Have not got anything fundamental to mention about the day thus far, or yesterday even - well, apart from the All Blacks beating Wales 41 to 3 - so am just going to write about something in my past and see how that goes. So for all of you out there that read me for my incisive political insight or my exciting James Bond like day to day life, you can all tune out now - sarcasm, people LOL.
I went over to England with a two year working holiday visa when I was just a few months past 21. I had been over to Europe on a Contiki holiday, well, actually two, one to Scandanavia and Russia, the other to Tourist Trap Western Europe LOL, the year before, and in my brief time before, in between, and after the trips to the continent spent in London, decided I wanted another look at the place, and had the plan to go back :)
As I am barrelling towards 30 now, I kinda think what it would be like to go back on another Contiki holiday in Europe by the time I'm 35, the kinda sorta age limit they have on those trips. I was at a right enough age to go through Western Europe with the McTour kind of way they did that, two fifths seeing famous cities, three fifths drinking and partying, but for the Scandanavia and Russia trip, I kinda sorta wish I had a bit more life experience before I did that - I just felt or was made to feel a bit immature to do that leg of the holiday.
Whereas it was my first big trip overseas, away from parents, responsibility and all, and therefore probably drinking a bit more than I should have, most of the others in the group were late twenties or early thirties, and a couple of them were discussing making a side trip while in Warsaw to Auschwitz.
I don't actually think I was that bad, but two memories haunt me - an overnight ferry ride from Stockholm to Turku in Finland, drinking, karaoke night, fade to black. Fade back in, I have locked myself out of the cabin, which I am sharing with three other guys, one contact lens in, one out, knocking on the door to be let in, feeling pretty terrible about things, making a bit of a ruckus - or at least, that is how I remember it. Losing all credibility for responsibility with the group hmmph.
Another time, Moscow, getting a bottle of Russian champagne, but no one wanting to share it with me, getting too tipsy too quickly, and heading straight to my hotel room (it was an odd number of single guys, and guess who got the room to himself, not surprising after the ferry ride) rather than socialising in the downstairs bar.
I wouldn't say my cheeks get hot with embarrassment when I remember those incidences, but I inwardly groan and my stomach kind of clenches thinking of the stupidity of it all. Pauly was quite quiet for most of the rest of the trip, and subsequently loved the Western Europe get tipsy every second night second tour :)
Of course, it wasn't all stupidity on that trip - on the drive from Malmo to Stockholm, we stopped at one of those highway restaurant stops, and I am still kicking myself that I didn't take a photo there. The place had a balcony overlooking a lake, and the greeny blue of the water, the dark green of the conifer trees by the waterside on the other side of the lake, the light blue of the sky, my memory probably making it more than it was, but yeah, is a nice memory. The picture I DID take of roadside stops in Sweden was of the karaoke muppets - classy LOL.
Stockholm was gorgeous, the Venice of the North. Wandering around with three or four girls - this of course being the height of my popularity before the Turku ferry crossing LOL - two Canadians from Vancouver Island of all places - that geographical location just keeps popping up in my life thus far, and an Aussie girl from Sydney, maybe another Australian as well.
Doing a walkaround the city, and then catching a tourist boat around the canals and inlets. Coming back to the city just on dusk, a glorious sunset behind Stockholm Town Hall - walking along the city at night, during the big summer festival in town, buying a Steinlager for some outrageous price, and I didn't really like Steinlager anyways. Getting into a night club, with an AC/DC tribute band, and then later in the night the Macarena (yes, it was that mad mad time on the music charts, no quality Crazy Frog tunes for another eight years or so LOL), looking at the watch, 3.30 in the morning and it getting light outside.
Helsinki, with not much sleep, a hangover, and glares from my fellow travellers. The morning pretty well a write off, despite the Olympic Stadium, Town Hall, and Church in the Rock. The highlight of that day being the boat trip across to Suommenlina Island, again, with the beautiful ocean, sky and green hills. I did have my camera out that day at that place.
Saint Petersburg, with history bearing down on you, ready to crush you if you aren't prepared. Walking up and down Nevsky Prospekt, behind the Iron Curtain as it were - of course, the Soviet Union had changed into Russia five years previously, and Yeltsin was allegedly at the controls, but it seemed another planet altogether. St Peter and Paul's Cathedral, where the tsars are buried - the Winter Palace/Hermitage, one of the world's largest art galleries - the Summer Palace, basically a shell of what it must have been a century or so ago. Memorials to the victory over Napoleon, where the front lines were during the Nazi siege, even a Lenin or two still standing. Not to mention the ballet, the churches, the bridges over the Neva and the parklands.
Saint Petersburg impressed me a great deal, with its character and its beauty. Even though the hotel we were staying in was in the architectural style 1960's Soviet Monolithic, and in between Yeltsin being inaugurated a second time the TV coverage was of the first conflict in Chechnya. And Mrs Doubtfire. And Knight Rider, in German before being overdubbed into Russian.
Stopped in Tver for the night. The trip from Saint Petersburg to Moscow was too long to do in just one day, what with the EU regulations on how long the bus driver could be behind the wheel. We may have been in Russia, but Contiki was registered somewhere in the EU and had to abide by their conditions. Tver memories are of soup, vodka, a small shower in the motel room, and not leaving the hotel at all - or was that Smolensk or Minsk? Or all three?
Novgorod was a lunch stop either to Tver or from it - an 850 year old Orthodox cathedral, and I believe the heart of the Russian Orthodox Church. Surrounded by a million postcard and babushka doll stalls. And toilets with old Russian women charging admittance - eh, it keeps the unemployment rate down I guess. The church itself was gorgeous, from memory, absolutely positively no pictures allowed inside the place.
By the time we got to Moscow, I think I was kind of burned out. A city of 10 million, the biggest one I had been to at that stage, stretching off in all directions from the hotel window, and, apart from the Kremlin and Red Square, I couldn't really work any enthusiasm up for the place. I hear a lot of Saint Petersburgers feel like that when they get to the capital LOL. Throw in the additional champagne on the boat cruise, and sleeping in for the Lenin's tomb visit, and Moscow wasn't my best city.
By some miracle, when I did head into town on the subway (counting stops rather than reading the Cyrillic on the station maps), I found the group before they headed into the actual Kremlin itself. Thank god for tall dreaded Aussie surfer dude LOL. Lenin I could live without, missing being inside the Kremlin would have been a disaster akin to sleeping in on Anzac Day at Gallipoli in 1998 - not alike exactly, Kiwi blood wasn't shed in Moscow after all, but akin.
Visited the battlefield at Borodino, where Napoleon had his major battle invading Russia, and then overnighted in Smolensk. For Smolensk, see Tver, apart from the fact that we were allowed a city visit. From this point in the trip it was almost a 'walk down WW2 memory lane' tour - Smolensk was 91% destroyed during the war, what with the German invasion first, then the Russian liberation after. It was a major transit point as well, which made it strategic to bomb even when the front lines weren't nearby.
Minsk was 88% destroyed during the war. I remember driving past a park dedicated to some famous Belarussian poet, and then the main square, which was called Liberty Square I think. Got on the rostrum where Lukashenko makes speeches, reviews troops and so on, and was very quickly moved on by the local police before a photo could be taken. Minsk wasn't the most impressive of cities, with memory it seemed very bland, but at the hotel we got talking to an American who worked at the embassy there. He gave us a very blunt assessment of the country, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one thinking he was CIA.
Warsaw, another gorgeous city. Chopin Park, with the red roses out in bloom. Saxon Park, with the Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier and Eternal Flame. In Poland, with its history of German or Russian occupation, and more invasions than I would care to count, the war memorials really mean something. The honour guard at the Eternal Flame meant business.
The Old Town Square, completely rebuilt in original fashion since the end of the war, as much of Warsaw was flattened when 'liberated' by the Soviets. The Warsaw Ghetto memorials, the Warsaw Uprising memorial, the main Catholic cathedral in the city - Warsaw is another city you could visit and drown in history. And pretty tragic history at that. Reasonably priced food and drink though, although, in a difference to Russia, vodka was more expensive than the soft drinks LOL.
Berlin. A strange sort of city, with different strands of history intersecting. Is it part of Bismark's Prussia, self confident in its victory over France, part of the Weimar/Nazi disaster of the early twentieth century, leading almost seamlessly, via the occasional revolution or putsch, from the fields of Flanders to the Red Army's ruthless revenge, or a victim of geopolitics and the Cold War for the next forty years, divided on itself, a huge burden of guilt, and, with the Wall gone, ready to take the next steps in its long and varied history. Of course, it is all of these, and more.
So it is easy to go from the Berlin Wall, to the Brandenburg Gate, to Opernplatz, to Checkpoint Charlie, to the Pergammon Museum, to Wannsee, to the Victory Monument, to Zoo Station. Opernplatz being where the Nazis burned the banned books, Pergammon being where German archaeologists brought over a Babylonian temple brick by brick back in 1865, Wannsee being the site of the conference approving the Final Solution, and the Victory Monument being Prussia over France in 1871. I added Zoo Station in here for the U2 song or maybe better described as a concept for the future Berlin LOL.
Not to mention the Berlin war memorials - one, a statue of a grieving mother holding her dead son, the Soviets had banned the eternal flame in front of that statue sometime in the 1960s. The second memorial being a bombed church with a tower behind it, with one window for each day of the second war.
Hmm, I was going to write about my time in England the year after my Contiki trips, but I kind of got distracted here. Will get around to it another time no doubt - hopefully I haven't bored anyone silly with the above travelogue.
Pauly
I went over to England with a two year working holiday visa when I was just a few months past 21. I had been over to Europe on a Contiki holiday, well, actually two, one to Scandanavia and Russia, the other to Tourist Trap Western Europe LOL, the year before, and in my brief time before, in between, and after the trips to the continent spent in London, decided I wanted another look at the place, and had the plan to go back :)
As I am barrelling towards 30 now, I kinda think what it would be like to go back on another Contiki holiday in Europe by the time I'm 35, the kinda sorta age limit they have on those trips. I was at a right enough age to go through Western Europe with the McTour kind of way they did that, two fifths seeing famous cities, three fifths drinking and partying, but for the Scandanavia and Russia trip, I kinda sorta wish I had a bit more life experience before I did that - I just felt or was made to feel a bit immature to do that leg of the holiday.
Whereas it was my first big trip overseas, away from parents, responsibility and all, and therefore probably drinking a bit more than I should have, most of the others in the group were late twenties or early thirties, and a couple of them were discussing making a side trip while in Warsaw to Auschwitz.
I don't actually think I was that bad, but two memories haunt me - an overnight ferry ride from Stockholm to Turku in Finland, drinking, karaoke night, fade to black. Fade back in, I have locked myself out of the cabin, which I am sharing with three other guys, one contact lens in, one out, knocking on the door to be let in, feeling pretty terrible about things, making a bit of a ruckus - or at least, that is how I remember it. Losing all credibility for responsibility with the group hmmph.
Another time, Moscow, getting a bottle of Russian champagne, but no one wanting to share it with me, getting too tipsy too quickly, and heading straight to my hotel room (it was an odd number of single guys, and guess who got the room to himself, not surprising after the ferry ride) rather than socialising in the downstairs bar.
I wouldn't say my cheeks get hot with embarrassment when I remember those incidences, but I inwardly groan and my stomach kind of clenches thinking of the stupidity of it all. Pauly was quite quiet for most of the rest of the trip, and subsequently loved the Western Europe get tipsy every second night second tour :)
Of course, it wasn't all stupidity on that trip - on the drive from Malmo to Stockholm, we stopped at one of those highway restaurant stops, and I am still kicking myself that I didn't take a photo there. The place had a balcony overlooking a lake, and the greeny blue of the water, the dark green of the conifer trees by the waterside on the other side of the lake, the light blue of the sky, my memory probably making it more than it was, but yeah, is a nice memory. The picture I DID take of roadside stops in Sweden was of the karaoke muppets - classy LOL.
Stockholm was gorgeous, the Venice of the North. Wandering around with three or four girls - this of course being the height of my popularity before the Turku ferry crossing LOL - two Canadians from Vancouver Island of all places - that geographical location just keeps popping up in my life thus far, and an Aussie girl from Sydney, maybe another Australian as well.
Doing a walkaround the city, and then catching a tourist boat around the canals and inlets. Coming back to the city just on dusk, a glorious sunset behind Stockholm Town Hall - walking along the city at night, during the big summer festival in town, buying a Steinlager for some outrageous price, and I didn't really like Steinlager anyways. Getting into a night club, with an AC/DC tribute band, and then later in the night the Macarena (yes, it was that mad mad time on the music charts, no quality Crazy Frog tunes for another eight years or so LOL), looking at the watch, 3.30 in the morning and it getting light outside.
Helsinki, with not much sleep, a hangover, and glares from my fellow travellers. The morning pretty well a write off, despite the Olympic Stadium, Town Hall, and Church in the Rock. The highlight of that day being the boat trip across to Suommenlina Island, again, with the beautiful ocean, sky and green hills. I did have my camera out that day at that place.
Saint Petersburg, with history bearing down on you, ready to crush you if you aren't prepared. Walking up and down Nevsky Prospekt, behind the Iron Curtain as it were - of course, the Soviet Union had changed into Russia five years previously, and Yeltsin was allegedly at the controls, but it seemed another planet altogether. St Peter and Paul's Cathedral, where the tsars are buried - the Winter Palace/Hermitage, one of the world's largest art galleries - the Summer Palace, basically a shell of what it must have been a century or so ago. Memorials to the victory over Napoleon, where the front lines were during the Nazi siege, even a Lenin or two still standing. Not to mention the ballet, the churches, the bridges over the Neva and the parklands.
Saint Petersburg impressed me a great deal, with its character and its beauty. Even though the hotel we were staying in was in the architectural style 1960's Soviet Monolithic, and in between Yeltsin being inaugurated a second time the TV coverage was of the first conflict in Chechnya. And Mrs Doubtfire. And Knight Rider, in German before being overdubbed into Russian.
Stopped in Tver for the night. The trip from Saint Petersburg to Moscow was too long to do in just one day, what with the EU regulations on how long the bus driver could be behind the wheel. We may have been in Russia, but Contiki was registered somewhere in the EU and had to abide by their conditions. Tver memories are of soup, vodka, a small shower in the motel room, and not leaving the hotel at all - or was that Smolensk or Minsk? Or all three?
Novgorod was a lunch stop either to Tver or from it - an 850 year old Orthodox cathedral, and I believe the heart of the Russian Orthodox Church. Surrounded by a million postcard and babushka doll stalls. And toilets with old Russian women charging admittance - eh, it keeps the unemployment rate down I guess. The church itself was gorgeous, from memory, absolutely positively no pictures allowed inside the place.
By the time we got to Moscow, I think I was kind of burned out. A city of 10 million, the biggest one I had been to at that stage, stretching off in all directions from the hotel window, and, apart from the Kremlin and Red Square, I couldn't really work any enthusiasm up for the place. I hear a lot of Saint Petersburgers feel like that when they get to the capital LOL. Throw in the additional champagne on the boat cruise, and sleeping in for the Lenin's tomb visit, and Moscow wasn't my best city.
By some miracle, when I did head into town on the subway (counting stops rather than reading the Cyrillic on the station maps), I found the group before they headed into the actual Kremlin itself. Thank god for tall dreaded Aussie surfer dude LOL. Lenin I could live without, missing being inside the Kremlin would have been a disaster akin to sleeping in on Anzac Day at Gallipoli in 1998 - not alike exactly, Kiwi blood wasn't shed in Moscow after all, but akin.
Visited the battlefield at Borodino, where Napoleon had his major battle invading Russia, and then overnighted in Smolensk. For Smolensk, see Tver, apart from the fact that we were allowed a city visit. From this point in the trip it was almost a 'walk down WW2 memory lane' tour - Smolensk was 91% destroyed during the war, what with the German invasion first, then the Russian liberation after. It was a major transit point as well, which made it strategic to bomb even when the front lines weren't nearby.
Minsk was 88% destroyed during the war. I remember driving past a park dedicated to some famous Belarussian poet, and then the main square, which was called Liberty Square I think. Got on the rostrum where Lukashenko makes speeches, reviews troops and so on, and was very quickly moved on by the local police before a photo could be taken. Minsk wasn't the most impressive of cities, with memory it seemed very bland, but at the hotel we got talking to an American who worked at the embassy there. He gave us a very blunt assessment of the country, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one thinking he was CIA.
Warsaw, another gorgeous city. Chopin Park, with the red roses out in bloom. Saxon Park, with the Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier and Eternal Flame. In Poland, with its history of German or Russian occupation, and more invasions than I would care to count, the war memorials really mean something. The honour guard at the Eternal Flame meant business.
The Old Town Square, completely rebuilt in original fashion since the end of the war, as much of Warsaw was flattened when 'liberated' by the Soviets. The Warsaw Ghetto memorials, the Warsaw Uprising memorial, the main Catholic cathedral in the city - Warsaw is another city you could visit and drown in history. And pretty tragic history at that. Reasonably priced food and drink though, although, in a difference to Russia, vodka was more expensive than the soft drinks LOL.
Berlin. A strange sort of city, with different strands of history intersecting. Is it part of Bismark's Prussia, self confident in its victory over France, part of the Weimar/Nazi disaster of the early twentieth century, leading almost seamlessly, via the occasional revolution or putsch, from the fields of Flanders to the Red Army's ruthless revenge, or a victim of geopolitics and the Cold War for the next forty years, divided on itself, a huge burden of guilt, and, with the Wall gone, ready to take the next steps in its long and varied history. Of course, it is all of these, and more.
So it is easy to go from the Berlin Wall, to the Brandenburg Gate, to Opernplatz, to Checkpoint Charlie, to the Pergammon Museum, to Wannsee, to the Victory Monument, to Zoo Station. Opernplatz being where the Nazis burned the banned books, Pergammon being where German archaeologists brought over a Babylonian temple brick by brick back in 1865, Wannsee being the site of the conference approving the Final Solution, and the Victory Monument being Prussia over France in 1871. I added Zoo Station in here for the U2 song or maybe better described as a concept for the future Berlin LOL.
Not to mention the Berlin war memorials - one, a statue of a grieving mother holding her dead son, the Soviets had banned the eternal flame in front of that statue sometime in the 1960s. The second memorial being a bombed church with a tower behind it, with one window for each day of the second war.
Hmm, I was going to write about my time in England the year after my Contiki trips, but I kind of got distracted here. Will get around to it another time no doubt - hopefully I haven't bored anyone silly with the above travelogue.
Pauly
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