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.

Schneeballen

Just as Salzburg has its chocolate marzipan Mozart balls, Rothenburg has a signatory pastry: Schneeballen. It's a sort of shortbread pastry folded over and over onto itself into the size of a cricket ball, then traditionally rolled in cinnamon and sugar. Other coatings on offer include yoghourt, coconut, and chocolate and nuts.

Finishing one is a bit like eating the top off a large apple pie. Perhaps this is why apple pie is popular the world over, and Schneeballen is not.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Rothenburg is a colourful medieval walled town about three hours by train from Frankfurt and 80 metres above the Tauber river valley. The half-timbered buildings on the cobblestoned streets are pink, green or yellow with red-tiled gabled roofs. It's pretty, and a popular tourist destination, but it strikes me as slightly kitsch. Maybe this is because I've been to Cesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic, of which it reminds me. Though Cesky Krumlov must certainly bear the charge of being kitsch, it is validated by its charm.

When I arrived at the guesthouse in Rothenburg, I asked the proprietor for a recommendation of where to eat. He told me to go to Hell. "Zur Höll" is a little restaurant on a back street away from the expensive tourist traps in the Marktplatz, housed in an old stone building with cramped ceilings and wooden stairs. One trapezoid-shaped table seating nine is actually an old bellows, the spout still attached to the narrow end.

Sydney to Singapore

Somehow, on an almost full flight from Sydney to Singapore, I managed to get three seats all to myself. It was a daytime flight, but I almost went to sleep just to take rare advantage of the space. For the planespotters reading this (hello, Jay), it was a Boeing 777-300ER. The leg room in economy was ample, and I'm six feet tall.

By the time I reached Singapore at midnight local time, I really was tired. My back was aching, not because of the flight, but because of the mysterious jab the Travel Doctor gave me before leaving Sydney. "It's free for those born between 1968 and 1981." So I shrugged my shoulders and rolled up my sleeve, as you do when someone offers to stick a needle in you for free. I wonder what was in it.

The Crowne Plaza Hotel in Singapore is really nice and, attached to the terminal as it is, very convenient for overnight stopovers. It's new and modern, and a very nice architectural design using lots of curved lines, open-air corridors and tasteful colours. I loved the ceiling showerhead in my hotel room.

So now, fully rested and refreshed, I'm boarding my flight to Frankfurt.

Europe Reprise

On August 21st, I'm returning to Europe. They've been notified.

After surrendering your soul for ten years, you get three months of long service leave because time is money. I'll be spending that time in Portugal, Croatia, and France via Venice, Bruges, Montenegro, the castles on the German Rhine, and the rusto-majestic home of flamenco, Andalucía. To the right, you'll find a link to a map of my travels.

You'll be either well-informed by this blog or bored by the egoistic conceit of the idea. This blog is all about me. And things that happen to me. I find that fascinating.

As well as trying to keep this blog regular, I'll be writing travel articles freelance and shooting pictures for my next book. I'll try to post a few here.

I've been planning this trip for six months. Planning is part of the trip. It's practical daydreaming. Having attended writing workshops, photography workshops, and language classes, it might also be said that I have a small obsession with being prepared.

Next: the real thing.

For Sale: One Soul

I am delighted to learn that Google's Blogger, the site you are now visiting, has introduced a facility to "monetize" one's blogs. By allowing Google's AdSense engine to display ads in the sidebar of my blog, I earn a portion of revenue for every thousand "impressions"—the times an ad appears on my site—and each time it only costs me a tiny portion of my soul. The more I attract people to my site, the richer I will get. I can become my own commercial network and, provided it doesn't get in the way of making more money, I can publish whatever I want! Hail Satan!