Author: max

Finland. Sweden. Copenhagen.

We did the almost unnoticed crossing from Norway to Finland on a seven-hour bus ride that ended in Rovaniemi. This city of 67,000 population is famous for one thing – it is the self-proclaimed home of Santa Claus. There is Santa Claus Village close by, where you can step over a white line, the supposed Artic Circle line, feed reindeer, do snow things in winter, visit the man himself (there’s several), post letters or cards, and go shopping. Never have I seen so much retail rubbish of questionable taste. We had decided not to go, but there wasn’t much else to do, and they don’t charge to get in, so we got on the nicely decorated bus and had a look. Kay bought one decoration and posted cards to grandchildren. Rovaniemi had several Indian restaurants and one showed how adaptable this cuisine is with Reindeer Curry on the menu.

Travelling in Finland either by road or rail exposes you to the same sights from north to south. Essentially the majority of your time is spent in a green tunnel with forest of mostly coniferous trees on both sides. Relief from this is the sight of lakes, of which the country has 188,000 of over 500 square metres size, plus the odd small farm and towns. We also saw a couple of white reindeer in the north. The trees are managed but there are no massive areas of clear felling and are the basis of a very important industry. They have twenty five paper mills and Finnish companies also operate mills in many other countries. The country we have been through is gently rolling and only once have I seen a high hill. The usual horizon is the tops of trees. The small amount of agricultural land is seemingly all for cropping, and we didn’t see any animals grazing, or any suitable looking sheds where they might have been hiding. Not surprisingly there is more cultivated land in the south, and right now it is wheat harvest time.

After the Santa onslaught we went to a very nice city called Oulu which is on the sea that divides Finland from Sweden. This bit of water is the Gulf of Bothnia, and anyone who knew that should feel pleased with themselves. It was not named by a lisping person from the Balkans. Then back inland to another nice place called Kuopio on a double decker bus sitting up and in the front, followed by a three stage train ride back to the Gulf and a port town called Vaasa where a ferry to Sweden awaited us on the next day.

Finns are very keen on long and complicated words and regretfully our knowledge of the language was and still is nil. As an example here is the name of the street from the last place we stayed – Hovioikeudenpuistikkp. Say that in a hurry. However almost everyone has the good sense to speak English. They have two official languages, Swedish being the second. I only found that out on our last train trip when I wondered why so many train stations had two names. The only problem we had was when asking if restaurants had wifi. Incomprehension ruled until we found out out it is pronounced weefee. We needed to ask this question because the miserable people at 2 Degrees do not have roaming in Finland. This was further complicated in Kuopio when our apartment didn’t have an internet connection. We found a mall with with good coffee for Kay that had access. My review of that apartment mentioned internet access as being as necessary as hot water. Of course the small print from Booking.com. noted this lack of connection but I didn’t see that until we couldn’t find a password in the apartment. While on matters digital and all that, one unique thing we have seen in cities in Finland are robots delivering groceries. They look like a largish chilly bin with three wheels on each side plus an aerial that flashes and are very cute. Watching them negotiate pedestrian crossings is delightful, and the last one we saw was on its way back to base and parked neatly beside three of its mates.

Compared to Norway there is a more bogan element in Finland. Not hugely, but more black hoodies, more graffiti, noisy dirt bikes, and the odd loud street person. Probably less than in NZ, but noticeable. Comparing anywhere to Norway is a bit unfair given its wealth and ability to do social stuff that is difficult elsewhere. The architecture in Finland is a little different as well and electric cars are a lot less obvious. One sight that is almost unique these days was the number of young men in military uniform. There is compulsory military service and given the border with Russia this is not surprising. In 1939, shortly after the start of WW2, the USSR invaded Finland citing the need for a bigger buffer zone. Some things don’t change. The Finns call this the Winter War and they stopped the invasion. But in 1940 the Soviets returned and in the end the Finns had to agree to hand over 9% of their country. That then lead to an alliance with the Germans to try and get that land back, and thus the Continuation War. This lasted until 1944, with no success, and then the Finns changed sides and had to chase the Germans out. And pay reparations. So Finland knows all about dealing with Russia.

I had expected to be in very cold weather in the northern places and packed accordingly. But even though some days we struggled to get over 10 degrees I have not needed my long johns or gloves. Maybe it’s something to do with a lack of humidity. My puffy Macpac jacket has been great, and after getting a number 1 haircut before Kay arrived, my old winter cap has been a necessity. It’s getting a bit worn and somewhere along the way we were staying by a very comprehensive male hat shop. I saw a suitable replacement but the price was about $280, which flattened any enthusiasm for a purchase. It must have been in Norway.

Eight years ago we did a day visit to Helsinki, and my thoughts then were that it was good to have been there, but it wasn’t a must see. Hence we have given it a miss this time. I feel a bit the same way about the country. It has been interesting with some nice cities, but not compelling. Unless you are a tree or lake lover.

The ferry crossing to Umea in Sweden was on a still and rainy day with nothing to see. The ship was very nice, quite a step up from the ones we are used to in NZ. I had booked Comfort Class and a meal, which meant heaps of room and reclining chairs, with almost silence away from the dance floor in the main seating area. The buffet meal was a winner, easily the best value feed of the trip so far with an outstanding seafood section. I replenished the gin supply from the onboard duty free shop after a lot of mental arithmetic to sort out the best deal, which was two Gordon’s in 500ml plastic bottles, ideal for travelling.

When we got off the bus from the port in the middle of Umea, I had the joy of now having roaming again, so opened maps and off we went following the dots. The only problem was I had not noticed the guidance was for driving, not walking, and the streets were one way for traffic. It didn’t take too long to understand we were going the wrong way but it doubled the expected seven minutes of bag towing. Our hotel had a new for us, and surprising, in-room feature – a set of hand weights on the wall beside Kay’s side of the bed. Not something ever seen before. The weather wasn’t wonderful the next day, but we did a hike to a museum and gallery, had lunch and few samples from food festival in the central square, said hello to the town’s river, and didn’t over extend ourselves. The next, and last, smaller city of the whole trip was Gavle about six hours train ride south. This day’s trip was better than the previous green tunnel rides, with more agriculture and even about eight cattle and twenty strange looking sheep, and more towns and villages. Lots of skinny logs ready for rail transport, and in the second leg of the journey we got up to 199 kph in a train that didn’t look very smart on the outside and had seats with not a lot of padding on the inside. Our last apartment stay was in Gavle and the bathroom had a huge spa bath with a chandelier over it, plus helps of space in the other three rooms, but (there’s usually a but) we had to initially make the bed ourselves. Who goes travelling and wants to do that ?

During the train ride to Stockholm I discovered the Swedish Rail site has all sorts of useful information, including telling me we were two minutes late leaving Gavle, and giving me live updates of when were gaining back that discrepancy. It turned out there were two Radisson hotels beside Stockholm Central Station and we initially visited the wrong one, but it was only a 50m correction. An orientation walk up the main shopping street produced no expenditure, probably because Kay had a nasty cold and wasn’t feeling like making big decisions. A highlight for me in Stockholm was the Vasa Museum. It has a statement warship built in 1630s that was launched to great fanfare, sailed about two kms, tipped over, and sank. Then bought back to the surface in the 1960s and 98% of it is original, inside a special museum. Deservedly it is a major sight. The ABBA Musem is close by and not worth the entry cost in my blues, rock, and jazz orientated opinion. My wife would not agree.

On our third day in Stockholm Kay declared a lay day for herself, and I went off on a walk that took in three joined-up islands and nearly eight kms. I visited a famous interior design shop and was glad it wasn’t in NZ, lovely Scandinavian design which I have been a fan of since my student days, but eye-watering prices. Then I headed for a "hip" area and got far away from other tourists for quite a while, ending up outside a closed bar called Bar Agrikultur. Where I took a photo to send to the Agricultural Correspondent. He’s a bit old now and has to stay on his farm, but he’s still young at heart. One of our travel rules is to never eat in the same place twice. On our last night in Stockholm we broke that, having found a small Japanese place called Naked Fish nearby that was exceptional, and the house sake was the nicest I have ever tried.

Our train to Gothenburg was a minute late, and my window seat had a decorative panel of wood beside the window that limited the view. However, inland Sweden is geographically repetitive, being pretty much flat, so the restricted view was not a major. And it was a grey drizzly day. A majority of the wooden buildings in the country are painted a dark red colour. Reasons why relate to the colour originally coming from iron ore processing (Sweden has lots of iron ore), and one explanation was in the old days it was the cheapest paint, another was that because of the iron content it stops wood rotting. Probably both would be correct, but it is ubiquitous and sort of fits in. In WW2 Sweden remained neutral and supplied Germany with high quality iron ore which is not something they shout about. Recently they abandoned their neutrality and joined NATO. Putin had a bit to do with that, and obviously doesn’t need their iron ore. Each of Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark has long ago historical reasons to be a bit wary of at least one of the others, and the one I heard about most was Sweden v Denmark. I assume sporting matches are the proxy battles these days. We visited a museum in a twenty two thousand square metre underground complex near Gothenburg which was developed during the Cold War to hide airforce assets, and was supposedly safe from nuclear attack. It is now full of aircraft and associated gear from that era, and you can sit in the cockpit of jet fighter and have your wife take your photo. Mine is available at no cost on request.

Two things about people-watching in Sweden stood out – there are seemingly more immigrants than in the previous two countries, and people with mobility problems are certainly more common. I have no idea why the later is the case, but maybe the government is generous in supplying mobility scooters and wheel chairs.

Our last train ride was to Copenhagan in Denmark, which included a big bridge and a tunnel that joins the two countries. Our hotel in Copenhagen was a late replacement for a cancelled Airbnb and finding anything with availability near the railway station had not been easy. I warned Kay as we trekked to the room from reception not to get her hopes up, She was stoic, mainly because I had the side of the bed with not a lot of space to siddle along, trying not to be hooked up by a radiator. On our first day Jain Tait’s Danish family took us on a drive along the coast to Elsinore (where Hamlet did boring Shakespearean stuff), and provided lunch of local open sandwiches. I had difficulty getting around my three of them. It was really nice to spend time with some locals. We did our usual free walking tour the next day, and amongst the many facts provided was the origin of the tech word Bluetooth. If you don’t know that look it up, a nice combination of old and contemporary history. All of our free tour guides on this trip have not been locals, this one was a quite refined Aussie guy, who finished the tour with a lengthy explanation of how a young lady from Tasmania ended up the present Queen Mary of Denmark. We already knew all about it because a few years ago in Suva, at the Grand Pacfic Hotel, we couldn’t get any service when we visited for morning tea. All the staff were in the main lobby area waiting for her so they could sing Isa Lei for her farewell. She was then the Crown Princess and in my opinion Fred, the now King, made a good choice. We walked around plenty of Copenhagen, a very nice city as most of you will know, apart from heaps of cyclists who assert their right of way vigorously. The Aussie tour guide said Danes are reserved people until they get on a bike. He also mentioned the huge government duty on new cars, which I checked by looking up the local price of my recently purchased vehicle. In Denmark it is more than double the NZ price so there is no surprise that bikes are plentiful. As usual at the end of a trip Kay likes to go shopping to take home lots of family presents, and we spent a day doing that. The consequent need for more luggage space was met by her asking at our hotel reception if they had any abandoned bags. I confidently said that was a was a waste of time, but as often happens, I was proved wrong. One hopes it has not been previously used to transport drugs.

It is now two months since I set off to tick off little countries, and the travelling life has become a routine for me that could be continued, but it’s time to head for a place where I can understand what people around me are saying. Apart from the Norway coast none of these Nordic countries are physically exciting. But visiting countries that always top the indexes for contented citizens is interesting, and the quiet pleasentness of all the places we have visited fits right in with that. It’s not spectacular but it is different from other western societies. There are the usual problems that relate to drugs and gangs, with Sweden’s gangs seen as a very nasty lot, as well as some people who seemingly cannot be helped. The big difference from other western countries is that high tax rates are regarded as very acceptable, because in return you get the certainty of free education and health care plus old age pensions that are enough to live on. And a fairly calm political acceptance of this from both left and right which means no radical changes. I wonder how dealing with falling birth rates and the consequent need for more immigrants will change future attitudes, but at present it all looks relatively good.

Hej Hej.

Dennis.

1018 River Road
Hamilton 3210
New Zealand

johnscons

0274 929792

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Norway

Norway

I arrived at Oslo airport the afternoon before Kay flew in the next morning, so I stayed at an airport hotel where I had to deal with a serious crisis. The host of our Airbnb in Oslo had stopped communicating with me which meant I had no instructions about how to get in, or if the place was actually available. I ended up talking with a very caring Airbnb customer service person who spoke rather quickly, and was not keen on cancelling the contract without giving the host a 12 hour chance to reply. I needed them to cancel it so I could get back all the money I had paid. That meant when I greeted Kay in Arrivals I had no idea where we would be that night, or what we could do with our bags for the day. Back in the airport hotel I finally got to talk with another caring Airbnb person who happily cancelled the deal and promised a full refund. The replacement hotel cost was nearly three times the refund, but at least we had somewhere to head for. When invited to review the non-stay I was rather critical. The response from the suddenly literate owner was that her life had been ruined by Airbnb and she was suing them.

We did a walking tour the next morning and the guide was not a Norwegian, as was also the case in the other two we did in the country. He was of Indian and Portuguese parents and boy, could he talk. But very interestingly, especially about the collective psyche of Norwegians. As he pointed out they are not big on what we would regard as social communication. If you look for eye contact they almost flinch, and I have enjoyed proving that correct. There is a fair degree of uniformity in appearance, but the odd Goth is seen. Young men usually have a hair style that is floppy in the front with a centre divide, like the Romantic poets such as Keats, so in moments of anguish or excitement they they can push their hair back in an expression of their emotions. But we haven’t found any problems in dealing with locals, who are seemingly interested that we have come from so far away, and if they haven’t been to NZ they want to.

It is a pity that you can easily work out what Norwegian money is in $NZ, by dividing by six. It took me eight days to stop being horrified at the cost of everything, after that time I was able to tell myself that it didn’t matter, and stopped telling Kay how much things really cost. Having been forewarned by plenty of you who had been there, my preparation was to buy a big bottle of gin on the way in and not buy wine for post daily exploring recuperation. Unfortunately, my limited experience of pouring and drinking spiritous liquor meant I was a bit heavy-handed for a few days, and the level of available gin diminished quite quickly. Adjustments were made and it lasted twelve days. I don’t know if that is good or bad, but I must admit that g&t is quite nice.

Oslo is a nice civilised city. I like trams, and it has plenty. We had one of those city cards that included local transport, so did a few random circuits and ended up with a degree of competence in getting about. In order to get our money’s worth from the cards we went to lots of museums and my favourites were about the Kon Tiki and a cold place exploration ship called the Fram. I knew a bit about both and it’s nice learning more. The Norwegians are quite polite about Scott, of the nearly South Pole, and when you see how Amundsen planned and executed his successful attempt they have plenty to feel smug about. A professional versus an amateur.

The plan on leaving Oslo was a train to the place starting with M where you change to the Flam railway and curl your way down to sea level, then a bus to Bergen. The night before leaving, advice was received that the bus couldn’t go all the way because of road works, and that last part would be by a later train. The train from Oslo got progressively late but we were reassured the Flam one would wait for us, and it did. It’s a great little train ride with big, big country, steep sides, waterfalls, great engineering, and ends up in a tourist trap. So we were keen to get the bus after a couple of hours. Obviously the roadworks were causing a bit of chaos because twice we put our bags into the luggage hold of a bus with the right number and destination, only to be told we were on the next one. We were not alone, and a collective angst was perceptible, even a little anger. When we finally got on the replacement train to Bergen there was a big enough crowd to overflow the available seats and I could see this would happen so we were purposeful and got seated. This train had several delays, each explained, the last being because there was a fire ahead. That announcement was at least more interesting than the others.

We did the obligatory fjord cruise from Bergen. I thought it was fine but not sensational. If Norwegians were not so phlegmatic those in this city might protest about the number of tourists, because it looked like a smaller version of Barcelona to me. On our first night after the late arrival the nearest eating place we found was called Angry Bite, a falafel joint where other hungry tourists included a Nvidia and a Tesla employee. It was fun asking questions of them, the Tesla lady being quite skeptical about some of her boss’s ideas.

Kay has been in charge of city activities and she has an interesting predilection for medical museums, so we had to go to the Leprosy Museum. It was an old wooden building, specially built in the 1800s, and seemed to me more like a jail than a hospital which is probably not a coincidence. This city has a household rubbish collection system I have never seen before. There are neighborhood places where you use your provided token to open the lid of a cylinder and put in rubbish that can be incinerated, and it is then sucked away via an underground pipe system to the city incinerator. Doing it appeared complicated for non-Norwegian people, and not wanting to break anything, we slid our rubbish into normal rubbish bins.

Bergen has a nice tram line out to its airport, although they call it light rail. From there we had the first of three short flights northwards to Trondheim, Tromsø, and Hammerfest where we had two nights in each. Trondheim accommodation was an Airbnb with a very small bedroom, Tromsø a hotel called Smarthotel (a chain to be avoided) which had the smallest room we have ever stayed in, and Hammerfest was a nice hotel with, incomprehensively, the smallest bathroom ever, when there was plenty of space for something larger. To sit on the toilet in a normal straight forward position you had to slide under the basin. I adopted an angled approach.

Although each flight wasn’t all in clear skies I really enjoyed looking at such interesting country from above. Norway appears to be one big rock that has been severely glaciated then partly flooded. Every view had sea, lakes, precipitous drops, and naked or snow covered rocks. Add in fringes of scrubby bush and a little agricultural land, plus the odd settlement, and that got repeated as we went north. Each of these cities was smaller than the one before and a bit colder. Trondheim had a lot of students and the male students all had the same hair do. A waitress in a fancy Tromsø restaurant was delighted to meet someone from NZ, and showed us her pounamu pendant from Greymouth. The main street has been turned into a pedestrian thoroughfare with heating under the paving to stop people skidding over when it’s icy. Hammerfest is rather small and the Hurtigruten cruise ship only stays there a couple of hours. It turned up while we were out walking to a local UNESCO site and we just got in and out before a bus load of passengers turned up to spoil things. There are reindeer wandering about as can be seen by evidence on the footpaths, and it was nice to wake up and see a couple on the grass outside our room. We went to the Reconstruction Museum which mainly dealt with the WW2 destruction that the Germans inflicted on northern Norway when they retreated. Basically they burnt and destroyed every town and Hammerfest was literally burnt to the ground. In the postwar years Norway was a poor country so rebuilding was not a straightforward operation. Now 70-80 years on they are trying to strike a balance between keeping the architecture of those days and dealing with buildings that are approaching the end of their useful life. But the best thing is we have now stayed above the Arctic Line in the northern most town in the world. And it was mostly sunny.

Norway is presently one of the richest countries due to the oil bonanza that started in the 60s. They have been very practical knowing that the wealth has to be conserved, as when the oil is gone, going back to fishing and a little agriculture won’t work very well. At present their two national funds are in total worth close to $US400,000 for each person, and if you want to see how many zeroes that is in total, multiply by 5.6 million, the country’s population. The country can afford to be generous to its citizens, and is, but tax levels are not low. One of its policies is to be the greenest country in the world and electric cars are subsidised, with a permanent ban on combustion engines in 10 years, I think, and a similar deal on cruise ships visiting. All financed by oil – interesting combination isn’t it.

Financially I have had to move with the times, and after a few small problems with my Wise card and strange card terminals, I now flash my phone about and magic happens as money flows away in this cashless society. I also have slowly gained some confidence about not always having a paper copy of tickets. But I do wonder what sort of a disaster it would be to go completely paperless and then lose your phone. (I don’t travel with any other device.) In Tromsø Airport we were faced with even more daunting progress. There was no one to check us in or deal with our bags. We had to navigate two systems, which Kay did with aplomb, and then watch our lonely bags automatically disappear along the conveyor belt. They reappeared in the little Hammerfest airport, which was an eight minute taxi ride away from our hotel. NZ$50.

Our last stop in Norway was east and then south in a bus, four hours, to Karasjok. This was the only bus ride I could not book in advance, and given there were only five people on it when we left my very small concerns were certainly misplaced. The main indigenous people in Norway are the Sami, who are across the north of Scandinavia and into Russia. In Norway they got a tough time after Norway’s independence in 1905, language suppressed and all the usual colonial nasty behaviour. But the culture remained strong, attitudes changed, and now they have their own parliament in Karasjok and basically have cultural independence. They used to be reindeer herders but not much of that happens now. You can buy lots of socks and gloves with Sami patterns on them, but I did cynically wonder if they weren’t made somewhere east of Sami country. We made a visit to the parliament which apparently has 25,000 registered voters and 39 MPs, and a very smart building to meet in. Essentially it is an advisory only institution, but more interestingly, they are very aware of the Maori political situation in NZ. The man from the parliament that showed us around said they had close relationships with them, and a Sami lady in the local arts centre said she really wanted to complete her studies in "Aotearoa". She reckoned she could usually pick a Sami person from a Norwegian but to the untrained tourist there is no obvious physical difference.

Next stop is in Finland. To finish with I am told to tell you Kay’s most useful travelling tip – when a door in your accommodation squeaks and wakes up your partner in the early hours, apply the provided shampoo to the noisy hinge or catch. It seems as effective as CRC.

Adjo.

Dennis.

1018 River Road
Hamilton 3210
New Zealand

johnscons

0274 929792

Categories
Andorra Liechenstein San Marino

Three little countries, and in between.

After Uruguay I flew to Barcelona. Putting it like that makes it sound simple, but it was three flights, four different airports, and lots of little things to cause travel anxiety. Right at the beginning, when I wanted be sure my bag was checked through to the end, I was told I only had a booking to Sao Paulo, which was the first stop. This was scary, but it was a code share flight so I explained about all the rest of it, and after a lot of key tapping the nice lady smiled and handed over three valuable boarding passes. And showed me my bag was going to Barcelona. I had two major concerns – a short stopover in Paris and whether my bag would arrive with me. The first was fixed by a take-off delay of the last leg, and after a very long wait my bag did turn up. I had started trying to see where I went to report its non-appearence. I was on Air France for the long flight to Paris and if you are forced to use their business class I can assure you the food is pretty good, as is the wine. I did a comprehensive survey of the later and then had a nice sleep.

Barcelona was the best entry port for a probably silly tick-off project I had thought about for a while. I suspect the push to actually go and visit Andorra, Liechtenstein and San Marino was the feeling that if I don’t do it now, I may never. It sounds a pretty easy thing to do, and if I had a private jet it would be. But it involves stringing together a lot of busses, trains, the occasional taxi, a couple of flights, and lots of places to have a sleep in. Because I was all alone my accommodation choices were mostly one step up from hostel dormitories which made for some interesting times.

Barcelona.

Last time there was 1973 and the big surprise then was finding the Sagrada Familia. I knew about the building but didn’t know where it was. My memory is climbing up one of the front towers. They were all there was above the ground then, I think. In my one full day there this time, I revisited and was totally awed by this unique and amazing building. I arrived a bit before my entry time and sat down in the shade outside. Beside me a man was setting up a harp to join the many people finding ways to extract a bit of money from the hordes doing the same as me. When on my OE in Paraguay I had seen and listened to someone playing a similar instrument, smaller than that which we see in orchestras, so I asked him in my simple Spanish if he was from Paraguay, I was close enough for him to look surprised. Columbian. For old times sake I walked down the Ramblas, which was a waste of time as it is presently a reconstruction site inundated by tourist like me, or a lot younger. After I arrived the previous day I had gone on a big walk as well, and it’s fair to say Barcelona central is a handsome place that looks like it would great to live in. But, as has been recently publicised the middle of it is full of tourists. If I lived there I would be very tempted to join those squirting water at tourists. I was told that had been stopped, and that’s no surprise because the income from tourism must be huge, and I guess those in charge might like to see it a bit less, but not so much as to hurt their pockets.

My accommodation was booked through Airbnb but turned out to be a room in a very central, self-described, hotel that also was a hostel. It was better than I expected. I found a good choice of Asian restaurants nearby which suited me. They were much cheaper than the standard Spanish for tourists places, and no one asked how much tip did I want to add to the bill. I think I had a temporary reversion to the travel attitudes I had long ago and without really meaning to, found I was being quite frugal.

Andorra.

The bus took a little over three hours to climb up to the Pyrenees and enter this rather strange little country. I didn’t know what it would look like and I wasn’t expecting to see so much modern construction jammed into the bottom of deep rocky ravines, and hanging off the steep sides. I was staying in Andorra de Velle which is the biggest town. The total population of the country is 83,000 and there are lots of smaller towns or villages, all told there seemed to more than enough apartment buildings in the main one for that number. But each place is strung out along the river at the bottom of their valley so there isn’t much width to build on and looks might be deceptive. The engineering involved in creating the towns and very good roads was interesting, I hope they never have an earthquake. The main open spaces are seemingly built over buildings below, although I did come upon a nearly flat park by the river one day. My attempts to find a suitable tour in English failed, Spanish and French only, so each day I hopped on a local bus, Line 2 and 6, and went out to the town at the end of the line and back. The drivers do not let you stay on at the turn around. You have to get off and walk a short distance to the next stop and, happily, pay another E1.90 to go back. I stayed in the small old town area and took a walk down to the main commercial area where I found a huge choice of label shopping along with anything else you might want to buy. Andorra’s main economic activity is tourism and couple that with 4.5% VAT, plus 10% income tax, and no import duties means the whole place is a duty-free shop. There were no shortage of people taking advantage. The only thing I saw that I might have bought had a crocodile label on it, and for some reason I can’t recall, I don’t wear that .

It is a very tidy place. No rubbish, I saw one bit of well hidden graffiti, no low life hanging about, no rough sleepers, no reminders of the well-behaved dogs some people have, flower boxes everywhere, lots of stone work. No need to worry about holes in the footpath. I have never seen so many serious cyclists, real ones, looking like they have recently been in France. All very pleasant and representative of a wealthy little place. I gather secretive banking is also economically important, although they have moved out of the list of naughty banking countries. It is very difficult to become a citizen which is no surprise, if I lived here I would be reluctant to share it. It’s a little too orgainised to tempt me but I like the tax situation.

My accommodation was in a place called Barri Antic Hostel and Pub. I was four stories up, the building was two rooms wide, and I was in the front with lovely views. I was also right above what seemed to be the two most popular bars in the whole town, and there was a two-day celebration of something of importance going on. On Saturday, my first night, closing time was 3 a.m. Even with the window shut and shutters down, wax ear plugs were a necessity. But the sunny mornings with the window open were lovely and silent.

Zurich.

This was my entry and exit place for a short one night stay in Liechtenstein. Once again it was 52 years since I was last in Zurich and I can say the lake looks the same. I did the free walking tour on my only full day there and the most reassuring thing I learnt was that Zurich is presently the most expensive city in the world. The previous evening I had a modest but acceptable meal plus two rather small glasses of wine. The cost was at least double the amount I would have paid at home, which made me wonder if my lack of the local German language had marked me out as someone to be grossly overcharged. Apparently not. When walking around town on my own, my main concern was to avoid trams, bikes, scooters and large black Mercedes sedans that seemingly were very silent. I found that not all streets were one way. My impression is that the locals put up with tourists but would be happier if those that did come were rich and discrete. On the other hand there are a lot of immigrants where I am which is great because their tasty food is better than the local fare which has a lot of potatoes and cheese.

I stayed in a place called easyHotel which is a hotel with no reception or other staff apart from cleaners. If you want your room cleaned while there it costs extra. I didn’t. Getting in required a bit of fiddling on a screen, creating your own key card, and then finding a quite pleasant and simple modern room. The only retro thing was that the hand basin was in the main room. On my return to Zurich I stayed there again and when I went to my room the door was open and it hadn’t been serviced. Very luckily a guy who was in charge of cleaning walked past and I gave him the problem. He showed me on his phone were it was reported as done, and told me was up to his neck with the job and tomorrow was his last day. He also got me another cleaned room.

My first visit to Zurich was in 1973 to catch up with a young man called Tony Ettlin who I had earlier met and travelled with in Peru and on to Bolivia.(If you have seen my account of that complete trip he was the curly blond headed guy in one of the photos of our walk to Machu Pichu.) He then lived in a village near to Zurich, and I thought it would be nice to see if I could meet him again on this trip. Son, Max did the Facebook thing for me and found a photo of a curly grey headed guy, and I got in touch. We arranged to meet up and go out for a meal after I returned from Liechtenstein. In honour of the occasion I did not wear my jeans, and broke out a shirt I had not yet worn since leaving home. Kay would have been very unhappy at all the creases in the wrong places. We had a really good evening together. Lots of travel stories and catch up histories of the last half century. Many similarities, the main one being that we are both still married to the girlfriends we left behind before that initial trip.

Liechtenstein.

A few facts first, with thanks to Wikipedia. The country population is 40,000 , the capital Vaduz has 6,000; it is the smallest double landlocked country; it has no debt; it has no military and 87 police on the beat; the lowest income tax rate is a bit over 2% and if you earn over $NZ400k you might go on to 22%. Once again secretive banking is big with a large amount of trusts and company registrations jealously guarded and not many lawyers. Apparently now you need a suitable story about where your money came from should you wish to invest there. Sound familiar?

I was only there for one night, which seemed enough. It was a train ride, then a bus, then a half hour walk to a very nice modern hostel, with private room and bathroom. I have form of not getting things right with trains, so I checked carefully before as to the platform it left from, how to be sure I was in a second class carriage and confirmed I didn’t have a seat number and was told 2nd Class did not. I got on, sat down, and then noticed a young lady looking at me quizzically, and eventually with the help of Google translate found she had a reserved seat that I was sitting in. I think there may have been a very small sign in incomprehensible German indicating that. In a similar but less embarrassing way, after I checked in and headed for my room I stepped out of the lift looking for the usual sign showing which room number was where. Nothing to see, so I took a few steps one way looking for room numbers on the doors. There were none. Then I looked down and found all the information was sign written on the floor. Some one should have told me. I walked into Vaduz, another half an hour, looked at most of the sights on the tourist map, and headed for Princely Cellars which the map said did local wine tasting. It was quite flash and no one else was there at midday, because as I then found out, they only did one wine tasting a day and that was a couple of hours away. I was offered a consolation prize of a couple of very meager tastes of their pinot noir. Central Otago has nothing to worry about from that source. At lunch time there were lots of young men in tight grey suits and white shirts walking purposefully. I assumed they might be bank employees. The scenery is pretty good being surrounded by rocky mountains and it’s all very tidy and pretty as befits a small wealthy country. My walk into the town was along dedicated biking/walking sealed pathways along side a mini river. There were lots of market garden sized plots of crops and vegetables, but it sort of looked more hobby farming than an economically sensible activity. I guess there might be a subsidy or three available. I was going to stay until late afternoon on the second day but decided to leave earlier because I couldn’t see anything else I wanted to do. I had been to a very smart art gallery and discovered that if you look intently at a big painting that just looks like one colour, it eventually shows you it is more complicated, or possibly my eyesight is deteriorating. Getting back to Zurich proved to be a bit different from planned when I mistakenly got on the wrong train, and realised just as the doors locked. Usual story with travel stuff ups – spend more money, this time another not cheap ticket. Couldn’t blame my eyes.

Bologna.

This was where I went to and from San Marino. I got there by train with a stop in Milan. That first leg was a scenic delight with mountains and lakes plus a few dark tunnels. One went on forever and once out in the open AI told me it was the Gottgard Base Tunnel, 57 kms and the longest rail tunnel in our world. The bit after Milan was a complete contrast, flat, boring, and we seemed to stop at every little tin pot grafittied town along the way. We went though Monza and stopped at Modena – you car fans will understand the mention. The contrast between Switzerland and Italy is considerable. I just mentioned graffiti, and Italy seems to have given up on it. Any suitable surface that isn’t in a flash shopping area has been got at. Nothing has changed from previous visits. But my initial impression of Bologna was rather positive. I loved the wide arcaded marble footpaths, and the central old bit with the high skinny tower and slightly strange cathedral which is a good example of why we go to Italy. I decided to be naughty and have a pizza, so consulted my landlord and followed his suggestion for my late evening meal. It was good, but why haven’t they caught up with existence off the little sharp wheel thingy that cuts pizza. Having to do it with a knife and fork is not easy, especially when the knife is far from sharp.

San Marino.

Last year the Economist published an article about the Russian influence there which was a bit of a revelation. And despite lots of carefully worded rebuttals from local officials it looks like a fair bit of that has stuck. As with the other two small countries secretive banking is important and possibly San Marino has yet to convince the powers that it has completely changed its ways in this matter. I kept my eyes open but didn’t see any obvious wealthy men from Moscow. I assume they have stopped being identified by their biologically improbable female companions, as seen in the 1990’s. But I did see a van with the Russian international tv channel logo on it parked outside police headquarters.

It has a population of 37,000 and San Marino town is built up to the top of the highest hill/mountain in the area. The views are wonderful. As with the other two small countries it is clearly not lacking in money, tourism is really big and that is not surprising as it is certainly worth a look. And there is no graffiti so far as I could see. I arrived on Sunday and the main narrow streets in the old town lead up to the 3 old fortresses on the top, where I went at a steady but not fast pace. These streets are lined with tourist shops and eating places. I was looking for a convenience shop to get a lunch snack but there were none. I ended up in a reasonably quiet and shaded street and ordered a hamburger. It cost NZ$20 and didn’t have tomato sauce or onions or a pickle. C’est la vie. On the way down I took a path that advised proper footware was required, but my jandals were fine, and it was nice to walk through a bit of light bush on my own.

My hotel was a real one where my single room could be described as cozy. When I entered I looked around for the place to put the door card and get the power going. I knew there had to be a slot and probably spent five minutes trying to not have to go and ask. Eventually I retreated to reception where I mentioned that I had been in hundreds of hotel rooms and never had such a problem before, and in response the receptionist did one click on her screen, turned it around to show me a large photo of where it was hidden beneath the wall a.c. controls. I had examined this bit of equipment very closely and had not found the slot. She told me guests often had the same problem. I thought about asking why not explain in advance, or print off the screen photo, but just said "grazie" and retired to get the a.c. working as it was over 30⁰ outside. I did get a voucher for a free glass of wine at the bistro beside the hotel. There was nothing else nearby and I went there for my evening meal. I sat at an outside table for a long time without any of the staff even looking at me. Normally I would get up and leave, but the choices were not good and free booze has always been attractive. So I went inside and did my best Italian shrug and a little hand waving, to imply I wasn’t entirely happy about what was happening. It worked and the glass of wine was extremely big.

I rearranged transport the next day so I could spend some time in Rimini. The NZ army took part in the battle with Germans in 1944 to take it, and Kay’s father was probably part of that, and as well he spent some time later in the hospital there. My idea was to find a museum with some WW2 history, but it was Monday and all were closed. I got a map with12 sites to look at, and walked around those trying to keep in the shade. The winner was a bridge from the time of Tiberius. Then I sweated my way to the beach where all the beach I could see was covered a vast grid system of perfectly aligned identical umbrellas with two reclining chairs under each. For a country whose citizens seem to thrive on taking little notice of rules it seems out of character.

There ends this saga. Tomorrow I take a couple of flights starting from Bologna and ending up in Oslo. Kay arrives early the next morning and we have a month in the north. I am relieved to have got through to this stage without any real problems, and I think I can say that I won’t be doing anything quite as complicated as this one again.

Arrivederci.

Dennis.

1018 River Road
Hamilton 3210
New Zealand

johnscons

0274 929792

Categories
Uruguay

Uruguay.

When I decided to go to Uruguay as the first step on this year’s big trip, I had a vague plan of doing a circle around the country from Montevideo, and stopping in at a few wineries along the way. When I got into the planning it became clear that essentially Uruguay was made up of one big city with nearly half the population of the country, two much smaller coastal tourist attraction towns, and the rest was a farm. With little farming towns, infrequent public transport, dodgy accommodation and nothing worth getting excited about. So my plan evolved into emphasising the winery visits and not straying too far into the hinterland. In order to make that happen I had to pay plenty of money to a nice lady called Veronica who could organise the wine side. They don’t have cellar door operations and you can’t just rock up and ask for a taste. She did a great job and I had a good time visiting eight different places where they did the magic with grapes.

Uruguay originally had nomadic indigenous inhabitants called Charrua, then the Spanish turned up and established fortresses at what are now Montevideo and Colonia de Sacramento on the mouth of the Rio Plata. This river is part of a system that drains a large part of the centre of South America, and transported a lot of trade, hence the name that means Silver River. I don’t quite know why the English name for it is River Plate, famous for where the Graf Spee got battled into submission. On the other side of the very large river mouth the Spaniards had Buenos Aires and Uruguay was a a province of Argentina. In the north were the Portuguese, now Brazil. For a fair while Uruguay was desired by both of these, there were invasions and independence revolutions, plus civil war. Eventually Argentina and Brazil agreed it could be independent if it didn’t side with either and in 1828 it finally became really independent. In 1831 the new president had a problem with the Charrua who were not happy about their land being taken away. A big meeting was arranged to sort this out. The president and the army turned up and killed most of the attendees on the spot and sent the rest into slavery. This was the start of a process of violence against them with the result that there is no evidence of any indigenous culture now. There is a sort of mythological appreciation of the brave Charrua warriors who assisted in the independence fights, but that’s a bit late to change anything.

Today it is politically similar to NZ. A bit left then a bit right, basically the same health and education policies, and it is the most sensible of the South American countries economically. They did have a military dictatorship, 1973 to 1985, which I suspect they would rather just forget about. Geographically it is lacking anything exciting. The land is gently rolling or flat, there are no mountains or even big hills. Flying over on my way to Spain showed exactly that, with rivers coiling about looking for a bit of downwards and plenty of ox-bow lakes. The main tourist attractions are Punta del Est which is a sort of Gold Coast resort town, and Colonia de Sacramento which was the old capital and has lots of old stuff and is quietly interesting. The people are mostly of European origin from when the early government needed people to come and make something of all the agricultural potential. About 2 million responded from poor parts of Europe and their influence is seen in the food and wine. The rest of the people, 11%, are descended from African slaves and that shows up in the music. The population is about 3.4 million, 1.4 live in Montevideo and the next most populous city is 100,000.

Uruguayans have three big passions, to generalise, which are football, matè tea, and bbq steaks of a considerable size. They won the first World Cup and once again in 1950. The guide of the free tour I did in Montevideo told us they had two serious clubs and showed a tattoo on his calf muscle of one called Nacional. When I asked what the other one was called he said he could not bring himself to say it. (It is Penarol). Matè tea is a bitter herb concoction drunk through a curved metal straw from a cup thing. People appear to be seriously addicted and walk around with the cup in one hand and carrying a thermos of hot water in the other. There are special shops selling all the required gear. I tried it once in Argentina, and haven’t wanted to do a repeat. The beef addiction is because they have a lot of meat available, and it doesn’t take long for visitors to be told they have more beef cattle per head of human population than any other country. Only once did I get a meal of steak that I could finish. My first meal was a dish with slices of beef as the base and other stuff on the top all covered in melted cheese. It was huge and I could only eat half, so I had it packed up and gave it to an old street guy who prentended to help people park their cars outside Palacio Salvo. There is a fourth addiction I think, which is dogs. In Montevideo it seemed like there were as many as people and not everyone picks up the resultant mess. You have to be on constant alert when walking on a footpath because the standard of paving can suddenly go from fine to broken, and adding the need to miss the dog contributions means una problema if your attention strays.

I travelled through enough country to see lots of black Angus cattle, lots of black and white dairy cattle, and plenty of eucalyptus plantations for nearby paper mills. I was told the trees get harvested at 5 years which I thought was bit quick, but was assured that was the case. The farms generally looked a little more messy than NZ ones, and the standard of rural housing was less than ours. There were a few flasher houses but nothing to compare with the Agricultural Correspondent’s modern mansion. There was also a fair bit of cropping and maize looked predominant, apparently mostly for oil. I am presently flying over heading northwest and it looks the same as the south did so I am glad I didn’t spend a week looking at the same scenery.

I enjoyed all my winery visits. They were a good collection with each being different. Two were owned by rich Argentinians and are what I would describe as vanity projects, because looking at the cost of the buildings and gear it’s difficult to see them ever making a commercial return. But that is great for the end product consumers and visitors. Another one was started in 1859 by Italian immigrants and several others also had that background. Most of the visits were quite formal with a nice table setting for me, and sometimes others, and heaps of food plus the wines. The one I enjoyed the most was done by a 5th generation lady who was the boss and delighted to have such an exotic visitor as me! Wine tourism is a newish phenomenon there, and all of the visitors I met were from Brazil or Argentina. You can do a day visit from Buenos Aires to the area around Colonia as the ferry takes only one hour. Their major wine product is from the Tannat grape, originally from the south of France, and it makes a strong red that funnily enough goes well with BBQ steak. But they seem to have a big choice of other varieties including some obscure ones unknown to me. I didn’t find a white wine to get excited about.

Montevideo dominates the country and like any big city has lots of internal differences. On arrival I spent a few days in the old city, where the original fortress and the port were. I stayed in an apartment on the fourteenth floor of the big landmark in that area. The building, Palacio Salvo, was finished in 1928 and was then the tallest in South America. It’s showing its age now and the apartment was practical but not an interior designers dream. The old city was a bit scruffy but has lots of bars and restaurants, and that was where I did the free tour. I am pretty certain I was three times the age of everyone else in that group but had a few chats with others and the guide was very good. Before leaving the country I was back in another area of Montevideo where tall modern apartment buildings lined up looking out over the river, which looks like the sea, and restaurants cost more and impose a cover charge. My last meal was in a memorable bar that began it’s existence 107 years ago. Despite the cover charge it was a delight to be there which was helped by my glass of good Tannat being very large and well priced.

The city is a peninsular and has lots of beaches and wide paved ramblas, walking promenades, connecting them all up. These are well used and in the weekends full of people walking, riding, sitting about drinking matè, and a lot of men pretending to catch fish. I saw literally hundreds of lines in the water, and being cast, but no fish. I took an Uber to catch the bus when I left for Colonia and my female driver reckoned all those men were just there to drink beer and tell lies. I didn’t ask if she was married. I went to a small museum about the plane crash onto the Andes in 1972 when the Uruguayan rugby team survivors had to consume some bits of their dead team mates to survive. It wasn’t a smart modern museum but I found it quite moving.

From Montevideo I went west along the coast to Colonia where I looked at all the old stuff and did a private tour with the guide who took me to two wineries in the area. I learnt the Portuguese built their roads to drain down the middle and the Spanish made them rounded to drain down the sides – examples still exist. From there I went further around the river to Carmelo for a couple more wineries. It is a town of about 15,000 population, has a plaza and not much else, apart from a surprisingly nice hotel. Then back to Montevideo for some more wineries.

Now I am in on my convulated way to Barcelona which involves three flights and if I make to Barcelona on time and find my bag on the carousel I will be very relieved.

The real reason I went to Uruguay was because I hadn’t been there. When doing my first visit to South America in 1973 I didn’t go there because the visa was very expensive. Having now been and had a look I can say it is a nice and sensible country, and I am happy to have had my visit, but I wouldn’t try and convince anyone that it is a must visit destination.

Hasta Luego.

Dennis.

1018 River Road
Hamilton 3210
New Zealand

johnscons

0274 929792

Categories
Bulgaria

Bulgaria.

When people asked where we were going this year, the answer of Bulgaria inevitably led to the question of why. My answer was because I hadn’t been there. Often that seemed to be seen as a rather thin reason, so sometimes I mentioned the local wine industry. When people in Bulgaria asked where we were from they generally hadn’t met anyone from NZ, and one ticket lady at a museum smiled broadly (a rare occurrence) and said how exotic that was for her. An exception was a guy at a railway station who had been to NZ twice and was very keen to live there. I got chatting to him because he was standing beside a young lady wearing an All Black sweater – apparently he had just explained to her the relevance of the name and the fern when I walked by and commented about it. Only one person mentioned Lord of the Rings while we were there. When we were asked how long we were visiting for and said nearly a month, most people were surprised, and pleased, that anyone would want to spend that long in their country. They are used to tourists who fly in for skiing in the winter and beaches in the summer.

Getting to Sofia, the capital, was done with Qatar Airways which has little walls around its lying down seats, but you can lower the one with the person beside you so you can have a chat. This airline was a first for us so we spent a couple of days in Doha. Getting through immigration proved difficult for me as they had a machine that required you to put onto it your four fingers of each hand. I held up my right hand to show there was a problem, which required getting one of those gentlemen in the immaculate white robes to actually do something, and it took a while. If you can’t make a direct connection there on Qatar Airways you qualify for a five star hotel at a big discount. Doha is memorable to us for the heat, at least one amazing bit of architecture, the range of nationalities of people doing the work there – nine different just in our hotel, and the lack of obvious commercial activity. It is the usual Arabic oil/gas financed invention of a city without a soul. The metro is nice to use. When we checked in to move on to Sofia we went looking for the lounge and eventually found one of the eighteen Qatar Airways have. The huge airport was a bit confusing for us old guys. The five hours to Sofia was a daytime flight in clear weather and easily one of the best flights for window gazing I have ever had. A few of you had the same secondary school geography teacher that I had, known as "Spanner", and this was a continuous geography lesson he would have loved. We flew over Kuwait City, across Iraq, along the valley of the Tigris River for quite a while, over Mosul where the Kurds and various Islamic fanatics continue to argue, skirted around the top western corner of Syria thus prudently avoiding any of it’s airspace, across Turkey and right over Istanbul, and then over the Black Sea and on to Sofia. Best possible way of spending time on a plane.

I had organised a pickup from the airport and it is always a small relief when someone is there with your name on display. He was a friendly chap which we found later not to be the usual demeanor of Bulgarian service providers. Usually I organise the travel between places in advance, but I had found the Bulgarian Railways site to be impenetrable so had to give up on that, and finding sites to book buses was equally confusing so relied on doing it as we went along. I asked a couple of younger locals about the railway site and their comments indicated I was not alone in my incomprehension. Bulgarians are very proud that a bunch of their long dead under-employed monks were responsible for the cryllic script, not Russians as I had always thought. Personally I wonder why they had to create such a thing when a perfectly useful script already existed. I presume some sort of literary nationalism is responsible. I should know more about it because it’s not my first encounter, but thank you to Google Translate. However, most websites do not fully translate and even on one page some bits are and some not. A lot of patience is needed and I am not well known for that virtue. In past travels I have avoided paying for roaming on my phone, but it was quickly clear that a combination of cryllic and often no road names meant finding our way around easily was not possible so our provider, 2 Degrees, should have a healthy profit this year.

Sofia proved to be a pleasant city in the middle, with tree lined roads, lots of pedestrian-only streets, an astonishing amount of small shops, plenty of graffiti, lots of good restaurants, and a nice wine shop just down the road from our hotel. We soon worked out that Bulgarians are not given to smiley service or acknowledging strangers. If you are walking along a street and the only other person is coming the other way towards you, a nod or hello is met with surprise or concern. Being chatty and enquiring with waiters was met with almost amazement and comments about how unusual it was to meet such friendly people. One chap said he had never been treated in such a way and what a complete contrast it was to normality. They also indicate "yes" by a very slight sideways movement of the head, and "no" with a little forward nod. You have to be aware of that and watch carefully to catch it. All these are normal social mannerisms for them, and once communication is established they are mostly as friendly and helpful as anywhere else. It’s an eastern European thing – I always remember a guide in Russia saying tourists are obvious because they smile. One can think of historical reasons why this is.

Which leads nicely to a bit of an historical summary. In common with the rest of the Balkan Peninsula and surrounding countries ancient history is a series of invasions and assimilation. There were two independent Bulgarian empires before the Ottoman Empire (Turks) laid their not so heavy hand over the Balkans and surrounding areas in the late 14th century. They seemed to be more transactional than most empire builders, and didn’t directly impose their religion and values as long as they weren’t challenged and the taxes got paid. So you could have a christian church but it couldn’t be higher than a moslem mosque and preferably only one storey high, even better if it was below ground level. If you didn’t want to convert that was fine but you paid more tax. If you wanted to get rich it was best you adopted Ottoman dress and outward customs, but what you did at home was your business if you kept it to yourself. In the mid 1800s a local independence movement began and in 1878 Bulgaria celebrated its independence. But that wasn’t the happy end. WW1 had them on the wrong side and they ended up a much smaller country. In WW2 the King, Boris 3, tried to be neutral, but when Germany wanted to invade Greece the route led through Bulgaria and Boris had to join the Axis or be forcibly invaded. No Bulgarian troops fought for Germany and Boris 3 is remembered for stopping the transport of 48,000 Jews to Germany and assisting many to escape to Palestine. After a meeting with Hitler where local legend has it that Boris was screamed at for three hours, he mysteriously died and no one knows if the Germans or the Russians were responsible. Then quickly came a communist coup, so in 1945 Bulgaria embraced the delights of Stalin and his mates. Nationalism and Industrialisation followed and a bunch of guys in long grey coats were in charge. Forty years later that disintegrated and socialism was abandoned. Property was returned to the original owners, imagine the chaos that included, oligarchs appeared, the usual Balkan mixture of gangsters and politicians arose along with local mafias, and eventually Bulgaria took its place as the poorest and most corrupt member of the EU. So far they haven’t been allowed to adopt the Euro but they are trying. At present they are about to have their sixth election in two years and everybody I have asked about this is heartily sick of the whole process. My feeling is some populist puppet of an oligarch financed by Russia will end up in charge but who knows. One younger man we talked to about the current situation said that 1998 was a very low point economically and things have been getting better ever since, so it’s not all gloomy.

Walking around the cities, both large and small, you don’t see much evidence of economic problems. What is obvious is more people smoking than in Italy or France, a predilection for botoxed lips, plenty of tattoos, men with buzz cuts or shaved heads, lots of babies in prams, a delight in family life, heaps of places to have coffee or a drink, and generally they are getting on with the better life than it was. Relics from the past include some old ladies with straw brooms and rubbish pans on a long handle doing a bit of tidying in public places, and you should never assume a properly smooth footpath will stay that way. An interesting statistic is that the average life expectancy is 71, NZ is 82, and patently all the cigarettes and alcohol play a part in that. In common with all other ex-communist countries, old people remember fondly having no worries about a job, education, health or a place to live, and the young ones wonder why they would think that way. One thing that surprised us is that this country must have the shortest school year of any. They have just restarted after three months off over summer.

As usual we did the Free City Walk in Sofia and one memorable bit was the statue of St Sophia. It is high up on a tall column and replaced one of Stalin. The sculptor has admitted the female figure has a fairly close resemblance to an Italian actress with the same name. He also created the lady with a few buttons undone on her top garment, which made the religious lot a little upset. We had two longish walks to visit the Tourist Information place and each time it was closed despite a sign saying it should be open. We also went on a day trip to a famous monastery and when we all got back on the bus to return two people were missing. We had been sitting beside these young ladies who could be described as self-infatuated, and after twenty minutes of efforts by the guide to find them we had to leave them behind. Subsequently we found out they tried to get on another bus, complaining about the shabby treatment they had received, and that bus driver refused to accept them. They probably found some mug male to drive them back.

From Sofia, we went south to Melnik, a very small town, famous for its wine and being a sort of living museum. There was one inconvenient bus a day from Sofia so I had lashed out and booked a car and driver. The company I did that through turned out to be associated with the airport pickup outfit and the same friendly driver had volunteered to take us there. Melnik had been an important trading town close to the Greek border but by 1900 that advantage had diminished and the 20,000 population is now in the low hundreds. Tourism and wine keeps it alive. We stayed in a small guesthouse up a steep rocky then dirt road at the end of the town. Our hostess was a delight, attentive and soundly opinionated, and for a reasonable cost delivered and collected us when we visited a couple of wineries. One of which was shaped like a barrel. She recommended three of about six local places to eat. The nearest was very local, which means meat rules, and lots of it. The English translation of the menu mentioned sausage, so I ordered it. It was actually two, about a foot long each and not skinny. I made it through one.

Nearby was another famous monastery and a view of the steep eroded sandstone mountains around Melnik. We trekked to the bottom of our town, caught the very local bus to Rozhen and walked up a steep road for more than a couple of ks to the important monastery. It was a notable day for some reason and lots of visitors were there. We looked around and then went to walk to view the nearby sandstone pyramids, but it was all misty and vision wasn’t good, so we went back down the long hill, found lunch, got a local woman entrepreneur to force her husband to taxi us, very speedily, back to Melnik and then watched the mist go away.

We had three nights in Melnik which apparently was two more than usual for tourists and then hired a taxi to Bansko, a ski resort town. Our accommodation was a very reasonably priced hotel. The driver and we had trouble finding the place as the hotel name and street number were obscured by trees. We disembarked from the taxi where it should have been and I went looking. I found a front door that was unlocked so I went in, rang a buzzer several times, nothing happened, went out and got Kay and the bags, and we were unloading behind the reception desk when the delightful female half of the owners showed up. I mentioned the trees were a bit of a problem for identifying the place. We were only there for a night so we walked about, it was a nice touristy place, looked at the obligatory sights, and the next morning were woken by the sound of chain saws at work on the trees outside. The husband owner had offered to drive us to the local railway station and we went out with our bags at the agreed time. He brushed off the wood chips and we hopped in his very small car, his wife came out and it appeared we had not paid the reasonable cost. Luckily we had sufficient cash available, and off we went to the railway station where we caught the only remaining narrow gauge railway train in the country, heading for Plovdiv. The train rattled and click-clicked its way scenically through some rough country which included a small spiral. The aforementioned guy who had been to NZ was on this train and came and got me to stand out between carriages as this happened. Not quite Raurimu but pretty close. Plovdiv is the second city in Bulgaria and the last bit of the train trip was on a real train for about an hour. We had tickets with seat numbers and found a compartment that tallied with them. Almost. I put our bags up on the luggage rack, sat down, and then a typical unsmiling railway employee came in and talked very loudly to us. One of the other passengers eventually explained in English we were in first class but had second class tickets. I managed to get the bags back down without squashing anybody and we went looking for two empty seats corresponding with our ticket numbers. There were none, and we stood at the end of the carriage behind the engine for the rest of the shortish trip and gave up on using the railway for the rest of our stay. At least on a bus the seat numbers only have one class.

Plovdiv has a population of about 400,000, and used to be the capital of the southern half of Bulgaria when the Ottomans split the country in two. It is a very pleasant city, claiming to be the oldest occupied place in Europe with lots of history. The Romans got involved because it had thermal springs and lots of their stuff has been uncovered. This was where we had our first Airbnb and it was a very nice central apartment. But it soon became very obvious that right above our 6th floor roof, construction work was underway. This involved some sort of jack hammer removing a layer of plaster and the intermittent noise was horrible. I contacted the host and we agreed, eventually, that if it continued we would leave and get a refund. It stopped at about 6 p.m. and there was nothing while we were there the next day. But the day after….

While in Plovdiv I did two walking tours, one about communist architecture, and one about street art. They made me feel quite intellectual but I still think the less creative street art is anti-social scribble. I only did the art tour because the visitors doing normal city tour included a loudly spoken English young man with an upper class accent and, seemingly, a firm opinion of his superiority. I knew I would not enjoy his company and might say something unnecessary, so I took the alternative choice. Maturity late in life is interesting. On our first night in town the restaurant we went to had its menu on A4 paper attached at the top to a clipboard. I was flicking over the pages when a strong smell of smoke and an urgent warning from Kay alerted me to a very small t- light candle in front of me. It had burnt a neat circle through the first page and quick action was taken to stop it. The waitress nicely told me it happens all the time.

To get to the bus terminal for the transport to our next place required a taxi. A usually simple thing to do but not so simple when there is no Uber and the local taxis require a phone call. Telephone conversations in a foreign place are fraught with potential misunderstandings, especially when you are not entirely sure of the correct pronunciation of place names. Luckily a guide from a tour had given me his contact info, because we were such nice friendly people, and said please call if you need help. I WhatsApped him and it was all solved. WhatsApp has been extremely useful on this trip, especially when dealing with Airbnb hosts. I think Europe runs on it. The taxi cost about $5 and in general taxis have been a bargain, apart from leaving the Sofia Airport.

The next place was a small city, Karlovo, famous as the birthplace of the national hero when getting rid of the Turks and obtaining independence. We stayed one night, had a look at the hero’s museum and a waterfall that was touted as beautiful, but really was underwhelming. Another hour on the bus and we got to Kazanlak which is world famous as the biggest producer of rose oil and rose water. I am sure you have heard of it. It’s been doing this for ages because roses grow very prolifically there and they have cornered the market. It takes about 5,000 kilos of petals to get 1 litre of rose oil, and in this town you can buy lots and lots of rose related stuff. Our Airbnb provided little soaps that were pink and shaped like a rose bloom with a suitable smell. The rose museum was pretty interesting and fulfilled my museum requirements of being specific and easily seen in an hour. Both of these towns had nice town centres with pedestrian-only streets and good restaurants, with prices about half of the cost in larger places.

Traditional Bulgarian food revolves around lots of meat, usually grilled, as are the vegetables which include the biggest reddest capsicums we have ever seen. Your standard greens like broccoli, beans and peas do not exist, but salads are a big deal and a menu will have a wide selection. Most salads have either " cow white cheese" or "cow yellow cheese" in abundance and it is, in my opinion, tasteless and processed. Portions are generally not small and sorting out a reasonable sized meal can be a bit of a challenge initially. There are plenty of very good restaurants in the big cities with a good range of food choices. There is a lot of Italian influence and pizzas are everywhere. Wine by the glass is usually just one choice each of white, rosé, and red. In the more local places they appear to serve the cheapest possible of these and are not at all interesting. As you move up the cost scale the single choice becomes a lot better. Only one restaurant offered a choice of two. Top end food prices are on par with middle of the road NZ restaurants and wine is cheaper. We tend to organise our own breakfasts and one of the small challenges we faced was buying milk. The little convenience shops have all the soft drinks, lots of alcohol, salty yogurt drinks, but no milk. It required a bit of questioning and sometimes a lengthy walk to find the real stuff.

We then bused a few hours to the Black Sea coast, starting with Burgas. Once again a nice Airbnb, that came with a pigeon living outside the bedroom window. Our host sort of warned us about it, and it had an early morning start each day, making the annoying repetitive cooing noise that pigeons do. But earplugs fixed that and we were literally right in the centre of the city so there were other morning noises as well. We knew it was the centre because on the square outside our entrance was a plaque on the ground like a big compass showing the exact middle.

Travelling in the rural areas made me wonder where all the meat consumed in Bulgaria comes from. We saw a lot of agriculture but it was all cropping, the only animals seen apart from a few horses were about three lots of small herds of sheep or goats being tendered in medieval style by a herdsman and a dog. Also at one of the monasteries we visited there were ten cows, this was quite exciting so I sent a photo of one to the Agricultural Correspondent. All the cropping was on flat or gently rolling country and everywhere else was either a village or covered in scrubby bush, that sometimes might have qualified as forest. There are ranges of high hills that may become mountains, only once did we see real bare rock mountain tops. A few times we did some zigzagging up and over these hills. The villages all have houses with orange tiles and none looked particularly prosperous. In some places it was clear the vineyards had been abandoned and the vines were all over the show. The road to Burgas on the coast had lots of large solar farms which looked like lakes from a long way off.

Fifty one years ago I found out the Black Sea is blue, and nothing has changed. Burgas has a lovely big park between the city and the sea, and in common with the other coastal cities the beaches are money making commercial areas lined with places to eat and drink and play. I even saw beach tennis which is sort of like playing tennis on a beach volleyball court and having to hit everything on the full. Apparently this is the place for packaged beach holidays if you can’t afford Spain. The two biggest tourism towns were originally set up by the communists back in the 50s and cleverly named Sunny Beach and Golden Beach. They are packed solid with apartments and hotels, and all the devices to take your money at such places are there. I am told beer is cheap. We passed through.

We had two surprises in Burgas. First was coming across a restaurant that had Babich Sauvignon Blanc on its list, and it turned out to not be the only place with some NZ wine. The second related to Kay and I playing cards while waiting for our meals. We were in a very nice restaurant, halfway through a game, when the chief waiter cautiously approached and informed us it was illegal to play cards in restaurants in Bulgaria. I explained that after fifty years of marriage we had nothing new to talk about, but that didn’t work. Given there are casinos everywhere one wonders quite why, but we were told it related to gambling. We obeyed and on following nights carried on playing without any problems.

We did a day trip to a small old peninsula town called Sozopol which was nice enough and unsurprisingly a bit touristy, but it was nothing compared to our next stay at a bit bigger peninsula town called Nessebar. There we stayed in the Panorama Blue Family Hotel which had a very hard bed with a pilled bottom sheet, luckily for only one night. But it did have a spectacular view. The Lonely Planet warned that Nessebar was excessively orientated to tourists, and even at the end of the season we were certainly not on our own and not short of shops to look in. It is actually quite spectacular and we enjoyed meals sitting on the top of cliffs with the waves smashing into the rocks below.

It was very hard to find out online if we could get directly from Nessebar to our last stop at Varna, the affable main city on the coast. Our reception lady at the hotel was able to say there was a number 33 bus at 10.30 and inspection revealed a rather dilapidated sign at the bus stop supporting that. So we trundled our bags down there the next morning hoping it would actually happen, and right on time it did. Varna had a similar park and beaches as Burgas and we had a pleasant walk there on the first afternoon. The next day we did the city tour, only three of us, with a guide who was a polyglot older lady with interesting opinions. At one stage she picked up lots of chestnuts that had fallen on the footpath and we asked did she roast them. The answer was she put them under her pillow when sleeping and the subsequent eminations were good for her brain. She also told me smoking was necessary for dealing with the stress of being Bulgarian and it was good for countering constipation. We followed that by a visit to a rather good Archaeological museum, but endless displays of pottery and other stuff from ancient graves eventually wore me down and I was pleased to escape. The best thing I learned was that boomerangs existed in ancient times outside of Australia. In a similar vein one of the cultural heritages of Bulgaria is their very own bagpipes. In most cities you will hear the untuneful screech of these on a street corner where a player is looking for contributions, maybe to encourage him to go elsewhere. I had thought we would do a day trip out of Varna on our second day, but it was all too hard to organise so we went to a naval museum. There we learned about the glories of the Bulgarian navy which appears to be a little bit bigger than NZ’s. They had a few cool old weapons and helicopters lying around outside.

My itinerary said we would return to Sofia by train or bus which involved six to nine hours of travel. A few days before I wondered if we could fly, and found it was a fifty minute flight, a compelling reason to abandon the original plan. But all the normal economy seats were gone, and I told Kay we would have to go the long way. She got stuck into the Bulgarian Air website and found some very expensive seats still available and booked them, I have not enquired how much it cost. So we went up-and- away back to Sofia and a hotel near our first one, which features a see-through shower right beside the bed where I am presently resting. Shopping has now been completed but there is a bit of cash left for breakfast and a final fling at the airport.

I am now in my little compartment on our flight Doha to Auckland. Because we were in Doha for about eight hours we were allocated a hotel room. It turned out the hotel was a half hour drive from the airport, which meant going through a crowded immigration hall where my lack of fingers again caused a delay, and we had to be back at the airport two hours before leaving. The time actually in the room was nice but not very long. Then when we made it back we found the flight was delayed for an hour and a half. First world problems.

So how was Bulgaria as a tourist ? It is not an overwhelming place like India, it doesn’t have any top ten world famous sights, the script and language can pose a few problems for independent travelling, but it is a nice place to go to. The food is fine, they make some pretty good wine, and once you get used to the service style the people are helpful and pleased to see you, things are reasonably priced, and it is relatively easy to get around because it is a small country. The population is a bit over seven million and land area is less than half that of NZ. It has lots of history and our safety was never in question. Interestingly in Bansko I talked to a Dutch woman who had a business setting up facilities for remote workers who could live anywhere. She said rents and apartment costs were low by European standards, the necessary infrastructure was fine, English is widely spoken, and the top personal tax rate was 10%. Plus skiing and beaches. She had plenty of customers and I can see why. We enjoyed being there.

Dennis.

Categories
Laos

Laos and the Mekong

I first tried to visit Laos in 1973, but was unable to get a flight from Calcutta due to chaos in Laos as the war drew to a close. In the 50 years since it has gone from an obscure adventure for backpackers to a fairly popular tourist destination, and after our very positive experience with Pandaw on the southern Mekong last year we decided to go the same way on the north Mekong. Having told others how much we liked the Pandaw style we were accompanied this time by Sonja and Gerbrand Van Vliet and Jain and Peter Tait. This was a major responsibility for me as if they didn’t like it I would be the bad guy, but so far I haven’t heard any complaints.

The Laos Pandaw is a river boat built on the hull of a cargo boat, 42m long, with 10 cabins on the lower deck, a large open roofed area plus an enclosed lounge area on the top deck. The first boat owned by the company was an old early 1900’s passenger boat from Burma. There was a fleet of them on the Irrawaddy River and all were scuttled to stop the Japanese getting their hands on them in WW2. This first boat was one that was refloated and refitted, and all Pandaw boats follow the same plan now. The cabins open to the outside so no corridor, everything is teak and brass, and I really like the package. There were 18 passengers and the 6 NZers were the biggest group, plus 4 Belgians from Brussels, 2 English, 2 Canadians and 4 Americans of which a mother and daughter were Trump supporters but conversation could be steered away from that topic and all its associated prejudices. It was a good group with no annoying jerks.

We flew into Vientiane for two nights in a delightful hotel that was beside the Mekong, but the water was a long way off for reasons that will become clear. Before leaving home I had tried to book a half-day tour in the city but a combination of dictatorship bureaucracy and potential scams made it too difficult and I gave up. When we arrived I had a chat with a helpful man at the hotel reception and the next morning 2 tuktuks arrived and took us away to look at the five must-sees, nothing too exciting, and it cost about a quarter of the online prices. The first impression I had was that the traffic was extremely well behaved and quiet. I never heard a horn being used, no one did silly passing, or try and create 3 lanes where two existed. It seemed very un-Asian, but it turns out that being laid back is a feature of the Laos people, and if the crew on the boat were typical another feature is having fun.

My 2007 Lonely Planet book suggests there are 132 different ethnic groups in Laos. They are categorised, firstly, into three groups depending on the altitude they live at, the lowland ones being typical Lao who are Buddhists and the biggest group, as well as presently being in charge. The rest are further differentiated by colour, ethnic origins and beliefs, most of which are essentially animist, and they live apart from each other. Early history seems to be a procession of outsiders invading and taking over with no real nation being formed, until the French arrived and set up what is now the nation of Laos. Recent history is it was used by the North Vietnamese for part of the Ho Chi Min Highway and savagely bombed by the USA because of that, and at the end of that war the Pathet Lao communists took control and still are. It’s a standard communist dictatorship and our guide told me no one would think of suggesting things could be done differently, if you did you would not be seen again for a very long time, if at all.

On our ten-day trip up the river we visted five different villages each of which was of a different ethnic variety. There was a level of discernable difference but also a lot of similarities. If your house is made of bamboo you are poor, wood is village middle class and concrete is at the top end. Our guide referred to each village having a millionaire and that person was rich enough to own a truck and/or tractor or other equipment the rest of the village could hire as well as having the biggest concrete house. Given that 12,000 kip buys you $NZ1 they must be at least a billionaire. The village economies are mostly based on agriculture with patches on the hills being used to grow crops in the rainy season by slash and burn, with tapioca being one of the main crops. Small areas of market gardening were mostly for their own use and there were always plenty of chooks and ducks. We also saw paddy fields to grow the ubiquitous sticky rice that seems to be the main basis of food consumed, with only one village having the good taste to grow jasmine rice. A lot of the labour- intensive work is done with rudimentary tools when it is not hard to see how a little innovation could make life easier. Peter couldn’t understand how people couldn’t see what was possible and it must just be an attachment to doing things the same as always. A good example was in a village that specialised in pottery – the potting wheel was turned by hand, by a woman, when creating a pedal mechanism to do the turning isn’t that tricky. It’s not that these places are completely isolated as there was usually a power supply or solar panels and often TV. Each of the different ethnic groups has its own cultural norms which are are mixture of commonsense and superstitions based on their version of religion. Same as anywhere else. Not marrying someone from your village makes sense but the dos and don’ts for new and full moons were a bit arbitrary. All the ethnic variety means there are 5 different new year celebrations in Laos which is a good excuse to bring out the local version of rice moonshine called laolao. The first time we came across this was in a village where a small group were having a few at lunch time. One guy was insistent we had to join him and I was the closest. He handed over his decidedly grimy glass and I felt obliged to take a sip. I was still healthy the next day.

For me the most interesting visit was to a water buffalo dairy operation set up and run by two western women. They came to Laos to set up a guest house as result of a self-described mid-life life crisis and wanted to provide the guests with local produce. The farmers in the area all had a few water buffalo so they went looking for buffalo milk to make mozzarella cheese. Much to their surprise they found that locals didn’t think they could milk the animals, and that led to a long journey starting with setting up a dairy operation by leasing pregnant buffalo from the farmers, and now includes being the only artificial insemination operation in Laos, running an English teaching school, trying to do the same thing in Cambodia and a heap of other stuff. They now can produce mozzarella and prior to covid were set to have a market in Japan but the plague stopped that. I was impressed by the way the owners are not only creating a business but also positively changing the way local farmers operate. A true win win, not just some well meaning people parachuting gear that eventually isn’t used because it can’t be maintained. One observation the owners made was related to there being no vets they can call on. The 70’s war led to a lot of professional people leaving and then the Pathet Lao dealing to most of the those that remained. This probably helps explain why the country has been slow to innovate and expand economically.

Our river trip started with a five-hour ride in a longtail boat up river to our big boat. Longtail boats are about 40m long and 3.5m wide and kind of like a very stretched dingy with a roof. Ours was set up for transporting tourists and was a fun start to the voyage with several staff from the big boat ready to cook lunch, serve drinks and start spoiling us.This start was necessary because the river is very low and Laos Pandaw can’t sail from Vientiane. This is because China has eleven dams on the Mekong in its territory and therefore controls the flow. Laos is dependent on China in lots of ways and obviously there is little it can do about the water flow. We could clearly see how comparatively low the level was and it provided some excitement along the way when we had to go up rapids and get through some very narrow places. In fact after one incident where the boat stood still momentarily while in some rapids, the captain decided he wasn’t going to risk the next lot, and we spent the last day on the river in another longtail boat to get to the final town. We went through one dam by way of a double lock and passed another one which is being built and will have a lake of about 150kms long. Laos wants to be "the battery for southeast Asia" and given the lack of other economic possibilities I don’t blame them trying to make the most of the Mekong. They plan to have another five dams which will mean the trip that we did will either be a series of locks and lakes or not possible. Being a bit of an economic basketcase Laos cannot afford to pay for this infrastructure so borrows the cost from other countries which get an electricity supply deal for, say, twenty years. It is not clear if Laos actually makes a profit from these deals. A cynical person might think that certain local citizens do well from it all though.

Life on board was extremely pleasant. Our cabin was fine, although Kay wasn’t entirely in love with the very small give in the mattress. As returning customers we got free laundry and for the first time in my travelling life I wasn’t stamping on my shirts in the shower. I have told myself not to get used to someone else doing it. Most days we had a shore excursion and something to do in the afternoon if wanted. Cocktail hour was generally at 6 and it was very easy to fit a couple in, and the roving barman was good at approaching your half empty glass, saying "would you like more?" and pouring it in at the same time. The meals were superb and we ended up with a table of 10 or 12 in an effort to not be a clique of Antipodeans. The staff, 18 in all, were wonderful. Sonja isn’t as mobile as she would like and seemed to have a permanent minder to help her getting up and down hills, and to hold an umbrella over her if it was sunny. One day we were watching elephants in a pool and she nearly escaped by trying to slip down the cliff into the pool, but the attempt failed. They were always good for a laugh and unfailingly helpful.

Our longest stop was 3 nights in the main tourist town of Luang Prabang which is a nice small town now partly overrun with tourists, so it has lots of stuff to keep you busy. There’s temples to look at, monks to feed, more temples, a museum, a hill to climb with a temple on the top, a food market that shows if anything has meat on it, it is edible (including rats), massages, and there is shopping. In these sorts of places Kay picks the items she really needs and my job is to bargain and pay. At the night market we bought three table runners and with each one I found the price could be a little lower. Then I was guided into the flashest shop in town to have another look at an extremely expensive table runner. It was clear it had to end up in Kay’s luggage and even with a meager 10% off it was multiples more expensive than the other three combined. But it is quite nice and the shop keeper looked happy. Next door was a carpet shop with a Kashmiri guy in charge. These men are the best salesmen in the world and I enjoy a chat with them. It turned out we had bought a carpet from his uncle in Siem Reap last year and possibly didn’t pay too much more than an average mug would. When visiting the pottery village we decided to buy just a couple of small approximations of a fish because we haven’t got enough fish stuff at our beach house. The price was 50,000 kip each and I tendered a note with a 1 followed by lots of 0s. This was not accepted so I retired to ask the guide to help, and when I pulled out the note to show him it was a 0 short, which explained what the problem was and I had to send Kay to complete the deal as I don’t like having to publicly admit to stupidity.

The country we passed through was generally bush with a little agriculture on the hills up from the river. The villages were very occasional and the only commercial activity was taking sand for construction and gold panning with a few more industrial gold extraction sites. At the times when the river was the border between Laos and Thailand there was a distinct difference between the two sides and Laos didn’t win in the development stakes. On the last day our longtail ride ended at a Thai town where we crossed the boarder into Thailand without any holdups. The next day we drove up to the Golden Triangle where Myanmar, Thailand and Laos meet. In itself nothing exciting, but there is a strange and big opium museum and, much more interesting, you get a look at a bizarre town over the river in Laos which has a gaudy and large casino building as well as several highrise buildings, all which look like they should be somewhere else. It turns out Laos has given a 99 year lease of 3000 hectares to an extremely dubious Chinese man with a background in gambling from Macau. It is now accepted that this place he has built is a lot more than a gambling centre for Chinese, and deals in drugs, which is no surprise given where it is, employs only Chinese, conducts online scamming on an industrial scale, is a centre for human trafficking and is not doing much for economic development in Laos, which was the reason given for allowing the lease. One might suggest the real reason has resulted in a bunch of Laotion VIPs having nice big bank balances elsewhere. After that bit of education we headed for Chiang Mai and after a night there the flight home.

If you haven’t been to Laos think about having a look. It’s interesting and the people are delightful.

Dennis .

Categories
Italy Slovenia

Milan to Slovenia.

It’s 13 years since we were in Italy but nothing much seems different. People still talk with their hands, the scooters have their special Italian loud tuning, everyone smokes, there are lots of elegantly dressed women, the food is the same, there’s graffiti almost everywhere, and it’s actually quite reassuring things stay the same. Kay and I landed at Milan after the 22 hours of flying and a fraught change in Singapore. It was a bit after 6 a.m. so we got the train into town, parked our luggage at a hotel that might make more money out of holding luggage than people, and started walking until our apartment was available. By the time we got in and then out for more exploring until Melanie arrived that early evening, and then had a meal, sleep came very easily that night and no jet lag was felt subsequently.

I am a bit of a fan of “free” city walking tours because the guide has to do a good job or they won’t earn much from the tips, and we did that on our full day in Milan. The next day we hopped on a nice fast train with no graffiti on the windows and went to Treviso. More than a few years ago I had been at a wine tasting run by one J Kirwan and I had asked about staying there rather than in Venice. He had played rugby in Treviso, found his wife there, and it looks like he buys his glasses from there, so his advice to definitely stay in Treviso was followed. It was a great idea as the centre is a lovely old town with all the the little winding streets and other old stuff, plus a few cute canals and lots of classy shops and restaurants. I don’t often remember restaurant names but one was called Toni Del Spin, recommended by JK’s daughter, and now by me.

The train ride to Venice was only half an hour, and I had overcome my reluctance to visit a place overun by tourists, so we went for a day visit. I hadn’t done much research and the simple plan was to hop on the Grand Canal boat, go to the second to last stop, then walk back to the railway station away from the crowds apart from the compulsory visit to St Marks Square. It actually worked out pretty well, mainly because Kay took control of the map and marked our wriggly trail on it so we didn’t go round in circles, or end up looking at a canal that needed crossing with no bridge in view. The square was full of visitors but most other places weren’t as bad as I envisaged, however I was very happy to get back to Treviso for the evening and give Venice a mental tick and “done that”.

This trip was originally planned for 2020 and was to include Kay’s niece Philippa, and the family bit was because Kay’s father finished his WW2 in Trieste along with most of the NZ Army. We went there next and of course there isn’t a lot of stuff directly related to that to see, but we did have a good look at the Tribulane building which is still showing bullet holes in the stone work. This happened because the very large building was occupied by a bunch of SS who refused to surrender.

Their senior officer was drunk and belligerent and said bad things to the NZ officer trying to deal with him. General Freyburg eventually gave an order for the Kiwis to surround it with their tanks and give it 20 minutes of bombardment. This caused to SS to retreat to the cellars where they must have run out of booze as they surrendered the next morning and were handed over to the Yugoslav Partisan army and, given what went on there at these times, probably ended up dead in a deep cave. The Partisans were Tito’s lot and had control of the city when the NZers arrived, which led to a few tense days before they went away. We had a couple of days there and were joined by Belgian friends, Guy and Vicky, who we originally met in a canoe on the Rio Tuichi in the Bolivian part of the Amazon Basin, in 1995. We last saw them in Talin in 2017 so it was fun to catch up. We agreed to go to a castle on the coast the next day which for us included a bus ride to a little village called Prosecco, followed by a down hill walk to the castle. Guy and Vicky are young and adventurous so walked all the way from Trieste to Prosecco, and then led the way down a path that looked very neat and tidy on the website Guy used. I assumed wearing my jandals would be fine, but it wasn’t, as the trail was far from tidy and my knees protested more than normal for the next few days. It was an interesting castle and we had a lengthy lunch nearby, where we could marvel at the Italians sunbathing at the beach, which was mostly a series of concrete terraces above a very rocky water line.

I have never been able to get excited about Italian white wine because generally it doesn’t have much taste, which is my opinion only. We came across an amazing food and wine retailer with built in restaurants in Milan called, very cleverly, Eataly, and I asked there for a white wine with a definite taste. I bought a bottle of Vermentino which was certainly a step up compared to my previous experiences. We found another Eataly in Trieste and had a lovely lunch there, while Len from New Jersey tells me there is also one in New York.

That ended our short time in Italy and the next day we had a driver and car to drive us for an hour to the Vipava Valley in Slovenia. We were staying near a very small village called Slap at a restaurant/lodge named Majerija. The valley is one of the major wine areas in Slovenia, which is a country that is very keen on eating and drinking wine, preferably local. It’s not really wine making as we know it, the biggest winery has 40 hectares of vines and the average is probably below 10. Everyone lives in one of the many small villages and seemingly all have an underground wine cellar that was built 700 years ago. Wine tasting is also different because you have to eat as you sample. When you get in the tasting room it has a table with lots of food and dining cutlery. The wine is all right but not spectacular.

We arrived close to lunch time so our host drove us into the main town, Vipava, and sorted out that the preferred restaurant was open. We were thinking about a small salad and maybe a wine, but our host was not to be deterred by our suggestion and we ended up with a four course meal and more than one wine. That set the scene for our two evening meals at Majerija, which were definitely up to a one star Michelin standard, and all this in or outside a lovely restored 600 year old building. If you are ever in Slovenia this is a must. Our rooms were underground with a glass section in the ceiling which was part of the path around the vegetable and herb garden above.

Such things can’t last, or you might become poor, so we left for the local capital, Ljubljana. Our Airbnb turned out to be large and roomy if a little rough around the edges. This is a city of 200,000 and has a controversial mayor who has set about turning it into a green city. I presume the EU is helping because what is being done would be fairly costly. The main thing has been to ban traffic from the middle of the city and set it up for walking and biking. It has a river, lots of squares, old buildings (although part was flattened by an earthquake in 1895 so some are comparatively young), and the Slovenian need of food and drink is extensively catered for, plus a castle on a hill. In other words it a great place to visit. The only negative is that most stuff is closed on Sunday which was our last day. Apparently they had a referendum about work on Sunday and there some exceptions but not many. We were told one of the rules is if a place has an exemption to work on a Sunday the management has to also work on that day.

Politically Slovenia sounds quite sensible for a Slavic country on the edge of the Balkans. It left Yugoslav in 1991 which set off a 10 day war with the rest, 16 deaths for Slovenia and 44 for Yugoslavia. It is a democracy which recently had the sense to vote out a far right government that was modeling itself on the elected dictatorship in Hungary. There are a few suggestions that some people seen to have got rich without adequate explanation as to how, but to an outsider it doesn’t seem like the gangster/political arrangements that rule in other Balkan countries. There a strong Catholic Church influence apparently, particularly in the country areas. The language is much the same as other Serbo-Croat languages and consequently a mystery to people like me. That is alleviated by almost everyone speaking English.

How would you pronounce Ptuj ? That is where we went after Ljubljana and you say it like Tui with a hint of P at the start. We travelled by train and it was quite a scenic ride although my companions were busy playing scrabble. Slovenia has a lot of tame looking forest and agriculture is sort of hobbyist looking until you get to a flat place and then it’s cropping. Farm animals are rare but there is plenty of local milk in the supermarkets so the cows must be hiding somewhere. The train carriage had compartments as of old and Kay’s large fat suitcase didn’t fit in the overhead racks, so was banished to the bike storage place. There were 2 younger males in our compartment and my attempts to learn more about Slovenian politics from them went no where. One of them came from one of the little towns we stopped at, but luckily he was going to Ptuj, so we didn’t have the anxieties related to getting off at right place. Our hotel was called MuziKafe and was very quirky and delightful, and the small old part of town once again had lots of old stuff, a big river, and a castle on a hill. It was obvious that the Slovenian requirement for lots of food and wine was as strong in the east as it was in the west. We went to the best restaurant in town, according to TripAdvisor, for lunch and knowing that ordering a main course is a sure way of not being able to leave a clear plate we requested three entrees. The affable waiter gave the slightest indication of disappointment but then rapidly recovered his equilibrium. The entrees were very nice and he cheered up when the ladies decided they should have a dessert, but he did make them wait quite a while before taking the order.

It is now late evening and we have to get up very early tomorrow to catch a train for Zagreb. Slovenia has been a positive experience and I would certainly recommend a visit. For those of you in NZ I hope you are enjoying all the election noise, and for those in other countries tell your politicians to try and stop Azerbaijan and Armenia fighting. I am supposed to be going to Azerbaijan in a month.

Adijo.

Categories
Cambodia

Cambodia

While we never really knew exactly when our river boat crossed the border from Vietnam to Cambodia there was a discernable difference. The amount of traffic on the river very quickly diminished, as did the traffic and activities on the banks of the Mekong. The houses became more permanent looking and more colourful, and the only obvious commercial activity was low level fishing. We tied up in Phnom Penh during happy hour and were surprised at the amount of neon and pulsating bass sounds. Quite exciting. In the morning formalities happened, visas issued, and bribes paid but we didn’t have to do anything except look at a guy who wanted to be sure we looked like our passport photos. He had a nice line in banter for those of us who have moved on in appearance. We had a day there doing the sights on cyclos, bike rickshaws. I felt a bit guilty at first being peddled around by someone smaller than me, but got over it quickly given that he was making much better than the average wage. Then we sailed away up a river that cleverly changes its flow direction twice a year. We were now only 6 passengers having left 19 English people in the capital. This river joins a big lake to the Mekong and during the rainy season flows from the lake and the other way during the dry season. Ideally we should have sailed across the lake to Siem Reap but it was too shallow so we went elsewhere after having a look at the lake and then u-turning back to the Mekong. All of which we knew about in advance.

Along the way we did lots of cultural stuff. Visiting very local villages and intruding into the lives of the inhabitants, who seem remarkably relaxed about it all. The best one of those had never been visited by a biggish boat before, and when we turned up all the locals were seated ready to watch the action. Our crew were very adept at these landings where the boat just nudged into the bank, and after a bit of fun to get mooring lines taut and digging a few steps, a gang plank would be organised and off we went. In this case we walked around from the boat but other times we had rides in an ox cart (not very comfortable), a tuktuk (fun), and a boring bus. Because all this was new to the village the crew had set up an onshore bar for us and the local police chief, which also served large amounts of evil looking soft drinks to all the youngsters, and a very loud sound system. It seems Cambodians have a liking for body rattling and ear hurting music. It is wedding season and you can easily sort out where a wedding is happening long before you see the venue. Weddings are big, long and noisy, and involve many changes of clothes for the bride and groom. It seems like part of the cost is met by gifts from guests, with reciprocal rights going with the gift. I have photographic evidence of how smart I looked when dressed in the most formal and traditional of groom gear.

Cambodia is very much a Buddhist country having changed from being Hindu about 1000 years ago. I know the timing because being a tourist in this country involves visiting many temples, monasteries, occupied and not, and receiving detailed explanations of what the buildings and all that comes in them are about. We even had a lesson in meditation at one monastery and l learnt it is very uncomfortable trying to approximate the lotus position while sitting on a hard floor. Before leaving our boat all 6 of us were blessed and sprinkled with holy water by a couple of cheerful monks who got gifts of Coca-Cola and Sprite. The people living all those years ago in the Hindu times came up with a very clever system for making holy water. In a couple of places we have seen they carved likenesses of a series of gods into the rock of a river bed and that means (still) that the water flowing over is blessed. Even better you can wait for it to flow down to your village and get it there, rather than trekking up the hill to the spring.

After getting off our boat we went to Siem Reap which is where Ankor Wat and the many other amazing old temples are. I just love those big smiley faces carved into the sides of the towers and you cannot be anything but impressed by what was achieved by the Khmer people so long ago. Often famous tourist sights are not as good as the photos long seen before you get there, but that is not the case here. The scale of what was produced is hard to appreciate. I always think of the organisation required to create these places – the number of people required, how you feed them, where all the raw materials came from, how they were moved, where the slaves came from, and the wealth expended.

And then there is the very near past in Cambodia. It’s only a bit over 40 years ago that Pol Pot and his band of murderous zealots were removed from power. I find it hard to understand how a well educated person like Pol Pot could conceive of such a stupid and horrendous theory of running a country, and then finding a big number of supporters who agreed and got control. When asked, each of our guides told us how many of their family was killed by the Khmer Rouge and who survived and how. I am not an expert about this, but it seems if you had any intellectual qualifications or aspirations, or wealth, you were a threat to the great dream of a subsistence peasant society and therefore best killed. But only after being tortured to reveal any others who needed killing as well. In one instance we were told that the murderers still lived in the village where they caused the death of others, and that is not uncommon.

The present dictator of Cambodia, Hun Sen, is an ex-Khmer Rouge and has had the job since 1985. Coincidentally, I think only 5 people were ever convicted for 1.5 to 3 million people killed in 4 years. You do wonder just how a country copes with all that. Part of coping is having no choice, and politically Cambodia is pretty much your standard dictatorship masquerading as a democracy which means any public dissent is a go to jail card. I am told there are elections due soon and that there are opposition parties. Some are allowed but only to window dress the elections and anyone who is really in opposition is already in jail. Hun Sen is apparently getting his son ready to be democratically elected in his place one day.

Day to day life seems pretty calm and friendly. People are very polite and patient as seen in the traffic, where there is none of the frenetic filling of any available space seen in most other places. Even the people trying to sell stuff to tourists are fairly relaxed and not too persistent. Last night a tuktuk driver launched into a spiel about shops he could take us to and when I told him no no no he smiled and said ok and started the bike. There is plenty of tranquility.

We have been in Siem Reap for 5 days of which 4 were doing the required tourist stuff, and today is for whatever we like. It’s a tourist town and there are are obvious commercial victims of covid to be seen, but it’s unusually clean and tidy and a good place to end the tour. There is a major difference between it and all the other places we have been on this trip – here you flush the toilet paper instead of using the bin. There is a place in the middle of town called Pub Street which is self explanatory, and it’s fun to have one’s evening drink in comfort by the footpath and watch the action. And then find a nice place to eat where, maybe, the wine by a glass is acceptable. It had happened once and hopefully might happen again tonight.

Tomorrow it’s off to Singapore for a few days and then home.

Merry Xmas and all that.

Categories
Australia

South of Perth and back.

I was the organiser of the itinerary and accommodation for the second two weeks of this trip, which brings the responsibility for the quality of our accommodation. I did the usual look at reviews and mulled over the choices trying to find the fine line between a bargain and a camouflaged dump. I think I did pretty well in Busselton, Margaret River, Denmark, and Albany. In Esperance there was a 4 lane highway behind our motel, which was sort of all right. Then we got to our chalets in the Big 4 camping place in Kalgoorlie. They had a reasonable bed and appliances but nothing else going for them. When I returned the keys before we left the next day I politely informed the manager and staff, plus a few other campers, that they had won the prize for the worst maintained accommodation in a month of travelling in their state. I left to the sounds of a strong Australian accent thanking me very much. The next night was in a motel in a Wheat Belt small town called Merredin and it all looked nice, and was, but it was also a short distance from the main train line. It was apparently quite busy during the night which I slept through, including a deliberately long and shatteringly loud whistle episode that Tony reckoned felt like it was being done in his room. The last night was in a nice standard hotel in Perth. And I am pleased to report that in this part of West A. the reception people were generally friendly and helpful.

We had 4 nights in Margaret River where we had plenty of nice food and wine, including a superb 8 course degustation Japanese meal at a place called Mikki’s . Highly recommended. We also fluked being there at the same time as the area’s Open Art Studio Festival, and there are a lot of arty crafty people in Margaret River. We took full advantage and visited about 30 of more than 130. That meant meeting a lot of interesting, and sometimes unusual, people who all did stuff that I cannot. The furniture makers got my attention the most, and I was able to use my limited woodworking experience to get into some technical discussions that led to looking in the workshops. That meant I saw, in particular, two items of kit that I would love to have but could never justify, however I might just keep a lookout for a second hand thicknesser with a very special cutting device made of lots of diamond shaped small tungsten blades. I suspect it might require a mortgage.

While in Denmark we did a recommended tourist drive and stopped at a winery unsuccessfully looking for lunch. But like in all small wineries the owner was an interesting fellow who sussed out my interest in wine quickly and made me taste his best 3 reds, which were pretty good, so I bought one of his T shirts as recompense. As we continued the search for lunch Tony googled the guy (Tony is a world class googler), and found out that last year he had abandoned some sort of entertainment event after the local council took too long to issue the necessary permits. He then put up a big roadside sign advising that any council employee wanting to visit his winery had to fill out a 100 page application form and pay a $1000 entry fee. He was subsequently forced to remove the sign. The next place we got to did do lunches and we ordered an expensive platter for four, having been warned it was quite large. That was an understatement and we tried very hard, however there was still enough left that was packed up and provided a nice picnic lunch the next day.

Most of the towns we have been to are pretty small and coffee is not easy to find after 2pm, and sometimes the evening meal choices are a bit limited. Apart from the chicken parmi mentioned in the last report we haven’t had any horrible gastronomic experiences. One of the treats of dining out has been watching Rosie convince serving staff to make her a personalised meal by taking bits out of one dish on the menu and replacing them from another. Tony and I are of the opinion that if someone goes to all the trouble of designing a meal, and having that detail printed in a menu, then you either order it or not. But apparently that is some sort of stupid male attitude.

In Kalgoorlie the self-described best meal in town was in an old true blue aussie hotel restaurant that was packed. The big dining plates were also packed and I was defeated by a caesar salad that included about half a chicken. Kalgoorlie has a hugely big hole which is a gold mine called Super Pit. It used to be lots of gold mines but Alan Bond (he of America Cup fame as well as getting jail time) had the great idea of combining them all. Eventually it got done and now you can watch big diggers filling up big dump trucks, way in the distance, and not on the day we were there you can see the next stage of the hole being exploded. There is only one working brothel left in Kalgoorlie in what used to be a street of them, so we didn’t bother having a look. Apparently in common with most of the world, bricks and mortar in this industry have been replaced by online ordering.

Our rental vehicle for this part of the trip was a very roomy Toyota Kluger. It took all our luggage and we could still see out the rear window. We assumed that getting out of the airport parking area where we picked it up had been arranged electronically, which was overly optimistic, and we had to back away from the exit security arm which would not go up automatically. We then searched for another exit which did not exist, and eventually went back to the rental office where Tony found we had not been given the necessary ticket. The Kluger has behaved itself and has been delivered to its owners at the airport without damage. (We have yet to hear from Avis about the cost of repairing the first car). In it we have done over 3000kms, and generally the traffic has been light and driving not difficult. Tony has had the most experience of unsealed roads as a result of us trying to find a sort of sculpture park at a place called Northcliffe. The GPS was put to the road name only as we didn’t have a street number, so we went down the road which led out into the country and gradually it got narrower, then it became the ubiquitous red dirt road and got really narrow. All the way there was nothing to indicate we were going the right direction, and a few of us quietly wondered if we were going where we wanted. Eventually the driver decided to turn into an isolated farm entrance to ask the way. Fierce dogs greeted the car, for some reason I thought of the film Psycho, and the wives firmly suggested that we leave immediately and return to where we had started. So we did, went to the Information place at the beginning of the road, and found that was where the park was. My favourite tourist place was Lucky Bay near Esperance which has two claims to touristic fame. Firstly it is a gorgeous very white squeaky sand bay, with turquoise and blue water, and round rocky islands out to sea; and secondly it is visited by kangaroos which of course didn’t happen while we were there. In the same area all the brochures show a very pink lake, but it has apparently stopped being pink so that got a miss. Second best tourist thing for me, excluding big holes in the ground, was the skywalk in the Tingle trees near Denmark. Kay convinced me we had done it before but it still seemed all new and those big trees en masse are quite uplifting.

Returning to the big city was a bit of a shock. Heaps of traffic, buildings everywhere, and when we went to lunch in a mall there were suffocating numbers of people, many of whom were extremely large. I think we will cope and get used to it all. Over the last month we have driven well over 6000kms, had a range of weather from cold windy rain to 30% sunny, been in desert conditions and forests with huge trees, had plenty of laughs as well as long silences as the kms ticked away at 110 kph, and managed to play together nicely without any friction. Not bad really for a bunch of oldish people who all have fairly firm opinions about most things. There was a certain funeral hogging all the media attention during some of our time away. I have very firm opinions about the place of that family and their involvement in our political system, which I expressed once and was then regarded as an outcast by the other three. In order to maintain cordiality I suffered in silence thereafter. At least it meant when checking the news each morning there were large bits I could skip over. Tony would feel very lonely without his mobile phone but whenever we needed directions or information he was onto it in a flash. He also showed great bravery when he went into a pub that had lots of big TVs all showing AFL and asked if they would mind changing over to the All Blacks rugby test. The answer was one word starting with “N”. Rosie is a bit of a researcher which proved very useful in finding places others might have glossed over. And Kay is an expert spotter of fauna that no one else gets to see, and we assume she really did see these things. She certainly saw the Wallaby that did damage to our first car. My only claim to fail was managing to miss a couple of Kangaroos that had a go at getting in front of us while I was driving.

In finishing I must pay tribute to the missing Agricultural Correspondent who would have had quite a lot to say if he had been allowed to join in, but I will summarise by saying there are lots of very big paddocks full of canola and wheat.

Dennis.

Categories
Argentina

The Start of Patagonia

Hola All,

Some people told me they wanted to know what I was up to so here is the first instalment. I am presently marking time in Rio Gallegos which is in the far south of Argentina, on the coast. For those who have not heard the reasons why I am here, there are two of them. The first one gets me to Tierra Del Fuego, right at he bottom, and that relates to 1974 when I was trying to get there but was thwarted by a thieving bus company who wouldn’t let me continue a bus trip to Rio Gallegos despite my having a ticket. The bus company was Don Otto and they are still in operation but not for me. I was going to tell someone there that they were a useless lot but decided it wouldn’t be much help now.

Continue reading “The Start of Patagonia”