Thoughts on making it half way

I've reached the half way mark. I left home on June 15, 2009 and the plan is to be back in Winnipeg by about June 1st, 2010. That makes a total of 50 weeks, meaning that 175 days is the halfway mark. I still have things to say about Turkey, and I’ve been in Israel for days now without posting about that, but let’s pause and take stock for a minute. I’ve been trying for a while to gather some thoughts about this whole crazy business, and as usual it’s a long, random collection of unconnected musings. At least you’re used to that by now.

Thoughts on interesting numbers:

175 days traveling

13 countries visited

11 languages attempted

9 metro systems conquered

6 currencies squandered

47 city maps cursed at

5 overnight trains, 3 overnight buses and 1 overnight ferry endured

71 different beds collapsed into

16 hashes met and welcomed by

12 guide books consulted, abbreviated, mangled and discarded

5922 photos taken (and counting)

1 extravagantly ferocious hangover

Metro System #1, Day #1, London

Thoughts on money: Those of you who know me won’t be surprised to find out that I’m keeping pretty careful track of what this is all costing. (Oh yes, there are spreadsheets.) So I can say with reasonable confidence that I’m spending about $165.00 (CDN) every day. Portugal was cheapest at $52.00/day, mostly thanks to Freddie’s spare room and extensive wine cellar. Russia was the most expensive at $277.00/day, but that includes the cost of the tour I was on and the flight from Dublin to Moscow. Denmark was next at $244.00/day, not even including the computer disaster.

As for the rest of the trip, my best estimate is that I’ll be over budget by about $5,000. The odd thing is that it’s not day-to-day expenses that are the problem. I’m pretty good at setting a daily budget for each city or country and sticking to it reasonably well. The trouble is with the extras, I think. These included sending and receiving packages, buying new computers, getting visas, generously donating money to random people walking by the spot where I left my wallet in Barcelona… I have no plan yet on what I’ll decide to do if I’m somewhere in Malaysia and the numbers on the spreadsheet start to turn red.

Thoughts on photos: Photos are a problem. I want to take more and better photos, especially of people (I really do, Rob!) but don't want to be intrusive. There seem to be three options. The best would be to introduce myself, make friends and then take photos of my new friends. I think of this as the Rick Steves Method. The worst would be to snap away like the local people are exhibits in a zoo. I think of this as the Ugly American Method. The unhappy medium I’ve found is to take occasional snaps on the sly. That's why you don't get to see the old women sweeping up twigs on the streets of Göreme, or the old men sitting at the bar playing a strange domino-like game. Rick Steves would dive in and be playing with the old guys in 5 minutes flat. I guess I'm not made of that stuff. This trip pushes me out of my natural introversion a lot already, but I just can't see myself making the leap to that Steves-ian level of gregariousness.

Then again, these orthodox Jewish guys rockin’ out at the Mehade Yehuda market in Jerusalem were practically begging to be photographed.

Thoughts on the downside of long term travel: I have no regrets about the decision I made to ditch my whole life and travel, but I’m also pretty sure now that it’s not the best way to see the world. On a trip with fewer destinations and a shorter timetable there would be a lot more opportunity for preparation and anticipation. That’s part of the fun of travel - falling asleep at night with the LP open, dreaming about what to do and where to go. As it is, I often don't even buy a guide book more than a day or two before arriving, and crack it open for the first time on the flight. I kind of miss that, but I also know that level of preparation is impossible for a trip like this, and I do kind of like being as flexible as I am. Still, it would be nice to be able to read up on a country, the culture and the people a bit before arriving, and maybe even learn some of the language before touching down. Certainly there are economies of scale to be realized on longer trips, but if I had the means, I think I’d rather travel in chunks of a month or so.

Thoughts on maps: God. Don’t get me started. Ok, too late. Here’s some advice for anyone who publishes maps of any kind:

1. Please, for the love of GOD, stop putting streets on your maps without noting the name of the street. If you don’t put the name of the street are you really creating a map? Or is it simply an abstract collection of intersecting lines? (Lovely Plant you know I love you, but you are a serious offender in this area. Pull up your socks.)
2. If you’re not going to indicate street names, then at least put ALL the streets on the map so your hapless victims can count the number of intersections to pass through before turning or stopping or hailing a cab in desperation.
3. Also please indicate the SCALE of the map. It’s exceedingly helpful, especially given the on-again off-again nature of numbers 1 and 2 above, to be able to judge the rough distance between points before giving up and turning back. At least the time spent navigating can be filled devising special forms of torture for sub-standard map makers.

(And as a side note… Dear City Planners of the World: Please make the effort to affix or erect some indication of street name at each intersection, or at least at major ones. I’m begging you. And Turkey, I’m talking to you here, a sign that’s 4” square and placed 12’ up on the side of a building behind an awning does NOT count.)

Thoughts on sight-seeing fatigue: I've mentioned it before, but the big problem with this full-time tourist gig is that you really start to get numb to what you're seeing. I've seen so many amazing sights - galleries, cathedrals, blah blah blah. I joke about it, but l'm not kidding when I say I never need to see another Madonna and Child. It bothers me, but I've also come to recognize that I can only take in so much during a day. Sometimes this means I skip one if the LP's "must see" sights in favour of a nap. What I'd really like to be able to do is be a full-time tourist from Monday to Friday and go home on the weekends. Instead, I'm making my own long weekends where I need them, like the 12 day stop in Athens.

The church of St. I-don’t-care-anymore (Big bonus points if you can actually identify this location, which has appeared on the blog…)

Thoughts on general fatigue: There’s no getting around it, long term travel is a grind. It’s got a lot of payoffs – seeing great stuff, meeting great people and eating great food to name the obvious ones – but it’s also hard on the body. Sleeping in a new bed every 2.46 nights, eating poorly (either too much or too little, with vegetable thrown in about every 3 weeks…) staying up late, getting up early and exercising infrequently are physically tough, but the mental stuff may be harder. Deciding where to go, figuring out how to get there, finding somewhere to sleep, and deciphering every new language take a lot of time and energy. Add to that the fun but frustrating task of winnowing down the list of worthy sites, galleries, museums, parks, markets, churches, ruins and monuments to a manageable size and it all becomes a bit much after a while. Then again, it’s better than sitting at a desk all day. As I write this paragraph, for instance, my office is a picnic table in a small, shady park in Jaffa, Israel. I can see the Mediterranean over my shoulder, just past the almost-empty passion fruit slushy.

Yes you’re right, I do need a haircut.

Thoughts on food: There’s too much of it. Lots of days I feel like when I’m not eating I’m just killing time before I can eat again. Sometimes it’s because there are so many new and interesting things I’d like to try, and sometimes it’s because I just want to sit and have a break, and the easiest place to do that is often in a café or restaurant. Sometimes though, food becomes a reward or a comfort when I’m tired or lonely or fed up, which seems to happen quite often.

Thoughts on the stretchy nature of time: Often I find myself remembering some sight or activity or event as if it was in the dim reaches of the past and then am shocked to realize that hazy memory happened only a week ago. So much can happen in one day that experiences just pile up on top of each other until it all becomes a blur. In "normal life" things are mostly routine and go by without notice. I used to get up in the morning, have the same breakfast I had the day before, go to the same job, and run along the same streets. While the minutiae might have differed from day to day, it was all pretty familiar.

Now there is no real routine - every day is full of completely new experiences. Even boring things like doing laundry or buying groceries come with a whole layer of exotic or complicating factors that make them events by themselves. Every laundromat is different, and the instructions might be in 6 languages. Buying bananas in a grocery store requires finding a grocery store in the first place, and then deciphering whether the bananas are sold by the piece or by the kilo, and then figuring out if you weigh and tag the bananas yourself or if the cashier does it at the till or if there's a whole other person who does that. It can be either an adventure or a pain in the ass, depending on your mood and how much you just want a bloody banana and not a meaningful cross-cultural experience.

It’s easier if you can just smile at the scary man and point.

On an average day I get up, have an odd local breakfast at a hostel, find a place to buy some fruit or a snack, see one big sight, have an odd local lunch, and then walk around a market or interesting neighbourhood for the afternoon, so by 4 or 5 o'clock I'm pretty much wiped out. Add a run in there, or drinks with hashers or single-serving friends and then do that day after day after day. Then toss in a generous measure of packing, unpacking, navigating, getting lost, and sitting on trains, buses, boats and waiting room benches, and you can see why a day might feel like a week and a week like a month. Then again, it also seems like it’s going by very quickly. I can’t believe it’s half over.

Thoughts on the Toiletries Event Horizon: Somewhere in Italy (Sienna, I think) I reached what I have termed the Toiletries Event Horizon. This is the point at which none of the consumable toiletries product one started one’s trip with are left. I now have the much-commented-on toenail polish from London, Vaseline from Amsterdam, deodorant from France, hair gel from Lisbon, sunscreen from somewhere I can’t recall (though it looks sort of Spanish…), toothpaste from Siena, nasal spray from Greece, body butter (mango-mandarin) from Turkey, and Vitamin C from Israel. Who needs souvenirs?

Thoughts on Souvenirs: Speaking of souvenirs – I don’t really have any, other than the aforementioned 6,000 photos. Karen asked me the other day if I’ve bought anything for myself and I really haven’t, other than things I need to keep functioning. My stance thus far has been that I don’t have the room or the budget for collecting something from everywhere I go. But I have got a few new bits of clothing, and I bought a key-chain matrushka doll in Russia, but I think that’s it. I did send home some swag from the marathon, but perhaps I’ll consider picking up some other things if the mood strikes me. I came very close to buying a small olivewood backgammon set in the Arab quarter of old Jerusalem (the price started at 480 shekels and went down as low as 100 by the time is was disappearing down the street) but the logistics of carrying things around until I get a chance to mail them, and then packaging them, and then finding a post office and figuring out how it works… it’s like the banana-buying thing. Sometimes it’s just more than I feel like dealing with. Oh, wait. I am saving currency – I’m keeping one example of the smallest denomination note of each new currency I encounter. So far I’ve got English, Scottish and Northern Irish pounds, euros, rubles, kroner, Turkish lira and shekels. The shekels are easily the prettiest, though I can’t get over the idea that shekels are a real currency. No offense Israel, but I keep expecting to get my change in camels or sacks of grain.

Shekels!

Thoughts on declining standards of hygiene: He mentions it in "A Map for Saturday", and it's true. The longer you travel, the lower your standards of hygiene get. It’s not like there’s fuzz growing on my teeth or dirt of three continents in the bottom of my bag, but when I started out I was dutifully washing socks and underwear in the sink every couple of days. Now I employ the Sniff Test regularly.

Thoughts on clothing: My clothing is in a bit of a state. I mentioned the disastrous laundry experience in Athens, right? That left my short-sleeved shirt, beige pants and white socks a distinctly melancholy colour and gave the much-maligned Patagonia long-sleeved shirt weird perma-wrinkles that make me look like I wore it to bed. (I'd like to try ironing it at a low temp, but in my current life an iron and ironing board is about as rare as a two-headed unicorn, or a reliable map.) This is all to say that I'm looking and feeling a bit rough around the edges these days.

Thoughts on body image: Added to the scruffy clothing is the fact that I really have gained weight, I’m guessing 10-15 pounds. So you might understand why I feel like a pudgy slob a lot of the time. My pants are uncomfortably tight around the thighs and I really don’t need that belt that was so important a few months ago. I'm not saying I'm unrecognizable or anything, but I notice it and it bugs me. I sort of knew this would happen – food is a big part of traveling, and it’s really hard not to try every delectable local pastry or deep-fired whatever. Really though I think the biggest culprit is beer… the circumference of my thighs has risen in direct proportion with my consumption of beer.

Thoughts on Hostel living: It’s not so bad. There are good hostels and bad ones, and a few that stand out at either end of the spectrum. And while I like a private room every once in a while, hostels are great for meeting friendly English-speakers who can totally sympathize with the transient lifestyle. I need a few things to find a hostel tolerable, in descending order of importance they are:

1. Wifi, preferably free. It’s the 21st century people. No excuses. (Africa may be the exception to this…)
2. A bottom bunk. I’m not sure why, but I find top bunks logistically challenging and highly depressing. While I can get quite cozy in a bottom bunk, I always feel sort of precariously perched in a top bunk, and there’s never anywhere to put anything. I have been known to lay in wait when a roommate is vacating a bottom bunk so I can annex it before the door slams behind them. The only real downside is that most bunks are rickety metal things and when the person up top makes the slightest twitch it's magnified through the whole structure as they're performing excerpts from Riverdance.
   
3. A central location. I really don’t want to have to walk for an hour or catch an endless series of impenetrably labeled local buses to find a place. And I don’t want to have to conquer the public transit system to see the sights either.
4. A decent number of bathrooms and showers, not too far from the room. It’s also preferable if the showers include an area where you can dry off and change that’s private but not in the splash-zone, but that’s often a pipe dream. Increasingly I’m running into bathrooms where the whole room is the shower. There’s no shower door or curtain, and the whole place is a swamp when you’re done. Forget going in there in sock feet for about 6 hours.
5. Free breakfast. Even coffee, tea and toast can make a difference if you don’t feel like going out to forage in the big, bad world.
6. A kitchen. Restaurants are nice. Eating out is nice. But sometimes you just want some mashed potatoes.

Bed #71, 48 Hayarkon Hostel, Tel Aviv. Typical.

Thoughts on the kindness of strangers: When I was trying to decide what to call the blog, one of the names I considered was “The Kindness of Strangers”. And though I love (LOVE) Go See Run Eat Drink, in some ways TKoS might have been more appropriate. Everyone in my life right now is a stranger (with the exception of Freddie in Portugal), or at least they start out that way. Hashers, hostel roommates, bus drivers, tour guides, hotel staff, waiters, passers-by… I don’t know anyone. In some ways this is a bit liberating, but mostly it gets to be tiresome. Luckily, I’ve found that people are basically nice, and they’ll almost always help if they can. This has become increasingly important since I left the English-speaking world behind. (And again I have to say thank you to every non-native English speaker in the world for taking the time to learn my language so that I can stumble around almost anywhere and manage to acquire food, shelter and beer from day to day.)

Thoughts on gear: Rob - In answer to your question about the State of the Pack, it turns out that my estimate of the weight of my bag on the sweaty trek from hostel to station in Naples was a bit inflated. It weighed in at 15 kg when I checked in for the flight from Athens to Istanbul. So I exaggerated a bit, but it's still too heavy for carry-on and certainly uncomfortable to jog with. As for an update on gear, I’ve added a few boring things you haven’t heard about like some sweatpants, my Athens marathon t-shirt, and a new button-up short sleeved shirt (I’m sure it will appear in pictures soon). Also, I just bought myself a little halfway-done present, so welcome to the team cheap Swiss Army knife! (Also, fond farewells to Copenhagen exacto knife and Barcelona corkscrew….)

Thoughts on standout gear: The other thing Rob asked about was whether any particular bit of gear has distinguished itself either for it’s indispensability or it’s utter uselessness. Without bothering to comment on every item in the pack, here are a few things I’m glad I brought. (If you ask me next week, this will probably all be different…)

• Travel towel: Though I still miss the pleasing scrubby nubbliness of proper terrycloth towels and use them whenever they’re offered, the MSR travel towel has been solid. I use it for drying myself and for wringing out sink-washed laundry. And even when it’s wet from a morning shower it’s often dry enough to pack by the time I’m ready to leave.
• Retractasafe cable lock: Lots of hostels don’t have lockers in the rooms, so in these cases I just lock the zipper tabs of the Aeronaut together and then lock all that to an immovable object with the cable lock. It’s not a perfect solution, but I think it’s reasonable.
• Palm Centro: It’s my cell phone and text message device, notepad, alarm clock, watch, calendar, address book, currency converter, e-book reader,flashlight, packing list and back-up camera. I am never without it. Never.
• Silk Sleep Sheets: Whenever I fetch up at a bed that just looks too… experienced for me to be comfortable, out comes the silk sleep sack. It gets between me and the creepies, and it’s all silky and smooth!
• Folding scissors: Not glamorous, but really useful, and I’ve even taken them in my carry on bags with no hassle.
• Shower Caddy: Again, not sexy, but it’s much nicer to be able hang something on the shower head than have to lay it all on the floor of some grimy hostel bathroom.

On packing: Not surprisingly, packing is down to a science. I know that if I’m leaving a hostel I need to get up 1-1/2 hours before I want to walk out the door. 1/2 an hour to shower and clean up, 1/2 an hour for breakfast, and 1/2 an hour to pack. In reality, all these things are usually quicker than that, but I’d rather not be rushed. And though I’ve done it about 70 times already, I still check my list every time I pack. It’s just too easy to leave things behind so I am rigorous about the list. (Ah… lists. Is there nothing you can’t do?)

On Hashing: I think I will owe a favour to every hasher on the planet by the time this is all over. There have been personal pub crawls in London and Lisbon, borrowed camping gear in Scotland, last minute laundry in Dublin, impromptu night-time sightseeing and taxi services in Moscow, package deliveries in Amsterdam, and guided tours in Rome, all thanks to hashers. They’ve been there for me almost every step of the way. Every hash I’ve visited has welcomed me without question, given me beer, treated me with the respect a hasher deserves (none) and made me feel right at home. They are simply good people, and I hope that wherever I end up when this is all over I can repay the favour to any visiting hasher that crosses my path.

Me and Hash #5 – the Dublin House Harriers, in the bog! (And I'm so glad I finally found a reason to post this photo!)

*****

So now it’s just three days before I leave for Africa! I’m still sick, and I’m tired, and I need a haircut, but an old friend awaits me in Kampala, and I’m really looking forward to seeing him and relaxing for a bit before diving into Africa in earnest. Stay tuned, the weirdest is yet to come.

Firenze: It's not just tripe.

First of all, apologies for not posting in, oh, a week or so. What can I say? The muse was not with me, and the internet access was inconvenient, and there seemed to be better things to do. Wandering around Siena for instance, or getting to Rome. But let’s take a moment now and look back at Florence.

Florence had a lot to offer – much more than I had the time or inclination to partake in. But I did have a nice three and a half days, and I saw some of the biggies. (Actually, they call it Firenze in Italy, so that’s how I’ve been thinking about it. This helps with things like train schedules; it means you’re not standing around waiting for a train to Florence while six successive trains for Firenze speed off into the distance.)

Firenze, taken from Piazzale Michelangelo

The hostel in Florence, Ostello Archi Rossi, provided stiff competition for the Rossio Hostel in Lisbon. (Apparently any hostel with “Ross” in the name is a good bet.) Archi Rossi had bigger rooms, and more beds per room, but even though I shared with 8 other people the room was big enough that it didn’t feel crowded at all. And there was a free computer in the room and full bathroom as well. The hostel also had all the standard stuff that separates the great from the mediocre – free wifi, laundry machines, 24-hour front desk, helpful staff. And they offer two different free walking tours, and had an extensive collection of cheap beer, wine, and snacks for sale. Like Rossio, they had free hot breakfast with about 8 or 9 choices of what to have. Unlike Rossio, or anywhere else I’ve been, the also had free supper six nights a week. Yup, two free meals a day. And the meals were decent – your choice of about 4 different pastas and about 6 different pizzas and 3 or 4 different salads. And it was prepared on site, by actual people. Brilliant.

Archi Rossi Common area / cafeteria

As for Firenze – it’s positively crammed with galleries and churches and publicly displayed sculptures, largely thanks to the Medici family. The famed Uffizi Gallery, for instance, grew out of the private collection of the Medici family which was “bequeathed to Florence in 1743 by the last of the family, Anna Maria Ludovica, on the condition that it never leave the city.” (LP). Firenze is also home to the Duomo, and, of course, the most famous hunk of white marble ever set to with a hammer and chisel (and I’m using the word “hunk” here very conscious of the double entendre). And here’s something that surprised me about David – did you know he’s about sixteen feet tall? I did not. I really thought he was closer to life size. Nope. He’s a big boy.

David (photo thanks to Google Images, because the Accademia did not allow photos.

Oh, and thank you Michelangelo.)

Firenze also has a history of producing fine leather goods, pens and stationery. There are a lot of high-end shops selling the stuff, and every two-bit kisok in every square seems to sell cheap(ish) leather wallets and books and purses. I found a great little shop on a side street (right across from Dante’s church, if you’re looking). It was exactly as homey and cluttered and personal as I’d hoped it would be. I even did a bit of Christmas shopping.

Cluttered and perfect, with friendly English-speaking saleswoman, who loved my paper wallet (which is still going strong, thank you very much Larry).

My visit to the Uffizi was nice, though the collection only goes up to about the mid-18th century, which isn’t really my bag. I think I can safely say that after this trip is over I will never, in my life, need to see another Annunciation, or Adoration of the Magi/Shepherds, or Lamentation over the Body of Christ or (please, oh please spare me from) another Madonna and Child. The Ufizzi does have a load of nice sculpture though, and I did find “my” painting too. A very small, and probably underappreciated portrait of a monk, painted in the 1500 (!) by Pietro Perugino. It’s called “Portrait of Don Baldassare di Angelo”. (Though part of my affection for this piece may be attributed to the fact that I think it looks a lot like Patrick Stewart, for whom I have a passing fondness.)

No photo because the Uffizi doesn’t allow them, and the nice one I found on Google Images is copyrighted. Go google it yourself if you want a look. Or just imagine Patrick Stewart with a tonsure.

And, despite what the LP says, I found the size of the Uffizi quite manageable. It’s got fifty rooms (and they’re small) which is sort of titchy compared to somewhere like the Louvre or the Hermitage. And the audioguide was decent and had commentary for every room. I didn’t feel like I was racing through it, but I was still through in about two and a half hours.

I also met some good people at the hostel (well, on the free walking tours provided by the hostel). I had lunch on Friday and Saturday with walking tour people, and had an especially nice time with Narelle, who stars in my 3rd “Portrait of new friend at lunch” series. She had pizza, I had papardelle with wild boar sauce. And we shared a half bottle of Chianti.

Narelle!

Of course the Duomo is one of the must-see sights in Firenze and though the church itself did not take my breathe away, the dome is quite fantastic. It was designed by the famous rennaissance architect and engineer Filippo Brunelleschi, and is famous for being (I think) the first large dome ever built without supporting scaffolding underneath. So, like the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, it was art and engineering at the same time, and thus right up my alley. I climbed up with Matthias and Heather, two single-serving friends from the hostel, so I even got a nice pic of me at the top.

Firenze also has a great collection of Tower Houses. These are, as astute GSRED readers may already have guessed, houses that are built as towers. Apparently in the Middle Ages the streets of Firenze were not the festival of high-end designer stores, trattorias, and gelato shops that they are today. In fact, wealthy families used to build their houses like mini castles, and live up above the mayhem that reigned at street level. Eventually they even built bridges linking different towers. Though there used to be hundreds of these buildings, and though only about thirty still survive, that’s enough that you can glance down almost any street in the historic centre of the city. One of my walking tours even visited the inside of one of these tower houses that’s preserved as a (free!) museum. It was fantastic, and had original 14th century frescoes on the walls all over the place, just like wallpaper.

One of many tower houses

And, to top things off, a had a good long run in Firenze – 33.3km, in about 3 hours and 18 minutes. That was my last long run before the Athens marathon, which is looming so close now it seems ridiculous. I will toe the line at 9:00am, on Sunday, November 8th, and though I know I won’t be setting any new personal records at this race, I am pretty confident I’ll finish. I’m also pretty confident it won’t be pretty.

Oh, and I've already mentioned it, but the gelato in Firenze was really top-notch. I've been keeping track of what flavours I've tried since I got to Italy, and have hit upon the brilliant scheme of having half chocolate and half something-else each time I hit a new shop. This means I'm not deprived of my chocolate fix, but I still try new things too. And these are the kind of innovative travel tips that are making things tick along so smoothly here at Go See Run Eat Drink, where we are powered by beer and gelato in approximately equal quantities.

Portugal at Random

You know how this works by now: stuff about Portugal, lack of interest in or time for composing something coherent, read it anyway.

- Now you know the secret of the Solar do Vihno do Porto, so I’ll let you in on another cheapie alcohol experience in Lisbon – the VinoPortugal. This is a free wine-tasting bar at Plaça Commercial in Lisbon. It’s in a lot of guidebooks so it’s not exactly a secret, which is why I was surprised that it was completely empty when I went in. Here’s the deal: they feature 20 wines from each of three different regions of Portugal, rotating through the regions periodically, because there are a lot of distinct wine-producing areas in Portugal. You go in, tell them you want to do a tasting, and they let you pick two wines and give you a form to fill out about your opinions on everything from the design of the label to the taste to how much you’d pay for the bottle. Then they pour you a tasting size sample of your two wines, and you go off to sit and taste and make notes. (“Woody undertones with distinct notes of red fruit, pig ears and wet umbrella”… that kind of thing.). And then you hand in your notes and you get to pick two more wines for the same treatment. No catch, other than you’re limited to four tastes (Per day? Per week? I don’t know, but it would be fun to find out.)

Part of the selection at VinoPortugal

- Tricky restaurants! When you sit down at the table the waiter brings over a tasty assortment of things for you to munch on while you contemplate the menu and wait for your order. Sometimes it’s just a basket of bread and butter, but at one place Freddie and I went to it was bread, butter, tuna paste, sardine paste, olives, and a lovely round of soft local sheep’s cheese. Everything you touch goes on the bill, even if you only have a nibble. It’s not hugely expensive – bread or olives is usually under a euro, but the cheese is often €3-4. (And it’s not just Portugal. I’m writing this from Italy, and can report that a restaurant in Padua had the audacity to charge €1.50 for a package of six dry, factory-made breadsticks that were only slightly thicker than uncooked linguini and about as tasty.)

- The LP promised, and Portugal delivered. Those folks really like their pastries, as evidenced by the presence of a pastelaria approximately every 50 feet on every street in Portugal. As I mentioned earlier, the specialty of the place is the pastel de nata, a flaky pastry tart filled with custard. But these pastelaria have loads of other stuff. It was all I could do not to walk into every one I passed and try something new. Thankfully, I was uncharacteristically abstemious.

Pastel de nata and coffee. I should have had two... they’re small.

- When I was riding around with Freddie I found out about a clever system they have in Portugal for getting people to keep their speed down when driving. There are speed detectors in places that are connected to traffic lights. As long as your speed is below the limit, the light stays green. If you’re over the limit, the light turns red, forcing you not just to slow down, but stop completely. Freakin’ brilliant.

- The Hostel Report: I stayed at Rossio Hostel in Lisbon (recommended by my new best friend in Madrid, Christine) and turned out to be, by a significant margin, the best hostel I’ve stayed in so far. In fact, it was voted best small hostel in the world (2008) by the people who frequent Hostelworld.com, and I can see why. Here’s just a sampling of its charms, available for just €18 per night:

• Perfect location, just off Rossio Square
• Clean rooms with only 4 beds each
• Large, free lockers in the room, with locks provided
• Free towel and bed linen
• Clean, bright, cheery, well-designed bathrooms
• Sunny, pleasant common room
• Separate tv room with wide screen tv, and library of DVDs
• Lovely kitchen
• No lock-out
  
• Free wifi and free computer terminals
• Free hot breakfast – scrambled eggs and toast, or crepes, with coffee and tea, juice, and cereal. I’m not kidding, you came down in the morning and a happy woman asked what you wanted for breakfast, cooked it to order, and brought it to you at the dining table. It was like a dream.
• Laundry service: For €5 they would do a load of laundry for you – washed, dried and folded - and return it to you in a tidy little tote which would be waiting on your bunk by late afternoon.
• A cooler of water, soft drinks and beer, all available for €1 per can
• Really friendly and helpful reception staff. They could tell you how to get to any of the tourist spots, which bus to get to the airport, and what was playing for movie night.
• A handful of umbrellas by the door, just in case

Rossi Common Room, set up for serving breakfast

And just because you haven't seen me in a while, and because I got my first non-English haircut in Lisbon, here's me at the castle:

The Central, the Baronie, the Strowis and the Ashes

Apologies for the gap in posts, but I’m just finishing about five days off which I spent hanging around in Utrecht doing a whole lot of nothing. It was good, but I started to feel a bit like I’d lost my way, so it’s nice to be back on the road (or rails, to be more precise). As I write, I’m on a train to Rotterdam, to connect in Antwerp and Kortrijk, ending up in Ypres around 5:30pm (or Ieper, depending on whether you’re speaking Flemmish or French).

So really, what does one do in Utrecht for 5 days? In my case one bounces around among a few choices of accommodations, drinks coffee and beer, has a few runs around the canals, watches cricket, lays about, plays pool and backgammon and cribbage with other hostel-dwelling people, and generally unplugs for a while.

Utrecht – quite charming. It's got canals and bicycles and tourists and coffee shops so it's kind of like Baby Amsterdam.

And so what does one blog about after such a week? Well, since I gave so much space to Rucksack’s Hostel in Glasgow, I feel like I should really add a few words about the 3 different places I stayed in Utrecht, because they were, in each case, quite singular.

I started off at the Hostel Utrecht City Centre, which had such, err... unfavourable reviews it really needed to be investigated. It was from there that I Twittered: “I'm in Utrecht, at a hostel where the common room has 12 electric guitars, a drum kit, a grand piano and a banjo. It will be a long night.” There seemed to be a mediocre jam-session going on all the time, though the bongos and tambourine were left mostly untouched, and there was no accordion in evidence (Thank God for small mercies).

The Common Room (note banjo on the left)

The place really was interesting. Unlike anywhere I’ve ever been, the fridge and cupboards were full of food, and it was all included – you could basically graze your way through the day – as long as you were fond of bread, pasta, rice, eggs and cheese*. They laid out an impressive spread for breakfast, including hot food, and they encouraged you to make up sandwiches to take with you for the rest of the day. It really was a dream for the 20-something kids who were just there to smoke up. They could hang around, play guitar, get high, and eat whenever they got the munchies. It really felt like an unsupervised college dorm. All that atmosphere for just €22.00 per night.

On the downside, my bed was in a dorm with 19 other bunks, and attempting to sleep, wake and otherwise function in a room with 19 other people is just not fun. Also, the cleanliness of the place was - and you may detect a slight note of sarcasm here - not exactly sparkling. And the bathrooms were curiously under-lit, though given the general state of the place this may have been a wise decision on the part of management. It was like showering at dusk while wearing sunglasses. Despite the ample cheese supply (and a lovely cheese omelet I had quite late that night), it was time to move on the next day.

Unfortunately the other hostel in town was full, so I was forced to look further afield and was on the way to a quite expensive hotel farther out of town when the Hotel Baronie appeared. It was total crap, but it was cheap and private, and after bunking up with 19 others I was prepared to endure some squalor for the promise of a little privacy. And how could I not be charmed by the decor in the “foyer”? Mirrored tiles on the walls, and – I swear this is true – black light fixtures that made anything white glow in that weird purplish way. The less said about the room, the better**. Let’s just call it challengingly ugly and have a quick look at one corner, though the arresting grubbiness of the place just doesn't come through in photos:

Yes, that is dried up duct tape holding the doors closed on that stack on non-functional sheet-metal lockers. The Baronie made liberal use of sticky tape for function and decor – the entire bedside table was covered in brown packing tape, I presume as a quick way to cover the blood spatter.

However, as you can see, the room had a TV, so I got to watch a few movies, and some late-night re-runs of “The Simpsons”, and a weirdly large number of Dutch shampoo commercials. And it was quiet and dark and I got to sleep as much as I wanted. Still, two night was more than enough for the Baronie’s charms to wear thin.

Finally, I was able to move to the nice hostel in town – Strowis. It was completely booked when I first arrived in town, but space finally opened up just as the Baronie became intolerable, so I was happy to move. It turns out that Strowis might actually be the nicest hostel I’ve stayed in so far. The common room was large and bright and clean and had free wifi. There was coffee and tea and beer and wine and chocolate for sale all the time. The back garden had lots of places to sit, and a giant umbrella to shelter under in the rain. The bathrooms were spotless and plentiful, and the rooms were clean, airy and simply but pleasantly decorated.***

The Common Room at Strowis.

There was also a reasonably well-equipped kitchen, though it didn’t open until noon and was locked at 9:30pm on the dot. I suspect this was to encourage everyone to buy the €6.00 breakfast on offer, but I found it a bit ungenerous. Then again the breakfast was nice, so it wasn’t all bad. I can understand why the place was booked up – at only €16.50 for a dorm bed, and equipped as well as it was, it really was the nicest place I’ve been. It’s big enough to force them to be well-run, but small enough that it was still friendly, and with ample opportunity to meet other people and, say, play backgammon in the garden for hours on end.

And that was Utrecht – a string of different beds, all with a story. There were also a few runs in the afternoon heat, and there was a frustrating day of running around trying to figure out how to transfer the funds for my new computer to my personal assistant in the UK, and there was an evening spent playing pool in a Irish pub with one Brit, one Aussie, and one Dutchman, while watching Day 4 of The Ashes****. I’m pleased to report that England prevailed in a surprising and decisive victory, thus eliminating the need for a fifth day of play. The score was something like this:

“England made 792 over-under for Australia's one not out, despite Hussey’s century of 12 fours, 19 sixes and 3 Flemberton twelves. English bowlers managed 127 flap-casts on a complete match of 47, and Wallace marked his fourth spinnaker in international play (an all-England record for left-handed Welsh batsmen born in a month ending in ‘R’).”

Or something like that. Honestly, I almost understood the game for one brief, shining, beer-assisted moment in that pub, but it’s all gone now.

What I’m really pleased to report is that the visiting team of England-Canada bested the Aussie-Dutch local duo at 8-ball, with Canada potting the winner despite clamourous and unsporting attempts to throw the shooter off her game. Sorry Australia, it just wasn’t your day.

* There were, and I am not exaggerating here, two full shelves of the refrigerator absolutely crammed with packs of shredded cheese. I know I may be a bit liberal with the hyperbole on occasion, but in this case I would confidently say that there was about 20 pounds of cheese. There was so much of the stuff hanging about that the next morning when I was packing up to move on to a new place, I found melted cheese stuck to the sole of my shoe.

** The state of the sheets will have me in therapy at some point in the next twenty years, mark my words.

*** I had a room on the upper floor where there were big exposed wood beams angling up along the side wall. Pretty, but positioned in precisely the right spot for me to walk into them at full tilt. Naturally I did this at the first opportunity, and dealt myself a blow that left me whimpering with astonishment and checking to see if my brain was dripping out of my ears.

**** The importance of The Ashes to English and Australian cricket fans was explained to me like this: “Imagine that Canada played the United States in a big, important hockey tournament in 1882, and the Americans were so pleased when they won that they gathered up all the Canadian hockey sticks and burned them in triumph, and carted away the ashes of the burnt sticks and stuck them in a little trophy to parade around. Imagine how much the Canadians would want those ashes back the next time the two teams met." The back-and-forth battle for The Ashes goes deep into the soul English and Aussie cricket fans.

Stalag Russell Square

The Smart Russell Square hostel is my first hostel of the trip, so I have no idea how it stacks up. I'll just lay out some of my impressions:

Here's what my first room looked like. (I had to change rooms a couple days ago because I'd only booked for 3 nights at first. It just seemed simplest to stick here, so I had to move to another room for my second reservation.) The place has rooms with 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 14, 16, and 24-beds; I have opted for the Cadillac-priced 4-bed version . That means 2 sets of bunk beds, one very tiny sink (not pictured), and one inconveniently located power outlet.

One bunk in my 4-bed room costs £19.99 for weeknights, and £24.97 for weekends. The real barn-like rooms with 24 beds start as low as £7.99 per night.

You get issued two sheets and a pillowcase when you check in, and you return them when you check out. If you're lucky, you get a pillow that's not coated in vinyl.

As you can see, each bunk also has little privacy curtains that you can draw over the opening, which I like very much. This is the only place I found with this feature, and it's one of the reasons I chose it from among the zillions online.

There are 2 large built-in drawers under each set of bunks; they unlock with the same swipe-card that gets you into the dorms. They're big enough that I can put the whole Aeronaut in one, though most people have to leave their bags sitting out, just putting important or expensive stuff in the drawers. (One more reason why I am so cool for traveling with one small bag. Heh heh.) However, you have to pay an extra £1.50 per night to use a locker drawer. This was a surprise to me, since it doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere on the website. Still, I'm glad they're there, and use mine to full advantage.


The Common Room has a couple of TVs that are usually tuned to music videos or incomprehensible game shows, a pool table, vending machines, some couches, and a bunch of tables and chairs, mostly used for eating at. Right now I am just out of frame to the left of the pool table pictured below. Also, the room is NEVER as empty as in this picture. Right now I can count about 57 people, so it's kind of loud.


The hostel advertises free breakfast which is, technically, true. There's toast you prepare yourself in one of those neat conveyor-belt kind of industrial toasters. You can have your toast with jam or margarine, or jam and margarine. There's also an industrial-sized bin of corn flakes, and a big urn of hot water with tea bags and instant coffee. It's extremely basic, but it's free. I've been supplementing with fruit bought at a local convenience store, and that helps. There's also a communal kitchen where you could prepare actual meals, but I haven't bothered with that. There are enough cheap eats close by that it just hasn't seemed necessary.

The showers are exactly 5 flights of stairs down from my cell, in a room in the basement. It's a bit of an event getting down there, but the facilities are reasonable. The showers (and the taps in all the sinks) have those buttons you push that turn the water on for a preset period of time. In the shower, this is exactly long enough to let the water go from cold through a brief 1.2 second period of comfort, to a temperature that surely must correlate with a label somewhere reading "parboil". They remain on for an additional 6.3 seconds, and then shut off after a total of about 10 seconds of thermally-challenging bathing time. I'm not kidding - that water is HOT. I'm convinced they're trying to make Backpacker Soup in the sub-basement, in a twist on the Sweeney Todd story... "Worst Soup in London".

The first roommates I had were quite nice and friendly, and the ones in the new room were a trio of 18 year-old Aussie girls just here to party. They departed noisily at 5:30 this morning, and I've just inherited a similarly-minded trio of German girls who were busy applying makeup and spandex when I was up there a few minutes ago. They make me feel old, but also profoundly grateful that I'm doing this trip at 40 and not 20.

And that's a snapshot of life in the hostel. Let's just say that though I'm reluctant to leave London, I'm very excited about getting to Kent next week, where I'll be visiting family and staying in a single room at a real B&B!

Servas International

I'm going to crib directly from Wikipedia here for a bit, to explain what Servas is:

Servas International is a non-profit worldwide cooperative cultural exchange network bringing people together to build understanding, tolerance, mutual-respect, and world peace. It works toward world peace by encouraging individual person-to-person contacts. It operates through a network of Servas hosts around the world who are interested in opening their doors to travelers, and, 'on the other side of the coin', many open-minded travelers who want to get to know the heart of the countries they visit.

And as Servas themselves say:

Servas is divided into nine regions around the world, each with its own coordinator. Each Servas coordinator maintains a list of approved hosts and travelers for their region. Names and addresses of hosts appear in annually produced lists which are made available only to approved travelers.

Through Servas, travelers have opportunities to meet hosts, their families and friends, and join in their everyday life. Where convenient, hosts may offer two nights (or more) accommodation and invite travelers to share a meal.

Or to put it simply, the whole thing is basically pre-screened and therefore safe(ish) couch surfing. I get vetted by the organization here in Canada and become an approved traveler with an official letter of introduction. Hosts get vetted by their local organization and then appear on a list of approved hosts that I have access to as I travel. I look over the list before arriving in a new city and contact hosts who look interesting or appropriate, and they're free to say yes or no according to their own criteria or schedule or whim.

I was first exposed to Servas many many years ago in the dim past of 1988 when I spent a summer in London, England working in the stock room of a W. H. Smith bookstore during the day, and being a tourist on evenings and weekends. My much savvier traveling partner joined Servas before we left, so on a foray to the Continent we were able to secure about 4 nights of accommodations and a couple of meals while visiting Paris. Now that I'm planning my much longer trip, I think it makes sense to hook up with Servas again. Not only does it give me the chance to save a bit of money on accommodations, it's also a way to connect with real local people in the places I visit and get a far more intimate sense of the customs, foods, culture, language and life of the area.

I've already made contact with the local Winnipeg coordinators for Servas, and we've agreed to get together in January for the formal interview process that will get me on the approved travelers list, and give me access to the lists of approved hosts in each country. (Unless, of course, they find out about my secret fondness for petty thievery and kicking puppies, in which case all bets are off.)

I really don't think I'll want to arrange all my accommodations this way - I'm pretty sure that would be a lot of work, and I'm also pretty sure that there will be lots of times when I'll want to be more anonymous. Still, it's another tool in the arsenal, and I'm looking forward to deploying it on occasion.