Not Off the Radar, Just Poor

HARROW LIBRARY, RAYNERS LANE: Frequent readers to this page will have no doubt deserted me by this stage but rest assured I've not been co-opted into the Celebrity Big Brother House nor have I been kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents, instead I've been busy using my internet time to apply for jobs. No luck yet but it's still early days.

Other than that I've spent a couple of days hanging out in Shepherd's Bush, visited Oxford yesterday and the rest of the time lying low. I made my English debut playing football last week and be assured it's a much rougher game than back home. We also did a few touristy things last week with Rod and Rob including visiting Buckingham Palace, Westminster and the Thames. We even went to Number 10 Downing Street, or as close as we could get. The whole of Downing Street is blocked off with heavily armed guards with sub-machine guns standing behind some massive gates, but we were allowed to take photos of them.

When Good Bogans Go Bad

RAYNERS LANE PUBLIC LIBRARY: Since I'm doing nothing but working on my CV and looking for employment I thought I'd bring you this gem from Australia's greastest mother Roseleigh Rose (courtesy of Charlie Brown):

Asked about three of her six children serving time in prison, Ms Rose
said: "What are you supposed to do? At least I know where my bloody
kids are, even if they are in jail.

"There's people who don't even know where their kids are.

"I kind of liked Clinton being in jail because I knew where he was ...
before I'd worry about him, always expecting the phone call - he'd
pinched a car and rolled off a cliff.

"But when he'd ring from jail, I'd be thinking, `all right, hope you
get a couple of years there'."

Her daughter, 15-year-old Melenae Kisina, likened the Corby clan to the
Brady Bunch.

"Three girls and three boys. Or maybe we're the Corby-Kisina-Rose
Bunch," she said, referring to the children by three different fathers.

"It doesn't matter - at least you know who your fathers are," Ms Rose
responded.

Having a Whale of A Time

RAYNERS LANE, PUBLIC LIBRARY: Welcome to London, the city Benjamin Disraeli called not a city, but a nation. And while I've only been here four days it's the kind of statement you'd have to agree with. I spent some time with Charlie Brown around his flat, including an all night welcome to London bender, and despite it's repuation for being an Antipodean ghetto, it seemed as multicultural a place as I've ever visited.

You all might have seen the news that a whale had found it's way up the Thames in search of a good curry and a night at the theatre. Well after the aforementioned welcome to London bender I set out to the Battersea Bridge in Chelsea to see said whale with Charlie and his housemate. Unfortunately we showed up fifteen minutes late. Ahab and his crew had already scooped the poor beast into the Pequod and ferried it down the river.

Yesterday we went to visit Stratford-Upon-Avon but only got as far as Milton Keynes. It's a lot harder to find your way out of town than you'd think.

Rodents in Washington

I got this from my cousin's travel email. And since we've just finished a phase of our journey, that started with a celebrity sighting, I thought it was kind of circular:

On the way home we had another celebrity sighting. I had sensed a general antipathy amongst the readership about Stanley Tucci. Not many enquiries were received. Our next brush with fame was with a man whose contribution to his chosen profession is about on par with Tucci - John Nance Garner once described the position of this man as not worth a pitcher of warm spit! {Garner was a Texan and a tobacco chewer so his experience with warm spit - in a pitcher or otherwise - exceeds mine.}

In any event, we were taking a short cut through the back of a cinema complex when I noted two cars. One was a black Chevy Suburban with tinted windows and the engine running. The other was a sedan with not one but four aerials at the back. Out the front of the cinema were another two sedans, another 3 Chevy's, three local cop cars and assorted other vehicles. The street was filled with serious looking men in suits talking into their hands. We were held up on the pavement by a DC cop and a group emerged from a local restaurant. Marg was ready to take a photo but was unable to pick any of the group who actually looked important. So, away sped the leader of the free world, the former President.... of Halliburton, the puppet master,..... US vice president Dick Cheney. Has anyone heard of him either?

Last Night on the Continent

DUNKIN DONUTS, BERLIN: My last blog entry on the continent. Would you believe it friends, six countries in eight weeks (not exactly a Contiki tour), has finally rolled to an end. After a week in Berlin I'm almost looking forward to getting back to London where good friends and soft beds no doubt await me.

The last couple of days in Berlin have been fantastic but we're absolutely exhausted after just being so go go go for a week and doing superhuman amounts of walking. Today we basically unwound by visiting a couple of museums. We started this morning at the Hampburger Bahnhof which is a modern art gallery in a converted train station. They have a fantastic collection with plenty of gems by Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Twombly and Beuys which was fun. They also had a full scale minimalist exhibition, parts of it exhibited in the cavernous area underneath the old train station, that included works by John Cage, Sol LeWitt and others. Anyone familiar with contemporary art knows minimalism can be a hard sell but I thoroughly enjoyed it. In particular I fell in love with a concrete radio, basically a lump of concrete plugged into a wall. Another highlight was the work of Anselm Keifer who does some incredible sculptures with lead.

After lunch we visited the new Jewish Museum, the glorious product of the imagination of architectural wunderkid Daniel Libeskind, the visionary charged with revitalising the former World Trade Centre precinct. Designed to resemble a fallen Star of David the museum takes you undergound through a series of passages displaying various objects given to non-Jews for safekeeping during the Holocaust. There is also an eerily beautiful tower, complete blacked out save for an arc of light at the top. The building uses light exceptionally well and while you stroll around it your attention is often arrested by starkly symmetrical beams of light that seem to shine through from nowhere. (Kind of like the beam of light that's supposed to illuminate the hiding spot of the arc of the covenant in Raiders of the Lost Arc.) Another part featured an installation by an Israeli artist. A collection of iron faces, the explanation implored people to walk across it, and when you did you not only got the sensation of walking on the innumerable skulls of genocide but the acoustics to the tall room also meant that all the clacking generated the most beautiful cacophony. Unfortunately we were too tired to really enjoy the rest of the exhibits.

Yesterday was supposed to be our cruisy day so we started by visiting the longest remaining section of the wall. It has been turned into an outdoor art gallery called the East Side Gallery unfortunately all the art seems to have fallen into total disrepair and is completely covered by a million different versions of "Kilroy Was Here". Then we visited Kreuzberg for some lazy window shopping in second hand clothing stores, record stores and that sort of thing. In the afternoon we took a lightning quick trip out to the Olympic Stadium to catch a premonition of the World Cup final (Bresciano to Cahill, Cahill props, shoots, Australian hoist the Cup aloft... I think I'm getting ahead of myself.) We did see the stadium from the distance but it doesn't look like they've done too much to it. And the train station certainly hasn't been renovated since Owens disgraced Hitler.

When we got back to the hostel it was all set up for a teenage living room party. Depeche Mode where in town. Our hostel is launching a revamped version of its sister hostel so to help promote it they decided to throw an after party. They moved amay the internet pc's, pushed the tables to the edges of the room and set up a projector screen for big screen versions of nu-Romantic filmclips. So after we got home from a rather disappointing night of barhopping we got to sip cold ones and watch a dancefloor full of pseudo-goths swaying to "The Forest" by The Cure. A definite, without a shimmer of sarcasm, party starter.

Anyway my friends this will be my last dispatch from the continent. So I'd like to leave you with one final musing that hit me in the cab (Berlin Funk Cabs!)last night. This city is more scarred by its former Communist path than any of the other major capitals we've been to. It's a curious mix of the rebuilt, the death zone that stood between the two walls is a major site for commercial development, and the absolutely decrepit. What seems strangest to this humble blogger is that this city was half capitalist.

Anyway I'll bring you more musings and adventures from Mother England!

Ich bin ein Berliner

SONY CENTRE, BERLIN: Day three in Berlin and both Kate and myself are thoroughly enjoying ourselves. Outside it's snowing for the first time in about a week and we're warmly ensconsed in one corner of the Sony Centre. A technological and architectural marvel that houses a cinema where we've spent the last two evenings watching films. First Narnia and last night Jarhead. I know you're all saying what are you doing watching films when you're in Berlin but Kate has been hanging to see Narnia for forever and I've been waiting to check out Jarhead for even longer. I would definitely recommend Jarhead and Narnia was okay.

And as for Berlin... yesterday we did a walking tour of the city that took in the Brandenburg Gates, the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his baby, the carpark where Hitler's bunker used to stand, the Jewish memorial, Checkpoint Charlie, parts of The Wall, various cathedrals, a memorial to the famous Nazi book burning, a chocolate model of the Titanic, the Reichstag and several other sites. It's a strange place, in all the tourist areas you can buy tiny flecks of concrete marketed as the wall. Any old entrepeneur can go into business with a sledgehammer, a Besser brick and a can of spray paint.

Then last night we visited the Checkpoint Charlie museum which was wonderfully disorganised but full of all sorts of thrilling escape stories like the guys that flew a light airplane over the wall, a midget sub that delivered somebody halfway along the Baltic (he later patented it and made a fortune) and various hollowed out cars.

Today was a bit of a museum day and we visited the Pergammon first which includes a reconstruction of an Ancient Greek temple, the ceremonial way from Babylon as well as the stunning, sumptous and massive Ishtar gates which stood at the end of the ceremonial way. There were also various artefacts from around the Muslim world. It was really one of the finest collections of antiquities I have ever seen. Afterwards we visited another art gallery which had a nice Bonnard, some early Monet's and some fantastic German paintings. We finished up the day at the Picture Gallery looking at, you guessed it, more Brueghels. This last gallery is actually quite an incredible place and we're going back today or tomorrow on our jumbo tickets.

(ps. i have the sneaking suspicion this blog entry sucks but don't have time to re-edit it as am trying to find out about a cultural event involving nick hornby in berlin)

More Art Wankery

SAME CALL SHOP, MUNICH: To quickly fill you in on our last day in Venice. We rose early and headed out to the Schloss Palace, the summer palace of the Hapsburgs. It was impressive but after you've seen the Hermitage the lustre on everything else seems dulled. It had a beautiful garden though, and with more brilliant sunshine, it looked absolutely stunning.

After the palace we visited the Belvedere which houses an art gallery that includes most of Gustave Klimt's most famous paintings, including The Kiss and the Bloch portraits, as well as some interesting paintings by Munch. The real highlight however was a room of paintings by Egon Schiele, an artist I'd never heard of before. The downside, however, was that there was a major Schiele retrospective on across town and Schiele museum in Cesky Krumlov. Neither of which we visited since my knowledge of Schiele was bascially zero.

Munchen

AN INTERNATIONAL PHONE CALL SHOP, MUNICH: I am know in the city that Lonely Planet describes as the Bavarian motherlode. And drinking steins of dark beer with Chinese space scientists in a cavernous beer hall complete with drunken revelers and an oompah band, I was inclined to agree with them.

It was a lucky thing we found the much feted beer hall as we were drinking upstairs and wondering why this place wasn't living up to its expectations. It was only as we went to leave we found this beer hall as big as an jumbo jet hangar. Almost the Kremlin all over again.

Earlier in the day we wondered around downtown Munich checking out some of their beautiful gothic architecture and some more amazing churches. One of them even claims to have the devil's footprint embedded in the entryway. He's about size 10 if anyone is interested! Then we visited the Deutches Museum which is a science nut's wetdream. There was only enough time to scratch the surface of things but we visited the space pavillion, saw displays and interactive things on bridge buildings, walked through what seemed to be kilometres of mine shafts, saw a model train show, learned about asthma drugs and marvelled at the size of jet engines. It was definitely one of the best, and probably the biggest, science museum I've ever visited.

Today we visted the two major art galleries: the Alter Pinkothek and the Neu Pinkothek. The Neu Pinkothek was one of the crappest art galleries I have ever visited. Filled with room after room of totally dull realist paintings, it was only saved by one of Van Gogh's "Sunflowers", a nice Bonnard, a nice Degas and a couple of other good Impressionist paintings. The other gallery had room after room of Rubens, including one of the biggest pictures I've ever seen, a couple of nice Raphaels, another two Brueghels, tonnes of Duhrer, a good da Vinci and some average Rembrandts.

Tonight I think it'll just be a couple of quiet pints in the hostel and hopefully some footy on the tv. I've already seen Harry Kewell net an absolute scorched against Spurs this afternoon. Watch out Roberto Carlos.

Our Man in Venice

HARRY LIME'S HAT BAND, VIENNA: So we finally made it out of Cesky Krumlov on a 6 AM bus. Travel, it sometimes seems, has less to do with experiencing culture and history and more to do with your backpack finding new ways of torturing you. Dragging two extremely laden backpacks down a very narrow aisle in a pre-dawn bus filled with school kids and early morning wage slaves is one of them. Lugging it down the aisle of a narrow Eurotrain is something I'm quite used to.

Vienna is quite a beautiful city. Yesterday we caught a train into town and wandered around for a little bit getting blown away by the Gothic St. Stephen's cathedral and the uber-Gothic Parliament building which ranks among the most impressive buildings we've seen all trip. Then we went and visited the Hofburg palace which was home to the Hapsburgs. One thing I've really learnt on this trip is my architecture. I can differentiate the Baroque from the Gothic at 2k's. And what I've discovered about the Baroque is... that I don't really like it. I think it looks like the flowery, ornate armrests on a musty armchair in a house where somebody has recently died, only painted ruby red and gold.

Anyway the Hapsburgs seemed to live a life of unimagineable luxury, as evidenced by their silver dinner sets and ornate tangines. Actually I enjoyed looking at their crockery cupboard far more than I thought I would. And I was suprised by how Eurotrash the Hapsburgs where. I mean Emperor Franz Joseph, with a moustache that would put Sonny Barger to shame, marries his fifteen year old cousin then sometime later his son is involved in a murder suicide thing with his much younger girlfriend. I guess all they needed was an appearance on Springer.

Today we rode the tram around the city and took in the beautiful buildings... TWICE. It really is a beautiful city and because it isn't quite as cold as some places we've been, some of the gardens are green. Oh and did I mention we've had two sunny days.

Today we visited the famed Kunsthistoriches Museum which is the main reason we detoured to Austira. In it there is a room that contains no less than fourteen Pieter Brueghel the Elders so needless to say that's where we spent most of the morning. The room included pictures as famous as Children's Games, The Hunters, Early Spring and the Tower of Babel. There were some other cool pictures including some by Giorgione, Rembrandt, Bosch and Cannaletto.

Finally we finished the day off with a visit to the Danube at which point we started to freeze to death and didn't feel at all like waltzing to a Strauss tune.

The Last Dispatch from Eastern Europe

CESKY KRUMLOV, HOSTEL 99: It would seem none of you, dear readers, has heeded my advice since I've yet to spot any of you wandering blissfully through the winding streets of this fine town.

Since I last left you I have done very little. Yesterday we slept late, moved into a gorgeous little pension perched above the river, had the closest (and best) approximation of Full English for two months, and then wandered around the castle. In the afternoon we retired to our pension to read for about seven hours. I'm still plowing through Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamzov but every town we've vistited in the last two weeks (with the exception of Gdansk)has had ample stocks of back issues of liberal US magazines. So I've worked my way through a stack of New Yorkers, a copy of the Atlantic Monthly and am about to get started on some Harpers. So that's what we did yesterday.

Today was more strolling around town and then we did a brewery tour and indulged in some of the local product. Kate was even heard to say about a sultry dark beer, with a tone of authority, "This is one of the best beers I've ever tasted."

Anyway dear reader we are off for another cheap meal tonight before embarking on a fortnight of self catering: painfully dull pastas and cup-a-soups. Yes, we're leaving Eastern Europe. Saying goodbye to the Soviet's legacy, to disgruntled shopkeepers, broken roads, Lada's and the various Slavic languages. Tomorrow we leave for Vienna.

Good night and good luck.

Stop Press

HOTEL 99, CESKY KRUMLOV: Stop whatever your doing whether that's lazing around at home, or here I'm guaging the habits of my readers, bludging at work. Quit your jobs, put degrees on hold, abandon artistic projects, whatever it takes and get to Cesky Krumlov as fast as humanly possible.

This quaint little medieval town, with a castle and a cathedral, ringed in on three sides by a beautiful river is the most beautiful town we have visited in Europe. Where ever you look there are stunning views of the river, the castle, the cathedral, winding cobblestone alleyways.

And the food is incredible. Last night we dined out on a three course feed with beer(Ettenburg, brewed locally since 1355) that cost less than $15 a head.

Today we wandered aimlessly around the town before heading back to the hostel to read. We were going to stay two nights but that's already stretched to four. I'll spare you anymore superlatives and just post the pictures when we have them.

File Under Things Never to Do Again

A word of warning to any future tourists who may be visiting Prague - stay away from the puppet version of Don Giovanni. Not only is Motzart's opera dull and trite but when you see it animated by a troupe of very average looking puppets, complete with the puppeteers hats occasionally bobbing up from behind the set, with an average sound recording, well it turns into a steaming pile of turd.

Today was a better day though. We crossed the bridge again to visit Hradancy again and take in the stunning vistas, visit a monastery featuring a library that had books from the first millennium, a convenant and various scenic streets.

Tonight is jazz clubs and beer. Oh and I forgot to add in earlier posts that we are currently staying in a hostel that used to host former Czech Prime Minister and (I think) Nobel prize winning playwrite Valclav Havel. When he was imprisoned! Yes we are staying in converted prison cells.

Amateur Spielbergs

It's been a while since I've seen package tourists and it's been a while since I've seen anything that's really ticked me off. But you know what does it... video cameras.

How does it work? You invite your friends around and sit them down to watch a seventeen hour opus of art galleries and souvenir stores you visited in Europe. I mean some of them even compose their own commentaries.

"Now these are... Christmas markets. And this is a souvenir store where they sell, guess what? Souvenirs!"

Photographs I understand; you can just flick through them but what exactly do you do with hours of travelogue on a shaky hand held camera? These things would be so boring (and so long) they'd make Heaven's Gate look like a popcorn flick.

"I Prefer the Penrith RSL"

WENCESLAS SQUARE, PRAGUE: Coming to you live and direct from what seems to be the most popular tourist spot in Europe, at least from what Kate and I have seen. After weeks and weeks of virtually no tourists, certainly outside the Kremlin and the Hermitage, everywhere we look somebody seems to be peering into a map, or videotaping a brick wall or thumbing through a guide book.

I was a little skeptical of Prague at first. I mean it's reputation had preceeded it and I'd sort of figured that it had been given over to the tourist hordes because it was the most accessible and the closest of the Eastern European capitals. And we really have seen enough medieval vintage Old Towns to satisfy even the most ardent medieval revivalist. But with its gorgeous castle perched above the hill, looking down regally across the river through seemingly endless, winding cobble stone streets, I've been forced to jettison my 'I'm too cool for this kind of thing' hat and say that Prague truly is one of the most beautiful cities I've ever seen.

We spent most of the first day just wandering down various laneways, checking out Wenceslas Square and the Old Town and finding a bookstore where we could get a guide book. Then it was time to retire to the local for a couple of pints and a plate of pork.

Day two we caught a tram across the river and up the hill to check out some of the sights of Hrdancy. We visited an old convenant and then realised that everything we'd come to see had shut for lunch. So we cruised over to the castle. The view was incredible. I mean the grey clouds kind of put a limit on the visibility but other than that Prague's multi-spired skyline really does take your breath away. Inside the castle there was St. Vitus Cathedral with some of the most amazing stained glass I've ever seen and a few other buildings of note.



Prague City Skyline
There's also a thin alleyway of shops that houses the former home of one F. Kafka.

Which brings me to my next point of interest. This morning we walked across the famed Charles Bridge and visited the Franz Kafka museum which was first established on Barcelona, then toured to New York, before settling in his home town. It provided a very postmodern stroll not only through Kafka's town but also through his works. There was one room, for instance, that consisted of nothing but sheer black filing cabinet drawers from floor to ceiling featuring the names of some of his more famous protagonists. There was a frightening exhibit for "In the Penal Colony".

Then we walked back across the bridge to take a walking tour of the Jewish part of the Old Town and take in a few Franz Kafka sights. Our guide was excellent and filled us in on various parts of the Jewish mythology that animates the history of the area.

Tonight we're off, at the recommendation of our French friends, to check out Motzart's "Don Giovanni" as performed by puppets.

And if you're curious the title of this entry refers to the Rugby League player who on a visit to this cultural smorgasbord of a city expressed disdain that it was devoid of TAB's. Rugby League, you gotta love it, it's the game they play in coal mining heaven.

paka

Bitched Up For New Years

WENCESLAS SQUARE, PRAGUE: So here is basically the recreated text of an email I posted earlier this week that was inexplicably marooned somewhere in the digital annals.

New Years Eve commenced with an overpriced train ride to Marbork, a small Polish town that includes the largest brick castle in Europe. Marbork seemed to be one of those pleasent small towns you see all over the US and parts of Europe but never in Australia. Not too big, not too small, just right as goldilocks might say. Anyway it was snowing buckets when we got to the castle and most of it was closed. The upside was apart from a bus load of package German tourists who departed on our arrival we had most of this amazing castle to ourselves. We were free to run along the hallways, play in the various courtyards and explore up and down the various curving staircases that were open. We even had an aborted attempt at building a snowman. Outside the castle walls, and the two moats, were completely covered by thick blankets of snow. It was quite a Narnia experience.


Narnia World


More Narnia World... (No CGI here)

Then on a bridge across a river that overlooks the castle - it gives you quite a special panorama, we met a couple of Polish kids. They wanted to impress us with their command of English swearwords:-
"Suck my sausage you shithead."
So I obliged by teaching them some new ones:-
"Muthaf&%ka."

Then we engaged in our first real live, genuine snowball fight. I have to admit with Kate offering little to no assistance, and three of the experienced little buggers we were quite soundly beaten.

In the afternoon we headed back to our hostel in Gdansk to get bitched up with three French actors and a school teacher who we were sharing our room with. They were a really cool crew and I now have somewhere to stay somewhere in France. They spent the entire night trying to teach me how to speak French. The #1 lesson: "French is not a language, it's an accent."

When I was good and shitfaced I started proclaiming that I too, with a heart of Rimbaud and Voltaire, was also French. They said to be French I needed to be arrogant. Kate seems to believe I fulfill this requirement. Surely my good readers don't concur?

Anyway we spent the next day moping around Gdansk and trying to leave for Berlin however since all the tickets were booked we opted for Prague instead. So it was another train back to Warsaw (for the 3rd time in a little over a week) and then on to Prague in a tiny little overnight cabin that featured three tiers of bunks.

paka my friends and happy new year!