Archive for the ‘RTW2009’ Category

Berlin Liebt Dich

Saturday, October 3rd, 2009

We don’t often visit the same place twice. Berlin was a fond memory of mine from 2004, and Jess hadn’t been there previously, so between a cheap BA flight and it being located in a sufficiently eastward direction it proved a logical next destination form London.

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There were other factors too – namely the lovely German girl Annika that we met in Salento, Colombia in July, who had recently moved to Berlin. She even offered us some couchspace to crash on, although Criagslist led us instead to a fantastic studio apartment rental. Once again I had the perfect environment for getting some work done (desk, fast WiFi, good coffee) and once again it amounted to very little.

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We were also still in possession of a postcard we had collected from the Galapagos Islands (Ecuador), addressed to a district in Berlin which, as it turned out, was just a couple of km from our apartment.

With Annika’s help, we hand delivered it to a slightly bewildered fellow one Sunday morning having dragged it personally through 9 cities in 5 countries in two months, which is historically how passing merchant sailors operated the mail system from “Post Office Bay” in the Galapagos.

Berlin was a place that, five years ago, I said I could certainly live in. Impressively, not only did I retain that impression, but Jess came away with the same feeling. The main caveat being of course that it would need to be over the summer not least so we could enjoy such bits of genius as the Badeschiff, a swimming pool & bar that sits mostly submerged in the river Spree:

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Berlin must be one of the most bicycle friendly cities in the world. We had a ball tripping around with Annika on bikes, which Berlin caters to with dedicated traffic lights, lanes, kerb-less footpaths, parking rails, train and tram carriage and the sheer volume of bike numbers such that they seem to dominate the city’s transport fabric.

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Melbournites would also be very satisfied with Berlin’s culinary and cafe culture. Plenty of good coffee around, and outdoor lounging, as well as the ubiquitous – and truly excellent – Doner Kebab which actually originated from Turkish immigrants in Germany rather than in Turkey as you might reasonably expect.

The German people must generally be very honest. The entire metro system operates on the honour system – there are no barriers or turnstiles to validate the tickets. We travelled for a week and our (very reasonably priced) tickets were not checked once. Same principle applies at the Winerei, where you drink as many glasses of wine as you like and pay whatever amount you consider fair.

Between the vast amounts of park & green space in the city, it’s remarkably low cost of living, strategic location (and 2 euro trips to and from the airport!) it seems likely that we’ll return for a longer stretch some day.

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Versailles and Western France

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

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We’re officially back on the euro-tourist circuit. It’s a bit of shock to be surrounded by hordes of massive-camera toting europeans prepared to pay 4€ for a shitty coffee. Also interesting that in many places the man-made beauty (grand buildngs, mostly) outshine the natural features. Up until Europe we generally found the reverse.

There’s not much point waxing lyrical about big ticket items like Versailles; wikipedia will do a much better job. But the weather played nice and gave us some great photos:

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And the Chateau:
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Dad in the abbey at Mont Saint-Michel:
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And my Facebook persona spotted on the coast in St-Malo…
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More dessert, French-stylee:
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Half Way Round

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

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Part two of the trip begins in London. The numbers thus far: 4 months, 11 countries, 17 flights, 59 different beers, 5200 photos.

We’ve also reached our most northerly point at 51 degrees, coming right after Rio our most southerly point at 22 degrees. We’re a little more than halfway round the globe now.

Arriving in the highly developed old world of Europe didn’t present too much contrast, coming as we had from a couple of the most developed cities in Latin America. The good fortune of a Business Class upgrade on British Airways courtesy of longtime friend of my fathers also helped ease us into the luxuries of home.

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Well, home away from home – we’ve stayed at my parents house in London for a couple of weeks now, and have really enjoyed the break from a traveling lifestyle. It feels a bit like cheating actually, to enjoy all the comforts of home (and then some!) when you’re midway through the epic adventure. But we’d be kidding ourselves to pretend we’d been especially roughing it anyway.

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I had been kidding myself about how much work I expected to get done whilst stationary in London. Despite some of the fastest Internet, best coffee and fewest distractions of the entire trip, my progress was decidedly lackluster.

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And seeing as I’m sitting in the back of Dad’s car somewhere in France writing this, and that we’ve booked up most of the rest of our days in London plus an onward flight (to Berlin) less than two weeks from today, not much is likely to get done. Oh well. Luckily some good people are on the case.

Time has once again run away from us, and brought the realization that 11 months isn’t actually all that much time in which to traipse around the planet. We’re continuing to ruthlessly cut items from the itinerary, most notably (and disappointingly) Spain & Morocco.

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Standing in the queue at Versailles yesterday I offered some small advice on French vocabulary in Spanish to a couple of Argentines, and lamented that we’ll miss the opportunity to make use of our relatively competent Spanish ability again on the trip.

We’ll be back from France for a final week in the UK, before continuing eastward to Berlin, and eventually southward onto, presumably, southern Europe and eventually the Middle East.

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(les escargots in Versaille. Every bit as good as they look)

Our initial, vague, and admittedly poorly considered plans were to buy a couple bicycles and cycle through a sizable swathe of Europe. On paper you’ll agree this is a particularly awesome idea. When it finally came down to working on the logistics I was forced to admit that we’ve arrived far too late in the season for this to make sense. Cycle touring Europe seems to be about Central Europe, long summer days, and well equipped camp sites. Or short loops in France.

I was pretty disappointed to arrive at this realization – cycling is one of the things I’m missing most whilst traveling. Plus we were kind of hoping to have free rein to eat as much as we liked for a couple of weeks ;-) Even our fairly zealous jogging schedule doesn’t afford that.

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Even without buying bikes, though, things are about to get a whole lot more expensive…

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(At the baths in.. Bath)

Rio de Janeiro

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

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There’s no doubt that Rio’s glory days are behind it. The short story is that in the 60s the capital of Brazil was moved from Rio to a planned city (named Brasilia), and the sudden absence of power and influence led to a decline that, combined with mass migration of rural poor to the urban outskirts (favelas), ended Rio’s days as the exotic holiday destination for Europe’s elite.

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The negatives notwithstanding, Rio remains a jaw-dropping place to arrive. The rock formations spanning both the coastline, and densely forested inland, topped with the perennially famous statue “Cristo Redentor” delivers arguably the most amazing urban setting of any city. It truly is “a cidade marvillhosa”.

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There’s only a handful of places where you can wander around thinking: “I’m in Rio!”. Well actually, there’s only one. Few cities have real brand recognition, places that are exciting simply in and of themselves; New York, London, Rio are some obvious examples.

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We had a nice taste of this when we shared a car from Ilha Grande back to Rio for our final day there, with an English couple who were arriving for the first time. Having spent over a week in Rio already, we weren’t enthused by the skyline shrouded in dreary cloud, but these two got quite excited at what they saw. The could see through the pollution, slums – urban reality – and were captured by the exotic flavors beneath.

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It’s disheartening that such a spectacular place can be ground into submission by traffic and congestion. Enormous multi lane highways, often duplicated in parallel, snake alongside Rio’s greatest seaside treasures.

Remarkably though, an extensive and high quality series of cycling infrastructure also skirts the beaches, and connects a number of attractive & tourist friendly places. We spent a great day exploring the extents of the bike paths, despite their proximity to the highways.

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I was struck at what a tough climate this place must have in summer; 30 degrees and sunburn was the order of this (mid winter) day. Humidity and extreme heat probably does detract from Rio’s identity as a cycle-friendly city. Although they have just launched a public bike system fittingly named “Samba”. Not available to non-Brazilian credit card holders, of course, much like their infuriating budget air carrier “Gol”.

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After a week and a half spent ticking most of the major tourist items (sadly missing out on the helicopter ride) we headed off to nearby Ilha Grande for another taste of tropical island paradise.

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Ilha Grande

The place certainly met the paradise expectation if a little lacking in the tropics this time of year. Despite spending most of the time indoors due to rain, I can confirm that this place is the most beautiful and well preserved inhabited island we’ve visited – and bear in mind we’ve visited 15 of them so far on this trip.

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Once of the stranger aspects of Ilha is that prices for food, lodging, activities are lower than on the mainland. There’s just two ferries per day traveling here, so it’s a legitimately remote location, and yet you don’t feel like you’re being gouged for the privilege. Unusual.

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In fact it’s the first island we’d really like to return to, owing to its abundance of forests, great beaches, hiking trails, 100% car free environment, attractive small scale development, reasonable prices, etc, etc. Not an easy place to get to from, well, just about anywhere in the world where most of the people reading this live.

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And so ended our final stop in the Americas. Brazil is a difficult place to summarize, not least because we experienced such a tiny fraction of it. Having been mostly at the end of our tether in Latin America we weren’t especially looking forward to Brazil, attendant as it is with language barriers and serious crime issues.

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In hindsight, though, we’re very glad for the experience. It offered a lot of contrast, great food (by the kilo or all you can eat ;-), beautiful people, fascinating language and culture, magic scenery and the exciting bustle of a country on a mission. I wonder how different it will look next time we go.

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Footnote: Turns out in Portuguese, the letter “r” has pronunciation equivalent to the letter “h” in English. Imagine discovering the correct pronunciation of such well known nouns as “Hio de Janeiro”, and the football player “Honaldo”.

Couchsurfing in São Paulo

Sunday, August 16th, 2009

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São Paulo was a shock to the senses in many ways. I’ve been looking forward to this city specifically because it’s a true mega-city with 11 million in the city proper and 20 million in the greater urban area.

That’s actually an odd thing for me to say; I’m really not particularly into big cities, per se, and we’ve spent swathes of this trip explicitly trying to avoid the major cities and stick the to natural beauty on offer.

I am, however, fascinated by the scale at which humans can engineer machines, buildings, communities. São Paulo delivers.

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Another shock was the language barrier. Thinking about it now, it’s actually been 4 years since I’ve wound up in a country being almost entirely unable to communicate verbally. In that time I’ve visited only Spanish speaking countries, and ones where English is, whilst not the native tongue, very widely spoken. Clearly I had been taking for granted just how much Spanish I had been using up until this point.

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We had six fantastic days in the city, and we owe the quality of the experience almost exclusively to our Couchsurfing hosts Virgilio and Patricia. If you haven’t heard of it, Couchsurfing is a social networking tool whose purpose is to connect fellow travel-junkies. It facilitates both a general cultural exchange, and also that of hosting “couchsurfers” at your place. We hosted a number of people at ours before we left Australia. Yes, complete strangers! It’s a thrill.

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Based on their recommendations we packed our days with gastronomic, scenic, musical and art / visual delights. Some of the greatest value of local recommendations is that you wind up with a very high success rate in your touristic endeavors, instead of wasting time on the inexplicably closed / uninteresting / tourist trappy things that often sap hours of the hard working traveler’s life.

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Combine that in this instance with Virgilio offering us the spare bedroom (complete with skyline views) in his lovely, enormous apartment in a very nice part of town (Lapa) and we had an incredible experience. You can read our Couchsurfing profile feedback for the full details on just how lovely these two people are ;-)

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Coming from Ecuador, Brazil comes across as a fully developed, modern and thoroughly rich country. Appearances are, of course, deceiving, particularly in the richest of urban areas of São Paulo. However I’ve been struck with a sense of just how dynamic an economy is powering this country right now.

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It really is night any day from where we’ve just come – everything works, from buses to espresso, people are quiet and industrious, the traffic, while intense, doesn’t seem to fill the city with choking smog.

Everything is manufactured locally, import tariffs are high, 93% of electricity generation is hydroelectric, the cars run on an 85% ethanol blend and increasingly the buses on bio-diesel.

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São Paulo is not a tourist destination, and the prices for many of the services tourists tend to need can be gob-smacking. In fact we never found a meal out to be cheaper than the equivalent in Melbourne – generally it was 10% – 50% more expensive. Prices were often rivaling London. This was, and indeed is, quite hard to figure out.

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A final note: The São Paulo metro system is yet another to put Melbourne to shame. We traveled in peak hour, and didn’t feel particularly crushed. Oh and watch out for the 28 new train stations and 107 new trains they’re rolling out by 2010!

In all we had a surprisingly good time in São Paulo, and had a timely re-introduction to big, highly developed city life.

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