Tag: Travel

Zone Of Silence

Travels

Back in 1985 when Longtime Buddy Trevor and I were flying from Johannesburg to the U.S. on our first trip together, I recall that as we took our seats (center two seats in the 6-across row), I looked around and saw that we were literally surrounded by families with babies — I mean, two babies in the row in front, three in the row behind, and two on each side.

The flight from JNB – JFK used to take about 17 hours, with a refueling stop in the Canary Islands en route.  I could see that a lengthy period of pain was shortly about to begin, so I called a flight attendant over, and very quietly asked if she could find another family with babies elsewhere on the plane, and see if we could swap seats with them.  She cast a glance around our seats, and a look of total sympathy came over her face.  “Give me a couple of minutes”, she said, and headed off.

She was true to her word.  “I found a couple with a baby who’ll swap — but they’re quite far back.  Would that be okay with you two?”

She hadn’t even finished the sentence when Trevor and I were standing up, bags at ready.  We even helped the couple with their baby stuff to our seats.

Nowadays, of course, airlines have made such an action almost impossible, what with fees and the deliberate splitting up of couples and families so that they can inflict “change fees” on us all, the bastards.

So I see this action as a step in the right direction:

The Turkish-Dutch airline Corendon Airlines is testing an “Only Adult” zone on flights between Amsterdam and Curaçao starting in November, according to a press release.

This area will be located at the front of the Airbus A350-900 aircraft and consists of nine XL seats with additional legroom and 93 standard seats.

I have no problem with people traveling with infants — hell, if they want to inflict that on themselves, then all power to ’em — and indeed, this is especially true when said families are bringing over Beloved Grandchildren to see Nana and Oupa.  Not that I’m biased, or anything.

But let’s be honest:  babies are noisy (not to say noisome) little beasts, and I can certainly sympathize with those who don’t want to endure a long-haul flight with their ears assaulted by wails which can easily drown out the sound of the jet engines.

And if it were that much of a problem for me (it isn’t really), I have no issue with an airline offering me an option to buy a little peace and quiet.

Afterthought:  I was amazed that “Amsterdam – Curaçao” even existed as a fight option, but a cursory glance showed that Curaçao is one of the several connecting points from Europe to the West Indies, most notably to Aruba (still a Dutch colony).

…not that I’m suggesting anything, of course.

Quelle Surprise II

Travels

You know you’ve pissed off the locals when you arrive at your holiday destination to see signs like this scattered all over the place:

And as the signs are printed, not handmade, enough of that sentiment exists that someone’s making money off it.  Whatever could have driven the locals to feel this way?  Well, here’s one possible reason:

A man shared his frustrations after being rejected three-times by restaurants with plenty of free tables in Barcelona. Resident (!) Eudald said: “On the first terrace that I got a table, a waiter quickly arrived and told me that it was reserved. It was not. As soon as I got up, a group of foreigners who were behind me sat down,” he explained.

“In the next one, they warned me that I would only have 20 minutes. I specified that I wanted to have dinner, but they insisted that I should do it within that time frame.”

Giving a Spaniard only 20 minutes to eat his meal… isn’t that against the law, Over There?  And don’t these guys know who keeps their doors open when the touristas  aren’t there?

Then you have this situation:

Ximo Lorenzo, the manager of the Clandesti bar in Valencia, said he’s tried other methods to stop customers from hanging around and not paying for drinks – but they failed. He told Levante-EMV: “This is a cheap place where we had board games for people to play, but I’ve seen people arrive at 6pm, stay until 12pm and only order a coke. That’s not profitable.”

At first, Lorenzo said board game players were required to order a drink every 40 minutes, but customers didn’t listen. He then limited glasses for shared drinks and took away the board games, which he said was a “shame”. He said: “In general, people do have common sense and order several drinks if they are there for a long time. But on the days when we brought live music, some people came in to see the concert and didn’t drink anything, so I had to put up a compulsory consumption sign.”

Nothing worse than a cheapskate tourist, I agree.  Even I, a devoted flaneur, will order either a meal, some pastries and/or several cups of coffee or aperitifs if I stay awhile.  However, ol’ Ximo could have the other kind of problem:

Boozy Brits vomit & brawl on streets of new party capital as
girls flash for free drinks & down 10 shots in 10 seconds

You have to read the whole story to get the full extent of the awfulness, but here are a couple of choice snippets:

British visitors Stacey, from Manchester, and Londoner Katy, had been left feeling a little disgusted after trying out the Anus Burner shot made up of tequila, orange juice and Tabasco.

And:

One person has a plastic phallus strapped to their head and if other punters can land three neon hoops over it, the whole bar gets a shot for free. If they fail, the reveler wearing the penis has to pay for everyone to get a shot.

Nothing says “class” like walking into a pub to find someone wearing a penis on their head — although I suspect the term “dickhead” slips easily off the tongue.

Oh well… scratch Split from the “Travel Bucket List” — or maybe I’d just go during late fall or winter, to avoid the wild animals (see above).

Why Indeed?

Celebrities, Travels

The question is asked:

Why DO US megastars Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and George Clooney prefer the UK to California?

The answer is actually quite simple, and it’s one of the reasons why I love going there too.

The pat answers, of course, are manifold — especially in the case of the above reptiles — and the first, obviously, is that anywhere in Yurp (including Britishland) is preferable to the shithole that California has become, especially when the said reptiles are also filthy rich and can buy things like “cottages” on the Thames River or castles in Devon;  and being all part of the same mutual admiration society, they can also count on their buddies to put them up for a day or week.

Then they can play the part of the “locals”, and go to quaint little pubs and tearooms and drink “pints” and drink PG Tips tea, go to Wimbledon and thus hobnob with all their precious little Hollywood buddies also visiting “for the occasion”.

And if the weather turns shitty (as it sometimes does in Britishland), they can simply jump into a first-class seat on an airliner and head off to, oh, Cannes, Como or Malibu.

The thing is, it’s very easy to fall in love with the U.K. under those circumstances.  All that British stuff and the matchless beauty of the countryside is like one big theme park, and it is just how it’s described:  charming, quaint and pretty.

And I haven’t even touched on the history, the kind one experiences when finding out that people have been worshipping in a little stone church since the 12th century, or stumbling across some broken clay pots from the Bronze Age in a field somewhere, or seeing the outline of a Roman road winding across an impossibly-green meadow where now a flock of snow-white sheep are grazing contentedly, safe from predators like lions, bears or even wolves.

It’s a gentle country, so unlike the harshness of the U.S. — and especially so when one is living in a wealthy cocoon like Clooney or Depp.  And it’s really easy to love a place when you’re not forced to live there as a native:  by family tradition, work or heritage.

If I sound familiar with the topic, it’s because I feel exactly the same way, having spent weeks and months living in Britishland, whether in Wiltshire at Mr. Free Market’s country house or The Englishman’s farm or in the latter’s cottage in an impossibly-beautiful Cornish seaside village.  After the first couple of weeks I was last there, I found myself browsing the real estate listings, wondering just how I could perhaps buy a little cottage in Devizes or Burton-on-Trent or Norton St. Philip or… or… or…

And if I had the wealth of the Cooneys, Depps, Cruises or their ilk, I would have done exactly what they have done.

Here’s the problem, though.  As I discovered, at some point you get sick of living in a foreign country, even one as pleasant as Britishland.  At some point, you get sick of the high prices (Brits are ripped off more than tourists in Manhattan, and it happens all the time);  sick of the tiny little roads that are so picturesque, and such a huge pain in the ass to use when you need to get somewhere in a hurry;  sick of the class- and wealth envy that you see every day on TV and hear in conversations in those quaint little pubs that serve delicious bitter ale, at £6 ($7.70) a pint.

You get sick of the stupid TV — oh, don’t get fooled by Downton Abbey or Midsomer Murders:  those are the very few jewels scattered around in the dreck and swill of Strictly Come Dancing, Love Island, TOWIE, the empty-headed morning TV hosts, and Piers Morgan.

And you get sick of how primitive the place is — a place which has simultaneously the best newspapers in the world and the worst Internet service (unless you live in London).   A place where you can wait a week for an electrician to come and fix your plug outlets, or where train service can be interrupted for days on end by chilly weather (!), not to mention the frequent strikes of the pampered working class.  Where a lowly bureaucrat can stop you putting up a privacy fence on your property, or after you’ve put it up, tell you to take it down because it’s six inches too high.

You’ll get sick of the petty crime that abounds everywhere — even in those postcard-pretty villages — and the indifference of the police to the problem.

And yes, you get sick of the weather, eventually.  Even those who prefer cooler temperatures and overcast skies will get sick of the ceaseless drizzle, the chill that seeps into your bones, and the inability of your clothes to ever dry out properly.  Like Seattle, only twenty degrees colder.  Why else would Britain boast the largest per-capita percentage of expats who move to Spain, Portugal, France and gawd help us Australia, in ever-increasing numbers?

None of this matters to our celebrity part-time Brits, because their careers take them off to film sets in California or Colorado where they can become, once again, Americans.

I still miss the place, terribly. I just don’t want to live there.

Natural Suckage

Bad News, Nature, Tragedy, Travels

Whenever some natural disaster strikes a place where I’ve been before, there’s always a hint of a personal tragedy for me.  (I don’t think I’m any different from most people, of course, but there it is.)

Such is the case with Ahrweiler in Germany, which lies on the banks of the Ahr River right before it empties into the Rhine at Remagen, and it’s a town that has many happy memories for me.

I remember that when I was there, about a dozen years ago, I thought that I could easily live in Ahrweiler — the town is gorgeous (although come the summer every year it floods, only with tourists), but the scenery everywhere you look is just spectacular.

The Romans thought so too:  the mountainsides are festooned with grapevines dating back to those days, and there’s a large Roman villa outside the town that was only discovered a year or so before I got there.

Some pics I took when I was there:

And the town is shot through with drainage canals and pipes: 

…which didn’t seem to help much.

One would think that Ahrweiler’s proximity to the Rhine outlet would spare the town from flooding — especially as the town itself is ringed by a wall dating back to medieval times or earlier:

…but that didn’t happen this time:

The people of Ahrweiler received no warning of the impending crashing waves.

Leonie from Ahrweiler had the terrifying experience of watching the water destroy the city.  At about 11pm Leonie and her family had gone to bed, but before falling asleep she was disturbed by loud noises outside their home.

The electricity had gone out and it was pitch black. The only way they could see was with candles and flashlights.

She looked outside to notice that there was a lot of water running down the street, but didn’t realise the severity of the situation until the water level started to rise to her doorstep.  She woke up her mother and grandfather and they started to bring food and water upstairs.  However, the nightmare had just begun – a massive wave burst through the front door, obliterating everything in its wake.

I should point out that Ahrweiler lies at the very foot of the Ahr Valley, which starts way up in the Eifel Mountains.  It’s a steep drop from up there to the Rhine Valley below:

I hurt when I think about it.

Another Useless Law

Drive Time, Gummint

I think I’m correct in saying that alone among the lower 48 states (i.e. the ones which have interstate highways running through them), Illinois is the only one which still stubbornly enforces a 55mph speed limit on its various highways.  It’s a huge PITA — like so many things about traveling through Illinois — and we all know that it’s not just Sammy Hagar who can’t drive at 55.

Anyway, the lower speed limit didn’t seem to help much (if at all) a couple days back:

A fiery 60-car pile-up happened late Monday morning on I-55 in central Illinois. The horrific wreck appears to have been caused by loose dirt and high winds. Normally, dust storms connote the deserts of the Southwest, but the combination of dry conditions, loose soil from freshly-plowed fields, and high, gusty winds resulted in extremely low visibility which led to multiple collisions along the stretch of interstate south of Springfield, Illinois.

I’ve driven through this kind of dust storm before — the ones I hit in southern Idaho, South Dakota and South Africa’s Orange Free State and Karoo desert come to mind — and it’s no small danger.  Typically, I’ve driven at 10mph or slower under those conditions, the problem being other drivers, who seem to have sooper-dooper x-ray vision and don’t have to slow down until they collide with your car’s rear end.

The same is true of snow storms, of course, the only difference being that snow doesn’t invade every crevice in your car and cause you to choke helplessly while peering through the suddenly-opaque windshield.  Then again, you’re unlikely to freeze to death in a sandstorm, so I guess it’s a crap shoot.