More Time than Money

Esfahan

bionicbishop — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 20:18:00 GMT

Been here in Esfahan for 5 days now and will have to stay probabaly another two, everything is closed here for the past 3 days due to the mourning of the death of Imam Hossein .... it was a job even to find somewhere where we could buy food, one night we had to join the queue outside the local mosque for the free food ..... its handed out to anyone and everyone during this time. (Though I felt somehwat guilty doing this, I mean, imagine cruising into mass one day just for the free wine then making a beeline out of the church!) Tomorrow, shall be interesting, it is National Iran Day .... looking forward to that after a slight quiet patch of a few days!

We arrived here in Esfahan via the now infamous Natanz in this bright-red-psychadelic-painted with-Quranic-verses-written-all-over-it clapped out dilapidated Mercedes bus. Evidently the bright and cheery decorations on the outside were just to try to get you in a cheery mood before been crammed into the bus that seem to dawdle along slower than your average Paykan. The bus insha'allah, was suppsed to arrvie in Esfahan in 4 hours time. Insha'allah is a lovley phrase they use here that translated into "God willing," and is especially used in respect to travelling. I, however, have found that the translation of "probably not" more fitting!

Esfahan is certainly one of the most picturesque cities Ive seen ..... the area round Imam Khomeini Square is amazing! Never have I seen richer architecture than in Imam Mosque, which is on one of the sides of Imam Khomeini Square (And this place, unlike all other squares in Iran, is shaped like a square, all the others look decidely round!). Met quite a few interesting locals here (even got invited to someone's family in the Iraqi part of Kurdistan which had to be very tactically declined!), whether it be just your typical uni student or even a guy who was formerly part of Hezbollah fighting in Lebanon ..... now he brands it as a silly childish pursuit that seemed a good idea at the time (sounds awfully similar to your average WW1 recruit). Even just sitting down at any teahouse with tea cup in ine ahnd and water pipe in the other watching the day go by is an experience in itself.

Speaking of drink and all things culinary, food here is awesome, both in taste and price! The banana milkshakes which every shop seems to make fresh round here are almost orgasmic! Never will I look at a jam donut back in Oz in the same way, bakeries here also superlicous. However, one thing that can be given a wide berth is the pizza and beer here. Yes, Iran does produce its own brand of non-alcoholic beer, called Delster. What makes it so unique is that it comes in several flavours, inlcuding lemon, strawberry, and .. wait for it ... caramel! It seems that what makes a good pizza here is making it totally devoid of any flavour .... you need to slosh on some tomato sauce to give it any flavour.

The mouring of the death of Imam Hossein has been quite intersting to witness. Mass crowds gather in the square and its surrounds as a procession of men and loudspeakers alike make their way through! Masses of flag-waving ... free hot milk been served ona ll corners of the street and meals at mealtimes .... never have I seen a population so galvanised before. I'm really hanging out for National Day tomorrow!

One last pointer Id like to make is what I think, is a little over-exaggeration of the Western media over these cartoons. Granted there are still many things and aspects of Iran which I have not and never will see, but people here, though annoyed at the cartoons, arent busy torching anything Danish and European. You can still buy Tuborg here, there are 2 Scandinavian travellers here who walk the streets freely and people here greet you with the utmost hospitality. Indeed, Australians seem to be much in the favour here at the moment (though relatively more European and Japanese toursits make it here, virtually none come from Australia apparently) due to a not so successful sporting encounter against them in recent years! (You get constantly reminded, in graphic detail about the winning/drawing second goal here!). The vast majority of people here accept that what governments think is not necessarily what the people think, they know that all too well from their own.

Anyway, I best be off now to do a little explore of the city!

James

Kashan

bionicbishop — Sat, 4 Feb 2006 21:28:00 GMT

Hi all,

In Kashan at the moment, a small city half way between Tehran and Esfahan. In the meantime have had lots of fun and frivolity in Tehran and Shemshak, a ski resort just north of Thran on the Alborz mountains.

But first of all Tehran .... probably had my best restaurant experience ever (big call!) whilst on travels here ...not so much for the food, but for the truly personal service ... Ill explain. Finally finding a place in Tehran where we could eat something that wasnt a pizza, kebab or hamburger, I rather confidently decided to order dizi .... a traditional Iranian soup dish. The first thing we noticed that was somewhat out of place was when the waiter put what we thought was an oversized-candle-without-a-wick on the table .... but Iranian restaurants have a habit of putting things in th table to confuse you ... we still dont know exactly what you are supposed to do with your half raw onion that you get in a seperate bowl when you order a meal! Anyway, along came the soup, served in a cast iron oversized mug and an empty bowl ....... I assumed that just getting your spoon and digging in seemed the way to go.

Not long after I took my spoon, one of the waiters came rushing over post haste and started pouring the soupout into the bwol and putting lots of bread into it. What I wasnt to know however, was that this was the first of many steps on how to eat dizi. To cut a long story short, the oversized candle turned out to be a petsel, the waiter had to come screaming over 2 more times to impart enlightenment regarding Persian cuisine and I ended out having to look over my shoulder frequently at the table next to me. The people there were also eating dizi and by ensuring thjat they were always one step in the process ahead of me, I could do monkey-see-monkey-do!

Skiing was fun, even if the getting up at 4am to get the bus wasnt. If sleep was what you wanted once you got on the bus, think again ..... a rather haphazard selection of Iranain Top 40 and Madonna was been played at mind-melting levels! At least th driver didnt ram/get rammed along the way, unlike a hair-raising taxi ride I took here the other day where we rammed two cars and got rammed once! (Though by far most exhillirating, is taking a motorbike taxi across town. Some people queue up a lonmg time and pay good money to go on death-defying rollercoaster rides ... why bother when you can just take a Tehrani motorcycle taxi as I found out!) Most of the slopes proved to challenging for me, as I discovered on the second day skiing when I found myself going flop-flop-flop-flop down the side of a piste, even now my knee still feels a bit sore! We had a lovely dinner there though, as for accomadtion we didnt stay in the resort iutself, but we went to a nearby village. It seems that every night there they have a big communal dinner, there must of been about 200 people in all. They all take it in turns to do the cooking ... we all (well, all the men, the women had to eat in an adjoinging building ..... its amazing to see how some places absolutely everyhting is sexually segregated and others anything goes) ate in this big hall.

Its interstiung to see the differing attitudes regariding the secual segregation laws. On the ski slopes men and women ski freely together, with most women wearing their hejab in the loosest of fashions if at all .... yet in the village 2km up the mountain its barely a face poking out. Tehran is not surprisingly the most liberal of all Iranian cities, so you see women walking the street and not really worrying about how much of themselves is covered up .... but attitudes change vastly outside the big smoke. Some women here ... esp if they know theyll be in a bus or somewhere not so public most of the day dont even bother with the hejab, and when they pass a police officer kinda do vague motions of putting some headware on .... the authorities here seem to quietly accept it as well. For that matter of fact, it seems quite a significan number if not a majority of Iranians despise those in power ..... they believe that the revolution has already taken its course and that it is now time to move on. Anyway, I digress.

We got here to Kashan via Qom yesterday, went to the bazaar this morning and managed to find a way up to the roof of the bazaar for some splendid views of the city. Last night had dinner at this place whuch, among other things, served up a dish called "Distinct Pizza of Poof" ... I just had to get that! Off to Esfahan tomorrow, maybe we need to go via the now infamous Natanz as buses here seem a bit irregular here.

Not long till Oz

James

Tehran

bionicbishop — Wed, 1 Feb 2006 07:09:00 GMT

Hey all
It seems that the internet connection or Mr Iranian Govt censor didnt take to my online journal to kindly so back to emailing it is!

Been in Tehran since yesterday, it looms like that the crappy weather has followed me from Istanbul to a degree, though its clearing up here at least!

First of all, the train, ferry and train again ride from Istanbul. All in all it took 3 days, though that in itself was quite an adventure and intersting. One pointer though to prosective travellers: Given the choice between an a)Turkish Train b)Australian train or c)Iranian train take c)!!

Anyway, the Turkish train that I took to Lake Van (between Dogubayazit and its crazy chickens and the Iraqi border) was rather optimistcally called the Trans-Asya Ekspresi which all of that optimism placed on the latter of the title! The train had a top speed of about 50km/h (when it wasnt sitting idle, or rolling backwards down the side of a mountain [yes, that did happen!]), we (me and two other backpackers) decided to christen the locomotive Old Betsy. Besides us, there was one Iranian in our cabin, a student the same age as me who had to go to Istanbul just to sit an exam (the exam was American-based, and with the whole US embargo thingy!) He gave much light as tothe current social situation in Iran, and their views about theur government and views on the West (which is not usrpirsingly vastly different from what John Laws would like you to believe).

Despite much fun and frivolity in our cabin, the Turkish train staff seem to be the most glum and cantakerous creatures ever to grace the earth. They spent most of their time chasing us and a group of Iranian kids we were playing cards with out of the communal area. We couldnt think of any card game which would be easy enough to explain, then we came up with the idea of teaching them this drinking game we were playing in Istanbul that uses a deck of cards (with some obvious modifications!). It also involved players to make animal sounds .... it seems that Iranian ducks go hup-hup-hup and their snakes go fizz-fizz-fizz!

As the train seemed to be in the habit of stopping in the middle of nowhere for a couple of hours (we assumed that Old Betsy didnt quite have it in her to do the journey flat out) there was plenty a oppurtunity to have snowball fights .... though me thinks the staff didnt like our idea of throwing the snowballs through the cabins door to door! The last day of the journey was the most excruciating ... the train at one stage stopped for 3 hours .... then started going forwards again ... for 20 metres! Then another 2 hr stop before reversing another 100m!

However, the Iranian train officials were as freindly as the Turkish ones were grumpy and the time spent on that train to Tehran was a pleasure! A few oddities about the train though. It seems that the cook in the kitchen hasnt learnt how to cook anything more than rice and chicken (and if you were lucky you might even get some barberries in your rice) which got a bit repetitive after a day, and also Iranian trains seem to emit copious amounts of steam from between the carriages which makes it look like your descending from the clouds or something as you walk through it! The Iranian train was alos somewhat faster than Old Betsy, though the concept of slowing down for corners didnt seem to be fully grasped so the train would kinda nervously teeter and rattle side to side as the train wobbled its way round sharp bends!

The first thing we had to do before getting to the border though was to put to good use our bottle of wine .... in a 'last supper' style, we somberly drank our last drop for a while!

Ive gotta say that considering Im a dual national of 2 countries that both label Iran part of the "axis of evil" I got accross the border with remarkable ease. No bag searches, no questions, we didnt even have to get out of our beds actually! The train staff took our passports to get them stamped in the border office on our behalf! It was interesting seeing the change in demeanour of people as we crossed the border, especially from women. Hejab on, and of coruse much less interaction. Our Iranian friend in our carriage was saying that it wasnt even really permissible for young men and women to walk together down on the streets. As mentioned before, you defintiely get the sense of discontent to the system here ... and with about three-quarters of the population aged 25 or under, you cant help but think that even without Western meddlings that the system would slowly change. Indeed, people tell you that it already has changed a bit from the days of just after the revolution (1979).

Here in tehran today, ive spent the day wonderign round the bazaar, visitng the National Jewellery museum, and avoiding getting run over by Tehrani motorists. It seems the norm here to ride your motorbike down the footpaths, as is reversing down a one-way street ... the wrong way naturally! Even having some experience of driving Asia style, Ive had a few near misses, in what can be best described as a game of high-stake dodgems!

Changing money here was funny, in return for my one USD 100 note, I got no less than 93 Iranian ones in return .... it seems that to buy anything of value here youll need a wheelbarrow to cart the money in. (Credit cards, debit cards and the rest dont work here obviously due to the US trade embargo). The National Jewellery Museum has an entrance not disimilar to that of the opening credits to Get Smart but inside you see why. It is truly stunning inside with the most immense and emaculate pieces of jewellery everywhere .... it is impossible to even think how much it all could be valued at! Its a pity that you cant (quite understandable as well) take photos there.

In the Tehran Metro System you definitely see which sex is the gentler sex. The first carriage for all trains is women-only and the rest for men. Whilst the women wait for ppl to exit the train and then board on later themselves, been on the mens sdie, you realise why wrestling is a big sport in Iran. Its a real test of strengh just to get on or off! A pair of boxing gloves seems appropiate attire down there!

Anyway, I best be off now ... going to get some dinner... food here is actually really nice! Hope alls well in Oz, having a (very cheap) ball here in Iran! Off skiing in a few days!

Turkey and a bit of Bulgaria

bionicbishop — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 22:02:00 GMT

n Istanbul at the moment, which is defiontiely one of the most beautiful cities I have ever been to ... when its not snowing and the wind is making the snow fall sideways! But when I did have the luck to have a fine day here, everywhere you look is a virtual photo oppurtunity.

My last day in Bulgaria proved to be quite an interesting one, I spent the morning doing an interview for a weekly mag in Sofia, A Week in Sofia. The journalist was a friend of one of the workers at the hostel, and as the only other option for the morning was sleeping in I obliged. The train to Sofia was predictably slow, at one point we stopped for about an hour, went forwards about 100 metres, then, almost as if the driver thought this as too much progress, he decided to reverse the train back the 100 metres and wait around for a bit longer! The train got cleared by customs amazingly quickly, 4 hours and we were on our way (these things have the potentila to take half a day). The train then tottered along into Istanbul, somehow taking 7 more hours in the process. This was no big deal because as it so happened there were two English expats of Istanbul travelling on the train as well who had a good supply of Bulgarian wine (it tastes much better than you think!)

You see now why all these travel shows showcase Istanbul, everyhtings a sight here .... but its a pity that its getting rather heavily touristed. Luckily, been totally the off-season and the media making light work of reprting the ins and outs of Bird Flu, it is mercifully relatively quiet here. Yesterday I walked around the mosques and took a ferry to the Asian side and back ... there seems to be a national obsession of drinking tea here, as there is with trying to hawk carpets. As is always the case when staying in hostels, its been a blast meeting other travellers with origins and stories far and wide. Ive been surprised though with the amount of Korean and Argentinian visitors here, spent the majority of last night with two Argentinian girls sipping away at their national drink makke, really nice! Amazingly still yet to run into an Isreali backpacker, who seem to dot the world everywhere (but hey, theres a 100% guarantee of not meeting any in Iran).

I thought that Id meet quite a few people going to Iran when coming to Istanbul, and that has been true, with one problem, It seems that everyone else here in the hostel who has applied for an Iranian visa has been swiftly rejected ,,, god knows why they gave me one! There is one English guy who got his this morning, though not after jumping through hoops and paying ridiculous amounts of "agents fees." I'll be heading off with him to Tehran tomorrow probably,

5 more weeks or so and back in Oz.

James

Bulgaria

bionicbishop — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 01:11:00 GMT

Well, Ive started on the long road back and find myself in Sofia, Bulgaria.

There were a few amusing incidents on the flight here to Sofia, but that was somewhat to be expected if you take a budget airline that gets you to Bulgaria for no more than $50! Flying the wonders of W!zz Air (Hungary's answer to Ryan Air!) the flight was firstly to Budapest, then a 5 hour wait to catch a connecting flight to Sofia. The inflight magazine, which for want of something better came my main source of entertainment does a write up of all the destinations they fly to. Rather than give you the word for "hello" or |where is the toilet?" in the phrasebook section, they just offer one phrase for each country, that been how to say "Is your sister married?" I found doing anything official like entering the country or buying an international train ticket here in Bulgaria much the same as the situation in China. Upon arrival at the airport the border official will try to impress you and make you see who's boss by giving you numerous forms to fill out. After sufficiently satistfying hismelf that he has shown you how important and special he is though, all you really need to do is put your name on half of the forms leaving the rest blank and draw smiley faces on the rest (well, not quite but you get the gist!)

The hostel where I'm staying is certainly one of the more interesting one's I've stayed in, but really good nonetheless! It is actually an art gallery that doubles as a hostel. Downstairs in the basement is a small pub and dancing floor, normally frequented by local artists here. Needless to say, my first night here was spent truly embracing Bulgarian culture by getting extremely pissed. The first warning sign should of really been when we drunk the bar dry of its Zagorska (the local brew), but all this meant to us (me, a few other travellers and a bunch of Macedonian students studying at Sofia University) was we had to switch drinks to rakia, the national spirit made from plums and as I found out later with incredibly high alcohol content. It does taste nice though!

Also been wandering around Sofia which although is still largely built up of communist sqaut grey buildings, does have some nice churches even if it is impossible to gain entry to them. The train station certainly wins the prize for "most overbuilt" station! Undoubtedly built in Soviet times it is a massive structure, though the architects seem to have forgotten to put any windows or lights in it. It has oversized monuments inside, but for all its grandeur the place is by and large deserted, a building about 20 times less the size would of been more apt! Talking about transport the rather mean-looking surly ticket inspectors that regularly patrol the trams and trolleybuses are quite a sight. They would look more in place outside a door of a nightclub!

Ive gotten fairly used to reading the Cyrillic alphabet and can say very very basic things in Bulgarian. It is surprising how similar alot of the words sound to English making it easy to guess. Ive taken the executive decision that everything is a masculine object ..... you can still get the meaning across! Food here is surpirsingly nicer than what you would think, the Bulgaruians seem to have an obsession with cheese, not to mention very strong thick black coffees ... you often see people slurping away with their big caffeine hit in cafes that dot the city, if not also accompanying the caffeine hit with an equally lagre nicotine hit!

Anyway, Im here till Friday night where I then head off to Istanbul, which is sure to occupy me for at least a few days! Hope all is well in sunny Sydney, its a balmy -3 degrees here.

James

English Pubs

bionicbishop — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 11:29:00 GMT

Well, in Bristol (again!) to see off my friend who just came back from China. Its only couple of days before i'll be in Bulgaria, about a weeks time in Turkey and 2 weeks time in Iran, but there is a little rumour going round that the Turkey-Iran border is partially closed which would put a rather major spanner in the works! Anyway, decided to blabber on a bit about English pub culture.

"You see Jim, here in England we have had 1500 years to refine our pub culture, whilst you in Oz only have had 200 years"

The watering holes here are certainly a few classes ahead of their Australian counterparts, if not that the price also is. My somewhat over-frequent visiting (it will all balance out by the time I'm back in Oz with the dry countries of Iran and Pakistan) has led me to attempt to summise a few pointers as follows:

1. Ambience - It comes quite of a shock that you can enjoy a pint without the cacophonous company of the pubs sound system blaring out the latest in the charts. Comfortable chairs as opposed to unergonomic bar stools, normal lighting compared to having my glass table lit up by some kind of flouro lights seem to indicate that these English pubs are a place for relaxing and socialising, maybe not for dressing up and fumbling for your proof of age card.

2. The Beer - OK, maybe us Ozzies win out in this department, but I found the idea of the brewers making special brews for Christmas (your Christmas Ales that taste spicy!), Indian Pale Ales, and for the seasons (a pint of Young's Winter Warmer .... mmmm) quite a novel one! On the down side the beer comes out the taps at something alarmingly close to room temperature and all pubs seem to have an insistence of having Foster's on tap. Even more disturbing is their belief that its the best brew from Oz and that all us Ozzies devour it, the reason for the latter being that all the Fosters ads feature Ozzies in them happily (forcibly!?) downing a pint! English beer does have more taste, not to mention variety. Below are a few that are highly recommended!

Hobgoblins - Afraid you might taste something, lagerboy? A very malty strongish beer, exquisite!

John Smith's - In the way that massed produced beers go, this one fairs pretty damn well!

Young's Bitter - Or actually pretty much anything from the Young's range ... got good pubs as well.

3. Miscallaneous - A pint, or half-pint of beer .... quite a bit more descriptive than a schooner, middie or pot of beer ... the last one sounds like you want a bit of the wacky tobaccky as a side! The idea of a pub lunch is also very appealing, somewhat more than a packet of overpriced peanuts. Talking of things been overpriced, the English have refined that art to a tea and the pub is no exception .... its just the thought that you know everything is overpriced that seems to comfort you in a very odd way! At least I havent had accomodation to fork out on!

Anyway, better be off now .... getting late here, off to bulgaria and beyond

An interesting thought

bionicbishop — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 01:25:00 GMT

Decided to take a break from the usual travel-telling rigmarole and have a random blurt about things that i have come across during my loop to looping of Britian.

Scotland, that big bit of land north of England. In 1651 (if this is the wrong feel free to laugh about me talking about somethign i dont really know, im good at that!) Scotland was forcibly annexed by the Kingdom of England. Since then Scotland has offered to the world such varied delights as Alexander Bell, Franz Ferdinand (ok, even if all but one of the band members are english!) and deep-fried Mars Bars (a wonderous invention!). In return, the Scots have been the priviliged guinea pigs of Maggie Thatcher's proposed Pole Tax, the Black Watch Edinburgh military unit is always sent to the front of the line in any given war and they have to get subjugated to England's answer to Franz Ferdinand, Blue. This doesnt seem to be a very fair deal here to me. Nearly all the other lands of which England decided to plunder have been given license to set about their own business, Scotland seemed a nice enough place to be given theirs. True this is a rather snap judgement based on very limited information and they do have their own legal, health and education system but so do the states of Australia. On that note, Scotland has some interesting if more logical laws. Its the only place I know of that gives the 2nd of January as a public holiday as well to help in the recovery process! Some of the more interesting ones include the right to knock on anyones door and demand a glass of water and the usage of their loo, or any 3 St Andrews students together who are wearing their academic gowns having the power to direct traffic as they please. But I digress.

Crystal Palace and Cambridge

bionicbishop — Sun, 8 Jan 2006 23:05:00 GMT

Well, after being sufficiently well-recovered to take the flight back to Long Melford via Stanstead on the 4th I then had a few relativel quiet days at grandad's. Went to an FA Cup match with a friend yesterday between the might and power of Crystal Palace (apparently normally quite a depressing team to follow, I mean, if an Australian can make it as captain [Popovic] then there must be something drastically wrong!) and Northampton. Superb refereeing, he gave the good guys two penalty spot kicks and one free kick, all converted into goals, even if some of them were awarded in somewhat dubious circumstances! Crystal Palace 4, Northampton 1.

Ive gotta say English football matches reall are something compared to our rather sedate AFL and cricket crowds. It seems that half the art of going to the football is not necessarily knowing whats going on on the pitch, but knowing all the various war cries of your club, (including each player's individual song!), and making choice comments about the opposition and/or referee! Even at the ground supporters of the home and away teams have to buy their tickets from seperate windows, enter seperate gates and sit in seperate stands. Taking in a bottle of water is banned, in case you wanted to take a pot-shot with it at the opposition's supporter's stand or their goalie.

On the way back passing through London Bridge Station, the place resembled more Fort Knox than a tube station with lines and lines of police everywhere, hearing them kinda nevously stutter over the radio "We couldnt hold the group back" even though there was no riotous group in sight. Bloody Milwall supporters.

Edinburgers and Scotland

bionicbishop — Tue, 3 Jan 2006 07:22:00 GMT

I'm really glad now that I made the trek (OK, it was all of an one hour flight but at least let me make it sound a bit arduous!) up here to Scotland. I spent New Year's Eve (or the somewhat cryptic Hogmanay's as its called up here, it was only the other day that I realised that it wasnt the name of a pub!) in Edinburgh with a group of ppl who were friends's with my friend in Glasgow .. a truly picturesque place with all the jagged hills that seem to dot its landscape and old buildings that stand on them (Edinburgh that is, though I have to say for Glasgow that having a Dr Who Tardis in the middle of the main plaza of Buchanan St is pretty funky!). Unfortunately I didnt get many snaps of Ed since most of the time there was spent either recovering from the pale ale or being involved in festivities that require the remedy aforementioned! In between indulging in those two complimentary activities we did manage to visit Holyrood (parliament house of Scotland, apparently which came with a construction bill not too dissimilar to its more famous American almost-namesake) and St Giles Cathedral. Also set minor records in how many people can sleep in a student's accomodation room! Fly back to England on the 4th, only 2 weeks or so before I start on the road back home beginning in Bulgaria.

Sunny Glasgow

bionicbishop — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 02:31:00 GMT

Well, done a few tours of England since updating this thing and now find myself here in Scotland where (at this time of year) the sun don't shine! Bristol is a truly marvellous place, where the most busy bus route is not necessarily during peak hours, but 10pm friday night from the student halls to the city where no doubt new records are set in how many people can fit in a double decker! Not only do you get decent beer there, but its where cider is traditionally produced as well! Managed to develop my B&W film there as well ... even if i screwed up the film by mistake in the darkroom. Im bad enough with anything requiring the least bit of co-ordination ... yet alone in the pitch dark!

In a nutshell, I then quickly travelled up to Hampton-in-Arden (bonus marks for finding that on a map!), a village outside of Solihull (not Sunny Hill, as I had originally thought! ... sounds like some loony bin) about half-way between Birmingham and Coventry. Went to a concert hosted by none other than Britsh gardener come funnyman Alan Titschmark (I spose a Harry Cooper half the age minus the beret!); and realised that Peter Moore's vivid (!) description of Digbeth Bus Stationin Birmingham was not so far off the truth after all! Also went down to Brookwood to see Rich for a ferw days (Surrey, near Woking SW of London), a place which London authorities seem it fit to move all their cemtries too, hence making it the largest cemetry in Europe. Also went to my grandad's at Long Melford (Suffolk) for Xmas and my cousin's wedding ... all of this side of the family I hadnt seen for 11 years! Flew up to Glasgow with Ryan Air .... one of these airlines here that gets you to your destination with ridiculously low air ticket prices .... the latter they do pretty well but the former seems to be a bit touch and go as I found out! You know that the plane your flying has seen better days when you realise that the airline logo embossed into the chairs has been crossed out not once, but twice (First KLM, then Air Lingus then Ryan Air!)

Staying in Scotland for new year's, be in Edinburhg then before returning back to England.

Money-wise things seem to be going alarmingly well considering its the UK .... i spose though living in student accomodation with 5 other uni students who probably are on a tighter budget than me (the British Government has acheived the unthinkable and actually has an education policy more stingy than ours). All stuff in the flat is of the Tesco Value product range ... even the beer! The beer, at a riveting 2.1% alcohol, artificially flavoured, and pumped full of carbon-dioxide bubbles to give the pretence of fermentation is certainly well, um, an acquired taste!

Bristol

bionicbishop — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 05:01:00 GMT

Arrived in Bristol-aye the other day from London to catch up with a friend I met during the days of wallowing in Qingdao beer in China.

Getting here was a bit of a task, the bus was "delayed" by one hour, but by judging from the departure times it suspiciously looks like they just decided not to run our service and cram us onto the next bus! All this meant that George, my conscripted guide to Bristol, couldnt meet me at the bus station becuase he thought attending his final GP Placement for uni just a tad more important than meeting a flee-ridden (OK its not that bad) ozzy backpacker :) But, with the ever-effusive help desk attendant shouting my name at the bus station, it came apparent George had left me something; a Bristol A to Z and a Student Union guide to Bristol.

The idea of a uni campus actually looking aesthetically pleasing is a concept somewhat forreign to me coming from the architectural delight of UTS, but Bristol University has some damn fine grounds .... student life here seems to be much more active here but I suppose much of that can be explained by the British tradition (and a somewhat wise one at that!) of moving out for uni.

Went around town today taking happy snaps of Bristol .... tho the film seems to be now stuck in the camera ... looks like a session in the uni's darkroom tomorrow to get it out. Hopefully going to put some B&W film in tomorrow as well and insha'allah, should be developing that set of film myself yayayayay!

Hopefully cycle to Bath tomorrow for a day trip, was thinking of dashing off to Oxford soon but opted fo the lazy inactive stay in Bristol option instead, though it looks like I'll be heading up to Birmingham in the next few days.

All the best

Jim

London

bionicbishop — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 08:04:00 GMT

Hi all,

Hopefully I can defy my techonological ineptness and figure out how to put something on here! Anyway, I arrived here in London a couple of days ago courtesy of Gulf Air. The flight went fairly smoothly, managed to catch up with plenty sleep at Bahrain airport, an airport which seems to distinguish itself by having more guards/officials/military personnel in the airport terminal than actual passengers. You even have someone directing you into the appropriate door when you go the toilets, just in case the ubiquitous male and female pictures that were on each door respectively left you confused.

Havent done anything awe inspiring here in London. Went around all the tourist haunts consisting of a something a bit like a "Monopoly board" tour of Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Whitehall, Westminster Bridge. It seems that in Trafalgar Square, the height of the monuments to Nelson and friends seems to be directly proportional to how many inadequately armed armies and defenceless locals they managed to wipe out .... double points if those killed were French!

Probably wont be able to get any photos uploaded to this website ... ive opted for the manual camera so you guys can admire my overexposed and out-of-focus photography when I get back. Off to Bristol tomorrow.

Jim