive, progress should also be faster.

I have selected several favourite shots, so will post something shortly to keep the bored amused.

The End

And now, the end of the 2009 European odyssey.

I am expecting the inevitable question: “Happy to be home?”  If it has to be yes or no, then it’s no.  I could keep going.  I would love to keep going.  Constant travelling is a little taxing, but I haven’t reached exhaustion.

Nevertheless, it will be a relief not to think about language anymore, to speak fluently and be understood.

All things end.  But this is only the end of the second chapter.  Good travel has three phases: the first is planning, when the possibilities excite and the anticipation builds; the second is execution, the trip itself, when plans come to fruition or lead in unexpected directions.

Now begins the synopsis.  Trawling through nine thousand photographs.  Developing.  Discarding.  Revisiting notes and blog entries, and assembling articles.  Digging out an old brochure to check the name of that church in Portugal, or a receipt to report the cost of a beer in Seville.  And beginning work on my next book of photography.

Over the coming months, as I select and develop my best photos, I will post them online.  Updates to this blog will be less frequent than they have been during the trip, but check back now and again to see what new photos are available.

Language

In major cities, it’s easy to get by with English.  Too easy.  Speaking foreign languages is one of the joys of travel.  Too many English-speaking tourists turn up in Venice or Paris and speak English.  You can't.  That's cheating.  Aussies are as guilty of this as Americans or the Brits.  You’ve got to make an effort.

But the effort does become draining, and the language barrier is isolating.  Spaniards are reticent to speak anything other than Spanish, and in provincial Andalucía you won’t get much else.  Luckily, my basis in French gets me by with Spanish, and it is probably my favourite language to try to speak.

In Bruges, English is so widely spoken it could be considered a second language after their Flemish Dutch (the national language of French is equally well-spoken, though pride is at stake due to wars with France).

Portugal and England share the oldest alliance in history, and English is widespread in urban areas of Portugal.  It is sporadic in rural areas.  The elderly, urban or rural, don't speak it at all.

My biggest surprise was Croatia, which easily has the most widespread English of all the countries I toured.  It is taught to children in school from young, and the standard is high.  This was a bit of a relief, because I have no knowledge of any Slavic language.  I was out of luck when I found that just over the border in Montenegro, English is not spoken at all, and I had to depend on my Croatian phrase book (for sensitive cultural and political reasons, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian are all officially different languages, but linguistically they are close dialects of the same language).

When I reached France, it was with a mixture of comfort and trepidation.  I actually speak a little bit of French, so I could have simple conversations.  But I also know enough grammar to know I’m getting my conjugation wrong or that I don’t know which participle to use.

Remembrance Day at Villers-Bretonneux

On 25 April 1918, at a cost of over 1,200 of their lives, Australian soldiers repulsed a German force apparently ten times their number at Villers-Bretonneux, the last point of defence before Paris on the Western Front.  The citizens of this little town declared their eternal gratitude to these men in a moving speech by the mayor.  The primary school, rebuilt with money raised by schoolchildren from Victoria—called the Victorian School—has emblazoned above its blackboards, “N’oublions jamais l’Australie”—we will never forget Australia.  And they never have; ANZAC Day is observed religiously to this day.  They dub the town l’Australie en Picardie, and it has been called by Australians the Gallipoli of the Western Front.
Remembrance Day, once known as Armistice Day, the last day of “the Great War,” is a national holiday in France.  This and the last day of The Second World War are of great importance to the French, as so much of their soil was battleground.  On November 11th, we visited the Australian National Memorial outside Villers-Bretonneux.  Several groups of Aussies trod softly past the sombre rows of graves either side of the French and Australian flags to reach the tall, white tower flanked by two chapels and a memorial wall engraved with the names of the Australian fallen in the battles of the First World War.  While we were there a French family with three young ones also paid their respects, the parents gently reprimanding the children when they became too boisterous.  We gave them little koala bears.

Parisian Cinemas

One of the things I really like about Paris is the number of little cinemas, mostly in the Latin Quarter, which play classic films.  Just around the corner from our hotel were playing two films by Sergio Leone, one of my favourite directors: the well-known Clint Eastwood flick “For a Few Dollars More,” and the not-so-well-known “A Fistful of Dynamite” (a.k.a. “Duck, You Sucker,” and a few other confusing titles).

It was very cool to immerse myself in a late screening of “Dollars” on the big screen.  Another cinema was playing several Hitchcock films.  In 1998, I came across one filmhouse which had been playing Casablanca continuously for many years, but I wasn’t able to find it this time.

Paris

Mai Li and I spent the final week of my trip in Paris, where it was averaging 8° or 9° Celsius.  It seems such a short time since I was being scorched by the 40°C Andalusian sun.

We kept warm with plenty of walking.  Paris is made for it.  The famed city planner Baron Haussman laid out broad boulevardes in the 19th century, though not for the enjoyment by the pedestrian masses but rather to suppress them; the narrow medieval bottlenecks they replaced prevented soldiers from effectively responding to the riots which led to the French Revolution.

The Promenade Plantée, a garden footpath slicing through the Bastille elevated on arches, was originally a railway after Napoleon III approved a right of way through the city.  Today it is a favourite spot for locals to jog or stroll.  We walked half of its four-kilometre length.

Another transformed right of way is the Canal Saint-Martin, controlled by a series of locks and once a highway for transporting food and other goods on barges.  It is now used for tourist boats.  A long stretch of it has been enclosed and covered with gardens, and a film on the history of the canal is projected onto the brick walls of the tunnel from the boat.  This and one or two locks are the most interesting; the rest of the two-and-a-half hour trip is frankly a little boring.

Gouffre de Padirac

The Gouffre de Padirac (Padirac Chasm) is a navigable underground river in the Lot départment, east of the Dordogne.  It begins at the bottom of a a 75-metre deep sinkhole, a huge cylindrical shaft which was once a cave before the ceiling fell in eons ago to leave a massive lightwell almost half its height across.  Three separate lifts and a scaffolding of metal stairs have been built against the walls to reach the floor of the chasm.

It was drizzling on the drive there.  It had been raining for days, so we were carrying umbrellas and rain jackets.  By the time we parked the car the rain stopped , but Mai Li asked if we should bring the umbrellas.

"Pff," I mocked. "We're going underground. It doesn't rain underground."

Indeed it does.

After wending us through corridors of limestone on a subterranean passage of water coloured jade with silt, our guide moored the flat-bottomed boat and led us up the corkscrewing ballroom stairway of the enormous Grand Dôme.  Water fell more heavily than the showers outside from the nearly 100-metre ceiling into the Lac de la Pluie, the Lake of Rain, below us, soaking us on the way down.

The 60-metre tall stalactite called the Grande Pendoloque, the Great Pendant, dips down to just two metres above the surface of the lake.  Limestone formations congealed over millennia on the cavern’s tiers look genuinely organic, like broad mushrooms or a Chinese Juniper bonsai, and in the pools that collect on the cascading plateaux smooth natural weirs form, curving so artistically that we debated over whether it was man-made.

The cave complex is vast.  Two journeys by boat, long passages by foot and hundreds of stairs represent only a tiny fraction which is open to the public.

Transportation

After a month of ferries, trains and buses through Italy, Croatia and Montenegro, it was nice to pick up a car again upon reaching France – happily another diesel, though unluckily another Ford.  Cars offer freedom and comfort, and are essential for visiting small towns.  The downside is driving in European cities.  It is a trial.  They are also the most expensive travel option, though there are some ways to mitigate the cost.  Diesel is a cheaper fuel than petrol and more economical.  You'll fill the tank less frequently, and for less.  Pre-booked packages through travel agencies will always be a better deal than a walk-in rental, which is extortion (I don't even want to admit how much it cost me to rent that car in Andalucia).  A good, cheap agency I used several times is Holiday Autos.  Driveaway Holidays was also good.  And I never buy the additional insurance.  The rental companies just sell this to make money, and there is already sufficient coverage on the car.

Trains are great no-brainers—you get on, you get off, and in between you read, nap, and stroll around while somebody else does all the driving.  European trains are comfortable, the system is efficient, and the high speed network is growing all the time.  Overnight trains are even better if you're travelling a long enough distance; the extra cost for a cabin is comparable to a hotel room you'd have to rent anyway, and you save time travelling while you're asleep.  But outside the more major destinations the regional lines can be time-consuming and tedious.

Intercity buses are often fast, frequent, and potentially the cheapest option, but are my least favoured because, like a plane, you’re restricted to your seat.  More than three hours sitting in one place gets uncomfortable, especially if the passenger beside you hasn't showered.

Ferries are a novelty and have even more space to walk around than trains, but are slow, can be pricey, and make limited stops.  And, of course, you need a great bloody body of water.  But again, they make good travelling hotel rooms.

Any metro within a European city is often cheap and convenient.  I love Madrid's modern and extensive network.  The Paris and London metros are also justifiably well-regarded.  And the aged but character-filled Budapest metro also deserves mention.

Trams are even better because you can sightsee en route.  Both Prague's and Lisbon's excellent and extensive tram systems are over a hundred years old, but run both modern rolling stock as well as older, charming carriages. Meanwhile, Seville’s brand new tram "network" is so limited with its single line that it almost makes the Sydney monorail look useful (almost).

My favourite method of transportation?  Hands down, on foot.  I am a walker.  While transport is slow, you are always in control, never miss a stop, and see more of the city than any other way.  It's also free.

The Dordogne

Three hours west of Lyon by train I picked up another car and arrived in the Dordogne départment of France in the full of Autumn.  I haven't had a Northern Autumn in over ten years, and the Périgord Noir county and the Vézère Valley is wooded with oak forests.  The countryside is orange, brown, yellow and red and threaded with bermed, winding roads, perfect for driving a stick shift.  I'm soon slaloming through falling showers of oak leaves.  I've driven into my Windows desktop wallpaper.

It is also home to the medieval city of Sarlat-la-Canéda, a preserved and restored living representation of 14th-century France.  I based myself in an apartment here for a week.  A few days later Mai Li arrived to besiege chateaux, spelunk caves, and indulge in fois gras and confit du canard before idling away the last week of this odyssey in Paris.

The day Mai Li arrived, it rained for the first time in the region for six months.  Scattered Autumn showers pestered every day thereafter, but were a cakewalk after the Adriatic vortex.

Where there is Man there is art, and where there is art there is graffiti

The Vézère Valley in the Dordogne region of France is littered with limestone caves, 25 of which are decorated with paintings estimated to be up to 20,000 years old, the earliest known example of painting.  The most famous of these is the Lascaux complex of caves, discovered in 1940 by some boys looking for their dog (actually, it was discovered by the dog himself, Robot, who had fallen in).  Comprising nearly 2,000 figures, primarily of horses but also of stags, bison, and aurochs (ancestors of modern cattle), it has been dubbed "the Sistine Chapel of Prehistory" and includes the famous Painted Gallery and the Great Hall of the Bulls.

The only other polychromatic paintings discovered in the valley are in the Font-de-Gaume cave, depicting bison and horses again but also mammoths and, the principle food source of the time, reindeer.  The best known images from this cave are a frieze of five bison and "the sexual parade of the reindeer," where a stag is smelling the head of a kneeling doe.  The natural contours of the cave walls were exploited to emphasise the hump of a bison or the belly of a horse.  (Photography is disallowed, so here's a picture from a government website.)  Sadly, yet again this is artwork defaced by graffiti, this time from the 19th century, where bison paintings at the fore of the cave have had names carved into them.  It's difficult to excuse, but it has to be said that the paintings had not been scientifically observed at the time and there was no comprehension of their age or significance.

Another site, Grotte de Rouffignac, is sometimes called "the cave of a hundred mammoths."  An electric train takes visitors into a ten-kilometre deep complex of painted mammoths, horses, ibex, and even rhinoceros.  I hugely regret that I missed this.  On 30 October, I set out late to see both Font-de-Gaume and Rouffignac, but had to wait for over an hour at Font-de-Gaume because they limit the size of the tours.  This is understandable; when Lascaux was discovered there was no such limitation, and the change in air quality from 1,200 visitors a day caused the development of a green fungus, la malaise vert, and a white calcite crystal, la malaise blanc, to damage the paintings.  This in turn led Lascaux to first limit numbers of visitors, and then to close permanently in 1963.  Indeed, there is suggestion that this may happen with Font-de-Gaume; the tour guide showed us an example of a white fungus growing on the wall.  The only way to appreciate Lascaux today is to visit "Lascaux II," an impressive centimetre by centimetre three-dimensional reproduction of the cave built into the hillside beside the original, with the paintings exactly reproduced using the same pigmentation and techniques.  Of course, knowing it is a facsimile unavoidably detracts from the awe, and the experience becomes a slightly carnivalesque appreciation of the facsimile itself.  Nevertheless, it is sympathetically and tastefully executed.  But with the delay at Font-de-Gaume and the closing for the season of Grotte de Rouffignac on 01 November, it was too late to return another day.

Nazi war crimes

In 1944, in the Limousin region of France, was a small village of about 670 people called Oradour-sur-Glane.  On June 10, it ceased to exist.  The village and all but twenty-odd survivors were wiped out by a German Waffen-SS company en route to intercept the Allied advance following the D-Day landings at Normandy.  All the men were rounded up into barns and machine-gunned, and the women and children were corralled into the church, which was then set alight.  The town was then razed.

Today, the Village Martyr has been preserved exactly as it was left that day as a memorial to the victims and the atrocities of war.  A rusted car is parked in the street beside the single disused tram line, power poles still supporting snapped, coiling cables.  Deformed bicycles and Singer sewing machines are strewn inside the collapsing stone shells of houses.  On the tiled floor of a broken boucherie lays the prostrate scale on which the family's evening meals were once weighed by the butcher for the village wives and mothers.  Even with the visiting tourists, the streets have an eerie quiet.

There is some debate over the exact circumstances of the massacre, but it appears that the battalion commander, Adolf Diekmann, believing the kidnapped German Sturmbannführer Helmut Kämpfe was being held by the French Resistance in the town, exceeded his orders to take 30 hostages and instead ordered the population be exterminated as a "just retaliation."  Though his actions prompted protests within the German army, including from Field Marshall Rommel, Diekmann and much of the company which had committed the massacre were never tried; they were killed in action shortly afterward in the Battle of Normandy.

Lyon

My rule of thumb when travelling is to stay in the old part of town.  By definition it is the most historical, so typically has the highest density of things to see when you walk out of your hotel door.  The average cost of a room is slightly higher, but in almost all European cities cheap accommodation can still be found in the centre.  This remains true of Vieux Lyon, "old Lyon," where the cheap rooms are in bed and breakfasts and auberges, but despite that mid-October is well out of the July-August peak season, all ten or so of the B&Bs I rang were full.  Mai Li and I had similar difficulty finding vacancy when we were in Lyon in April 2007. Despite it being France's third largest city, there must simply be a dearth of accommodation in the old part of town, which would explain the high prices of the hotels, but after three-and-a-half hours of faffing around just to find a bloody place to stay I relented and threw €135 a night at the Collège Hotel.  Included in that was free wi-fi, water and Coke from the refrigerator in the hall.  I don't even drink Coke, but that night a drank my bloody money's worth.

Torino

En route to Lyon I stopped into Turin to break up the seven-hour journey.  Why aren't there more tourists in Turin?  It is a charming, spacious city, not unlike Paris at first glance, with broad boulevards, beautiful architecture—from medieval fortresses to grand belle epoque buildings—miles of colonnaded arcades, and a comprehensive tram network.  Maybe it was just that I was there on a Sunday, but it's also peacefully quiet; no traffic jams or swarms of people.  And like I say, no tourists.

High water and fresco vandals

I experienced the acqua alta—high water—in Venice after all, and I'm glad I did.  Having occurred for hundreds of years, it is a quintessential part of life there.  It is not a result of rising sea levels (though this will severely exacerbate it).  Of course, it was nowhere near the magnitude of the 1966 floods, but locals were wearing their colourful gumboots (Venice is the place to shop if you're a fashion-conscious pig farmer), wading obliviously through six inches of water in the lower-lying areas.  More commonly it was less than an inch, most places were in fact dry, and the water table dropped again with an hour.

For four nights in Venice I lost track of the days, like I had taken a vacation from my holiday.  The city feels unmoved by the passage of time, like it is still its own republic, separate from Italy, the rest of the world, and modernity.  It's a strangely affecting place and, in all my travels through Eastern and Western Europe, incomparable.

So when I arrived in Verona, only an hour away, I was rather too bedazzled to fairly assess one of Italy's prettiest little cities.  That it was raining again dampened my enthusiasm, too, but the second day was beautifully clear and sunny, a cool, Autumn day (as in fact, they all have been since), and I discovered the stunning Romanesque Basilica of San Zeno.  If you remember your Shakespeare you'll know that Friar Lawrence married Romeo and Juliet in the crypt (looking on would have been the preserved body of Zeno who died in 380 AD).  Also preserved are superb frescoes, dozens of them, dating back to the 12th century.  They are still brilliant and in large sections intact, despite being damaged by time, war (Allied bombing), and 18th-century snot-nosed brats—there is a great deal of graffiti, often dated, etched into the plaster.  The architecture of the building is reknowned, with a beautifully decorated ship's keel ceiling as well as a stunning facade.  Apparently.  It was masked by—that's right—scaffolding for restoration work, rendering it unsuitable for shooting.  At least the scaffolding screens were sympathetically painted with the facade's likeness.

The not-so-happy-go-lucky-anymore traveller

For my last night in Venice, I decided to indulge myself and spend a night on the Grand Canal.  This was too wet and unsolid so I decided to spend a night beside the Grand Canal instead.

On the morning of this last night I moved across town from my old hotel in the pouring rain, carrying my camera bag and harnessed to a heavy backpack under a nylon poncho, a bit like wearing a circus big top, squeezing through narrow people-dammed passages barbed with umbrellas.  I was interrupted by some university student with, "Excuse me, sir, will you sign a petition?  It's in English.  It's against drugs."

"No," I said, irritated.  "I take drugs."

How to find a Bird in Space

The layout of Venice, evolved over a thousand years, was unplanned and has grown organically by the needs of the city, the district, and each street itself, resulting in numerous short, narrow medieval lanes that dog-leg and reticulate between canals and campos.  There are umpteen ways to get from here to there, yet surprisingly, it is not that easy to get lost.  Heading in the general direction of somewhere will get you there, guided by signs tacked to the buildings pointing to Rialto, San Marco, or Alla Ferrovia, and a glance at a map now and again is enough.

I found my way to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection today, which includes a number of Picassos (I don't care much for Pipe, Glass, Bottle of Vieux Marc, but I do like On the Beach), Jackson Pollocks (meh), Salvador Dalís (pff), and three of my favourite pieces of sculpture in one place, which I was very excited to see: Giacometti's Standing Woman, his Piazza, and Brancusi's Bird in Space.  Standing Woman is about four feet tall (130cm), but I was very surprised that the figures in Piazza are only about eight inches tall (20cm).  Things look so different in books.

The problem with taking a 12-week holiday

... is that you start to think about how it's ending soon when there are four weeks left—when many people begin their holiday.

Mind your bocconcini

I found a cheap place to eat in Venice, an otherwise very expensive city, where the quality of the food is still good. It’s self-serve, like a cafeteria, but the atmosphere is still cozy and it’s become my regular place for dinner.  On the table they have complimentary wine, which sounds very nice but is the worst wine I've ever had.  It's thick and tastes like olive oil.

The second night I was there, I picked up a plate of pasta fresco al pomodoro and a bowl of salad. The salad had greens, tomatoes, olives and bocconcini, those delicious little balls of mozzarella. I sat down and ate half before it occurred to me that there wasn’t any salad dressing, so I went to the salad bar and picked up some olive oil and balsamic vinegar. When I got back to the table and started eating again, I noticed there was no more bocconcini. I thought there was more. I went up to the cash register and said, “Mi scusi… er, when I got up from the table, someone ate all the bocconcini out of my salad.” Though the lady seemed to speak English well, it was obviously not perfect as she asked me to repeat myself, which I did.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “You want more bocconcini?”

“No,” I said. “I want justice.”

This prompted the manager’s appearance. Now we were getting somewhere. I explained the problem to him, but after some confused arguing we didn’t seem to get anywhere at all. He actually asked me to leave!

“I’m the victim here!” I said, and stood my ground. This only resulted in the carabinieri, the military police whom I’ve heard are best avoided, so when they grabbed me by the arm—I didn’t know what else to do—I screamed, “rape!”

That sorted things out.

How to shoot

The explosion of digital photography has put a little camera in every tourist’s hands. Thirty years ago cameras would not have been so prevalent because you had to know how to use one. Today, they are almost completely automatic.

Here’s a tip for my readership: the correct stance for taking a photograph is to put your feet together, bend your knees and stick your bum out, lean forward with the camera held at arm’s length, and grimace.

This must appear in the manual, as most tourists seem to know it.

Wow.

Venice is fantastic. I don’t know where to begin.

The 1500-year old city is vast—when you wander the sprawling sestieri (districts), it just keeps going—yet it never feels bigger than a large town. And there is not a single modern building in sight.

Venice is a tourist’s feast. The canals are as picturesque as you have been led to believe, and are never clichéd. The art is such sumptuous gluttony that another Tintoretto invokes an offhand, “oh, more paintings.” And the shopping (for those inclined) is comparable to Paris (both in scale and price).

Yes, Venice is expensive. The average price of a simple trattoria meal is €20. I was fortunate to find accommodation in a resedenzia for €50 per night—a simple room with no breakfast—because it is off season, and that is as cheap as you’ll find.

Visiting in the off season is the way to go. There are still plenty of tourists, but they don’t overpower the city as they do in peak season. Trying to pilot the narrow streets swollen to bursting with mile after mile of people is an arduous way to relax, as Mai Li and I found in Florence one year when we unwittingly arrived on a long weekend.

After catching a vaporetto, a public ferry, down the length of the Grand Canal the first morning of my arrival, I spent the entire day in Piazza San Marco. I took some furtive photography—disallowed—of the dazzling golden mosaic-tiled ceiling of the Basilica San Marco, now the cathedral of Venice but which for 700 years of gobsmacking opulence was the private chapel of the doge (duke and elected head of state).

I depleted the next three hours spending not enough time wandering the warren of rooms in the doge’s palace, the seat of the Venetian government. The walls and ceilings of every room are filled with paintings by Veronese, Tintoretto, and Titian, culminating in the cavernous Sala del Maggior Consiglio (Grand Council Hall) which hosts Tintoretto’s Paradiso, one of the world’s largest oil paintings. It is a mindboggling experience. One room that did stand out for me was the Chamber of the Magistrato alle Leggi, which, to my surprise, is today used to exhibit several works by Hieronymus Bosch.

Whew!

I caught the bus back from Montenegro to Dubrovnik, in the south of Croatia, then caught the ferry up the Adriatic Sea to Rijeka in the north, a 22-hour trip.  I booked a cabin for the night, a simple room with two bunks and a bathroom with sink and toilet; no window (an outside cabin costs more).  From Rijeka I had originally intended to stay a night in Rovinj or Poreč in Istria and catch a fast catamaran to Venice, but the service stopped running in early October.  Poreč has some remarkably well-preserved Byzantine mosaics which I was disappointed to miss.  So, instead, I had to kill seven hours in Rijeka, a pleasant-enough-but-not-terribly-interesting town, waiting for a bus to Trieste, from which I boarded a train to Venice.  Which is where I shall stay put for a while!

Kotor

The old Venetian walled town of Kotor is much more interesting than the similarly sized old Venetian walled town of Budva.  Bounded by the Bay of Kotor, the Škurda River, and Mount Lovćen—the “black mountain” that gave the nation its name—it is arguably more beautiful, and with a permanent residential populace it feels more authentic.  Pick-up-sticks-like marble streets open into numerous little plazas for drinking coffee at the cafes, and at only four hectares (ten acres) in size, it is easy to get both lost and found.  I didn’t get time to climb the thousand-odd stairs which run up the mountain on the city walls to a fortress overlooking the turquoise Adriatic fjord on which the city sits.  For 400 years the city fell under the control of Venice, hence the appearance around town of the winged lion of St Mark and the variety of Renaissance palazzos.

Interestingly enough, there was an article in the Sydney Morning Herald about Kotor just the other day.  Click here.

Black mountain, black lung

I met one Montenegrin who didn’t smoke. He was Australian.

At a café on the beach in Budva, when the waiter asked if I needed an ashtray and I said no, he was momentarily stunned. Then he walked away and said, “Good for you.”

Stari Bar

Stari Bar—“old Bar”—is four kilometres away from Bar, an uninteresting port city on Montenegro's south coast. The once populous ancient city is today four hectares of vine-shrouded ruins and piles of stones, a consequence of war and earthquakes, but numerous buildings, already being used to host small concerts and events, are being restored in an effort to develop the site as a historic tourist destination. Those buildings completed are impressive, including an 18th-century Turkish bath house, a Renaissance palazzo and a mediaeval church. Already very pretty in its wild state, it is easy to see what a beautiful drawcard it will become, though with evidence of Illyrian settlement dating from 800 BC the several sites being offhandedly worked with shovels and wheelbarrows raise questions about how much archaeological oversight there is.

I was fortunate to get a lift for the 45-minute drive from Budva with the owner of the hotel where I was staying.  I clambered around the peaceful ruins for four hours, between thick flowering bushes alive with clouds of ecstatic bees, and, lulled by the sound of the river in the valley below, napped on the stone wall of the citadel overlooking wild pomegranate trees and a stone terraced olive grove at the foot of the diagonally-tilted, striated limestone mountain.

Border control

There were only a dozen or so souls on the 3PM bus from Dubrovnik to Podgorice, the capital of Montenegro. I was getting off at Budva, the centre of the action on the Montenegrin coast in peak season. In October, though, stripped of its tourist gloss under gray skies, it is somewhat bleak (as noted in my previous entry).

At the Croatian-Montenegrin border, a policeman boards the bus and collects passports from each of the passengers. He takes them into the border control office to stamp them and then gives them back to the bus driver, who returns them to the owners, a bit of a random process of sometimes checking photos and other times actually passing off the responsibility of distribution to another passenger. The bus travels two minutes up the road, stops at another border check, and we do the same routine all over again. Why? Old bureaucratic communist habit? And what is in between these two stops? No man’s land?

Budva, Montenegro

There is a certain look of desolation in Montenegro's off season which exposes the communist 1970s Tito hangover it still can't shake.  The promenade to Budva's Stari Grad, the old town in the centre of the Montenegrin Adriatic coast, is bounded by impermanent single-storey aluminium and concrete shops and weed-strewn lots.  The pedestrianised street is paved with concrete blocks, and a cracked basketball court next to a fibreglass waterslide held up by rusted scaffolding is used as a go-kart circuit.  Half the shops and most of the bars, tacky ones in the shape of pirate ships between palm trees and dead neon signs, are closed due to the off season.  "Fisherman's Pub" is decorated with the typical pastiche of hanging lifesavers, floats and fishing nets.  Though trite, these are used and faded objects taken from actual fishing boats; it's an authenticity that deserved recognition thirty years ago but which is now an eastern bloc curiosity.

Past all this, moored next to the walls of Stari Grad is a bank of expensive cruisers. Inside the old town of 17th-century walls it's suddenly upmarket with expensive watches and jewellery, cafes and restaurants... yet it's a bit like a shopping mall.  There are almost no residences.  Compare this to Split, Dubrovnik, and Kotor, further north on the Montenegrin coast, where the character difference is distinct; they are still residential towns, and there is a life buzzing around the tourists.

Apparently, Budva in the summer high season of July and August is a different thing entirely.  The swarms of bikini-clad girls and crazy nightlife every night are enough to distract one from, well, everything else (including perhaps a good night's sleep).

The winter jacket is out

In one day, the Adriatic coast went from Indian summer to early winter.  Eight degrees has fallen from the thermometer and the wind has taken off a couple more.  Though the rain has moved on, the temperature hasn't climbed above 14°C in three days, and considering that I'm only going north now, I better get used to it.  All of Europe is under an Arctic chill.

Chamber music

I won't bore you with the details of the makeshift raft, disappearing coastlines, and invoking Poseidon himself to escape the maelstrom, but there was afterwards a moment of peace when I was able to see the Sorkočević Quartet perform by candlelight in Dubrovnik's tiny Church of St Saviour (an odd name, as I thought there was only one saviour in Christianity, and that he hardly needed to be canonised).

The orchestra, comprised of flute, violin, piano and contrabass viola, performed:

• Handel's "Largo"
• Albinoni's Trio Sonata
• Sorkočević's Symphony No. 4
• Overture to Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro"
• Beethoven's "Coriolan Overture"
• Overture to Rossini's "Italian in Algiers"

They also performed an encore, which piece they announced but the name of which I didn't catch.

The atmosphere was intimate—there wouldn't have been more than fifty people in the audience, already more than half the little chapel's capacity—and the sound was warm and clear.  The small plan and high ceiling of the church are perfect for the acoustics of chamber music.  My favourite was the Cariolan Overture, which they performed with the dynamic sympathy required for Beethoven.  I thanked them afterwards for a wonderful concert.

Deluge in Dubrovnik

The storm front over Dubrovnik lasted for two days. The rain held off during daylight long enough for me to walk the stout 2km-long city walls, but that night after dinner I was trapped by the deluge.

I ventured out in the downpour that evening wearing only shorts, a T-shirt, and a light rain jacket because all my clothes were at the laundry.  I found a cozy little vegetarian restaurant in the old town called Nishta: wooden roof beams, gold script on purple walls, lounge music and candlelight.  The food—apart from being a simple relief from meat and potatoes—was delicious.  In Sydney, I eat much more vegetarian than I have been able to in Europe, so the ratatouille hommus wraps and tempeh burritos went down like a king's banquet.

The rain was so heavy that the restaurant had closed the outdoor tables in the little stone laneway.  When I got outside, torrents were cascading down the stairs of the perpendicular lanes and flooding the little street two inches deep.  I stood on a raised step with my back against the building, propped my umbrella up and waited in my bare legs for the rain to ease.  It got heavier.  I pressed myself into the building and waited some more, and after ten minutes, it got even heavier.  I couldn't believe it!  It was like the Adriatic was upturned.  I was reasonably safe on my raised step against the building, and all I could do was laugh.  I was stranded like Maitland livestock.

The secret to stylish backpacking

Those who know me will know that I'm a bit of a fashion plate.  Looking good when travelling is tricky, and even harder when backpacking.

You know what the secret is to looking good?

Email me if you do.  Today I was wearing shorts and an anorak.

Summer is over

It's been an Indian summer in this part of the world.  The pleasant, sunny days I've had in Croatia are usually finished by September, apparently.  But there's now been an announcement that the fun is over.  Thunderstorms woke me in Dubrovnik at 7AM this morning.  The rain held off for most of the daylight hours as I walked the city walls, but now at 8PM as I write this it has returned, and it is pissing.  Notwithstanding the afternoon storm in Mértola, Portugal, I've had almost no rain at all on this trip (which was in karmic order after being practically rained out of Eastern Europe last year).

If this low pressure in the Adriatic keeps up by the time I reach Venice next week, I might just experience the notorious acqua alta, where the pedestrian areas of Venice are submerged.  I have an umbrella and a rain jacket, but I didn't bring any fishing waders with me, so I'd probably make the call to skip it and move on.  After running out of time in 2007, that would make it the second time I failed to reach Venice.

Contaminated

I sound like a travel brochure.

I have to read something different. I’ve spent seven weeks reading nothing but Lonely Planet guides, and it’s infecting my writing. Lonely Planet is an excellent resource for information, but the writing—industry travel writing in general—is not prose to aspire to.

Long Island iced teas, filo pastry and women

When I got off the bus from Zadar to Split, I was mobbed by women wanting to take me home. I must have said no a dozen times. They only wanted me for my money.  In any case, I had already booked ahead for accommodation.

There must be many empty private rooms outside of peak season; wearing my backpack, I continued to be approached walking into town. “Excuse me, do you need a room? In the palace, very cheap.” They are civil, and a polite “no” resolves the matter; they are certainly nothing like Lisbon’s hash peddlers.

Lonely Planet says that Diocletian’s Palace is “one of the most imposing Roman ruins in existence.” It’s no overstatement. Built by the Roman emperor as a retirement villa, the intact, three-storey walls, roughly 200 metres on each side, encapsulate Romanesque and Gothic mansions built into tall Roman arches and Corinthian capped pillars by wealthy merchants in the Middle Ages, and today is a labyrinth of narrow stone lanes filled with jewellery stores, market stalls, museums, windows adorned with laundry, restaurants, and weed-strewn dead ends.

Split may be even more relaxed than Zadar. After a rather busy three weeks of driving through Portugal after scrambling to get to Andalucía on time, followed by a three-day Italian blitz, I decided to take advantage of the coastal Dalmatian atmosphere and spent three days in Split doing nothing much at all. The harbour is fronted by a long promenade knows as Riva, populated with open air cafes. It’s a beaut spot for people watching against the background of the Adriatic sipping a Long Island iced tea.

The weather in Croatia has been sunny and pleasant in the low to mid twenties. Despite having spent many hours in the sun without sunblock over many weeks, I haven’t yet been sunburnt, which is a bit of a mystery to me. My Irish skin is like filo pastry. I only once lathered up, when I sat in the baking Andalusian sun to watch the bullfight in Ronda, which I’m pretty sure would have otherwise done me in.

Sea Organ

Zadar’s Sea Organ is a unique and inspired installation. The swell of the sea pushes air through organ pipes built under the broad stone steps of the waterfront promenade. You can’t see the Sea Organ; you can only hear it. The sound is projected out the fluted risers of the steps, so the best way to enjoy the music is to lounge on the steps and watch the boats drift on the sea, especially as the sun goes down. The intensity and timbre of the notes surge with the waves, so a passing ferry sends a new song into the organ. It is peaceful, enjoyable and utterly brilliant, and the only one of its kind in the world. The designer deserves a special mention: local architect Nikola Brašić. It warrants stopping in Zadar just to see it

I’ve attached a 30-second recording of it here.

Croatia

The mood of the Dalmatian coast makes me think of it as an enormous Manly (a beach suburb of Sydney). Zadar has a calm, chilled vibe, quiet except that there is plenty of life. I always base myself in the old, historic centre of each place that I visit, but there are very few hotels in Zadar’s old town. My hotel was a half hour walk away. Most tourists here stay 3km away in the newer part of the city where there is plenty of accommodation. High season in Croatia is July and August, the northern summer, but October seems pretty low-key.

Zadar is a very youthful place; there is an abundance of people under 25. If this is representative of the Croation population, reflecting on the possible reason is disconcerting: the “ethnic cleansing” of the Homeland War, as the Croats call it, took place when they were all children. But there is a distinct feeling that that is history now, and the place feels ready to surge into the future with the youth at its helm.

The harbour is busy with ferries en route up and down the coast, and the marinas are filled with fishing trawlers, sailboats, and runabouts. The place is very genuine. Few of the yachts are as ostentatious as the showboats in Sydney’s Darling Harbour. I strolled along the peaceful waterfront at night back to my hotel, and quietly envied two skippers on cabin cruisers moored alongside each other, chatting over the gunwales and looking out to the moonlit Adriatic.

Adventure!

Constant travelling place to place is a continual cycle of anxiety, triumph and departure.  You venture into unknown territory, not uncommonly getting lost, and establish yourself in a strange place.  After orienting yourself, things become familiar and you’re comfortable enough to enjoy the novelty and newness of everything.  You even become a minor authority and pass on recommendations to fellow travellers.   Then you move on—sometimes it’s bittersweet when you leave a favourite place—and the anxiety begins anew.  It’s a slow-burn adrenaline rush.

I’ve stuck largely to my planned itinerary on this trip, adjusting it only slightly to stay a day longer in Mertola or Tomar, or dropping a destination like Elvas or Viseu because I try to do too much.  I think Croatia and Montenegro will be even more fluid, as it was planned with the least rigour and because my itinerary has now gained two days.  I had planned to raft Montenegro's Tara Canyon, but I have just learned that the rafting season is now over.  October is late, but some years the water is still strong enough for rapids.  It must have petered out.

This is boring

As amused as I was that I could say I’ve been to Pisa but didn’t see the Leaning Tower, my reporting responsibilities overruled my sense of humour and I got up early on the morning of my flight to dash up to the Piazza dei Miracoli.  Lonely Planet compares this square, which also features Pisa’s Romanesque cathedral and baptistry, to Venice's Piazza San Marco as one of Italy’s most memorable.  Having spent a full fifteen minutes there and not (yet) having been to Venice, I can say with complete authority that that’s rubbish.  It’s boring.  Apart from visiting these monuments there’s nothing to do.  The piazza is all grass, surrounded by a wall and a street.  There is no reason to linger, and indeed, nobody does.  It is surprisingly sterile.  And though I probably would have entered the cathedral had I had time, I don’t go in for tourist compulsions like climbing the Leaning Tower.  I climbed the Eiffel Tower once, but only after I’d already been to Paris before, and I didn’t find it especially memorable.  It’s not even good for a photograph; high panoramas or distant landscapes are also boring.

The art of photography is similar to the art of writing well: the writer should suggest the whole with just a detail, and allow the reader’s imagination to complete the picture.  Landscapes are too vast and any subject is lost in the innumerable details.  A good photograph doesn’t have too many competing subjects.  There seems to be an inverse relationship between scale and interest: panoramas make as dull pictures as an entire chapter of description makes dull reading.

Hello?  Are you still there?

The Odyssey

First there was Tartarus.

It is not easy to get from the Siena train station, 2km out of town, to the historic centre. Usually I prefer to walk if I can, but Lonely Planet obscured the position of the station on their map with the reference listing. They say in the guide, “buses Nos 8, 9 and 10 run between the train station and Piazza Gramsci” at the edge of the pedestrianised old town. This is not entirely true, as it suggests a shuttle which goes to and fro. What they neglect to state is that the number 10 does not simply return to the train station. It continues on to tour the outlying Siena suburbs in a 40km loop, for which I waited 20 minutes to do on a bus with no shocks helmed by Slayer’s ex-drum roadie working the pedals over roads patched more times than a chain smoker gone cold turkey before being returned to the spot where I boarded. I understand that getting lost is part of travelling, but this is one time that the otherwise reliable Lonely Planet has failed.

I got off the bus where I got on and walked the two kilometres to the train station, where I found that the 18:41 train didn’t arrive or even exist, despite being posted on the timetable. The missing 19:18 must go to the same destination. So, I tried to catch the 19:41 which, according to the departures board, was leaving from platform 1 TR. At 19:38, when a train berthed at platform 1, naturally I boarded. But you see, Siena train station has six platforms, 1 through 5. It’s perfectly logical: there is a hidden platform, actually in the dark, at the far end of platform 1 and obscured by the building, called “Platform 1 Tronco (truncated).” When the train I boarded wasn’t moving by 19:45 I realised that it was indicating a different destination, and after some scrambling noticed somebody running into the dark at the end of the platform and boarding a train—my train—which promptly departed.

So, I finally caught the 20:18. In the end, it took me an hour and forty-five minutes to get to Siena and five hours to return. I was aiming to get back before sunset so I could at least get a photo of the one thing I can now say I have not seen despite having been to Pisa—the Leaning Tower.

Five lands

I was very excited to get to Cinque Terre, a clutch of villages clinging like barnacles to rocky slopes above the Mediterranean. Not only have I wanted for many years to go, but hiking six kilometres of precipitous footpaths between coastal Italian villages was a complete change from driving highways for three weeks between inland Portuguese cathedrals. Exactly as prescribed by the proverbial practitioner.

From Pisa it is very easy to get to Riomaggiore, taking under two hours on the train, including wait time changing at La Spezia. I then walked as far as Vernazza, only reaching quattro of the cinque townships as I ran out of light by 7PM and decided to abandon Monterosso. The walk is renowned for its prettiness: the path strings along cliffs between clusters of orange, green, pink and yellow buildings, with turquoise waters and beaches of ocean-rounded stones below.  There is the crash of the breaking surf and, as if a distant shower of fireworks, the cracking, crumbling sound of the tide rolling the stones like racking billiard balls.

In Corniglia I ate a pasta specific to the region (I bet every region in Italy has a unique shape of pasta), the name of which I can't recall, in pesto made with local basil, a specialty here. Simple and delicious. Italian food is all about quality and simplicity, and what a delight it is after weeks of Portuguese meat.

The human bookcase

Flight routes to Croatia all end in September. The only feasible route for me to get from Portugal to Croatia in October is to fly RyanAir and stop over for three nights in Pisa, Italy.

This time, I avoided RyanAir’s excess baggage fees by wearing a fleece jacket stuffed full of six language phrasebooks, a book on philosophy, numerous maps and all my travel guides. I looked like a cross between a Series 4000 mechanoid and a geodesic dome.

It is ridiculously easy to get from the Pisa airport to my hotel. The airport and the train are not exactly modern, but the train trip takes literally five minutes, and my hotel is less than a hundred metres from Pisa Centrale. This was intentional; I am making two day-trips by train to Cinque Terre and to Siena, so I wanted to be close to the station.

All right, already.

I have seen more convents, cathedrals and castles than I can now distinguish. Germany and Portugal have so many castles between them that in my mind’s eye they all look alike; as I review the photos, I can’t tell which one is where without cross-referencing the date on my itinerary.

While the German castles on the Rhine were built by robber-barons, many of the Portuguese castles were built by the mysterious Knight Templar monks, such as the ruins of the castle at Constançia, or the castle ruins at Monsanto.

And I’m over them.

Goodbye Portugal. Hello, Italy!

Roman mosaics

And, of course, all this discussion of photography made me look through my photos, and so many I want to share, so here is another.

Conimbriga is the largest excavated Roman site in Portugal, and the mosaics unearthed are the most complete (albeit restored) and impressive that I have ever seen, and having a penchant for Roman mosaics I have seen many.  This one depicts horsemen on a hunt.  My favourite (though much less detailed) is a mosaic of a maze with the minotaur at its centre.

Memory

Speaking of photos, I bought a 320GB external USB hard drive for my laptop to back up all my photography.  It is the most feasible solution.  I initially anticipated I would take about 100GB of photos, but at the rate I’m going I will need double that.  The online site I have been using for backing up photos is a nice idea in theory, because of the redundancy protection and the fact that I could have everything stolen and still have my photos, but in practise it just isn't workable. The upload rate of broadband is typically a quarter of the download rate, so I have only backed up about a third online.

Where are all the photos?

Some weeks ago I promised I would upload some photos from time to time.  This is just too arduous.  At this stage, halfway through my trip, I have about 6,000 photos.

But nevertheless, here is one.  It's not grand photography; it's simply a good example of the variety on a Portuguese menu.  Click on it so you can read it.

Portuguese monasteries

Beginning with the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos in Lisbon with its ornate stonework, I did the monastery circuit in Portugal—Batalha, Alcobaça, and Tomar. These towns host architecturally astonishing abbeys that are perhaps the most significant in the country.

The monastery at Batalha was built to commemorate Dom João’s victory in the 1385 Battle of Aljubarrota. The defeat of King Juan of Castile in a contest for the Portuguese throne was one of the most consequential battles in European history, given that it assured Portuguese independence prior to their initiation of Europe’s imperial expansion and colonisation across the globe, the so-called Age of Discovery, with Vasco da Gama’s establishment of a sea route to India. The elaborate architecture and sculpture of the convent at Batalha (which means “battle” in Portuguese) reflects the importance of this event.

At Alcobaça, the interior of the severe but grand Romanesque hall church contrasts its Manueline façade, while the gigantic kitchen of the abbey itself is indulgence manifest. The chimney is three storeys tall and is large enough at its base to envelop a car. A small tributary was dug from the nearby river and diverted through the kitchen to supply the monastery with fresh fish. Hardly a monks’ existence.

The massive, 12th-century Convento do Cristo in Tomar, the headquarters of the legendary Order of the Knights Templar, is the most atmospheric—and the largest. I spent four hours hurrying to see everything. The highlight is the staggering charola, or Round Church. An octagonal rotunda with a ceiling perhaps ten metres tall containing a central structure connected by arches—the high altar—is intricately decorated with sculptures and paintings. Legend has it that the knights attended mass here on horseback.

Shitfaced

What was I thinking?  Last night with dinner I drank a bottle of wine and finished off the night with three martinis.  I was absolutely hammered.  This morning I got up at 11:00, too late for the hotel breakfast (of slices of ham and cheese with bread), and felt awful.  The smell of car exhaust and cigarette smoke, already my two least favourite flavours of air, made me sick.  I had reached Porto a day early to fit in more sightseeing, but I can't say today was terribly productive.

Mmm... pig stomach.

That'll teach me to consult my Portuguese phrasebook before ordering dinner.  "Buchos," I learned after it arrived at my table, is pig stomach.

The Portuguese love meat (as pretty much all Europeans seem to).  Pork features a lot on the menu.  And just about everything is served with deep-fried potatoes.  You won't go broke in Portugal as a cardiothoracic surgeon.

In Monsanto I had a nice steak of black pig, and in Coimbra I had a delicious goat boiled in red wine called chanfana.  A full dose (portion) of anything on the dinner menu typically serves two, so unless you're very hungry a half portion will usually do.  Breakfast is almost always slices of ham and cheese with bread, which gets a bit boring, but apparently the Portuguese don't go in much for breakfast.

Bloody Italians

American tourists have a reputation for being loud, but they are not the worst.  That dubious honour goes to throngs of Italian tourists, always in large and vocal groups, yelling at each other like they're all on the other end of a mobile phone.
The quietest?  Japanese.  I watched one tour group led by a woman speaking seemingly to herself, followed by a silent train of tourists with wireless receivers stuck in their ears.

Why Europeans wear shoes

What do you do with an empty bottle in Europe?
You smash it.  Duh.

Another good idea which the RTA will never have

In Portugal, they don't use speed cameras to generate revenue.  They use them to trigger stop lights.  They're called velocidade controladas, "speed controllers."  People might not obey speed limits, but they obey red lights.

Another method is sheep.  I was stopped on the road to Monsanto by a shepherd moving his flock between paddocks.  The road was shoulder-to-shoulder with sheep.  The ebb of the flock flowing around the car, surrounding it like water, was very peaceful.  I bleated at them like an idiot out the window.

Then I got back to speeding.

Coimbra

Coimbra’s Sé Velha—the old cathedral (the “new,” 17th-century one is further up the hill)—is considered a masterpiece of Romanesque architecture in Portugal. It is a stunning example, largely unaltered since it’s construction, with a double-arched clerestory over each tall, single-arched arcade. The narrow window slits and crenellated 12th-century walls are reminders of the hostile relations with the Moors.

Inside, I overheard a young boy looking up at the elaborate Renaissance retable of Christ on the cross ask his parents, “why was Jesus crucified?” I pulled him aside and said, “because he was stupid.” Let’s face it: when Pontius Pilate asked him, “Are you the Son of God?” he only needed to whisper, “Nah, not really. Don’t tell anybody,” and voilà! He would have lived to a ripe old age and history would have been spared centuries of Catholic guilt. You know all these lunatics who swear, “I’m Jesus Christ”? He’s the one who got away with it. The joke’s on you, Christianity.
But it is still a nice cathedral.

New car

It's a Ford.

Enough said.

Lisbon

The Ponte de Vasco da Gama, one of two bridges spanning the Rio Tejo, is an inspiring entry to Lisbon. A stunning thin white 17km-long line over blue water, it is a spectacular and beautiful piece of modern engineering. The other bridge, the Ponte de 25 de Abril, is a dead ringer for San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge (it was built in 1966 by the same company).

Lisbon is a fantastic place—a laid back, tranquil, completely unpretentious world-class city where local residents mix unselfconsciously with tourists. Trams race improbably up steep cobbled hills and down narrow twisting streets with inches of clearance between the buildings. If the buildings are are not pastel blue, pink or orange, they are covered in hand-painted azulejos (tiles), many very old, and the laundry hanging out the windows testifies to the city’s realism. It is not a tourist pantomime. People live on the streets, grocery shopping, smoking on the corner, meeting friends in the plaça, eating at the corner cervezeria, and at night the streets are full, much like Seville.  There is also a very big African influence in Lisbon, stemming from the influx of refugees from the abandoned Portuguese colonies after the 1974 Revolution of the Carnations.

After returning the car and catching the bus from the airport into the centre, the first thing I was offered in Lisbon was hash. Peddlers carry it on the street. I lost count of how many times I was approached by a hash peddler that first day alone—five? And when you say no, they ask, “marijuana? Cocaine?” And they all are persistent, as if I might change my mind and say, “Actually, you know what? I do feel like some cocaine.” One time a guy approached me and there were two police officers three metres away. Unbelievable! It’s annoying, but not dangerous. Lisbon is reasonably safe. These people want to sell you drugs, not mug you, and there are police on the beat.

I was tempted to see The Complete Works of William Shakespeare in 97 Minutes at the Teatro Municipal de São Luís. It’s supposed to be very funny. The title was in Portuguese, though, making me wonder if it is translated, which would be very strange. Many Portuguese do speak English, though, a legacy of the 600-year old friendship with England. Also being performed was Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, worth seeing just for the brilliant title.

As I write this, I’m supposed to be out shooting things, but instead I have been seized by Lisbon’s chilled out sunny Sunday vibe and am emptying mojitos to funky Motown on the terrace of the Noobai Café overlooking the Rio Tejo.

Driving in Europe

Aaaarrrhhh!!

Driving

For those interested (I am not one of them), the two vehicles I rented so far were a Volkswagen Golf 5-door sedan in Spain (really nice car), and a Fiat Dobló in Portugal. The Fiat was a 5-door minivan with a huge decal of a golf bag over the rear and side windows – very strange for a rental car. I was a bit annoyed since it was like a giant advertisement, and I don’t even like golf. I would rather have had a sedan than this poxy minivan, but I requested a diesel if one was available, which this was. And Fiat notwithstanding, I actually loved it. The extra height was nice, almost like a truck, and the diesel was brilliant over the hilly and winding roads through the national park from Faro to Mértola (a great road for motorcyclists, of which there were many). It was fun to practise driving a diesel for the first time in many years on those roads.

Three words

Lisbon is fantastic.

Mértola

There’s a little town in Portugal’s Alentejo region called Mértola which is thousands of years old. Located on the Rio Guadiana, navigable 50km inland from the ocean, it has been the home of Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Moors, and the Reconquista Christians. There has recently been discovered a wall from the Iron Age.

Today, old Mértola is a little village of whitewashed buildings painted with broad strips of yellow and bright blue on steep, rolling, bumpy cobblestoned lanes in the lee of a once impregnable clifftop castle.

When I arrived, a brief rainshower after several dry months had raised an incredible perfume from the trees and soil which stained the air with a spiced incense of sandalwood and nutmeg, like antique wood. Every breath of air in the whole town smelled of it. I stayed in a bed and breakfast run by a friendly guy named Carlos which was so comfortable, like being at home, and I was so charmed by Mértola itself that I stayed for two nights.

Flamenco

The Jerez-Seville axis is an important region in Andalucía for contributing to the development of flamenco. Indeed, Seville considers itself the heart of flamenco. Yet Jerez’s Judería, the maze of back streets in the gypsy quarter where flamenco grew, was completely quiet. I couldn’t find any flamenco at all.

In Seville I could have gone to any of several flamenco shows put on for tourists—many of which charge €30-€50—but I was looking for something authentic. When I was last in Seville, I went to a little bar called El Tamboril hidden in the corner of the quiet Plaza de Santa Cruz, where I found one of the locals with a guitar and another singing. It was deep, genuine, impromptu flamenco. I headed back again this time but found it closed on Thursday night. I returned on Friday and again on Saturday, and the door never opened. It must have shut down; a real shame.

I tried another place recommended by my Rough Guide to Andalucía, an excellent resource on flamenco, but I found instead a small group playing chamber music. In any case, the place was so hot and stuffy with the hundreds of bodies crammed in there that I wouldn’t have been able to last.

So, in the end, I travelled to the other side of the world to the heartland of my favourite genre of music and was unable to see any.

(Cue Shizuka’s howl of disappointment.)

Booking ahead

Having learned my lesson, I bought my ticket today for the bus to Portugal tomorrow. Apparently, there are two daily buses. When the lady at the ticket office asked me in Spanish which one I wanted, I couldn’t make out what she was asking and all I could answer was no entiendo—I don’t understand. The guy in the queue behind me, impatient, intervened and explained to me that there is a morning bus I can catch at 7:30 or an afternoon bus at 16:30, and she was asking which bus I wanted to take—all in rapid, verbose Spanish. After he finished I turned and said to him, in Spanish, “I don’t speak Spanish.” Somehow, he seemed to think that speaking to me in Spanish would remedy that.

Meantime, the lady at the counter simply wrote 7:30 and 16:30 on a piece of paper. I pointed to 7:30, paid my €16.50, and was on my way, wishing the impatient Spanish man a continued fruitful career in impromptu customer service.

Inter… net?

What is with the Internet in Seville? It is virtually impossible to find an internet café. Generally I need wireless access for my laptop, which is hard enough to find without sacrificing a good tapas meal and eating at a crappy American Tex Mex bar with some Yank hollering baseball on five different TVs just so you can use their Wi-Fi as a paying customer, but this time I need to print my voucher for my car rental in Portugal. I spent half the day going to five different addresses listed in various guides, and there was no trace of any one operation. Apparently they start up and shut down like dot com bubbles here, which is really strange, as if Seville is one place in the world the Internet just hasn’t caught on.

Seville

Of all the Andalucían cities and towns I have ever been to—Seville, Cordoba, Granada, Carmona, Jaén, Jerez, Arcos, Ronda… Seville is the best. I thought there might have been a halo effect, as it was one of the first places Mai Li and I reached on our maiden European voyage in 2007, but having returned I can confirm it. Granada is a must for the Alhambra; Cordoba is equally important for the Mezquita; and picturesque Ronda was a lot of fun because of the fería.  But Seville, though touristy, retains its heart and lives up to all the romantic expectations. It has the cathedral and the Giralda, and the alcázar with its rambling gardens, all in the centre of the Barrio de Santa Cruz—the yellow, salmon, and white-washed quarter of tall, narrow laneways and rose-filled balconies of iron filigree. Though other places have made important contributions, it is the soul of flamenco. I feel very safe in all of Andalucía, but in Seville, at any hour of the night, utterly so. And the tapas, invented here, is the best anywhere, with dozens of bars offering hundreds of kinds of tapas in the Barrio de Santa Cruz alone.

Americans love Seville, too. It is one of the places I have found them the most as tourists, along with Paris and Salzburg. So, they mustn’t be all bad.

The bureaucracy of buying tickets

Here is a not unusual example of queuing for a ticket in Andalucía. At the Jerez train station, there are three ticket windows, one of which is open. To be served, you take a number. I pull 480. The number currently being served is 449. My ticket says it will be about a forty minute wait, yet there are no more than five people in front of me. Where are the thirty people holding the intervening tickets?   After fifteen minutes, the number being served ticks over to 450, and one person advances to the counter.

There is a line on the floor marked with the words Espere su turno—wait your turn. The Spanish word for “wait” is also the word for “hope.”

I used the automatic ticketing machine.

The Quest for Tea

Spaniards are drinkers of coffee, not tea, but in the ancient land of the Moors you can find teterías, Moroccan-style tea houses bedecked in tilework, ottoman cushions and rugs. They are more a commercial conceit than a vestige of culture, but are nevertheless mini Meccas for the deprived tea lover.

When I learned about the Salon de Té Al-Zahra in Ronda, which offers over a hundred different teas, I made a beeline. A darkened series of low-ceilinged rooms with red walls, the décor was cozy but the air was smoky and hot. There’s no ventilation in these deep old buildings, and non-smoking establishments are a very non-European idea (though France is apparently catching on). Since recovering from this flu, if I spend the evening in a smoky restaurant – which is inevitable in Spain if you want to eat – I spend the night coughing myself to sleep. But after two weeks of abstinence, I’ll do anything for a decent pot of tea.

In Jerez de la Frontera, the Tetería La Jaima has very high ceilings and is much better ventilated. Even the hookahs they have on the menu are barely noticeable. The teapots come in three sizes, and I ordered a grande, which typically serves four or five people. The waitress double-checked, thinking my Spanish must be bad.

“Grande? Por uno solo? Es mucho mucho.”

“Si,” I smiled.

It was served in a decorative brass teapot and filled my glass a dozen times.

Unpredictably, the most pleasant tea house I’ve found in Europe is in the medieval Bohemian town of Cesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic. After seating yourself under a large tree in the garden, the bearded waiter in flowing pantaloons brings a hundred-kind menu of black, green and white teas, with milk or lemon, spiced with cinnamon, anise, roses, or even chocolate, and a little brass bell. You while away the day in the shade of the tree, and whenever you want another pot of tea, you just ring the bell.

Luck

Well, it seems my luck with Ronda may just have run out.

I have taken meticulous precautions to back up all my photography on this trip with multiple redundant copies on SD cards, my laptop hard drive and online storage. But it seems that the card I was using when shooting the Corrida Goyesca is corrupt. No matter how many precautions I take, I can’t do anything about a card that is already fucked when I’m writing photos to it.

I used three cards to shoot the bullfight, with about two hundred peripheral photos on two, and about five hundred of the real material on the bad card.

I haven’t forsaken hope yet. Recovery software does exist, so I’ll put this card away until I get back to Sydney and then do some forensic repair work.

I will just seethe quietly until then.

La Corrida Goyesca

The bullring is sold out and the crowd is dense but civilised as they funnel through the several puertos, climb the stairs to the alto seats on the upper tier of the bullring, and thread through the rows of wooden benches. I find the number of my sol seat on one of the benches in the direct sun and throw down the little square cushion I bought outside for €2. It's 38°C, smells of cigarillos, and the bullfight will go for four hours.

In the Corrida Goyesca, there are three matadors, or toreros, who will each fight two bulls, and a 500kg Spanish fighting bull is a very angry beast. At the start of each fight, one is released into the ring through a wooden gate and it is immediately clear how dangerous these animals are. It charges the matador’s cuadrilla, the team of assistants, who goad it with muletas (capes) and then slide out of the ring behind a wooden partition. It is very much like a Roman arena.

The corrida is highly ritualised, divided into three tercios, stages. Starting with the tercio de varas, the bull attacks a blindfolded horse on whose back rides a lance-bearing picadore who spears the bull in the shoulder muscle.  This  weakens it from loss of blood. The bull attempts to lift the horse with its horns, weakening its neck muscles so that when it comes time for the matador the bull will hold his horns low. The horse, draped with a padded coat for protection from the bull’s horns, seems to accept this all with surprising equanimity.

The second stage sees three banderilleros on foot take turns to deftly thrust two banderillas, barbed and decorated sticks, into the bull’s shoulders. This both fires up the animal and weakens it from further loss of blood in preparation for the final stage.

In el tercio de muerte – the third of death – the matador and the bull go to head-to-head. The torero makes ballet-like movements with his red cape and sword as the bull passes, sometimes holding the bull’s flank with his hand as they pirouette. Though significantly weakened, the fierce bull is still capable of delivering a lethal cornada, or horn wound, and there was one dangerous moment in one of the fights when the torero lost his footing and slipped to the ground. The cuadrilla quickly moved in to distract the toro, and he was able to regain his footing and resume the fight.

Finally, the matador raises his sword, takes aim at the bull, then takes a running leap towards the horns and thrusts the sword down between the bull’s shoulder blades into its heart in an action called estocada. The torero is in the most danger at this point. With a proper delivery, the sword is buried to the hilt.

The noble animal musters all its dying strength to keep from collapsing but, if somewhat prolonged, it is inevitable. When it finally does, a péon moves in with a dagger and strikes into the spinal cord, killing the bull. The crowd cheers and waves white handkerchiefs, which is a call for the bull’s ears to be cut off and awarded to the torero, who will then walk around the ring to accolades. The bull is chained to a team of mules and dragged out of the ring.

It is barbaric. It could be argued that the actual death is relatively quick, and that we kill cattle regularly for eating. The complaint by animal rights activists, however, is that the animal is severely distressed prior to being killed, and therein lies the cruelty. A cow slaughtered for meat is oblivious until an instant death when the rod is fired through its head.

But legitimate charges of cruelty aside, the cultural spectacle is compelling.

¡Olé!

And then, to top it off, I got tickets to the Corrida de la Goyesca!

The Corrida Goyesca, or Bullfight in the style of Goya, is performed in the oldest and most revered bullring in the country in traditional 19th-century costume, after the paintings by Francesco de Goya. This year, the suit of one of the matadors, Cayetano Rivera Ordóñez, was designed by Giorgio Armani. The popularity of the Goyesca has grown enormously in recent years, and I had reliable advice that tickets were all but impossible to get. They’re not available online, and the window at the bullring only sells them on a few set days prior to the fight. After this, licensed resellers have been known to sell tickets for up to €2000! Although I bought an expensive telephoto lens for (among other things) shooting the bullfight, I abandoned hope of actually gaining admission and resigned myself to photographing the peripheral events. But on the morning of the fight, I noticed an open window at a restaurant near the bullring advertising tickets for the three weekend corridas – the novillada (novice) fight on Friday, the rejones fight on horseback on Sunday, and the Corrida Goyesca on Saturday. I enquired, “Esta la Corrida de la Goyesca disponible? Is the Goya bullfight available?”

“Si. €92 por sol alto.”

I could barely contain my elation.

Reaching Ronda

Simply finding Ronda was not the end of my good luck.

The Feria de Pedro Romero is Ronda’s biggest festival of the year, and it attracts an influx of tourists that would turn Jesus misanthropic. Parking a car in Ronda’s narrow streets is an absurd idea, and one that convinced me to originally abandon the rental car plan. My Michelin map was too large a scale for provincial towns and, unable to navigate from my guidebook while driving, I entered Ronda blindly. There are numerous dedicated parking lots as you make your way into town, but I wanted to get as close as possible to my hotel (wherever that was) so that I didn’t have to haul my heavy pack around in the 38°C heat. Somehow, miraculously, I chose a parking lot 50m from my hotel. I actually could not have found somewhere closer if I knew what I was doing.

Finding Ronda

I hauled my pack up to the window and asked for a ticket to Ronda. At last, I was almost at my first milestone, the Feria de Pedro Romero.

“Todo completo. All the trains are full."

My heart sunk. “When is the next available train?” I asked, angry at myself for not booking ahead.

“Mañana.”

Tomorrow?!  I learned this lesson before. Mai Li and I missed Amsterdam two years ago when we had to stay an extra night in Paris because all the trains were booked up. How had I forgotten? Now, after gearing my schedule for the past two weeks towards getting to Ronda on time for the festival, it was all at risk.

I tried the bus station across the road.  They said there is no route from Cordoba to Ronda. I was in disbelief at my predicament.

I realised there was a way, but it was going to be expensive: a rental car. When originally planning this leg of the trip, I abandoned the idea as unnecessary. Now it was my only option.

Driving from Cordoba to Ronda is not straightforward. Ronda is a provincial town, not a major city, connected by secondary roads in the centre of the Cordoba-Sevilla-Malaga triangle. You need a decent map. I happen to have an excellent Michelin map of Andalucia.  At home. From the rental agency, I got an A3 piece of paper demarcating the entire 90,000 square kilometre region, from which I could discern that I had to head south. Fortunately, I know the sun sets in the west.

Two kilometres after starting off I stopped at a petrol station looking for a map.  They did not have one.  After spending half an hour in the front seat of the car poring over tiny maps in guidebooks it hit me that I have Google Maps on my mobile phone. Not only that, but it provides explicit directions and distances. My salvation! I was out of Cordoba within the next fifteen minutes and on my way.

Of course, taking technology for granted, I didn’t count on the fact that 100km into the Spanish plains there is a rather complete absence of reception, without which Google Maps on my mobile phone is useful only for smashing against my head in frustration. Being lost in Cordoba is preferable to being lost in the middle of nowhere.

But where there are roads there are petrol stations, and notwithstanding my immediate experience in Cordoba, petrol stations usually do have maps. And what did I find when I stopped?  My excellent Michelin map of Andalucia.

The drive from Cordoba to Ronda takes 2¾ hours. I pulled it off in less than double that.

Wow, it's hot

From Madrid I caught the fast train, the AVE, to Cordoba, and arrived to 40°C heat.

For my birthday in July, Mai Li bought me a North Face winter jacket for my trip.

The prime tourist attraction in Cordoba is the Mezquita, the grand Moorish mosque which set the architectural style for the region, but having seen this two years ago I focussed my attentions on those things I missed on my last visit here. I stayed in the Judería, the atmospheric old Jewish quarter of narrow lanes to the north of the Mezquita, and visited the ruins of the 10th-century Moorish palace city, the Medina Azahara. The best restored and most spectacular part of the site, the throne room of Abd ar-Rahman III, was closed for further restoration, probably in anticipation of Cordoba hosting the European Capital of Culture in 2016. Having missed this already in 2007, I was bitterly disappointed.

Back in Cordoba, I was accosted by a gypsy on the street when she abruptly put a sprig of thyme in my hand and commenced a palm reading. “No, no,” I said.

“Un momento, por favor,” she replied, and then told me I was “muy fuerte” – very strong – that I would live a long life, and I would have lots of babies. She then rubbed her fingers together and said, “coin.” I said no, and she gave me a look that made me avoid running into her again.

At the Meson de la Luna I had the menú del día for lunch. The first course was gazpacho, a cold tomato soup which was so refreshing in the hot weather that I proceeded to dump the contents of the bowl into my lap. This did not go down well with my white pants, which suddenly became stained and wet. Gypsy curses are very swift.

Toledo

When I was last in Madrid two years ago with Mai Li, I had to decide whether to make a day trip to Segovia or to Toledo.  We chose Segovia, which I highly recommend.  It has spacious plazas and monumental sights, including the Alcazar (castle) and, most particularly, the spectacular Roman aqueduct (which I used as the cover to my book).
So, of course, this time I went to Toledo.  Given my limited time, I booked a tour.

Toledo was the capital of Spain before Philip II moved the capital to Madrid in the 16th century.  It is surrounded by steep hills leading down to the Tagus River, a perfect, almost impermeable site for defence, and it is this dramatic location which is its biggest appeal to the photographer.  Naturally, though not entirely apt or fair, I compare it to Segovia.  I'm afraid it comes up short.  The streets are narrow and there are no wide plazas, so it is very difficult to get a sense of location from the ground.  The national cathedral is sited here, and while it is impressive and deserves its reknown, there is nothing in Toledo quite as dramatic as the Segovia aqueduct.  Perhaps Toledo's own alcazar, the other defining silhouette on the city's skyline, would change my mind, but the tour can only include so much and it wasn't on the itinerary.

Spain

I love Spain.  Madrid was a dry 34°C on the day I arrived.

One of the things I love is that at nine o’clock at night the city is alive. It’s warm and people are out. I just want to wander and be out, and do nothing. It’s so pleasant; it feels like a perpetual fiesta.  Spaniards eat late.  Dinner at 10PM is the norm.

A common things to eat for breakfast are churros, often described as Spanish doughnuts.  They aren't much like doughnuts at all, but are indeed deep fried dough, extruded into finger thickness and looped into a teardrop, and then dipped in a pudding-like hot chocolate.  I ate the following morning at Maestro Churrero – the churros are crisp and not oily, and the chocolate is thick and not powdered.

Museo del Prado

A tip for those planning to visit Madrid’s Museo del Prado: buy your ticket online. I was able to completely bypass the more than 100-metre long queue. My main reason for going was for Goya’s Black Paintings, including “Saturn Devouring his Children” and “The Cudgel Fight.” All fourteen are on permanent exhibition.

When in Bruges, I saw Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Last Judgement” and thought how small it was. In Madrid’s Museo del Prado, I saw Bosch’s triptych, “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” and it’s huge! The central panel must be 2m x 3m. There were also numerous other Bosch works, several of which I was unfamiliar with, and another version of Hans Memling’s “Adoration of the Magi” triptych, which I saw in Bruges.

Ryanair

Ryanair’s maximum checked luggage allowance is 15kg.  This is one of the ways in which Ryanair makes money – excess baggage is €15 per kilogram.  My fully loaded backpack weighs 20kg.  Before catching my flight from Brussels (Charleroi) to Madrid, I managed to jam all of my books, my camera and lenses and my laptop into my carry-on camera bag, but my backpack was still two kilograms over, so I had to pay €30 (A$51). It would be a tolerable amount, except that I already paid for two tickets! I was stupid enough to book a ticket under my middle name of Wayne instead of the name in my passport, Geoffrey, and the €100 cost of changing the passenger name exceeded the cost of simply buying a new €55 ticket. Still, at a grand total of €140, it was probably still cheaper than a full flight fare on a national carrier.

Getting from the Madrid airport to my hostel was very easy because the Madrid metro is so efficient.  A single ticket anywhere on the network is €1 (or €2 from the airport), and you never have to wait longer than five minutes for a spacious and air-conditioned train.  It surely must also rival the Paris metro in its extent.

Bruges, Belgium

Bruges is beautiful, but bordering on fairy tale and very touristy.

Medieval buildings of brick and stone rise straight up from green canals of water lilies and vines.  Cobbled streets traverse canals over stone bridges.  Narrow laneways lead to small squares lined with trees and churches.  Chimes from the carillons in the UNESCO listed belfries chorus through the streets, playing “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” and “Danny Boy,” and the sound of horses hooves as they pull buggies full of tourists mix with the clatter and bells of locals on bicycles.

It is possible to avoid the tourist kitsch altogether and see authentic Bruges in quarters like St Anna, a quiet, mostly residential district nicknamed Verloren Hoek – the Forgotten Corner – where I found the Jerusalemkerk, a 15th-century church purportedly based on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (though the two don't appear to share a great resemblance) and still owned by the same family.

The Groeningen Museum houses a permanent exhibition of the Flemish Primitives, a school of painters in the 15th & 16th centuries who were emulated all over Europe for their modern, realistic style.  They include Jan Van Eyck, Hans Memling (known for his exceptional detail), and Hieronymus Bosch, whose triptych "The Last Judgement" is included in the collection and which I specifically planned to see.  Imagine my disappointment when discovering the museum is closed for reinstallation!

Fortunately, the Musem St Janshospitaal is temporarily hosting Bosch's triptych (which is surprisingly small—the central panel is only about 100cm x 70cm).  While I did also see some of Memling's works at the museum, I missed out on the Groeningen collection of the Flemish Primitives.

I drank beer every day through Germany and Belgium – and why wouldn’t you?  My last night in Bruges was spent in a little beer-specialist pub called De Garre, hidden down a tight lane between the town's two tourist-packed main squares, Markt and Burg. I started with the 11% strength house beer and moved onto Satan Gold.  It was Heaven.

Tourists are idiots

I have no solidarity with tourists.

When I was once on a bus in Berchtesgaden, Germany, an American tourist had a digital SLR , which typically requires at least a basic understanding of photography. He then proceeded to shoot through the bus window with the flash (landscape scenery, no less). His flash reached just far enough to splash a huge white sun over the top of his picture. Even his teenage son told him to turn the flash off. "I can't," he said.  "It just decides when it needs it."

Walking along the ramparts of Rothenburg, I was behind a Chinese woman with a video camera who documented every step of her teenaged daughter three metres in front of her. Never mind that there is a beautifully preserved medieval city surrounding you!  Imagine the tedium of sitting through the tape. If travel writers chronicled their trips to the same degree of banality, the market indices would gain readership: "I walked along the city walls. They were very long, and I kept walking. I passed some stairs down to the road several times, but I didn't take them. Instead, I continued to walk straight ahead. I did stop once, but there were no stairs where I stopped, so I resumed my walk."

Cheap camera prices and the digitisation of photography have meant the medium has been ransacked by the proletariat.

I am not a hypocrite; I am an elitist.

The hidden castle

I finished my cruise at the Rhine’s confluence with the Moselle River, at Koblenz, arriving in the evening. My intent had always been to use Koblenz as a base for a day trip to Burg Eltz, a tall and picturesque castle two hours along the Moselle, but I must have had a lapse of attention in my otherwise meticulous planning. I had booked a train to Cologne the next day at noon. I could have skipped Burg Eltz and concentrated on the pleasant, strollable Altstadt (“old town”) of Koblenz, but I decided instead to abandon my €17 train ticket and see the castle. It was wasteful, but I didn’t want to miss one of my must-sees on this trip for the sake of A$29.

From the Moselkern train station half an hour out of Koblenz, a 90-minute walk through forests and along streams takes you to the Eltz castle, towering above the valley. It is the only castle in the region to escape destruction by French forces under Louis XIV – all the others were blown up – and it has been restored several times under the custodianship of the same family which has owned it for 1000 years. The comforts of the castle were much advanced for the Middle Ages, and included rainwater flushed toilets.

It was predominantly for the photogenic aspect of the forest castle that I wanted to make the trip, but alas, the photographic expedition was a bit of a failure. No photography of the castle interiors was permitted, which is not unusual, but the light outside was really lousy. Bright sun struck the castle at the wrong angle, the afternoon light hazy enough without the wind also kicking up dust. Passing clouds which might filter the light skirted the sun like water avoiding an oily spot, so after waiting an age all I could do was put on a polarising filter and hope for the best. On top of this, the castle was blemished by the bane of architectural travel photographers: scaffolding. I can’t object to restoration or structural maintenance, but it seems that half of the castles and cathedrals in Europe are constantly marred with metal skeletons and veiling shrouds.

St Goar & Burg Rheinfels

St Goar is a bit kinder to backpackers. I was able to leave my pack at the tourist information centre while I climbed up the hill to the ruins of Burg Rheinfels, once the most impregnable fortress on the Rhine. A rabbit warren of defensive passages, some as little in height as a metre, meant soldiers could quickly get to other parts of the castle and any invading army which gained entry would be confused and outflanked within the walls. It would have been impossible to get through all the low castle doorways and narrow passages wearing a backpack.

Pace

I've been moving at a pretty rapid clip so far, only once staying more than one night in the same hotel.  I'm on a tight schedule for the first two weeks so I can get to a festival in Andalucia, Spain.  As such, it's been difficult for me to stay on top of the blog as well as emails, phone calls home (free on Skype), managing my hundreds of photos (shooting, archiving and uploading), and a bit of sightseeing in between.

Speaking of photos, I'll be uploading one for every so many posts, as and when I get a chance.  You'll start to see photos appear in the oldest posts first.

Feelin' Groovy

I've had more comments on my flu than on any other post here so far.  Thank you all for your kind words, but let me reassure you that Tamiflu and Sudafed are magic.  After the necessary and sometimes prolonged clearing of the pipes in the morning, I feel absolutely fine and am completely unimpeded to traipse around Europe.  The Travel Doctor paid off.

How to work off a German breakfast

A hard day’s yakka today, working my way up the Rhine by ferry cruise, hopping off to visit different ports and sightsee along the way.

Carrying 25kg on my back.

Running.

I hopped off the ferry in Rüdesheim to visit the Niederwald Denkmal, a monument celebrating the creation in 1871 of the German Reich, high above the Rhine and accessible by a 2-person cable car. It’s then a 30-minute walk through the forest to the chairlift down to Assmannshausen (which sounds like a house Cosmo Kramer lived in – boom-tish!) I rested the tired dogs on the peaceful chairlift down, but by the time I found the ferry wharf I had to crack the whip. I was 300 metres away and the ferry was already there! I had to run, which is hard to do wearing a backpack. It’s a good thing I have a sharp whistle, because at 50 metres they were pulling the gangway.

I made it to Bacharach, one of the prettiest towns on the Rhine, full of half-timbered houses on narrow streets surrounded by a city wall. Burg Stahleck, the castle on the hill overlooking the town, has been a youth hostel since 1920, and I booked a private room there months ago. Unfortunately, there’s no cable car or chairlift; the access is hundreds of stairs and switchback trails up the hill.

The steam from my shoes hissed like a train when I finally released my belaboured feet. The shower was very welcome.

Expecting a relaxing evening overlooking the Rhine, I came downstairs from my room to find the youth hostel completely overrun by overexcited schoolchildren on an overnight excursion, screaming, playing, and running everywhere. Being the happy-go-lucky traveller (tourists are always happy) I rather enjoyed their fun, though when they were playing in the hall outside my room, screaming and falling against my door, I had to look up the word "quiet" in my phrasebook and open my door with "Ruhig, bitte!"  German children are very polite, and they complied.


Misty morning view from my room in the castle. 

Mainz is boring.

This is in part because carpet bombing flattened it in 1945, so there are only a few old buildings left in a small untouched section of the old town. But the rest of the blame must lay with the indifference of the subsequent town councils who seem to have engendered a total absence of civic pride in the local population with their apparent lack of city planning. Europe is a continent of pedestrians, as much so here as anywhere, yet it’s difficult to get anywhere in Mainz because you have to walk around so many walls and roads and buildings that suddenly loom in your way. Public spaces are half-hearted with unimaginative pebblecrete fountains smelling of chlorine, and gardens are yellowed and uncared for with half-broken green wooden benches from the 1970s. It is unglamorous and suburban.

This is the start of Germany’s famed Romantic Rhine. I now understand why, when I said I was headed next to Mainz, the guesthouse proprietor in Rothenburg shrugged quizzically at me as if to say, “Why?”

Illness

It is almost inevitable that on a major overseas trip you’ll fall ill, whether it be a gastric illness or food poisoning or a common cold. Staying awake for nearly 24 hours travelling across the globe to a timezone where day and night are reversed stressed my constitution and compromised my immunity so that within mere days of the start of my trip I’ve fallen victim to the flu.

The night before last I felt the start of a sore throat. I visited the Travel Doctor before leaving Sydney and picked up some Tamiflu, but despite that my throat was raw the following morning I hesitated to take it. It’s my only supply. For it to be effective against influenza, it must be taken within 48 hours of the onset of symptoms, but it is also ineffective against the common cold. What if that’s all I’d caught? What if I really do contract the flu later in the trip? I tried to convince myself later that day that my sore back was just from carrying my backpack, but when my temperature rose overnight I relented and began my course of Tamiflu this morning. I have Sudafed with me as well, so I’m not feeling too bad.