Spain

This is our final instalment of the three- or four-part series on our three-month European whatsup trip. The main focal points being The Netherlands, Berlin, Northern Spain, with a yarn or two about the UK (London, Horsham, Brighton, Portsmouth, and of course our mini-cruise, the ferry).

Noja

Lovely overnight on the ferry. Pilar and Josera met us; the ferry was an hour late arriving in Santander, Spain. During the night it was quite rough. Little bit nervous a few times – have to confess.

Our flat is nice, strangely located in an area where people have second homes, so this time of the year almost every apartment block is all boarded up. Nice and quiet! Though shops are still open (‘Lupa’, the local supermarket). No one speaks English, but they seem friendly, though no one smiles at you in the street (very unlike Denmark) We ate croissants at the local café.

Our hosts, Pilar and Josera, collected us from the ferry and drove close to the hour to our new home. As Narda pointed out above, we are the only ones here. The owners live in Bilbao another hour away. For a few miles in each direction there are rows of houses as above. We have a tennis court in front of our door. We will get back to our world of tennis further on. It is a bit spooky with no one around. On weekends a few people would show up, during the week, we were the masters of our surroundings. I liked it. Like one of those end-of-the -world films where two survive. We are them.

But perhaps you survived too as you are reading this.

The flat was well furnished and everything we needed was there.

We enjoyed walks in the small town of Noja – pronounced No gHa, (with the G sounding like ‘gezellig’ in Dutch; not so useful for most of you) and the seaside views a block away. Noja is in the autonomous community of Cantabria. Cantabria is the northern section of Spain that borders the sea. We stayed within Cantabria for the most part, except, for when we travelled a bit to the east to the Basque area.

While snooping through the flat we had for the next three weeks we found tennis rackets and balls. Outside the building was a tennis court. Putting all this exciting new information together we decided to play tennis. Nothing extraordinary about that, except, neither of us had played before. We went onto the court, had a bit of a look-around the neighbourhood, saw no one was in any of the flats, to possibly watch us, and off we were. Back and forth, back and forth. I think that first day, well, the whole first 27-minutes, of our fierce rivalry, our record volley in a row, before hitting the net, putting it over the fence, or watching it half-heartily bounce into the next court, was three times, back and forth over that bloody net. I never realised how hard it was to get a stupid little ball, hitting it with a large surface, would be so hard. Knowing we had done our exercise for the day we went back into our cosy flat, had coffee, looked at pamphlets, brochures, and webpages to plot our exploration of the continent, or at least Northern Spain.

We thought we would put off driving for another day, as we had not driven in Europe yet on our three-month trip. Now, back here in Australia, I forget which side of the road who drives on what, but I think it was either the same or different than Australia. In Berlin, we had use of a car, but chose to ride bikes the whole time, the same in The Netherlands, and UK. I am so used to Narda yelling out that I am on the wrong side of the road when riding a bike, it all just becomes one big blurry, ‘you’re on the wrong side, still’.

Being our first day, recovered from our tennis tournament of geriatric-bouncy-poo, being hungry and in need of substance, we Google-mapped the nearest grocery story, ten-minute walk away, and were off. There are three food stores in Noja: Lupa Supermercados, Coviran, and the Carrefour Express. We went to Coviran first as that was nearest but it was small, so we got only a few things. Our market of choice became the largest of them all, Lupa. We both like foreign supermarkets. Our favourite is Jumbo, in The Netherlands, but any foreign market is fun, trying to figure what dangerous items they have slipped into the ingredients section. Of course, in places like Spain, India, France, well anywhere we don’t know the language, it is quite the challenge, so we just go by the pictures on the package and hope our bodies can separate the righteous items from the pretending-to-be-food items. Throw in my low-carb-vegetarian-make-that-organic diet, and the challenge becomes even greater. Nevertheless, we got home with a couple of good stuff.

Santona

After settling in, learning tennis, exploring Noja from side to side, and having now been in Spain for a whole day we decided to give driving the car left for us a go. Narda being born in Holland, gave her a right-of-passage to be the first to drive in Europe. We are used to our truck back in Australia and driving, I think it is on the left side of the road, so having a good-looking Volvo station wagon waiting for us and driving on the right side seemed doable. Me, being the Yank, driving on the right side as we do, it should have been me driving first.

The car is a lovely Volvo, complete with leather seats, and great to drive. Our first venture out was to a beach town called Isla, where we tried the potato croquettes. (I added chicken).The scenery is spectacular, cliffs, small beaches, inlets, rocks. Then we drove on to the lovely town of Santona, where the first thing that you notice is a strong smell of fish; that is if you take the backroad, which we did. Apparently it’s anchovies, which are caught, washed, aged, cured and dried. Folks in Santona are the experts in this.

Santona became our local ‘big’ town to troll. Via the internet, there are eleven-thousand people in the area, http://www.aytosantona.org/. If there is such a thing as a typical Spanish town, this would be it. We found a printer for Narda to print photos for her travel-book, some of which I am borrowing passages of for this blog. Santona has the sea on one side and mountains in back, or front if you are facing that way then the sea would be in the back. I liked apartments built into the mountain, as below, facing the sea.

The Spanish countryside is beautiful. The first town after Noja is Isla, a copy of Noja, with lots of holiday apartment buildings. If you are in town, we found lunch at Hotel Alfar tasty and affordable, with croquettes, though probably not low-carb. http://www.alfarhotel.com/ I did find the word for vegetarian, so, probably what I ate was not once an animal. We were there at low-tide, with what was becoming our often-viewed sight of the sea from many towns and angles. After Isla we went through the towns of Argons and Castillo, both smaller than Noja, beach-side tourist enclaves, on the way to downtown Santona. The whole trip is about fifteen minutes, if not stopping, or getting lost, which, surprisingly, we do.

 

 

However, we liked to stop, take photos, say ‘wow’, and continue to whatever our day was to bring us.

Surprisingly, to us, was that there was snow on the nearby mountains – in October.

There was some event in our town on the weekend. Tents were put up, people mingled, and there was a day and evening of music, with bands, cooking shows, and lots of foreign stuff happening. We made a short clip to give an idea of the tent and music – http://tiny.cc/tc7c3y.

Wow, talk about being clueless, I just looked up that weekend in Google, trying to piece together why there was such much merriment going on;

“Hispanic Day (Día de la Hispanidad) or National Day (Fiesta Nacional de España) is an annual national public holiday in Spain on October 12. It commemorates when Christopher Columbus first set foot in the Americas in 1492.”

Ah, something just went off in my brain-stem. When we lived in New York City, there was Columbus Day Weekend. We would go to Fifth Avenue and watch the parade. I have videos of it on YouTube, for example, you don’t want to go past this Narda/Terrell classic @ http://tiny.cc/v2mb3y  ‘Columbus Day Parade New York City 2006’.

In fact, what I wrote back then about the parade was, “Not a very good parade, surely not up to New York City standards. Most of the parade was very disorganised with people wandering around as if they were in the parade. Some of the floats were OK but overall very budget”. That somewhat sums up the Columbus Weekend in Noja, except, there were no floats, but it all did seem quite random. Of course, not reading/speaking Spanish we had no idea to begin with.

For a 20-second clip of us stuck in a herd of cows in Northern Spain  http://tiny.cc/5inb3y on one of our random-day-wanders through the Spanish countryside.

Most of our days were highlighted by sleeping in, playing a spot of tennis, going for a few hours drive around the local areas, taking an afternoon nap, and watching our Netflix series in the evening. The bit of a nap is not because we are as old as the hills, it is that is what the Spanish people do. From 2 – 3 or was it 4? Shops close, people go wherever they go, presumably a glass of wine and a nap, then have dinner between 9 – 11 pm. That is their day. We tweaked their day by having dinner at 6 or 7 and to sleep by 10, old-as-the-hills.

Laredo

Laredo, 45-minutes away was another groovy Spanish town we visited a couple of times.

Laredo is slightly larger than Santona. It is a beach city with one of Cantabria’s longest and busiest sandy stretches. It had a very old section, dating back to Roman times. Not current Roman but old old Roman times. As with elsewhere in Spain, the folks disappear in the afternoon. We wandered around the whole old section for hours without seeing anyone. As it was siesta time, we didn’t get into the 13th-century Gothic Iglesia de Santa María cathedral. I got lots of photos which are posted somewhere.

At the end of a street we came across the tunnel leading through La Atalaya hill to the sea. I can’t find my notes on this tunnel or information on the web, though I found it was built in the 19th century, no doubt, in anticipation of our arrival in the future.

For my USA mates, it is the sister city of Laredo, Texas; there is nothing in common, oh wait, both places are Spanish speaking and maybe even both have a tunnel. I won’t comment why there would be a tunnel between Laredo and Mexico though.

When in Spain, eat at tapas bars. A tapa is an appetizer or snack in Spanish cuisine and translates to small portion of any kind of Spanish cuisine. It became the way of eating in the afternoon. We didn’t write down the name of the tapas bar in Laredo, but you can find it. It is the only place open in the afternoon at the start of the old town.

We have a short clip, with a minute slideshow of photos from our day in Laredo at https://tinyurl.com/y426xbce 

Santander

We drove the couple of hours over to the port city of Santander. Santander is where we arrived on our ferry from the UK, the Bay of Santander, the week before. It is the capital of Cantabria, the region we were hanging out in. The main attraction here is the Palacio de la Magdalena. Built 1909 – 1911 for the Spanish Royal Family. We walked around the palace, waved to the sea, looked for a loo and went back to our car, had lunch in the old section of Santander, drove home.

The only photo out of a hundred that summed up my day was watching a millennial preening in front of the palace. If you want to see what I said about this photo, go to the twitter feeds for it: http://tiny.cc/pmmh3y    and, http://tiny.cc/6nmh3y

If you are into exploration, driving through random towns, seeing the countryside, is as interesting as the larger cities. For example,

I don’t have the name of this town, but there were so many with the whole place being old. Being old, we like old, quaint, no big-box stores or fast-food shops, just pubs serving wonderful tapas for meals.

 

 

San Sebastian Donostia

San Sebastian is a resort town on the Bay of Biscay in Spain’s mountainous Basque Country: driving for a few hours twards the French border.

There are four languages spoken in San Sebastian: Basque, French, Spanish, English. For example, from a sign we saw four languages on most signs.

The Basque language, and people, are fascinating.  We learned something about the Basque culture from our host, who is Basque. He is the principal in a school system, where the students only speak Basque (or Euskara). They are a strong, good looking people, very proud of their extensive history and heritage. To our ignorant ears, the language sounds very different from Spanish. Both the French and the Spanish have tried to supress their language and culture, but now in more recent times, they enjoy more autonomy.

We booked into Pension San Martin and spent two nights, three days in San Sebastián. The hotel was a one-star pension, in the centre of town. For one-star it was very comfortable, and a good choice. Trip Advisor gave it a 4.5-star rating. We strolled around town our first day walking along the grand beach of Playa de la Concha, then into the old quarters for a great meal of tapas.

One of the things I discovered was that there was a tram-line that went to France. Holy Cow, what a great idea. How about going to France for lunch? We took the half-hour tram/train from San Sebastián to Henday. Ticket costs 2.55 Eur per person ($3 USD, $4 Australian); deal of the day. It is on a narrow-gauge train track, looks like a commuter train, but locals seem to refer to it as a tram.

When we got to the French train station, we saw that there was a train that went to Paris that took five and a half hours. We were so tempted to wait a few hours and go, but; 1. We are not good at waiting 2. Our stuff was back at the one-star hotel in San Sebastián. 3. One of us was practical enough, in that particular moment, to suggest, perhaps we shouldn’t do that. There was street fair going on in Henday, we had lunch, walked heaps, through the old section, checked out the views from some hip-looking lookout, and took the train back.

On our last day in groovy San Sebastián we took the funicular railway (cable car) to the top of Monte Igueldo, with its sweeping view over stuff.

Along the coast, before the cable car we watched surfers riding alongside the village wall. It seemed quite perilous but no one came to grief.

If we get back to this part of Spain, Donostia, San Sebastián we will definitely craft a longer stay; next time we will bring an overnight bag, take that train to Paris and grab one of those les cuisses de grenouille, les escargots, la tête de veau; oh wait! I am a vegetarian. Bring on Flamiche and other groovy stuff.

We drove around the countryside some days, including going down to Solares to see Naturaleza de Cabárceno Park, which is a nice old town folks go to for one reason, the open animal zoo. It was once a large iron mine and after the iron business went elsewhere some adventuresome folks saw it as a big area to toss in a bunch of wild animals. Being cheapskates we drove around part of the park, walked through a gate as if we belonged and waved to various animals. None waved back, however, it was a great, inexpensive day. Yes, we even took a flask of coffee and lunch with us. How to see the world on pennies a day – we will be your guides. Reviews of it are in the five-star range, folks saying it is one of the best animal places in Europe. But really, park in the free car park in town, walk through the gate, around the enclosure and it is all free. I think it is because most people drive in to park, and they get stopped to pay for their ticket and to park, well, and to go in the actual park. Oh boy, they have an area to see kangaroos. We see them as much as we want to, on our walks behind our house, laying alongside the road (roadkill), even hopping down the road. But if you are from one of those no-kangaroo places in sight then it may be interesting. ‘The natural park is home to a hundred animal species from five continents living in semi-free conditions, which are distributed in large enclosures where one or more species coexist. Almost all of them trigger fights and mating season struggles for control of females (sounds like my neighbourhood). More than 20 kilometres (12 mi) of roads cross the park, leading to gorges, lakes, and rock figures.’ You can ride a cable car over the top if you have the cash.

Bilbao

A highlight was Bilbao. We had wanted to see The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. It would take three runs at the city before we got inside. The first time we went was by train. There is no train stop in our hometown of Noja so we need to go to Beranga, a twenty-minute drive, if doing the signposted speed.

We waited at the train station for longer than the train should have arrived. https://www.virail.com/, which is the regional lines.  We kept looking at our handy dandy online train guide in some non-understandable language. With no one around at 8 am we didn’t know what to do. Fortunately, a gentleman finally arrived giving some hand waving indications that no train was coming, but instead, we should follow him. He led us to a bus and off we went. There were some Brits on the bus, speaking a similar language as us who said  the train line was being repaired and that we were on a bus that would stop at various stations until we re-joined the one that would get us to Bilbao, also known as Bilbao-Abando and locally named as Estación del Norte (“North Station”)  (Station of Abando Indalecio Prieto), for those who know what all that could possibly mean.

The train was a good ride, a two-carriage thingy with a loo. They advertise to go 250 kilometres an hour – not sure if we did. It is a two-hour ride for 6.6 euros ($7.50 USD/$10.60 AUD).

We spent the afternoon in Bilboa, old people checking out the old area. Bilbao is the fourth largest city in Spain after Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia. We had a great tapas lunch in one of those pintxos bars. We kept the card for the establishment saying, this place has the best tapas selection ever. After that we did the Donostia, San Sebastian trip, and thought they had the best ever, only to realize everywhere we went had an amazing selection of tapas so we tossed the card. You want a great pintxos bar go to Spain.

See our little clip for our train ride and scoot around the old section of Bilboa at http://tiny.cc/qcq13y.    We included a minute slideshow in the 3-minute video, instead of posting a bunch of photos here. A week later we drove to Bilbao – see our short clip of our driving there/here (https://bit.ly/2T1gkA0).

Our idea was to meet our hosts, whose flat we are living in, for lunch see the Guggenheim Museum. We met at the Guggenheim but the line to get in was so long we decided to go for a walk instead. Eventually, taking the incline railway, The Artxanda Funicular, to the top of Mount Artxanda, overlooking Bilbao. The Funicular is like the one we took in San Sebastian with both being built in the early 1900s. We have a one-minute clip going up the tram @ https://tinyurl.com/yy6aszms 

Our hosts, Pilar and Joserra, showed us around Bilbao, took us out a traditional Basque restaurant which was much more upmarket than we are used to: white tablecloth, wine (not the two euro a bottle Narda likes), some Spanish type band wandering about the shop – like you see in the movies, and a four-course meal (lots of meat for those people surrounding me, good veggie stuff for us elite, me). We walked around the Guggenheim and took zillions of photos of the place.

The dog guarding the museum is named Puppy. To side-track for a second and talk about me, I used to have a dog named puppy. He never seemed to mature so he never had his name capitalized. Here is a photo of puppy and me in 1995, in Hackham, South Australia. He ran away from home in 1997. We had him for about ten-years, then one day he just ran off with a neighbour’s dog, into the hills and never came back. Now I know that he grew up and became a model dog in Spain, and now his name is capitalized. I am so proud of him.  Here’s to you puppy.

Back to Puppy. Puppy is a 40-foot-tall West Highland white terrier. He is a permanent installation, but twice a year, in May and October, all the plants that make up the sculpture’s exterior are replaced with fresh seasonal varieties, including pansies for the fall and winter, and begonias, impatiens, and petunias for the spring and summer. We were there in October, the third time to Bilbao, when we got into the museum, they had the scaffolding around the outside of Puppy, and were replacing the flowers. The photo below was from the week before when Puppy was still in flower.

The same artist dude created the tulips below that made a nice bouquet for Narda.

Our third shot at getting into the Guggenheim was successful.

We left early on a foggy morning, see our two-minute clip, http://tiny.cc/k0q23y 

The museum, a mate of the one in New York City, which I have taken students to several times when I was teaching middle school in NYC, is well worth the visit. They have the usual huge sculptures that leaves one scratching their heads, as well as modern to the point of ‘what-the-hell?’ to stuff by Americans such as Warhol as well as trendy European artists. I tried taking photos, but got stopped in each room, by some hand-waving person rambling on in some language I had no way of understanding, that there was a problem with my camera. No doubt, that it was being pointed at various things and snapping. Our favourite was Paris-born, Lisbon-based artist Joana Vasconcelos, www.joanavasconcelos.com. She does giant pieces using kitchenware, which I did quickly get photos of before a head-shaking, hand-pointing foreigner indicated to stop my rebellious ways. She even went so far as to show me a sign with a camera and a line through it.  Gosh!

The “shoes” reflect on the social conventions, in terms of gender roles and expectations, instilled within traditional generations that have also creeped into modern society. They represent the dichotomous domestic responsibilities paired with contemporary ideals of a woman.

If you get to see Vasconcelos’ work, do so. She does shows all over the place. You can see some of her Guggenheim instalments at https://joanavasconcelos.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/exhibition, including a huge chandelier made of tampons. The work is called The Bride. My photo is blurry due to being harassed for taking photos.

OK, one last photo – this one Narda took quickly when the guard turned around… we are criminals at heart.

On the same foggy drive from Noja to Bilbao when we saw Guggenheim, we stopped at the incredible Vizcaya Bridge. It is the world’s oldest transporter bridge and was built in 1893. It links the towns of Portugalete and Las Arenas crossing the mouth of the Nervion River. Look in Wikipedia for more on the Vizcaya Bridge. We walked across, later rode the transporter back. In Las Arenas, which is really just a burb of some bigger town, primarily setup for the likes of us (tourists), we attended their street fair, spent money, bought me a groovy looking leather bag, unfortunately it fell apart a month later when we were back in Adelaide. Lesson is something about being hustled that something is locally crafted in the finest leather and craftsman in Europe. Meaning, someone was able to remove the ‘made in China’ label, and sucked us in. We filmed some old blocks in costumes of some sort playing bagpipes and other instruments of torture. You will hear them in several as background in several of our clips on Spain, scattered through this tale.

 

The Cueva de El Castillo or Cave of the Castle

 

 

Video and slideshow of the cave and Puente Viesgo http://tiny.cc/t0y23y 

 

We got an early morning start and drove 40 minutes to The Cueva de El Castillo, or Cave of the Castle. It is an archaeological site within the complex of the Caves of Monte Castillo, in Puente Viesgo, Cantabria, Spain. The El Castillo cave contains the oldest known cave painting. The El Castillo cave contains the oldest known cave painting: a large red stippled disk in the Panel de las Manos was dated to more than 40,000 years old. The painting below is not of the red stippled disk. I was unable to take a photo. The guide watched my every move; whether because she thought I was hot or because she saw my camera in one hand and phone in the other, and she didn’t trust me, or who knows what goes through a woman’s mind? Sucks! Nevertheless, she was good in the sense that she translated everything to us in our understandable language. We were the only non-them in the group, so it was a good effort on her part.

We did not go to any one of the other many caves (1600 I think) as we drove down the cave-mountain in search of food, as all hunters and gathers do. We wandered the historical village of Puente Viesgo. It was alongside the river Pas (see our video/slideshow above), and to quote Wikipedia; ‘The various populations of Puente Viesgo (Viesgo Bridge) are documented since the year 1000 by the abbey of Santillana del Mar. Bottom line, if you are in northern Spain, like caves, old stuff, visit this place. It is only 28km away from Santander, the capital, and arrival point if you take the ferry to Santander from the UK.

In the village of Puente Viesgo we found the Gran Hotel. We thought it would be too expensive for the likes of us but we got ourselves a good feed for under 20 euros each. (The Gran Hotel, https://www.balneariodepuenteviesgo.com). OK, so we dipped into the world of the millennials and took photos of our meals – such as they were, so delightfully served.

And that was our month in Spain. Coming up in a few weeks (April 2019) is a short three-month trip with stays in Denver for a month, Florida a few weeks, upstate New York to see my sister and family, NYC, of course, and the rest of the time in DC to hang with Narda’s son and his family. Later in the year we are in Pakistan, India and Thailand and of course good old Oz. So we will scribble a bit over the year.

Next up will be USA. 15 April 2019 ~ 15 July  2019: Washington DC, Denver, NYC, upstate New York, Florida. Let us know if we are in the same town as you and we will have a cuppa. Count your sleeps. We are.

Thanks for sharing this moment with us.

e-books of Terrell Neuage updated 19/03/2019

Terrell Neuage Thoughts 2019 updated 13 March 2019 Adelaide, South Australia

NEUAGE HOMEPAGE

picture poems are available at these sites: Twitter, ~ Tumblr ~ Pinterest updated 13 March, 2019 Adelaide, South Australia

‘Leaving Australia Book 2‘ (updated March, 2019 IN PAPERBACK & AS E-BOOK)
‘ Leaving Australia “Again’: Before the After” (updated March, 2019 See the first 30 pages of each for free) Paperback Edition

cheers

UK

Leaving Germany to Horsham, UK

30 September Sunday

Goodbye Berlin. It has been an amazing stay. A really nice cosy flat, super hosts, beautiful views, great bikes and easy public transport. I think we’ll be back. Our host, Frank, drove us to Schönefeld Airport (the secondary international airport of Berlin used for these short flights). We flew Easy Jet to Gatwick Airport, London. No drama, and cheap.

(notes from Narda’s diary) From Gatwick we took the train a few stops to Horsham. The walk to our Airbnb was a bit tough. 45-minutes with pretty heavy luggage. Haven’t got this quite right yet! The flat is at the end of a property which has historic homes. We are in a converted, beautifully decorated garage.

We arrived on a Sunday, walking straight into the yearly historic hot rod rally, (AmeriCARna “celebrating everything we like about American Culture with a big nod to the 50s and 60s era”. Oh boy celebrating Yanks – ‘hey I am one of them’) which would have been great to attend but we were stuffed and so walked another twenty-minutes to our new home. After examining our new digs, realizing we had not eaten since Berlin, several hours earlier, that there was no food in our pad, or in our luggage, we traipsed back to the centre of town. All the American car types and British viewers were heading out of town. The first couple of pubs/restaurants were either full or sold out of food.

We had a soup/sweet potato meal at a pub. Our place is called “Gingerbread House” it is at the “North Lodge” on Denne Road.

Who can not resist a swing tied to a high branch in a mighty tree in the Horsham countryside which is our new home (for a few days)?

For 52 seconds of Narda swinging then talking to a flock of sheep don’t let this clip go by without your attention…

This twenty-minute walk became our daily hike into town… can’t really complain. Especially when we were no longer dragging a suitcase and backpack along. At the end of our stay we took a taxi to the train station – old people stuff.

In the evening we cut across some paddocks and took the path less travelled; except, for the cow path we followed through the paddock, and over the train line.

Horsham itself is a quaint little town. In our planning we were going from Germany to Spain but there was a mix up with our Spanish booking, so we only have three weeks in Noja, Spain instead of what we believed was going to be four-weeks. Giving us a week to fill.

Brighton was our first choice and we knew we needed to get to Portsmouth. We had spent several days in London at the beginning of our three-month European visit. We stayed with Narda’s family in luxury digs on the Thames near Parliament then. We weren’t too keen on going back to London, forget why – think it is due to its expensive nature, Narda found us this neat little Airbnb in Horsham.

On one of our meanders through town, I saw this gentleman having lunch with a rabbit. The reason I have my 300 mm lens on the camera most of the time is to get these types of shots and not be obvious. There is so much to unpack here (I hate that new expression…but…). Firstly, we see he is on his phone, no doubt talking with another rabbit. His rabbit mate is having coffee, but the man is not what does that tell us? The rabbit is obviously focused on the moment or possibly on a hawk flying overhead. The blue jumper tells that she could be he or who knows with this generation of rabbits, what they are into? Perhaps the man has suffered a great loss in life and the bunny is a replacement, wearing the missing person’s garments and drinking coffee or most likely tea as this is a British bunny and not a Yank bunny with milk… gosh, I just don’t know.

“The place name Horsham was recorded in 947. Horsham was called a borough in 1235.” We went into The Parish Church of St. Mary the Virgin the oldest building in Horsham. It was completed in 1247. The street going toward the church has these beautiful houses, built in the 1600s and still standing.

A place to be seen, well, to be at, is the Horsham Museum and Art Gallery. https://www.horshammuseum.org/  We spent a long time in here. There are original artefacts from Percy B. Shelley. He is considered one of the best philosophical poets in the English language. I studied him at uni and for a semester knew lots about him. He was born in Horsham, August 1792, giving the reason for so much about him at the museum. He was promoted by his cool wife Mary Shelley the author of Frankenstein; for you generation XYZ people who may never have heard of the first beat poet, Percy Shelley (or I thought he was the original beat poet, maybe no one else agrees). Shelley had a most interesting life and both the bunny in the photo above and I encourage you to read the Wikipedia entry regarding him; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley

There is a lot in the museum with a lot of excellent art scattered around the place. The museum is free, making it all the more interesting when on an overspent holiday.

I was intrigued by the cemetery, seven – eight hundred years old. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, how many times have the original owners of the bones here been back on earth? Tourist kinds of questions but no one giving any answers.

As always, we got home before dark and watched our Netflix series or something we downloaded. We are currently watching the last season of ‘Episodes’ which we like very much.

Narda developed a bit of a tummy wog so we went to the doctor. Not that I would write about that, and very possibly Narda will delete this when she edits and adds and subtracts… but what I want to share is the medical costs while being a tourist in the UK. Narda first filled out some forms, saw a doctor and when we went to pay, we were told that there is no charge for a first doctor’s visit in the UK. Well that helped the travel budget heaps. Then we went to the chemist (pharmacy, drug store) to get her prescription filled. Surely, this would cut into our budget. No! No charge for over sixty-years old. We went to another doctor in another place, I think it was Brighton, a week later, again no charge. Hey, USA, look at the UK for how to look after not only the local citizens but also anyone trespassing in your great land.

In Horsham we bought groceries at Sainsburys, which was only minutes from where we were living, and accessable by lovely country paths. Always good to find the local supermarket. This one was wonderful. It had everything. I bought 2 soft and sloppy bras.

After a couple of days of walking the length and breadth of Horsham, many times, we acquired the castle itch. There are so many castles in the UK. Where to go? We chose the one in Arundel, West Sussex, about half an hour by train from Horsham. Arundel Castle. It is about a fifteen-minute walk to the village, then up a hill to the castle.

We grabbed the GoldPlus admission so we could see all the rooms. At £19.50 (senior concession, £22 regular) it is well worth the cost.

There are so many rooms and areas and histories to see and learn about. The place was founded at the end of the 11^th Century. It was founded on Christmas Day 1067, by Roger, Earl of Arundel, one of William the Conqueror’ most loyal barons. Arundel Castle is one of the longest inhabited country houses in England. The same family (The ancestors of the Dukes of Norfolk) still live in a part of the castle and have for more than a thousand years.

As with most castles they had their own chapel.

We had lunch in the village and said that the next time in these parts we would rather get a place in this town than in Horsham. Nothing against Horsham, a lovely town, but hey, who doesn’t want to live in a castle village more than a thousand years old?

After three great days in Horsham – a very doable town as the whole place can be viewed and walked through in half an hour then twenty minutes to our country estate, we took a taxi ( 5 quid ) and then train to Brighton. Taxi to train station 5 pounds – train to Three Rivers then to Brighton.

 

Brighton

04 October Thursday

Brighton UK. How cool to be here. We have one in Adelaide and one in Melboure. Beachside suburbs all. One of those Australian towns named after a place in Britain. We also have a Horsham in Aus. Nothing like the Horsham in the UK.

We asked the first person we saw once outside the train station for the street our Airbnb was on. She asked if we were here to see the Banksy painting. As it turned out the great street artist’s painting of two cops kissing was on our way to where we were going. Having just come from the Urban Nation street scene of Berlin we felt quite UpToDate with Banksy.

We got to 94 Theobald House over on Blackman Street a bit exhausted. It is not far from the train station but there is a stupid hill to clamour down then up then down. Again after 20 years of lugging stuff about the world one would think we would have it right by now. We did it right for our three months in India earlier this year, but we reverted to our old ways of lugging too much once again on this trip.

05 October, 2018 Friday

We were near the top, I think it was floor 20, with fantastic views. The apartment itself was well done, trendy and comfortable. The elevators made us a bit nervous as well as knowing that another UN housing tower had burnt a year before killing many people. Narda does not like staying above about the third story, so we can escape in case of fire. Or at least to a floor that a firetruck ladder could reach, but 21 floors up?

Zooming in on housing not far away.

Looking toward Brighton Beach,

After a good night’s sleep with no dreams of tower fires we headed across town to Brighton Pier. The pier is like a little city with restaurants, casino, amusement park rides and just cool views of the coast. It is called ‘Brighton Palace Pier’.

We took random buses around Brighton and walked heaps. Here is a clip of that random bus journey – 2.55 minutes – well worth the time in your day to behold…

We bought a bus pass and headed along the shore to Eastbourne. Nice town a bit like Brighton complete with a pier. Had an average Chinese Buffet lunch. I person who identified as Dench Photography, stopped Terrell and took his photo with his new hat.

Ah! My new hat. I wanted a hat like my mate, Randy, my friend for fifty years, who died a year or so ago. I have been looking throughout this trip then walking into one of those trendy clothes shops one finds in tourists spots, I spotted the hat for me.Not being a hat wearing person it took awhile to get used to it, but it has become a fixture of my wandering ways. I was pleased and that is all one can hope for in these situations.

BTW my mate Randy with his hat that I wanted to copy

The area we were in, not far from the train station, seemed like a trendy place. A lot of pubs, all very busy with lots of people sitting outside in the evenings. Street art everywhere, very much like Berlin. Generation XYZ flooding the streets and alleys. An easy city to find everything one needs. For example, I kept up my low-carb diet, and my blood sugars were like a normal person. It is so much fun being like a normal person. Well worth the effort. XYZ people are so young and annoying but they like their organic and vegetarian servings and they are really not far removed from the street scenes of 1960s San Francisco, New Orleans or NYC so all and all they are not too bad rustling about in the background.

Snails.

They are all over the place. They are very colourful with patterns and crap all over. Very much like the cows, horses, bears… other cities have. I have been wanting a cow for a long time for our front yard and to have my son, Sacha, come over from Melbourne and piece it. So those of you who have no idea what to purchase for my next birthday (turning 72 and being in Adelaide, August 10, 2019 – not far away, so start saving, or get together with your neighbours and buy me one). Well I want a big plastic cow!

The snails… Apparently there were 50 unique Snailspace sculptures which were auctioned off in December, so lucky us to see them(?). It was all for a good cause, a charity, Martlets providing people affected by terminal illness in the community. They were hoping to collect 20,000 pounds but I can not find whether they achieved that.

Brighton is really the place to go. Easy train ride from London and elsewhere. Funky, beat, colourful, and as with all Brits, friendly.

We didn’t go up the British Airways i360, a 162-metre observation tower on the seafront. https://britishairwaysi360.com/ We went into the lobby, the sun was setting, probably a good time to go on it but we would have to have waited for half an hour and we don’t like waiting so we walked along the pier and the beach and had a wonderful sunsetting time.

On Monday, 8^th of October we hopped a train over to Portsmouth. We explored Portsmouth, stayed at a nice hotel near the ferry port. The old area is the place to be and Gunwharf is the place to eat and see stuff. https://gunwharf-quays.com/ we had a really good feed at a place that had an American motif – can’t remember the name but the food was cheap and tasty.

Near our hotel is the Charles Dickens’ Birthplace Museum. Unfortunately, it was not opened on either day we were there, but I sat on his step and sent him some good vibes in case he came back to earth and needed inspiration. Even wore my hat for him.

But at the end of the day we hadn’t come to Portsmouth to see Charley or eat at an American café or see old ships and navy stuff.

We were here for one reason. To take the ferry to Spain

We upgraded to a room with more space and a window with a view. This is a 24-hour overnight ferry. We saw these large ferries from our fifteen-story Norwegian Getaway room the year before as we sailed around the Baltic (see our cruise blog). On the Getaway we had a much larger room, balcony and spent too much time at the smorgasbord/buffet which made me forget the woes of being on a low-carb diet (I so forgot it I even gained weight). And the entertainment, and on and on… back to the ferry. It was good. Narda socialized, I found free Wi-Fi and there was a lot of room to roam the ship. There are cinemas, restaurants, swimming pool (which was closed due to some wind and cold; soft Brits I suppose) and several decks and lounges. We were on their flagship boat, ‘Pont-Aven’ on deck 6 of a nine-deck ferry. According to their brochure, here in front of me, the passenger capacity is 2,416, room for 650 cars and 184 crew. Its service speed is 23 knots. Overall it is 185 metres in length. In contrast our Getaway boat was 326 metres – twice the length and has capacity for 4000 and crew of 1640. When we took it in 2017 it was the world’s largest cruise ship. But we still liked our little ferry. We love cruises. So much so that in a few weeks (end of February 2019) we are taking a four-day trip to Melbourne on a large cruise ship out of Adelaide. An easy way to visit my son in Melbourne as we spend a day there then sail back to Adelaide. Just the other day we were doing a search for ‘low-carb’ cruises. We found a few and Narda’s first question was whether spouses can eat regular food. OMG

During the night we hit some waves, a bit of a storm. We rolled around a bit and we were awake for a while wondering what we would do if we tipped over. Where are those life preserves again? What happened in that Titantic flick? Will my computer survive? Will my fridge magnet souvenirs be salvagable?

When we lived in China, we took the Dalian to Yantai ferry which was nowhere as nice. In that one, no doubt because we got the cheapest fare, there were four bunks in our room, and we shared it with some snoring and noisy Chinese people. The food was awful too. The ferry was obviously overcrowded with people sleeping in the halls and all over the deck. See our 2012 blog, Ferry from Yantai to Dalian https://neuage.me/2012/10/06/ferry-from-yantai-to-dalian/ with photos when we were young and clean saved (I mean me). That sailing made us more nervous as there had been a couple of accidents previously during the same crossing. In 1999, there was a terrible accident; 280 people died when the Yantai Ferry sank. The same company had another ferry sink near Dalian. Things to think about when sailing. Like watching YouTube disaster plane crashes before flying. All good preparation for travel.

Lovely overnight on the ferry. During the night it was pretty rough: little bit nervous a few times – have to confess. We met many friendly Brits. I met a lady (widow) in her mid 80s travelling alone. She said she wanted to travel still and did not like to be a burden to her kids. Very inspirational. Terrell met an interesting bloke who drove cars for insurance companies returning them to Spain or back to the UK or to France when the people could not. We had nice meals – full English Brekkie, big roast dinner etc. All good.

And lucky me when I said no meat, they heaped lots of other ‘normal’ food on my plate. Fair price for meals considering we were at sea. No more than landlocked two and a half star prices.

10 October Wednesday

Ferry arrived at 6:15 pm; a couple of hours late due to rough weathe. Our hosts for the next three weeks in Spain collected us at the Santander, Spain dock. For a two minutes and seventeen seconds clip of this ride check here. BYW may as well turn off the sound – just noise from ferry motor and etc – no music but a glimpse of life on our boat… And to plug our little clip channel for our recent trips and other stuff in our world since 2009 check here. Prior to 2009 we used this channel. And for our India trip earlier in 2018 we tossed the clips up here

Next up will be Spain. Count your sleeps. We are.

Thanks for sharing this moment with us.

e-books of Terrell Neuage updated 05 February 2019

Terrell Neuage Thoughts 2019 updated 05 February 2019 Adelaide, South Australia

NEUAGE HOMEPAGE

picture poems are available at these sites: Twitter, Google Plus ~ Tumblr ~ Pinterest ~ linkedin updated 05 February 2019 Adelaide, South Australia

‘Leaving Australia Book 2‘ (new NOW IN PAPERBACK & AS E-BOOK)
‘ Leaving Australia “Again’: Before the After” (See the first ten pages of each for free) Paperback Edition

Berlin

Follow @neuage Tweet to @neuage

Holland was a hoot. (previous Europe post) We’ll be back. We said that six times before and sure enough we went back. Seems as if we have a January/February 2020 stay lined up. We did a winter stay two years ago; not sure if it is best for bike riding.

As of 09 May 2017, The Netherlands has a reciprocal health care agreement with Australia. Guaranteeing Medicare – aligning reciprocal health care, which is good (for me) and others in similar situations. Getting old and shoving in implants makes travel insurance very high so thankfully we live in a country with good health care willing to share their good karma with eleven other countries: Belgium, Finland, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the Republic of Ireland, Slovenia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. So, there is our list in the future of places to age gracefully in. Of course, we go to the States in a couple of months for three-months and my insurance for that little trip costs more than the air fare. Not fair. And I am an American. Go figure.

30 August 2018

We left our Airbnb river tugboat, (see, https://neuage.me/2018/12/08/utrecht/) walking ten-minutes to the number four bus and arriving at Utrecht Centraal an hour earlier than we had planned. As we were taking five trains to Hamburg, saving money instead of one train, the ICE, which was twice as expensive, we got the first train to Amersfoort, had a snack at the train station and got ourselves to Hamburg, changing a few times along the way, by four pm. Narda’s friend Mau met us at the station and took us to our hotel a couple of blocks from the subway and a couple of blocks from her house.

We have stayed at the Centrum Hotel Commerz, Altona a few times. It is inexpensive, near Mau’s and the train station and it has a nice breakfast spread. It reminds me of the Fawlty Towers series, not in how the owners act but in how it looks; small, funky, a fussing-about man and his wife, but they are good.

Narda met Mau at a music summer school in Budapest thirty years earlier and they have been friends ever since. We had breakfast together at the hotel the next morning and spent Saturday wandering around the Altona Park of Hamburg, ending at the Elbe River and taking a bus back. Because we have been to Hamburg several times before, most recently in February 2017, we won’t post much here (see “2 February Thursday DAY 69 of trip” https://neuage.me/2017/02/13/two-ponts-and-a-castle/). Suffice to say, we happily got lost and sometimes found how to get to the next spot following a map. And when we are unable to find where we are headed we tend to explore where we are; which is what travel is really about.

We went with Mau to the train station on Sunday and took the ICE to Berlin. Earlier this year we rode many trains in India, including a seventeen-hour overnighter (https://neuage.org/India/). Long story short; the ICE is nice. Choose the quiet car – silence is golden and all that. Of course, people listen to music, videos, whatever, (on headphones) but they don’t talk on phones or to one another, OK, we did talk a bit, but there were only a few people in our carriage. It is an hour and forty-two minutes (yes, the Germans do on-time well, and so do the Indians, usually).

We also met Mau’s parents at the train when we left. It was fantastic to see them again, a family of wonderful musicians. I have enjoyed meeting them a number of times over the years, once also in Australia when Hanno (Mau’s dad, a great jazz pianist) came to watch a big band gig I was playing 2nd alto in (The Little Big Horns). This visit in Hamburg was the first of three times in this trip seeing my good friend and her 11 year old son. Precious times of reconnecting.

 Our Berlin hosts, with who we traded houses, met us at the Berlin station and drove us to our new home. They had already stayed at our home in Adelaide a few months ago when we were away in India. Frank and Wally took us out to an Italian restaurant, showed us around Berlin a bit and left us to our own discoveries back at their home. They have a second home and are staying there for the month of September while we make hay with their home. It is a nice German home, very comfortable and full of art as Frank is an artist. Frank and Wally are living in Frank’s art-studio several blocks away. The next day Narda and I spent the day at home, writing, doing photographic stuff and looking at some of the things we would like to do during our month in Berlin. Narda plans our world-trips and I plan stuff to do when we get to where we are going. Of course we overlap but that is the big picture. I have found us an electronics fair to go to and lots of street art things to see. We will do the tourist stuff too. The idea of home-exchange is to live like a local.

In the afternoon Wally and Frank took us to their daughter’s home. A very large apartment in a building from the 1930s. My impression of Berlin was that it was leveled during WW 2 but there are many buildings from the early 1900s as well as some from the 1800s.

We had some really interesting coversations with our new German friends. They are actively involved with helping a young Syrian refugee find a job, learn the language and get settled. It is great to see this side of the ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe. The daughter and her freind also told us some of their experiencees with Osho as their guru. This resounded with us, as we had spent time in Pune, India quite recently in a town where the movement is alive and well, and you often saw the participants walk around our neighbourhod in their maroon gowns.

Our hosts said the best option for seeing Berlin was to pruchase either a weekly or a monthly transportation pass. We have use of their car but we did not use it preferring to ride bikes, walk, and public transportation; also, parking is difficult in Berlin. We bought a monthly bus/train/boat two zone pass for 59 Euros ($68 USD). The only limitation is we can only use it after 10 am which gives a great reason to sleep in.

Monday – we did our first day out, taking combinations of five buses and subways/elevated trains, getting ourselves to the Brandenburg Gate and to the Jewish Memorial.Brochures tell us that The Brandenburg Gate is an 18th-century neoclassical monument, built on the orders of Prussian king Frederick William II after the successful restoration of order during the early Batavian Revolution.

The separation of Berlin began in 1945 after the collapse of Germany. The country was divided into four zones, where each superpower controlled a zone. In 1946, reparation agreements broke down between the Soviet and Western zones. Response of the West was to merge French, British, and American zones in 1947 (sidebar – I was born in 1947, also Israel became a nation and India [Indian independence act 1947] became separate from Pakistan, four days after I was born, and of course the start of the modern era of UFO sightings, in Michigan, where I was born, began.) My friend in India interviewed me for her university magazine saying I was the man who was as old as India. We may have become side-tracked here. Moving on.

From 1961 to 1989 the Brandenburg Gate came to symbolize divided Germany, as the Berlin Wall shut off access to the gate for both East and West Germans. It served as the backdrop for U.S. Pres. Ronald Reagan’s famous 1987 speech in which he entreated the Soviet leader, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” (So easy to share our observations of what we saw/learned in Berlin with the wall issues and the wall ‘proposed’ in the States – but we won’t).

The Holocaust Memorial, a block from The Brandenburg Gate, is a moving tribute to the Murdered Jews of Europe. As most museums are closed on Monday, including this, we were amongst a only a few people here. The memorial is made up of two thousand, seven hundred and eleven grey concrete slabs, or stelae. They are identical in their horizontal dimensions (reminiscent of coffins), differing vertically (from eight inches to more than fifteen feet tall), arranged in a precise rectilinear array over 4.7 acres, allowing for long, straight, and narrow alleys between them, along which the ground undulates. There is a heap of information including upsetness about the whole memorial on the internet so there is no point in repeating.

On my birth-day, 10 August, 1947, General Lucius D. Clay reported the release of the last 8 million German prisoners of war and the complete destruction or conversion of all armaments plants in the US-occupied zone. The United States became the first of the four occupying powers to release all its German POWs.

For the whole month in Berlin we rode bikes every day. We have access to a car but never used it. The bus and train system are so good. Most busses are double decker, we would watch for one that had empty seats in the front on top and like any children we would scamper up and settle for our day’s journey which most days was to wherever the bus was going or until something looked interesting.

URBAN NATION.

As the parent of a person who actively (interactively) loved piecing/graffiti/street art I have cast my eye in the direction of urban art over the years (decades). My only real participation was my saying to Sacha that if he got permission to spray paint a fence in our town of Victor Harbor, I would even assist him with his ‘work’. Sure enough, he got the permission from a neighbour and one Sunday the two of us were out doing a fence. 1993. I only was ‘allowed’ to fill in some large areas due to my lack of experience; and well, for being old. After many challenging years of parenting a street artist he did come good and has done wall art for councils in Melbourne. So as the pa of a professional street-artist I looked forward to sharing with Narda this world. ‘Urban Nation: Understand the power of art as a social architect’ https://urban-nation.com/. Where does one start with such an amazing place? It is street art, it is younger people (everyone is younger these days), it is protest, it is amazing, and it is good.

And I was totally hooked. This amazing art, so full of colour, drama, beauty and societal comment was so much fun.

There is a new show of international work every few months. We were fortunate to see two shows and to attend a movie night.

Even the toilets are tagged/pieced more than what would be at the local Ikea,

Wall outside Urban Nation Museum

We took too many photos inside and of street art around Berlin to post here but we did make a slideshow that is worth the visit, https://bit.ly/2AxPl8Q. We went one evening to see the incredible documentary, Happyland, by Australian street and contemporary artist Kaff-eine (http://www.kaff-eine.com/);

“art as shelter. film as connection’. Filmed in Manila’s slum: “We created and installed thirty five large art tarpaulins or ‘art tarps’ which featured Kaff-eine’s portraits of local residents. The art tarps were either used to create or improve shelter, or sold and traded for food and other necessities. The installation process was professionally photographed and captured on film.”  “Manila’s slum communities are home to millions of poverty-stricken people. The slum residents who experience the most brutal circumstances are the garbage-picking and charcoal-making communities, whose homes and livelihoods are Manila’s dumpsites. In Kaff-eine’s Phoenix 2015 project, the communities of Baseco and Happyland (from a local word ‘hapilan’ for dumpsite) identified a need for improved housing and shelter. In these wastelands, most residents live in makeshift homes built from scavenged, piecemeal materials and located in areas vulnerable to flooding, typhoons, storm surges and fires.” https://www.cheeseagle.com/happyland/

There is a sample on youtube of the film, well worth seeing if it is in your area https://bit.ly/2HjsUdB. The showings were free. There were only six or seven of us there to watch. Perhaps because it was in English. We got to Urban Nation Museum an hour early because we believed it would be packed. We were surrounded by many empty chairs. Look up Kaff-eine on that internet thingy, she is doing some amazing stuff.

A day of sightseeing got us to the F10 ferry from Wannsee to Kladow.

As you can see, we were excited about the trip.

We did this trip a couple of times. The 20-minute trip is free with the standard A-B ticket (it’s part of Berlin’s official transport network); as we purchased a month pass we are taking several of the ‘free’ ferries. The teen idol, Kleine Cornelia, had her first hit record in 1951, aged eight, with a song written by her father. “Pack die Badehose ein” (Pack your swimsuit”) a cheery tune about a group of children going swimming on a hot summer’s day at Wannsee.  The Wannsee Conference; where the implementation of the so-called Final solution to the Jewish question, was held along here, we could see the buildings from our ferry. Don’t think teen idol, Kleine Cornelia was singing about this particular beach. The Wannsee House, site of the conference, is now a Holocaust memorial. Berlin is full of unpleasant history everywhere.  There is not much to see in Kladow, another suburb of Berlin, but we did go for walks through the local forest and have lunch in it one day. Another day we took the #218  to the ferry for Peacock Island. The bus ride is rather spectacular as it goes for about half an hour through a dense forest on a one-lane  gravel road.

“Peacock Island is a world apart, with the fairy-tale castle   and the free-roaming animals. From the ferry dock at the southern end of the island, a narrow path leads past lush roses and dense trees to the castle built in 1794.”

Wow! Great hype. We were pumped. Got to the dock and saw a sign saying the ferry was closed for the day due to a strike or some dumb-ass reason. We were disappointed but not for long. In the distance we saw a large ferry coming our way. We got on without knowing more than that it was headed down the river. It was a ferry to Potsdam.

This was our third trip to Potsdam. On the second one we had taken our bikes and bought the AB pass for them. Potsdam is in zone C. One time, in a month of daily riding, we saw an inspector on the train and of course we didn’t have the zone C bike pass. After close to getting arrested (I may have been a bit rude) we paid the on-the-spot fine and continued our ride. Arguing with a German train inspector is … (use your own adjectives, we did).

Actually I will finish that sentence “arguing with a German train inspector is”… pointless. I left Terrell arguing and went with the other inspector (in case I should try to flee) in search of an ATM. We drew the money out, it took a while, but when we returned, Terrell and the female inspector were in happy conversation talking about their mutual travel experiences. See how travel unites the warring nations. 🙂

The best way to see Potsdam in a day, or afternoon, is on bike.   There are bike paths around the Schlachtensee, the southernmost of the chain of lakes surrounding the Grunewald (Green Forest). We were even surprised… coming around a forested area, along the lake, to see many naked people. On the footpath, laying on the lawns, basking in the sun alongside the Schlachtensee. I wanted to take photos of the beautiful lake but Narda thought maybe I shouldn’t.

We weren’t looking for anyplace in specific, just riding through parks when we came across Cecilienhof.

Site of the Potsdam Conference, at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm in Potsdam from 17 July to 2 August 1945. Joseph Stalin, British Prime Ministers Winston Churchill^, and Clement Attlee, and President Harry Truman hung out together and shared thoughts; how to administer Germany.

Being with Dutch born Narda, we had to find the Dutch area in Potsdam. There are exactly 134 red, two-storey brick houses, arranged on four squares. Known as the Holländerhäuser (“Dutch houses”), they were built for Dutch immigrants between 1734 and 1742. They make up the largest exclusively Dutch housing development outside the Netherlands.

There are lots of cafes, and shops and cool streets to act Dutch in (not quite sure what that means but I enjoyed myself).

Berlin has 5 other public ferry lines. There are links on the Berlin homepage https://www.berlin.de/ and there is a dropdown menu to choose whatever language floats your boat.

The Berlin Wall and The Wall Museum East Side Gallery are main attractions. We spent a few days in this area.

The path goes to Potsdam which is some 20+ kilometres but we only went about five K, stopping little towns along the way and further up where it is wider we saw this big-ass barge with a couple, in our age bracket if not older running it. Narda immediately figures she wants to have a barge and navigate it. Being Dutch, with family members who had tugboats, and other vessels, it is in her blood. Of course, I agree but believe we may be a bit old and foreign to start a career as barge drivers.

When we were not hooning about on our bikes and trains, we took random buses. We do this in most every place we go. Our main criteria is, if a bus stops with empty seats we get on. In Berlin it was if there were empty seats on the second story in the front, so we could feel like flying through the streets of Berlin.

We went to so many places that were so old, we felt young. For example, St. Nicholas Church in Perlin-Spandau started in 1240 and complete 1398. In 1806, Napoleonic troops used the church as an ammunition magazine. In 1944 a bombing raid burnt the tower, but they fixed it back up in the 1980s. They have several things from 1398, the alter is new though, built in 1582. I have the information sheet in front of me here in Adelaide (January 2019) so it makes remembering things from four months ago a bit easier.

The stories of what went on stays in one’s mind. The idea of building a wall in the States is close to shocking after viewing Berlin’s stories.

There are many memorials around the city such as this one,

We took trams to random places in the former East Germany starting from Alexanderplatz, a huge meeting place in the centre of Berlin. As most places in Berlin the ‘Alex’ was pretty much wiped out, though now there are no signs of anything but modern building throwups. With the many museums we managed to get to two. The American Museum and one and Berlin’s East Germany museum. As we were here toward the end of September we went one evening for the Oktoberfest celebrations but by nine pm we were bored and went home.

In the East Germany museum there were displays of how everyday life in the German Democratic Republic looked during the wall division. I thought they looked pretty much like anywhere in the Western world except every apartment looked the same… wait isn’t that how they were everywhere? There was the chance to drive a Trabant, the most common vehicle in the former East Germany and so Narda did. Unfortunately, I missed that exhibit and have no photos as I was looking at the exhibit about nude bathing… and other interesting parts of German life.

While Terrell was busy with the nudes, I found a display of an old ccommunist era Trabant, which was all set up to have a ‘driving experience’ with an interactive screen and real steering wheel, gears and foot pedals. I managed to get it ‘going’ and drove very fast around the neighbourhood, narrowly missing other cars and pedestrians. It was a hoot. Unitl I finally crashed it into a pole. Oh well. Next.

My favourite Berlin iconic food was ‘curry wurst’. Basically yummy German wurst covered in tomato sauce and sprinkled with curry powder. Simple but good. I clocked up 6 meals.

Berlin has been a traditional hot spot for squatters, initially driven by the multitudes of empty properties left by families leaving the former East Germany. We found an area in the Turkish Quarter (Kreuzberg) with a block of apartment buildings with poetic lyrics on banners hanging about the  place. As there is a squatter’s museum we passed we tried to find it again but never did. Our host took us to a large area filled with huge Russian statues, The Soviet War Memorial (Tiergarten) erected by the Soviet Union to commemorate its war dead, particularly the 80,000 soldiers of the Soviet Armed Forces who died during the Battle of Berlin in April and May 1945. So impressive I took maybe a hundred photos but two here is enough.

   

OK, one more… These statues are huge, like the dude with the gun is 12 metres (almost 40 foot) and others are as large or larger.

We went to other free concerts, such as the ones offered at The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. There is no entrance fee to see inside the ruined church or to bop around the new one. The church built at the end of the 19th century, bombed to smithereens in 1943, rebuilt in the 1960s, still has part of the bombed-out section, including the bell tower. It is quite impressive to see the ruined steeple surrounded by the ultra-modern skyscrapers around it. We attended an organ concert but didn’t make it to any of their other free concerts or paid ones. Well worth the bother to get to this part of town. See their webpage for stuff (in English and other languages too) https://gedaechtniskirche-berlin.de/.   inside the new church – zillions of small blue windows – It is located on the Kurfürstendamm in the centre of the Breitscheidplatz. The Christmas market is near the church, this is an active area day and night with buskers, outdoor concerts, souvenir places and shopping centres. (On 19 December 2016, a truck was deliberately driven into the Christmas market next to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church leaving 12 people dead and 56 others injured). I have this in my Thoughts in Patterns Book 6. (page 27 – print edition) (eBook) (Examine the first fifteen pages for free). Book 6 is from our 2018 travels.

I was taking photos of the area when this little girl walked by, looking at the flowers and memorial to those who had died. (On Google+ here).

Another area we explored was Potsdamer Platz about 1 km south of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag. After developing from an intersection of rural thoroughfares into the most bustling traffic intersection in Europe, it was totally wiped out during World War II and then left desolate during the Cold War era when the Berlin Wall bisected its former location. In the last couple of decades, it has once again become a centre. We took Europe’s fastest lift (elevator for the Yanks), to the top (100 metres or about 30 stories) in 20 seconds. It is the coolest lift. At the top there is a 360-degree view of Berlin. We were there on a clear day and though we could not quite see Australia in the distance we did see heaps. Hitler’s Reich Chancellery was just one block away and many other Nazi government things were nearby as well, and so Potsdamer Platz was right in a major target area throughout the war until it was levelled. When the Berlin Wall, 1961, went through the Platz it stayed in its rubble state. Only one building in the whole area remained. To get a feeling for how it was see the German film Wings of Desire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wings_of_Desire The film scored 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, meaning it is quite good. There is a YouTube trailer of it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og4Y9gbhqBE Or rent the two-hour movie from YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehLj4RzUhrs. For more groovy stuff; on 21 July 1990, ex-Pink Floyd member Roger Waters staged a gigantic charity concert of his former band’s rock extravaganza The Wall to commemorate the end of the division between East and West Germany. The concert took place at Potsdamer Platz. The full concert is on several YouTube sites – as is the nature of YouTube, some are better filmed than others. Not sure if there is an official version.

Just a couple of more places/insights. As we often say, “we like to live where we visit”. We try to make minimum stays of four-weeks. Berlin, we need to stay for several months. Everyday we were out and about, though if we had longer we would have had some ‘downtime’, a day at home; perhaps even writing a blog, instead of waiting for three-months later, as is now, to write from memory, Narda’s handwritten notes, my daily textualities, picture-poems, and sorting through, easily, a thousand photos and a lot of video. I am not doing a video for Berlin currently. Just too much else to do in life, and we still have all of Spain to write about.

One of my favourite museums, The Urban Nation Museum for Urban Contemporary Art by far is the best, but up there with the next tier of museums is the American Museum (Allied Museum). http://www.alliiertenmuseum.de  Not because I am one of them, but due to its quality of information. It is free, except for a euro to go inside an airplane used during the Berlin Blockade.

A video (in English) tells the daringness of the Yanks during the Soviet blockade to starve out western Germany. We also got to see Checkpoint Charlie buildings. We saw tunnels,how the Yanks did the 1960s in tough times and so much more. Well worth the visits, to see how the locals endured. The last place we will mention is the Spandau castle. We took the train out to the Rathaus Spandau stop (on our bikes). and yes it does look like a girl’s bike, but we don’t call them that. We call them ‘step-through bikes’ as that is their current names and less gender humiliating (for males). I need this type, as at 71, running and throwing a leg over and racing away is difficult!

“Spandau Castle was indirectly mentioned for the first time in 1197. The Margraves of Brandenburg had built it on the site of an old Slavic settlement at the place where the rivers Havel and Spree meet.” http://www.zitadelle-berlin.de/

“The Citadel is home to 10,000 bats every year. They come to sleep through the cold winter. The vaults of the old fortress offer a multitude of hiding places. The brick walls offer one of the most important winter quarters for bats in Europe.” (http://www.zitadelle-berlin.de/en/ )

We went to the bat cellar. Very interesting. I used my phone light to look through the glass. Maybe it isn’t supposed to be done. The bats went nuts flying all over inside their once sleepy enclosure. But we did get to see them in all their glory. Spandau Castle is a good whole day visit. There were maybe five other tourists the whole day we were there. We brought our lunch and thermos of coffee and between the bats and the towers the day was wonderful. Some of the highlights here are the Julius Tower which is the oldest building in Berlin (1500s), which we lumbered to the top of for a spectacular view. The Fortress ‘A masterpiece of Renaissance architecture’ since the 16^th century‘ is groovy too.

And that is all we are saying. We loved Berlin, a month is just not enough time there. A short blog like this only scratches the surface of our life in Berlin. We lived life like we do at home or anywhere we nest: we watch Netflix series in the evening, watch Colbert, John Oliver, Bill Maher and other USA real-news in the morning, eat our usual meals which for me is low-carb, organic vegetarian. And with Narda, meat and stuff. Next blog is Northern Spain. Between Germany and Spain, we popped into Great Britain for ten-days. Staying in Horsham, Brighton, and taking a Brittany Ferry from Portsmouth to Santander, Spain, with visits to museums and castles all of which we will share in the Spain blog, coming soon to you, exclusively.

I agree with Terrell; we coud easily have stayed here for 3 months. I think we will probably return. The city has a very special presence. Full of tragedy and courage, and the memories are everywhere. And full of art and creativity. We also enjoyed the Turkish quarter, another different vibe. One of the highlights for me was the conversations with Frank and Wally. Frank has such a lot of knowledge about Berin’s history, but also about the state of the world and I found his insights so fascinating. They are a very generous couple, both in their dealings with us, their hospitality, and also in their work with the refugees. Berlin made a big impression on me.

Thanks for sharing this moment with us.

e-books of Terrell Neuage updated 05 February 2019

Terrell Neuage Thoughts 2019 updated 05 February 2019 Adelaide, South Australia

NEUAGE HOMEPAGE

picture poems are available at these sites: Twitter, Google Plus ~ Tumblr ~ Pinterest ~ linkedin updated 05 February 2019 Adelaide, South Australia

‘Leaving Australia Book 2‘ (new NOW IN PAPERBACK & AS E-BOOK)
‘ Leaving Australia “Again’: Before the After” (See the first ten pages of each for free) Paperback Edition

Macclesfield

Macclesfield is a small town on the upper reaches of the River Angas in the Adelaide Hills region of South Australia. 958 is what Wikipedia says is their population. Allegedly we upped it to 960 for a couple of days last week. Good on us.

That is not the story I will tell though, our addition to the population. That is a given.

My mate Sandy Mathewson sent us an invite on Facebook several months ago to hear his band, The BoogieMen, playing at The Goats Head Festival at The Three Brothers Arms over in Macclesfield. As one does in Facebook, we said yes. We were in Spain at the time so saying yes seemed reasonable. However, we forgot about the festival and anything to do with anything in Australia after we got back from three months in Europe and started busily planning our next trip overseas in six-months.

We complained how long before we got to go anywhere when Narda remembered last Thursday that we had said we were attending some sort of festival. I texted Sandy to say I thought we would go to hear him. We had not seen Sandy for years even though he lives half an hour away. I have known Sandy since about 1990. Back then we lived in Victor Harbour, with lots of ideas of what to do in life. One of those ideas was to start a radio station. Sandy was an ex-ABC radio dude and had lots of knowledge about the business, We started E-FM (Encounter FM; Victor Harbor is in an area called the Encounter Coast – has to do with Mathews Flinders first encounter with some other dude in 1802) in 1990. Sandy was president, I was secretary and newsperson (I was doing a degree in journalism at uni at the time) and several other characters were other things. Even our children were involved. There was a story about my children’s involvement in a magazine (https://www.neuage.org/neuage_radio.pdf) with photos. Over the next twenty-five years our paths crossed (oh, we both quit and passed the radio station on to some other people a couple of decades ago) a few times. I remembered Sandy as a very talented bass player so an opportunity to see him was good.

On Friday, the next day after we said we were going, we rang the Three Brother’s Arms to enquire about tickets; they had sold out, but were told they could probably rustle up a couple of tickets if we got them soon. We were also told we could park our caravan in town. Free accommodation had us packing our van and on the road three hours later. Macclesfield is only an hour away. We hadn’t been in our caravan for six-months and an excuse to get out of town worked for us. We definitely are restless nomads. I have been since age 16, fifty-five years ago. To make a long introduction short, we realised we did not need to flee Australia to have a good time and to be the on-the-road explorers we were meant to be.

To borrow a line on their webpage (https://www.macclesfieldhistory.com.au/). This small town from the 1830’s still retains much of its Old-World charm in this present era.

We found Davenport Square with a large parking area, public toilets, even a power point which I was quick to plug our van into for a few hours.

We were only a couple of blocks from The Three Brothers Arms. Actually, the town is not much more than a few blocks, with two pubs, couple of churches, a bakery and a post office.

The first place we found on our bike meanderings was the local footy oval – in Australia these are the sacred grounds; in the Adelaide Hills they are the Adelaide Hills footy clubs. Narda’s three sons have played many games here (they played for Birdwood; Stu, Narda’s youngest – somewhere in his mid-30s, still plays) but it is the two acres of once scrub land next to the oval that impressed us. It has been landscaped into a garden with walkways, seats and statues from local artists. The park is a memorial to various wars. For example, there is a brick paver for every South Australian military person who has served in Australia’s defence. There are memorials to dogs in the service, horses and camels from various wars, as well as every aspect and every battle Aussies have been in. Below are a few photos – if you get to Adelaide go to this park, it is well worth the visit.

My favourtie scuplture was this helicopter from the Viet Nam era made of horseshoes (I chopped out some trees to hopefully show the horseshoes better). More info from somewhere on the web tells us: “RAR Somalia Veteran, Greg Hopgood, unveiled his Huey made with nearly a ton of horse shoes. Commissioned by the Mt Barker District Council for the 100th Anniversary at the end of WW1. Using a 112-year old-hand-cranked coke forge, he carefully sculptured and created the Iroquois helicopter, commonly known as a “Huey”, which is synonymous with the Vietnam War.”

We found a favourite café to purchase a meat pie for Narda and a veggie spinach-cheese roll for me (BTW, there is only one café in Macclesfield) and to learn about the town a bit.

We were told that Macclesfield is on the ‘Hills Sculpture Trail’, with some cool sculpture scattered about at Crystal Lake.

The sculptures are crafted by master sculptors from around the world every two years. The last one was in 2017 and the next is schedule for April 2019. Over nine days nine sculptors will be doing their stuff. We leave for the States mid-April and will depend on you to tell us about it and share photos. (don’t let us down) Other towns throughout the Adelaide Hills will be doing this too. In 2017 there were 26 sculptures done. Find out more at http://hillssculpturetrail.com.au/

We rode our bikes over to Crystal Lake only to not only discover some good stuff but to conjure up a memory for Narda; which she will tell…

I’m sure this is the site of a Bible camp I attended when I was 10 or maybe 12 years old! I remember this building with its metal double bunks lined up along each wall. This one was for the girls and there was another one (now gone) for the boys, and a dining area. It was a weird feeling, all those years ago; memories I thought I had forgotten. If anyone reading this blog knows more, let me know. There was also a small recreational lake, now wetlands, where I’m pretty sure we got to ride in small boats. I even remember the camp councillors saying early each morning to we-sleepers. “wakey wakey, wash, make beds”.

Here are some photos of sculptures we came across…

 

 

 

 

 

After a day of riding around, well two days, Friday and Saturday morning it was time to experience what we had come for, The Goats Head Festival at The Three Brothers Arms. It started at 2:30 pm and would go until midnight. Our bedtime is 9 so to be up with the young ones (those still in their 60s…..hey! careful….N) we took a nap and walked the two blocks from where we were parked to the venue. We were told once we went in, we would not be able to go back out which troubled us at first; the idea of nine hours in a pub was a bit hard to come at, especially as we never go to pubs, or out at night for that matter. We got a wrist band and made it clear we would need to leave to go to our home on wheels to get a jacket, take a nap, who knows what? We went in for half an hour listened to the first group and went back to our caravan for an hour then back to the pub where we caught up with my mate, Sandy. His group was not until ten pm, but he came in six hours early, so we could catch up with years of each of our adventures. Sandy has been playing with his band at local venues for the past couple of decades and he travelled too.  See https://www.facebook.com/The-boogiemen-126909057487071/ to check out where he is shaking up the neighbourhood next.  We told him about our travels which he has been following for years on Facebook and other spacey places but all we knew about him (except for making fun of people like me with our low-carb veggie diets and hanging on to a 1960s San Francisco/New Orleans/NYC mindset even when living in Australia) was that he had gone to Scotland. He looked up and tracked down his family genealogy from his father’s side and he had many great stories of that experience.

During the day we drifted in and out of the Blues thingy. We were very impressed by the Kelly Menhennett (http://www.kellymenhennett.com/) What a singer and performer! Be sure to catch her on your next night out. Sandy’s band as always had everyone up and dancing and gave us a good dose of the Blues. They were on only for 45 minutes which is not enough of their good listening and dancing music. Look up where they are doing a solo gig to get three hours of high-quality blues to top off your working day, retirement life, or just another week completed.

Then evening ended with the well-known South Australian Dixieland group ‘Gumbo Yaya’ https://www.facebook.com/gumboyayaadelaide/ a top Louisiana type of blues band. I have lived in New Orleans off and on for several years in the 1960s and 1970s (I was a streets artist along Jackson Square in the early 1970s) and even took Narda there six or seven years ago. New Orleans has always been my favourite city (next to NYC) and whenever I can I am listening to some of that Louisiana swamp music, especially blues from the early 1900s.

We managed to get back home (to our caravan) by half past midnight. A fair effort for us. What we learned from this weekend was two things: We can go out at night past eight pm and have an enjoyable time; and two, we should be exploring more of South Australia. For example, this year we spent three-months in India, three-months in Europe, it is time to enjoy the small towns of South Australia. Our next blog is our time in Germany and then our month in Spain, then we will tell you about the groovy small towns of South Australia.

 

 

 

This is Misty. She was rescued from her mother who had sadly become roadkill. The kind lady who took her in is now her surrogate mum and Misty follows her everywhere. A beautiful little ‘roo, I believe she is a Western Grey,  typical of this area in the Adelaide Hills. We met her watching some kids playing tennis, trying to pick up some tips (we have started a new venture: tennis playing, inspired by tennis rackets and a vacant tennis court left for us in at our lovely apartment complex in Noja, Northern Spain.)

Thanks for sharing this moment with us.

e-books of Terrell Neuage updated 05 February 2019

Terrell Neuage Thoughts 2019 updated 05 February 2019 Adelaide, South Australia

NEUAGE HOMEPAGE

picture poems are available at these sites: Twitter, Google Plus ~ Tumblr ~ Pinterest ~ linkedin updated 05 February 2019 Adelaide, South Australia

‘Leaving Australia Book 2‘ (new NOW IN PAPERBACK & AS E-BOOK)
‘ Leaving Australia “Again’: Before the After” (See the first ten pages of each for free) Paperback Edition

 

Utrecht

Utrecht

(This was written 22/08/18 – and posted mid-December 2018. How time flies)

We have a clip over at YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBJhZgMqB6A

The Netherlands is like my third or fourth home. USA would have to be first as I was born there and spent about 33-years before nesting in Australia, then nine-years back to New York for teaching. Australia would be second with about twenty-six years. China could be third with three years, but The Netherlands could be my third home; this is my seventh trip here and Narda was born in Utrecht and her family here is my family now too. This time we are only here for three weeks. Last year we were in Utrecht for February. This time we can ride bikes heaps. In February we needed to stop quite often and warm up. Another house-exchange; a bike ride to the oldtown which we are doing today. There is no point in timing our excursions based on phone-maps as we get lost too easy. Yesterday, we rode to Harmelen to visit Tom and Ineke. The GPS said 25-minutes, we got there one-hour and fifteen minutes after starting. Tom and Ineke are Narda’s uncle and aunt. We visit them each time we are in town. A side-story; they visited us June 2004 when we were living in New York. We were standing in the Times Square’s area when news of Ronald Reagan dying was being announced. A reporter with microphone in hand was asking folks questions on how they felt with his passing. The reporter asked Ineke and she said, “I’m Dutch, I don’t care”. It was playing live on the big news screen there on 42^nd street. If we could have posted to social media, we would have put a video up. Of course, social media was just starting its run of silliness then.

Another aside, a pretty sad one. Just a few months after we returned home, Tom died suddenly at the 25th anniversary party of my cousin Hans. Tom, although we miss him; he was the last of his siblings to die;  he died surrounded by his loved ones.

We took the Eurostar from London to Rotterdam on my birthday, 10 of August. We wrote about that in the last blog-thingy. Overnight Rotterdam in a nifty A‌i‌r‌b‌n‌b‌ space, had a nice breakfast served to us and were soon out the door. Hello Holland!

We got to Utrecht Centraal about an hour later. Utrecht Centraal is the largest and busiest railway station in the Netherlands. Bigger than Amsterdam, it is all new. From there we got a local bus to our house-exchange. We got settled quite quickly and the next day we were out on our bikes to explore The Netherlands. Well actually we went about ten-minutes along a canal to Maximapark, (https://www.maximapark.nl/).

Maximapark is large, larger than Central Park in New York City or the Parklands in Adelaide to give an idea. We explored that on other days; on our first in this area, Saturday, we went to the Castellum Hoge Woerd (museum).

Castellum Hoge Woerd, situated in Utrecht’s Leidsche Rijn neighbourhood, is a modern interpretation of a centuries-old Roman fort. One day in 1997, contractors building the Leidsche Rijn residential area stumbled by chance upon the entire infrastructure of the Roman borde, the border road, the river and a ship. Their big thrill came when they uncovered the Roman ship De Meern I. This inland vessel from 150 AD had to undergo conservation for 12 years before it could be exhibited. See photo below; not sure where the suites and buffet area of this ship are but it surely does not match the cruise ship we were on a year-ago today.

And we got to see what we looked like back in the day when the Romans hung out in these parts, a couple of thousand years ago.

The next day, Sunday, Narda’s cousin Hans and his wife came to visit us, and we took them to this museum and to an outside concert of Cuban music (Ricciottiando en Cuba).

Even though they have spent their life in nearby Utrecht they had never been to this part or this museum. Yesterday (Thursday the 16^th) we were with Narda’s other cousin named Hans and his wife and they said they had never been to this park or to this museum either. We told a few other family members, all living nearby, and none of them had been to it either. And these people travel heaps. Hans number two goes overseas a lot for work, Hans number one and family travel a lot around Europe. What is it in us humans that makes us see the world but not our local stuff even if it is historic. “Hey mate, we just found a 2,000 year old Roman ship in the ground”, “groovy, no time to see it, on my way across the pond to see New York City, Paris, Adelaide…”. I am the same. Tourist sites in Adelaide I have yet to see, if there were any in upstate New York I never got to see them either; too busy seeing the world.

If you come to The Netherlands, give Amsterdam and Rotterdam a miss and go to Utrecht. And if you go to Utrecht check out the Castellum Hoge Woerd and Maximapark. Don’t just come to visit us, we probably won’t be here.

The northern frontier of the Roman empire along the Rhine in the current Netherlands was established in AD 47 and abandoned around AD 270. Ships were used to transport troops and supplies to the frontier zones. Now days we speed around on freeways or ride bikes.

We had our lunch in Máximapark (https://www.maximapark.nl/), watched people go by with carts of children, ducks coming and going, the museum, and generally had a best time ever. Máximapark is a place to see, check out their website for stuff happening like free concerts, Australian tourists on bikes… Máximapark is rated number three on stuff to see in Utrecht.

As everywhere in The Netherlands, Germany… school buses are quite personal. A bike full of children on the way home from school.

There is this groovy sculpture (see below) called ‘Barricade’ of a car that blocks part of the entrance to the park.

We spend so many hours each day riding bikes; so fit, though admittingly very sore at the end of each day. Being me, or being the average guy, I noticed the people passing by on bikes or jogging; especially those in their twenties and thirties, forties, fifties, you get the picture. Such nice smiles. Are those females flirting with me? Do they think I am hot? OK! Reality check, those nice smiles are them thinking of their grandfather, maybe even great-grandfather. Maybe they aren’t sexy smiles, just kind-to-an-elderly-person smile. Thoughts of a kindly, frail, a bit-confused, slightly eccentric, OLD, grandparent. Dam! Dutch women have enchanting smiles. I know, I married one.

Riding bikes should not be a challenge. Narda’s 92-yearold uncle who had two knee replacements, one at 91, rides every day. Sure enough I managed to fall off. Twice. The second time was in the old-town, so many folks on bikes, so fast, I moved over and hit the curve and sure enough not only fell but hit my head, lucky I was wearing a helmet; something locals rarely do. Knocked my glasses off, got a few cuts and scrapes, several people helped me up. Shattered ego.

We rode to Utrecht centrum several days, bought and tasted cheese, and took another armful of photos of the Dom (Domtoren, the 14^th-century bell tower) as we do every time we come to Utrecht. We go into details of this area in our previous blogs (2009, 2017, 2006). Of course, our old video clips are the best way to see this area: The Dom, Boating in Utrecht, Old Utrecht and of course the one from this trip = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBJhZgMqB6A

Today we went to visit two of Narda’s uncles and a cousin. Remarkable Oom Pete (oom being Dutch for uncle) (remarkable because he had his second knee reconstruction at 91 and is now riding his bike most days).  We have stayed with Rienk before and in his 80s is feisty as ever. He has a great German World War 2 boat which he has taken us around the canals of Utrecht.

Cheese everywhere at an affordable cost (cheap); all kinds of cheese.

After two-weeks at our home-exchange we moved to our Airbnb, Tugboat the Anna from 1927,  https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/4426214, on the river Vecht.  Our host from our house exchange drove us the half hour there which made the transition from a large home to a tiny home easy. We loved the boat and the area. We were here for four-days. The space was small compared to a larger space (and of course a larger space larger than a large space but who is measuring?) but hey, who is complaining? We could bump our head inside our cabin, worry about falling in the river crossing over on the narrow plank to the boat, drop our cameras into the River Vecht or wonder what happens when we poo in the toilet – yes, we can now tell you where it all goes. It goes into the river. Apparently, as we were told, due to the age of the boat, and size, that which goes into the loo goes into the river – directly. Of course, we did not look out the porthole to confirm if anything floated by, saying all that, we did make good meals in the kitchen and spent time riding on the bikes provided.

We rode around the quaint small town of Oud-Zuilen where there is castle, Slot Zuylen Castle. Being the tightwads that we are, we took sandwiches and ate on the lawn of the castle rather than go to the overpriced café and we watched a YouTube video about the castle instead of paying lots to go inside and see it. An economical day out can easily involve packing a lunch and reading internet pages and viewing online clips about the inside of a place. Some museums are surely worth the money and some restaurants are worth the bother but save fifty bucks a day on a three-month trip and that is more than four-thousand dollars. Do a house exchange with a car included and that can be worth more than five-thousand dollars a month. There are ways to do Europe for months at a time on a budget and still have a great time.We found a couple of windmills and did lots of riding on trails into the Dutch countryside. Our hosts in Germany did a four-day bike riding trip recently (Germany is our next blog) and they are 78 years old and they took their cousins with them (both in their 80s). Because of their age they only go thirty kilometres a day then stay at a hotel. Narda’s uncle in Utrecht, after his second knee reconstruction, age 92, rides his bike to his son’s house most days. Hopefully we will still be riding around various countries when we are much older too. The concept of being tethered to a car is a bit repulsive, limiting, imprisoning, crap.

Gouda

We had thought dragging our stuff out of the boat area would be difficult but there is a bus stop within walking distance of the river which we managed to keep from falling into and we got to Utrecht Centraal a couple of hours before we had planned. The train to Gouda from Utrecht is only eighteen minutes and the walk to our Airbnb took us half an hour. We are still dragging too much stuff with us and as usual are realizing we need less than we have. Our week rental home was an older arty quaint two-floor plus attic house within walking distance of the old quarter of Gouda. We explored the Church of St John ~ ‘Sint Janskerk’ (The Netherland’s longest church)

built for and by the Catholics in the sixteenth century but after the reformation the Protestants grabbed it and have held on to it since.

In our Utrecht clip there are a few minutes of organ music as well as shots from inside this beautiful building. Included with the entrance fee of about six Euros is a listening device which very clearly explains the many huge stained-glass windows – one of the better information deliveries I have found at any museum. Plan to spend at least an hour here to get the low down on all the capers that went on in this neck of the woods. Wikipedia has lots about it over at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sint_Janskerk and if you want to jump to see just the stained-glass trip hop over to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sint_Janskerk. My suggestion is to just watch our video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBJhZgMqB6A . Better yet check out their page http://www.sintjan.com/ with great photos and stories told. There are many windows like the one below.

Gouda of course is the cheese place and apparently there are seven different types, but I cannot recall which was the best. I think it was the fifth one we tried. We also found out that Gouda cheese accounts for 50 – 60% of the world’s cheese consumption (I read it on the internet).

In the bike-mad country of The Netherlands there is always a better bike – this one below has a bit of a rustic appeal.

Below is a Photoshop rendered image from the centre of town. I manipulate photos for my writings that I post on Twitter (https://twitter.com/neuage), Google+ (https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/E_6JaB), tumblr (http://neuage.tumblr.com/), pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com.au/neuage/picture-poems-by-terrell-neuage/), behance (https://www.behance.net/neuage), linkedin  https://www.linkedin.com/in/neuage) and most other sharing sites.

Below is the town hall. (not Photshopped) Unlike our house exchanges our Airbnb places usually do not include a bike so we rented one for a day and rode morning to night. There are bike paths to country farms and along rivers. We had lunch beneath this lift bridge below – see our video to see this in action. What we found unusual was that it did not lift at one end but the whole bridge moved up.

And that was The Netherlands, again. I wrote a lot less this time because not only have we done this six or seven times before and written heaps then, but our daily life was riding bikes most of the day, making dinner at home and watching our television shows in the evening. House exchanges were best for us as we could live ‘like a local’ and as we would spend more time in one place, life became a pleasant routine. Of course, we shopped at Jumbo, our favourite grocery store. I was able to fulfil my foody-needs; low-carb, vegetarian, slightly-organic, affordable, tasty, Narda-eye-rolling meals. Next up is Berlin for a month, of course if someone in our family was to read this, they would rightfully claim not only are we past Berlin, but we are through our next couple of stops in the UK and headed off to Spain; but, this is a slower process this time. Earlier in the year when we were in India for three-months we wrote every day and posted many videos. This trip we are just living our life – though most mornings I spend an hour or two on my textual-images that I play around with in Photoshop and other programs and I have listed a few of the places I post them above. I do the same thing back in Adelaide and I have been doing textual illustrations since the 1960s – making this a very routine part of my life. We love to travel – the idea of living life on the road or at home in quite the same fashion appeals to me. At seventy-one having routines is quite comfortable and I write every night and have for more than fifty years and most mornings I find a way to illustrate something I had written the night before; doing this anywhere in the world: in a new setting home, on a plane, train, bus, even in a park using my phone makes this a life that has a continuous flow, with everywhere being home. The only difference is I have a shed full of crap back in Adelaide which is nice and for some reason Narda won’t let me carry it all with me. Narda writes as much or more than me, though she does it by hand and pastes in photos of places, meaning she did not write a lot here, though I refer to her notes for a hook to remember things.

Next little blog will be our month in Berlin. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for sharing this moment with us.

e-books of Terrell Neuage updated 05 February 2019

Terrell Neuage Thoughts 2019 updated 05 February 2019 Adelaide, South Australia

NEUAGE HOMEPAGE

picture poems are available at these sites: Twitter, Google Plus ~ Tumblr ~ Pinterest ~ linkedin updated 05 February 2019 Adelaide, South Australia

‘Leaving Australia Book 2‘ (new NOW IN PAPERBACK & AS E-BOOK)
‘ Leaving Australia “Again’: Before the After” (See the first ten pages of each for free) Paperback Edition

London2018

Kuala Lumpur to London 07/August/2018

11 am – One hour into our flight, Australia all around; sky, land, air, Australian clouds drifting by, sure they are foreign, ruffled refurbished refugee clouds. This sky again – millions of years in the making, I have seen it before, multiple times. Machine learning sky, reformatting to my projections; first saw this space 1980. I went to an astrological conference in Sydney flying through Yankee sky: Baltimore, Dallas, Los Angeles, Auckland, no longer Yankee space; then Australia, bloody Australia…thirty-8 years later leaving again. Lost the times I have been in these skies, leaving; between 25 – 30 times. Probably many more. I even wrote two books; Leaving Australia 1 (Leaving Australia ‘Again’: Before the After) and 2 (Leaving Australia, ‘Again’: Book 2 ‘After’), published them on Amazon- sold one a few years ago; girl from my past took issue with my description of her and our early 1970s foray into youth and the streets of New Orleans. Another complained about us in Baltimore at the end of the 1970s I changed their names, everyone else in my books are now dead except for one son and an ex-wife I have had no contact with for fifteen-years so I no longer get notifications from people and my depiction of them.

I got off task here… so good to be in flight again. Three months in Australia is quickly over. Our India three months was fantastic, and we are already planning the next exploration of the sub-continent, but that trip is three months behind us. Now a three months European run: UK, The Netherlands for three weeks Berlin a month and Northern Spain a month. It has been a year since this area. We did Denmark for six weeks and the Baltic last year at this time. I turned 70 in St. Petersburg, Russia with the evening out-to-sea; a metaphor for my life. This week I will be 71, half in London and half in The Netherlands.

Australia was a good stay; family, creative stuff, mowed the lawn, tried to declutter the shed; decades of boxes of memories. I did throw away a few papers. When we get back I will attempt another declutter. We’ll be planning for 2019 and the USA for three months and Pakistan-India later in the year. And there will be the lawn to mow, family to attend to so the decluttering may have to wait until 2020, though I won’t mention that to Narda, she has brought up ‘the shed’ for several years. She even escorted me to a ‘declutter’ class (twice) when we were in upstate New York around 2003 or 4. I found them quite interesting and dragged a container of stuff to China for our three-years there, added more and now it is all in our shed. Not just my stuff but my dead family’s stuff: father, brother, son, mother as well as some dead-friends’ things. A shed filled with dead people’s belongings- but they give me comfort. And yes, Narda has past stuff there too.

So here we are, in the clouds again. Getting away from our stuff. Narda is a master packer. We each have one bag less than twenty-Kilos and a seven kilogram carry on bag. Half my weight is computer, phones (Android and iPhone; need options), hard drives, camera, lenses, tripod…. Narda is looking forward to the time I can travel with just a phone (or two) using it for video, photos, computer and my endless hours using Adobe. I am still tethered to my computer for editing/creative madness and I like my Nikon and 300mm lens. Phones are not quite there. And books. Narda changed to Kindle fifteen or so years ago. My last old thing, I would rather read a book. Narda reads books too but still all those cheap e-books… for example, I have 8 e-books I have published, all very cheap, they don’t sell. I was almost finished with my thick and too heavy to bring Henry James’ ‘New York Stories’, all written in the 1880 – 1890 era.  I have been reading literature from last century the past couple of years. Though for this trip I moved forward and brought a book on the poetry of the 1950s. Eye rolling from the passenger next to me I brought along on this trip.

Our first stop is Kuala Lumpur, we are on Malaysia Airlines. Instead of trying the whole thing, Australia to Europe in one go, we are breaking this up into two trips. I turn 71 in a few days so we’re taking it slower. And this is my start; just wrote this on my phone while listening to music from the 1950s and 1960s. On some level I suppose I am progressing.

Finally, something to write about. We had a typical ordinary flight. With Malaysia airlines picking seats it is an add-on, as most airlines are now. However, booking 72 hours before the flight brings up the seat chart. We chose the front row with a window and isle on the two-seat side row plan. We realized our error within minutes but were unable to change. We were told to change we’d provoke a fee, but if we waited until 48 hours before departure we could change seats. Our obvious error was we were next to the front row of crazed babies and their wailing. With 48 hours to go the plane looked empty. No one is leaving Adelaide. Really, why would they? (CNN reports that Adelaide is the number ten most livable city in the world for 2018). Low and behold when we got to loading up time there was not a spare seat. Wow a brain-drain on Adelaide, everyone is bailing. TIP 1, choose seats 72 hours early. Sure enough there was a baby screaming the whole eight hours in the front row. With my noise cancelling headset filtering the best music of the 1950s and 1960s I was fine a few rows back but Narda seemed spooked.

Narda, the wise, has us overnight in Kuala Lumpur, central, they spell it Sentral. The last time we were in KL we took a taxi into downtown, well actually to the India area and stayed several days. It took so long, we were stuck in traffic all the way. This time, older, somewhat wiser, we took the KLIA Ekspres train to Sentral; 28 minutes, air conditioned, worth the 200 ringgets ($50 USD for two, round trip). TIP 2 take the bloody KL express airport to Sentral.

The downside with an overnight is the immigration line. In KL it is always bad – quite chaotic, taking more than an hour to get through. After eight-hours sitting it is too long to stand, going back it will be after a thirteen-hour flight.

TIP 3 We almost stuffed up this one; we could have had our luggage go on tomorrow’s flight and not be incumbent on it following us everywhere, but we didn’t. If the continued flight is within twenty-four hours they will take care of it. We got to Sentral and saw that with our KL Express return we could give our luggage to the airline and they would take it to the airport and have it arrive with us tomorrow. I believe it is only with Malaysian planes. So we got rid of our crap for awhile. It was just a ten-minute stroll to our room and the first thing we saw was an ad for a massage; 50 local thingies ($12 USD) for an hour so we grabbed a bite to eat and rocked up for our hour of rubbing by the seeing-impaired folks. Narda was happy with her hour, even proclaiming it was the best massage she ever had. Me, good grief, writing this on our flight KL to London a day later I am still sore. OK so he couldn’t see me but when I said ouch several times he should have gotten the clue I was not whistling Dixie. We used to get massages often in China and they would be either too hard or great.

TIP next Get the right person for your massage.

We upgraded a bit, taking Economy Plus which gave much more leg room. TIP, upgrade to Business – you can plug your computer in for more entertainment/creativity.

Twelve hour flight to London; five hours to go, I have used up my computer battery doing my Photoshop-textual wonders (https://plus.google.com/collection/E_6JaB), finally found something to view on the airline movie channels, ‘Jailhouse Rock’, 1957, Elvis first film. So different than what’s on offer now. I followed that with 1955 James Dean ‘Rebel Without a Cause’. Life is good. I am UpToDate. Another Tip: don’t rely on a battery hungry 15-inch-plus16 GB RAM computer, doing several Adobe programs, to be satisfying for long.

We arrived in London, a bit worse for wear at 4 pm, immigration was much quicker than KL. We bought an Oyster Card – putting 25£ on each, which turned out to be enough for three days of travel around London. The underground took us close to an hour to get to Narda’s family members where we were to stay for the next couple of nights. They have a spectacular view over the Thames, near the new US Embassy and a short walk to Parliament, Palace of Westminster, Buckingham Palace, some note worthy bridges the London Eye; all of which we saw in a couple of days.

As usual, in any city we go to, we took random bus rides and walked heaps. We need to travel just to get off our butts and grab some exercise. Buses are only 1.50£ (less than a couple of USD bucks). Our big day out was a rainy day so sitting looking out the window from upstairs in a big red bus is a great way to see London from a non-tourist view. When we got hungry we got off, went to a pub, The Joiner’s Arms, Camberwell. A most friendly girl served us well, and yes this is a tip-free space. For my birthday, 10^th of August, we took a random bus on a most perfect weather day and got off when we were hungry in burb called Clapham and again had a great pub meal.

We ate at pubs – always the best places. Having been on a low-carb diet for the past four-months or since India, I enjoyed the rising of my blood sugars with the local foods; the plan is to get back to serious carbs-counting mode when in The Netherlands where we will have our own kitchen and to continue throughout our three-months in Europe. We booked the Eurostar for our three-hour journey to Rotterdam. The Netherlands will be the next write-up – next week or next month. Cheers. In the meantime my daily scribbles are at https://neuage.org/2018 and my photo-digital-textual thingies are up in several places such as twitter (https://twitter.com/neuage)  and google-plus above.

TIP, read my (our) blogs – and yes, I will post Narda’s writing and observations and photos in the future too. This one was my exhaling.

Amritsar

Amritsar

For some reason, forget why now, we decided we had enough train journeys in India, so we booked round-trip flights between Delhi and Amritsar. The cost was $71.50 round trip for each of us, the train would have taken us six-hours, the plane less that an hour. Getting to the airport was easy, only a 20-minute taxi but getting from the airport, amongst other problems, to our Airbnb cost us 700 rupees ($10.70 USD – cheap for trips into NYC from JFK but here expensive for here). Air India was a good flight, Delhi airport was grand, there are multiple signs declaring it is the number one airport in the world. My only complaint was that there was only 45-minutes of free internet – come on Delhi, we are supposed to be at the airport three hours early then have 45-minutes of internet usage. What am I supposed to do, talk to my wife for three-hours?  We had a good meal at an Irish Pub, I gave my low-carb diet a break, having the mac and cheese with fries special. Narda had something that did not look like the vegetarian-only food we had agreed on for our time in India. Nevertheless, we seemed happy and found our waiting area – twenty-minute walk from where we had eaten. Still looking for my free internet time we sat down only to be called over a loudspeaker to report to some uniformed dude who informed us we needed to go with him right away to the baggage area. By now we had 55-minutes before the flight left and 25-minutes before boarding. Fortunately, after much insistence, more on ‘her’ part, we got a cart to drive us to the baggage area. There was one of our suitcases sitting lonely as could be and we were demanded to open it. Something about a cigarette lighter was in the checked luggage; a big no no apparently. Narda found the offending device, which we used to light incense, nothing more, making us ideal Indian tourists, one would think. After a sort of scolding we were told the suitcase easily would make our flight. We found and demanded a cart to go back; Narda was sitting in the driver’s seat ready to drive it herself which made folks nervous and compliant to our request. We got on the plane as the last ones to get on and we were assured our luggage would happily accompany us to Amritsar.

We got to Amritsar and our suitcase with the once offending article was nowhere in sight. We rounded up several airport employees (we had about five) with each having a few sentences of English at their disposal and began our flight plight. Well won’t you know it? There was a state-wide strike. No internet was one of the casualties.

“Hundreds of protesters on Monday blocked a main bridge in the center of Amritsar, in the northwest Indian state of Punjab, as thousands more joined 
a nationwide strike called by several organisations representing the low-caste Dalits, or "untouchables"…
The state of Punjab reportedly blocked mobile internet services and suspended bus routes during the strike….
Dalit activists say the Supreme Court's Mar. 20 ruling, which removed certain provisions protecting members of India's lowest castes from harassment, 
will lead to an increase in violence against the Dalits.”
https://www.efe.com/efe/english/portada/protesters-block-amritsar-road-as-part-of-nationwide-dalit-strike/50000260-3570599

We soon realized our largest error. All my medication (heart, diabetes, etc. Hey, I am 70, give me a break) were in the suitcase. Usually it is in carryon but as we would be in Amritsar before six pm we thought in check-in would be fine. I did one of my Leo-generated panic moves, showed my defibrillator-pacemaker implant, proclaimed my heart pills were in the bag and that we had been told for sure our suitcase was on the flight. I said I may have to see a doctor or go to hospital to get pills to keep my heart going and on and on. They were able to string enough sentences together, and a few looked quite worried. They rang the baggage department back in Delhi and we were told our suitcase would be on the first flight at six AM tomorrow and they would deliver it to us at our new digs.

Actually, Terrell’s performance was impressive. A monumental hissy-fit which completely changed everything. We no longer had to fill in many forms and email them hither and thither. Phone calls were immediately made on our behalf. I was a proud wife.

The next upsetting thing was there was only one person outside the airport when we finally got out, who claimed he was a taxi driver. We had been told about 300 rupees were enough, but this dude wanted 800. Narda explained to him that he was a dishonest man, and after much to and fro and head bobbing (on his part) he dropped his stupid price to 700. Looking around and seeing no other transport, knowing there was a strike, realising our phone could not ring our host, we got in and scurried off into the night.

Unpacking my bag, I found my pills for the evening; OK so my performance was not needed, I don’t see anyone signing me up for a Bollywood role, so I am left to my own devices for entertainment.

Our flat looks fine, two-bedrooms, two-bathrooms, small kitchen, a large alter with a colourful strobe light and statues and pictures of dead people with long white hair and long flowing white beards and a tv that we could plug our HDMI cable in to continue with our various series that we have been relaxing in the evening with: ‘The Last Ship’ and the Netflix doco about the Rajneesh, also known as Osho, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Acharya Rajneesh, or simply Bhagwan trip – spoken of in our Pune blog.

We got in touch with our host with a list of complaints: air-conditioner was spitting water all over the bedroom, the beds were too hard, no frying pan, internet was not working and a few other things. We were a bit grouchy from our air-India experience and were ready to move out then and there. The next morning a dude showed up, got everything fixed, even got soft mattress toppings and a frying pan (he brought all this on his motor scooter). The internet was fixed (though slow for our liking but we don’t like to complain) and we appeared happy. In fact, we were.

As we come toward the end of our India three-month visit we wished we had taken a train one more time instead of flying.

Our suitcase arrived the next afternoon. The driver wanted a tip, so we gave him a hundred rupees after explaining to him Air-India should be giving him a tip, but it merged with foreign-thoughts, dissipating into the air, as he did not understand me. I didn’t turn around to see if he was as happy with his tip as I was.

We had our flat-for-a-week @ ‘Model Colony’ – a gated community of large almost modern homes – a lot like our previous home in Adelaide at Lochiel Park.

See our video of a walk-about of our colony – and the other end of the bus line…

Walking around our area we found a street dental clinic –

A street hair-cutter

A dude who sharpened knives and did lots of other things all through bicycle power

A happy family of pigs And a good bus. The bus story is that a previous government began building a bus thoroughfare along G.T. Road that currently goes from the railway station to India Gate. We were surprised at how few people took that bus – we did a few random bus rides and only once of four rides did we see anyone else on it. Asking several people, we were informed that the previous government started a very expensive bus project, apparently from three different people, it was all quite corrupt. The next government in their bid to stop corruption stopped the bus project, leaving more than one-hundred buses parked for the past few years to get rusty. Currently these yellow buses go back and forth every fifteen minutes.  Each bus had a driver, conductor and usually two or three other ‘official’ looking people on board for the few passengers. At each bus stop there are a couple of workers, one who wants to look on the computer and print out a ticket for us to hand to the conductor on the bus and another person, seemingly, just hanging about. Often the buses are empty going each way.

At this bus stop a couple of hardworking employees asked to have a selfie with Narda.

Along the bus route is Khalsa College, (the premier-most institute of higher learning, was established by the leaders of the Singh Sabha Movement in 1892. They were inspired by the lofty ideals of the great Gurus… http://khalsacollege.edu.in/) We found a few good eateries across the street at Gate 3 of the College. It is only  a ten-minute walk from our home and we set out almost everyday to visit the college but usually ended up taking a random bus ride and never made it to this beautiful place.

At the opposite end to the Delhi Gate end, is full-on Amritsar, near the train station. I got a groovy pair of high-end shorts for 100 rupees (a buck fifty in USD) there and Narda did a ‘WhatsApp’ interview with Brendan’s third-grade class in Phnom Penh standing on this corner…The Golden Temple

I was asked so many times to pose with the locals for a selfie. It is the weirdest thing. Sometimes (mainly men) won’t even ask, they will just come up next to me and shove that phone in front of me for selfie with the 2 of us. My white hair maybe? But this has been all through our trip. Often folks will go up to Terrell and admire his beard or ask to shake his hand. Not many tourists around I guess; in fact we have not seen many for quite some time. The Golden Temple is the go-to default for all folks to Amritsar and who live in Amritsar. All one-million plus tourists; so, it seemed

It is quite the site sight. Lines were long, chanting was loud; no doubt we were all blessed. It was not because we wanted a free-feed; the idea that everyone was in a line with clanging plates going toward an area that we have read can feed 50,000 hungry souls was too much to resist.  After too much pushing and shoving and general waiting in line we turned in our empty plates and hit the road. We had to leave our shoes behind at the start of our inward journey of discovery (how metaphysical it all sounds) and I had to cover my head with something different than a silly hat (with a camel – reading ‘desert’, on it, left over from Jaisalmer) and fortunately Narda had just bought a scarf for 30 rupees (about 50-cents USD) for herself that I could use to cover my head and the entrance guard accepted my spiritually significantly successful sexy attire. Shoes are put into a free storage area and we are given a thing with a number on it to collect our foot ware when we had had a gutful of chanting and crowds; a very workable system. I did like this dude’s hat and thought perhaps I should write my poems http://neuage.org/2018/ on my hat too…

The Wagah Border

This was a highlight in our trip. We bought a tour to the border where there is a guard changing ceremony we can watch. What we arrived at was amazing. There were about 50,000 people. It had the atmosphere of a grand final at the MCG (I think; never actually been). We were there about 2 hours before it started but the whole thing was a carnival, with flag waving, chanting for the team, dancing the conga, bright colours. On the other side of the gate was a smaller crowd of Pakistanis, trying to match us. The loud speakers on each side were playing at full volume; completely different stuff, each side trying to “out-volume” the other. I had a nice chat with one of the guards, who tried to order me back to my seat, away from the Paki side. I said to him that really, folks should go through that bloody gate and shake hands. I shook his hand and said they are your brothers. Surprisingly he agreed. Then the real show began. On each side high-stepping, macho chest thumping, marching back and forth to the roar of the crowds. Quite an experience, and we recommend it if you head that way. On weekends the crowd swells to 100,000, we were told by our driver.

It is my dream to teach a choir of children, 50 Indian and 50 Pakistani, who can perform at this border ceremony with the gates open, showing that music is the way to unification.

Our video – a real treat (did I really say that?) is at

When we got to the parking area – about 45-minutes from home to the border; I got hustled into purchasing a cap with India on it and having my hand painted in India flag colours. OK, it was all for less than two-bucks USD, but still, once again I got hustled. Narda declined, she is not taking sides. With India beating Australia in cricket once again (did I get that correct?) I should cheer on Australia, even though I don’t follow cricket and after twenty-two years living in Australia, I have no idea what the rules are except that after three or four days sometimes it is a tie. What a stupid game. Watch our video for a real-closeup of this event – the ‘changing of the guard’. What a lot of whooping and hollering. We sat at the top of the stadium, mainly to get out of the sun as it was covered there. I used my zoom lens for most of the video and photos but still would have liked to have been closer.

The Museum of Partition and the War Memorial Museum (over at the end of the yellow bus run; more about that later) both informed us why Pakistan and India have issues. Of course, it was all from India’s side and sounded like propaganda. It is always “who to believe” in these situations. I think the main beef now is that Pakistan wants Kashmir and India basically says, ‘go get stuffed’. It is quite terrible what happened with the partition, how both countries suffered so much and still do. The War Memorial Museum took us back to the Sikhism start and all that befell them along the way. I have lots of pamphlets to be informed of what they are up to: ‘Notes towards Definition of Sikhism’, ‘A Brief Introduction to The Sikh Faith’, ‘The Golden Temple’, and ‘Guru Granth Sahib “The Scripture of Sikhism”’. All this stuff to read while we wait for our plane back to Delhi at the Amritsar Airport; and our plane is already delayed by an hour so if I ever stop writing I will have more time to read. Bottom line from all I have read and museums and speaking to folks is that the Sikhs believe all religions are under the same god – which is cool and groovy, but why then is there so much division in this part of the world? Apparently, the Sikhs stronghold is in Lahore, Pakistan, and their second place of coolness is here in Amritsar. I have lots to learn. And they never cut their hair. I haven’t for more than two-years, so I am on the way, except, I am not going to cover it under one of those turbans.  I have been asking Indians about partition and whether they would want to reunite with Pakistan. I think back in the day (1947) Kashmir should have gone to Pakistan with its Muslim majority. But now, according to some locals, Kashmiris want to stay on the Indian side because of the hardline extremism on the other side. One guy in the museum explained that Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan fought for independence from West Pakistan because they were much more moderate in their views. Clearly, I need to read more on this. It’s a sad but fascinating history.

In our last night in Amritsar we experienced some “weather”. Loud noises (things falling off the roof?) woke us about midnight and Terrell was sure there was someone trying to get in. It turned out to be quite a storm. Strong winds and continuous lightening flashes, with no audible thunder meant that the storm’s centre was a good distance away. We lost power until about 8am the next morning when a kindly neighbour cranked up a big ole generator; noisy as can be, but it powered us up nicely. So we watched the Al Jazeera news with breakfast. Presently power was restored and we finished our packing and headed out for the airport. We paid the taxi driver 550Rs despite our host warning us “ not to go over 350Rs.” The guy even asked for a tip on top of it. What do you do. I said, “sorry mate you’ve already got your tip” and he smiled and shook my hand??? The difference is $3. We must remind ourselves to keep things in perspective.  

The Punjab State War Heroes‘ Memorial and Museum

Part history, part propaganda, part tourist show… what is it? We enjoyed this place and found it by mistake – at the end of one of our random bus rides, at India Gate. A lot of sections tracing the poor plight of the Sikhs to a few wars between Pakistan and India, with India always being in the right to the today’s glorious, proud, just and powerful India military. As there were ‘no photography’ signs everywhere, and army clad folks wandering around I was unable to focus the camera long enough to get good photos; but here is an example – excuse the poor quality but I was trying to do the right thing and not take photos but I was unable to completely refrain… Most of the displays were pretty gory and one would easily feel sorry for what befell these ‘brave’ folks as they trudged through history with so many out to get them. Of course, at the end of the day was the important signing of stuff between Pakistan and India with Narda negotiating the terms; We went to the film place – a large cinema like room with 72seats; moving seats. There was a movie in some foreign language, but we could tell there was a lot involved with war like situations and bombings and planes, tanks, guns and general confusion. Every time a gun or missile fired the seats would rock forward then backward; sometimes something would hit our legs or poke us in the back. They called it 7D, not sure what that meant but we loved it. After the war antics there was a longish movie of a roller-coaster. That was quite cool. Every time we went down the slope, the chair would roll forward (we really did put our seat-belts on) and up the bloody hill our seats would tilt back; then as went around corners the seat would shake. It was like being in a computer game. The only suggestion to make us old people really go nuts is to make it three-D and give us 3d glasses, so we could really trip out.

We saw a sign that read the theatre was not working – something to do with a bear I think, but when we got there all systems were go.Here is a blurb from their stuff:

First of its kind in India, the Punjab State War Heroes' Memorial and Museum at Amritsar is now fully operational 
and draws large number of visitors daily. Built at the cost of Rs 130 crore (20 million USD), the memorial-museum was inaugurated in October 2016.

The memorial-museum showcases the splendid gallantry deeds of the brave hearts of Punjab. It immortalizes the deeds of brave soldiers 
and to inspire and infuse the spirit of patriotism in the youth.

The hallmark of the magnificent campus is a 45-metre high stainless steel sword on the central edifice. 
It represents strength and courage of the people of Punjab while defending the nation in the hour of need. This iconic structure stands atop a circular platform 
surrounded by water body. Names of nearly 3500 martyrs are inscribed on the memorial built at an elevation of 4 metres.

We were there on a Saturday, at 10:30 am; the only ones there. By mid-day there were a couple of dozen others in the whole place. Not sure about the large number of visitors daily.

A side-note; one of the more difficult parts of ‘doing India’ is that cars rarely have seatbelts in the backseat. With the dangerous driving; weaving, quick stops, speeding up, passing on the wrong side of the road, darting in front of a truck… having seatbelts on would make us a tad bit less nervous. Today we see on the news that a bus went off a cliff near where we were living in Shimla for a week killing thirty or so, 27 being children between 4 and 10 years old on the school bus. Shocking.

We enjoyed our week in Amritsar and would suggest it as a great place to stay. The train station is near the Golden Temple and Old Town. The airport is a little further out, but we needed a break from trains and it was a good choice.

Many people along the way ask us to take their photo – this is typical Many did not ask for their photos to be taken but I still would point and try to get an agreement  – this is one is of  a chap going past our home in Model Colony.

The flight is only an hour between Amritsar and Delhi; barely enough time to take another zillion photos out of the window and play with them on the camera.

 

Delhi again

This is our fourth stay in Delhi. This time at an Airbnb. 8A/24G, WEA, Karol Bagh, New Delhi-110005 to be exact if you want to stay at this place. A good stay; two-bathrooms, nicely laid out; it reminds us a bit of a NYC apartment, perhaps in Brooklyn.

We are just chilling, buying last minute stuff for our home and some little gifts for the kids.

Four days in Delhi then after three-months back to Australia in preparation for our next excursion; September, Berlin for a month home-exchange (they already stayed at our house while we were laying about in India), a month in Spain as a house-exchange, and a month we will make up as we go, somewhere in Europe. We have four-plus months in Adelaide to get all healthy and strong for our next trip.

Some last photos of our trip – Delhi April 10 – 13^th. They really sum up all four trips to Delhi: Narda having selfies with locals, amazing traffic, wonderful and modern metro, and rickshaws. India for three-months: a retrospective look, and some ideas for others

• Take lots of video/photo cards – I filled three 64 gig cards for my Nikon; take lenses – I have an 18 – 55 MM, 55 – 300 mm, and a wide-angle lens. If I could have taken more I would have, but my carry-on with my laptop was already past the eight-kilo weight limit. I would have liked to have brought a tripod but again no room for it. I only used an external mic once, so I could have left that behind.
• Be organized – Narda put together this trip many months before we left. Most of the train trips had to be booked three-months in advance. I just went along for the ride. However, I did organize my web-content (http://neuage.org/india) well before we left, and our blogs so that we wrote when we were taking a breather from exploring, riding trains, waiting at airports, flying… and I used Adobe Premiere for video-editing and Photoshop for photo-editing, and Dreamweaver for webpage content. All three programs I have been using since the 1990s, and have taught them, so knowing these programs made editing quicker. It still takes a long time; like an hour per minute of video editing.
• Know where everything is, always, or at least the daily-carry stuff. For me that was camera and lenses, phone, wallet, and prescription sunglasses that are worth close to $400. Narda and I kept track of each other’s stuff at all times too, which helps in these fast moving crowded situations. Usually we lock up our computer(s) where we are staying but this time we didn’t. We even bought a lockable mesh thing to put over a suitcase with computer and passports, important crap in it, but we only used it once on one train. We used our hanging over the bed mosquito net only once too. The air mattresses and pump as a guard against hard Indian beds we gave away to our tuk tuk driver in Agra.  We had three changes of clothes for hot weather and two for cold weather (Shimla) and that was plenty.

Having been in India before (we were in Goa in 2009) I knew somewhat what to expect. I still felt overwhelmed at times by the number of people and by the poverty. It is impossible to help everyone out and it does affect us to have beggars, especially small children, say they are starving, to see crippled people asking for money, to hear every tuk tuk driver/taxi driver tell a story of how difficult their existence is. How to be caring and sympathise in each situation is a challenge. Train stations are probably the most difficult; people living in the station, some places with a hundred beggars. At the same time, we have a budget which of course is impossible to explain to a beggar. “Sorry mate, I have only sixty-dollars a day to spend on accommodation and food and souvenirs and museums and trains and airplanes, so I can’t give you fifty-cents for a meal today, sorry mate”. In fact, we had a thirty-five dollar a day budget for food and etc (not accommodation) and we managed to stay below our budget for three-months. Accommodation we managed to average $32/day for three-months and that is with mostly Airbnb and three-star hotels. Trains were cheap, and we only went first class or second class AC. If we could do the same on Amtrak in the States or in Europe that would be beaut. Even internal flights were inexpensive. The round-trip Delhi – Amritsar was $75 each. That would be equal to flying Adelaide to Melbourne, usually more than twice that.

Yesterday we decided to bite the bullet and buy some curtains for our lounge at home. It was a crazily busy day in the shopping area of Karol Bagh. I have not seen it so crowded. A virtual parking lot, with cars jammed up to each other; actually touching, and yet motor cycles and auto-rickshaws were weaving though. The pedestrians (not us) seemed completely oblivious of this chaos; and strolled on the road, looking relaxed and unhurried. We darted around cars in a panic, stepping in all sorts of soft squishy things that you don’t want to know about. It was quite exhausting, so we stopped at an ice-cream vendor and sat for a bit on the steps of a department store, eating our drumsticks.

We finally found a curtain shop. It was nice; a friendly vendor with lots to choose from; and his grumpy wife. I found something that I thought might do (won’t really know until we get home) and had it made up to fit. Total costs, for a very large window at home: $92USD. Would have cost at least 4 times that back home. We returned the next day to pay; the connection for credit card payments was down, so 3 ATMs later, we managed to extract some cash. All good. A helpful lad from the store, with no English, led us to the ATMs. He would keep looking back to see if we were still following, and smile at us as we dodged and wove amongst the cars. His technique: just ignore the cars. I have no idea what he told the shop owner on our return, but I feel that there was some laughter at our expense!

Our favourites:

1. The Pakistan – India Border show
2. Catching up with our ex-students from China in Pune (Sidhee even had us feature in their university magazine with a title something about ‘the man as old as India’; I had said I was born in August 1947, soon before India became independent from the Brits.
3. Our visit to Shambhu’s village in Agra
4. The food – I think the Northern Indian foods with their gravies were tops
5. Meeting locals and hearing their stories
6. Meeting other travellers and hearing their stories
7. Animals – cows in the streets – love it… summing it up with this meditative cow in Agra,
8. Camal riding in Jaisalmer
9. Random bus rides – every city
10. Trains – I think the overnight one stands out – seventeen hours (Jodhpur to Mumbai)
11. Everywhere we went people wanted selfies with Narda
12. A day to the village, an hour from Kochi, of Narda’s dentist
13. The Toy Train and the Single Car Toy Train to and from Shimla
14. Boating on the backwaters of Alleppy
15. The fort and Blue City of Jodhpur
16. Taking thousands of photos and videos – I started with doing video in 4K, but it was eating through my memory cards, so I went down a notch.
17. Inspiration everywhere – I continued writing daily as I have been for decades and I think I have a lot of material for my next eBook – http://neuage.org/e-books/
18. Facebook – I know people are saying quit it because of all the privacy stuff (hey Russia, read my posts!) but I have enjoyed sharing our travels with family and friends on Facebook and receiving feedback and of course, ‘hearing’ where others are and what they are up to. I never feel far from family and friends because of Facebook. I only wish we had Facebook back in the 1960s and 1970s when I was exploring the States – on, oh so many levels.

And that is it…thanks for sharing this trip with us

Our next trip begins in September with a month in Berlin, a month in Spain and a month we are still planning. 2019 we will be in the States and in Pakistan. and maybe at your door.

In our time back in Australia we will do some caravan trips around Australia and may post some blogs along the way here.

I post my daily thoughts at http://neuage.org/2018/

My HomePage is http://neuage.org

Shimla

Shimla

I long had dreams of going to Shimla, based mainly on watching the TV series “Indian Summers”. The setting is a beautiful green valley, with lovely gardens and walking trails. Shimla is NOTHING like that! It is a vertical city, perched on the steepest, largest mountain sides I have ever seen. Each building is above or below the next. A difficult city to get around.

We arrived on the narrow-gauge railway, built a hundred years ago by the meticulous Brits, to give their ex-pat citizens a place to cool down in the summer. The trip takes 6 or 7 hours about 22 Kms.

The train to here was amazing; see our clip of the Himalayan Queen here

The trains are old and restored, listed as World Heritage. You go over 800 bridges, through 103 tunnels and ascend to 7,500 ft, and there you are; Shimla.

We are staying in a small village, perched on a narrow ridge on the top of a mighty big mountain.

You look behind houses on one side of the road, and there is an almighty drop, then cross the road to the other side, and another similar drop. Blimey. Today we decided to head to downtown Shimla, where some lovely historical buildings can be seen along the “Mall”.

So we took the local bus. It is only a short distance, but takes an hour, with crazy turns; the fast-moving bus driving precariously close to the edge of a cliff.

I had to move to the other side of the bus and look away. The return trip was worse, with way too many people squished in, and us trying to stand. Each time when we thought, “no way, no more people, I can’t breathe”, another 5-people got on. The passengers were very good natured, no one got upset at having an elbow in their face, or their nose in someone’s armpit. Everything in Shimla is like that; that’s what I meant by difficult. It’s all a matter of perspective. We have a lot to learn.

See our one-minute video of our  bus ride @

It is SPECTACULAR. The views are mind blowing. The Himalayas just keep on going, as you look towards the horizon, and the mountains get bigger and bigger. So here we are; the agony and the ecstasy.

We have a nice Airbnb, which is gorgeous inside, lots of space and friendly hosts living upstairs. However it can only be reached by going very slowly down a long set of outdoor steps, VERY steep and scary, especially with luggage. We are starting to get used it to it…a bit.

Our village, called Kasumpti, is becoming familiar. We have the older guy who sells us large bottles of water (you can only buy smaller ones from the other little stores), and eggs at 5 Rs (8c) each, sometimes a bottle of soda water and Cadburys chocolate. The village is just a strip along the mountain. There are often lots of people congregating in a central area, called the bazaar, who are waiting for buses. There is also a wine shop; first we’ve seen in India. I asked about the price of a bottle of Kingfisher. It was marked 85 Rs but he insisted that we should pay 180 Rs, so no-sale for me. Other store owners just charge the price on the item. Oh well.

Yesterday began another hospital day. I had squirties again, and a tummy ache, so I thought, better get onto this early. Our host very kindly offered to walk us to the local hospital. He has never driven a car! I guess this makes sense in this part of the world. The traffic is chaotic; with the road circling those mountains, always with 1000 ft drop on one side and steep mountain on the other. There is NO wiggle room. He told us that several times a year a bus rolls off the road into the gully. Everyone is always killed. I’m surprised that it is not more often. Anyway, you can’t drive up or down the mountain. There are steps which join the road loops around it. So, it’s mainly walking for most people. It’s much further to take the circling roads. We finally arrived at the hospital and I was waved ahead of a longish queue. I walked to the front, apologising to the folks, who simply smiled and pointed the way forward. The lady at the desk, a very efficient woman, who had it all ‘in hand’, said she was surprised that I was ‘a senior’. She then became my new best friend. I got the paperwork done and we (the three of us) sat down to wait. It wasn’t too long before we got to see a doctor in another building, who sent me off to have some tests.

We walked back home. Our host had been with us for some hours, a kind man. Today we returned and I had my very first Indian ultra-sound. Kinda cool. The radiologist himself was operating the thing….a wand? He dictated to his assistant the whole time and told me what he saw. ‘probably not appendix’ I have a really sore spot on the right side, which is some sort of infection, ‘needing further investigation’ when we return. Oh well.

The hospital ‘ground floor’ is actually the 7^th story. So you can enter from here. Then you go down to the 4^th floor (where the ultra-sound room is) and step out the back. When you look down it’s the roof of another 6 or 7 story building. The building seems to be anchored somehow to the mountain side.

The other day we took a walk in the other direction, following a very narrow path cut into the mountain side; the same deal. A massive drop to one side, and the steep side on the other. It’s so steep that you can hold you hand up to it to steady yourself. I keep my eyes on the path. I can only look around when I stop. It truly freaks me out. As we progressed, the path got narrower and I had to stop and head back. Terrell was completely comfortable with it, but not me. On the way back, we were greeted by a man sitting outside his house, which basically sticks out over the valley. We had a friendly chat, and he asked us in for a cup of tea. It was really nice. The couple are both retired, speak English well, and it was interesting. One of their grown-up kid’s lives in Chicago, the same as the son of our host. The house is heritage listed, 100 years old. He told us that the forest is also protected, 100-year-old pine trees filled with black faced little monkeys. It really is very beautiful.After our month in Kerala (see our Kerala blog) we stopped in Delhi for a couple of days. As usual we stayed in the Paharganj area in the Main Bazar. We have posted enough clips of that bustling area in previous blogs. We stayed at Hotel Hari Piorko with a fish tank in our room.

Our first room didn’t meet our requirements; i.e. the TV didn’t work, the bed was too hard, we couldn’t plug our computer into the powerpoint… so we got them to change our room – something which happens surprisingly often. We enjoyed our stay; the next room was good. I did worry about one of the fish in the tank – it looked depressed, didn’t swim around with the others, and kept to herself. Narda said it was a ‘bottom-feeder’ and that was perhaps its normal behaviour. It did move about a bit but she did not respond to my tapping on the glass. Maybe I should reassess my communicative style with females.

The rooftop restaurant was good both for the view and food. We had an Ayurveda massage and I got some Ayurveda crap for my hair; allegedly makes it grow thicker, longer, healthier, and perhaps will awaken my brain-cells clustered at the foot of my hair follicles.

Kalka

Kalka is a town in the Panchkula district of Haryana.

We arrived on the train from Delhi at 11 pm, staying at the $16 USD/night,  Kalka Hotel Dharam Villa, which was a good hotel. They made us a great omelette breakfast the next morning. The room was clean and the shower sort of OK. I think it was our cheapest place in three months of travel. We paid $22 USD for it on the way back a week later due to it being high season for tourism.

We grabbed a smoothie on our way to the train station in the morning,

Got a tuk tuk to the train station and got on the toy train.

On the way to the train I saw a very distressed horse with a sore foot. I spoke at great length with him and Narda and I went out to find an apple for him, but as we do, we got side-tracked and when we went back the horse had disappeared. He was obviously in pain. Someone had put on a plastic bag and tape, but the poor thing was not happy.Solan

The trip from Kalka to Shimla is about six-hours. We went for four hours, stopping at Solan.

Solan is our first venture into the state of Himachal Pradesh (listen), literally “snow-laden province” which is situated in the Western Himalayas with such groovy borders as Tibet and Kashmir. See the map that I borrowed from Wikipedia.

Folks have been enjoying the cold and heights for heaps of time, for example, the Indus valley civilisation flourished here between 2250 and 1750 BCE – so after more than four-thousand years one would think this is one of the more advanced areas of civilisation in the world. This is what we are in a quest to find. Is there an advanced civilisation in the world or are we all just muddled bystanders to the winds of fate? We Westerners like to think we are the top of the pile but watching the news I think we are the bottom-feeders. To read more about Himachal Pradesh check out Wikipedia’s article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himachal_Pradesh.

 

Folks have been enjoying the cold and heights for heaps of time, for example, the Indus valley civilisation flourished here between 2250 and 1750 BCE – so after more than four-thousand years one would think this is one of the more advanced areas of civilisation in the world. This is what we are in a quest to find. Is there an advanced civilisation in the world or are we all just muddled bystanders to the winds of fate? We Westerners like to think we are the top of the pile but watching the news I think we are the bottom-feeders. To read more about Himachal Pradesh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himachal_Pradesh  Wikipedia’s article.

We stopped at Solan at a height of 5,000 feet (1,600 metres) so I could climatize to higher altitudes before hitting the 8,000-foot mark in Shimla. Years ago, in Quito, Equator, at ten-thousand feet we had to get off the mountain due to my not being able to breath. Of course, even in small towns Narda finds things we ‘need’. Solan is a city that reminds me of a medieval European city with narrow streets and oldness, a bit more mildew and more trash about the place with a few cows standing in the middle of the street looking overwhelmingly content and people speaking Asian, Solan is tops for us. One night, two days is not enough to hang out here. In the evening from about 6 – 10 the main street is blocked from traffic so the locals all go out for a stroll; so cool. We stayed at the Mayur Hotel Bar And Restaurant, http://www.mayurhotelsolan.com/ an adequate space at $26 USD/night. There were no fish tanks in the room but good just the same.

India is known for its sweets – and once again I gave my sugar-free diet a rest… as well as Narda did so likewise,Narda has posted about the toy train to Shimla. The only downside was that there was a narrow path to the train station, so we were unable to get a tuk tuk from the town of Solan to it. The night before we really struggled to get up the hill with all our crap, plus it was raining so we were on the bit of a self-pity side of life when we finally did get to our hotel.

Coming back was fine with it being down a steep hill to the station. There are more than one-hundred tunnels between Kalka and Shimla – this one is next to where we were sitting at the station. People pass through them, I suppose as a shortcut, which explains why the train sounds its horn when it gets to each tunnel. For those of our multitude of readers (I think we have four or five family members who feel obliged to skim through these long winded things) who are familiar with the children stories about Flat Stanley http://www.flatstanleybooks.com/  I am sure one could think of that being the result of folks who do not obey the train whistle warnings.

The train made several stops and we all piled off. At one of the stops, children lined up to have their photo taken with Narda. Not sure why she is always so popular (more than me – but I am not complaining – just wondering what I can do to get as much attention) – this has happened for many years in many countries. A selfie with Narda is just so cool for folks. I know I do it too. The carriages are smaller than regular Indian trains as they are on narrow gauge tracks. There are toilets in the front and back of each carriage. The distance from Kalka to Shimla by rail is 97 kilometers with several bends, 102 tunnels, 988 bridges and 917 sharp curves. It takes more than six-hours to make the trip up.Last year, the train had met with an accident near Dharampur while it was travelling at a speed of 28 km/hour. The driver was dismissed for speeding. The one we were on went considerably slower, making leaning out the window to take photos and video easy, though Narda gets nervous as I go out the window or door to get footage. Our favourite sign along the way at one of the stations on the way up to Shimla. Now, a week after Shimla, in Amritsar, the centre of Sikhism (that story is next) we are learning this is the crux of what the Sikhs have to say.

Shimla

Shimla (  listen), also known as Simla, is the capital and the largest city of the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. The climatic conditions attracted the British to establish the city in the dense forests of the Himalayas as the summer capital, from the 1940s. The main shopping area is Mall Road in the centre of the city. It is closed to traffic except for emergency vehicles, making walking rather pleasant. There are many monkeys around the place – I liked this bold one.

See our clip of our week in Shimla

And of course, Narda got more folks rushing up to her to get a selfie – no one asked me.We had a nice Airbnb, Narda wrote about this above. We were on the edge of a forest area and often monkeys would be everywhere. The photo below is moneys at our house – one was licking the wall. Narda captured one of their capers this morning; I had put out a bag of trash, hearing lots of noise, a monkey was taking a few prized possessions out of the bag – we didn’t record much, so it does not show that there were six or seven soon after at our door. They are very bold and used to humans. Narda’s sister, Caroline, was bit by one a couple of years ago in Indonesia and had to have shots.

See the short clip of our monkey-thief

Narda has written about our stay in Shimla. I will just add that it is one of our memorable places we have visited. We would not do it again as it was a bit difficult for us. The narrow roads, steep drops, climb down and up to where we lived, and our flat; two-bedrooms, two bathrooms, large lounge area, lots of English news stations and easy to plug in our HDMI cable to watch our latest series of our computer, ‘The Last Ship’, and the Netflix documentary on the Rajneeshees, ‘Wild Wild Country’ – we were just in Pune for a week, even stayed at an AirBnB run by a couple of their devotees and last year we were in Oregon, their US Centre – so we are quite interested in their stuff. Of course, you can reread the ‘Pune’ blog about this. And the other difficult part for us, the elders, was that there was no heat. It would be five-degrees Celsius (41 Fahrenheit), cold for us, warm for our New York family and friends, in the morning. There was no shower, as we have done in other places, we used the bucket provided and got enough warm water to dump over our shivering bodies. During the day it was warmer, outside, but for a week, we never got warmed up in the house. We wold wrap up in blankets in front of the TV. The other minor complaint we have had before is that beds are incredibly hard. Luckily there were enough quilts to pile under our sheets to make it bearable.

These houses are built not only on mountainsides but in areas that are not accessible by vehicles, every brick, window, roof tile, everything is carried in. We have seen men with washing machines on their backs, 50-kilo bags of cement mix, and so much more. When we left our flat we were unable to carry our suitcases up the hill and paid a man to carry them; he took two suitcases and a bag of our not-needed crap (hey family we bought you each something) all together on his back.

KSR railcar on The Kalka–Shimla railway

We took the railcar – a single carriage train back down the hill. 8,000-foot drop in four hours. As it left Shimla at 5 pm we only had an hour of daylight. After dark I spent a few hours catching up on our writing and video editing, all the things I seldom have time to do as we keep adding more experiences to our trip. There was only one stop along the way and we all ran to the toilet and grabbed a bite to eat then we were on our way. We stayed at the same hotel in Kalka that we stayed at coming up.

See our clip of the Shimla to Kalka Rail Motor Car   – about two-minutes

We only had a few seconds to see the sunset as the mountains covered the setting sun most of the way. This was not touched in Photoshop. Do the Shimla trip once in your life.

Kerala

Kerala is a state on India’s tropical Malabar Coast. Did you know: Kerala has the highest life expectancy at birth (74.9) during 2010-14 among all Indian states. wikipedia.org

Narda writing Terrell writing

Thiruvananthapuram

20 – February

Our hostess is an Indian Jessica. Softly spoken, sweet, helpful and intelligent, with long dark hair and a gentle friendly face. So, we’re good. This place is a large, very clean 2 bed-roomed flat. The showers are hard-core India, buckets with scoopers, but you get the technique after a while and the water is hot. We have internet most of the time, have hooked the telly up to the computer via HDMI, and happily watch Peaky Blinders every evening.

 view from our street
The food is so cheap it’s embarrassing! We pay less than $US3 for a meal for the 2 of us, with drinks. So we try to tip them a bit, but they won’t have it.

Today another bus ride. We found our way to the big bus depot near the railway station and got into a bus. The seats looked comfortable and there was plenty of room. Problem was, it didn’t seem to be going anywhere in a hurry. A few folks started to get off, so we followed them onto a second bus. This one was going somewhere. The conductor asked us where we wanted to go, and we said “just to end”. He looked very puzzled. So we said we didn’t really mind we just wanted to see things. By this time a few other passengers were watching with interest. One had a little English. Terrell then offered that perhaps we should see some waterfalls and a kangaroo. Small smiles starting appearing on the passenger’s faces. The guy with a little English took the matter on his own hands and spoke very rapidly in Hindi (smiles got larger). He probably said something like “just sell them your most expensive ticket, these guys have no idea what they want”. Anyway, it worked out. We paid 38 Rs (about 50c) and off we went. Well, it was a pretty hot day, but an interesting ride. When we saw a town after about 45 minutes, we got off and walked to a sweet shop, bought some fudge (can’t beat it!) and caught another bus back home. The driver of this one was a maniac, running red lights only to pull up sharp to pick up old ladies. It was the fast ride home and we collapsed into our cool house, and had cold showers.

This place has been fun. Totally not touristy; no one tries to pressure sell anything, which is a welcome change. We almost feel local. We have our milk and yogurt guy nearby to whom we can almost say “the usual”. And we have two favourite restaurants, one has occasional air-conditioning and the other has clean red chairs. So you have to weigh it up. We take turns. They both sell really good fruit juices and shakes. Terrell likes pomegranate. My favourite is grape juice, but not fermented….this seems to be a completely alcohol free zone. I have not had a drink for a month. Actually the only time I had a Kingfisher beer (largish bottle) I threw up  violently the next day…and have had on-and-off funny tummy ever since. I don’t think it was the alcohol, but I have this association stuck in my head! Right now I’m on my 4^th course of antibiotics after a second hospital visit. Feeling good now.

Right now we’re watching “Peaky Blinders” season 4. Highly recommended. I think it’s on Netflix. And we’re reading two books by Yuval Harari, “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”, and “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow”. (thanks Sacha and Georgia). Read them if you can. We are fascinated, such an interesting take on everything.

We like staying at Airbnbs; close as we can get to living at home somewhere else. Firstly, we unpack everything – set up our little home, buy some groceries, try to find some English channels on the telly and feature our nest the best we can. We start looking at Google Maps to see our surroundings then go out and explore. We met our ‘neighbour’ a girl from the State of Washington in the USA, here on a Fulbright scholarship for some medical thing.

After discovering there was quite a close beach we grabbed an Uber there for the usual less than a buck-fifty (USD) to Valiathura Beach. It looked amazing until we were on the actual beach where we discovered human poo all over – perhaps there is no loo for the fishermen than inhabit this area. The pier is quite amazing, but it was closed to the likes of us as it was under repair. We did see folks fishing off of the end of it but a local guard type of dude said we could not go out on it.

 As often is the view in this area there were the many fishing boats waiting for something – perhaps for fish to jump out of the water. When we were there, in the mid-afternoon, the locals were huddled under tents, which if we were wise we would have been too instead of walking in the mid-day sun. We took a tuk tuk along the beach in hopes of finding some groovy beach-side restaurant but ended up in a small shop feeling lost in the middle of nowhere and took another tuk tuk back home.

Another day we went to the local zoo; The Thiruvananthapuram Zoo; entrance fee of 30 rupees (45 cents USD). I thought it looked a lot like the Honolulu Zoo. We have only been to one other zoo in the past twenty-years, La Aurora Zoo, Guatemala City about ten-years ago. The Thiruvananthapuram Zoo is one of the oldest of its kind in India, being put together in the 1830s or so. If you are widely interested in knowing more check out their webpage. We spent most of the afternoon there – see our clip, on YouTube for footage of this nice park. We also went to the Napier Museum but found it rather boring though inexpensive (10 rupees – 15-cents USD).

We walked the few blocks to the main temple attraction but did not go inside as one needed to be of the local religion of the temple to peer within…the fact that we are both quite enlightened did not seem to pave the way to their celestial consciousness.

We grabbed a bus over at North Gate to, Kovalam, the most popular place in Trivandrum and no doubt the main reason folks go there.

We were there at the end of the tourist season with only a few bikini-clad folks left on the beach. Not that I took photos, just of Narda with her umbrella. It used to be a nude beach, I think the only one in India, but then they banned nakedness as perhaps not having clothes on is unnatural for hunters and gathers that we homo sapiens are. After all we were born with clothes on and we should keep them on. At the southern end of Lighthouse Beach is a striped lighthouse with a viewing platform which was closed, we discovered after walking to the end of the beach and up the hill to it. Always a fun thing to do on a hot day. We didn’t make it to the palm-backed beaches of Hawa Beach and Samudra Beach but chose to get the next bus back to the city which thankfully was an air-conditioned bus. It was double the price setting us back 40 rupees (sixty-two cents, USD for the two of us for the hour ride) but well worth it.Overall, we liked Trivandrum and would suggest it as a place to be for a week or so. The zoo stands out as the best but just taking random buses and smiling at the locals is quite a cool thing to do. And there are lots of temples; we were actually in the temple area of Trivandrum.

There is a wall to go through, separating the highly-evolved temple consciousness dwellers/visitors with the rest of the dregs of humanity. Surprisingly we were allowed through. I was happy to see only vegetarian restaurants within, so us evolved animal-loving folks can feel good all the time about ourselves.The only time we went to the other side of besides the beaches was to go to a restaurant suggested to us. It was the most expensive one we have been to in India, Villa Maya Heritage Restaurant, about $12 per meal which is more than three times what we normally pay. Looking at their website; http://www.villamaya.in/ we learned, weeks later, that TripAdvisor rated it as the third best restaurant in India and in the top 15 in all of Asia. Perhaps we should not have complained that at $12 a meal it was expensive. Maybe we are rated amongst the top dozen or so most clueless tourists. Nevertheless, the food was tops and so was the place and service.

We usually go to Vrindavan Restaurant, a block away, for lunch they have such yummy dishes as Tomato Uttapam which is basically a pancake with tomatoes or whatever shoved in / veg fried rice, pomegranate juice and pineapple juice all for 226 rupees ($3.48 USD) breakfast is 126 rupees ($1.94 USD); of course, that is for the two of us.

Narda became ill, again, (no photos of the event) so we went off to the hospital and got more medication. It was her fourth dose of antibiotics and hopefully this time will be the last. It was our third hospital in India so far; less than two years ago after her motorcycle accident in Cambodia when we went to a few hospitals between Cambodia, Thailand, and finally Australia. We are making the rounds of Asian hospitals. Tomorrow we start heading north again; 5 days in a beach town called Varkala, highly recommended by Bren, and then 2 weeks in an Airbnb in Kochi. So we’ll keep you posted.

Varkala

27  February ~ 3^rd March

A very spectacular place, huge cliffs and wild beaches.

 I say wild, because more than once I was smashed face first into the sand by a monster wave. Still the water was warm so we ventured in a few times. Our ‘resort’ was south of Varkala, a little remote but very pretty. We upgraded to a balcony room upstairs with a gorgeous 4 poster bed surrounded by swishy mosquito nests and white curtains. With an archetype view of a palm fringed beach, we were happy. Mind you if you looked straight down, there was a busy little fishing village with lots of red fishing nets being rolled, not much evidence of fish being caught, but what do I know. This was actually pretty interesting for us to watch; and everyone with friendly smiles. By and by we discovered the main part of the action, North Cliff. This is a wonderful narrow road along the top of the cliff, lined with restaurants, shops and guesthouses; everything your heart would ever want. We some great meals here, enjoyed the specie sunsets, and took (Terrell 🙂 many photos. Can see why Brendan has spent so much time there.

See our video

We took an Uber to Varkala for 900 rupees (less than $14 USD) for the two-hour ride. Our driver was on his first run with Uber and was quite happy that we gave him a 100-rupee tip at the end. He was young and wild (aren’t they all?). I had looked up the death rate on roads in India a few days earlier which was an error in judgement. Narrow roads with speed, what could be more thrilling? Often, we would go through a built-up area with signs of 40 Ks for the speed, but not us, we flew through doing 60-70, passing motorcycles, tuk tuks, trucks, even buses. What is nerve-racking about some Indian drivers is they believe in karma, ‘if we die, it was meant to be’. Our driver may not have had a death wish, we never asked.

We arrived in Varkala noonish – walked to Varkala Beach and to the closest town and wandered until we had no idea where we were. Of course, that is nothing unique. We grabbed a tuk tuk home and had dinner at our local restaurant here at the Guru Ayurveda Retreat Centre. It sounds much grander than it is. There is a small building with a sign advertising rubs and stuff, though we did not see any activity.

On the rooftop of our building there was a ‘yogi-centre’ though I saw no activity for the week we were there. The internet was slow as it is in most places in India. Slow meaning a five-minute video I would leave overnight and if lucky it would appear on Facebook and YouTube by the next morning.

Our room was good though, large, balcony, great sunsets, OK bed – not awful but for India not too hard, OK shower, if used between 7 – 10 am for warm water.

(A note from Wikipedia “Varkala is the only place in southern Kerala where cliffs are found adjacent to the Arabian Sea. These Cenozoic sedimentary formation cliffs are a unique geological feature on the otherwise flat Kerala coast, and is known among geologists as Varkala Formation and a geological monument as declared by the Geological Survey of India. In 2015, Ministry of Mines, Government of India and Geological Survey Varkala of India (GSI) have declared Varkala Cliff as a geo-heritage site.”)

If we stayed here again we would stay on the Varkala Cliff which is where the restaurants and most of the hotels are. We found a good hippie-type coffee shop, Coffee Temple, though the Mexican food we ate was not very Mexican. India has the best food, when it is Indian dishes, but going for anything Italian (mac and cheese), Mexican, etc. forget it. Perhaps Chinese food is good as every place offers it but we have never tried any. Be sure to say, ‘not too spicy’, otherwise you will have a mouth on-fire. A week where we were was too long, as we had to do long walks on the beach everyday (rough life we live) to get to the cliff about forty-five minutes away.

The water was warm, and we would have a bit of a swim most mornings or evenings or whenever we could get our lazy asses into the sea. There is a meditation/yoga/Ayurveda place at every turn. We got some creams and lotions but did not participate with the massages – they are the same prices as Australia.

Alleppey

03 – 05 March

Alappuzha (or Alleppey) is a city on the Laccadive Sea in the southern Indian state of Kerala. It’s best known for houseboat cruises along the rustic Kerala backwaters.A nice train ride to Alleppey. We sat with a young couple, a Brit and a Colombian, who somehow made their way into second class aircon, because the other carriage “was full”. We had a great conversation with them, lovely kids on a 7-9 month trip though India, S.E. Asia, ending in the Philippines or “whenever our money runs out”. When we arrived we had lunch with them at a VERY dodgy little place. I think the bill was under $2. The next train station meal was our cheapest ever, 2 coffees, idly, and banana fritters; all for 66 cents. But that was Kochi, more later.

The accommodation was crap. Fantastic view, but nasty hot little room. No shower and hot as hell. Oh well. We took a lovely boat ride through the backwaters which are amazingly beautiful. Left at 6.30 am, just getting light, so the intensely heavy traffic of large houseboats had not yet started. This was a difficult stop, mainly I think because of the heat. The temperature is only about 34, but lots of humidity with it; we’re not used to it.

Narda held an eagle on our breakfast stop – they said the bird had lived there for the past sixteen-years.Our morning boat ride, leaving at six-thirty am was peaceful as the many boats had yet to hit the road. There was just the two of us and the driver. We could have laid down – but we would have fallen to sleep so we sat up – see our groovy boat below.We paid 400 rupees ($6.15 USD) per hour and did four hours. In 2016, Centre for Science and Environment rated Alappuzha as the top cleanest town in India. Everything is by its own standards. Not quite the same as tidy-towns in Australia. There are still enormous amounts of trash along the road, in the river. Everywhere. Perhaps compared to other towns it was clean.The view from our porch at Malayalam Ayurvedic Lake Resort (http://malayalamholidays.com/) was amazing, the room was awful – small – dirty – no air conditioning – shower barely spits out water, and the manager was not friendly. There is no ‘amazing breakfast’ as stated on their homepage. They order out from a nearby restaurant. Not sure why it is referred to as a resort. And as was the case back in Varkala, the Ayurvedic trip was highly advertised but we did not see any sign of activity. The hotel or ‘resort’ next door had signs all over advertising the same thing but again no one around doing such activity. The view below is a couple of minutes from our ‘home’. Sitting on our porch we watched houseboat after houseboat go by – see our video clip, a lot was shot from our porch.

We saw this boat on one of our travels – a couple of kids had taken a lot of plastic bottles (and there are a lot in the water) and made a raft out of them. Unfortunately, I did not have my zoom lens on at the time.We met some folks from Belgium and Narda spoke Dutch with them and we went off looking for a place to eat. The nearest restaurant was on an island and we found a row boat ferry to go across on. On the way back Narda paddled us across with the owner – see the end of our video. Luckily there were no houseboats in our area at the time. https://youtu.be/E_bsE2HDYIc

It was a bit of a walk from where Malayalam Ayurvedic Lake Resort was to the main road – along a dirt track, along a canal, up the road and a fifteen-minute ride into town where we found some restaurants from ‘Lonely Planet’ that were at best adequate.

Two days was enough for us in this place and we were happy getting the train out of there to Kochi.

Kochi

05 – 19 March

Staying for two-weeks at D’Homz Suites, YS Lane 2, Yuvajana Samajam Road, Kadavanthra P.O., Kochi, Kerala 682020, India. Hosted by Arun at +91 93 876 62 000 Highly recommended – http://dhomz.business.site/

Off again, this time an uneventful train ride. Despite the beauty, we were happy to be on our way. We are now residing in a beautiful little modern apartment. Fully airconditioned, washing machine, the whole thing. And a real SOFT bed!!!!! It is so nice. We’re here for 2 weeks, an Airbnb, time to get sorted, get clean, get rested, Terrell to get his blood sugar back down. He’s even joined the local gym. We just may never leave. So if we don’t turn up in April, this is where you will find us.

The Airbnb stays are the best. You really get a local home. In Pune, it was REALLY local; kinda scary entrance, lots’ of black mould, but it turned out to be a cosy little flat, Indian style. The Trivandrum flat was an apartment at the back of a family’s house. The daughter took good care of us; checking that we were happy at least once a day. We became a little known to some of the store holders nearby, which is also nice. Kochi tops it though. We have everything here. TV works with Netflix, aircon, a very soft bed, a nice little space in a block of flats with a doorman. The thing that makes the Airbnbs different from hotels (and we have stayed in many on this trip) is that they are in non-touristy areas. So, no hustle, no sales pitch, everyone just going about their lives. And we can get all the mod cons easily; western meals when we feel like it. Though today we discovered Curd Waadah. Not sure about the spelling, and it was not on the menu. Two balls of ricey stuff, in a bowl of raita, with some spicy crunchy bits. We’ve already had it twice. It costs about 75c. Yum.

Yesterday I spent half the day sitting in a dentist’s chair, having my front teeth fixed. Looks pretty good even if I say so myself. The day before we saw “The Shape of Water” in first class chairs. Very enjoyable. The mall, called Lulu, was very modern and new, full of the same useless shops you see in these malls everywhere (Marks and Spencer, The Body Shop, Apple, Tommy Hilfiger) but to its credit it had a large supermarket in the basement and a half decent food court.

Kerala is a curious mix of Christians and Communists. Currently the communists are in power; they support the trade unions support free education, medical etc. They are freely elected, displaying their red hammer and sickle flags everywhere. The association we make with the Soviet Union is a bit unsettling for us, but in Kerala, folks are happy. Then there are the Christians. There are so many beautiful churches, obviously well supported financially. Our local church is Catholic, St Joseph’s. Our dentist (more about him later) belongs to the Syrian Christian Church which is the biggest I think. Apparently it was started 500 plus years ago by Syrian missionaries, but has no links with modern Syria. I guess communism, in its purist form, has a lot in common with Christianity. Anyway, every morning there were church bells (the first at 5.30am!) getting folks there for the first mass at 6.30. The church was packed. Several hundred folks there every morning, sometimes more than once a day. I did enjoy hearing the mass hymn singing in the cool (ish) morning air.

Last night we walked in an area very nearby, with lots of new high-rise apartment, all the occupants taking walks in the cool of the evening. The walkways were well marked, even with a bike lake; almost felt like Holland, but way too hot. It was a surprising little area, very liveable I think.

https://youtu.be/QMkoqmTnN1Y  

 Kochi is the old city and the new Kochi is Ernakulam, about 7Km from Kochi. We took a ferry from there to Fort Kochi and to Vypeen see our groovy video at https://youtu.be/cjj53vrp9FY

and our talking to fishermen at Port Cochin with their Chinese nets (“shore operated lift nets”), The unofficial emblems of Kerala’s backwaters  see video at https://youtu.be/OwTxHu-wKhs

We saw hand washing clothes in dhobi khana, run by Tamils – see the description from Wikipedia below

Veli Street in Fort Kochi – Dhobi Khana – The first sight that greets you inside the gate is an array of men and women ironing clothes with these songs providing a musical background.  Most of them are old and grey haired. Pass through into the next portion of the three-acre compound of the Khana, and you see 40 wash pens lined up in a row. Although a huge washing machine stands in the first wash pen, no one seems to use it. This is what might possibly be the only Dhobi Khana (community laundry space) in Kerala, existing in the city successfully for many decades, thanks to a fair number of Kochi citizens who prefer their clothes washed by hand. The origins of the dhobi khana lie in the colonial period, when British officers brought many Tamil villagers to Kochi to work as washermen. This Tamil community was first organised together in the 1920s, and came to be known as the Vannar community and has retained its cohesive identity over the years. At present, there are about 40 families in the community who use this Khana. Each cubicle with wash pens and water tanks is allotted to one family. 75-year-old Murugappan, who started doing this job when he was 15 years old, says that they still rely on traditional, elaborate procedures for washing clothes.

“First we soak the clothes in water mixed with detergent for some time. Harder clothes are washed by beating them on the stones. 
To remove stains easily, a pinch of chlorine is also used. After that the clothes are rinsed twice in fresh water,” he says.
“For starching cotton clothes,” he adds, “we still use the traditional method of dipping them in rice water. No modern day starches 
can give so much crispiness as rice water does.”
“Then, women from the family hang these washed and starched clothes in the sun. We dry the clothes for almost 5 hours,” he says. 
Interestingly, no one here ever uses clips to keep clothes from falling off the line; instead they all use a technique of tucking clothes b
etween the ropes in such a way that they are never disturbed by the wind.
We use charcoal irons for ironing the clothes. Some of these irons were brought from Sri Lanka decades ago,” Murugappan explains.
Murugappan says that this process has remained unchanged for at least the last 40 years.
“Then, women from the family hang these washed and starched clothes in the sun. We dry the clothes for almost 5 hours,” he says. 
Interestingly, no one here ever uses clips to keep clothes from falling off the line; instead they all use a technique of tucking clothes 
between the ropes in such a way that they are never disturbed by the wind.
We use charcoal irons for ironing the clothes. Some of these irons were brought from Sri Lanka decades ago,” Murugappan explains.
Murugappan says that this process has remained unchanged for at least the last 40 years.
 https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/kochis-historic-dhobi-khana-run-tamils-may-soon-be-hung-out-dry-44636

Our area is Panampilly Nagar, an upmarket residential area just 1 km east of M.G road, the epicentre of Kochi city. Many areas in India end with the word Nagar which means town, city, or suburb. We have found several good eating places such as Gusto Foods Donut Factory, across the road from us is ‘The Best Bakery’, around the corner is ‘Choice Bakery’ and anyone who has eaten Indian sweets would know how good they are. Even a diabetic needs to have a ‘sample’ now and then.

We found our closest shop ‘The Food Mart’ with the basics we need, St. Joseph Road. Past the church that wakes us each morning at 5:30 with bells ringing then soon after singing. Across from the Food Mart was my daily spiritual centre, the local gym. Not fancy, but with all the necessary equipment to make me look fit if I would spend more than half an hour and do so every day for the year. This cycle is for two-weeks. I missed two days, one because when I was mixing boiling soup in the blender the top flew off and gave me large burns on my arm and stomach – quite painful for a few days, and the other when we went to the countryside with Narda’s dentist for the day. Fitness centres are an important part of my life because they represent continuity in my life. I started them in Baltimore (Towson actually) in the mid-1970s and my travels are a record of gyms I have been to. My favourite was last year’s in Ringkøbing, Denmark. Every morning Narda and I would ride our bikes to the fitness centre overlooking the fjord. I have had membership or went to gyms in China (at Dalian International School – almost every day for three years), lots of years in NYC, upstate New York, Adelaide, Hawaii, and so many places in between. Forty-years of doing the same thing – machines have not changed that much, just fancier. I still listen to Mississippi Blues, Dylan, Janis Joplin. It is like I started in the 1970s and never left. Everywhere around me is an extension of then – after all I am seventy and should embrace the 70s and of course the sixties. The world around us changes and we have those scattered experiences called life, but we pretty much stay the same. The gym gives me a place to momentarily stay the same as I was long ago. It is a nice place. Narda and I go twice a week to one in Adelaide, but it is this thing for old people – we stretch then do machines and weights then more stretches – really geared toward old people but I like it. Daily I do my weights in my shed, so my escape is listening to music and weights. Narda’s escape is travel and books – I escape with her too. Maybe on my tombstone I will put ‘escaped’.

The largest shopping centre we have found here is LuLu Mall where we have seen films twice. Yesterday we saw ‘The Black Panther’. Both times we got the first-class seats in which we stretched out and we stood for the National Anthem at the start of the films. Food is ordered and delivered at intermission, which is often abruptly in the middle of a scene – then lights go on and food ordered and delivered all for fifteen-minutes or so. There is a good food cart at the LuLu Mall as well as the Hypermarket. In the photo below the top images are for one theatre -where we paid the extra buck for a reclining seat, the other is where all the seats are luxury and we are standing for the national anthem at the start of the flick. Come on Australia, lift your game, we want luxury seats for five bucks, and of course, meals for three to four dollars for the two of us, and add the Uber for 100 rupees ($1.50 USD or about $1.75 Aussie dollar) for a half hour ride. OK airport runs are more here. We had to cough up almost ten-bucks USD for the hour ride to the Kochi Airport but in their defense that was double the price as Uber seems not to be allowed at the airport to collect people and we paid for their return. From JFK to our home in NYC it used to be about $75 then they want a tip on top and that was a shorter ride.Everywhere in India, every shopping centre, airport, train-station, hotels… they have airport-type of security and I must show my defibrillator/pacemaker implant each time and get searched individually – always a nonsense. Aside of that we have enjoyed the air-conditioning and cleanness of large shopping centres and while seeing how out of place they seem to be with so much poverty around them. It is so in your face here – homelessness is bad anywhere but here there is so much of it, and such difficult living conditions compared to the west. Following futurists such as Ray Kurzweil and Harari and the folks at Google/Apple/Microsoft/Facebook and their mates is wonderful but they have not lived in India, some have not visited here – that the world will be oh so much more modern in twenty-years; I don’t think so… getting people basics would be good without all the technological marvels constantly predicted.

Yesterday we were sitting on the steps of a light-rail station trying to determine where to go or what to do on a hot muggy day, a man walked up to me, handed me a drawing of me, then walked away. Narda says it looks like me, I am not so sure – too old looking.Narda wanted to go for a walk this morning. I usually go to the gym but thought, ‘OK a short walk then the gym’. We left before eight am and got back after twelve. Typical of us. No one would want to travel with us, we are too indecisive and changeable. I thoughtfully brought our camera thinking I would get a snapshot of a train track nearby that I wanted for a poem I had written recently. We walked along a canal, wandered down a street that was a dead-end but had a good conversation with a couple of locals who lived there. We said we were looking to go for a walk along the river, sea, lake, lagoon, whatever there was that appeared as a body of water on our phone-map of the area. As usual they asked where we were from and after a bit of chatter sent us back the way we came from and suggested we go left. We saw a sign for the local yacht-club, asked if we could have a coffee but as we were not members we went without but found a bridge

up the river that looked interesting and headed off in its direction. We found a narrow footpath along it and after crossing had conversation with some more locals who said further ahead we could find a backwater boat tour place. We walked for another hour or so, had a tea, walked some more and came across the Kundannoor Bridge in Nettoor, on Panangad Island which is a part of the Maradu Municipality. The Varapuzha bridge on NH 17 is a cantilever bridge spanning the Periyar river between Varapuzha and Cheranallur. It was the longest bridge in kerala Kochin backwaters… oops looked it up in Wikipedia and just kept going.

We found a boat operator. The owner said 3500 rupees ($54 USD) we said, ‘no way’ and after some haggling he came down to 2500, again we said ‘no’. Then there was 2000, and finally the absolute final offer of 1500 rupees. We walked away, sat down, talked some more, I said I only had two five-hundreds on me (we didn’t include Narda’s holdings) and after a bit of time we all agreed on 1000 ($15.40 USD). Which was still high for us as we had paid 400 rupees per hour in Alleppey a couple of weeks ago. I read some reviews, and the main complaint was how expensive it was. One person said they had managed to negotiate down to 1500 rupees – sucked in mate, we outdid everyone.

The boat trip was spent on Vembanad, the second largest lagoon in India. We love boat trips, and this was up there with the finest of them. The driver spoke good English, said he was a school teacher, geography. He liked his cricket and knew Adelaide as a crew ground place. We went past a couple of famous cricket player’s homes including one who is referred to as the ‘god of cricket’, Sachin Tendulkar.

Cochin is believed to be one of the finest natural harbors in the world. It is an exquisite combination of modern and traditional of intense nostalgia and high revelry. It is one of the most visited backwater destinations. It has been voted as the top ten beautiful places to visit in a lifetime.

When we take random buses too far from home we help tuk tuk drivers find our way – sometimes it takes a village to find our home.Chinese Fishing Nets

We saw Chinese Fishing Nets on Fort Kochi Island and another island and here there are again. The Chinese fishing nets found at Kochi are unique to the area and make for a very popular tourist attraction. This is the only location in the entire world outside China where such fishing nets can be seen in use. 10 meters in height, the entire structure is a fixed land installation which is used for unique and unusual method of fishing. Set up on the bamboo teaks are held horizontally with the help of huge mechanisms which are lowered into the sea. These nets are made-up of teak wood and bamboo poles and each net is handled by four men. If you missed our video above here it is again https://youtu.be/QM

Metro

There are several ways to explore Kochi: tuk tuks, Uber, buses, the metro – we did them all. The metro is being built, one route is complete (the others in years to come – there is construction – i.e. holes in the middle of streets and concrete towers everywhere) – we took it from Maharaja’s College, which for now is the end or beginning station, depending where one is, to Aluva, which is a city in its own right. we spent an afternoon wandering this busy area negotiating a sandwich in a restaurant – negotiating in the sense that we had to have several translators help us define what we wanted and still we got something completely different than we had expected. We sugared up our disappointment at a cake shop next door where I gave my body a break from its normal boring no-sugar routine. The complete trip taking about 45 minutes set us back 50 rupees (about 75 cents USD or a buck in Aussie currency). There are guards everywhere and signs not to take photos but we did manage this one above.

Jew Town

Another attraction of Kochi, Jew town is the center of city’s spice trade and is also a busy port area. Located in the Mattancherry area, it is quite popular for housing shops, selling (possibly) antiques. The streets are lined with colonial-styled buildings giving it an old-world feel. Actually, the Jew town is a street between the Jewish Synagogue and Mattancherry Palace. We drove through the area and went to a large herb barn or whatever they call them.

Where we live at D’Homz Suites is really good: air-conditioning (in both the lounge and the bedroom), balcony, kitchen with everything we needed to make meals, good shower, large TV with HDMI input so we could watch our Netflix series, elevator, washing machine… the streets were difficult as most are in India. We are constantly in fear of our lives (really). However, a few blocks away there was a walking street that went for several blocks so that became part of our daily walk.For a week our weather map said it would rain and storm but not until our last night did it rain since being in India. A monsoon-type of rain, worthy of sitting on the porch and watching.

Kochi was great. We are now on a train from Delhi to Shimla in the Himalayas. Our next stories will be our time in the Himalayas.

I also do this blog at our India site which is located at http://neuage.org/india and is often more up to date than this as we are too busy exploring where we are or reading. Currently Narda is reading, “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” and I am reading “Homo Deus A Brief History of Tomorrow” both by Yuval Noah Harari. I have already read the book Narda is reading. We love these books and recommend them to everyone. Any time left, which is little I post my photo textual work at https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/E_6JaB

I post my daily thoughts at http://neuage.org/2018/

My HomePage is http://neuage.org

Pune

Pune: wow, so much to say. We went there to meet up with Sidhee and her little sister Gargee. This was a highlight for us. In our first meeting, Sidhee arranged for us to meet a group of her uni friends. They are all studying Computer Engineering. The conversations were so interesting, ranging from their roles in the new India, to Trump and our anger about how he is dividing and destroying America. We moved on to a restaurant with Sidhee and Ash; the other two had to get home with a one-hour commute, and uni tomorrow. They do Saturday morning classes as well. Aussie students take note!!! More wonderful conversations with these interesting kids.

The second event was dinner at the Hande household. All intelligent women. Gargee, now in grade 7 sang “The hills are alive” from the Sound of Music in her beautiful voice. Confidently maintaining total eye contract with me. I told her that she would be my next “Maria” for sure. It was a very moving experience for me. Mrs Hande, a research scientist, now working in management in the insurance industry (based in Australia) was also so interesting to talk with. She starts her shift early, getting up at 3am to match the Australian time zones. With her mother, she cooked us a delicious meal. We also received beautiful India shawls as gifts. The third event was a group with Sidhee and her friends from the university magazine, interviewing Terrell. 4 hours and 2 pizzas later, I think they had some great material. Then there was the Sikh Uber driver who had lived in Australia. He was quite OK with Lahore. This is the question that gets asked, by me, as a somewhat anxious mother and a son heading off there. And we also saw a movie in a luxury theatre, called “The 15.17 train”. About a train shooting on the way to Paris, which was interestingly, acted by the actual people involved in it.

Pune 13 – 20th February

Not exactly sure when we decided to add Pune to our three-month travel of India. Sidhee was a computer student of mine in Dalian a very years earlier, she is one of the few people out of more than seven-billion people on earth who liked some of my textual-photo-art I have been posting for years and making eBooks of, so of course, she was at the top of my list of people to visit. My artist sister has liked some of my stuff too, (thinks sis) and that is for the world. Enough of me (as some would say). Visiting Sidhee and her family was a stop that we are glad we made. As Narda spoke of above, she had her sister in chorus and we had met their parents at the Chinese school. I had been communicating with Sidhee for at least six-months prior to leaving Adelaide for suggestions for our India trip.

Pune is not a tourist city, for example, our fridge at home is covered with magnets from places we have visited (the front and the sides – we may need a new fridge soon for more magnets) but in a week I did not find one. Perhaps the first place ever not to find one. Not being a tourist city gives a great chance to be local. However, saying all that…there is one tourist type that comes here. The 1970s ashram loving group that followed Rajneesh, an Indian spiritual guru, considered as a Godman; the Orange People, were a world-wide hippie-seeing phenomenon. Rajneesh later changed his name to Osho which is how he is referred to now. The Osho Centre is in Pune, near where we stayed. There was a rather large group of his followers in Adelaide. From 1981 – 1987 I was a tofu maker (really – see http://tofu.neuage.us/) and they were one of my customers. They did not have a very favourable reputation in Adelaide. In Oregon they had an even worse reputation. Wikipedia goes on to say “Rajneeshpuram was an intentional community in Wasco County, Oregon, briefly incorporated as a city in the 1980s, which was populated with followers of the spiritual teacher Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, later known as Osho.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajneeshpuram He did have 93 Rolls Royces (here is an image of them); which he said allowed him to “ride in a tranquillity that compares with the peace by Buddha,” he was escorted out of the country at some point – interesting reading.

We are staying at Laxmi Sweet Homes.

This property also has one of the best-rated locations in Pune! Guests are happier about it compared to other properties in the area.
Couples particularly like the location — they rated it 9.0 for a two-person trip.
This property is also rated for the best value in Pune! Guests are getting more for their money when compared to other properties in this city.

Nevertheless, Rajneesh is popular where we were staying. The people in charge of our airbnb let us know that they were his disciples. One of them liked to give long winded discourses about their hero. We brought up the scandals and Rolls Royces but our man-on-the-ground, in his purple robe defended the dude and said his many books he wrote are the thing to run one’s life by. We did not go to the ashram itself as not only is it expensive, but you have to pay for an HIV test on the way in because of their ‘touch therapy’ and etc. they are known for. There was a large poster of Rajneesh on the wall next to our bed that we put behind a chair, as well as posters, cards of Rajneesh’s sayings around the flat. I never did get a fridge magnet. Bottom line, Rajneesh is still going strong even though the body of Rajneesh has left (which is how they say it). Our host said there was a big party as they cremated remains where tossed into the Mutha River across the street from us.On our second day we crossed the bridge, got on a random bus and said we wanted to go to a shopping centre. The conductor found a seat for Narda, on a crowded bus, and after twenty-minutes or more stopped in the middle of the street in front of a large western style shopping centre, Phoenix Market City, we were nervous about getting off in traffic but realised there was no other way to get across the street. Narda found several women at a stall and managed a bit of discourse with a couple of them.We were in hope of finding an English film but there was none available, so we just enjoyed the luxury of air-conditioning in a large modern mall that had more people working in shops than there were customers in the whole place. Not knowing which bus to take home we got a tuk tuk, auto-rickshaw, home.

As Narda said above we had a few times with Sidhee including a lengthy interview with me about technology and life in general. As one who is not a stranger to talking, especially about myself, I thoroughly enjoyed our visits. Sidhee will be one of the folks at the centre and head of technology. She is studying computing and is taking an interest at university in bio-tech which is our future. I totally expect here to come up with nanobots that will make my brain better, perhaps helping me to download my brain, well, parts of it, so I can re-upload an enhanced version of it. Considering I am now seventy, I am putting a bit of pressure on Sidhee and her generation to get on with it. She wrote an article for her school’s magazine P.I.N.G titled ‘RNA nanodevices, programming living cells’, so she is well on her way. https://issuu.com/p.i.n.g./docs/ping13.1_digital_ pages 29 – 30. Sidhee’s mum made a tasty dinner and the family gave us a lot of information about India and politics. I do not recall it all, hoping it will be part of my ‘enhanced-brain-of-the-future’ that Sidhee will construct, soon.

We had our interview lunch at the Yogi Restaurant, a short walking distance from our flat. It is expensive and caters to ‘our type’ with pizza and the like. Another day we took another random bus, telling the driver we would go to the end of the line, which was a dirt road with the usual mixture of farm animals, people and vehicles.

Not being intimidated by not having a clue where we are we proceeded forward. A few blocks later we were in an upcoming new housing residential real estate projects in Keshav Nagar. Dozens of twenty or so floor apartment buildings. I forgot to take a photo so just picture a lot of very modern buildings amongst old market stalls, dirt roads and farm animals. It reminded us of when we lived in Dalian, China, where there were so many new apartment blocks tossed about the landscape. Wondering what they looked like we went into an office and said we were interested in viewing an apartment. When asked where we lived we said Koregaon Park (which is the trendy area filled with Ayurveda centres and ashrams) and the agent I suppose thought we were local enough and she showed us through. The apartment was quite large with ten-foot ceilings, a couple of balconies, and of course I asked if there was a gym/fitness centre, so we were showed that and the swimming pool. The three-bedroom apartment was twenty-five thousand rupees ($383 USD) per month rental and the two-bedroom was 19,000 ($291USD). I was interested in the three-bedroom apartment and being so cheap, outside of living on a dirt road with farm animals and our having no intentions of living in Pune, at least at present, I thought we had landed a great deal. We took her card and got a tuk tuk to a nearby shopping centre for lunch.

The below shot is not of the apartment we looked at, it is a building I liked in another section of Pune.Another day; they tend to blend on holiday, we took Uber to the old section wandered around, took some more random buses, found the Bund Garden cinema to watch “The 15:17 to Paris”. The theatre was ultra-luxurious with five rows 8 seats per row, totally reclining seats like a flatbed on a plane. Large and comfortable – 350 rupees ($5.37) for the two of us.

Next stop Trivandrum

I also do this blog at our India site which is located at http://neuage.org/india and is often more up to date than this as we are too busy exploring where we are or reading. Currently Narda is reading, “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” and I am reading “Homo Deus A Brief History of Tomorrow” both by Yuval Noah Harari. I have already read the book Narda is reading. We love these books and recommend them to everyone. Any time left, which is little I post my photo textual work at https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/E_6JaB

I post my daily thoughts at http://neuage.org/2018/

My HomePage is http://neuage.org

Mumbai

Mumbai   08 – 13  February 2018Narda writing in italics Terrell – whatever is left  Hopefully you caught the one before – The fantastic Blue City of Jodhpur https://neuage.me/2018/02/23/jodhpur/

Things that are surprising. Toilet paper and tissues are cheaper in Australia. Indian food is so good. It’s better than in Australia. Lots better, consistently. That might sound weird but our experience in northern China was that we preferred Australian Chinese food to the local slimy version. (though not always)

Surprisingly, I slept like a baby in the rocking AC1 berth which we had to ourselves. These trains are actually pretty good for insomnia. Not sure why, the bed was hard, but you sleep without really trying, no pills involved.

Yesterday we took some random bus rides. These are always surprising. Our first one took us deep into a military zone, navy we think. It was a nice road, lots of trees but some very definite signs that said “if you enter this area you may be shot”. When we asked if we might be an exception, we got pointed to the bus stop with a head waggle and a smile. Maybe they would not have shot us after all.

Then there are the people you meet on these buses. Two English speaking Indian ladies “took us on” as their project. First, they instructed us to sit on their side of the bus. We, asserting our independence, sat on the other side, only to find that this was the sunny side; which did kinda matter. They asked us if we were here “for the festival”. We responded with blank looks. Then they really got bossy and told us all about the art, dance, theatre, and food there was to benefit from this festival. We were a little focused on simply getting back to the hotel for a nap so some of their enthusiasm was lost on us. But tomorrow we will endeavour to find the festival. Actually, we saw it. The bus was stuck in an hour long traffic jam very close to home, and there was lots of colourful stuff going on there….must have been it.  Kala Ghoda Arts Festival –

Mumbai is different from Rajasthan. More New Yorkish in an Indian sort of way. Busy, buzzy, people on a mission, hotel staff unfriendly (or at least disinterested) and smelly. There is also a resemblance to St Kilda, or perhaps Miami with the Art Deco style beach side buildings. Nice. The shore is pretty, with a skyline of modern high-rise. Our room is enormous. Nothing New Yorkish about that! I think they ran out of our budget class and put us in a 4 person giant room which spans the width of the building. It has a grand dining table in the middle and 2 sets of twin beds at either end. An exterior toilet/shower, but one just for us. The beds are hard. All 1920s style, furniture, lots of wardrobes and mothball filled storage cabinets, even the switch board has really old style switches. Cool. Plus, a giant porch. There is a lift which you have 2 open grated doors you have to close….you can see all the floors as you go up and down, and the level of the lift does not quite match the level of the floor.

Photo below is the best we have – it is like one of those images of BigFoot that were circulated in the 1970s to prove that Bigfoot indeed did exist somewhere in the forests of Oregon – this photo proves a 70-year-old person went into a lift built a hundred years ago. Unfortunately, we have no proof of this person exiting this lift. There is a one-minute clip here:     (note the last line in the clip: ‘it was last inspected in 1929’.)

There’s a place nearby called Café Leopold’s. Readers of Shantaram will recognise it. In 2008 it was attacked by Pakistani terrorists, who sprayed it with bullets killing about 10 people in this café alone. The bullet holes still exist in the mirror. The biggest loss of life of at other targets in Mumbai, the large hotels the Taj Mahal and the Oberoi Trident, and other targets were The Rail Terminus, and the Cama Hospital. In all 164 people dies, and a further 308 injured.

08 – 13 February Thursday

Mumbai – the 4th most populous city in the world and one of the populous urban regions in the world, Mumbai has a metro population of about 20.7 million in 2016.

The train was good, sort of. We took the Surya Nagri Express, leaving Jodhpur at 6:45 pm (Wednesday) and arriving 11:45 today (Thursday) in Mumbai. Good, we had a two-bed berth, with room to spread out -as I do with gadgets and unrelated stuff. The not-so-good, the bed was so hard, add the bumpy train ride and I got little sleep, the toilets as always were close to unusable. However, we had our privacy, it was quiet, we got to where we were going.

I am constantly amazed at the difference in the standard of living between the West and India (and most Asian countries) and know it is just my thinking that makes the separation. Happiness is much more of a criterion than preconceived notions of structures and possessions. From the train window going through towns and cities we see the same as one would see in an Australian environment; people laughing, enjoying tea, kids playing cricket, and of course television satellite dishes serving up the best of India – most likely a foot-stomping Bollywood delight. We might complain the houses are not what we have in Australia, there is more trash about, but I would say the women are better dressed in India; even in a slum situation, they are colourful – men? Well we all are dags at the end of the day and are comfortable slopping about in what we have. Arriving in Mumbai, we had booked an Uber on our you-beaut-Uber app; upon exiting there were so many tuk tuks, taxis, trucks, people pushing and shoving and grabbing, that we gave up looking for our Uber. The app said one-minute away, but one-minute is very complicated at the Mumbai Train Station. The first taxi person quoted 680 rupees for the drive, the Uber app was 280, another driver we got down to 500 and went with him. We gave him 600 ($9.34 USD) at the end for the hour and a half journey through crowded streets, over India’s super bridge, Bandra–Worli Sea Link, that was completed a few years ago and is unique – look it up, I did.

We are at the Bentley’s Hotel, http://bentleyshotel.com/, a budget hotel, but highly rated in various places. Our room is huge, especially compared to where we have been lately. It is the size of two, perhaps even three, rooms, with a balcony, ten-foot ceilings, and finally, fast internet, like about 24 Mbps. The last place we stayed at we got to about a half Mbps (Megabits per second), never made it to one, and the place before, about one-fourth that, meaning I could not plaster the internet with my videos. The balcony is large and a great place to read, write poems, novels, film scripts, blogs, and to paint, draw, plot new travels, and to observe the state of mildew on Mumbai’s building. (BTW, we did not do all those activities) We took a shower, nap, and were out into the local traffic by five pm. We are a couple of blocks from the sea, ‘The Gate of India’ is a five-minute walk; The Gateway of India is an arch monument built during the 20th century in Bombay, India. The monument was erected to commemorate the landing of King George V and Queen Mary at Apollo Bunder on their visit to India in 1911.  and the hotel that got shot up in 2011, The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, where John Lennon and Oko have stayed as well as Obamas and many other celebrities is nearby.  We walked through the hotel but gave the overprice menu a miss. The restaurant was filled with rich looking men all dressed in white – Arabs, probably shahs of some sort, not at all friendly looking.

At a local pharmacy we got mustard oil which my yoga-nutritionist person in Jodhpur recommended. I got a Muslim woman to smile, not often a fellow from New York gets a local Muslim to smile – maybe she was being polite. I said I needed the mustard oil to make me look young. Difficult to illustrate the moment but I enjoyed it. A clash of culture but we are in fact all mates.

We did one of our famous (to us) random buses day, walked for hours in full sun along the shore, took another random bus, got quite loss, but somehow ended up on another bus that got us near our home.  We had a couple of good meals at Cafe-Mondegar a block away from the Leopold Cafe (1871 start).

A little-known fact is that Cafe Mondegar is the first restaurant in Mumbai to house a jukebox. It was started in 1932 by Iranian Zoroastrians as an Irani café but now is a hipster’s hangout (proof being that Narda and I ate there, twice). The jukebox is not from the Zoroastrians but was installed in ‘the mid nineteenth century’ a more exact date is not given but apparently the place was modernized and made groovy in the 1980s and 1990s. There are great cartoons on the walls and ceiling – from a famous Indian artist, Mario Miranda, who made the murals for the café. I had a vegetarian burger (not on my low-carb list but worth the diet break – actually, most of my meals are a break in my low-carb diet, that I will amend back in Australia after this three-month of feasting on Indian food. Narda had pizza. She has ordered pizza a few times, loving each one. Though we never ate an Indian Domino’s pizza.  Elephanta Island

We took an hour boat ride to Elephanta Island, a Unesco World Heritage Site.  The ride through the harbour is well worth it. I got carried away with filters for my camera, nevertheless, a great ride.  I wore my new hat that I bought for a hundred rupees ($1.50) on the island so I could look more local. However, no one had a similar hat, so I am not sure whether I looked native or as someone tossed off the last boat to the island. I am also happy about my prescription sunglasses. I rarely wore sunglasses in the past but when I purchased my new glasses back in Adelaide (seemed like so long ago we were there) they had a two-for-one deal so now I have trifocal sunglasses and if could read the signs  I would be perhaps in the correct place; if only I could interpret the language I would often realize I am entering a restricted zone, or perhaps I am the restricted zone.

The tourist thing to do is go to the caves with their shrines and temples but we were content with walking around the island and never made it into the caves. Part of the reason is the cost; like about $15 USD for foreigners and less than a buck for locals. Fact is, we are locals wherever we are, but try and translate that to someone at the booth. For our slideshow (three-minutes) of Elephanta Island see…

As so often is the case, we are stopped by folks who enjoy taking a selfie with us. Here is Narda with her new friends, each one took a selfie at some point with her. I was not asked to appear in photos; so typical, Narda the popular.  Of course, in India, everyone is often taking a selfie. Phones are sold for them – large billboards advertise certain phones as great for selfies. Nothing about using the bloody things to ring someone we love, just about taking a photo of ourselves to share with our millions of Facebook followers…Mumbai was a wonderful visit. A week is not enough. We only saw one small part and did not do much tourist stuff. We just live locally and enjoy the local Indian restaurants with a few stops at hip eating places and a few times to McDonalds to get good (over-priced) coffee and their great vegetarian burgers. I also do this blog at our India site which is located at http://neuage.org/india and is often more up to date than this as we are too busy exploring where we are or reading. Currently Narda is reading, “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” and I am reading “Homo Deus A Brief History of Tomorrow” both by Yuval Noah Harari. I have already read the book Narda is reading. We love these books and recommend them to everyone. Any time left, which is little I post my photo textual work at https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/E_6JaB

I post my daily thoughts at http://neuage.org/2018/

My HomePage is http://neuage.org

next blog PUNE

Jodhpur

Jodhpur 05-07/February/2018

We arrived via Indian Railroad from Jaisalmer last night about 11 pm but after getting settled; including having toast with peanut butter and jam (if I were ever caught by a hostile regime and I said I was not an American, and they put out peanut butter and jelly (jam) I would be caught out as I dove for it), and hot chocolate, it was suddenly one am Monday. Super Bowl Monday, in some other world. The game between Philadelphia and New England starts at five am here. We did get to sleep but an hour later the dogs started barking. We get this everywhere; they sleep during the day and bark at night. I have made it a mission to wake every dog I come across during the day – telling them to ‘wake up and sleep at night’. So far in four weeks in India it has made no difference.

Jodhpur is wonderful. So blue. Jodhpur, 2nd largest city of Rajasthan is known as ‘suncity’ & ‘bluecity’. Blue because most of the houses are painted blue. Those who live in the States would think there is a lot of oops paint around the place. Oops paint is when people don’t like their colour mix and Home Depot, Lowes, etc. sell it for cheap. We know because we often painted our houses in the States with oops paint. We could not find any definitive reasons why so many houses are painted blue in Jodhpur. The most told reason is that the colour is associated closely with the Brahmins, India’s priestly caste, and the blue houses of the old city belong to families of that caste. Who knows? I still believe it is a simple case of oops paint – some company hundreds of years ago made too much blue paint, and no one would purchase it. The reason is, in summers, blue paint keeps the house cool from inside against the scorching heat. Though there are no historical mentions to the reason why the colour is blue. There are many reasons as defined by the ancestors and tour guides. Also, with them are some associated scientific and psychological reasons. (these from various sources both online and from asking locals)

• Blue colour has been associated with Lord Shiva and there were lot of Brahmin followers of Shiva, they consider blue colour to be sacred.
• Blue colour has psychologically most soothing effect. That is one of the reasons why Facebook is blue. Mark Zuckerberg said so. (See, “Why Facebook Is Blue: The Science of Colours in Marketing” @ https://blog.bufferapp.com/the-science-of-colors-in-marketing-why-is-facebook-blue
• Blue colour reflects most of the heat. This could be the most important reasons for keeping homes cooler in the city of jodhpur which is one the cities of India receiving highest solar power per unit area.
• Blue colour paint is the mixture of limestone and Copper Sulphate mixed in water and applied directly to the walls inside as well as outside homes thereby copper sulphate imparting its Rich Blue colour.
• There are two possible geographical reasons for colour being blue
  a) Copper is an abundant mineral in Rajasthan thus copper sulphate was easily available,
  b) Indigo Plantation; There has been historical evidences of Indigo Plantations in Jodhpur and nearby regions. Indigo dye was used for making the blue colour
• I like blue – but that is most likely not the reason Jodhpur painted their houses blue. We are at the Singhvi’s Haveli heritage family guest house. From their website http://www.singhvihaveli.com/; “This haveli is more than 500 years old. This was being built at the same time with the fort. The family is living in this house for last 400 years.” It is rated #1 of 196 B&Bs / Inns in Jodhpur on TripAdvisor.We had a very good breakfast here for a total (coffee, cheese omelette, toast, yogurt) of $4.50 USD for the two of us. We got the cheapest room, they have some very large suites for a few dollars more, but I did not want to climb a lot of stairs, the bed is soft, the shower is budget but does spit out some hot (warm) water after a while. Overall this is a good place to stay with several hippie types (excuse my 1960’s San Francisco mentality) spaces.

I saw a poster advertising the services of a local yogi guru type of person: nutrition, yoga, meditation, astrology and the usual stuff associated with this type of caper.

He gave me a four hour consultation for a diabetic diet for 500 rupees ($7.50 USD) – we put his notes at http://www.neuage.org/food2 with a list of foods to avoid, to eat in morning, evening, winter, summer, and on and on. Not that it is sustainable but some of it makes sense. He also ‘subscribed’ a couple of Ayurveda things that are allegedly good for diabetes and he said I should stop taking some of the meds my doctor prescribed back in Australia. I did write my doctor a rather light-hearted note about these, though I did not mention the stopping of anything (which I did not do). Here is our correspondence…

ME: I should have run this past you – but I am adding an Ayurveda pill to my diet for ten days (some nutritionist yogi guru suggestion): Vasant Kusumakar Ras – one pill each morning for ten-days – he said I should stop one dose of Metformin but I’m not stopping anything until I get back and we have a look) and a nail size dose of Shilajeet Powder: not asking for medical advice until I see you – but just saying – in case you hear I have turned into some famous mystic – naked in a cave in the Himalayas – and you will know why

Doctor: it would be cold

ME: my Ayurveda medical BS will help me rise above the cold

Doctor: I am sure you are aware that your new pill contains, among many other things, lead and mercury. Fortunately, kidney dialysis is widely available in Australia.

Needless to say, I didn’t take anything more of the Ayurveda stuff. However, the next day, I did a yogi class with him for an hour and a half for 500 rupees. The concept was that I would learn several exercises that would be good for various parts of my body. Unfortunately, I was unable to do 74% of the positions. At times he seemed annoyed with my progress. I would point out that I was seventy and not very limber, but that did not seem to matter. At the end of our stay he met us at the train station and told us many wonderful things I could take and do to become a body perfect performing seventy-year old. He even sat in our carriage until it was almost leaving.

And… being told by our Ayurveda dude that mustard oil as a massage was the thing to do and specifically it is good for hair. Well that got me. Better for hair is my weak point, perhaps I can grow thick healthy hair to my knees sooner and with less grey hair. Seventeen days later (today is 22/02/ and I am still working on the Jodhpur file), we have missed only one day of using mustard oil since getting this groovy information. We do a daily massage (no details provided). It is all good. Cheers!

Jodhpur started as a city around the 4th century AD (1459). The Mehrangarh (Mehran Fort), dominates the old city and is visible from lots of places. See our slideshow  that shows this grand city at

It is one of the largest forts in India, built around 1460. Our (my) yoga guru said he met Mick Jagger (Rock legend Mick Jagger in Jodhpur- http://www.dnaindia.com/entertainment/report-rock-legend-mick-jagger-in-jodhpur-1130239) at the fort several years earlier. Not that I did not believe him so I looked up the event and sure enough Mick was there at the time my yogi person said he met him.

We spent the day walking around the fort. From our hotel it is five minutes to the fort up very winding narrow streets. Unbelievably motor scooters, tuk tuks, cows and people get past each other. There is a lot of climbing and from the direction we went there was no entrance fees.

The museum at the top charges about 700 rupees each, plus a hundred to take your own photos, and fifty to take an elevator to the top. As we went past our budget with sightseeing in Jaisalmer we didn’t cough up the $24 USD to tour the museum.

As we do in all cities we managed to get lost, though never far from the fort. We saw several signs for Shahi Heritage, as a place to eat, and had a tasty lunch of tomato soup and pizza. I have gone off my low-carb diet I have been on for years to keep my blood-sugars low. Surprisingly, my blood sugars have been about 6.3 in the morning, in Adelaide they were in the mid-7s. not sure why my blood sugars are better here. It could because we walk so much every day, also, I eat less, as the food is a bit spicy, and I can only eat so much at a time. This was another old Haveli (350 years old). Don’t expect Australian or US standards, but funky is good. Having handy wipes is good to use frequently and drinking only bottled water and eating boiled or well-cooked food is best.

We travel a lot and have never been thingy about any nationality. However, saying that, there are a lot of French people everywhere we go, maybe the cold months are sending them here, but we have found them very unfriendly, almost to the person. They will seemingly go out of their way to ignore us or not respond. It is not a language barrier, we smile and say a greeting, but no response. The only French people who have spoken with us was a black couple or are currently living in India. Not sure why this is. We have not come across any Australians, a few from the states, we heard a German tour group today, and lots of French, and a few British.

What has been interesting, at least for me, is that I get a lot of compliments for my moustache. People will ask to get a selfie with me, or just come out and say, ‘I like your moustache’. No one says that in Australia. My wife has never even said that. We watched (young) people using zip lines over the battlements and lakes of Mehrangarh Fort. It is rated the No.1 activity in Jodhpur by Tripadvisor. I made a short 20 second clip of a rider at

Narda was having some stomach problems, probably left over from Delhi (belly) a couple of weeks earlier so we went to the local hospital. We took a tuk tuk which we are told are referred to as auto-rickshaws, and as soon as we stepped out of our chariot we were quickly escorted through the hospital and to the emergency room. Narda believes they do that with everyone, I thought it was rather quick and I saw many people laying around on the floor in the lobby and along the corridors of the hospital. She got to see one of the head doctors, who BTW, had the same surname as the hospital and a fellow told me in fact it was his family’s hospital. Being used to western hospitals we declined the invitation to spend the night and to have blood tests and whatever else was on offer. Narda was prescribed several pills (which were also on the Australian Travel Doctors list) and we got out as soon as possible. The cost for an emergency visit with a head doctor set us back 500 rupees ($7.50 USD) which we will not claim on our $200 deductable travel insurance. The medications were around 400 rupees for a couple of weeks supplies of four different drugs, each of which even on Medicare in Australia cost much more.

On the way home in the evening we came across a wedding celebration. It is amazing how what would be a one-way street in most cities a parade can go forth with traffic going both ways; traffic including horses, cows, camels, tuk tuks, cars, lots of people, and in the midst a marching band. See our clip at –

Below is the preparation we saw earlier in the day of some camels to haul folks through crowded streets. The groom gets to ride on a white horse. Narda and I had our wedding at the end of a jetty in South Australia and had a mob of family and friends, twenty-years ago, and we cooked them breakfast. Perhaps I can convince her into doing it again like they do it here; with me on a white horse, she can ride a camel and we can have a band.A shot of a typical health and safety issue; a motor scooter with four tanks of flammable liquid weaving in and out of rush-hour traffic (24/7)

Not all horses are in parades, here by the clock-tower (some famous landmark) they line up to take folks to destinations we could not imagine. The death of a motor scooter is always sad.Everywhere we go they love Narda and want to have a selfie with her. Squirrels look the same as New York squirrels, but they are much more aggressive. We sat down for coffee and Narda had a donut and a couple jumped on the table and went for her prized possession – first donut in India. They do not scare easily and keep returning, we gave this, acting cute to get brekky squirrel something and of course every squirrel in Jodhpur came running over. On our last day we visited the Rao Jodha Desert Rock Garden. ‘The visitors centre is housed in a 17^th century gateway into Jodhpur city, known as SInghoria Pol.’ Inside the garden we had a great view of the city wall which dominants the landscaper of Jodhpur, we saw volcanic rock, birds (we don’t know one from another, but they are there), Devkund Lake and other stuff. We were unable to find any reptiles as they advertised (lizards, skinks, and geckos). From their brochure:

‘About a third of the Thar Desert is rocky, which is a much more harsh, unforgiving habitat than sandy desert…’

And that was our week in Jodhpur.

Next stop is Mumbai, overnight train (17 hours)…

 

 

Jaisalmer

01 – 04 February 2018 Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India

We left Jaipur at midnight to Jaisalmer taking a 2^nd class sleeper. First class was filled when we booked three months earlier. Narda took the upper bunk and seemed to sleep more than me. A woman in the bunk across from me snored louder than anyone I have ever heard before keeping me awake for most of the night. Somewhere in the night she was replaced by two women covered head to toe in black with no face showing sitting on the bunk opposite and looking at me. That kept me awake most of the rest of the night. We got to Jaisalmer around noon and took a tuk tuk to Hotel Helsinki.

Jaisalmer is a former medieval trading center in the western Indian state of Rajasthan, in the heart of the Thar Desert. Dominating the skyline is Jaisalmer Fort, a sprawling hilltop citadel buttressed by 99 bastions. Behind its massive walls stand the ornate Maharaja’s Palace and intricately carved Jain temples.

Helsinki House (http://www.helsinkihouse.in/) is built as a Haveli, (rooms surround a central courtyard) and for a budget hotel is very comfortable, meaning the beds were soft, the shower had hot water, and the room was large.  View below is walking outside our room into the centre of the haveli.They advertise as being at the edge of the Gadisar Lake, however, we found the lake a bit of a trek away. This is because of a long-term drought. The photo of the walled city is at the top of this blog, from their rooftop. We ate most of our meals here and they were affordable and tasty. Affordable meaning a complete feed for two with drinks (not beer) for about 600 rupees which is about $9 USD. Breakfast was included. The people running it are really helpful, friendly and with the line ‘this is your home we are just here to make it good’, and they did. The one who built it lives in Melbourne now and his brother is running the place. Getting there is not worth the ride, walk those last few blocks. The single lane road is so rough that body parts begin to fall off by the time one gets to the hotel.

In one ride Narda held onto the driver’s child as we roared around the old city streets:Our first trek was to the fort which is viewable from our hotel. It looks like a gigantic sandcastle. It is one of the few ‘living forts’ in the world, if not the only one; filled with temples, shops, and thousands of people living within the walls.  Built in 1156 AD, the streets and houses are a journey into the past with the present everywhere (people with cell phones and free WIFI throughout the city and satellite television dishes sticking out of five-hundred-year-old homes). See our slideshow for a bunch of groovy pics showing this wonderful place at

On our second day we hired a tour guide. Going into the walled city there are dozens of men offering their services as guides. We were hounded by them yesterday and today when someone said for two-hundred rupees ($3 USD) they would spend a few hours showing us around and explaining stuff. I recorded some of what he said (see clip above) though at the end of the day the only thing I remember was him telling us how the fort was not attacked because the enemy’s elephants and camels could not make it up the steep stone climb into the city; the fort-folks “poured oil over the long ascending road” – what a good idea. The image of elephants, camels, and horses sliding down the mountain on oil stayed with me for days. I think I even had a dream about it. Very Freudian.We did a tour of temples in the walled city, such as the main Jain Temple with such incredible carvings, Paraswanath Temple, built in the 1100s. Narda bought some clothing, pants I think, I got a fridge magnet and toilet paper. For anyone who has never travelled to Asia before (any country) carry toilet paper with you as they never provide it. There are those water spray thingies like they have in Europe, details not included, but still toilet paper for those of you like me is a necessity. We bought hats for the high tourist price of 150 rupees each (almost $2) for our camel ride. In this city of narrow winding roads cows, tuk tuks, people, goats, pigs, dogs, and cats vie for navigational prominence. Here is a short clip of our tour of the fort etc.

Jaisalmer is a very hustling town. At every step someone or their child is trying to sell something or ask for money. I was hoping this dude would give me some groovy mantra or tell me I had the most magnificent aura ever but instead he put his hand out for money then was disappointed with the amount we gave. Even the animals, as in every city, go for handouts, with cows nuzzling up to you if food is in your hand, the same with goats, dogs, and some places monkeys.

Camels I freaked out about the idea of riding camels in the hot blazing sun. It was not the ride, but the sun that scared me. Terrell REALLY had his heart set on it. He is usually very laid back about everything (with the exception of all things computer related), but the camels had captured his imagination. So here we were. I bought a white scarf and a hat to hold it in place, Arabian style.

Our camels were one-humped boys, called dromedaries. They have nice big eyes, and lovely long lashes. My camel, named Rocket (a little alarming) stood over 7’ at the top of the hump, putting my head 9 to 10 feet up! They also have soft mushy feet divided into 2 toes. The feet splay out to the size of a large dinner place I recon, protecting them from sinking sand. They walk with a gentle roll, like being on the ocean. It was surprisingly pleasant. Mind you, getting on and off…you have to lean forwards, then lean right back. All good.

We got picked up at the hotel. The driver stopped at a few villages on the way, the first one was full of kids, the second one was ruins from 350 years ago, abandoned because of a mixed marriage. A boy falls in love with a girl from the wrong caste, and all hell breaks loose. That’s the short version.

Actually, speaking of caste, the system is still alive and well in India. Our tuk tuk driver Shambu, a lovely guy, told us about his upcoming arranged (by his brother) marriage. She was from the shoe-maker caste, as he was, and so he told us that this makes life so much easier, especially when there are children. They would meet at MacDonalds to get to know each other better. He just completed building his one roomed house, and now he is ready to receive his bride. Bless them!!

I am surprised everyday in India. It is such a fascinating country. And the food……don’t get me started…..is fabulous; you don’t need to go to a fancy restaurant. The dodgiest looking little places serve the most wonderful food. Though last night I nearly had to call the fire brigade when I bit into a serve of Momos..HOT dumplings. The waiter came rushing to me with a spoon full of sugar…bless him…it helped. Back to the camels. We rode for some 2 hours, then sat in the sand and waited while the camel guys cooked us a meal over a fire. From scratch, kneading the dough; the whole thing! The ride home in the 4Wheel drive was the scariest thing. He had to ‘gun it’ to get past the sandy area, otherwise we kept getting bogged. That was definitely a ‘white knuckle’ ride. I recommend camel riding; another surprise.

Our video, not to be missed, of camels’ adventures with us

I loved the camel ride and could have gone for longer. Narda’s camel seemed friendlier, I know this because mine spit at me when Itried to pet him, and Narda’s didn’t. While our guide(s) cooked, our rides were tied to bags of something to keep them from wandering off; not sure how many or who belonged to us but there were at least five blocks around the campfire cooking, frying, laughing, a couple holding hands. We were told that the camels had to be tied up as they were males and females were in a wanting mood, and if let loose, our camels ‘would go off and party and not return for days’. The idea of camels humping one another (get the humping joke?) whilst we sat in our meditative moods on their humps did not seem so picturesque. Until sunset we sat on our own little sand dune with no one else in sight. After dark we wandered toward the fire and got our meal which was very good, though, as one would expect, there was some sand in it. Most people we met at our hotel did this for days. Narda’s son, Brendan and a gal, did an overnighter but we were not quite up to it and got back about ten pm.

Below some happy city residents of Jaisalmer that Narda caught smiling at us. We have four sources of photos: our Nikon with wide angle, regular and zoom lenses, Narda’s Samsung phone, and tablet, and my iPhone. From our room we would watch incredible sunrises every morning – see the clip below…

For a great way to end the day there is always tea at the Tibet Café inside the walls. Then we took an overnight, eighteen-hour, train to Jodhpur, the incredible Blue City, in an AC1 carriage – we had our own room. That will be the post next.

I also do this blog at our India site which is located at http://neuage.org/india and is often more up to date than this as we are too busy exploring where we are or reading. Currently Narda is reading, “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” and I am reading “Homo Deus A Brief History of Tomorrow” both by Yuval Noah Harari. I have already read the book Narda is reading. We love these books and recommend them to everyone. Any time left, which is little I post my photo textual work at https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/E_6JaB

I post my daily thoughts at http://neuage.org/2018/

My HomePage is http://neuage.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jaipur

Jaipur in the state of Rajasthan
25 January, Thursday

 Narda slept most of the way from Agra to Jaipur. We had first class sleepers which were comfortable. I sat up the whole way (six hours) and played with some Photoshop stuff.

We got to Jaipur after eleven pm and took the first tuk tuk driver we spoke with. For 100 rupees he got us to our hotel and along the way he told us that he had fallen on hard times and he would give us a tour for the day for 500 rupees (less than $8 USD). He did not have a card or website (very few do) but he gave us his brother’s phone number if we were so inclined. I did write it down, but we never got in touch again. The reason being that every time we walked out of our hotel, restaurant, shop, there would be dozens of tuk tuk drivers offering their services. When we said we were just going for a walk people would walk alongside us offering tours, guides, rides, marijuana, hash, even opium, along with carpets, and textiles to view and purchase.

The Anaraag Villa (http://www.anuraagvilla.com/) was quite a change from our place in Agra. Both were around $20 USD but this place was heaps better with a garden that filled with peacocks in the morning and evening (I counted twelve once). And the food was excellent for the whole week.

We spent most days wandering around our neighbourhood, a couple of times we took a random bus ride into town and one day we had a tuk tuk drive us around.

The famous places are the forts, which we went past but not inside, and the Pink City. I bought a new suitcase as the wheel fell off the one I have used for the past couple of years, Narda got dresses and scarves and generally we just chilled.

We walked for a couple of hours in the Pink City (the paint was produced from a calcium oxide compound), where, once, long ago, everything was pink, though now it is all a bit of a mildewed brown. At a restaurant we met a couple of fellas from Albany, New York, which is where I am from, I grew up twenty miles away in Clifton Park, New York, though I left there in 1965. Narda and I taught in Albany, New York 2002 – 2007 so I did have another run at that town. We saw them again several days later in Jaisalmer and had a chatty evening with them. We are on one of the tourist treks between cities that people go to one after another, but it is still interesting to see people from one’s obscure hometown.

Below is the Hawa Mahal (palace of winds) which is really just a front – there is no building in back. The Mahal was constructed by Maharaja Sawai Pratap Singh in 1799. Word on the street is that the Mahal was constructed to enable the Royal women of Rajput family to view the happenings in the city.

Below is the Hawa Mahal (palace of winds) which is really just a front – there is no building in back.
Jaipur Pink City

Getting around Jaipur tuk tuks

Amer Fort…It was constructed by Raja Mansingh in the year 1592.The red sandstone and marble stone construction reflect a blend of Hindu-Muslim architecture. We didn’t go inside but we got a lot of photos of the outside.The Anaraag Villa has been a real treat. The building is beautiful, 3 stories with lovely wall and ceiling frescos and marble floors. In the back a shady garden, peacocks grazing and tables and chairs where you can eat and relax. Only issue is the flute player who comes during breakfast times, playing his wooden flute to a mechanical drone. It was truly horrible. He played scales over and over again, never changing key. ….for 1 ½ hours. It drove me crazy. I actually asked for him to stop while we had our breakfast and to the credit of the staff here, they accommodated Miss Grumpy!

Jaipur has been nice. The air is much cleaner, the weather fantastic. We have slept well and done some explorations of the Pink city, a section of town with craftsmen and even visited a guru, who told us a whole lot of crap.

Yesterday we decided to go real local and took the bus across town to the World Trade Park. Enjoyed a movie “The Post”…loved it. Took our first Uber home. A nice easy ride.

World Trade Park is an amazing modern plaza for this part of the world. We have not seen anything like this yet. We saw a movie here and ate in there tripped out dinning area. The Uber ride we took cost 200 rupees ($3 USD) for a 45 minute drive.
Elephants take cargo and tourists up the mountain. Elephants take cargo and tourists up the mountain. We went up with a tuk tuk. The driver asked for 200 rupees for three hours of showing us around, we gave him 300 ($4.50 USD). We went to the various carpet shops, dress and scarf shops and worse of all an idiot guru. Our tuk tuk driver told us how he had been ill for years – some stomach thing – and he went to this famous guru who reads auras and the dude sold him some gem and then he was well. The ‘guru’ had a jewellery shop and we were parked in front of a glass case filled with silver and ‘amulets’ and the good ‘guru’ said a lot of stupid things to both of us and we left. (For example, he said I had dementia in my aura – which I ‘decided myself’ to quickly forget; of course, if I purchased some stone – it would help). We were extra upset to discover our poor tuk tuk driver who told us he had a crippled daughter plus two other children at home, his wife had died, and his elderly mother was home looking after the children. This ‘guru’ who had read his aura had sold him an amulet for 3000 rupees to heal him. The tuk tuk driver is lucky to get a couple of hundred rupees in a day. India is filled with sad stories. Everyone we meet has a list of dead people, troubled home situations and just difficult lives. People plead with us to show us things; to hire them for a couple of hours. There are so many more tuk tuk drivers than passengers. We hear stories of drivers getting no passengers for days. This is their livelihood. Then so called ‘gurus’ hustle illiterate people for all they can get from them.

Situated in the middle of Mansagar Lake is the groovy Jal Mahal. It was built by Maharaja Jai Singh II in the 18th century, as a hunting lodge and summer retreat. Not visible is the high level of pollution in the lake with lots of rubbish – I enhanced the colours a bit on my photo to give more blue and less grey and less yuck in the lake.In the evening, as we do at home (wherever that may be at any given time) we watch TV series. We have yet to figure out how to watch television, though we have tried in several cities, so we watch our Netflix series on our laptop. Currently we are finishing up the “The Good Fight” season one; which is an extension of “The Good Wife” that we loved except for the series ending, which sucked.

Narda was back to her Delhi Belly ways so we went to the local chemist and got a repeat of the pills we paid about $35 a piece for in Australia for $1.50 USD for a pack of ten. We didn’t need a script, like going to the chemist in China, if you know the name of the drug, they will sell it, no questions asked.

And there is always someone to ask for directions, even if everyone points a different direction.

I also do this blog at our India site which is located at http://neuage.org/india and is often more up to date than this as we are too busy exploring where we are or reading. Currently Narda is reading, “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” and I am reading “Homo Deus A Brief History of Tomorrow” both by Yuval Noah Harari. I have already read the book Narda is reading. We love these books and recommend them to everyone. Any time left, which is little I post my photo textual work at https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/E_6JaB

I post my daily thoughts at http://neuage.org/2018/

 

 

 

India2018: Agra

Travels through India with Terrell Neuage and Narda Biemond. India 2018 itinerary   Previous blog: Delhi

Wednesday 24/01/2018 Agra

We were up at five am after not sleeping well all night from waking up constantly to be sure we were awake at five am. We had our phone alarms on (my wake-up ring tone is a Dylan song ‘She belongs to me’ and Narda is enough to drown out a freight train) plus the hotel was to bang on our door but we were up before then. Still we worry.

We got a tuk tuk to the train station that even at 6:30 am was crowded with zillions of people all over.

We had a nice chat with a couple of police people while we waited. They helped us get on to the correct carriage, which in our case was first class seats for the two plus hours. See  below.

The train seats were comfortable – not Amtrak comfortable but Indian good. Our first train on this three-month trip. We got breakfast served (cornflakes, milk, coffee, and a hot meal of eggs and something which we declined as we had breakfast at the train station. An uneventful couple of hours with some reading done. Shambhu, our tuk tuk driver for the next three days greeted us with our names on a sign and we settled into Hotel Sheela near the Taj Mahal and after eating at the hotel we slept. The hotel is quite basic, we had booked the basic room for $23 USD for two nights, but apparently it was too basic for us uptown folks (no hot showers, and small) so for $53 USD we got a hot shower and a larger room for two nights. We thought the beds in India were going to be too hard, so we brought a couple of blow-up mattress and a pump which puts our luggage over weight for internal flights. The beds so far are good, thick foam, after two stays we gave them away to Shambhu.

With Delhi we were tossing out blogs a day, videos, photos galore, now we are too busy to do any such thing. Or we were, I am writing this on the night train to Jaipur, with Narda, and everyone else in our carriage asleep. When we get there I will be stuffed, but then I should sleep, Narda will be reading her Kindle for the rest of the night. The last couple of days have tested every fibre of this seventy-year old and I am sure Narda-the-younger feels exhausted also. Of course, she has been asleep for the past three hours on the berth above me. And this morning I woke her at eight am, so we could get out the door; such is the life of an old person.

We did the Taj Mahal thing Wednesday morning, a very foggy morning – barely saw it. An hour later when sun decided to shine and chase away the fog we got a couple of photos. It is somewhat impressive, the fact that it has lasted so long is a testament to something.

I have always liked cows, from living on a dairy farm in Australia to not eating them since my parents may have slipped something onto my plate in the early 1950s and throughout the early 1960s that may have had cow chunks in it, cows have been an interesting topic of observation for me. My email image of the past ten years has been with me walking alongside a cow in Goa.  In Delhi, Agra, and now Jaipur I have had many photo ops with cows. So many in fact that Narda has put me on a cow-band. I will include a couple here just to remind myself of these days.

We met our tuk tuk driver in the afternoon and went to a carpet weaving place.

Shambhu was recommended to us by Narda’s work colleague, Brother Rob. He has been using his services and those of his family for a period of about 30 years as he made frequent trips back to India. This family of tuk tuk drivers has become very special to Rob, and he has many great stories to tell.

We visited Shambhu’s village. One of our favourite visits, ‘the real India’ he said. The video below is a bit blurry, something I blame on very poor internet for uploading but it does give an idea of this village. Shambhu is getting married in a month and he explained the process to us. His brother arranged a girl from the same class; in his case the ‘shoemaker class’. They meet at McDonalds. He asked if she like him and with an affirmative she asked if he like her, and thus began their romance. They met one-another’s families and when we met Shambhu he was in the process of building his new home; an add-on room to his brother’s home. There will be no floors, outside of what the earth provides, he has the bricks and has started digging out the sandy soil for a foundation. They have a well for water for their area, provided by Brother Robert, who brings students from his school in Australia. It will cost some 50,000 rupees to build his new home; about $776 USD. Shambhu is working hard with this tuk tuk business to raise the money. If he can not build his house in the next two months he will lose his bride as her father wants her provided for. She is 19, he is 25. He is also raising funds for the marriage. I forget how much it is but it is supposed to be a three day affair with a horse and bands and lots of celebration. Travel gives us such a different view of life-styles. Narda and I met on the internet, from the day we physically met at the end of 2000 until now we have rarely been apart. My marriage proposal was one night when, in the middle of the night, not even knowing whether Narda was awake or not, I said, ‘let’s do this thing’. That was it. I could not even use the word marriage for a long time. We did the deed with family present at the end of a pier, and I called it ‘JettyDay’. At the time I didn’t have a car, I was a single-parent, a few bucks in my pocket, and I didn’t even give her a ring. What a contrast to an Indian hitch.

The class thing takes awhile to get one’s mind around, but we have heard people mention it wherever we go. People will tell us on first meeting, ‘I am of the Brahmin Class’ which I believe is a priest class and they feel they are at the top of the heap. It seems strange to identify with birth as the totality of one’s place in life. Of course, it is easy for me as a white male from a western culture (with my duel citizenship of USA and Australia) to say one can achieve whatever they wish. I sure have. I realise I need to get over myself and understand how society has limited people by race, gender, place of birth, belief systems. I always thought by now, 2018, the world would be more homogenous. Maybe religion would be replaced by doctrines of love without doctrines. We would treat each other equally. I think it is getting worse. America First as well as anyone else who proclaims themselves first is putting us back into the class systems. Everyone is to get in the back of the line. I must be careful when I think a tuk tuk driver is over-charging me 150 instead of 100 rupees ($2.33 instead of $1.55 USD). A cup of coffee in most shops in Australia is about $4 (204 rupees), a beer in a pub starts at $8 (408 rupees). Our daily budget for food in India is $20 USD (sorry about switching between USD and Australian Dollar) for the two of us which is about one meal if we are doing it on the cheap in Australia. We feel good about ourselves giving a beggar a twenty rupee note until we realise we just gave away 30-cents. India is tough on a western consciousness.

Narda even played a bit of cricket with the children.

Shambhu and his sisters made us a meal. We were concerned about getting to the train on time. He kept saying we would be there on time, and he did do it. Was I feeling uneasy being waited and eating a meal surrounded by about twenty children. I said feed them first and we were told there was plenty for them. What I saw didn’t seem like it. The meal was cooked in their kitchen, a small open fire on the ground with a few vegetables. Letting go is such a difficult thing. Perhaps this is what I will learn in three months of being in India.

We were told that the school situation was good for people with money, they could send their children to a private school. Public school was a different story. Teachers are paid a salary. They do not show up, except a couple of times a year when there is an inspection. When we were there on what should have been a school day, children were all over the place. We went up to the roof and 360 degrees around us there were children on the rooftops waving to us. We did not share a language but they were smiling and we all laughed together. Narda taught them a song – see the clip below.

Village visit =

Shambhu took us to the local market with everyone smiling and saying it was OK for me to take their photo. We didn’t buy anything, no one seemed to worry. Around historic sites it is a different story with so many people asking for money, selling tours, trinkets, pity. What would I do in their situation? I have had my hardships, tragedies, failures, and success in life but nothing compares to the stories we get and the situations we see. I feel I get beggar fatigue. But I feel somewhat good about animal life in India. I am sure I will go on about this too many times. Unlike cultures of animal-eaters (goody-two-shoes vegetarian for decades me gets a bit judgemental in this space) the animals in India receive more respect. Cows are holy. They wander everywhere. Nutritionally their life is crap as they forge for themselves among the garbage, but they get to live their lives, hangout with each other. The calf is not separated from the mother at birth so we can steal the milk, pigs and chickens are not forced to live in such totally unnatural conditions where they can barely move, let alone socialize, so we can slaughter them to get fat on.

We had no intentions on purchasing a carpet – what would we do with an expensive new rug in our home that we are trying to get rid of stuff from? We watched how rugs were handwoven, months of works, and such an array of amazing colours. Then we thought of our home back in Adelaide. A bit dated, needing new style, something different than our Chinese collections of things dotted around, then we remembered how we have no second thought of replacing a camera or computer for a thousand dollars every few years; phones, television, constant car/caravan servicing, etc. A handwoven carpet should last for a long time. We were told it also would help several families.

This is the carpet we bought. We will now need to redecorate our lounge; oh wait, the house, the next day we bought three more: two for our bedroom and one for the hall. We need new curtains, we will paint the lounge when we get home, maybe even some new furniture. It is amazing what one can do a month after saying no more spending on the house.

the two for our bedroom: handwoven months of work,

And the one for our lounge;

And the one for our hallway (in the middle)

We were told this took five months and three-months of work to make. That is about how much we had to work to make the money to pay for it (not really – but they were not Walmart rugs.

Carpet – here is a video we took of them making a carpet:

We went to a music store where we were given a sitar concert and Narda was taught how to play a sitar in a few lessons. Of course, they wanted us to buy one but we didn’t.

We went to a marble shop and saw how marble pieces were inserted into tables and things. Tuk tuk drivers get a small commission for taking tourists to places like this. There is no pressure to buy anything; we did go nuts at the carpet place, but other places we just look and make it clear for the start we are not buying. They are happy to show their wares and the tuk tuk driver gets something and we learn from everyone we meet and there is always my ever-present camera taking photos or video. I made a rather uninteresting video which can be seen here Marble factory

Agra Fort video

Agra Fort is in the city of Agra. It was the main residence of the emperors of the Mughal Dynasty till 1638, when the capital was shifted from Agra to Delhi. Compared to the Red Fort in Delhi it is much more spectualar. The fort in Delhi was going through a reconstruction cycle but even without that the Agra one is bigger and better. It was India Tourism Day so we got to have our photo taken with some foreigners. Narda got them all to do a round of “Aussie Aussie Aussie” and them to say “oi oi oi”. I did not get my camera up in time to record it so just imagine it.

Video Clips are HERE

India2018

Travels through India with Terrell Neuage and Narda Biemond. Return to India 2018

For daily notes and photos and clips see http://www.neuage.org/India/ and follow the link to UPDATED…
Video Clips are HERE

Thursday 18, January 2018 Friday morning 10 AM India time Delhi

Narda writes in italics Terrell not

I’m writing waiting for brekkie at the Diamond Restaurant. It’s “roll out of bed and there you are” …..almost. Yesterday we went for a ride on the wild side. Bought a 3 day tourist card for the metro. The Delhi metro is really modern, fast and efficient. Women get offered seats, they line up separately for the extensive (just like the airport) security check. And the line is much much shorter. Less women travelling…it looks like it in the metro. There is even a special area on the platform marked  “Women only”.

Our first stop was Connaught  Place, a large roundabout with high end restaurants, shops and hotels. We bought a high end coffee were a little unimpressed and then tried to find the Red Fort by metro. We were unsuccessful and walked for quite a while through some pretty dodgy areas. There was a bunch of public hospitals in this area. Then we decided to do some random rides and got off at a station north of Vishwadidyalaya 😏😀. There the housing was quite different, three story buildings surrounding a park. A nice place to live and quite a contrast.

Think we slept about five, maybe six hours last night. ‘We’ll come and take a nap’, we promised ourselves when we began to rattle around our room at six am. It is now seven pm and naps never came our way today, nevertheless, we felt good and spent the day getting lost and enjoying it all. At our new found great breakfast place we spent a couple of hours on our computers/smart devices while sipping chia and eating a wonderful breakfast; eight am until past ten. Much more pleasant than our room to write and to connect with the great world out there; not that the twenty-five million (give or take a couple of dozen) people in our immediate vicinity are not enough to connect with; we do connect with them though in a bumping into a crowded type of way. Back in our room we managed to fiddle and fart around for a couple of hours with several serious attempts at trying to get out the door. Perhaps we are just old, maybe too thingy about what we want to wear (after all we have about two changes of clothes as we packed very little, other than all that we thought we would need: mosquito net, blowup mattresses because we thought the beds would be too hard (not so, so far), mesh to lock around our bags on trains, camera gear, one fifteen inch computer – must get that size and weight down, extra shoes, books, some stuff to give away, and not much to wear. Of course, that opens the door, if not the overfilled full of crap we may never use suitcases, for Narda’s new Indian clothing. Not to worry, finally out the door, tried to follow our GPS but ended up taking a tuk tuk to Connaught Place, not sure why, I think someone recommended it to us. Ended up in a rather longish conversation about Muslims with a Muslim man, the second in two days. Both from Kashmir and both with houseboats to rent. I think we may go there for a week and stay on a houseboat at the end of our trip in mid-April.

Had coffee at some alleged trendy Starbucks-like place, not a nice place, people too precious, all thinking they were trendy, we much prefer our area, which is just happy people getting through their life. We bought a three-day visitor metro pass for about eight bucks and rode around. One place we got off there was lots of college students protesting with signs and banners and surrounded by police with their guns. We finally found a sign in English, seems there were protesting about wanting another bus to come to their schools.

I think there were more police than students. After all, kids wanting another bus can get quite unruly.

We got back on the train not out of fear of police and college students but because there was a long line waiting to get onto the metro. They have airport security things to go through here (they have it our hotel too) and I show my special card as I unbutton my shirt, to show my defibrillator /pace maker, then I get to go around and get checked individually. Hey, I have been lifting weights and going to they gym for many years, maybe a bit of a vain Leo, but at 70 I can show off a bit.

That’s it. On and off at a few more shops; a great lunch; absolutely love Indian food. We try different things each time. we are looking at taking a cooking class later this week; so come to our home when we get back and we will cook great stuff for you too.

The Cow Thing

Narda, the wise, asked an intriguing question yesterday which got me to thinking about it sometime around two am when the world around us was asleep.

If I had to be a cow, would I rather be a cow in Australia living with clean air and green grass and roaming about a groovy open paddock or a cow in Delhi with the air not so good and playing bumper tag with the traffic and eating garbage?

After deep reflection using these thoughts I think I sided with the cows of India. Here is why;

The cows of Australia with their clean air, water, wide open terrain get to produce their grass-fed butter and lots of milk for humans but at what cost? Life is short and swift for an Australian cow. Luxury living, then it is off to the slaughter house for wayward cows to feed the meat eaters who enjoy chunks of karma in their stew. A cow lives only a couple of years – a cow giving birth has it worse with their calf being taken away soon after birth, so we can have their milk.

Cows in India have freedom. They may push a rider off her motor scooter and tourists get stepped on, but they do what they wish. I have seen cows in the middle of a busy street contently looking about for quite sometime as everyone finds a way past them. I have seen cows laying in the middle of the road having a bit of a rest with no one stressed. Can you imagine that in NYC? Some irate driver would shoot the cow in a road-rage moment.

There seems to be a lot of food around the place and once they find their way through Delhi perhaps they will make it to the Ganges for a bit of a bath later in life. I am sure some enlightened person would tell us how Australian cows are reincarnated souls who had worked hard in past lives but had done something not too correct, so they get luxury then death whereas Indian cows are reincarnated souls working off stuff. As I am not believing in reincarnation at the current time I don’t really have an opinion. Below is an enlightened cow giving me a bit of an eye.

Friday 19/01/18 11 AM

our video for the chai maker https://youtu.be/OOX-W7nfU1Q

Starting to figure this place out. The metro is a big bonus and on our 5th day we found a stop much closer.

Our area seems to be a neighbourhood of Kashmeri Muslims. At have met 4 in a short space of time, in completely separate incidents, all have a houseboat on the lake in Kashmir which we may rent (we will be taken care of by their family). 

It’s so interesting to hear a different take on everything, from moderate Muslims, which they all are, to the conflict over the border with India, which in their view is India being inflexible. 

So off we go to Kashmir in April, in search of truth , beauty, and a cooler climate.

And Lahore is safe. The last fellow was very definite. His brother lives there and   “the people are very friendly”.

Tried being tourist for the day, day; oh wait, we are always tourists – even back in Adelaide. As usual, we managed to have difficulty getting around on the metro and at some point we got near to where we thought we should be. Many people descended on us to sell tours and offer great discounts on rides and who knows what else. This morning one bloke, after not being able to sell me a tour, offered some ‘very good weed’ and a police car was sitting right next to us; gave that one a miss. Once you get in a tuk tuk, whether it is a motorbike or rickshaw type they just go on and on about offering to show side streets and special markets. The first rickshaw said only 20 rupees to the Red Fort “too far to walk – very dangerous, pick pockets, and criminals everywhere” then he said only $30 (I think he meant USD and not the Australian dollar) he would give us this wonderful tour. The more we said no the more he went on. After a few blocks we just got out and gave him 20 rupees and wished him well.

I am aware of all the dangers. Of course, that does not protect me from them. I do have the latest Nikon and zoom lens and our phones and whatnots that we cart around, and I don’t hesitate taking photos, asking first if I can take someone’s picture, but what is the point of having a camera and hiding it in fear of someone grabbing it? The Red Fort is amazing from the outside. There was the always present security with machine gun totting military types and the airport electronic scanners that I can’t go through. When I showed my pacemaker/ defibrillator they send me around for personal searching – a tour guide led us through and around security. Sure enough, on the way out an hour later he was there and said, ‘hi, Mr Pacemaker’ and we had a difficult time trying to get away from him with his tour selling ways.

Inside the fort several ‘guides’ offered their ‘excellent’ services and that we should not go through the place without them, but we declined and wandered about happily on our own.  The place is under re-construction with lots of repairs going on, so we did not get inside some of the buildings and the water did not flow through all the little canals and fountains but a well worth visit.

Narda made some new friends:

To get away from ‘Mr Pacemaker, the expert tour guide’ we got the next rickshaw in line to the Spice Market. Of course, he tried to sell us ‘must see’ tours all the way and we parted ways on good terms after giving him 100 rupees ($1.55 USD) instead of the 70 we originally agreed on. We do this often wherever we are; if the price is fair, and they get us to where we are going in one piece we tend to add to the fare. If they start off with some ridiculous price to begin with we go elsewhere. Tourists pay a lot more than locals as it should be. The Spice Market is very loud, congested, and smells nice but a short visit was enough for the likes of us.

We took some more metros, went to some shopping area as Narda wanted to get some local garb. Holy cow, one forgets what it is like shopping with a woman until it actually is in front of them. In Adelaide, Narda says she needs to shop, great, I spend quality time in front of the computer with my best mate, Adobe. In foreign places I just find some place to sit and look foreign. I do get caught up with my Facebook friends, world news, sports, weather, write a few blogs, take pictures, videos, say no to someone at the average of every 56 seconds and at the end of it Narda hasn’t found anything she wants. We have three months here so I am sure the correct clothing will manifest on some cosmic level and say ‘take me’.

Fact check: In Adelaide when I say I need to shop, I dash off to Aldis and spend as little time as possible on it, while his highness spends hours reading labels at Coles. That’s what really happens!

As we keep saying, the food here is absolutely amazing. On Sunday we will take a cooking class with our first person to interest us into going to Kashmir. He has his office out of our local favourite restaurant (Diamond Restaurant) and has named his travel business after the music group The Doors (I saw Jim Morison in 1969 and where he is buried in Paris in the 1980s) https://www.facebook.com/touradvisorindia/. He rents house boats on a lake in Kashmir and it all looks very tempting. We have met three more Muslim men each who has a houseboat for rent in Kashmir. Maybe this is the area where they all live. Something to think about! Everything else is all planned.

Saturday 20/01/2018 Delhi

Saturday morning we were up early, a bit before six, and off to our neighbourhood chai street vendor. For our first three days we struggled to get to the nearest metro, which we would take a tuk tuk through unbelievable heavy traffic for twenty minutes to because that was our first instructions how to get to it. The night before in some dark alley somewhere in Delhi in one of our totally lost moments we hailed a tuk tuk and it took them about 45 minutes to find their way to the alley we live in. I am sure we should have some natural alert instinct of any possible dangers, especially with cameras and other things worth more than a couple of rupees we cart about to record our moments but we don’t. So we were happy to be informed that there is a metro stop five minutes away from where we live. The रामकृष्ण आश्रम मार्ग stop (OK, the Ramakrishna Ashram Marg stop). I was a tad bit interested in the Rama Krishna Ashram which is near us, maybe we will get to it tomorrow, due to the popularity of the Krishna movement at the end of the 1960s in California. It was the hippie thing to be involved with though at that time I got involved with a different cult for a decade but I was aware of its hold on others. Those of you who are young enough to have experienced the 1960s would have seen this sect at airports and malls (even in Adelaide) around the world with devotees or pretend to be devotees chanting stuff, burning incense and handing out flowers. (The Vedanta Society of Southern California, with its headquarters in Hollywood, was founded in 1930 by Swami Prabhavananda). Incidentally, the New York Times (International Edition, which we collected in KL on the way to here) had a cover story about when the Beatles went to the TM ashram in Rishikesh and how it is being renovated. Not sure if we will get there. But back to our local subway stop. Groovy. Not far away. It is on the Blue line which we took for one stop to Rajiv Chowk, where we caught a train on the yellow line to the INA stop as we wanted to check out a hotel we had booked for when we came back through here in April. We immediately did not like the area, nothing beats our area with the narrow streets, startled looking cows, people trying to sell us tours, shops, chai carts, and the bustle of this older area. However, Narda did find a dress she liked and bought it so that was a fortunate stop in one of our worlds. Back on the yellow line we thought going to the end of the line would be good. Huda City Centre was sort of pronounceable which made it a logical destination. However, after a series of stops the train started going back and never made it to Huda. Wanting to persevere to our desired stop we crossed the track to continue our journey. It was then I spotted two signs of interest; this was of course, at the Saket stop, one sign advertised Garden of Five Senses and another a cinema. I told Narda that I wanted to go to the Garden of Five Senses, but feeling a ‘rolling of the eyes’ coming on I said and there is a cinema at this stop too and she was quite interested. Another extremely busy hustling part of Delhi where we got swarmed by tuk tuk drivers we just kept walking to who knows where? Realising our utter lostness, and seeing a park with a sign for the Garden of Five Senses we asked someone about the cinema and of course the garden. The person told us that the Garden of Five Senses was not worth the bother, pleasing all five senses of Narda, and that yes there was a cinema.

The only English movie playing was ‘The Darkest Hour’ which we have seen good reviews for and we paid the extra 25 rupees for the ‘premier’ seating (total 400 rupees for the two of us or six buck USD) believing we would get good seats. However, the seats were average and close together with little leg room, but we were in a balcony, so I suppose that was the extra we paid for. Movies in India begin with standing for the national anthem. The movie was good, however, there were several anti-smoking commercials at the start and throughout the whole movie in rather large letters at the bottom of the movie was a line about not smoking. The ironic thing was that Winston Churchill and lots of other people in the movie smoked the whole time. Half way through the movie there was an intermission that lasted about half an hour filled with ads, most of which were impossible to know what was being advertised.

And that pretty much was our day. we never made it to Huda City or the Garden of delights but getting back to our area around nine pm we had another great meal and that is it.

subway youtube of this 24 second clip

 

 

Denmark 2017

The cruise was great. Yet just part of the story. What could be better? Well we found better, or let us say same same but different in the better world of better. Six weeks in Ringkøbing. Clearly my spellcheck is going to struggle with this narrative. An o that is an ø; perhaps on the web the o will not have a line through it; like in space no one can hear you scream. It is not just the o/ø but that ae thing such as  that slightly, actually, sends my brain cells into a tizzy. The Danes manage to have 29 letters in their alphabet (since 1948, which started a year after my birth, giving me plenty of time to learn it. But I didn’t). I was going to paraphrase the Wikipedia article on this but I got confused after the first line, so I won’t. but of course, you can, see; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_and_Norwegian_alphabet.

What have I learned about the Danes? They fly their flag even more than the Yanks. Our fantastic host, Erik told us why, but I forget. Like Australia is to New Zealand (you know the jokes and thoughts of each toward the other) the Danes are to the Swedes. Again, I forget why. So, we’ll forget what I have learned so far in my first two weeks here and go on with the being here part.

In our jump into the deep end mentality we drove to our new home with just one stop to change drivers. Erik and his wife Bente collected us from the cruise ship; which we have already written extensively about and made a video of (and who wants to hear about someone else’s wonderful time on a cruise? Most likely no one), gave us the keys and drove off hoping we were on the correct side of the highway; opposite to Australia, the same as the USA, different from some other countries we were in earlier this year but not like living in China where folks drive on whichever side of the road they feel least impeded on.

We have found routine rather quickly. What we have changed about travel is to stay longer. Really quite a simple idea. After doing round-the-world trips for twelve years, going from New York to Australia at least once a year, sometimes twice and stopping in cities for three or four days so we could be back in Australia for a couple of months before returning to teaching gave little perspective on places visited. We continued our mad dash of the planet when we lived in China for three years. At least we stayed in one foreign place for an extended time but as soon as there was a school break, even just a few days, off we were. We were spending more time planning than experiencing. Narda did, I just stayed south of La La Land in my mind and threw some clothes and camera equipment into a bag and I was ready to go wherever Narda thought we should go to. Of course, she would repack my stuff. Then we started doing slightly longer stays mainly booking Airbnb places. This year was so different. We did our first house exchange this year for five weeks in Holland now in Denmark for six weeks. We have Berlin next year and chasing other places. India we are not doing house exchange because we could not find any but we are spending three months with a week or so in each place we go to.

House exchanges gives us the feeling we live there and are not just passing tourists. We spent a month in Washington D.C. at the end of last year and that was like living there, and a few weeks in Cambodia earlier this year which for some odd reason we still felt like foreigners in, even after a few weeks. So here we are at home. We don’t speak the local language or understand the signs but that is fine. We can ride our bikes into places that probably say ‘piss off’ but how would we know?

We joined the local gym. Cheaper than in Australia, about $30/month USD. The gym overlooks the local fjord which is really another word for a bit mother of a lake, some glacier caper. Well as one who always needs to learn, Google tells us; ‘A fjord is formed when a glacier retreats, after carving its typical U-shaped valley, and the sea fills the resulting valley floor. This forms a narrow, steep sided inlet (sometimes deeper than 1300 metres) connected to the sea.’

Here is a map of Denmark pinched from the internet – the © credit is on the map – we just scribbled a bit on it. Jutland is the island – there are three islands that make up Denmark.

Italics below are Narda’s notes – not-italics are Terrell’s notes

August 14, Monday

Ringkøbing

We left the ship at 8.30, it was all really efficient and orderly. Picked up our suitcase, and then met Erik and Bente, who drove us around Copenhagen. Had a coffee with them at the beach, then started our long drive to Ringkøbing. It was actually quite easy. A great car, a Citroen van, easy to drive, and the roads are pretty much all freeways. We arrived there at about 3pm.

It’s an amazing house, full of lovely decoration, art and lots of room. We walked to the super market nearby and tried to negotiate finding it, and feeling pretty tired, but all was well, we had soup and a salad, and slept really well.

Gathered these flowers for Mabel’s birthday xxxxx

Driving to Ringkøbing

We love driving in foreign countries, firstly sorting out which side of the road to go on, then diving in traffic. Narda was the first driver getting us out of Copenhagen. I got to navigate and take photos and video and look bewildered; it is a challenging task but I do it well, the looking bewildered part.  We changed drivers after crossing The Great Belt Fixed link which cost 240.00 DKK ($36.40). We made a little youtube video of it https://youtu.be/_ZCyDnWiIVQ – I stuffed up with the lighting on my camera so everything turned out bluer than it actually was at the start of this trip.

It was exciting to drive across a whole country in only about four hours (should be three but we stop), considering how far it is across Australia. We drove up to the house on the cobblestone street and saw our host’s name, opened the door and were happy to be home for six weeks.

At the end of the street was the harbour.

As often is the case, the first shopping excursion is a challenge. I am looking for low-carb, (organic if I can get away with it) animal-free, stuff. When everything looks unfamiliar and is in a language that neither Narda nor I would ever hope to understand, we just go around appearing confused. The Super Brugsen was just a ten-minute walk and feeling good; after all we had just spent a couple of weeks lying about on a huge cruise liner, so we were far from tired, we were in a shopping mood. We had asked where was the Aldi store but got lost on the way and Brugsen seemed like a normal supermarket from the outside. Of course, after fifteen minutes of not figuring out where what we wanted was hiding, we left with a bottle of milk a sweet potato, some seeds for my breakfast, as well as what appeared to be normal soup (to me normal is vegetarian, to Narda normal is meat – in this instance we believed it was my normal, but who knows what gets sneaked in to a package with foreign script); we declared never to return to this place. Now writing this, two-months later, I can say that is not true and we shopped there often and found all that we needed. We found food in the back of our home too. Firstly, a large apple tree, pineapple apples we later found out, and oh so good, then in the greenhouse ripened cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and grapes, and in the garden zucchini for my zucchini spaghetti low-carb meals.

The apple tree produced so many apples that we were putting out five – eight bags a day for people to take – and they did. The original sign left for us to put out, in Danish, got rained on, then sort of blew down the street, no worries, Narda made a new one, in English. I suppose the word ‘free’ is understandable in all languages. There are mainly German tourists as Germany is only a bit down the road, and being a land-locked country, they liked the waters of Ringkøbing.

August 15, Tuesday

Today we spent the whole day on bikes, basically exploring all the supermarkets we could find. It was fun. Sitting in the lounge now, just about to get dinner ready, listening to the rain. Had a great day. Terrell is still feeling a bit fluey, hopefully better tomorrow.

• Up at 6:30 about eight hours sleep
• rode bikes to Aldi, Netto
• home took nap half an hour still have a cold
• rode bikes to Kvickly found tofu and to Lidl
• watered garden
• rain in evening

As Narda pointed out we rode bikes and went shopping. As is often the case, after watering the garden, it rained. I love shopping for food, reading labels, looking for those nasty things companies sneak into their food, but I was thwarted. I like shopping in foreign food stores and finding things not common in Australia, but not being able to read labels sucks. Nevertheless, we soldiered on to Aldi, Lidl, Netto, and what would come to be our favourite supermarket, Kvickly. Two reasons for Kvickly being our choice: we had a fifteen-minute bike ride there going through a bit of a forest if we wanted to and they had lots of stuff, sorted for fussy people like me, even a vegan section.

In the afternoon we rode around the fjord; not around it, but for half an hour one way then back to check on our shopping.

August 16, Wednesday

Today, another big bike riding day. We headed out of town, reaching the village of Velling, where we had coffee. They also had a beautiful cemetery full of hedges and little miniature gardens.

Terrell’s bike was hard going, but after visiting the bike shop and filling the tyres we realised that this was the problem. Last night the town criers (we were later told they were not ‘criers’ but ‘night watchmen’) came by again this time accompanied by a trail of tourists. Terrell had quite an extensive conversation with them. (see our youtube video @ https://youtu.be/vzaPX1oC6cY)

Narda started posting on her Facebook page ‘Why Denmark is the happiest country’. Sorry but you will need to read to the end of this to read that.

August 17, Thursday

Quiet day, a bike ride this morning, discovered a large interesting industrial complex called Vesta, where they make some strange looking things; parts of wind turbines. Also went into town and found a nice pair of sandals for India. Rieka Stress free. So far comfy. Paid About $70USD. August 18, Friday

A marathon bike ride today to Sondervig. It was a great ride, we followed the highway north/west, and arrived at this little town, a beach town with lots of outlet stores. Also has some beautiful old places with thatched rooves and many holiday houses.

We took a little walk through the supermarket, as we do in every new place. Gotta first check out the groceries! I resisted buying a GIANT chocolate meringue, but I keep thinking about it, so I might have to return sometime and eat it. Otherwise it will become an obsession. Like an unrequited sugar craving.

We returned by heading down the coast a little way, and then crossing the Bagges Daemning (the a and the e are joined) which is a little pedestrian bridge across the Ringkøbing Fjord, and a short cut back to Ringkøbing.

This was one of the recommended trips from our Danes; they said about 1 ½ hours, we took from 9.45 until 1.30. Oh well!

We saw a very spectacular display of wind surfing with kites. There seemed to be a festival of some kind, about 50 people in the water, sailing/surfing.

See our 2:36 (that is two minutes and thirty six seconds) clip of this at https://youtu.be/ZC7NbrTXHcA

August 19, Saturday

Today we saw a nice band playing some Beatles and other stuff in the town square. Lots of tourists, it’s a popular town.

We also checked out a suitcase which we might buy to replace Terrell’s. A bit bigger, but lightweight. Make these long trip a bit more flexible in packing….especially packing for going home. And Terrell bought his first ever watch, pretty groovy one.

In the evenings we’ve started watching The Mentalist, which is good. Finally figured out the TV thing, just plugged the computer into the HDMI port. We can use the hard drive now, or directly use Netflix.

We carry our HDMI cable on every trip, it didn’t work on the cruise ship so we did not watch TV except for the one channel that showed where we were – usually just a view of water. In Cambodia, Holland, The States earlier this year the cable worked each place and we would unwind from our day of exploring watching some gruesome series on Netflix. I would double dip my time by dabbling in Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, and other mind-numbing practices. And of course, I would check social media to see if any of my five followers on Twitter etc. liked something I had tossed up. HDMI also assisted with our watching YouTube to see what The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was doing to get our daily fix on the States politically. We did get CNN and BBC news but nothing locally or on Denmark so for six-weeks we had no idea of anything happening around us; kind of a nice way to live in la la land, and the news we saw, usually something stupid going on in the States, was far removed from us. Maybe this will be in Narda’s top reasons why the Danes are so happy, they don’t pay attention to the news. Though I am sure it is just us wandering folks who land upon their shores and have no idea what the papers or TV shows are saying.

August 20, Sunday

Another day of exploring the areas around here. This time we took the car, and drove north. First to Struer, where we found a caravan sales place. Of course, we had to look. We found the prices were much lower than in Australia. For the same money as we spent we could buy a nearly new caravan here, with toilet shower, weighing a lot less, about the same size for 80,000 DKK which is $15,000 AUD (about $12,600 USD)

This one, with toilet/shower; 39,990 DKK , about $8,000 AUD

We drove on to Humlum. That’s a place you need to have coffee in, just because of the name! Actually, we went all out and had lunch. Blew our budget for the day, but right now we’re pretty ahead with it. I had a beef patty garnished with beetroot, capers, and raw egg yoke. Yum!

On the road again, we followed some sidies, getting a little lost, and then headed southwards along the coastal road between Nussum Bedning, another fjord, and the North Sea. Reminded us a bit of Coorong country (South Australia). We stopped at a place; to our right were really high sand dunes, actually one gigantic long one, like a dyke. When we got to the top we were nearly blown over by the gale.

Watching our little clip at https://youtu.be/vzaPX1oC6cY shows some of this trip along the coast.

August 21-24, Monday-Thursday

Had a few quiet days. The weather has been pleasant, though some days really windy. Yesterday (Wednesday) was warm and sunny, no wind, all day. We’ve been bike riding each day. Often in the morning , we spend some computer time, blogging and making a movie about the cruise. And some reading. Then we ride to various stores to get stuff for dinner. Either Aldi, Netto, Kvickly (I think our favourite) and Lidl. We bought a few useful things, a cool little clock with projection onto the ceiling, and a key security box where we can put a key to let the next house sitters in, back in Adelaide.

The bike rides are the best. I have Bente’s bike, it’s a strong step through, nice to ride, gears and a hand brake and foot brake. Sometimes we take some sandwiches. One time on the way home from Kvickly we were so hungry we both felt a bit ill, so we stopped (to get out of the strong wind) at the petrol station on our way home and found a table at the back, meant for gamblers (horse racing and lotto stuff) and ate our sandwich. We did buy their machine coffee which was crap, but it did the trick. Then we headed back to Kvickly to spend more money.

Our budget, so far has been way under, even with these purchases. We are averaging $30 USD for food per day. (Which I must note is less than we spend in Adelaide)

And I will add I am doing well with my low-carb vegetarian diet.

Near the Ringkøbing Harbour is this statue;

[The 3.5-metre-tall bronze sculpture was made in 2002 and depicts a huge fat woman from the west, sitting on the shoulders of a starved African boy. The woman is holding a pair of scales as a symbol of justice, but her eyes are closed to show that justice is degenerating into self-righteousness and unwillingness to see the obvious injustice.
The sculpture intended to send out a message to the rich part of the world, and seems to create focus on our obesity due to over consumption while people in the third world are dying of hunger. Due to the imbalanced distribution of the resources in the world, the most people in the western countries are living comfortably, they are oppressing the poor people by means of an unjust world trade. The rich countries are by means of tariff barriers and subsidies keeping the poor countries out of the markets of the West.
On the sculpture there is an inscription, which states: “I’m sitting on the back of a man. He is sinking under the burden. I would do anything to help him. Except stepping down from his back.” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_Fattest_(sculpture)]

Friday Aug 25, 2017

Today we decided to leave Ringkøbing and explore some towns to the south of us. We headed to Ribe, stopping at a road house on the way for some lunch. We actually did not go through Ribe, but continued on to the island of Mando, which is a world heritage sanctuary for migrating birds. Since access to the island depends on the tides, we thought it might be fun to take the giant tractor style tourist bus through the receding tide, but we missed it. So hopefully we’ll return.

Then off again to the next island, Romo. This time we were successful. The causeway across to the island is ‘tide proof’ so we headed off to the next island, Sylt (Queen of the North Sea). This one has a waterproof causeway. We found ourselves in a little harbour town, Havnby, and low and behold, a large ferry was about to leave. It does not take us much go off script, so we bought tickets and were on our way……to Germany! It took a few clues….they wanted Euros, and they spoke German…..for us to figure this out. https://www.syltfaehre.de/home/ (BTW we did not pay the full price as we got pension discount, and nicely so, the woman at the counter didn’t believe I was 70, so I should my driver’s license – aren’t people nice?)