I'm Home

The last days of my amazing holiday got very hectic and I was away from wireless connectivity. When I next got near a PC I was in the flight lounge and on my way home. No pics for this blog. I got on the plane, turned left as you do, changed into my provided designer pyjamas and after a champagne nightcap, went to bed.

Thanks for following my journey and for all the email responses. Watch for my next amazing adventure only made possible with the support of friends at home; Herman, Herman, Herman, Jan, Rod, Wendy, Gary, Wieland, Jarrod and many others.................................. thanks

Nathan

Berlin Pics

The Trabant was an East German car, a P 50, powered by a smoky two-stroke generator that maxed out at 18 hp; the P stood for plastic and the 50 signified it’s 500cc engine that used only 5 moving parts. To conserve expensive metal, the Trabant body was manufactured using a form of plastic containing resin strengthened by recycled wool or cotton. There was a waiting list of up to ten years to get one so old ones sold for the same price as new ones.



Most of the beer gardens in Berlin face the canals and are made to look like beaches. Every lunch time you head for the canal beach for a quick beer and a sausage and watch the passing boats.

AlexanderPlatz - the centre of former East Berlin

Berlin - 1.5 Litre beer glasses, Oh boy!

Berlin, population 3.5 million, is the capital of Germany, population 82 million. Post WW2, it was divided into East Berlin, governed by the Russians, and West Berlin, governed by the Americans, British and French. When many East Berliners decided they liked the West better a 155 kilometre, 3 metre high wall was erected, overnight, to stop the mass exodus. The wall came down in 1990.

Although not a beautiful city, Berlin has some world class architecture, albeit pock marked by the weapons of a world war. Berlin has as an extraordinary collection of museums which rank among the very richest on the planet that take days to get through, and an amazing outdoor eating lifestyle centred around the canals and many plaza's. Berlin is pushbike crazy, everyone pedals around and most of the taxi's are pushbike based for inner city travel. One bike has six seats in a circular design and everyone pedals to make it move forward, you have to see it to believe it.

During a single meal, in the Jewish Quarter, no less than six wandering street theatre acts presented in front of us, ranging from acrobatics to quartets to opera singers, all touting for the odd dollar. Berlin has a plethora of parks, forests, canals and lakes and is not a place that is appreciated easily or quickly and not without a broad range of emotion. 

 One of the first things we did, after tasting the local brew, was to take a three hour tour of the canals in a river barge. Yes, Berlin, like Paris and Venice, has water as the vital lifeblood of the city. A series of canals, connected by locks to control the water height, provide much of the public transport, movement of goods and social nightlife for Berliners. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways weaving between east and west.

The Radisson Blu Hotel has, as it's architectural centrepiece, a 1 million litre, 30 metre high fish tank with over 5000 fish, cleaned daily by scuba divers. All the rooms face the fish tank. You could watch this for hours. To get a sense of the scale of this tank, look at the coffee tables and chairs and the glass lifts at the right side of the pic.

There are many museums in Berlin, the most interesting to me being the four floor Altes Museum that contains more Egyptian antiquities than the two floor Cairo Museum. The collection of artefacts is grander, better presented and in far better condition than the Cairo exhibits. I asked a Guide where it had all come from and got the answer that much had been donated over time and received in good faith. The Guide added that a lot of the provenance on items was shady. Possession being nine tenths of the law seems to hold where Egyptian antiquities and heritage are involved, worldwide

I visited the iconic Brandenburg gate, through the maze of pillars at the holocaust memorial, had my passport stamped with an East German stamp at Check Point Charlie and ambled through the gardens of Potsdam Castle.


Everywhere we went, the Berliners were friendly and accommodating with conversation and guidance. Our Australian accent attracted many people wanting to practice their english and talk about Sydney. We refused so many free beers for conversation mainly due to the size of the glasses and lack of time to drink them all :)))

I regularly bumped into remnants of the Berlin Wall seemingly forgotten and ignored by modern culture. I won't speak to the atrocity that preceded its construction or the oppression that it visited on the people and community of post war Berlin.  Everywhere you look there are bullet holes and blast marks, in a city founded in the 12 century AD, that tell a story beyond any words. 

Brighton Beach on a rough day, so they said

The Butchers Home Delivery Service

London - no thanks

What a difference a few kilometres north can make. All the stories about England weather are true. Paris was sunny, hot and humid and Southampton is cold, windy and miserable, almost as bad as Sydney.

There was a rush on buying tracksuits in the onboard clothes shop and, quite clearly, there were only two colours, grey and pink, in uneven proportions. There are quite a few men in pink which is refreshing but a little odd on the eye.

The gangways opened and we all went ashore. A ripple of conversation went through the crowd and a quietness washed over the dock as we realized that we were standing where the passengers of the Titanic had stood in 1912. Almost as a single group everyone turned and looked toward the sea as if expecting to see the Titanic returning to Harbour. No-one threw any large diamonds into the harbour so in true Anzac style, after a minute or so, the hustle bustle and buzz of excited septuagenarians picked up again.

So, all rugged up we headed for London through some of the greenest countryside you might want to see. Every few kilometres there was a little village with cobbled streets, fish and chip shop, tea-rooms, large castle, large church and Morris Minors by the bakers dozen. I was living an episode of “Heartbeat”.  

The United Kindom has a population of 62 million with 7 million living in London.  London is Sydney on Ectsasy but every bit as architecturally and historically rich as nearby Paris. The Romans founded London as a communication centre shortly after they invaded Britain in 43 AD. Londinium, as it was called then, was a little village on the Thames. London rapidly grew to become the biggest city in Europe.  

London City is not a nice place to walk around when compared with other large cities, the streets are narrow and cold and its as busy as downtown Mumbai with all the aggression of lunch hour in Sydney. I can see why I was warned about pickpockets, you are jostled and bumped into constantly as you walk around. 

We jumped a red double decker topless bus and worked our way around the obligatory sights so we could leave the city. There was a lot to see; Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, 10 Downing Street, the Tower Bridge, Barbican Arts Center, Nelson's statue in Trafalgar square, the wax museum and Buckingham Palace.

We were relieved, a few hours later, to leave London and head down to Brighton. One of my goals was to visit Brighton Pier (note the pebble beaches). Brighton and Hove were much more civilized and calmer to walk around. Both towns were essentially seaside homes for the English Gentry and even the Royal Family had their summer Palace here. An absolute must is to visit the Summer Palace as you can walk through every room and have tea and scones on Queen Victoria’s private balcony, left of Dome in picture (which I did of course). 

Paris pics

Paris

Paris, the capital of France, is located in northern France on both banks of the Seine River, 145 km from the river's mouth on the English Channel. A total of 2.2 million inhabitants live in Paris proper, and almost 12 million live in greater Paris, which is one of Europe's largest metropolitan areas. Paris owes its prosperity in large part to its favorable position on the Seine, which has been a major commercial artery since the Roman period.

The first thing you see when entering Paris is the Eiffel Tower. Three hundred French folk built the Eiffel Tower, over only two years, for the 1889 World Fair. The Tower was simply the front gate to the Fair and an amusement with 2 francs being charged for people to walk up its structure. The builder, Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, paid for the entire construction and was given a twenty-year lease to recover his costs. At the end of the twenty years it was to be dismantled. The French largely hated the Tower for most of its twenty years with many protests at the ugliness of the Tower. Newspapers of the day reported that the Tower was killing all the fish in the River Seine and had changed weather patterns across France.

At the end of the twenty years, under threat of an official order from the French government to pull down the Tower, Alexandre Eiffel convinced the military that the tower could be useful for military communications via newly invented radio transmission. The first antennae were installed at its top just in time for World War I thus saving the Tower forever. Sadly, over 300 people have committed suicide off the Tower and now the lower floors are wrapped in a visually unpleasant steel mesh to stop further deaths.

A short list of must see attractions in and around Paris;
• The 9000 seat Notre Dame Cathedral
• The Louvre – former Royal Palace housing the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace, along with 3000 other world artistic treasures
• The Invalides – Napoleon’s Tomb
• The Champs-Eleysees running through the city centre (ANOTHER Egyptian Luxor Obelisk is at its centre)
• The Arc de Triomphe
• The Paris Opera Theatre – largest in the world
• The Palace of Versailles
• Claude Monet’s home
• Rouen, where Joan of Arc was martyred
• Jim Morrisson, Sarah Bernhardt and Oscar Wilde are buried here.

Getting around Paris was much easier than reported. We got to most of the sites by either bus or river barge. The highlight of the day was a late dinner cruise down the Seine over a classic French meal, duck breast with pears and roasted potatoes millefeuille, poire William reduction, washed down with a 2001 Canon Fronsac Ch. Cassagne Haut Canon " La Truffière ". Even in our underdressed tourist couture, it was still a genuinely emotional experience.

As I took in the surreal scenery on deck an Australian woman standing beside me, Alyce, began quietly crying. Alyce was so overcome with the opulent splendor of Paris, particularly the riverside milieu, that she had to let it out. I empathised with her emotion and offered a glass of my red wine. It was at this time that the roaming violinist arrived beside us on deck and began playing an Edith Piaf classic Non Je Ne Regrette Rien.

Alyce’s heart-sourced tears rose in audibility and passion and threatened to upset my own fragile state of well being so I refilled my own glass of red, nodded to the violinist, bid adieu to Alyce, and moved to a different part of the barge, problem solved.

Now where was I? Paris is a city that stirs emotions and moves even the hardest soul, if only from one end of the barge to the other, non, je ne regrette rien!!