potatoes...

I don’t really believe in bucket lists. I’m not a fan of keeping lists of things I want to do before I die. Partly, this is because it seems a nonsense, as the simple truth is that no one knows when they’re going to die. If you could die tomorrow, why are you writing a list instead of getting out of the door? Mostly though, my objection probably comes from how lucky I am to have done some incredible things in my life, so a bucket list seems kind of redundant. 

 I’ve swum in the chilly waters off Kaikoura in New Zealand as hundreds of dusky dolphins swam around me and leapt over me. I was told that you need to sing to them through your snorkel to keep them interested in you and to stop them just swimming off when they get bored. As a result, I’ve discovered that they’re big fans of “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga. 

I’ve skydived from 10,000m above the Skeleton Coast in Namibia, where the big dunes of the Namib desert meet the ocean, freefalling for a seemingly endless 30 seconds before the parachute opened, surprisingly filling me with mild disappointment. Here I learned that it’s okay to pack your main parachute up in a slightly slapdash way as long as you’re careful with the reserve as that’s the really important one. 

I’ve done a lot of diving too: on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, in the Maldives with giant Manta Ray doing a graceful dance together no more than a meter above my head, or along the edge of a canyon into the deep ocean surrounded by literally three hundred sharks, all bigger than me and a few casually swimming along behind me as if to see if I was worth the effort of a closer look. It’s at moments like these when you really begin to appreciate your place on the food chain. 

I’ve walked with lions and wolves, seen sperm whale, humpback and orca, kayaked with baby seal, stood within 2m of an adult male grizzly bear, watched dawn breaking above the jungle temples of Ankor Wat… So there’s no question that I’ve been very lucky. 

All this brings perspective; when you experience the elemental beauty of nature first-hand like this, it’s not hard to understand your own existence as comparatively insignificant, in the most wonderful way. All our sound and fury ultimately signifies nothing, and that’s okay. 

The time I felt this most acutely was standing on the sides of Mount Tungurahua in Ecuador as it erupted. Ecuador is a small country, barely the size of the UK, but it contains in that space an enormous diversity of landscapes, from high Andean paramo all the way through to Amazonian jungles (not to mention the Galapagos Islands). We were on a three-week trip and wanted to cram in as much of this as we reasonably could. We hiked the high Andes up to about 5000m, we watched hummingbirds feed, fished for piranha in tiny jungle rivers, brushed tarantula off the benches before sitting down to dinner, drank fresh passionfruit juice and picked coffee berries straight from the tree. Banos is a city in the middle of the country and is renowned for its hot springs and adventure activities. I’ve never seen the appeal of bungee jumping, but we did mountain bike along mountain gorges and, on our first evening in town, we took a trip up the town’s volcano (as our guide would say, the hot springs are not for free) Now, when you think about active volcanos, the chances are that you’re thinking of Pompeii or Krakatoa, but not all volcanos are quite that explosive. Tungurahua means “throat of fire” in Quichua, and although it is erupting and you actually have to drive over the pyroclastic flows that have poured over the road to reach the town itself, you’re not seriously in danger of being overrun by lava. The town does have volcano warning alarms, but apparently the lava moves so slowly that you will have around three days to actually leave the town before you’re really in trouble. Mind you, the volcano dominates the skyline and, as you drive into the town, you can see the column of smoke and ash it produces from a hundred miles away. It’s quite an impressive sight. 

That first evening, we drove up the volcano before it got dark. It’s quite steep and narrow in places, and as we slowly wound our way up the narrow, wooded tracks, we came across a tiny, wizened old lady dressed in the traditional costume of the region, complete with natty woollen Spanish-style trilby hat (a legacy of the Spanish colonisation). There’s only one path up or down the mountain, so we stopped and – through our guide – offered this lady a lift, which she gratefully accepted. As we continued up the mountain, we began to be aware of the rumbling of the erupting mountain. “Ah,” said this tiny, birdlike lady, cackling delightedly, “Mother Tungurahua is putting baked potatoes into the oven for her children”. 

 Before long, we dropped her off to make her own way, and as she smiled and waved, we continued up the mountain. Not long after that, I was standing in the gathering dusk, listening to the sound of an erupting volcano and feeling the ground rumbling beneath my feet. I have never before in my life felt quite so connected with our planet whilst also feeling utterly insignificant. It was, in the most literal way possible, awe inspiring. 

Our precious planet is huge and beautiful and life is short. Later that day, I ate guinea pig for the first time. I don’t recommend it. Tarantula is nicer and neither are a patch on crickets fried in sesame oil served as a bar snack. Travel really does broaden the mind… as well as the palate.

come fly with me....

Our chariot

What did I do with my weekend?  Oh, nothing much.  We flew to Galway for Sunday lunch.

It started about five years ago when I had a conversation with a colleague on the way to a meeting in Leamington Spa.  He was a pilot, I learned, and he liked to take people up with him so that he could split the cost, keep his flight hours up and get a nice day out.  He's left the company since, but every time I see him, I ask him if he's still flying.  He's been asking me for some time if C. and I fancied a trip, and eventually - when I bumped into him at a retirement bash - we made a plan.

NOT the pilot

So, we left Tollerton airport in Nottingham around 9am on Sunday morning (seeing a couple of hares as we taxied along the runway), flew over Nottingham and past Stoke and Crewe, past Manchester and Liverpool on our left hand side, down the Menai Strait, around Anglesey and across the Irish Sea, past Dublin on our right and on across Ireland to the west coast.  The weather was pretty good, and as I was sitting in the co-pilot's seat, I had a grandstand view of the flight, pausing occasionally to help the pilot with the maps and the transponder.

The ACTUAL pilot

Wearing headphones, you get to hear all of the chatter with air traffic control and other flights in the area as you make your way from one zone to another.  Each air traffic controller was calm, efficient and really helpful as they moved planes across their zones and handed each one on to the next ATC area.  I've never really had a chance to listen to chatter like this, and it was fascinating.  Obviously, small airports like Tollerton have a pretty small zone and very few aircraft to deal with, but larger airports like Manchester, Shannon and Dublin are dealing with major transatlantic flights and we got to hear them talking to KLM, British Airways, Scandinavian Air and Ryanair as well as the many smaller aircraft.  East Midlands in particular seemed particularly perky, both ways.  Perhaps it's the house style?  I also got to watch the pilot flying the plane at really close quarters... all the while desperately trying to keep my long legs out of the way of the pedals and the controls that were right in front of me and were fully operational.

An IDIOT, sitting in the back out of the way

On the return flight, I sat in the back.

Welsh mountains

It's funny how green England looks from the air.  There are lots of towns, of course, but you really get to see the shape of the land, and the way that the gradient sharply changes as you get into Derbyshire and how the Mersey Estuary opens up on your left, with lots of windfarms just offshore and the Welsh Mountains rising steeply over on your left hand side.  The original plan had been to fly over the mountains, but they were cloud covered on the way out and so we routed around them.  The sun was out on the way back though, so we flew by Snowdon.  Britain looks magnificent from about 2-3000ft up.  Ireland is beautiful too: noticeably fewer towns and lots of green fields, broken up by fields of peat.  Sitting on a normal passenger flight, you're pretty remote from the process of flying, but here you have a grandstand view.  You might think that being in such a small plane as this makes the whole thing seem more precarious, but actually it really doesn't.  I don't much like landing in a normal plane, but here, watching how our pilot slowed the plane down and gently plopped it down, you could really feel how in control he was, even in a crosswind.  Galway itself has a lovely little airport.  Apparently it once serviced around 16 flights per day all across Europe, but now all those airlines are bust, and we looked like we might well have been the only traffic they saw all day.

We spent about three and a half hours in Galway, in total.  It seems a busy little town.  Nothing too much to look at, but a bustling high street filled with buskers and restaurants and bars.  If you walk down a little bit, there's a nice stroll out towards the sea.  We had lunch and a walk and then headed back to the airport for the return trip.

A small plane / a big lummox

With the wind now behind us, the return journey only took two-and-a-half hours, a good hour faster than the trip out.  It was now pretty sunny and we had a great view all the way home.  Not a bad way to spend the day.

Worth it.

After all, it's not every Sunday where I can say that I had a properly poured pint of Guinness with my lunch, is it?

It tasted BRILLIANT.

...just a stereotype

Do you ever think that you can guess someone’s nationality just by looking at them? I’m not talking about their race or anything totally obvious like that, I’m just thinking that it sometimes feels as though you can tell just by looking at someone, by the general cut of their jib. Clothes are a bit of a marker, of course, but it’s more than just the clothes you wear. To me, Americans are kind of big and wholesome looking, with Canadians a taller, even more wholesome version of the same thing; Australians are somehow brash looking and Kiwis are somehow more understated and wry. Grotesque generalisations, obviously… but do you know what I mean?

Is it possible that our cultural heritage is something we unconsciously carry with us as a visible marker of where we’ve come from?

The Brits are pretty easy to pick, I think – not least because we’re so often covered in tattoos displaying the badge of our national football team or spelling out ENGLAND in big, fat letters on the inside of our forearms. And we’re always queuing. And complaining (to each other… NEVER to the person who has upset us). And apologising.

I remember when we were wandering around the Jemaa el-Fnaa in Marrakech a few years back. If you’ve ever been there, you’ll know that this is a smoky, crowded Souk packed full of Moroccan traders trying to sell you something. Of course, to the passing tourist, many of the stalls look exactly the same and seem to be selling more or less the same merchandise. The traders combat this by vying to catch your attention so they can lure you in to their shop. They do this by calling out to you as you pass by, trying to guess your nationality and calling out to you in what they think is likely to be your language. Tourists are easy money, after all. For some reason, they seemed to find me hard to pick and tried pretty much every language they could think of: English, French, German… eventually just listing out the countries that popped into their heads: Aussie? American? Dutch? Swedish? in the end, they seemed to decide that I must be Scandinavian. It was probably something to do with being tall and thin and not answering them when they spoke to me in any of the languages they tried, but I remember being childishly pleased that they hadn’t picked me as English. I’m not especially ashamed of being English, or of the English themselves – we’ve got as much good and bad as any other nation - but I just don’t see my nationality as being anything I want to be defined by. I am English, but I don’t care to be pigeon-holed by anyone’s idea of what that might mean.

C. used to occasionally remark that I don’t really look English, although I’ve never really been able to decide if that’s really true. Or, if it is true, then why is it true? Why? It’s not just because I don’t have terrible sunburn and “FOOTY MAD” tattooed into the nape of my neck, is it? (personally, I'd go with 'footie' as my spelling of that, but then I wouldn't have it done at all, so each to their own....)

Actually, I don’t like the idea of being pigeon-holed at all. Full stop. By nationality or by anything else. In my own mind, I like to think that I’m an enigma. You might disagree, but that’s just because you don’t understand me. No one understands me. No one ever really could.

Still, if I had to be guessed as a nationality, I suppose I could do worse than something Scandinavian. Tall, windswept and mysterious. Possibly soundtracked by a-ha. I could live with that, I reckon.

 I could so rock one of Sarah Lund’s jumpers too….

so hip it hurts....

I was wearing my Ho Chi Minh t-shirt last weekend.

I searched long and hard for this when we were in Vietnam during the August of 2010.  Clearly t-shirts of Uncle Ho are as common as muck and as cheap as chips over there, but I was looking for something a little out of the ordinary... well, and something that might last me a little longer than the first wash.

In the end, I stumbled across exactly what I was looking for in a small shop called "Papaya' down by the river in Hoi An.  It wasn't the cheapest by any means, but the t-shirts seemed to be a very high quality and - best of all - they were fair trade.

Here's a snippet from their website:

"Purchasing a papaya t-shirt you can be sure to help and also be involve in the building process of an equitable system where both, the worker earns a living wage so he can provide for his family’s daily needs, and you, the consumer can be sure of having purchased a quality product that will bring satisfaction and that he has done a good deed.
Our Policy: No children labour freedom of association safe and good working conditions reasonable salaries and benefits sharing reasonable working hours equal opportunities employment security respectful treatment of employees".

The label "Made in Vietnam" is used here as a badge of quality.

I wear my Uncle Ho t-shirt with pride: he's an iconic figure and it was a fantastic trip to a beautiful country (plus it's WORTHY, too... what's not to like?).  The great man only appears on the t-shirt in silhouette, but the guy in our local picture framing shop recognised it immediately on Saturday and commented approvingly.  Well, I suppose he would: he's both exactly the right sort of age to identify such an iconic figure AND he framed the Vietnamese publicity posters that we brought back with us (including one of Uncle Ho).  Hmm.   Now I think of it, he's also just framed a North Korean propaganda poster advertising an art exhibition in Vienna that we went to).  Yeah, so I guess he had some context.  But still....

A little later on, I was enjoying a beer in the bar at the Broadway cinema when someone else approached me about the t-shirt.  Now, the Broadway is the art-house cinema in town, and it has a pretty good bar: if you can find hipsters anywhere in Nottingham, you can find them here.

"Excuse me"
"Yes?"
"Do you mind if I ask you who that is on your t-shirt?"
I summoned my most nonchalant look and replied, "It's Ho Chi Minh"
"Ah."
Pause.
"...that was a great episode of Top Gear, wasn't it?"
He then went into what I assume was a Jeremy Clarkson impersonation, making some remark about how they'd now made it further north than the Americans, but by now I'd looked away disdainfully.  To be honest, I was a little embarrassed on his behalf.

Seriously.  I bet he wasn't there to watch a subtitled film either*

(* we were there to see Dark Shadows, btw... but he doesn't need to know that)

...after all this, won't you give me a smile?

We were in London this time last week enjoying a delicious Korean meal in Soho and the company of a dear friend.  As we made our way back through the backstreets around Shaftesbury Avenue, I was rather taken by this particular 'stop' sign:

Ah, you crazy, creative, bohemian urbanites!

As I paused to take a quick photo from the pavement, a rickshaw driver pedalled behind us on the road.  In passing us, he shouted out -  rather disdainfully, I felt -  "TOURISTS!"

Look: I realise that rickshaws, often passed from father to son,  have been part of the fabric of London's streets since their invention in Islington during the early Victorian period.  I also know that these honest, hard-working guys get the vast majority of their trade from locals and barely get so much as a glance from visitors to the world's greatest capital city.... but really, there's no call for that, is there?

It would be a terrible shame if one bad apple robbed Londoners of their well-earned reputation as some of the warmest, friendliest folk in the world.  Before you know where you are, you soon won't be able to make eye-contact with a stranger on the Tube, exchanging warm smiles and friendly greetings at the start of what could be a beautiful friendship.

Think how much less enjoyable rush hour would be once that little pleasure is gone....it really would be just you with your face in a stranger's armpit.  A rude stranger.

O tempora! O mores!

trunks of memories....

As winter drags on, it’s perhaps an odd time to bring this up… but I miss living in a camper van.

Our first camper took us from Melbourne to Adelaide via the Great Ocean Road and the Grampians. We’d decided long before that we didn’t want anything fancy, so we’d picked up a Wicked camper; little more than a converted van with the back seats taken out and replaced by some storage space you put some wafer-thin mattresses over. We had sleeping bag liners with us in our bags, and as it was late February and we were in Australia, my wife thought she could live without any of the blankets we were offered. As I’m pretty much always cold, I took them, and then spent the rest of the week wrestling my wife for them as she discovered that those beautiful, cloudless nights on the Ocean Road were bloody cold in an uninsulated van.

Our second camper was my favourite: a 4x4 number that we picked up in Cairns and drove down to Brisbane over the next ten days. We were now smart enough to grab an extra couple of mattresses from the depot to try and avoid bruised hips, but in the heat of tropical Queensland, the cold wasn’t an issue and now we had to work out a strategy to deal with the mosquitoes, especially when it was now so hot at night that it would be madness not to leave the doors open to allow air circulation. To be honest, my mosquito protection was mainly the fact that they prefer to bite the succulent flesh of my wife (to the tune of about 100 bites to 1), but after one particularly difficult night in Townsville, we got ourselves a mosquito net and did our best to rig it up. A great plan, but after waking up one morning in Rainbow beach to find the net filled with mosquitos who were small enough to get in but then, post-feed, too fat to get out, we learned that we needed a smaller-gauge net…. You live and learn, right? I had about 5 bites, for goodness sake and was outraged…. Poor old C., meanwhile, looked like she had smallpox.

That van was great, but it would be remiss of me not to mention how glad we were of the warm welcome, the delicious meal and the honest-to-goodness actual bed that we received at Margaritaville, just outside Gympie, from Deb and Jaimie.... still the best birthday breakfast I think I've ever had.  Please come and visit so we can try to return your kindness.

We picked the third van up in Christchurch.  The weather on South Island New Zealand was always going to be a little more wild and woolly, but by now we were campervan veterans.  You see lots of people travelling around NZ in these vast great big lorries, with their own toilets, showers and so on.  When the wind was blowing so hard in fjordland that the camper van was rocking and I was desperate for a pee, I could sort of see the attraction, but we stuck it out with the same kind of basic van from Wicked that had served us so well....

....it's just that this time we weren't going to be cold and took the precaution of building ourselves a little nest of duvet, down-covered mattress toppers and lots of possum-merino layers.  It had a creaking fanbelt and was old as hell, but it was home for a month and it was great.  Cheap as chips too... apparently no one starts in Christchurch and works their way round back to Auckland, so it's a much cheaper way around to rent a van.

Anyway.  It's a brilliant way to travel around Australia and NZ, and as I slog my way through a working week that already feels like it's never going to end, those three months we spent down there exactly two years ago are helping to keep me warm.

I want to go back.

hurry boy, it's waiting there for you....

Of all the trips that we did last year, I think my favourite by some distance was the overland journey from Cape Town to Victoria Falls.  The alchemy on that trip just seemed to be perfect: the beautiful scenery in Namibia, the way the animals all seemed to pose for us and the fact that everyone in our little group seemed to get on like a house on fire.  Even long, gruelling truck journeys of 10 hours on dirt roads became fun as we took turns on the iPod and sang along "Sweet Caroline".  It was a perfect trip.

Trying to recapture that magic was always going to be dangerous, but something about Africa, and in particular seeing Africa in this way, got under our skins and we were determined to go back.  We tried to book an overland trip to East Africa in August last year, but ended up going to South East Asia instead.  Returning to work cramped out style somewhat, but although I would ideally like to have taken a month long trip that took in the Gorillas in Uganda and Rwanda, a two week trip into Kenya and Tanzania seemed like a good way of getting my Africa fix.

The itinerary looks simple:

Day 1 - Nairobi
Day 2 - Arusha
Day 3 - Karatu
Days 4-5 - Serengeti National Park
Day 6 - Ngorongoro Crater
Day 7 - Marangu
Days 8-9 - Usambara Mountains
Day 10 - Dar es Salaam
Days 11-13 - Zanzibar
Day 14 - Dar es Salaam

What that doesn't tell you is how much time we got to spend in the truck (11 long hours from the Usamara Mountains to Dar....).  It doesn't talk about the burst tyre on the first morning; the snake farm at Arusha; the community farm and village we visited at Marangu; the fact that we camped without fences in the Serengeti and had hyena and lion wandering about the campsite; the fact it poured with rain when we played "Africa" in the Serengeti, and stopped when we played "Good Day Sunshine"; how I realised how lucky we were with our leopard in Etosha last year....

It doesn't tell you about the dust in the Ngorongoro crater; the orphanage and the schools we visited and dropped off crayons, exercise books and pens; the Basil Fawlty character who ran the hotel in the Usambara Mountains or the noisy Dutch who woke everyone up; the ridiculous ferry in Dar; the chaos of the ferry terminal to Zanzibar; the angry Swedish man who told us all to "you shut up!" as he tried to complain unreasonably in a restaurant in Stone Town as we tried to place our orders; Ali T, the spice guide who had clearly learned his English from cockneys; the beach volleyball and diving in (mostly - thanks Pete) crystal clear waters in Zanzibar.....

Yeah.  It was a pretty good trip.

Our group was pretty mixed: Australians, Kiwis, Canadians, Americans, Irish, a couple from Singapore.... there were a few in their 20s, but most we in their 30s and a few in their 40s.

We were a happy bunch, on the whole.  On our trip in Southern Africa, our group was brilliant, and I felt so sorry for the people who joined us halfway through in Windhoek for the second leg.  I don't think we exactly made them feel welcome.

 Imagine my dismay when we went to our introductory meeting to find that half of our group had spent the last 2 weeks travelling (with the same guide) to see the gorillas, and the other half had spent the last week together travelling the Masai Mara and around Kenya.  On this trip, it seemed, I was Cupcake.

I needn't have worried.  Everyone was very welcoming.  Chopping onions and washing dishes with people breaks down barriers pretty quickly.

I would say that 2 weeks is just about long enough to really start to get to know people.  By the time we got to Zanzibar, I think we were starting to make some good friends, and I was sad that we didn't have longer.... although it was also in Zanzibar that it became clear that some people find travelling together for 4 weeks too long to maintain a facade of politeness, and some cracks began to show.

It was a good group though, even if we didn't have a Jane.... every group should have a Jane.

I can't wait to go back to Africa.  Next year.  For longer.

Incidentally, Toto were lying: Kilimanjaro does not rise like Olympus above the Serengeti.  This much I now know.

it's business time.....

 

So, after 2 weeks travelling around Kenya and Tanzania in a truck and sleeping in a tent, we're back to the mundanities of our normal lives.  On Saturday morning, I woke up next to the Indian Ocean in Zanzibar.  When I next woke up in a bed, after 30-odd hours of travelling, it was to get up and go to work on Monday morning.

Hey ho.

Waiting for our transfer to Heathrow in Nairobi airport on Saturday evening, I looked around at all the white people wearing very corporate looking t-shirts trumpeting about how they had climbed Kilimanjaro, and I realised how lucky we had been in our choice of trip.  No disrespect, but there are so many of those guys that they must almost climb the mountain holding hands.  I'm not claiming that we went all that far off the beaten track, and indeed, we went to have a look at Kilimanjaro from the  foothills (and the mountain was entirely veiled in cloud throughout... so I couldn't honestly tell you that it even exists), but as well as spending time in the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater gawping at the wildlife, we also went to visit schools and played football with some kids from an orphanage.  We lost.  Obviously. 4-1.  One of the kids was wearing a Watford shirt, weirdly (haven't they suffered enough?).  But anyway.....

It was a great trip... as with our last trip to Africa, made by a happy combination of what we saw, our guide and the group we were travelling with.  I'll bore you with more details and photos later in the week, in the meantime I'll content myself by saying that we saw lions enjoying what one of our guides splendidly called "comfortable time".... which lasted about 10 seconds, and didn't seem all that comfortable for the lioness.  After his labours, the poor old boy was clearly exhausted and flopped flat out onto the ground, clearly satisfied with a job well done..... well, who can blame him?

I can't wait to go back... perhaps next year to go to Uganda and Rwanda to see the gorillas and to Kenya to have a look at the Masai Mara.

LOVE Africa.

The distant echo of faraway voices boarding faraway trains...

I'm not in London very often, so I don't travel on the Underground more than a handful of times every year.  But I have travelled on it: I've travelled on it in rush hour at both ends of the day; I've travelled on it last thing at night; and I've travelled on it with the tourists at every other point of the day.  I've travelled on it drunk and I've travelled on it sober.  I've slept on it and I've smiled at strangers on it.  I wouldn't claim to be an expert, but I have never - as far as I can remember - felt particularly threatened on it.

I don't much like it, and I'm mildly in awe of those people who can remember which end of the platform they need to stand at to be in the right point for the exit at the station where they're getting off (I get lost in Oxford Circus all the time), but I've never been frightened.   I'm sure bad things happen on there all of the time, but I haven't seen them.

I mention this because I travelled on the Paris Metro a couple of times over the weekend: once to head across town from Gare du Nord to Gare D'Austerlitz to catch the train across to Orleans on Friday evening, and the same journey in reverse on Monday afternoon.  Nothing bad happened: we trekked across from platform to platform and waited for our trains, but on both occasions, I felt vaguely intimidated.

I'm not sure what it was.  It may have been the fact that I didn't really know where I was going and had completely abdicated responsibility to the journey to someone else.... but to be honest, that's true when we're in London too.

Perhaps it's the language.  I speak French, after a fashion, and I'm fairly sure I'd be able to struggle my way through enough of a conversation to get from A to B... but it is undeniably a little bit intimidating to be surrounded by people babbling away in a language that I only partially understand at a speed where I can barely make out a single word.... and yes, that's sometimes true in London too, and it doesn't bother me there.

Perhaps it's all of these things.

We might not like to admit it, but France and England are pretty close, both geographically and because of all our shared history.  A French statesman, seeking to flatter Lord Palmerston, told him, 'If I were not French, I Would wish to be English.' Palmerston apparently smugly replied, 'If I wasn't English, I would wish to be English.' (illustrating, at a stroke, why all French people might be well justified in hating us all....) In spite of this closeness though, it can feel pretty alien... at least it certainly does to me on the Paris Metro.  People even look different: both ethnically and physically.  London is a melting pot, of course, and even if you discount the tourists, the history of Britain has been defined by successive waves of immigrants.  So has the history of France, but the immigrants have often come from different countries.  Many people travelled to Britain after the Second World War from the Caribbean or the sub-continent or from East Africa.  Many people moved to France, at the same time or perhaps a little later on, from West Africa and North Africa.  The ethnic mix is superficially similar, but the immigrants in France look very different and have different coloured skin, different clothing and different languages.  To my eyes, it seems more unfamiliar to see someone with very dark skin wearing African traditional costume than it is to see someone with slightly lighter skin wearing a sari.  I don't have a problem with either, but the one is a much more familiar sight to me than the other and I suppose that as a result I'm more comfortable with it.

Never mind skin colour or traditional clothing, even people in more traditional "western" clothes look different to me.  It was hot in Paris over the weekend and people were wearing shorts and t-shirts.... but in England where people might be wearing baggy, shapeless shorts with cargo pockets with an un-tucked t-shirt, the French seem to like wearing straight line, chino-style shorts with tucked in shirts or polo shirts.  Not so very different, but different enough that you notice.  Ladies too seem to dress slightly more formally and wear slightly dressier outfits to work.  The cliche would say that the French are more elegant than their English equivalents; perhaps thinner and more expensively dressed.  Maybe, like many generalisations there's a little truth in that, or maybe they're just the ones that caught my eye, but people just look different somehow.  Same same, but different, as they would say in Vietnam, with a shrug of the shoulders.

I don't know why all of this might come together to make me feel slightly intimidated as I stood on the platform in Gare Du Nord waiting for the RER train to come along and take me to the airport, but it did.  I felt alien and out of place.

What I am sure of is that it definitely says more about me than it does about anyone else.  I'm not saying that different is not bad, it's just.... different.

Und es war in Wien....

Now, I'm aware of the Easter Bunny, obviously.... but I'd kind of always assumed that it was one of those American things that was slowly but surely creeping its way across the Atlantic and infesting our older, wiser European cultures.  Turns out I was wrong.... this has been a very big deal in what used to be the Holy Roman Empire since at least the 1500s.  It's also, I found out on Easter Day this year, still a pretty big deal in Vienna.

At a certain point in the morning, after drinks have been served but before dinner, we are all summoned out into the garden.  Gifts have been hidden all over the place and everyone -- no exceptions, not even guests -- have to go out and hunt to see if anything has been left for them.

Some are hiding in plain sight, leaning up against flower pots and the like.

Others are tucked a little further out of the way.... up trees and behind bushes.  One salami even finds its way behind a supporting strut to the garage roof.  It takes a while, but everything is eventually discovered.

I think it's fair to say that everyone gets something that they like: Clemens gets a whisky.....

...and C. gets 1.4kg of chocolate.

It's a nice way to spend a day, surrounded by close friends and their family in sunny Vienna.

Whilst we're there, we also take the opportunity of a return visit to the zoo at Schönbrunn.  I first read about this zoo in John Irving's "Setting Free the Bears", where the plot revolves around a plan to free the bespectacled bear.  When I first visited, ten years ago, I think it's fair to say that the place had seen better days.  The cages were beautiful and ornate, but what was acceptable 100 years ago is not acceptable for a zoo now.  The poor bears, when I saw them, were in a tiny enclosure and were pacing neurotically around the perimeter of their cage.

Things have changed, I'm happy to say. There are still some beautiful, ornate buildings, but they are mainly now used as cafes and things.  The animals now have large, roomy, state-of-the-art enclosures, and as a result look a whole lot happier.  I'm not entirely comfortable with the concept of zoos, especially since I've seen many of these animals in their natural habitats now.... but it's definitely an improvement.  I particularly liked the polar bear relaxing in a dapple of sunshine, but the zoo also has (amongst other things) tigers, cheetah, a very fat looking leopard and a beautiful black panther.

I also quite liked some of the native fauna that was on display.

The big cats had just been fed when we arrived, so they were in their enclosures snoozing, and you could view them from behind glass.  We turned around from admiring the leopards as they twitched and ran in their sleep, to find a rather smaller (but no less magnificent) domestic cat standing behind us.  You can't pet the leopards, of course, but the cat was not so reticent and happily took the adoration.

 The reason for our visit?  We were catching up again with our friend Monica, who also lives in Vienna.  We first met Grooves on our trip to Southern Africa that started almost exactly twelve months ago today, on 1st May in Cape Town.  We saw some pretty cool things on that trip through Namibia, Botswana and Zambia - it was probably the best trip we did last year.... but the best thing about it was the friendships that we made.

so.....Gums, DJ Tash, Sparks, Bones, Meters, Baby Max, Grooves, Dark Horse, HRH, Sarge, Screamer, Bullitt, Snappy, Swampy, Spike, Danger, Timon, Waffles, Tigger & Silverfox (one word, no hyphen - and congratulations to you guys on your new arrival too!), Cupcake, Dr Zhivago, Robin Hood, Buck, Boss Lady and Chuck Norris..... Miss you guys!  I can't believe it's been a whole year.

We've just booked a two week trip to Kenya / Tanzania, travelling in a similar style, for September this year.  If it's half as good, it will be amazing.

concrete jungle where dreams are made....

The view to Central Park from the Top of the Rock

You're probably sick to death of hearing me talking about New York now, but I promise that I'm almost done now.

 Atlas bows before St. Patrick's on 5th Avenue

Compared to previous visits, I suppose that we didn't really do all that much stuff in the five or six days we were in the city. One of the great joys of the time we took off from work last year were the friends that we made as we travelled around the world. We're still in touch with people that we met in places as far apart as Cairns, Cape Town and Bangkok and they now give us plenty of excuses for further travel as they live in places like Costa Rica, Bern, Vienna and...erm... Stockport. Of course, it's the New Yorkers that we met whilst travelling that made this trip to NYC so special. We met Jane in Africa and Marissa in SE Asia; one is a 20-something law student and the other a 30-something teacher. I don't suppose they have all that much in common apart from the fact that they live a few blocks apart around 8th and 9th Avenues in New York, but each was the heartbeat of our trips to those countries and both were kind enough to be willing to share their city with us when we came over.

Jane and Bella stay warm in the Park

We landed on the afternoon of St. Patrick's day and the plan was, of course, to head over to a bar. Much to Jane's amusement, the bar picked by Marissa was one just by her law school campus, and one she was liable to be drinking in on any given Thursday night anyway. In spite of all of the "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" t-shirts, with an Irish grandmother, I was probably the most Irish person there (somewhat less Irish when watching the rugby on Saturday, I might add).  Still, if nothing else, we discovered that, in spite of liking none of the constituent ingredients, C. is a big fan of Irish Car Bombs. Jane is doing a summer placement in Belfast this year, and I did feel honour bound to tell her that she should probably take care before ordering that cocktail in some of the bars she might find herself in..... We crawled to bed at something like 04:30 in the morning and thanked our lucky stars that we didn't have to be up and teaching by 8am.... hats off to Marissa for having the stamina to do that, and for having the foresight to have planned that all her classes would be doing worksheets all day.

Peace, y'all

So we spent our time in New York hanging out with our friends and going to the kinds of bars where they knew the bar staff and to the restaurants that they wanted to try. It was nice. Jane was looking after her parents' dog, so we spent Sunday morning grabbing bagels from Barney Greengrass's famous Upper West Side Deli for brunch and then walking Bella in Central Park.... it was a beautiful crisp, sunny day, and just the sort of thing that New Yorkers actually do. We almost went to see a show, but unfortunately Matt Stone and Trey Parker's "Book of Mormon" was still in previews (just the idea of them doing a musical about that makes me laugh), so we went to the cinema instead to watch "Limitless" (is it meant to be a comedy, by the way? I couldn't quite see it in any other light....).

Empire State of Mind

We also went to the Bowery Ballroom to watch Noah and the Whale play on Monday night. They're a British band, and I'm pretty sure I could easily watch them play over here, but it somehow felt special to catch a show in New York. Review to follow at some point, I suppose.  It's a great venue, anyway: sort of like a cross between Rock City and the Rescue Rooms.  Better beer, mind - I was on Sierra Nevada draft.  Something of a cut above the piss they serve in venues here.

Contemplating Ad Reinhardt's use of shades of black at MOMA / Looking for the remote

We did do some touristy stuff - ironically because Marissa was keen: we popped into MOMA to have a look at the Andy Warhol film exhibition (and to remind myself how much I dislike Picasso.  Cardboard guitar? Pfff); we went on an art tour around Rockefeller Plaza and then checked out the view from the Top of the Rock; we went for a 5 mile run in Central Park and watched the runners going through in the Half Marathon. The route starts in Time Square and loops back around Central Park... maybe next year? We even almost went to Ellis Island, but decided instead to do a bit of shopping in the Village.

30 Rock

As an unexpected bonus, on our last morning we stumbled across Alec Baldwin, Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan and the rest of the cast filming 30 Rock in Central Park.  The production crew had gone to the trouble of piling snow around the park, so it was perhaps a little ironic that it snowed for real the very next day....  I also got to hang out with Chris Lowell, a friend of Jane's, although to be honest his celebrity is completely wasted on me as I've never watched Private Practice.  Marissa does though, and was a little taken aback when the guy we were waiting for turned out to be a guy in a show she watches.  He was nice, for what it's worth.

Dempsey & Makepeace: Reloaded

It was all very relaxed.

Jazz hands panic before the lego wookiee at FAO Schwartz

I've never fancied living in London, but New York I reckon I could do. It's a cool city and I have some very cool friends who live there.