Andorable

The other day my family (including my brother and his friend, who have dropped by to visit for a few days) took a couple of cars up to Andora for a day trip.

Andora is a small independent principality snuggled in the Pyrenees between France and Spain. It is very remarkable for a couple of reasons.

1. There was snow

Which was of great amusement to us all. There was a good covering on the slopes, and there was lots of snowball throwing action. My brother also decided that 3 degrees celsius was the perfect temperature to walk around bare chested. He was lucky that no one tried to capture him and claim him as the Andoran Yeti.

2. Cheep cheep liquor

Andora is a tax haven, and they don't have any duty on their alcohol. This means that it is basically a giant airport duty free lounge for their neighbours in Spain and France. The streets in the two or three main towns were brim full of electronics boutiques, perfumeries, jewellers, tobacconists and supermarkets selling alcohol, chocolate, confectionary and cheese.

The alcohol wasn't just cheep, it was astonishingly cheep; 10 Euro (~ 20 AUD) for a liter of Absolute flavored vodka, and around 8 Euro for a liter of your standard bourbons.

The down side of this is that the French will try and charge you duty on whatever you take out of the country, and will do thorough searches on random vehicles as your re-enter their country. They also have search posts about an hour down the mountains, just in case you think you got away.

So while all of this was of great amusement, the windy roads up the mountains to get there left me with the worst car sickness I ever had. Perhaps I should have partaken in the affordable booze for medicinal purposes...

Good and Bad

As though the route that I had to take from Brussels to get back to the south of France wasn't bad enough - the train that I was on from Lyon to Toulouse was over crowded, so I sat in the large luggage rack. Then, 20 minutes into the journey, our train was involved in an accident, and so we were stuck o the tracks for two hours. Luckily it wasn't a Russian train, so we could still use the toilet while we were stopped.

But after all the drama and mayhem, I have made it back to the same little pocket of France where I was a few weeks ago. It's another anonymous little town, but this one has a better bakery. The weather is quite mild, and the vines that were lovely and green last time are now a riot of reds, browns, yellows, purples and browns.

Also, my parents have been very busy in my absence - they've decided to buy a house in this sleepy little village. A great big old place full of dust and peeling wall paper and lovely furniture. So although I'm only here for a week now, I feel that I'll be spending much more time in this area in the years to come.

So French...

The thing about the French (and possibly every other culture more or less) is that everone loves the good cultural experiences, like red wine, 35 hour working weeks, brilliant baked goods, a wonderful modern art tradition, Amelie, etc. But you never really get a feel for a country until you experience the shittier side of their outlook on life.

Point in case: Strikes.

The whole of France is having a 3 day train strike. So instead of visiting Luxemburg as intended, and then returning to see the folks in the South of France, I have to take a long, complicated, over crowded (and expensive) train ride down to Toulouse.

Still, Luxemburg should be there for a while yet, and there's always next time.

As for the city I am currently in; Brussels is dirty, ugly and smelly. It has a couple of nice buildings, the undersized and overhyped peeing boy statue, and the best flea market I have ever visited. It was in a good sized market square and had everything, from clothes to trinkets to furniture. Brussels also has lots of chocolate shops, good waffles and amazing fries. They also have lots of great beer. You can get a Chimay at the supermarket for about AUD 1.50m and last night we went to a bar with over 2500 beers, the list was about 5cm thick. I don't think my backpack is going to come home too much heavier, but I certainly will at this rate. So it's all balanced out into quite a good time here.

So yes, on to France tomorrow, and a quite week of lounging around, eating less deep fried and chocolate things and spending some time with the family before they head off to Canada for the Christmas season and I begin to make my way home via a week in Japan. The end of the adventure is in sight.

What's up, Doc (Martin)

In revenge for dragging them into a library, yesterday, my parents folded all five members of our not-too-short family into a Ford Fiesta for a two hours drive into Cornwall. More specifically, we went to Port Issac, where the show 'Doc Martin' is filmed.

Although I think the eponymous doctor is a bit of a twat, I have to give him credit for settling in such a lovely little town. We strolled around, ate Cornish pasties and drank Corninsh ale, and then folded ourselves back into the car for the drive home.

My legs were sore from the folding and the walking, and my stomach sore from the pasty, but it was a fun excursion none the less.

The Planes and Spain

The somewhat crazy itinerary that I am currently following (Swizterland to Malta to Spain to Poland) has arisen because I am joining the dots on a map of Europe between all the family and friends who are unfortunate enough to be cursed with a visit from me.

This 24 hour stop in Barcelona is not to visit family, but simply because spending a day here was the easiest way to get from Malta to Poland. So as to not waste an opportunity, we (I´ve reunited with the parents and Claire once more) have packed as much into our one day as possible. I don´t want to bore you with tales of warm weather, sangria, tapas and the usual (see the Cadaques post for that) - surprising all my highlights from today are technological.

The Metro

Many of the ticket validating gates on the metro are left handed. I´m not sure if they have a large population of lefties, or if it was just a vengeful left hander who designed the machines.

The View at Park Guell

Normally you have to work hard to earn a great view of a city from the surrounding hills - but they solved the problem of hiking up a hill at Park Guell by installing escalators along the middle of the public streets. Brilliant idea.

Giant Vending Machine

At Catalunya metro station is a vending machine that takes up a whole wall and contains no fewer than 180 items. Chocolate milk to cigarettes, sandwiches to sanitary products - all in one massive machine. Japan, home of vending madness has a lot to live up to when I visit - Barcelona has set the bar high.

This Week On Boarder Security...

Lauren, a hapless backpacker from Australia, arrives at the Geneva International Airport to catch a plane to Malta. Lauren checks in, presents her passport and ticket, and has her ticket to Japan to show that she will be leaving Europe (eventually).

Check-in proceeds well, until the end, when Lauren is required by airline policy to show that she has a ticket to depart Malta. Lauren's father has booked her a flight to Spain on an e-ticket for the following Saturday, but Lauren does not have a copy on her, or in her email inbox.

Thanks to the modern wonder of mobile telephony, Lauren contacts her parents, who are already in Malta and asks them to email across the details. Lauren goes to the only internet cafe at the airport, to print it out and is told she needs to present it at the desk by 8:15 am.

The internet cafe does not open until 8 am. As soon as it opens Lauren attempts to access her email account, but due to the crazy French keyboard gmail gets suspicious and won't let her log in. More phone calls, more emails, and finally - at 8:10 -Lauren has her reservation. She rushes back up to the desk.

Will she make it in time?

Well, yes, she did. But it was the most stressful airport experience I've had to date. Many thanks to my parents for emailing across the details, and to Hugh for buying the internet time and preventing me from hyperventilating. The only consolation was that I didn't have that guy from Boarder Security narrating the whole sorry affair.

Things I Didn't Know About Paris

- The Eiffel Tower is brown, not gray.

- The Mona Lisa is not in a room by itself. In fact, it's in a room full of Venetian painting, which is all a it weird.

- Everything is the same price as in Australia, it's just that the price is in Euro, which is worth about twice as much as the dollar. I stopped converting back, and haven't dared to look at my bank balance since.

- There really is a Patisserie on every corner.

- The Bastille Fortress was demolished a very long time ago. Actually, I may have learned this in French history, but forgot. Sorry Sue...

- They have some Metro lines with trains on rubber wheels, it's endlessly fascinating.

- The Notre Dame cathedral is so well restored that it looks like it was built 8 years ago, not 800 years ago.

- That I would have quite as much fun there as I did (A big thankyou to the Kings and Queens and People of Paris for building such an interesting city, collecting so much art and knocking up Versailles too. Also, big thanks to Benoit for dinner, my parents and Claire for a fun night out (in the red light district, no less) and Alex who took the walking tours around the city and Montmartre).

The Baltic, See

So, being unable to find an ínternet cafe for the last few days, my octogenarian Aunt has a computer with excellent connection at her house. She says she doesn't understand it or use it, but that her children set it up for when they occasionally drop in. Thus, for the next four days while we´re in Stockholm I'll be able to attend to my backlog of emails and things to do. But before all of that, I can now tell you all about the Baltic adventures Claire and I have had since leaving our trans-Siberian family and venturing off on our own.
The overnight bus from St Petersburg was the final 'stressful' boarder crossing for us (excluding convincing the English boarder patrol to let us in) on this trip. We got to the boarder at 1am and spent 2 hours sitting around, being pulled off the bus, being put back off the bus etc. Thankfully we´re now in the EU, where there is virtually no boarder control between countries, and being Aussie doesn't mean pre-arranging visas for entry.
Tallinn It Like It Is
We got to Tallinn early on a raining Saturday morning, so it was dead quiet - we had the whole place to ourselves for a while. It's a very cute old city that has been very well preserved and restored. We spent two days binging on museums, churches, galleries, and, off all things, Mexican food. It really wasn't intentional, but each day around lunch time we just happened to come across a good looking, affordable Mexican restaurant, and seems Claire hasn't been within cooee of a tortilla for 8 months we made the most of the opportunity.
Tallinn is strange in that I'm not sure where the actual population of the city lives. The old town consists almost entirely of museums, galleries, souvenir stores, bad restaurants and cafes and more souvenirs. It's like Disney for Euro-Tourists. It's not even like Venice, where if you walk down enough side streets you'll find the local population. Normally this situation makes me sad, but the Estonians who I ran into and talked to seemed to be so genuinely proud of the city, and the extent to which it's been preserved that I gained an appreciation of what a feat that is, considering that it was pretty heavily bombed during WW2.
Architecture (And Islands and Food and Shopping) In Helsinki After 2 days in Estonia we caught a ferry north to Helsinki. Now, I've heard rumours that Helsinki is cool. Like Prague, Edinburgh, Berlin and Stockholm before it, Helsinki is apparently cool du jour. I'd have to say that it's not so much cool, but it's certainly nice. It is small, clean, open, and has that effortless Scandinavian elegance - but it's just too small and nice to be cool. It's full of chic kitchen wares rather than chic fashion, and it's cafes are homely, not boho. Still Claire and I had a lovely time there, we visited the island fortress Soumelinna, and spent a lot of time at the food hall (cheap baguettes helped to offset the otherwise costly nature of the Scandinavian lifestyle).We also did something that I've been avoiding for some time now, clothes shopping. We hit up all the cheap and cheerful retailers (H&M, Vero Moda, Indiska etc) and I now own more than 2 summer skirts and 3 t-shirts. This is really a positive step, because the weather has taken a turn for the colder in the last couple of weeks. While it was 22C in Moscow less than a fortnight ago, it was 6C in Helsinki yesterday. Given my predilection for gloves, scarves, hats and coats, the change in temperature has been met with great relish.
Taking Stock(holm)After an amusing overnight ferry ride, in which we were in a cabin deep in the hull (the part of the ship in which everyone in Titanic were Irish and died very early on) we have arrived in Stockholm. We're spending the next four nights with our Aunt Sophie (nan's sister). I'll post all about how much I love Stockholm later - provided Sophie doesn't feed us to death first...

Russin Around

There's been so much sightseeing to do over the last five days or so that I've been a big to distracted to blog. Thus, I would like to present my top three highlights from the capital of Russia, Moscow, and the 'Northern Capital', St Petersburg:

Moscow
- I'm sure I've said it before, but the metro is amazing. Every station is unique, and decorated with mosaics, or leadlight, paintings, bronze sculpture, plaster moulding. The trains are occasionally rickety, but it's an incredibly fast, efficent and effective way to move around the city.
- Visiting Lenin. Claire was excited as she's now completed the trifecta (Ho Chi Minh, Mao and Lenin). I was excited as it was a rainy day so we had Lenin to ourselves (excluding guards). Also, we got to walk in along red square - which was the only way we got in there as it was still closed after Moscow day.
- St Basil's - It looks like it's made out of icing, it's so colourful. Ivan may have been terriblee, but he was also terribly cool for getting it built.

St Petersburg
- The Hermitage and Winter Palace. Over 3 million works of art - that's one for every member of the population of the city. We spent about 4 hours there and only saw a fraction of the art. There were whole rooms of Rubens and Rembrants and a couple of great Da Vinci Madonnas. You'd have to spend a week there and still not get to see everything properly.
- The city itself is beautiful, full of lovely churches and buildings and places of historical importance (I studied the Russian revolution and this place is seeping with important events, places and people from that time).
- The Hermitage. What can I say? I am an art nerd and this is art nerd heaven.

Tonight Claire and I are catching a bus, and when we wake up we'll be in Estonia and back in the EU! I'll make sure to write again from Tallinn.

3762 Things To Do On Trains

Having completed the 78 hour train journey from Irkutsk in Siberia to Moscow, I have decided to publish a book with the above name. Below is an excerpt:

Idea 2456: Eat
We decided to use our time and money creatively and instigated a cooking challenge. The group divided the nights up among us and 2-3 people cooked for all 8. This is especially challenging given the tiny preparation area and the fact that the only cooking process you have is access to boiled water. My group made a trifle for dessert, it was awesome

Idea 2457: Get Crafty
Claire did general repairs, Meg sewed flag patches on her backpack from different countries. I found some wool for sale at one stop and decided to knit a scarf using my chopsticks. It's bright green (the scarf, that is).

Idea 2458: Discuss All Bodily Functions
Spending all day and night with the same people in a tiny box brings a new level of intimacy, discussing toilet events is a topic that everyone has something to say about.

Idea 2459: Befriend The Cabin Guard
Even if you don't speak the same language. Then you can find out all about how he's dating the other cabin guard, but also seeing his boss, who as a boyfriend at the next stop. Who knew trains were so exciting.

Idea 2460: Get Sick
Claire, Bella and Jules all did this. It gives the others something to talk about. Works especially well with idea 2458, but not idea 2456.

Under The (Mongolian) Weather

We're spent the last couple of nights living in a traditional Mongolian ger (tent-like structure) - the scenery was breath-taking, and the air was breath-able, which is a nice change after smoggy China.

While at the ger we went horse riding, visited a nomad family at their ger, ate some interesting dairy products and made the most of the lovely views.

Unfortunately I'm feeling a bit crook today - early diagnosis was a hangover, but I think it may be a bit more lingering. We have an overnight train to Russia this evening so hopefully a good sleep will make me a bit more lucid and descriptive for my first blog from Russia.

Goodness, Gracious, Great Wall of China

Yesterday Claire and I took a day trip north of Tianjin to visit the Great Wall.

We spent a lovely three hours on the train there chatting to some students and miming to their parents. When we arrived in Ji Xian we were met by our guide Diana and our cavalier chauffeur, Mr Wong. It was a 30 minute drive through the lush green country side to the wall at Gyuan - actually, it probably should have taken longer, but Mr Wong had a rather lax interpretation of the road rules as do many of the drivers around China.

The wall was amazing, we were right in the middle of a valley and it went soaring up among the jagged mountains to either side of us. Diana accompanied us most of the way up but had to turn around at the last bit, which I thought was fair enough considering that she was trying to do it in high heels. The final section was so steep that I climbed it using all fours, and had to crab crawl back down. It was worth it though, the view was spectacular and we were pretty much the only people there.

After the climb we ate lunch, saw a few temples in town and then Diana put us on a bus home. The bus was a decrepit mini-van and most of the trip was spent chugging along at about 30 km/h. It was the worst bus trip ever, but it was fascinating to see the effects of rampant growth on rural and sub-urban China. As we got closer to Tianjin we passed the factory workers spilling out after their shifts, heading home on their bikes or stopping to eat at roadside carts.

By time we made it back to the hostel, over 3 and a half hours later, we were caked in dust. We washed and decided to head out for dinner. Claire took me to a restaurant so that I could try lots of authentic Chinese dishes. We had Sichuan hot-pot, Peking duck, sweet and sour pork, and lamp (lamb) skewers. It was all incredibly tasty - but never fear, it was all at a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant so it was fake meat!

Today we meet the group we'll be travelling the Trans-Mongolian with, which means heading back to Beijing on the express train - travelling about 350km/h, it should be snappier than yesterday's bus ride.

Curse of the Cankle

After three days of walking around in my sneakers in the oppressive heat, my ankles have turned bright red and swollen so that from calf to foot is one straight line. It's rather sensitive to touch and looks like scars from stepping into a deepfrier as a child.

To alleviate the pain, Claire and I took bikes around Tianjin today. Tianjin is East of Beijing, but equally flat. Riding here is a pleasure, even on the clunky pink single speeder that I christened Lui-Xi for the day. Bike helmets are non-existent and road rules are much the same -The jaywalking policeman was a particular highlight. Bikes have their own lane completely separated from cars, so all together it was a delight to peddle around.

We rode out to the Olympics stadium, where soccer finals have been held. We also visited some temples and old streets around town to do some shopping. Claire is a demon bargainer - she's so ruthless that when we went to the supermarket I was afraid she was even going to haggle with the register attendant...

The swelling and redness has started to go down on my ankles, but they still look rather nasty. Nothing a few quiet days can't fix.