The Periodical Anti-Bus Rant

Sevilla, Spain to Cascais, Portugal, 25th July 2012

After spending our final morning in Sevilla wisely (having a lie in and then walking to the bus stop in sweltering heat, buying postcards on the way), we began the day-long journey to Cascais. There is no train line across the border south of the Madrid-Lisbon line and so we were faced with my travel nemesis: the long-distance bus. This could be a strange sentiment, you might think, for someone who crossed Africa with the aid of exactly these vehicles. But in Africa there were always new sights through the window, people who were willing to have a chat with you or who were slinging insults at the driver. Failing this, you knew that an African bus was always on the brink of breaking down so you could get off to stretch your legs or get some skewered meat and a beer. A European long-distance bus is a fail-proof, air-conditioned machine and is generally filled to the rafters. It is filled with "characters", just like the African buses - but whereas the Africans were characters in the sense of "I'd like to buy this character a beer and hear a few stories", European long distance buses seem to be more the haunt of more seriously questionable characters. 

Once we boarded at Prado station, the bus left pretty quickly and to my surprise we were one of only a few passengers on board. I was also surprised that we were heading the wrong way, and both of these surprises were explained a few minutes later when we pulled into Plaza de Armas station, a few blocks away, and passengers filled every seat. Opposite us, a German guy with a fluorescent pink monkey stuffed toy, which had the good fortune of being showed everything through the window by his caring owner. You could tell that the monkey enjoyed it by the way it nodded its head in appreciation with every interesting sight that went past. In front of the German guy was another guy with a large camera who took burst shots of everything through the window (trees, bushes, clouds) complete with the fake shutter noise for each of the 30 thousand snaps he took during this trip. And directly in front of me, of course, was the classic "girl who just must lean her seat back as far as it can possibly go". And so we set off from Sevilla on the interminable crawl to Lisbon. A few hours went past, Portuguese border appeared in front of us, and the sea opened up to the left. "The sea ??" I asked M. What is the sea doing there ? It turned out that my bus experience was to be extended as, instead of heading straight for Lisbon, we were also doing a tour of the Algarve resorts to drop people off. Curses. Still, we stopped at Faro bus station long enough for me to get a beer and a snack so it was a blessing in some sort of disguise. After many more hours of hearing the infernal camera shutter going off in my ear while trying to find space under the maximally-leaning seat in front of me and watching the pink monkey getting his guided tour of Portugal, we finally arrived in Lisbon Sete Rios bus station.

The metro station was eventually located (after one large illuminated M sign turned out to be advertising a  mass calorie intake facility in the form of McDonald's rather than a mass transit facility) and we attempted to buy tickets to Cais do Sodre station, from where we'd have to get a train to Cascais. Our Portuguese was not fantastic, nor was our knowledge of the Lisbon metro system, and the place was seemingly deserted so there was no one to ask for advice. The machine had an English language option although unfortunately only the line "Select desired product" was in English. The products themselves remained listed incomprehensibly in Portuguese. The tried and tested method of "press as many buttons as possible until something looks good" was carried out and we eventually worked out that one must buy a magnetic strip card and load journeys onto that. We bought a card and loaded 2 journeys onto it. I went through the gates, passed the ticket back to M and waited for her to pass through. As she inserted the ticket, the machine made a collection of irate noises at her and told her in no uncertain terms to go away. She tried pushing more buttons and inserting more money before scuttling off and summoning a wandering security guard for help and he explained to her in his best Portuguese that we needed one card per person. Thankfully, we had just about enough coins to pay for that. Everything then went perfectly fine for the next 20 minutes.

Cais do Sodré station was where we changed to the suburban train to Cascais - different ticketing structure but same ticket. We were prepared this time so we tried to add credit to our cards when the machine beeped irately at me, this time. The fact that I had a problem was articulated to me in English as I had requested but the problem itself was outlined in Portuguese. Fortunately, a woman in the queue next to us needed changed and spoke both English and Portuguese. We were a godsend for each other. It turns out that my ticket was not accepted by the machine for train ticket credit as it still had metro credit on it. I kept both of my identical-looking tickets, trying to remember which one was for the train and which one was for the metro. We finally piled onto the Cascais train, an hour and a half later than predicted, desperately trying to think of more illogical public transport systems we have come across.

We got to Cascais where we were staying with Miika and Henna, a Finnish couple who are judoka and nutritionist respectively and who decided to jack it all in and spend the year surfing (to put it simply), their reason for living here for a while. They welcomed us with bread, meat, cheesecake and beer. Long day ? Which long day was that ?

Religious Tourists: Part Dos

Córdoba, Spain, 23rd July 2012

Our day trip to Córdoba was another hastily (or rather, not at all) planned affair. We knew it was nice, although our planned visit to the Alhambra was cancelled when we discovered just a few days earlier that the Alhambra is in fact in Granada, nowhere near Córdoba at all. Courtesy of a free map from the train station tourist bureau, we managed to construct our day over a beer and a sandwich at a nearby café.

Yet another "impressive gateway" picture ruined by roadworks

Self explanatory narrow street

I'm not sure why but I always imagined Córdoba to be a grand, imposing city. Maybe it's the name. Maybe I just imagined it. In any case it's quite far from the truth and the old town is a mishmash of winding cobbled streets, whitewashed houses and various older historical buildings dotted around. The first of these we entered was the Alcazar, the Garden of the Kings. At 6€ per person entry, M was not too impressed (the castle was open every other day of the week but not this one, and the ticket also included a lights and laser show in the evening, when we would be back in Sevilla - great planning), and I was impressed with the amount of water used to keep the plants green and the pools filled in a region which is so starved of it. Still, it was nice to look at. Hopefully our entrance fees will go towards the construction of a desalination plant.

Alcazar from the outside

Alcazar from the inside. No crying at the discotheque here...

More wandering, more sights. The "Roman Bridge" had obviously been restored since those days but still afford a nice view of both sides of the river and of the river itself. Various other buildings that were nice to look at and that we were too lazy to identify and, in any case, we were content enough to wander around admiring them. The heat wasn't conducive to any extensive archaeological research. One building that we did try to enter was the Mesquita which, like many large buildings in Andalucia, began its life as a Moorish mosque, was converted into a church, and is now open to tourists. Could we be heading for our second religious experience in two days ? A sign at the door informed us that entrance was 18€ per head. We'd already seen the gardens and the inside of one large ex-mosque church, so we went for a beer instead which proved to be an inspired choice.

Mesquita gardens illustrative shot

Attempted artistic shot of same

We'd got tickets to a Flamenco show in Sevilla for that evening so we started a long, slow, rambling walk back to the train station. Córdoba is a lovely place, the kind of town you could spend days getting lost in, although our day trip of around 6 hours was pretty much perfect. As in every place we'd been so far the streets were busy with people, walking as slowly as we were, stopped for a chat with friends or to sit on a bench and watch the world go by. Hopefully I'll come back some day to explore a bit further.

Artistic shot of the day #2

Post-scriptum:

 The flamenco was great - a permantly smiling male guitarist with a female singer whose corpulence was an impressive as her voice, and a classically Spanish-looking couple of dancers. After the hour-long show, we wandered off to find a place to get a snack, marvelling at the energy of the dancers. "They must train so hard to get into that kind of shape !" M exclaimed. We found a place to sit and, a few minutes later, the two dancers sat on the table opposite us, ordered 2 large beers and got their cigarette packets out. Conclusion: there's hope for everyone.

Flamenco dancer. Half man, half hologram.

Religious Tourists

Sevilla, Spain, 21st-22nd July 2012

As the non-owner of a guidebook who hasn't looked on the internet for information, it's quite hard to know what to expect from Sevilla. It's well known to be a lovely city in the general public conscience but the only thing you'll possibly get out of anyone regarding this city in Andalucia is "oooh, it'll be hot at that time of year !". It's accurate information but doesn't really inform me of very much. And so, as we rolled into Sevilla on our train from Madrid at around 8pm, the outside temperature was 41 degrees and I had no idea what we were going to spend the next few days doing.

Sevilla skyline from the hotel rooftop

M, as always, had some ideas and we wandered out into the beautiful, beautiful heat and headed in search of "la Giralda", Sevilla's Cathedral. We knew the vague direction and eventually, via a sizeable but expected detour, we came across a very large cathedral, although the sign informed us that this was Santa Maria de la Sede cathedral, not la Giralda at all. Surely there can't be two cathedrals this size in Sevilla, we thought. We stood and stared for a while and decided to go in. This was indeed Santa Maria de la Sede, and its large minaret was called la Giralda. That mystery was solved then.

Chillin' by the Guadalquivir. I add this as it's one of the few pictures of me from the trip, not because it's interesting

The inside was impressive, it has to be said - Christopher Columbus' tomb was there, huge open spaces and a little display case featuring a certificate from the Guinness Book of Records confirming this building to be the largest cathedral in the world. It also had a collection of bizarre Catholic art, such as a sculpture of Jesus Christ as an infant, joyfully walking on the decapitated heads of three other infants. I've always thought that religions in general could attract more followers if they placed less emphasis on misery and death and more on positive aspects of life. I think if I ever, for any strange reason, decided to become religious, I'd be far more likely to join one of those African-American hallelujah churches than spending every Sunday being told by a Catholic priest about my impending one-way journey to hell.

Gruesome Christ-as-a-child statuette

None-too-shabby tomb of Columbus

As I was beginning to get my usual church-related foot-fatigue, M suggested we go up the Giralda (the real one), to have a look at the top. There are no stairs going up to the top, just an endless slope, turning the corner 48 times (if I remember well) before you reach the top. The Giralda was turned into a bell tower many centuries ago but it was originally built after the Muslim Conquest as a minaret for a mosque. So either the Moors had already invented wheelchairs, or they didn't like stairs. In either case, we were pleased to get to the top, where we appreciated the fine view of the city and took pictures on request for Japanese tourists. This was a very timely moment for M to get a large cramp in her leg and, imitating the knights and gentlemen that I imagine frequented this cathedral all those centuries ago, I half carried her down the slopes of the Giralda. Unlike those knights and gentlemen (I have a possibly unrealistically pure vision of them), we then popped round the corner for a glass of wine.

Cramp. Only 12 slopes left..

Generic view of Sevilla from the Giralda #73428234a (above) and #73428234b (below)

The evening, as usual, was spent outside, where it seems that every person in Spain spends the evening. People are everywhere, sitting around, chatting with friends, wandering through the old streets of Sevilla either in large groups of friends blabbering excitedly or as canoodling couples. We found a little place to sit down and have a bite to eat and, in a moment of class, ordered a 3€ limoncello. What we didn't realise is that, in Spain, a limoncello is not poured as a shot for slow supping as it would be anywhere else. It's poured with reckless abandon up to the rim of a large wine glass. We were off to Cordoba early the next day and planned to get to bed at a decent time. That, quite obviously, did not happen.

Combatting the heat in Sevilla: droplets of water are sprayed over customers on terraces 

Cheers !

The rain in Spain is nowhere to be seen

Madrid, Spain, 19-21st July 2012

Arrival in Madrid was a breath of fresh air, metaphorically. In a more literal sense it was completely the opposite. A nice day in Geneva can be hot and sunny but the weather there is far too unreliable to enjoy ("sure it's nice now, but will it be cold and rainy in 20 minutes ?") and so it was great to step out into the hot Madrid air knowing with relative certainty that the next 10 days, spent in Madrid, Sevilla and Lisbon, would be pleasant in a doing-things-outside kind of sense.

Our host for the three days (who complained about not having a nickname on another blog and so will henceforth be called Fiesta, after his ex-car and one of his favoured activities) proved this point by taking us to a municipal swimming pool where we caught up with Mike, who I haven't seen for seven years, got slightly burnt, and discussed the Madrid municipal pools' relaxed rules on topless sunbathing for ladies. It was here that I also discovered tinto de verano, some sort of red wine cocktail with several icebergs inside, a perfect refresher for a hot summer's day. Thoughts of home evaporated from my mind entirely.

 

Fiesta discreetly pours beers at the municipal pool

Our one entire day in Madrid was dedicated to a walking tour/sitting around hybrid where we saw "most of the south west of the centre" of the city, stopped at a few terraces for tinto de verano or a nice cold beer, and stopped in a few parks to lie around and chat idly and do nothing particularly productive. We started at a terrace just to give us a bit of energy for what was to come next where I picked up a few Spanish hints - Fiesta gave some of them out through pure generosity and some of them out of necessity - for instance after one incident in which I mistakenly asked the waitress for a portion of coca leaves. We wandered around, ticking off the sights - the presidential palace, Plaza Mayor, and so on. Madrid is the kind of city that can surprise the unsuspecting visitor. A guy dressed up as a baby on Plaza Mayor, for instance, entertaining people for a few coins.

A street.

Plaza Mayor. An apt name for this large square. And yes, we were trying to look casually disinterested in the picture

Guy dressed as baby

Around a corner in a park, another surprise. "That looks like an Egyptian temple ! Looks a bit out of place in a Spanish park..." I mused. It turns out that it was an Egyptian temple. Out of gratitude for Spanish help in moving Abu Simbel after the construction of the Aswan High Dam, the Egyptian government gave Spain an entire temple. Motivation to be generous with one's time and efforts if I've ever seen one.

Looks out of place, as I said

A market, where various Spanish things are to be found, mainly fish, meat and cheese. What a lovely place

As day gave way to evening, we sampled a bit of Madrid's nightlife and culinary scene although, being too old for anything these days, this took the form of an Ethiopian restaurant and a bar with loads of board games. We supped on very generously proportioned cocktails and battled it out in an epic game of Scrabble before wandering home, past locals and visitors, partygoers and prostitutes, ready for the train to Sevilla the next day...

Presidential palace

Final note: Spain is going through something of an economic downturn at the moment. It's not so much a crash as a complete wreckage, although barring a couple of protests here and there, it's not really in evidence in the streets of Madrid. One thing that is easy to notice, though, is the ubiquity of the word "MUTANTS", seemingly directed at banks and everyone considered responsible for this state of affairs. Can anyone enlighten me on why this is...?

Boringness Research Mission

Zürich, Switzerland, 23-24th June 2012

I was quite intrigued several months ago coming across a list of the most boring cities in the world, as voted for by users of TripAdvisor or some other website. Living in the Geneva area, I'm pretty shocked that it's not on the list. In all fairness, before this weekend I'd only been to two cities listed - Brussels and Bratislava. I grew up in Brussels and don't find it at all boring. I visited Bratislava once 10 years ago and, granted, it wasn't the most exciting city I'd ever been to. But then again it's not a huge city either so you can't really expect it to be Paris or New York. The presence of Zürich in third place was interesting to me though. It had taken pride of place as the only Swiss city on the list. Could it be possible that somewhere more mind-numbing than Geneva could exist ?

"The financial hub of the country and the whole Europe, Zurich is home to corporations, banking giants as well as one of the world's biggest stock exchange, and it is often called the Singapore of Europe. Despite the fact that this Swiss metropolis has been cited as the city with the best quality of life and the wealthiest city in Europe, it is hardly a fascinating place to visit.  Put into apple-pie order, Zurich is simply too sterile and predictable."

So that was it. This little passage appears quite appropriate for Geneva quite well (aside from the presence of the stock exchange and the "Singapore of Europe" moniker) and, as M's parents were over and wanted to do a little exploring, I was determined to find out just how Zürich was. I had heard relatively little about it although nearly everything was related it being a) excessively clean or b) excessively boring or c) both. It is certainly wealthy - even the Swiss called Zürich "Zureich" - German for "too rich". Although any Swiss calling someone too rich could be considered somewhat hypocritical.

No garbage so far...

The Swiss inexperience with defacing things shines through here. What does this actually mean ?

It certainly started off clean. The car park we ended up in near the centre of town was probably cleaner than most hospitals in France. We walked along clean streets and up the lakeshore, admiring the clean water. The glasses from which we had a beer were clean and there wasn't even any clutter on the floor at a flea market we came across - something inconceivable in Brussels, for instance. People were friendly without being too energetic, as seems to be a constant in this country - the Swiss in general are not antipathic people but it's difficult to find anyone very exciteable here.

Downtown Zürich (vague description intended as I've forgotten what this building was)

There is a noticeable difference between Geneva and Zürich in terms of the old town - the latter's in far larger and has a large concentration of people walking around it, cafes and restaurants. It's an attractive one as well and big enough to get lost in. Very clean as well, of course, although that doesn't take away from its charm in any way.

Curiously for a city with a large lakefront, this appears to be Zürich's main beach

 Generic bridge picture #87623890p/4

 Generic bicycle/old town juxtaposition picture #482

So is Zürich a fascinating, exciting city-that-never-sleeps overall ? Not particularly. Is it the 3rd most boring city in the world ? Probably not. Is it less interesting than Geneva ? Certainly not.

Even the graffiti is classy in Zürich