All Good Things...

Nothing lasts forever and today Okei Wapi's adventure has come to an end.

Its successor is at http://mangidem.blogspot.com

See you soon...

The Taxi Driver

Colchester, UK, 3rd-5th August 2012

As someone who lived in the UK for a depressing number of years, I know the place very well. Still, whenever I go back, as I did for weekend to attend a friend's wedding, I find myself remembering some of the more quirky aspects of the country. The way that people who you have never met will call you "mate". The way that every town outside London looks exactly the same as every other. The fact that policemen stand around in any train station or airport carrying small anti-aircraft weapons around their necks. The ubiquitous and almost proud ignorance of anything like lies beyond British borders (aside from the Canary Islands and Ibiza). The impressive dedication to fair play and doing things by the rules (aside from for the rich and/or powerful). Such are the features that make the country distinctive.

The wedding took place in Colchester. We'd taken a train up there and hopped into a taxi to get to the hotel which was a short distance out of town. The taxi driver looked exactly the same as all other British taxi drivers - in his 40s, small pot belly, tennis shirt, shaved head. 

"You sound American, you do" he said to M

"I'm from Finland", she replied.

I made a small interjection about how she used to live in Halifax and, many years ago, spoke with a Yorkshire accent.

"What ? Fuckin' scouse accent ? Like Steven Gerrard ? Fuckin 'ell ! Can't stand 'em !"

Silence fell. I'm aware that Liverpool and Halifax are some distance from Essex but this was still quite an impressive display of total geographic ignorance. Especially coming from a taxi driver, whose job requires him to know where he's going. His car radio was providing background music as he explained how the taxi-driving business worked. He rents his car, he told us, and has to make upward of 400 pounds a week in order to turn a profit. Or something like that. The song changed.

"You know what, I don't care what anyone else thinks but, speaking as an Englishman..... That foreign music.... It's shit innit ? I mean, it's fuckin' rubbish ! Innit ? Innit ?" He repeated the innits as he looked at me, waiting for some sort of a reply. 

It doesn't happen all that often but I was completely lost for words.

NB: I feel that I should counterbalance this rather negative assessment of the UK with a list of things about it that I genuinely like. These include McCoy's crisps (salt and vinegar flavour in particular); the fact that special offers are so ubiquitous that it's nearly impossible to do anything for an unreduced price; the fact the people are generally friendly and curious with foreigners even despite the fact that those same pesky foreigners have flooded the UK with shit music, innit; and the self-deprecating sense of humour, which is probably an essential quality for those who live in a country where it rains all the time and all the towns look the same.

A fine example of the above-mentioned ubiquitous discount: This rack of sandwiches (expiry date: in 10 minutes) was reduced to an exceptional 8 pounds.

Holiday Extension

Lisbon to Madrid to Geneva, 29th-31st July

I wasn't really expecting to wave M off at Lisbon airport, but then again you can never be sure of anything in life.

It was on the train to Lisbon from Cascais that I first realised that my ID card was not in my wallet, where it has been for the last 10 years. A thorough search of my pockets revealed that it wasn't in any of them either, and on arrival at the airport I launched a full scale assault on my bag, which took a long time but resulted in nothing. Miika hadn't found it at his place either. Where the hell had it gone ? M suggested that I call our hotel in Sevilla on the off-chance that I may have left it there. The cheerful guy at the reception confirmed that it was, and I was stuck with no ID. After a desperate attempt at getting on the plane using my health insurance card (which, predictably, failed), I was faced with the reality of of the situation. I can normally talk my way out of trouble but EasyJet is a formidable opponent and there was no (legal) way that I was going to get through. M gave me a look that only women can give, its complexity out of reach to any man - part sympathy, part annoyance, part pity, part bloody-hell-not-this-again. I was suddenly waving as she went off to the plane and back to work, and I headed back out into the Portuguese sunshine and back into Lisbon. I would like to take this opportunity to confirm that this is the first time that such a plane-boarding failure has happened to me (although I have missed planes for various other reasons, nearly all involving my own incompetence) and I have no idea why or how my ID card was not in the same country as I was. 

I headed off to Oriente bus station and bought a ticket for the next available bus, which left at 11pm. It was now 1pm and so I bought "Fresh Air Fiend" by Paul Theroux (the pretentious father of the pretentious Louis Theroux), sat at the beach and read it until the sun went down. On my way to the beach I also tried to find the tower of Belém, Portugal's most famous landmark. I failed at that as well, although I did catch a glimpse of it from the train as I headed out to the suburbs for my beach session. I'd been looking for it at the wrong station. It all made sense.

The bridge to Setubal

The same bridge as in the previous post, just this time with fishing rods.

Another overnight bus session followed, and it was my penitence for not having my ID card on it. I probably clocked up about an hour of sleep. The only seat I could find was behind the central door and so my knees were jammed against one of those hard walls. The woman sat next to me was of a certain age and the owner of a smartphone which rang incessantly. Unfortunately the smartphone appeared to be new and she seemed unable to either answer it or refuse the call (or indeed turn down the volume) and so every so often I would hear the blare of heavy metal coming from her handbag and try to close my ears as she got increasingly flustered and violent towards her screen. We arrived in Sevilla at half past five, I tried to walk to the hotel and instantly got lost. Any other day, a wander through Sevilla's old town at night would have been a pleasure but I was desperate to find somewhere to sit down and try to have a nap again. I picked up my ID card, went straight to the train station, got a bucket of Coke from McDonald's (and I am ashamed) and bought a ticket for the next slow train to Cordoba, where I hoped to pick up another one towards Madrid, saving money in the process. Another hour and a half to kill, during which Coca-Cola company shares probably rose a little as I tried to stay awake. 

"A portrait of the artist as a tired man" - Sevilla, 6am

Cordoba pulled into view at 9.30 and it seemed that no slow trains ran north. The fast train was 80€. Fortunately, the bus station was just over the road and, 4 hours after swearing I'd never get on a long distance bus again, I bought myself a ticket for the far more pleasant price of 16€. The bus left at 2pm and would arrive in Madrid six hours later. I set up camp in a cyber cafe, bought some flights from Madrid back to Geneva and stared vacantly at the screen while keeping M up to date with developments over Skype. My breakfast consisted of a sandwich, carefully crafted from a supermarket baguette and a buy-one-get-one-free pack of chorizo. The second part of this became my lunch. It was a far cry from the tapas and limoncello of the ten previous days. After an interminable wait, I got onto the bus and, naturally, the guy who sat next to me was not only the largest person on the bus but also the one with the loudest music and the least soundproof headphones. I slept like a baby anyway.

 Sunrise from the train. Not a particularly interesting or good picture, but I didn't take many

 I wasn't sure if my friend Fiesta in Madrid was aware that I was coming. My phone battery had died and I'd sent him a text message from a newly acquired Spanish number that didn't appear to want to cooperate. I'd sent him a message from the cybercafe in Cordoba and hoped that he would check his emails before I arrived. As luck would have it, we arrived on his building's doorstep at exactly the same time. As always happens, my tiredness evaporated as the evening came and we ended up going out with his friends for a night out which lasted far too long. We got home at 6am on what was, for the second time of asking, the last day of this trip. Our tiredness ensured that the trip ended in exactly the way I would have wanted - with a day at one of Madrid's exotic and enticing municipal swimming pools.

Beach Bums

Cascais & Lisbon, Portugal, 25th-29th July 2012

Having finally arrived in Cascais, we were treated by Miika and Henna to a true travellers' welcome (beer and cheesecake) and eventually settled down to sleep. There was only one spare sofa so one of us would have to sleep on the floor - I did the gentleman routine and insisted that it be me, knowing that I would sleep like a baby anyway. This prediction turned out to be correct.

Host number 1 engaging in a kebab fight with M

...while host number 2 is far too busy for shenanigans like those.

Cascais is a small place on the coast so we did small-place-on-the-coast stuff. Fish at the restaurant. A day at the beach. Surfing.

The surfing episode was one that I looked forward to with bucketloads of trepidation. I always enjoy trying out new things, although I generally never miss an opportunity to injure myself and surfing seemed to fit the bill. Together with our South African instructor we did the basics on the beach: learnt how to lie on a board (successfully reproduced on the waves) and learnt how to stand up once we'd caught a wave. In the gentle, non-moving setting of the beach, the standing up was easy. It turned out to be less so once waves and motion were thrown into the mix. Normally a calm and reflective person, I managed to forget my left and right while trying to remember which side to stand up. Catching waves was easy - doing anything with them was not. Miika had done it before and we looked to him for inspiration, and one other guy in the group knew what he was doing as well. Looking to him for guidance was somewhat more difficult though as he was apparently the owner of an ultra-proud dad who stood on the beach taking pictures and waded into the sea shouting "WELL DONE OLIVER !" every time the guy managed to stand up. I caught a particularly good wave, sailed towards the shore, remembered which hand was my right and stood up with such enthusiasm that my forward motion propelled me up and over my board, crashing head-first into the sea before deciding that this probably wasn't going to be my day. Nonetheless, I'd managed to stand up - granted it was only for half a second and only on one leg, but it's a start.

We consoled ourselves with a beer at the beach bar afterwards, as all good surfers naturally do. I slept on the floor again, with very good results again.

T.I.C. - This is Cascais

While the gang busied themselves at the beach I headed into Lisbon for a bit of a wander around. It's an attractive town but looks more tired than Madrid and Sevilla. It's also probably the biggest city in Europe without a single flat surface as the roads undulate over hills all through town. It seemed a bit of a ghost town compared to those in Spain as well - most of the people milling around in the centre seemed to be tourists and the terrace restaurants were bursting at the seams. After wandering around and seeing everything I could be bothered to see, I hopped on the train back to Cascais. M insisted that I sleep on the sofa as I'd be more comfortable but its length combined with the arm rest ensured I woke up with a cricked neck every hour through the night. I decided to be a gentleman the following evening and sleep on the floor again.

 I don't remember what this is

This is a fountain 

This is a theatre 

 And this is a tram.

 The seafront at Cais do Sodre station

It was a lazy time in general and we were shown around slowly by the delightful hosts who seem to have adapted to the Mediterranean pace. It was a sudden jolt from this pace to find ourselves on the train back to Lisbon, heading for the airport. And that should be the end of the story. For me, it was not........

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

Spring Chicken Kievs

Kiev, Ukraine, 28th May 2012

Marina's trust in her guests was obviously rather low. A couple of days ago, she'd bought us a street map of the city and this morning, before disappearing off to work, she'd carefully drawn lines along various streets, setting us up for  roam through the centre of Kiev, passing along streets which she had avoided on that first day in order to give us something to see today. She double checked whether we had understood everything before dropping us off at her local metro station. As we waved her off, we were confident in our orienteering skills although her mistrust was well placed - five seconds after she left, we discovered that we (or rather I) had left the map at home. We went on memory which, for once, served us rather well. We managed to change money (albeit after walking into the wrong building), encountered a huge array of "Free Yulia Tymoshenko" posters, and found a statue of Lenin which had been marked on the map which lay so uselessly on Marina's kitchen table. 

A couple of days ago it was "Fuck off Euro". Now it's "Ukraine to EU, Yanokovych to prison". Ukraine - country of constrasts.

And, as the flags will attest to, this guy still has a couple of followers too...

At this point, a man accosted me with a barrage of Russian to which I put my finger to my ear in the international language of those who fail to understand was it being said to them. "Ya ne ponimayu" I said back to him - I don't understand. One of the very few phrases in Russian I can whip up at short notice. Unfortunately this amateurishness failed to impress my new friend who laughed and explained to me that in fact, I spoke Russian very well. He then asked me if I was African before breaking into English and exclaiming "Give me Gryvnia please very good !". For his troubles and his entertainment value I slipped him a couple of coins from my back pocket and he smiled and disappeared, looking for another victim.

Our aimless wandering took us past several extremely exciting attractions such as a dead-end car park from which we could see the back end of Dynamo Kyiv's stadium and various attractive buildings. Our aimless wandering in the pleasant sunshine continued until M's stomach rang 1 o'clock and we turned our attention to finding food. We'd reached half way and, besides leaving our map at home, we could feel proud of ourselves. 


We didn't really escape from the restaurant unscathed but a few characteristic semi-errors were littered across the hour or two we spent at "Opanas", set in the middle of a delightful park. I sat down and put my bag on the floor and within half a minute, a waiter had brought a stool at very high speed and placed my bag on it. It isn't that my bag is valuable or classy and so deserves a stool (quite the contrary, in fact - it was never very impressive even new, and it now more of a net than a bag), but that placing your bag on the floor in Ukraine brings bad luck. Error number 1. At least the waiters cared for our well-being, it seemed. We ordered a bit of this and that to eat, I got a beer and M got a "fresh juice" and our friendly and enthusiastic waiter brought us some free stuff and informed us that we should call on him if we needed anything. We thanked him and M immediately noticed that her fresh juice came at a price of 10€. Error number 2. 

The mythical 10€ juice

...And a bit of tongue for me.

She then noticed a pot of sauce with her borscht and we asked our enthusiastic waiter what to do with it. Pour it in the borscht ? Dip bread in it ?


"Ah, this. First, you take bread."


He demonstrated amid a dramatic pause. This guy was obviously made for theater, not for waitering.


"After you dip, you place slowly in mouth".


In an exaggerated fashion, he continued his mime. We were both impressed.

"Put back head, close eyes....."

What would come next, we wondered ?

"NIRRRRRRVANA !!!!!" he roared.

We all had a good laugh and he went off on his way.

Kiev, city of contrasts - the above three pictures were taken from exactly the same spot

Our wander continued past the opera house, the Golden Gate (some part of the ancient city walls which, were it not Monday, would have been open as a museum) and headed towards the "Landscape walk" which I vaguely remembered from the map which still lay resting on Marina's kitchen table. I vaguely knew the direction and had no idea of its name in Russian and so I was delighted when, in the face of M's doubts, I found it at the third time of asking. In my defence, it was down a small alleyway which didn't look to have anything to do with nature until we went around a bend and it turned into a small park with more views over some part of Kiev - we were slightly disorientated by this point so I'm not sure which part of Kiev this was. The landscape walk was full of kiddies play areas, sculptures the likes of which I have never seen, people wandering and teenage girls taking pictures of each other in "come and get me if you dare, boys" poses (for solo shots) or "come and get us if you dare, boys"/ "Charlie's Angels" poses (for groups). I haven't really carried out a scientific study of photo-pose attitudes in various countries although it's noticeable here that girls especially enjoy the "come and get me" pose. Teenage guys, on the other hand, will generally stand straight, emotionless, staring into the distance. It's not that they are emotionless beings in general, much as the streets are not prowled by gangs of teenage girls purring at every eligible gentleman they come across (sadly), but the camera just seems to bring out certain reactions in people. My reaction, quite often, is to unintentionally look really stupid.

Above-mentioned bizarre statues. Pillows and small children feature in this one...

A clever optical illusion as the buildings are taken in for repairs. T attempts his "Ukrainian male" photo pose.

At this point, Marina called. She was out of work and we went to meet her and, culturally sensitive people as we are, went for sushi and shisha pipes, both of which are all the rage in Kiev these days. This was followed by the traditional middle-of-the-night-visit-to-a-24-hour-supermarket (previously pulled off with great professionalism in Yerevan, although this time we decided against borrowing a shopping trolley to bring it all home) for a general buying-stuff-for-friends-and-family adventure. We left the place with cognac, the chilli vodka we'd tried in Chernihiv, a wide variety of dried sausages and several truckloads of "with beer".

The only regret from the trip turned out to be that it was only for a long weekend. We had a great time in a lovely city and declared at Kiev airport that next time we came back, it would be to see more of the country and for a longer time. With Euro 2012 just around the corner, Ukraine will probably be put on the map and won't be a large unknown wasteland any more. Hopefully it won't be conquered by the legions of EasyJet and Ryanair weekend party animals - Kiev and Ukraine don't deserve that...

.The balcony which became the second home...