Posts filed under 'Travel'
A nice surprise this week - an email from a friend in Germany, who found the blog in passing, and tracked me down to my work email address. What I like about this is that we met back in 1993, and despite not meeting up much since, emails and letters, off and on, have helped us keep up with each other.
Sometimes the world goes rattling ahead and we expect that nothing will stay the same. But he’s still a teacher, I’m still working with teachers (and aspiring ones), and all of a sudden you realise that quite a few things can stay the same. And it’s rather a nice feeling.
I also heard from a friend working abroad - who is taking the trouble to put up lots of nice pics on his blog of life in Asia. Having another friend living in the same country, it’s great to get more of a sense of what life is like there, with both of them in mind. Sometimes speed of change is good - how much easier is it to keep up with people, even after a gap, when it’s so quick and easy to find out how they are getting on, via emails, blogs and so on?
Today, it was time for a game of ‘oh, you know…X too’? A friend at work was showing pictures of his wedding, and we recognised that their photographer was probably related to someone I know from a completely different context. Admittedly, the longer you stay in Edinburgh, the easier it is to play this game, but it’s still nice when it happens, particularly when you’re also saying goodbyes to other people heading away from Edinburgh.
What also interests me here is that all these connections this week came through men - when it’s still probably assumed that women have the monopoly on keeping address books, remembering birthdays, and generally keeping communication flowing. Maybe these chaps are all in the New (Communicative) Man category.
But still, three cheers for continuity. Britain may be a bit hard pressed at the moment, what with difficult financial circumstances at so many different levels. It’s not the ‘Blitz spirit’. But it’s still welcome.
October 23rd, 2009
Through to Glasgow - and beyond! The bright lights of Glasgow Queen Street Lower Level - and the even brighter yellow plastic seating - are good for keeping you awake when heading from A to B.
But what I’d noticed last time I used this station, and was reminded of today, was the almost constant injunction over the tannoy: “Always hold the handrail - and take care on the stairs.”
Now this is all well and good, all risks assessed and dealt with. What interests me is the little light attempts at poetry that public announcements offer. It could be a missing verse from Paul Simon’s “50 ways to leave your lover”. If only he’d taken care on the stairs, he might not have needed to slip out the back, Jack…
Some of these announcements are so ingrained, you almost feel you could slip them into conversation to change the tone, if you weren’t sure what to say next. The melody of them, familiar as verse because we hear them so much, is comforting - as well as becoming fairly devoid of meaning, after a while. Some of them even slip into everyday use, usually to parody ourselves: “exits are here, here and here…”
You can probably add your own, but here’s my selection of ‘public poetry’ options for your next cocktail party:
- “the person you are calling knows you are waiting”
- “a trolley service…of drinks and light refreshments…is available on the train”
- “or why not send a text?”
- “…and…Glenrothes with Thorntons.”
They don’t really say Thorntons. But I live in hope that the trolley service might hand them out some time, as we prepare to uplift all our personal belongings.
September 9th, 2009
I know I’ve said before that this blogging lark is more for me than it is for you (though I hope that’s not a selfish statement). Having come home stroppy two nights in a row, part of what made the difference yesterday was sitting and writing, and having a chance to calm down.
But then, when people do comment, it makes it all the more worthwhile - particularly where I learn more about them, or their thoughts on life as a result. Last time I restarted the blog, I had comments from male friends - maybe not so surprising given that it’s still more the men than the women who blog.
This time, great to hear from female friends straight off - so perhaps I can encourage some of them towards their own blog writing? Many have really interesting thoughts to share.
One of the other things I’ve enjoyed for myself, and am now trying to spread a little further, is the art of sending parcels. When I lived in Poland the first time, I was working in a school for the blind, and my mum learned that you could send up to a kilo of parcel for free (in most post offices) if it was marked ‘for the services of the blind’. She must have kept the local post office very busy, anyway, because I got some great parcels! And the kids I worked with got benefits too from sheet music and other things she sent over which I could use in teaching.
I’ve been reminded of it when sending parcels to friends in Italy. Being both frugal and enjoying a spot of tesselation (that’s cramming multiple items into boxes to you), I’m having fun seeing how much can be fitted into the standard boxes you can buy from the post office.
Book reviews torn out of the weekend newspapers make great padding for smaller items, I’ve discovered, and I have a suspicion that squashy bags of ground coffee might work well too. (Coals to Newcastle, I’m sure, sending coffee to Italy, but it’s part of a particular theme for that parcel.)
The memorable parcels were ones we used to get on holiday on the Isle of Jura. It tending to be somewhat wet in the west, shall we say, relatives who knew we were going on holiday would put together parcels, knowing that there would be a wet day (or more) AND that the books we had taken with us would run out at some point. Getting a parcel part way through, with new books, but perhaps also sweeties or a game…great excitement.
The ultimate parcel? A sofa bed, which was in the cottage on Jura for many years. One time, those staying in the cottage were told by the postmaster that there was a ‘parcel’ for them at the pier…the sofa bed had been delivered and was waiting to be collected. It was known forever more as ‘the parcel’, which allowed you to have somewhat opaque conversations with nearest and dearest about the relative merits of ’sleeping on the parcel’.
September 9th, 2009
I’ve not ventured into Second Life - first life quite occupying, thanks. But there are still some attractions to having an alter ego, maybe particularly online, but perhaps a few variations in the everyday too.
Before this all starts sounding too ‘multiple personality’, we all do it - because we all fit into each others’ lives in different ways. I’ve sat in on those team build-y type exercises where you have to describe who you are - and often it’s in terms of labels, many we give ourselves and some we let others give us.
Back to online: I was expecting a few more pseudonyms in some of the Facebook applications, particularly the ones which allow you to beat up people who have (probably unwisely) agreed to be your friend. Given that a lot of superheroes do have alternative names, I decided to be Superfrau for the purposes of the game. (Superfrau has a real life aspect too: it’s written on a small soft toy key ring I was given by the German interviewer of the students I send abroad.)
Sadly, only one other person I knew picked out an alter ego, although there are plenty of others out there on Facebook who are perfectly happy with their pseudonyms, mostly nicked from the TV show Heroes (which seems fair enough, as the game I play is based on that premise). But it got me thinking about which of our alter egos we keep as we go on in life.
When I was 19, I did the gap year thing, went to Poland for half a year. And yes, it was the life-changing experience that gap years are heralded to be - in loads of different ways. I hadn’t expected to, but I linked myself with Poland. It influenced how I decorated my room at university, how I cooked, the kind of music I listened to. It had a major impact on how I viewed things like hospitality, and other positives I wanted to emulate, when back in the UK.
Part of this was also what I told others about myself. For some time, any connection with Poland - even if it wasn’t the exotic gap year that some had had - seemed unusual for a UK citizen with no family ties there. I enjoyed a perspective that was European, but a different kind of Europe.
Now, over 15 years since I first went there, I find myself identifying myself less with Poland. It’s not that the significance has faded. But Poland is less part of my life than it was. My point is, it is unlikely to regain that position it had - because I have moved on too. Other identities have entered my life, many of which get lived more on a daily basis than the Polish aspects I hung onto.
So what? Life today offers vast amounts of change, choice, alternatives. Perhaps I put more stock in particular identities because I don’t have the consistency of belonging that some do. I don’t come from one particular place - though Edinburgh does offer the best option, having been home for a good number of years.
There are other identities that we gradually realise have been passed on to others. Mid thirties, the desire to change the world quite so much, the capacity for large amounts of caffeine, these seem to have slipped quietly out the room, probably when I was doing something significant like hanging up washing.
Perhaps what I’m struggling towards is a notion of letting go of some aspects of who I’ve been - but not feeling diminished in the process. Quite enjoying a little more space - equally, not rushing to fill it. Meanwhile, can I recommend Captain Fantastico for your day to day superhero requirements?
December 21st, 2008
Paris in the spring…With a few more days to go of nights drawing in, it’s harder to imagine a time where the light will become clearer again, even beautiful. There is something about spring light, and the promise it holds of cheer now, and cheerful times to come.
For me, spring is also linked to travel to Europe. In spring, we start to move out of our near-hibernation, into broader activities, and for me, travelling to ‘the continent’ seems bound up with that move to wider spaces. Looking back through my notebook for writing ideas, and our travel-related posts, it seems a shame to miss this one out, especially in the dark of the year where we need things to look forward to.
Europe in the spring started with German exchanges. In the days before cheap flights (and from reading others’ Facebook posts, even now), school trips abroad tended to involve lots of long overland travel. So we got the obligatory 5am coach ride from the Midlands to Dover, got on a ferry to Ostende, and from Ostende onto a train that would take us through Belgium and down the Rhine in Germany, for our host families to meet us in Mainz.
I was at an event celebrating Germany yesterday, and one of the activities in the group for young people was talking about things we saw in Germany that surprised us. Even before getting to Germany itself, our group discovered the older kind of European train rolling stock, with seats that push together in the middle of the compartment to make beds. We had no idea that German trains would be so conducive to playing sardines, and set off to see how many teenagers we could fit in one compartment…
One of the advantages of going to Europe in the spring is that it’s a few weeks ahead of the UK for signs of spring - blossom is already out, trees are in leaf, people are already sitting outside cafes (and not just because there’s a smoking ban). Life starts to feel more expansive, more open to possibility. Even when you have to go back to the UK, there is hope that these options are not too far away for us too.
Later, studying German at university, and trying to keep up some Polish, spring became a good time to try to go back to either country to see people. Certainly in the first year or two, before grants were frozen, my travel plans took in quite a few places - with the opportunity to travel by train, heading through wider landscapes, and gaining more of that spring fever. Since then, worktrips have enabled me to continue the trend, as our main set of policy meetings with partner agencies abroad is usually around Easter time.
It’s not just about the travel, good though that is, or the places themselves. Europe in the spring has become something of a state of mind, a boost for the synapses as well as the spirits. As the year draws to a close, we tend to go back into familiar patterns, traditions for Christmas and New Year, reviews of what has passed. It’s good to remind myself that there is also a time for new things to come after this, new perspectives - and new delights the world has to offer.
December 13th, 2008
The season of hibernation continues. Do habits set in more quickly when it’s dark all the time? At any rate, we’re back to a reading aloud at the end of the day habit, and the book we’re on, “Full Tilt”, seems worth a mention, particularly when it contains descriptions of blue skies and heat.
We’re both keen on travel books, in this case the kind where someone else does the travelling and writes about it in a witty way. We have a few stacked up to read, and finally started this one, written by an Irish woman, Dervla Murphy, who decides to cycle to India. As you do. Or in fact, as she planned to do from the age of 10. But, unlike many of us and our early-stated ambitions, she actually sets off to do it, once in her 30s, and with a suitably heroic bike which becomes a second leading lady in the story.
She writes in the 1960s, when the Soviets are being seen to be gathering in around Afghanistan, one of her countries on route, but have not yet got going fully. The Shah is still in place in Iran (or rather, Persia, as she calls it), and hitchhiking is still an option - all to the good for Dervla, if her bike breaks down or the road gets impassable.
Rather nicely, she includes an equipment list in the back of the book, so you can work out how many tubes of sun lotion to take on your next intercontinental trek. She also packs a pistol, literally, and writes about the uses of it in amazingly understated ways (let’s just say, there are still wolves in the woods of central Europe at the time she is passing through).
In some ways, we are happily ploughing through the next set of adventures; at points, we look at each other and say ‘Nutter!’ at the general endeavour. People are often saying how it’s difficult to do travels that others haven’t done - but you would have to ask yourself how many lone women would set out to do that kind of journey now, only a few decades later, even if she’s had the sense to send spare tyres and inner tubes ahead to a certain set of international organisation’s offices.
We have just reached the point where she is entering Afghanistan, and it will be interesting to see how the descriptions compare with the images we have from news stories of recent years. And in our current midwinter torpor, reading about someone casually knocking off 80 mile cycle rides, day after day, brings only admiration.
Meanwhile, Dan looked up Dervla’s name online, and found that she is still trying to do epic cycle rides now, in her 70s, though somewhat hampered by hips and knees not behaving themselves. Once an adventurer, always an adventurer? I suspect we will be looking out for sequels.
December 9th, 2008
Next door bought a large trampoline earlier in the year. Perfect child magnet. (It works quite well as an adult magnet too, but only as long as the adults consent to have their performance critiqued by the kids). We haven’t yet been asked if we want a go, but as long as we keep making approving noises at our neighbour’s routines on the trampoline, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before we’re given a shot.
But what happens when the year turns cold, and there’s no time to play out? You need a few other options up your sleeve. Many of our readers are familiar with our yellow friend Eric - and for those who aren’t, type in ‘Eric Frydman’ on Facebook and see what you find. Eric is happy to add child magnet to his list of abilities (as well as conducting, playing charades, and general making us laugh duty).
In fact, such is Eric’s appeal that we had to find additional Erics for our friends in Italy, and Dan’s small cousin on the west coast. Other friends’ children have wised up to Eric’s importance in the household - when I got in the car to get a lift from the family a month or two back, the first question was ‘Is the yellow thing with you?’ Eric consents to dance, hang upside down, spin round and round, be tied in knots, quite apart from laughing obligingly at each ‘look at this!’
For parties, we have another trick up our sleeves - or in the box we bring out for parties involving small children (that is to say, all parties now, pretty much). One of my toys from my childhood is a Viewmaster - essentially a way to view pictures in 3D, by inserting a disc of images in the viewer and looking at the overlapped images. Despite the fact that kids now have lots of access to films and cartoons, this always gets played with and marvelled over by new visitors, particularly when they get the hang of working it themselves.
Tall bloke, child magnet. Dan discovered on our recent trip to Italy just how tempting it is for kids to have a moving climbing frame that will also tickle you and hold you upside down. Unless of course three medium sized kids jump on the climbing frame at the same time…and even then, there’s a happy balance between pretending you’re completely outnumbered and actually being so.
Meanwhile, I’m off for my tea - food being a long favoured magnet of most children, and thankfully, adults too.
December 8th, 2008
Sometimes, a title comes to me, and I know I have to use it. I’ll bung it down in the notebook, waiting for a point at which I can write about it. And following a holiday to a house whose inhabitants love books just as much as Dan and I, it seems a suitable time.
A reading rat - Leseratte - is the German equivalent to a bookworm. It was featured on a set of postcards from the Goethe Institut - they know how to do their advertising, I have to say. I sent it over to David, who is interested in German at the moment, and rediscovered it in a book, while we were over.
Shame in a way to choose rats and worms for such things - here are these wonderful things, books, and our way to talk about people who like them is to relate them to animals which are often the source of fear or disgust. My guess is that there’s probably some implied reference to devouring anything, which probably is true of serious book dependency after a while.
An alternative might be to talk about book fever - the illness that besets one when discovering just how addictive books are. I’m not just talking ‘can’t put them down’ thrillers. Even Enid Blyton can hit that craving button, when you are six or seven, and there just aren’t enough hours in the night to read. Talk about reading yourself into an early pair of glasses, as I did.
They warn you about sweet shops, and fast food stores, but libraries are pushers too. Want one? Why not take six? In fact, read three in the first day, take them back, and take out another six in addition to the ones you’ve not started yet.
This visit to Italy, both the older girls were getting stuck into books. The younger of the two is into Geronimo Stilton, mouse detective, whom I can only hope will get translated into English at some point. The cartoons that go with it are certainly fun. And I remember my discovery of Asterix at a previous age. The one thing better than a really good read is the discovery that you’ve only just started the series, and that they are still writing more…
These days, it’s getting harder to let animal instinct take over when it comes to reading. Time is shorter, and I find that I read several shorter things, rather than start a longer one and have to stop.
I quite fancy the idea of being some kind of reading polar bear - take on enough books to see you through the winter, in the way that they take on enough food supplies to keep going, and then dig yourself into a nice snowdrift (or equivalent) for a few months. If only they’d let you stay in bed to read during the winter, rather than going to work, I’m sure we could all achieve fuel efficiency too, because we’d still be warm enough.
If there’s any readers who can comment on what imagery is used for voracious book reading in other languages, would be interested to know. Next week, magazine locusts…
November 24th, 2008
I’m going to lay my cards on the table straight out - as well as beginning the gaming metaphors - and confirm that I was a bad loser at board games as a child. And so I stopped. Unattracted as I was, equally, to other people being openly competitive, there wasn’t much reason to start again. Except this year, for some reason I have wanted to play board games.
I still don’t know why it should be. Perhaps it helps that some of the board games available now are more interesting than the ones I played as a child. (I still hold a torch for Mine-A-Million, which allowed you to build up oil reserves, and ship them to the other side of the world. But what with global warming, and pirates taking over oil tankers, I don’t think that one’s going to come back into fasion.)
I’m talking about games like Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan. And I rather like Ticket to Ride, particularly the European version where I can distract others from my losing by being smug and saying “been there!” on some of the more obscure routes. Games which are different every time, in terms of how you make up the board, keep me interested - and take the sting out of losing, or at least of not winning.
Our friends Jan and Paul are good on the board game front, and introduced us to both Settlers and Mah Jong, though we clearly need to build up more practice on games in between visits. But the real shift was going on holiday with friends in June, and playing board games most nights. And liking it.
When you are a child, winning and losing is a much bigger deal, and having siblings to taunt you, or parents to point out that you are a bad loser, tends to distract you from even trying to put a brave face on it. A couple of decades down the line, and you’ve realised that there are many ways to win and lose in daily life, and so a brief stint at a board game is perhaps easier to take on.
In the case of our trip in June, it perhaps helped to be there with a very competitive friend, who you knew would win (almost) all the games anyway. This took the actually trying to win part out of the equation, leaving you focus on banter, admiration of nice design of board game, an additional glass of wine, and so on. (Obviously, if wine had been in the equation as a child, who know how many people would have stopped being bad losers much earlier?)
But I think the real reason for it is a desire to be with people. To do something together that you can remember, but that isn’t that big and important either, so you can focus on the people too. Perhaps the addition of a nice fire, or bad weather, or large amounts of chocolate etc, add to the picture of it being a very positive thing to stay indoors and be with people you like.
And for that, I can even risk the possibility that some competition might come into the equation.
November 23rd, 2008
Social ill is a bit harsh. But it’s interesting going out for a meal in another country - particularly a European country, given the ongoing belief in the UK that we still eat worse than our European counterparts - and think you could have done better at home.
Targets on the list? France is rather good at pre-dressed salad, as was Germany, back in the spring, and both were overly salty. Top marks back to Italy, where you can generally dress your own salad at the table, although there’s still more of a tendency to add salt.
I still find salting a salad vegetable a bit strange, particularly when you could choose a tangier lettuce if you wanted more of a taste hit, but it still sits easier with me than adding cream to lettuce (my former flatmate in Poland. It was just cream. I like a cream-y sauce on a salad from time to time, but not quite in this form).
Morning coffee in Italian hotels can be a bit of a disappointment - and this in a country which is really rather rated for its coffee. Best trick is probably to forgo a hotel breakfast and get a quick breakfast in a nearby bar - which clearly works very well for the commuting population too, in many places.
We’re used to ’serving suggestions’ on packaging, those kind of pictures that help you understand what to have on a plate with mayonnaise, for example. France goes a step further, and suggests on its packets that you should actively have chocolate at breakfast time.
I know that many people need no encouragement in this area, but normally chocolate gets brought out later in the day…once something’s gone wrong…or you’re flagging at work? Maybe we have completely the wrong attitude to chocolate - maybe our days would go much better if we had chocolate at breakfast time, and mustered the will to strike much earlier in the day.
I had an unexpected stop in a French hotel recently, and they offered the usual buffet breakfast option. What was interesting was the paper serving mats on the table - like you get in fast food places here - only in France, it told you what elements you should be having to start the day.
There were 4 of them, and as far as I remember, you should have some protein, some carbohydrate, some fruit and something to drink to rehydrate you. I’m sure chocolate was included in at least one of the categories as a serving suggestion…
Does this mean that the French are constantly thinking about how to balance their diets? Is the placemat for visiting foreigners who need to shape up in this area - but need to be able to read French to do so? Or is it a sign of a country also worried about its children going the way of the fast food chains?
Final food note: restaurants in Germany put rice in pots of table salt - I think this is to absorb any liquid which might get in, and cause the salt to dissolve, or clump, or something of that kind. It makes lots of practical sense - but it doesn’t look quite as nice to look at.
Aesthetics eh? You get them where you can.
November 23rd, 2008
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