The Big Trip Route

Whenever anyone asks me where I travelled to on my Big Trip, what I would like to say is, "Well, from KL to Hatyai to Bangkok and then Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, after that Ho Chi Minh, Hue, back to Ho Chi Minh for a short cruise on the Mekong and then fly to Seoul, side trip to Seoraksan, back to Seoul, fly to Ulan Batar, up to Irkutsk, detour to Listvyanka, back to Irkutsk, on to Moscow, then St Petersburg, day trip to Peterhof, onwards to Helsinki, then on a ferry to Stockhom, off to Copenhagen after that, then Berlin, with a short visit to Potsdam, then to Budapest, then Prague, spend a day in Vienna to catch a train to Paris, then through the Chunnnel to London, take a bus to Oxford, train to Durham, fly to Dublin, ferry back to Oxford and then the train back to London and then fly MAS all the way back to Kuala Lumpur".

What really comes out is "ah, all over South East Asia, Russia and Europe", but I think it rather loses it's romance when i say it that way.

Labels: big trip

The Big Trip index page

OK, I've made a single page to point to all the posts I made during the Big Trip. To the curious out there, it is part of the work I'm doing to gather all of it into something more substantial.

Eventually.

Labels: big trip

5 July 2003 - Somewhere over Bucharest on Flight MH003
The Recruit

How do airlines choose what movies to show during inflight? Do othey just accept films at random from studios? Is there a panel that chooses from a selection? Or is there some sort of secret algorithm?

However they do it, I know that it's a lucky dip when you get to the plane. The choices on this flight are: Just Married, National Security, The Recruit, Children on their Birthdays, Kangaroo Jack, A Guy Thing and Juli Juli Bintang Tiga. I stuck my hand in, rummaged around and came up with... Colin Farell and Al Pacino.

The Recruit is about a young man (Colin Farrell) with a bright future heading towards MIT whose life is turned upside down when he is approached by a recruiting agent from the CIA (Al Pacino).

Now, I'd like to be James Bond as much as any other person, but I know what I'd do given the choice between spending three years as a student hanging out at frat parties and a year undergoing the most rigorous of training regimes learning how to jump through windows, how to be shot at and how to be tortured. But I didn't have a father who was employed by the CIA and killed in the line of duty, so I guess I just don't have the right motivation.

During training, he meets up with a stunning fellow recruit who immediately grabs his attention and presumably his more baser instincts, since we're talking about an action-thriller here, and not a romantic-comedy.

However, before he can finish his training, he slips up somewhere and ends up a wash-out. But he isn't, says our omniscient CIA trainer. He's actually in special ops. And our belle in training school is a double agent.

You know how when you're at a party, and you meet this guy who thinks he's pretty sharp and a hit with all the ladies, but actually he's not? Well, The Recruit's a bit like that. It thinks it's a really clever movie full of plot twists and smart dialogue, but it's just too full of unbelievable things that I felt like banging my head to a pulp against the food tray in front of me.

Let's just take this as an example: there's a killer virus out there that can travel through electricity lines and infect and affect every piece of electronics it encounters. Since this is taken with a straight face by an MIT candidate, I guess MIT likes people who follow orders well and keep an open mind on most things. No, make that all things. Actually, make that all things needed to make a hole-ridden plot work.

Here's another one. Somebody's stealing this code from a secure lab. We know it's secure because there are no floppy drives and no printers in the lab. I know how I would do it. It would involve a video camera and the 'type' command. But what do I know? I'm not a Hollywood scriptwriter. I would have never thought of using an external USB drive.

Even the great Al Pacino can't save the movie. And although Colin Farrell a pretty enough face, pretty doesn't cut it in a film like this.

You go to a movie to suspend disbelief, and be transported away to somewhere for an hour or two, but it's an awfully hard thing to do when you're faced with things that make you go "Wha-?!!" every few seconds.

Labels: big trip

Back in the old days, Britain was an island, aloof unto itself, protected from the vagrancies of the rest of Europe by the English Channel and all that water around it. Getting to England from Europe required a boat, and the most popular route was via Calais and a ferry ride across to Dover. To get from Paris to Calais or from Dover to London was another problem to be solved.

Now, Britain is still an island, both geographically and politically, but there is this tunnel connecting it with France and you can take the high-speed Eurostar train from Paris, through the French countryside via Lille, under the Channel and up again into Ashford, England and then into London.

The advantage is that in about three hours you get from the centre of Paris into the centre of London. If you fly, it takes about 50 minutes, but you need to be at the airport at least an hour before the flight, and takes another hour or so to get to and from the airports.

The big disadvantage is usually cost. The price of a single second-class ticket is EUR140. However, there is now a special offer, on limited trains, to travel for only EUR35. Seeing that a plane flight costs about EUR80, it is a stupendous deal.

Travelling on the Eurostar is a little like travelling on normal trains except for the bureaucracy. How on Earth Britain expects to be taken as part of Europe, I don't know. This is the only country since I've entered Europe that have had serious immigration checks, and the only one where I've had my passport looked at not once, not twice but three times. It's checked twice in Paris, once by French immigration, another time by British immigration and then you have to queue up again when you reach London. Does this make sense? No. Does this look like a way forward to a United Europe? No. Do the Brits look as if they're trying their darndest to stay out of it? Yes.

At least the trains leave on time. You wait in a boarding lounge (just like you would for a plane) and there is a queue to get on board (just like a plane) and there are announcements when you're in your seat (just like a plane) and if they're too many trains trying to get into the station ahead of you, you slow down a little (just like a plane).

The seats are a little cramped, but you get a nice tray that folds out to put your AlphaSmart on. I have to say that there is something about train travel that rocks me off to sleep. I have absolutely no problems nodding off on buses and trains.

EuroStar zips through the French countryside at some incredible speed - something like 200kmh, but has to slow down for the tunnel and the English countryside. In fact, they were strongly advertising that train travel the next day would be interrupted by vital works on the railroad that would improve service quality and cut journey times by half an hour. There was a lot of stress on this being work done on the English side, and I like the way that it was stressed as being "improvements" and not as "things we should have gotten right first time round but somehow failed to". A fellow passenger grumbled about the English inability to do things properly first time, and maybe that's the way they should look at joining Europe as well.

Because of problems on the line, the train reached Waterloo station about twenty minutes behind schedule. Add another twenty minutes for immigration. My brother had to actually call me up to find out where I was.

After all that, immigration was a breeze. I thought they would ask me to dig out my plane ticket to prove that I was leaving the country, but that didn't happen. Best of all, Adik was waiting outside and we immediately headed off for a great steak dinner, but that's another story.

Labels: big trip

Already by the late 1860s Monet and the other Impressionists were trying to paint the world as they saw it outdoors. Shadows cast a different colour in daylight and reflected hues make an even greater difference. This was radically different from the style of the time.

The Academy in Paris were unsure about this new direction and rejected them from exhibition. This spurred the new group to set up an exhibition of their own. In 1874 the first Impressionist exhibition was held, in direct confrontation with the annual Salon held by the Academy.

Although the movement had a few patrons, it took years before it was accepted. In this time, the various artists developed their own styles and ideas.

Monet's Coqueliots presents many of the ideas of the Impressionist movement. Depth is not characterised by perspective lines, but by colour. Things that are nearer have stronger colours and thicker strokes. The movement of the wind is captured in visual cues, such as the umbrella and the hat slightly askew, and in the blurring of colours, as in the grass on the right-hand side.

One reason for the "fuzziness" is because of changeable weather conditions, the paintings had to be painted quickly and there was no time for detail. The compromise meant that these paintings had to be viewed not up close and in detail, but from afar. The painting had to be viewed as a whole, and not as a sum of detailed parts.

This idea dictated the construction of the exhibition halls in the Musee d'Orsay. Instead of angled spotlights shining on the paintings, sunlight is the primary source of illumination. The impressionist gallery is placed close to the roof so that the best light is available, and it is acknowledged that the paintings will look different over the day as the sun changes position and colour. The idea is that spotlights will focus a viewer's attention onto a few parts of the picture, whereas changing sunlight will make a viewer look at the painting as a whole in various ways.

Degas, on the other hand, favoured the accenuation of movement. Movement is emphasised through a variety of methods. One is by blurring the details and using sudden changes in colour. Another is the framing of the picture off-centre, which gives the impression of it being a candid shot from a camera (Instant photography was a recent invention in the 1870s and Degas was a hobbyist photographer).

Although Renoir and Monet were good friends and frequently went to the same places to paint, they began to diverge in interpretation in the late 1880's. Renoir began to include many classical elements in his painting, such as attention to detail, but they were still impressionistic by the use of bright, complementary colours.

Monet became more interested in how light and climate affected colour. He purposely chose subjects that had a lot of moving light (such as seascapes and landscapes that had a lot of water) or diffused light (such as foggy weather).

The series of paintings of the cathedral at Rouen was, for him, a demanding study of the different aspects of light, the same cathedral at similar angles, just in different climates. The result is a stunning series of paintings, each individual although of the same subject from the same position. He later developed a similar series of haystacks that prompted Kandinsky to say that the subject does not matter any more and that only the colours are of interest.

The Rouen Cathedral series paintings are far more impressive in real life than in print. The paintings have texture, in Monet's effort to capture the light. Up close they resemble a random collection of vigorous brush strokes and the paint is clearly thicker in places. The painting is, in fact, three dimensional, looks quite different depending on the light source and the angle you view it at. The raised sections correspond to the highlighted areas of the subject, where the light catches a potrusion in the foreground.

Monet's later works became more abstract, as he tried to capture the essence of the light before him. This further abstraction led to the neo-impressionistic movement, and painters such as Seurat and Van Gogh, but since that's beyond Impressionism, we'll stop here.

Labels: big trip

One of my most favourite places in Paris and definitely one of my favourite art museums in the world, is the Musee d'Orsay, which house one the best collections of impressionism period.

The museum is housed in an old railway station, and contains art pieces dating from the early nineteenth century up to the early twentieth century. Slap bang in the middle of this is the Impressionism period, which includes artists like Monet, Renoir and Degas. I've long been interested in their art, specifically their motivations for making what I call "fuzzy pictures". My intrest was piqued by the collections I saw in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, and when I found out that they were giving guided tours specifically about the Impressionists, I jumped at the chance.

They actually give a lot of tours, but very few are in English. Fortunately, one of them was on a Thursday, when the museum extends its opening hours until 9.45 pm, which allows me to hang around until I really get tired of looking up close at fuzzy brushstrokes.

The impressionistic movement is officially said to have begun in 1874, when a bunch of young upstarts exhibited a series of paintings that formed a new movement in the art world. It was their work that gave impetus to later, more abstract forms of art, such as by Cezanne and Kandinsky. It is ironic that I celebrate this in-between period so much and yet loathe the bastard offspring.

The roots of the movement were embedded the work of French artists who, if you like, wanted to go back to Nature. They abandoned the warmth and comfort of their studios and ventured forth into the forests of the countryside. This was unusual, for at that time artists made their own paints and it was easier to do this within the confines of the studio. To go outside was to court additional difficulty, but this new breed of artists wanted to paint nature in its environment, and not as they saw it under a roof. Artists like Diaz de la Pena were considered to be outside the art community and they reslished their separation and celebrated their commune with nature.

Although they were outside the conservative art world of the Academy, they still adhered to the traditional romantic period style. Their landscapes were moody studys of a brooding Mother Nature, overlooking Man with her might.

Nevertheless, these rebels inspired the future generations of Impressionists, probably with their derring-do, as well as their body of work. Since these new young wild ones wanted to follow a path not deemed to be "classical", the only teachers they had were each other, and the only references they had were the work of those that inspired them.

In 1861, the work of a recently deceased artist named Delacroix was put on exhibit, and one piece in particular, The Lions, further captured the imagination of the Impressionists. The Lions was an unusual piece of work because it was a sketch for a later painting and not a finished product, but in it you can already see the factors that would inspire Impressionists to come.

Three things stand out. Firstly, the choice of colour veered away from the traditional dark, earth tones, and instead was bright and had plenty of contrast. Complementary colours (such as red and green) was the key.

Secondly, movement was accenuated by the use of colour. Instead of a gradual shade from dark to bright, form and movement was determined by different colours. Paint was placed on top of one another haphazardly to create an effect.

Thirdly, the brush strokes were very rough and seemingly imprecise. The texture of the strokes can be seen in the paint and you can see its movement as the artist moved it about.

These ideas crop up again and again in Impressionistic art. In the ten years between that time and when they finally presented the exhibition, another movement cropped up, which would further influence the impressionists - the Realists.

Manet was one such artist. He felt that it was time to begin painting life as it was, and not an idealisation, as was the thinking at the time. He rejected ideas such as the perfectly proportioned body, the goddess-like faces, inspired by Roman-Greco art, and instead began painting people who had lumps in funny areas, if you like, wearing fashionable shoes and jewellry. Furthermore, he recognised this rebellious idea, and proceded further to abstracise peripherals and props. This further inspired the impressionists to break out of the current mould and begin something anew.

Labels: big trip

Labels: big trip

What an odd thing to write about, I'm sure you're thinking. Surely there's not that much difference between food in Oxford and food in the rest of England. And English food has a deserved reputation for being mediocre.

However, I spent three years in Oxford, and I considered it home for time I was there. And a big part of my life is food, so it shouldn't be surprising that some of my most vivid memories should be connected with food.

It is a testament that although I can easily point to you several decent eating places in Oxford, I find it almost impossible to do the same in London (I can think of the budget Japanese shop near Leicester Square, but that's all that really comes to mind).

My first port of call when the bus came to a stop was Harvey's, the sandwich shop. I immediately stopped by for a scrumptious steak sandwich. In my years as an undergraduate I consumed countless numbers of these, always in half a loaf of ciabatta, always without tomato slices. It was a favourite stop for me because it was halfway between the Maths Institute and my college, and I could have a quick lunch while walking to one place or another. It was also conveniently near the cinema, so I could check out what was showing there.

The sandwiches from there are very, very good because they are generous and they give you exactly what you want: mustard, mayonnaise, brown sauce, cucumber, lettuce and 8oz of steak in half a loaf of ciabatta. In the nine years between the time I left University and now, they have not scrimped on any of the ingredients and their price has gone up a paltry 60p at the most.

There are other sandwich shops in the Covered Market, but none of them match the economy and taste of Harvey's.

Another favourite shop of mine is George & Davis. It should be world-famous, by right, if sales were based on quality alone, there should be a chain of G&D's stretching from John O' Groats to Land's End. People should be familiar with the G&D cows, not Ben & Jerry's, and the favoured flavours of the land would be Dime Bar Crunch and Chaos.

Instead, there are only two outlets in Oxford. Infuriatingly, the second shop opened five or six years after I left college. It's not a chain, really, because one called George & Davis, the other George & Danvey's, but the queues can be as long as ever, and the quality is still the same. Well, except that the Danvey branch seems to have fewer flavours on offer, but that could just be my imagination!

Why is it so good? First, the ice cream is good. No, I take that back, it's great. It's made in the basement and you can petition your own flavours (enough names on a petition sheet means a flavour gets made). The ice cream is solid, full of proper milk (not air) and it's difficult to be completely satisfied with just one scoop.

Secondly, the shops have got a fantastic atmosphere. It's full of students, so everyone's relaxed and having fun. There's a Question of the Day which wins you a free scoop of ice cream if you're the first to get it right (The question when I was recently there: "Which 1960 Billy Wilder film won Oscars for Best Film, Best Director and Best Script?"). You have your choice of free newspapers by the side, which I used to peruse in between bouts with tutorial questions.

Thirdly, the location's great. The original G&D's is just across the road from the Mathematical Institute which made it a comfortable place to hang out. It also faced Somerville College, the formerly all-girls college, which wasn't such a bad place to be.

The new G&D's sits across from Christ Church College, so you can now eat your Rum n' Raisin while in the shadow of Tom Tower (although why anyone would look forward to that, I don't know).

The other thing you should do when you're in Oxford is to go picnicking. You can either loll about in the sunshine by the river or you can loll about in the sunshine on the river. You can stock up on things like bread, cheese, and drinks from the local Sainsbury's or Mark's and Spencer's, but the authentic way to do it is to go to the Covered Market. It's a great place to just wander about - two of my favourite shops in there are Ben's Cookies and the cheese shop where I can buy Oxford Blue Cheese. I don't normally like blue cheese, but this one is creamy enough to make me forgive the strong taste. Ben and Claudi know this, so when I stayed with them, they almost invariably have a little stocked up in the fridge. Actually, the last time I was there, there was quite a bit, and I brought back a whole lump to London. My brother doesn't eat blue cheese, so there I was, wolfing it down, while he sat beside me with an awkward look on his face.

It's probably a lot easer to picnic on terra firma than it is in a boat, but if you are going to do it over water, make sure that at least one of you knows how to punt. It looks easy, but there is a knack to it that needs to be learnt. You'll find out before long that it's far easier to go around in circles that it is to go in a straight line. It's been more than ten years since I've done this, and before I was just getting the hang of it. I obviously have forgotten a lot in the time in-between.

Labels: big trip

I do not like London very much. The truth is, I think that London is one of the least pleasant cities to live in. However, all things have their silver linings, and London's is its collection of very fine museums.

The British Museum of Natural History must be one of the best museums of its kind in the world. Having said that, I usually don't visit it anywhere as often as I could, simply because I prefer visiting the Science Museum next door. This is strange, because I wouldn't categorise the Science Museum in London to be all that great, but I've always preferred hard core science over stuffed animals. And yet, perhaps I'll still change my mind.

My brother and I visited the Natural History museum because of the new Darwin Centre. It's actually only the first phase of many, and at the moment it's not terribly impressive to the casual visitor. What you see are some exhibits of preserved animals, an interactive multimedia display explaining why it's important to pickle animals and not much else. But that 'not much else' includes a behind-the-scenes tour of the centre, and that makes the whole trip worthwhile.

Because we visited close to closing time, my brother and I were the only ones on the tour, lead by one of the staff (Emma, I think her name was - Emma, if you're reading this and I'm wrong, please correct me). The tour goes into the actual laboratories used to preserve and examine specimens.

The Natural History Museum's collection of preserved specimens is one of the most important in the world. There are specimens dating from the early nineteen century. Some of the bottles are marked with a red cap. This is to indicate that the species was named based on examination of that particular animal.

The number of specimens is stupendous - something like six million, if I recall correctly. They keep everything from small beetles and earthworms, to their largest specimen, a fully-grown Komodo dragon.

The specimens are kept in specially cooled rooms, behind double doors. The doors are what my brother calls James Bond double doors, because the first set automatically opens when you wave your passkey over it, and then you step in, and when the outer doors have closed, only then do the inner ones open. Very cool. But a little over-the-top?

The temperature is kept at 13 degrees Celsius, below the flash-point of alcohol. And with that much alcohol floating about, it's probably a wise idea to do so. Obviously, there's no smoking in the labs.

A lot of the animals are kept upside-down. This puzzled both my brother and me, until we were told that limbs were less likely to be damaged when animals are pulled out right-side up.

The Darwin Centre has seven floors, and each floor focuses on one type of animal. I wondered if there are rivalries between the floors. "Don't talk to him, he's with the inverterbrates".

Labels: big trip

16 June 2003 - London
Hamlyns

When I was a teeny weeny tot running around London, I remembered that Hamlyns was the coolest place there (the new Science Museum notwithstanding). Come on, five floors of toys, toys, toys - there was no way that could go wrong.

These days, it's not the automatic stop for me that it used to be, but I still drop by to see what's going on when I get the chance. I think I've been to Harrod's twice, but I've lost count the number of times I've wandered up and down the escalators (almost always the escalators and not the lifts).

As you walk through the front doors, you are greeted by people making giant soap bubbles or playing with multi-coloured crayons or firing rubber pellets or throwing around giant spaceship frisbees. As far as I am concerned, a sense of wonderment fills me and I start wandering around googly-eyed looking at what's on offer. I hardly ever buy anything these days, but browsing around is undeniable, purified fun.

I know that some of you out there will snort with derision at me succumbing to the allure of mass commercialism. Most toys out there are tied-in to some over-hyped flavour-of-the-moment (e.g. Hulk) and are over-priced for what they give. But there are still some enjoyable things to oogle at - the micro remote control cars are pretty cool.

However, the magic doesn't last for long. I think I spent the longest playing FIFA 2003 on the Game Cube with my brother. These days, gadgets have to be smarter to keep the attention, big kids included, and there are not many gadget freaks out there bigger than me. To be honest, the only reason why my house is not filled with bleeding-edge technology is because it gets bleeding expensive to make it that way.

So it is with perversity that I content myself with simpler toys. The ones that fill me with nostalgia for my childhood days (for example, the Fisher Price ambulance that still sits on my shelf).

Labels: big trip

It's not as easy as you might think to find cheap food in Budapest and Prague, especially if you want to avoid the American fast food outlets. You first need to step outside the normal tourist areas, and then decide what it is that's worth eating.

Despite me telling my mum of university kebab horror stories, I've been having my fair share of them lately. Well, they're called gyros in Hungary but they're basically the same thing - sliced grilled meat in a pitta bread with sauces and vegtables.

I have to say that they do 'em well in Budapest. It's yummy and filling and all for only HFL350 (about RM4). And they dollop in all the yoghurt you want.

It's much nicer than the University kebab vans. It probably has something to do with the fact that the meat looks like real meat and not reconstituted by-by-products (the stuff they don't even throw into sausages). Yummy stuff.

On the other hand, I never thought anything could compare with the lows of University roadside van food, until I had a burger in Prague. I mean, I say bad things about Ramlyburgers back home, but my Czech burger recalibrated the scale.

They're very cheap (about CKr20 ~ RM2) and for good reason. Let's begin with how it looks. What you see when you order a burger is some wrapping paper, some bun, some green leafy stuff and something hidden behind all that. It looks like something trying to disguise itself as meat behind lettuce and bread. It's embarassed that it's even called a burger, and has tried to disappear by drowning itself with tomato sauce.

It gets better. Go ahead, take a bite. You'll taste the bun, the lettuce, the tomato sauce and... something. It has a texture not unlike cardboard that has been left soaking wet for a few days. It really needs to be tasted to be believed.

And if you dare look at what you've bitten into... well, it was the stingiest looking chicken burger I've ever seen. No more than a single layer of mince, a thin white line which just about separated it from being called a lettuce sandwich. And you pay for this stuff.

Well, to be fair, I was a little fuller after that, although it probably had to do with me downing whole litre of water just to wash away the memory.

Maybe I shouldn't judge a whole country's burger industry by just one sample. Perhaps I should try another one tomorrow - after all, they're cheap enough. Wish me luck, guys.

Labels: big trip

Finally. I've hit it. I thought it might happen sometime around now, and it has. I've hit the Travelling Wall.

The Travelling Wall is that point of time when you suddenly feel that it's about time that you stopped travelling and went back home. When if somebody gave you a ticket home right then, you would be sorely tempted to take it.

There are many reasons why you hit the Wall. Sometimes it's just the tiredness of living out of a suitcase. I hit that in the USA after about a month or so, but travelling then included the stress of finding a place to stay everytime I flew in. Now I reserve hostel beds in advance

Sometimes it's because you're disillusioned by the lack of stability and you just want to be able to wake up to something predictable. Well, that's not hit me yet. I'm looking forward to Prague, to meeting my brother in London and to (hopefully) go to Dublin.

And sometimes it's because you just miss home. You miss being around people you know. You miss your cats. And you miss being able to wake up in the morning and eating roti telur.

What I would really like is for somebody to give me a return ticket, so I can go back home for a few weeks and then continue travelling the last month or so. To recharge my batteries, as it were. Although it sounds odd that I'm asking to take a break from a vacation, travelling is pretty hard work sometimes. You get out of it as much as you put in, and I've been putting in a fair bit. I'm happier for it though, I have to say.

I have not regretted a single minute of this trip so far. It's reminded me how little I know about the world and, has, at times, tested my resources. I've learned more about myself and what I'm able to do and what it is that makes me tick.

But I do miss my roti telur.

Labels: big trip

It's absolutely incredible. I can actually count on one hand the number of days it's rained on me on this trip. Apart from these few aberations, the weather has been absolutely incredible.

Take Budapest, for example. I am sweltering here in this hotel room. It must be 36 degrees plus outside. I drink so much water, I think I spend more on it than food.

I don't have a thermometer with me, but I find the state of my undergarments at the end of a hard day's walk to be a pretty good indicator. Stickiness corrolates to temperature. No, it doesn't hug the wall when I throw it there, but it does seem to momentarily cling before dropping.

I have to admit that I do look upon with some envy at all those air-conditioned tour buses as they zoom up and down the Buda hills, but I console myself with the thought that I am my own free man and not tied down to the whims of some fascistic tour guide. You hear me? I'm FREE! And getting a good work-out, to boot.

Sometimes all this works to my advantage. In the heat I'm not my normal slightly dishevelled self and turn into a more grotesque version, with my t-shirt collar askew from sweat, my wind-blown sculptured coiffure above a shining brow and the hair on my arms gently layered with a mildew of perspiration. All this helps cultivate my sweaty skinflint student look and I do get the occasional break when bargaining for discounts. Either that, or the shopkeepers are keen to get me out as quickly as possible.

Labels: big trip

Budapest is actually two cities, Buda and Pest. It's was actually originally called Pest-Buda but I think they changed it because Buda is the older half, because Buda looks over Pest and because Buda looks way cooler anyway, with it's castle.

In fact, I'm sure in some dictionary somewhere, next to the word 'buda' you're going to see the following description: "lots and lots and lots of hills, don't even try to walk it if you don't plan to climb a lot, but is pretty nice to look at".

It doesn't look too bad to start off with. Just walk down this road and you're at Matthias Church. Well, this road slopes at an almighty angle, and those smart Hungarian entrepreneurs had placed their grocery shops just at the point where you think "Oh my, this is hard work". I rewarded them by buying a litre and a half of water straight away.

The view of Pest from up there is, in short, outstanding.

(If it wasn't, I was going to march straight up to the nearest Tourist Information centre and demand to know why. It should be made mandatory by law that high places must print disclaimers if the view from the top is disappointing. I can name two places that should have large WARNING stickers on them: The Berliner Dom in Berlin and St Stephen's Basilica in Budapest.)

I did hunt around up there for Castle Cavedn as well, and I really have no idea where it is. This was a shame, because I really wanted to be able to title this piece "Climbed up a hill to climb down a cave". I went to the exact spot on the map, and there was something behind locked doors that looked a little like an entrance to a cave, but who knows?

The jewel in the Buda crown must be Buda castle itself. Like all good castles, it occupies the highest point in the city, and yes, it gets my You-Get-Good-Views-From-Here label of endorsement. It's large (but not as large as the palace complexes of Peterhof or Sanssoucci) and it now houses numerous museums, like the Museum of Cotemporary Art, The Hungarian National Gallery and The Budapest History Museum (none of which, unfortunately, I was terribly interested in).

There is actually a furnicular railway up to the castle, but I think that that's for wimps and you wouldn't catch a real man like me going up on one. Not unless it was for free, of course.

In my naivety (and this trip is certainly exposing lots of that), I had thought that all those fantastic buildings that I saw across the Danube from Pest were on one hill. There was this huge, Soviet-styled statue (I found out later it was the Liberation Monument) that caught the eye and warranted a closer look. I tried to find the best route
across to it, but to my consternation, I kept going downhill. Well, unsurprisingly, that was because it was on top of another hill.

Well, I had climbed to the top of Neak Pearn, and I had wheezed up to Seoul Tower, and I had battled Seoraksan and (barely) won, so I rolled up my sleeves and climbed Gell¢¾rt-hegy.

I am proud to say that I managed it without wheezing once, and I even beat a couple to the top (although I'm pretty sure they didn't even notice I was there). Yet again, great views from the top. And I even had the will-power to not give in and pay double-price for a litre of water and waited until I got down to rehydrate.

By the time I had got down, it was only five o'clock, but nine hours of climbing up and down hills had pretty much done it for me. But tomorrow, I think I'll tackle the much flatter Heroes' Square.

Labels: big trip

I've bought myself an EURail ticket. It's one of those things that lets you travel for so many free trips on European rail for within a certain period of time. You pay quite a bit for it, but since you travel for free, it should work out.

Well, not exactly for free. Let me give you some examples.

• If you travel from a country where the EURail pass applies to one where it doesn't, you obviously don't get to travel for free in the latter. They calculate a price for you, based on a free journey to the border. For example, when I asked how much it cost to travel from Budapest to Prague, I was quoted Hf12,000 (which is about EUR50). It was high enough to make me think twice about travelling.
  
• You need to make a reservation when travelling on EuroCity, InterCity or InterCity Express trains, which is just about every train going from a city in one country to another country. These reservations aren't free. They can cost anything from EUR5 to EUR20, depending on the train, the country and the class of the travel. They're not even consistent. In Sweden, first and second class reservations have different costs; In Denmark, they don't. Hence, my decision to travel second class in Sweden, but first in Denmark.
  
• Night trains need reservations as well as a supplement if you want to use a sleeperette, couchette, or sleeping car. They're all basically "places to sleep", going from a reclining chair all the way to private cabin. A couchette (a flat place to lie on in a shared cabin) costs about EUR20. Note that cost of the couchette supplement will buy you a similar sort of sleeping area and a trip on the night train between KL and Singapore.
  
• The rail days are only valid between midnight to midnight. There is something called the 7pm rule which means that any journey starting after 7pm and ending the next day is considered part of the next day's journey; hence, instead of a 24-hour day, you get a 29-hour travelling day. However, there are several overnight train journeys that require a change at some station before midnight, especially if you're travelling from some hick provincial town. Once you make that transfer, the 7pm rule doesn't count any more, forcing you to use up an extra day on your EURail ticket. The problem I faced when travelling from Stockholm to Berlin was that although the trip takes 14 hours, there's no way to use up only one Rail Day, hence my decision to stopover in Copenhagen. If, for example, you want to travel from Lisbon to Budapest, you must use up at least two Rail Days (although that involves three transfers including one with a 10-minute wndow).
  

So, is it a good deal? Well, train travel in Europe (especially that area covering France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria) is so expensive that even with the EURail ticket at the exorbitant costs they're selling it at, it's actually worth it if you want to travel Europe by rail. This is especially true if you plan to either go trans-continental (e.g. all the way from Lisbon to Rome to Budapest to Scandinavia to Paris) or if you want to make many small day excursions.

It isn't anywhere near as good as the Delta Air Fly-All-You-Want ticket that I had when I was travelling in the states all those years ago. Then, the only criteria was that there was a free seat on the plane, and then off you go. There were no extra costs, nor did you have to make reservations.

Labels: big trip

There is a reason why people get stereo-typed. You hear about loud Americans and arrogant Germans, and there must be some basis for it all.

Take my train journey from Berlin to Budapest, for example. I was sharing a couchette cabin with this dear old German lady and two Americans.

These guys were walking advertisements for stereotypical Americans. They spent half the night talking to each other, in loud, annoying voices, on subjects as diverse as which girls in college were hot to which girls they've met on their trip so far were hot. Not that I enjoy eavesdropping on people, but there are times when you just don't have a choice.

"Man, do you remember Sharon?"
"Oh yeah, she was awesome, dude. But she'd do anyone."
"No way! How come she never did it with me?"
"Cos you're such an a******, dude!"

"Do you remember that chick from London? Man, she was hot!"

And so on, and so forth. For at least an hour they discussed various conquests (rather, degrees of conquest).

What was more surprising was that these guys weren't just out of high school. They were both over twenty six. Listening to them talk made me feel good that at 26 I was where I was in life, working in what I consider to be a worthwhile job, and not where they were. Okay, they probably made it with more hot girls than I did, but they'd have to be pretty hot to beat what I was doing.

Just as they were drifting to sleep, the train pulled into some other station. At least eight more Americans clambered on board into the cabin next door and just to confirm that the two I had just listened to weren't an aberration, they then proceeded to loudly explain to each other how sucky couchette cabins were, even if they did have awesome cup holders.

Labels: big trip

In Russian, bolshoi means big, which is a word you would think they would use more often, given their predilection for all things big.

Everything is huge is Russia: the country, the buildings, the statues, the women.

Well, the women seem to fall into two categories: extremely thin or extremely large. There seems to be some sort of correlation between age and size. I exagerrate a little, but not much.

The statues are just huge. What on Earth makes people think that having large monuments to themselves is such a great idea?

But maybe there is so much in Russia that they can afford to be profligant. The country is huge. Remember, it's taking us six nights to cross the country from Ulan Batar to St Petersburg by train. There are (at least) five time zones covering the country. And there is a lot of space in between the towns.

Russia is large enough and rich enough in raw materials to be self-sufficient. They don't need to be trading partners with anyone if they don't want to. And yet, all this potential seems to be wasted. Things are sometimes so inefficient, especially when you compare it with countries like Singapore, Switzerland, Hong Kong and Luxemburg. It's a paradox that the larger a country is, the less they seem to be able to do with their resources. The US is an exception to this, and I suppose that Russia is correct in trying to use them as an example for privatisaton, but they have a long, long way to go.

Labels: big trip

I had studied German in school for two years. Well, actually it was four, but there was a break in the middle and I started again from scratch, so I consider it two. It was a choice between German, Music and Latin. There was no way I was going to take a dead language, and I thought that I could learn music on my own, so German it was for me, then.

I can tell you, from personal experience, that the gulf between GCSE German and the real world is as wide as the Malaysian football league and the English Premier League. They kind of look the same, but one is faster, more complex and takes much more skill to master.

Take the simplest of instructions, for example. The things that the conductor says when the train is entering the station I can just about understand, but some of it are educated guesses. "The next station is blahblahblah. We hope you had a lovely journey. Please do not forget your belongings.". Something like that.

I worry that I'm missing the subtleties. What if the conducter was actually saying "The next station is blahblahblah. We hope you've had a lovely journey. And, by the way, the train is on fire, so it would be a good idea to get off as soon as possible.".

It must mean something that the first full conversation I had was with a lovely film attendant near Alexanderplatz, although it consisted mostly of me repeating what she was saying.
"Matrix Reloaded, die Film is auf Englisch oder Deutsch?"
"Alles auf Deutsch."
"Alles auf Deutsch?"
"Sie m☻ssen nach Potsdam Platz gehen."
"Potsdam Platz?"
"Ja, es gibt Film auf Englisch im Potsdam Platz."
"Film auf Englisch in Potsdam Platz. Danke sch¢¼n!"

Now, I'm sure that you can understand what was going on in that last conversation without me having to translate it. And a lot of what I talk to people about is in that vein. They're just simple phrases that I know, and I kind of fake it around them.

Sometimes I get into trouble. They start playing dirty, by speaking too quickly and using words I don't understand.

For example, here's me ordering dinner:
"Einmal Fisch mit Frites, bitte."
"FischUndFrites? DreiStucke,Ja?"
"Erm... Ja..."
"M¢¼chtenSieKetchipOderSenfOderReinchwalkSosse?"
"Erm... Ketchup is gut, danke."
"OK,dasistzweiEurof☻nfundneunzigbitte."

At this point I just give them a five Euro note that I know I should get change from.

It actually amazes me how few people in Germany are comfortable speaking in English. Unlike those in Finland, Sweden and Denmark, the Germans assume first you can speak German, and then only try communicating to you in English. Even the guided tours at Sanssoucci palace were in German (which is why I didn't go on one).

Anyway, despite my very basic German, most of what I say has been one of the following: Entschuldigung bitte (Excuse me please), Ich versthehe nicht (I don't understand), and Mein Deutsch ist nicht so gut (My German isn't very good).

Labels: big trip

Aha. Finally. Three weeks after it opened in Moscow, I finally got a chance to see it. I didn't see it in Moscow or St Petersburg because Mama doesn't like Keanu Reeves. I didn't see it in Scandanavia because it was expensive (about RM40 for a ticket).

I almost didn't get to see it in Berlin because almost everything in Germany is in German. All the TV programs are in German. All the plays, the musicals, the newspapers, the magazines, most of the signs, the menus, you name it, it's in German. Subsequently, most of the films have been dubbed in German too.

They seem to be well done. I had the chance to watch Star Wars I: The Phantom Menance in a showroom and it was the German version. The guy dubbing Qui Gon Jin really sounded like Liam Neeson. It was a very impressive performance. Even Jar Jar Binks didn't sound as annoying.

But no matter how well done it is, I still am completely and thoroughly against voice-over dubbing. The inflection and manner of speech is part of the acting itself and to take that away from a film and replace it with something else is simply butchering a film. You
could argue that sub-titling also spoils a film, but surely less so than dubbing. I also have the same bugbear about translated works. I told my mum that I haven't read Dr Zhivagho because I don't read Ruussian. She was amazed, but surely, it's not the same thing to read a translated version. The author's words have been changed.

But we're moving away from the main point, and that is I want to say that I think that Matrix Reload is a very good film. There are also a lot of inidivdual things I could point to that I really hate, but overall, it's good. Even if it does have Keanu Reeves in it.

It's another sequel in a year of sequels. We've already had X-Men 2, we're going to get Terminator 3, the big one at the end of the year is The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King AND (as if it weren't enough) another Matrix sequel, Matrix Revolution.

The story picks up six months after the end of the last one. It begins with another awesome Trinity (Carrie Anne "tight wetsuit looks good on her" Moss) action scene where she single-handedly takes on many, many guys in a slow-mo camera-panning kung-fu fist-fight that the original initiated and is now standard in all action movies (and yes, she does look good in her threads).

Neo (Keanu "man, when will he gain more than one expression" Reeves), Trinity and Morpheus (Lawrence "listen to my elocution" Fishburn) are still running around the Matrix trying to free the people in it and save Zion, the last bastion of humanity in the real world.

Neo still has his super-powers that he discovered at the end of the last movie but now people keep making it clear that there's no point having the ability to fly and fight like you're on hyperspeed if you don't know what you're going to do with it. Morepheus is convinced that Neo is the One, but what on Earth (or on Matrix) is the One meant to do?

Well, this movie is about that, and that main plot is very well done. As before, there is a twist, but it all builds up so nicely to it, it works well.

The other story is Neo and Trinity's burgeoning love story and the introduction of Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Locke (Harry J. Lennix). These characters provide some tension and it's very probable that they will have a major part to play in the third installment.

Also back is Agent Smith(Hugo Weaving), but... well, there's more to him now than before. I shall leave it at that and let you find out.

Most of the action scenes are great and I never really get tired of watching them fight. There's so much effort put into choreographing them, just sit back and enjoy them as works of art.

The whole movie is stylish. It isn't innovative, but long black overcoats and sunglasses will probably never go out of style. And there's something about fighting while keeping a deadpan look on your face that's just, well, cool.

(I've just realised that the Matrix owes a lot of its look to the Terminator series - black threads, cool shades and that deadpan look.)

What I do have a big problem with is the use of computer-generated Neos for some of the action sequences, especially his fight with Agent Smiths. The problem is that it looks computer-generated. I know that a lot of the graphics in the film are created on a processor somewhere, but for goodness sakes, guys, it's got to look real.

When they look good, it works great. For example, the shots in a chase scene where the motorcycle swerves in and out of traffic must have been computer-generated to some extent, but it looks so good it's a thrill. But some other shots just look baloney. I hate them. They spoil the whole movie. If I could, I would edit out whole sections of fight scenes simply because they annoy me. Snip, snip, snip.

Another thing that annoys me are the long stretches of discourse that don't move the plot forward at all but seem to be just there emphasise how much the Wzarchowski Brothers (who produced, wrote and directed the series) know about philosophy. There is a point when being clever is just showing off. It's good to break up the action, but next time guys, try some comedy instead of existentialism.

However, all in all, these are not major problems and the movie works well enough for me. There are some very good scenes, especially the one after Neo goes through the door to find out what exactly it is he has to do (a lot of doors in this one, by the way). Also, just about every Morpheus scene where he spouts theology and struts and poses is actually great. It could have been bad, but it works with Lawrence Fishburn.

The initial reviews to this said that because the original set such high standards and expectations, this version just had more of the same, and there was nothing new.

Well, as far as I'm concerned, it just has to be good enough, and I enjoyed it enough to look forward to the next one this December. Even if it does have Keanu Reeves in it.

Labels: big trip

I've been racking my brain to think of lucky breaks I've had on this trip so far, and I can't come up with any. I can think of many 'challenges to overcome' and since they didn't kill me, I guess they made me better. I certainly hope so.

Maybe I exagerrate a little bit. I did manage to go into, not one, but two cathedral towers at student price because the cashiers insisted that I was one. I did get to travel on a Scandanavian ferry for free. I did manage to not fall off a mountaintop.

But, as a whole, the returns have not been enough to balance out the bad breaks.

Let's take this evening's hijinks as a case in point. I bought a ticket with a couchette from Berlin to Budapest. What a great idea. I get a good night's sleep and wake up to the strains of the accordians of Hungary (or whatever it is they play).

I've got my ticket, I checked it twice, I made sure I got my bags out early so I didn't have to rush in case anything bad happened (who says I don't learn from my mistakes?), I take good care of my bags and valuables and then I take note of my seat number (44) and wagon number (164) so I don't have to rush.

Except that my seat doesn't exist. Couchette 44 in Wagon 164 is a figment of somebody's imagination because Wagon 164 is not a couchette wagon.

I had a nice long conversation with the conductress, mostly in German. There is some sort of strike or something somewhere and because of that, the last wagon is not a sleeping wagon. That's how good my German was.

For a long, long moment I thought that she was going to send me to go sit in a chair and I was about to demand (Hear that? Demand.) for my EUR20.50 back because I wasn't going to be sleeping in a bed like I had paid for.

Fortunately, I didn't have to show my darker side (stop sniggering, you guys) and it was settled by me being given a fourth couchette in a wagon that already had three people, and would eventually get one more.

At this point, I am trying to be positive and I must say that I am extremely thankful that I still have my health, most of my money, my passport and (although the last is debatable) my sanity.

Labels: big trip

Today, a young lady stopped me and the following conversation took place:

Her: Hi! M¢¼chte¢¾ du ein fahr? (Hi there, fancy a ride?)
Me: Nein, danke... Ich habe kein Geld. (No thanks, I have no money)
Her: Schade... (Shame...)

And with that she zoomed off into the sunset. Nice looking girl, though, with fine legs.

I mention the legs because she was cycling at the time. Actually, she was cycling one of these velo taxis which are like modern rickshaws in Berlin. They seem to cover the park area between the Zoo and the parliament, where public transport is a little thin. It's also a bit of a tourist magnet.

Actually, they're a good idea. They're non-polluting and they complement Berlin's excellent public transportation system. They're not strictly part of it, being a private enterprise of some sort, but they work fine.

Berlin's main public transport arteries include the bus, the metro, the train and the tram system, and it's not too dissimilar to Stockholm's and Helsinki's.

It's an integrated system, so one ticket covers all. The basic ticket costing EUR2.10 (about RM8) lasts for two hours and you can do whatever you like in that time. You can transfer, double-back and get on or off however you like, within certain zones. For example, it's possible to go somewhere, do shopping and then travel back.

There are a plethora of variations, including a day card (EUR6.30 - not that good a value if you're not staying out late or travelling a lot), and short rides (EUR1.10 for up to three subway/train stations or six bus stops without changing).

Again, as with all these integrated systems I've seen so far, the keyword is trust. Nobody checks all the tickets on the subway and metro, and the bus drivers just give it cursory glance. The fine for being caught is EUR40.

The routes and maps here in Berlin are really good, and unlike in Copenhagen, I didn't spend ages trying to figure out exactly what I had to do. They have one map with all the train routes, and another that overlays all routes over a city map, and they do it consistently. Makes life a lot easier, I can tell you that.

Labels: big trip

Especially if you're travelling first class. That's the one perk you get for travelling using an 'adult' EURail ticket - you get to travel first class. Well, I paid for it, I might as well use it!

The train between Copenhagen and Berlin was especially nice, although I think it was a Danish train, and not German, because the map in between the carriages were of Denmark. However, all the signs were in both German and Danish.

I'm now in the train to Berlin, and I'm all alone in first class. Not a bad deal, really.

The seats are wider and a bit more plush, and (this I especially like) there are little headrests you can lean on - useful for people like whose head lolls back and front and from side to side when I fall asleep in a chair.

The first class cabins also have little temperature controls, so you can adjust it to be a little cooler without having to open the windows.

Labels: big trip

It's absolutely brilliant. I love technology. I love being able to stay in contact with everyone back home whenever I want. People don't appreciate how powerful technology is in changing lives. Toffler was right, I think: Changes in technology and society affect each other.

I can, while on a train heading towards Berlin, send SMS's to three different people on three different topics in less than five minutes. And they reply back to me in about the same time.

There is a cost to all this of course. I don't know how much the bill will be, but I could access the Maxis website and check my bill status.

Technology's wonderful.

Labels: big trip

If you look on a map showing rail routes around Europe, you see a dotted line joining Denmark and Germany, between R◘dby and Puttgarden. Now, I thought that it was a bridge, despite the legend showing blue dotted lines to be ferry routes. This was because the train I was boarding said very clearly "Hamburg Hbf" which meant I was going to stay on board it until I reached it. No mention of ferries anywhere on the ticket, on the timetable, on anywhere else.

Well, I should learn to trust map legends a little bit more. It was a ferry, but I was right too: I didn't have to get off the tain.

Another first for me. The train stops right outside the ferry, waits, and then gets on board. It's like a mini-station in there, and you can get off and wander about the boat.

It's a regular ferry, with restaurants, bars and the ubiquitous duty-free shops. You get a view of the sea and enough time to wolf down a fish and chips, which I did. They were also selling an all-you-can-eat salad buffet for DEK80 which was extremely tempting, but since I had a good breakfast, I didn't think I'd do it justice.

Labels: big trip

Oh wow. The first real disaster of my own making this trip. I think tiredness has something to do with it - I was coping fairly well up to Ulan Batar and then pretty okay after that. Actually, it's a miracle that nothing bad has happened before this, given my propensity of being distracted by unimportant things.

I lost my left luggage card and only found out about it fifteen minutes before the train was due to leave. It was in the right-hand pocket of my 'flak jacket', which is where I put all the stuff I label "important" which I need ready access to. Well, it was in my right-hand pocket until I emptied it to organise it better. For some reason, I didn't recognise the card when I was cleaning up and relegated it to 'someone else's property' in the hostel dorm. I only realised my mistake when I saw somebody using the same card at the left luggage lockers. I would like to say that if I hadn't tried to organise the junk in my pockets, it wouldn't have been misplaced, which forms a rather convenient excuse for me to not ever clear out my pockets again.

Fifteen minutes is a lot of time if you can open your locker. It's not when you have to persuade a bureaucratic locker attendent to let you get your stuff.

It was quite easy to get him to open the locker, but then he closed it up again and told me that I had to fill up a form before I could get to my stuff.

Actually, it may have not been so bad if it was me who was filling up the form, but he insisted on doing it by refering to my details on my passport himself. It was then I found out he was short-sighted.

Once the form is filled in, he gives you another ticket and asks you to pay an additional DEK50 into the locker. This is after I had cunningly spent most of my Kr¢¼nes in anticipation of leaving Denmark. I gave him EUR20, and got back in return some unknown number of notes and coins (which I later figured out to be DEK140, which is
pretty close to the actual exchange rate).

If you've never had to climb two sets of steps and run a hundred meters carrying four bags at the same time, let me tell you, it ain't so easy. It's a little bit harder if you're asthmatic. For the second time on this journey, I got a slight asthma attack. Fortunately, this time around I had the Ventolin. Wonderful stuff. Really, really works. Here, have some free advertising on me.

The story doesn't quite end there. The zipper on one of the bags broke in the rush and now I have a makeshift combination of shoulder and trolley bag.

Lesson learnt? Left luggage cards fall into the same category as passports when it comes to importance. Either that or, DON'T BOTHER CLEANING OUT MY POCKETS!

Labels: big trip

Wow. This is something I won't do again in a hurry: stop in a city for 'just one night' to get a taste of it, en route to a larger town. The idea was that I would stop by Copenhagen on my way to Berlin instead of going there straight from Stockholm. Originally I was going to go direct, but a friend had suggested that I look him up in Copenhagen. Furthermore, it takes 13 hours to travel to Berlin and the way the trains are arranged, it will always take up two days on the rail pass, so I thought, "what the hey, might as well do a stopover in Copenhagen".

Well, it was a bad idea, I think. Firstly, the train in from Stockholm gets in at about six in the evening. Secondly, the youth hostel I am in is far away from the centre of town. Thirdly, things are expensive in Copenhagen. Actually, things are very expensive. And lastly, my friend didn't reply my email.

It costs DEK15 (about RM10) to use a bus. It costs DEK50 (about RM30) to get a burger, fries and soft drink. Somebody was saying that they spent DEK1000 on the first day, and they didn't even do anything - it was just food and lodging. In case you're interested, I've been
surviving since this morning's buffet breakfast on one pair of Twix and an apple. And several bottles of water. And I walked the 5 km from the station to the youth hostel.

Labels: big trip

Well, Mama left me yesterday to fly back to KL via a short stopover in London, leaving me to fend for myself in Stockholm. Well, it's not that there's much to defend myself against. Swedes are generally nice people who speak good English and say "Hej" a lot. If you're wondering, the 'j' is a 'y' sound, so it's "hey" or "hi".

Mama thinks that "hej" is interchangable for "hello", "what's up?" and "good bye", although I disagree with the last one. If there are any Swedes out there who can clarify this matter, it would be very much appreciated.

Anyway, they almost always say this, certainly when you enter a shop or when you want to ask for something, and even if you happen to be sitting down on a bus next to them. It certainly makes your day when you get a bright smile and a jolly "hej" from a pretty face first thing in the morning.

However, you can sometimes see people getting impatient under that veneer of politeness, so I wonder exactly how far you can stretch them before they explode on you. Unfortunately, I am now leaving the country, so I am not going to be able to indulge in a bit of Swede baiting to find out.

Labels: big trip

There's one big thing that separates Mama and me on holiday. I like to walk and she, unsurprisingly, doesn't. On top of everything, St Petersburg, Helsinki and Stockholm are pretty compact towns, so they're ideal for walking.

One reason why I like walking is because you can see everything from where you are to where you want to be. You can take your time, and detour whenever something takes your fancy. You can take pictures to your heart's content, and not have to rush to take one through a window. You are on holiday, after all - make the most of it.

Secondly, this is the only real exercise I'm getting at the moment. I'm not going for morning jogs, I'm not working out at the gym, I'm walking. At the moment, every week, I spend three or four days walking at least five kilometers, usually more.

Thirdly, I believe that only way you really get to know a place is to get lost a little in it and wander around, and you can't easily do this on public transport. But when you're walking, you can easily take a wrong turning on purpose just to see where it leads you.

Lastly, walking's free.

Actually, the truth is that once I know a place, walking to and fro kind of loses it's appeal a little, so if it wasn't for the fact that it's one way of saving money, I probably wouldn't do it so much.

Mama, on the other hand, has money, has shorter legs than me and is not good at walking long distances if she's not being distracted by something (like shopping). I'm terrible to her sometimes, and I feel bad for not trying harder with the public transport.

Lesson learnt: When travelling with somebody else, make sure that both arrange beforehand exactly how much walking we are going to do in a day.

Labels: big trip

I actually like museums. There's something about them that excites the soul. The fact that they're made to edducate the general public gives them a nobility which I'm more than happy to share in.

I read an article recently which criticised museums for becoming more and more populist, moving away from the tradition of educating to one of making money. I didn't fully agree with it; in fact, I think that museums have a duty to be as fun as possible because that's the one sure way of making learning easier. I'm not suggesting that we relabel Disneyland as a museum, but we should see what is it that makes something like that work, and then incorporate it.

Skansen, in my book, is a fun museum. It's not fun in the white-knuckle, adrenaline-pumping way, but more in the this-is-a-nice-place-isn't-it way. (White-knuckle is next door, at the Tivoli Gardens amusement park.)

The down-side is that it's so big that things kind of get samey after a while, and because of the number of things on offer, some don't quite work. But, in general, I'm more than happy with the results.

Skansen is an open air museum, established in the early part of the twentieth century as an effort to preserve Swedish heritage. One thing you can't fault about the Swedes, it's their determination to be kind to the environment and their culture. Who else would invent a
soda-can crushing machine that automates aluminium recycling (including paying people for the effort).

Somewhere along the way, Skansen grew to include a zoo, so now it's can be thought to be in two parts: A set of authentic and well-preserved Swedish architecture that includes demonstrations of craftwork and a zoo that includes some animals native to Sweden and then quite a few that aren't.

The craftwork portion reminded me of the Korean Folk museum. Since Skansen pre-dates that, I'll assume that the Koreans included Skansen in their research, and the similarities show.

For a start, there are samples of architecture from all around the country. Honestly, this is my least favourite part of the whole thing. My poor brain just can't cope with the variety and in the end I've seen twenty different houses, and I'm still not able to tell you
which was which.

Within some of these buildings are museum attendents, but they're all nicely dressed up in period costume (read: turn of the last century). Some of them are actually doing something like baking cakes or working the printing press, and they're all ready to answer any
questons you might have. This is my favourite part of the whole thing. If you have the right people manning the museum, you can do wonders. They're well-informed, friendly and entertaining. And being there actually doing what they're explaining adds a whole new
dimension to the exercise.

You can, of course, buy anything they make, including food, silverware, glass instruments, printed material, you name it. If they make it, you can buy it. The prices are all quite reasonable and I suppose they help subsidise the museum.

(By the way, I think that the state should fund museums, and all this talk about corporate sponsorship should remain with places that are purely entertainment [Petrosains, anyone?].)

The zoo is pretty okay. It goes for the open-air concept popular with modern zoos these days. (Although the wolves and bears are kept in very deep open spaces, just in case some curious tourist thinks it's a good idea to tease one of them. If you ask me, people like that deserve all they get.)

There's actually a surprising amount of farm animals, although I suppose if you're putting up a model of a farm, you might as well include the whole shebang.

There's also elk, bison and seals, and then a special section, which is like a zoo within a zoo, that has exotic creatures, including lemurs, bats and tarantulas. (They let you pet the spiders, if you want. And no, I didn't want to. They're as big as my hand and some of
them have words like "bird-eating" in their names, and I reckon my hand is just the right size for a dove or a small pigeon.)

The zoo suffers from a lack of people to help explain things, and the signs are a little brief to be of much help; they also point out strange things, like how in a particular breed of cattle, the forelegs are bigger than the hindlegs (or something like that).

More annoyingly, because animals are now in their 'natural' environment, they're much better at hiding away from pesky tourists. Good for the animal, not good for me.

It's actually big enough for a whole day if you stop and look at everything, but if you just skim some parts and just do half a day, you can end early and then run off to Tivoli Gardens next door and scare yourself silly, just so that you get the full gamut of
experiences.

Labels: big trip

Sweden has given the world many things, for example: The Nobel Prize, Ikea and ABBA. Only the last is significant to this posting.

ABBA weren't just pretty faces, you know. Two of them also wrote the songs: Benny Andersson and Bj¢¼rn Ulvaeus. And before Paul McCartney wrote oratarios or Elton John wrote movie soundtracks, Benny and Bj¢¼rn, with the help of Tim Rice, wrote a musical called Chess.

I tend to get nostalgic when I hear music from Chess. It was the first musical I really liked through and through, although I must admit I was attracted to it because of it's links with the game. I was a bit of a chess geek back then.

The first and only time I watched it was when I was fifteen. It was a short three-show run at the Old Fire Station in Oxford and I persuaded my housemaster to make it a house trip. I enjoyed it thoroughly then. I really, really liked it, got the full album, heard all the songs. Then I got the American version of the cast recording which had a few new songs in it, and liked them too.

Because it's not considered to be in the same league as Les Miserables, Cats or even My Fair Lady, it's not a popular musical to put on and there has not been a long-running version of it other than it's initial release, although it seems to get a lot of tours.

They also put on one-off presentations, like the one being produced in Stockholm until the end of May. I would have taken my mother to watch it, but it's performed in Swedish, and I didn't think she would have enjoyed sitting through two and a half hours of people warbling in a foreign language if it wasn't opera. I don't even know if she'd
through it if it was an opera.

But, because it's been fifteen years since I last saw it, and because it's probably going to be another fifteen years before I get another chance to see it again, I went ahead, bought a ticket for SEK475 (slightly less than RM200) and resigned myself to remembering the English lyrics (which at one point in my mis-spent youth I completely
memorised, although age has a way of remedying follies like that).

What now follows is a review of the Stockholm production of Chess as performed on the night of 29 May 2003. Those of you who have not seen the musical, or are not familiar with the plot or music and will never want to be, I suggest you skip right on ahead to the next article - the following paragraphs will be painful to you.

To summarise the basic plot: Two players compete for the World Chess Championship and for heart of a woman during the height of the Cold War. One is Anatoli, a Russian with a frustrated marriage to his wife, Svetlana, and tired of his current life. The other is Freddie, a brash, arrogant American (I'll cut the snides about there being no
such other type) who is a brilliant genius, but spoilt to the bone. The only reason he manages to keep it up is due to the efforts of Florence, his assistant and general PA. Anatoly beats an over-confident Freddie in the first game, and Florence is exasperated with Freddie's viotile character. While cooling off in a bar after arguing
with him, she meets Anatoli, and there is an attraction between them. Anatoli wants to defect to the West with his new squeeze, but Molotov, Anatoli's politburo minder, suspects this and tries to foil him. All this builds up to the climax of the deciding game of the Championship that will decide who gets to wear the crown and win the
girl.

This production as a whole is thoroughly well done, especially the performances in the lead roles and the overall production values, but key changes in the tone of the plot jar with me a little.

What amazes me about this musical is the way whole-sale changes are made each time it is newly staged. The original West End version, to me, best balances Anatoli's conflict between love for a woman and duty to his country, and Freddie's attempts to redeem himself. The Broadway version (based on what I hear in the cast recording)
focusses on Freddy, while this Stockholm version most definitely is about Anatoli's affair with Florence and how it clashes with the family that he has back home.

To be honest, I don't really like the changes. I preferred it when both men were fighting for both Florence and the Championship. Florence's talents as a chess expert and game advisor is now non-existant and there's really no reason for Freddie to want her other than because he doesn't want anyone else to have her. The new version reduces Freddie's role so much that he is just a caricature of all things bad about Americans. His solo "Pity the Child" is now more of a tantrum than a plea for help and I think the story suffers for it.

I really would like to see a production that stresses the parallels between playing a chess game and the players trying to win Florence's hand. But maybe that's too obvious, and that's why I write reviews instead of directing musicals.

Apart from that one thing (which I think is a pretty big thing!), everything else about the performance was very good. The singing throughout, especially of Florence and Anatoli, is right on the mark. There are several new variations on delivery: The most famous song of the whole musical, "One Night in Bangkok" is now just background
nightclub music (the whole tournament is played in Merano now, instead of being split between it and Bangkok); the Arbiter's performance is more cloying than authoratative - a conscious, change, I'm afraid; and my favourite song in the whole musical, "I Know Him So Well", which was originally a heart-felt plea, is now a catfight between Florence and Svetlana. These all work well to keep the musical fresh, although the Arbiter's take on things doesn't reallly work well with me.

The other pieces which are played more or less as they were in the original are still pretty well done. "The Deal" between Freddie and Anatoli is especially good, and the conflict presented there is certainly better than when they are facing each other over the chess board. (Incidentally, yes, they really seem to be playing a game, but
from where I was sitting, I couldn't really follow the moves after the first few. If anybody knows what they were, I'd be happy to know!)

The set as a whole is as you would expect from Sweden - modern and spartan - with some elaborate props. The use of squares and black and
white are ever-present, as with just about every production of this musical, I'm sure.

There are also other novelties. For example, the Arbiter floats eerily over the game as it is in progress. More impressively, trapeze artists perform while Anatoli and Florence discuss their impossible love affair, although I have no idea how one relates to another (all that stretching and touching might be semi-erotic, I guess). Another
impressive point is how the entire chequered background, with practically the whole cast mounted on it, moves out and around the players as they play their final game. Never mind the creaking as it moves forward, it's still a pretty impressive idea.

All in all, did I enjoy myself? Yes, without knowing a single word of Swedish. Maybe key elements of the plot were explained in the dialogue, which would have made the changes more satisfactory, but never mind - I still left the theatre humming tunes in the key of Chess.

Labels: big trip

I'm in Prague now, and I really like the city, despite only having been here for a few hours. A few of the reasons include: It's pretty, the girls smile nicely at you and the food can be cheap (if you know where to look and what to and not to eat). But the keyboards are still a pain to use - try figuring out how to get the @ key on a Czech keyboard.

Labels: big trip

I'm sure there's a pun somewhere involving Finland, Sweden and Vikings, but I'm just not able to think of one just now. Never mind, I can tell you that I am taking the ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm, that it's an overnight journey that will dock at 9.30 in the morning (Swedish time) and that it gets bloody cold up and out there on the topmost deck at six in the evening.

There is a certain romance about sea travel in this jet age, just as there is with rail travel. It's looked upon as a luxury, it's like the people are saying "we want to travel like this because we can afford the time and the money to".

Why else would you want to go from point A to point B on something that is slower and usually not much lower in price (and sometimes, more costly)? It's the lure of romance, when travel was adventurous, when men were men and women journeyed on silk sheets and the finest wines.

Well, the truth isn't always like that. You must remember that there is a good reason why you don't always see people ambling about on deck in Nordic seas. It's because the wind is fr&&@ing cold out there, even in springtime. Plastic chairs set out on deck are blown about with abandon, and woe betide any person whose surface area to weight ratio is too large. I have no problems, being short, small and dense, but my mum risks becoming a human kite if she weares the wrong type of jacket.

We braved the weather and the fine sunshine for all of half an hour before combing the decks. For all it's size, cruise liners don't actually offer all that much. Apart from the decks (which included a bar at the stern), there is one floor of restaurants and a casino, and one floor of shops, a children's play area and a café. All the rest are cabins and crew areas.

The cabins range from 'the finest luxury money can buy with incredible views of the ocean' to 'the ones under the car deck that have no windows because all you would see is sea water, with some froth, if you're lucky'.

We actually got ones above the car deck, because it cost about the same for a double-decker bed above the car deck as a side-by-side arrangement under it. Of course, we had no windows. We didn't even have pretend windows like some of the other cabins. At least we could pretend we were in luxury by staring at a mural of an ocean-swept rocky isle, but we were even denied that opportunity. At least we had one shower and a WC with a sink and sheets and towels. I did notice a sign in one of the pamphlets that notified passengers that 'for the first two hours of the journey, channel 8 will be playing a video on safety precaution'. As we didn't have a TV in our room, I assumed that those of us in the inner cabins in deck 5 were to fend on our own and were probably expendable anyway in the event of an emergency.

The main reason why these liners are so cheap to travel on (if you consider paying RM400 for two people in a cramped cabin 'cheap') is because of the amount of duty free they sell and gambling that takes place on board.

You cannot turn a corner on the restaurant or duty free deck without seeing a line of slot and poker machines. The casinos open at 9pm, at about the same time as the performance shows. I didn't witness any of this as I was fast asleep by ten, and didn't want to be seduced by wine, women and gambling chips anyway.

The more amazing thing were the duty-free shops. From the time the shops open (about an hour into the journey), they were full of people carting away as much alcohol as they could. They even sell beer cartons that come with free trolleys so you can pull it off the ship. There are limits as to how much you can bring off, so I wonder exactly how much these guys drink in order to bring the carry-off amount under the limit. Not that customs seem to care too much - I didn't see a single soul pulled over or move through the red lane.

Labels: big trip

There are two ferry lines serving the Helsinki-Stockholm route. The Silja line is the more expensive, the nicer one, and the one that clearly gives me a free passage if I use up a day on my EURail pass. Unfortunately, the computer system could not handle a cabin with one EURail passenger and one normal passenger, and so they couldn't offer my mum and me the lowest price possible (about EUR90 ~ RM360 or so).

The Viking line has no such arrangement with EURail to validate passes, but they don't want to be left behind, so they've arranged an offer that says EURail passes get a free journey if they can produce a rail ticket. This, depending on how you read it, results in a way of getting very cheap ferry tickets.

Let me take a little time explaining EURail passes. They are these magic passes that allow you unlimited travel on European rail for a certain period of time in certain countries. For example, you can buy a pass that allows you to travel for 30 days in Europe. Or a pass that you can use for five journeys in Finland, Sweden and Denmark.

You can get one for USD249 for five days worth of travel in three countries within two months, if you are under 26. (If you're interested, mine is the 'ten days worth of travel in all of Europe within two months and I'm not under 26' which costs a whopping USD694.)

The ticket must be used within six months of you buying it, and within two months of the first journey. Before you begin the first train ride/ferry ride, you must get a railway offifcer to validate it. This means that the ticket is now 'live' and will expire within two months.

Now, I think that what Viking mean is that if you have used the EURail pass on the day that you are getting on board the ferry (i.e. it is stamped for that day), you can travel on the ferry for free. Note that 'free' means 'without a cabin', so that is an extra EUR48 if you want a cabin for yourself.

However, the people at the Viking counter didn't really know too much about EURail passes, so when I showed them an unvalidated pass (i.e. it had never been used before and no railway officer had put a stamp on it), they just gave me a free passage. Incredible.

If they're consistent with this, it means that if you're under 26, you can get six months of travel on the Viking ferries for USD249. If you travelled nine times back and forth between Stockholm and Helsinki, you would have already covered the cost of your ticket.

Of course, I'm not going to do that, but it's an idea. But, let me point out one more thing. Although they print your name on the ticket, not once on the journey between Helsinki and Stockholm did they check whether we were the same people as on our tickets. So, these tickets are 'transferable' if you don't get caught. I suppose I could have made some money selling free ferry passes.

Labels: big trip

Yet another example of Women Will Get Something They Don't Need Because It Costs Less is when my mum waved me on board a ferry without knowing where it was going.

"It's only two Euros per person!", she said. I had been scouting the port for left luggage lockers where we could stow our bags before hopping on board the ferry. I'm forever doing things like this, scouting out railway stations the day before I leave, so I know where the platforms are, but I only really seem to do it when I'm alone. I hadn't checked out a single train station in Russia, depending on the local guides to get us there. I would have in St Petersburg, because of all the luggage I'm dragging about (that's another story), but I didn't. Anyway, the Russians seem to not have figured out things like Left Luggage yet, so it would have been an exercise in futility.

Anyway, while I was away, my mum had been busy scouting out the ferries, and she had happily decided that since it was so cheap, it was worth hopping on one. Never mind she didn't know where it was going. Or what was there to see.

The irony? Since we had already bought a group 24-hour travel pass, we could have gone on it for free anyway.

Labels: big trip

Hey, it took me minutes to think up of that title, okay? So, cut me some slack.

The Russian phase of our journey will be over once we cross the border into Finland. It has been a... tiring experience. Don't get me wrong - I like Moscow, and St Petersburg was pretty pretty. Mainly, it's because my credit card was stolen, and a lot of time and effort and worrying was spent trying to find out how to call the Visa helpline to get it back.

Also, there's the additional stress (I'm not sure if that's the right word) of not speaking the language, which severely limits what you're able to do.

Labels: big trip

The train finally got into Helsinki and we made our way to the hotel without much incident, if you don't count me leaving my reporter's jacket and handphone on the train as one. We took a taxi, rode in a Volvo and paid EUR10 for the priveliege. Taxis aren't cheap in Helsinki, but they sure are nice.

Helsinki represents a sort of pitstop for us, followed by another one later in Stockholm. The only reason why I'm zipping through these countries is because of cost. Things are not cheap in Scandanavia, but they sure are nice (just like their taxis).

Their public transport is just the best I've ever seen. It's not that large, especially since Helsinki is such a small place, but they have an intergrated public transportation system. KL City authorities, please take note: Earlier, I talked about a single ticketing system for trains travellling on different lines. Now I shall point out to you that you should actually have a single ticketing system for all forms of transportation.

This is how it works: you buy a ticket, and it lasts for a predetermined amount of time, say, an hour. Within that hour, you can use either the train, metro, bus or tram, and change between them as often as you like. You can travel as many stops as you like. The only thing you can't do is travel outside a pre-determined boundary (you need to pay a supplement to do this).

There are no conducters checking your tickets as you travel. Everything is based on the honour system. If you are caught without a valid ticket, you are fined EUR50 and the cost of the ticket. I haven't travelled the metro here yet, but I assume there are no gates stopping you from geting on or off.

The cost is a little high (EUR2 ~ RM8 for a single ride or EUR4 ~ RM16 for an all day ticket), but it's comparable to, say, the cost of a Big Mac Meal (about EUR5).

Assuming you could get a good job, it would be a nice place to live, if a little staid. However, there must be some sort of adventurous streak in the Finns. Not only have they produced Mika Hakinnen and Kimi Raikonnen, they play ice hockey with a passion, and (just because it must mean something) pornography represents 90% of their film exports. In fact, they just held a world expo on pornography last week.

Labels: big trip

Russia has a great tradition in the circus, and as testament to this, Moscow has not one, but two permanent circuses, imaginatively named The Old Circus and The New Circus.

The Old Circus didn't have a performance on the day we decided to go and have a look, so we went to the new one.

We knew where the circus was when we got out of the metro - just follow the lines of children streaming towards this big domed building. Finding out where to buy the tickets was less straight-forward. The sales booth is underneath the main entrance and not directly accessible from it. To top it all off, the ticket attendents do not speak English. Or maybe they just pretend not to so that they could push the most expensive tickets at us (about 310 Rubles per ticket).

Acts in the circus fall ino basically two types: Those involving human performers doing incredible or funny things; and those involving animal performers doing incredible or funny things.

In the former category, we saw a lady who jumped and twirled hoops while standing on a horse, tightrope walkers, somersaulting and dancing ice skaters, a guy who did one-handed handstands, a guy doing a performance on something like the rings and, of course, clowns.

In the latter category, we had performing goats, performing dogs, trapeze monkeys, horses that trotted to On The Street Where You Live, ice skaters and their boomerang pigeons, elephants and, the most amazing thing I saw, trained performing house cats.

When I told Adik about this later, he assumed that I meant the big cats.

I said, "No, they're house cats. With flaming batons".

"With the cats on the ends?"

Actually, there was a point in the dog show when the lady spun a long pole with poodles hanging off the ends, which was a sight to behold. They seemed quite blasé about the whole thing, which I doubt the cats would have been.

The cats did climb twenty-foot high poles and then jumped off them (or climbed down them again). It was mightily impressive.

Labels: big trip

There is this idea that women will spend half as much on something they don't need and men will spend twice as much for something they do. Well, I think the first half of that was demonstrated today.

As part of St Petersburg's birthday celebrations, they are hoding a serie of concernts and performances for a week or so. They have this little guide as to what's on, but they are a little cryptic about what exactly they mean.

For example, on my guide it says: "Solo concert of A. Rosenbaum, Palace Square". Of course, I have no idea who A. Rosenbaum is, or what kind of music he's going to play, or what the 'A' in his name stands for, but it sounds like a good deal, especially since the conert is going to be free.

So we walk into the square at about ten past seven when they are conducting some ceremony about a statue or something, and we sit through (stand, rather) an hour's worth of singing, speeching and general waiting around.

During this time, the crowd ebbed a little, and Mama sidewinded her way towards the front of the audience, fish-like. I had no option but to follow, but because I didn't know where she was going, I had to play catch-up. We snaked our way to within twenty meters of the stage and then stopped, presumably because she couldn't find any more gaps.

All the while, I was thinking, "why is she so keen to get into the crowd and closer to the stage?". I leaned forward and in my best son-asking-mother-curiously voice asked "Why are we getting closer? We don't even know who this guy is". Her answer demonstrated that girlishness is an inherent trait of the female gender: "If he's handsome, we're staying".

Well, presumably A. Rosenbaum is not a patch on Paul Newman, because he was not thirty seconds into his first song, when Mama turned around and wanted to leave.

Labels: big trip