This afternoon (morning in Japan, evening back in Chicago – so, I’ve taken the average which puts me somewhere around 2pm) sees me sitting in a highly desirable business class seat – which I take pleasure in announcing I’ll be converting into a bed for the remainder of the journey – for the 13 hour ‘hop’ from Chicago to Tokyo. How I managed to secure this seat is quite another issue; basically I was running late to start with this morning. To compound the matter, Chicago’s transit authority has taken the liberty to partially close the main airport line and replace just that segment with shuttle buses, meaning in my case, a train, then shuttle bus, then train. It’s all a bit confusing. Anyway, it made me even later. Then, if I’m being honest, I never did bother to reconfirm the flight which my ticket goes to great lengths to more or less force you to do. Not that I was hugely concerned – who takes a gigantic flight that doesn’t arrive until the following afternoon on a Sunday, traditionally a pretty quiet day in the airline world?
The answer? Half of Chicago. The line-up was worrying. I decided a specific plan was required – namely, friendliness and gently reminding the guy that I was on a round the world ticket and had a frequent flier plan with BMI, their partners. At first he looked a bit nervous – before announcing the ‘unfortunate’ news with sincere regret;
‘It’s actually a very full…a few too many actually…flight today so I think I might have to put you in business class’. Oh no! What a nightmare! Since then I’ve been enjoying glasses of French wine, pan-fried beef tenderloin, fresh salmon – basically taking complete advantage of this ‘unfortunate’ turn of events. To say that the flight I dreaded the most for the whole trip has turned into a real pleasure would be a severe understatement. Anyway, I need to hurry along, I’m about to cross the date line into tomorrow and let’s just say there’s a ‘toasted pork cutlet’ sandwich on its way in the first 10 minutes of tomorrow, so onto Chicago…
How to enjoy Chicago at night - 1. Find empty space 2. Sit down & Look around 3. Enjoy!
Chicago itself is certainly every bit as manageable as I first suspected it might be. Although I was staying in Greektown, it was just a hop across a highway and then a river to be more or less right in the centre of things. However, the only issue as I quickly discovered, was the lack of any sort of air conditioning or ventilation in my hostel. The first night I took to the bed, it was absolutely steaming. The first two days in Chicago then were spent trying to alternate between air conditioned buildings, finding out about the place and trying to survive the unbearable heat in the hostel – the second night particularly, it seemed to be just burning no matter which way you turned in the bed. The possibility of a restful night’s sleep was further disrupted in no small part by the strange inhabitants of the room. Firstly, there was a man right above me who never seemed to be seen by anyone, yet left all his personal belongings that one would normally hide, in full view on his bed – passport, laptop, all not a concern for this guy! Then there was a Brazilian man who seemed to have a rather bizarre liking for sitting in the room listening to his mp3 player (just loud enough that everyone else got a taste of the song) without a shirt – in the dark. I definitely was not the only one locking my backpack at night.
Things got desperate as funds ran out and the bread clearly wasn't helping...
Finally, an escape route to a nicer room came along on Wednesday when Anna finally flew into Chicago. Having not seen her since the morning that crazy old woman nearly tried to execute citizen’s arrest on me in Frankfurt, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t nice to see her. That evening however, both feeling extremely poor and lacking money having paid for the hostel bill (although some could correctly argue that I more or less recouped this money through my borderline destruction of the room), we elected to just buy bread and a huge piece of watermelon. Now, I still don’t know what was up with the bread or whether we just have touchy digestive systems but having each consumed a large amount of the bread we headed out. I felt full. Very, very full. Certainly much more significantly full than I should have done for the amount of food consumed. Then Anna felt the same. We eventually decided that in fact, the bread was probably that type that expands after being eaten – I don’t know what it was, all I know is I thought I never wanted to eat bread again.
Fireworks at Navy Pier...
The fireworks at Navy Pier were spectacular – certainly, having hung around for nearly 2 hours to see them, they’d have wanted to have been. They certainly didn’t disappoint however – the show lasted a good 10 to 15 minutes and set us up nicely for Anna’s time in Chi-town! Being in such high spirits, you can imagine my almost tear-jerking sadness to discover that our private room also had no air conditioning and in fact, as it didn’t open out onto the street like my previous room, was even hotter than before making sleep more and more difficult. By this stage however, I was becoming slowly more concerned, along with two Dutch guys I met, that in fact the owner of our hostel was involved in the mafia. He continually seemed to always be in the place you’d least expect like standing on the street when you were coming home late or swarming around your table at breakfast and kept telling people during breakfasts to ‘Stay safe’ or ‘See you tomorrow guys, hasta manana’ or in my particular case; ‘Take care out there guy’. I kind of got this whole mafia vibe – either that or he thought Chicago was some combat zone that nobody understood the dangers of.
We spent a lot of our time in Millennium Park and Grant Park, home to the Buckingham Fountain, which plays this pleasant light and water show on the hour from dusk onwards for about 20 minutes. The only downside was that there was this strange waterfall that basically showed someone’s face for a bit and then they’d get sick – and this jet of water would actually emanate from their mouths onto people below. I’m not too sure what that was about but it was a bit gross in spite of the locals seeming to enjoy it. On the same day, we also made it as far as a little beach just past Navy Pier – people seemed to be out in their millions and the size of the beach coupled with the number of people trying to get space gave it this whole Sandycove feel to it, it’d have to be said.
From there on in, the clouds moved in and thunderstorms came down on top of us. Needless to say, I’d left my jeans that I’d washed (in the shower with me one morning, to save money) hanging out the window. Great. We finished up the trip with a last night at Navy Pier and a proper dinner – the first either of us had really had in quite a few days! It was with sadness then that I dropped Anna out to the airport on Saturday – it’s strange, not only is it sad going back to a big room by yourself (especially one that’s steaming hot), but also that it could be the last actual meet-up I might have with anyone from Ireland until I get back.
Buckingham Fountain performs one of its 'shows'...
Chicago’s a cool place – there’s no need if you’re living anywhere near downtown to really use the transit and if you can get over it being one of the more expensive US cities, there’s a lot of varied things to do – beach, the parks, the sights. Unlike New York, it doesn’t seem to depend on its fame and seems much happier to see visitors. It doesn’t sell its history or its landmarks and then try and rob people to see and get close to them; if you want to go see Chicago’s landmarks, they’re right there; but if you don’t, it’s still a good place to just relax. The streets aren’t anywhere near as crowded as New York and people are far more eager to help out.
For now however, I’m sitting in my airline-issued dressing gown and slippers (everyone’s wearing them even those who are clearly not planning to sleep so I decided I better as well) and getting a hunger on me that could only be cured by the sandwich (more like a full meal) I’m now trying to balance on my knee while writing…
Until next time!
As I write this evening, from the aptly-named ‘windy city’ Chicago, I’m surrounded by a bunch of angry Spaniards desperately trying to connect their laptops simultaneously to the hostels wireless network. This time last night I would have been sitting on a train struggling to stay awake amid the strangely fatigue-inducing sway of the train, steaming along from New York to make it to Chicago for about 10-ish this morning – a fairly serious journey of 19 hours. The night before that Ryan and I were sitting in a bar in New York drinking pints and discussing how exactly we’d managed to book a hostel in Harlem, the shall we say, not entirely desirable area of town. What a difference a few days make. Things have seriously started picking up in terms of the pace of the trip – I’ve suddenly noticed I’m packing my bag every second day seemingly (not that it’s at all bothering). Last night, some extremely religious woman was trying to impose her beliefs on me by force – this evening, I’m typing this while simultaneously trying to hold a conversation with a French man about the same age as myself here on an internship with a company for 2 months just trying to settle in and figure out where to live.
Toronto, as seen (finally) from the islands...
Toronto as always, was good. For a change of pace, I managed to avoid the ‘hilarious’ Canadians you might remember me commenting on back on January (they thought it was hilarious that I turned up looking for a boat to the Toronto islands when the lake was frozen over) and actually got out to the islands, complete with bike. Really, it was probably just as well that I didn’t make it until now – they really are spectacular and whether it is the case or not, the whole area has this strange sort of Dalkey vibe to it except minus the Starbucks and the overpriced restaurants. The rest of the time in Toronto was spent mostly catching up with people and of course, delving into our usual XL sized pizza that has become a staple part of every trip to Toronto. All in all, it was good, if a little too quick to properly manage to catch up with everyone.
Andy Mac gets in touch with nature...
Onto the plane then to speed down to New York – I hate this particular expression but ‘touch wood’ I’ve had very successful flights in terms of timeliness so far and I hope it continues, although I’m sure it’s due to come to an end very shortly. The plane was more or less empty and for some reason, they still put on the in-flight entertainment even though in fact it only lasted about 40 minutes before having to be turned off due to the imminent touchdown. Don’t really know what that was about. New York is a really strange place – in my case I took the Airtrain to Jamaica and the Long Island Rail Road from there. It actually stays above ground for a long time, disappears underground and when it finally comes to a stop and you end up scaling the 3 or 4 escalators required to get to ground level, it all can become very quickly disorienting. Everywhere I looked there were huge buildings, people begging (and by begging, I really mean borderline trying to mug) and millions of people walking in front, behind, beside and nearly on top of you.
NYC - Why can't you be friendlier?
It’s not that it’s not a nice place, I just found it a bit much. New York’s a pretty cool city, but the problem is they seem to be 100% aware of this and have so many visitors that they don’t really care for helping them. I get it – it’s a bit like those Americans all swarming off the coaches on Nassau St. back at home and clogging the whole area up in nanoseconds and then trying to take pictures of anything, even me. But their subway system is strangely complex – it’s very old, not air conditioned in the stations, there seemed to be at least one beggar per train and the subway station attendants were bordering on the obnoxious. The problem is, while we complain about tourists on Nassau St. (although it could be just me), we also know that they’re there most likely in part due to the various concerted efforts made by Bord Failte. New York on the other hand doesn’t put any effort into attracting visitors and then proceeds (it seems to me anyway) to treat them like dirt when they get there. But it’s ok because they know and most of us know that it’s not going to stem the steady flow of tourists to the place whereas I know (much to my delight) that a couple of choice statements on Nassau St. would certainly stem the tide into Ireland.
All Aboard for DVT on the 20-Hour Lake Shore Limited...
Before I knew it though, Sunday had rolled around and it was time to get on Amtrak 49 ‘Lake Shore Limited’. The brochure assured me of incredible sights and beautiful views. Just two things happened very early on that threatened me ever getting to see these beautiful views – first off, the woman beside me was very friendly. Very friendly. Her diary had a different quote from the bible everyday. Then her pen she used to sign her ticket said something about sinners on it. Now, while I’ve no major issue with people into religion, experience has taught me that Americans feel it important to not only share their thoughts on religion, but to also try and ram it down your throat. Secondly, the train was probably only about 10 minutes out of the station when I began to feel really very tired – I don’t know how, but it seemed to be being exaggerated about 30 times by the motion of the train. Needless to say, the woman beside me eventually got cracking with the old bible-speak as I’d expected and the combination of the cradle-like swaying of the train and various quotes from the bible and how she had been living a sinful life meant that very quickly 4pm somehow seemed to turn to 7pm. When I finally came to my senses again, the other one had drifted off. But she quickly awoke and began her line of questioning with ‘So you haven’t really got in touch with your spiritual side?’. The longer this went on, the only side I was slowly getting in touch with was the side of the train and before long I had a look at my watch and it was now about 10pm. I don’t know what was happening, I just couldn’t stay awake!
Sometime around 10am then, we finally pulled in, by which stage my legs felt like they were about to drop off. So far, Chicago’s looking very good – a lot more manageable than New York and the friendliness so far is actually making me curious it’s such a dramatic change from NYC! So that’s it for now then, hopefully next time I’ll have something on Chicago, in the meantime I’m going to try and partake in the conversation with the Spaniards since they’re getting stereotypically loud…
From when I wrote last time, the plane continued onwards, passing just south of Greenland before beginning its descent just a little after Montreal. I don’t know what’s gotten into Air Canada but they were in some monster rush to get us down on time, and that’s exactly what happened – about an hour earlier than scheduled, we were on the ground and in my case at least, planning what to say to immigration to pacify being here twice in the space of 6 months. It went pretty well and in no time at all I was standing in The Beer Store selecting a crate that would tie us through until I left Ottawa! As always, Kirk was a fantastic host and got the pizza in before I even knew I was hungry – on a different note, he’s releasing a CD and you can find him by Clicking Here!
The Lovely Locks!
It always amazes me how different Ottawa looks in winter and then in summer. It’s such a small place but really pretty beautiful – certainly, as capital cities go, I don’t know if it really comes across as one. It seems more like a town just situated on a major road to somewhere else. But it’s pretty nice and there always seems to be something new to see; this time, it was the locks. We wandered around the buildings of parliament and down some steps and it was amazing; within 5 minutes, we were standing down at the locks of the Rideau Canal, looking out to the ‘Northside’ (Hull). Aside from that, there was also something new to drink and just another 10 minutes on from that, we were sitting in Blue Cactus having a ‘Cactus’ sized beverage, which was pretty impressive! Oh yes!
The rest of the time in Ottawa was taken up alternating between more sightseeing and going out of a night – we went and saw an incredibly bad film, ‘Troll 2′ on Saturday night. Otherwise though, Ottawa seems much the same as it always does – so crime seems to be maybe a little up, but the buses are still every bit as complicated and tourist-unfriendly as I always found them, while still being ruthlessly efficient and in plentiful supply – just look at the picture to the lower right! Monday morning then saw me heading to the bus stop (after I collected my laundry en-route!) and making a decision that would come back to plague me in a major way later on. I grabbed a slice of pizza, coke and pack of crisps for $5 about an hour before the bus ride and feeling a bit full, elected not to buy any more food for the bus journey. Poor choice. I got on the bus and got comfy for the 5 hour journey down to Toronto. As we sped along, I began to feel a tiny bit hungry after the first hour and a half, pushing on two hours. Not to worry, it wasn’t too bad.
No problems catching a bus in Ottawa...
However, at some point in the journey we made a rest stop, during which everyone stormed off the bus, purchased some highly overpriced (and when I say highly overpriced, I mean too expensive for me to be able to buy) food and got back on. It looked delicious. It smelled delicious. It probably tasted delicious. I, on the other hand, had half a packet of crisps to last the next 2.5 hours down to Toronto. It would be safe to say that by the time I reached here, I was absolutely starving. I was actually starting to debate whether the carpet they upholster coach seats with had any nutritional properties. I got off the bus and straight into the arms of the nearest homeless man who was stopping everyone one by one off the bus and asking if they’d any money they’d like to hand over. I actually said no sorry, but in hindsight should have just explained that a) I’d just gone 7 hours without food, quite an amazing feat in my case and b) the others definitely had lots of money they could give away because they’d all been able to afford those sandwiches at the rest stop.
So here I am in Toronto! I’m leaving for NYC tomorrow but hopefully during that flight will get time to write about Toronto and how it’s been going (it’s been very good so far though, thanks for asking) and will post that when I get to New York!
In the meantime, it’s time to go look for more $5 pizza…
According to my little seatback screen, I’m writing this from somewhere more towards the American side of the Atlantic, than the European, while speeding along nicely at about 578mph – the beer tastes pretty good too. Things went a little pear-shaped this morning. To start with, it was up at 7am to see Anna off the premises; due to the borderline OCD nature of her fellow apartment residents, every door has to be locked upon leaving (and they don’t lock themselves), which since there was two of us meant I had to accompany her off the building and then go back in, in pyjamas, and lock all the doors behind me on the way back to bed. So we were standing there, saying goodbye’s when out came some impeccably attired businessman, pausing only to wish us a good morning as I stood there like a complete tosser in my pyjamas. Great start. Back to bed then, where unfortunately I overslept slightly due to…well, personal laziness if we’re being honest. I only overslept by about 15 minutes but that would turn into more like a 45 minute delay later on. So, packing done, I attempted to leave the apartment block. Only problem was, as I got down to the front gate (which, like everything else, has to be locked after you and warns of penalties if not), some old biddy was standing on the other side also with key in hand. I was obviously in a rush so I lashed open the gate – wrong move!
The old Opera House...and boy was my visit to Frankfurt not over until the fat lady sung...
Old biddy, handbag at the ready for a duel, proceeded to start lecturing me in German about who I was, what apartment I was in, where I was from, and from what I could ascertain – try and ensure that I was familiar with the OCD nature of the residents and knew to lock all doors, gates and letterboxes after me. At first, it seemed a rather pleasant encounter but after 20 minutes of still being lectured and under fear that she was trying to actually execute an OAP’s citizens arrest, things were getting kind of exhausting and a bit annoying. So after listening to one more sentence (or paragraph, who knows), I concluded with ‘OK’ and thanked her in German for her sage advice and walked around her and out the gate. And no, I didn’t lock it. Onto the S-Bahn then and out to the airport, thanking myself profusely during the journey for having checked-in for the flight on the internet last night, thereby requiring me only to present myself at the security line and the plane itself. So I did just that and proceeded to the ‘McCafe’, where I was sort of queue-barged by a family of about 12 Turkish people – it turns out after all of Anna’s warnings, maybe they are slightly annoying and ignorant. Who knew?
The flight has been smooth so far – I remember taking an Air Canada flight from London to Ottawa a number of years ago and the plane was clearly old, the seats worn, the staff looking ‘tired’ if that makes any sense and the whole thing was just a bit of a pain. Although the plane this time is the same old thing, it seems to have been done up in the years between and now boasts some sort of ‘mood lighting’ to match the day outside – right now for example, the inside of the plane kind of looks like what I imagine the inside of a brothel to look like (which also begs the question of what kind of ‘day outside’ its basing itself on), low shades of blue and purple. The food wasn’t bad, although I’m now starving but I guess that’s something I need to get used to anyway! So what about the rest of Frankfurt?
What I thought was actually the ECB...it wasn't...
Well Tuesday night, in complete defiance of the scorching weather outside, Anna’s cold just got worse and worse until she was sniffling and coughing like nothing else! We went back out after our rest, although somehow, while looking for the Rhine, which we’d managed to find and hang out at for hours just a few hours before, we could not now find it and ended up in some kind of sketch area of town. Never mind, a few more poorly thought-out turns later and we managed to find it, the Turnfest and an ice cream stall – so everything back on track then! Wednesday then, I was determined to finally catch a rest having had no sleep in excess of about 7 hours since the start of the college exams. Despite the best intentions to ‘eat healthy’, breakfast consisted of a huge bar of Cadbury’s dairy milk and half a pack of pringles! We checked out the European Central Bank, what I thought was the European Central Bank (Just because it was a big building with a huge € symbol outside it), and the observation town (or ‘Helaba’ as I kept calling it, owing to the massive name sign on the side of the building). During the course of trying to descend from the observation tower, I decided it best not to hold the lift for anyone and pressed the close door button. But then I stopped, as I saw someone approaching. Anna however, decided to be generous and hold the door open and frantically pressed the button – the close door button, unfortunately – so just as the guy and his family made a beeline for the lift, BING, the doors closed pretty much in his face. Considering the intended act of generosity, it was pretty hilarious!
Andy Mac takes in the sights of the Helaba building...
After that, we found the ‘Fessgass Fest’, a big food and drink festival lining one of the streets (see, Frankfurt ALWAYS has something happening) and decided to buy an Apfelwein each. One really would have more than covered it. I actually had one a few years back and good sense should’ve reminded me of that unfortunate incident. But it didn’t. So we sat down and within nanoseconds had quickly realised that a) Apfelwein is NOT like cider and b) is actually not nice, full stop. It’s flat and extremely sweet and bitter – kind of like if you open a Bulmers and leave it for an hour before taking a sip. Gross. For dinner then, to celebrate Anna finally getting her job sorted and me heading out of Europe the following day, we snazzed it up a little and went to the local steakhouse for some proper food. The food, although the wait was bordering on the ridiculous, was delicious when it finally made it to the table. We rounded the evening off with a trip to a cafe for a quick beer before turning in! So that was Frankfurt – it’s definitely a special place and perhaps some people hate it because it’s just so organised, quite expensive and perhaps difficult to navigate if you’re not German (or not trying hard enough) but with at least 3 festivals coming up in the next 3 weeks, bargains to be found when you go looking and a city teeming with skyscrapers, modernity and convenience, I don’t know what else you could want!
The ICE readies itself for a high-speed journey to Frankfurt...
After a less than overwhelming time in Cologne, Monday finally rolled around and it was definitely time to escape. We had our tickets for the ICE, Germany’s answer to France’s high-speed train service the TGV, and by around half 7 we were up and packing at a speed normally reserved for only the biggest dumps. Perhaps Cologne kind of falls into that category – after two visits, I can definitively say I just can’t take to it, no matter what! The beer’s nice, but that’s really as far as it goes. So it was time to leave. But not before taking the time to wake the other occupants of our lengthy office-corridor that served as our accommodation. Having successfully completed that, we legged it for the 18 tram (and associated trouble-making vending machines), only to find that, surprise, surprise – in complete defiance of the normal unspoken German rules, the tram was running late and did what Irish Rail do best; showed an approaching tram within 3 minutes, only for it to actually take around 7 minutes. When it finally did arrive, it continued its reign of terror on the great commuting public of Cologne by having the ticket machines on-board out of service, leaving us to take our chances with the rather ’strict’ (to put it mildly) ticket inspectors. Oh dear.
Frankfurt - Hectic, but surprisingly good fun!
Anyway, we finally made it to the ICE unscathed and without facing a huge penalty. I took the TGV years ago when I was a young lad and in spite of being the fastest passenger train in the world (at the time anyway), I was less than impressed and felt the whole thing was a bit overblown. The ICE, on the other hand, definitely is overblown (it seems to border on being considered as much an icon in that Germany as the harp is to Ireland), but it has the speed to match and within significantly less than an hour and a half, we were steaming into Frankfurt. The side effect however of this great speed was my ears were popping like absolute madness and an occasional feeling of flying almost, from the acceleration and speed around corners. Considering I was also told that tickets can range from the mediocre to the absolute outrageous (i.e. Up to and including €100), I was further satisfied to know that other train users were probably subsidising my high-speed journey, having only personally paid €20!
Frankfurt's old town - Yep, pretty traditional...
After all this, we were in the apartment in Frankfurt and ready to head back out again by about half 12 in the afternoon! We ended up just going around the block, only to find that the bank holiday had resulted in most shops being closed – not much use on an empty stomach with no food in the apartment. So we set off in search of the city centre, doing a full block of the locale before finally finding a U-Bahn station. Just as we were beginning problem #2 with German ticket vending machines, some couple came over and told us to go find an S and U-Bahn station. We finally found it, spent a further 20 minutes deciding how to get the ticket machine to sell us a ticket, and finally made it back to the city centre. It turns out that right now, there’s actually something called the ‘turnfest’ (or like…gym/athletics festival) on all over the city and this means there’s ALWAYS something to do – there are beer and bratwurst stands literally everywhere you go and combined with the great weather, has resulted in major crowds and a really good time to be had here! Then, to make the deal sweeter, we walked to the apartment a different way, only to discover that the S & U-Bahn station that initially required a full circle of the block, is actually only about 400m away in a more or less straight-line! Perfect!
The Rhine just before the Turnfest got going...
Today then, we hit the Rhine river early this morning and took in the sights of the skyscrapers and saw one of the many stages for the Turnfest come to life, as the performers began another day of the festival. We also headed on down to the old part of the town, which is so nice and so clearly traditional German. It’s also right beside the main cathedral, St. Bartholomeu’s, which although not as big as Cologne’s cathedral, is every bit as beautiful. After all that early morning sightseeing, it was off for a bratwurst (and a beer), which pretty much takes me to now – the rest of the day involves having a relax (our feet are falling off us) and maybe trying to locate some free wireless internet!
*Next time then, we’re going to cover the last day or two of Frankfurt and getting en-route to Ottawa on the first big flight…*
So, after all the planning and effort that went into getting me, quite literally ‘off the ground’, we finally made it onto the plane for Cologne yesterday morning. The journey was pretty quick and I took the liberty of enjoying one of Cologne’s world-famous Kolsch beers during the flight. For some reason, Germanwings have this strange pricing policy that sometimes means a beer costs the same as a can of coke if you pick the right value meal. It’s very bizarre. Anyway having taken all the beer on-board, we literally rocked and bumped the rest of the way into the city, passing straight overhead and consequently, leading to some beautiful views. Cologne airport however, is not how I remember and somehow in the intervening years since I was last there, they’ve succeeded in making it worse. If I knew however that this would be a sign of things to come downtown, I might well have elected to head straight for the ICE to Frankfurt.
A Pretty amazing picture of Cologne is offered through the turbulence...
Into town then, we arrived to Hennings place, dropped our gear and legged it for the local park, where pretty much the whole of Cologne (and his wife…or being one of Europe’s major gay outposts, his boyfriend) were out having a beer, having a barbecue or whatever else you do in Germany on a stunningly hot day. It was pretty much beautiful. Myself and Anna went to a cocktail bar later for one or two before returning home for sleep.
Today then, my feet are falling off me. We rose pretty early and went straight for town. There’s a bit of an issue with the local tram vending machines as illustrated in the portrait of me kicking one below. They seem, in spite of being vending machines, to only accept coins or ‘AutoCash’ ATM cards, which of course only Germans seem to have, thus pretty much making them quite impossible for anyone not familiar with Cologne to use. Even Anna, a German, had has extreme difficulty trying to come to terms with these machines. They don’t have destinations – instead, a bit like Dublin Bus, you sort of just have to know how much it is to go where you want to go. We ended up getting on and off the train a few times before finally settling on tier price ‘1B’ and hoping that’d do the job.
We went to the chocolate museum, which was both delicious and interesting. It was pretty cheap too, only about a fiver and if you were scabby enough, like myself, there was the possibility of going round and round the tasting stand and taking a stick and dipping into the chocolate fountain – again, and again, and again, with the repeat visits purely dependent on the individuals scabbiness. After that, we met with Anna’s friend, Anja and her boyfriend (while I, getting a taste of things to come, secretly starved from not having had any food all day) and went into the cathedral, the third tallest in the world I’m informed. Of course, Brett, Chris and myself were in it a number of years back but it’s still always a joy to see – and unlike the rest of Cologne, didn’t require a degree to get into. So that brings us to now – by the looks of it, dinner will be consisting of a mixture of chocolate and crisps I brought from Ireland and some bread if I can nick it secretly in the next 5 minutes while making it look like I’m just looking for something of mine…
So here we go, I’m going to go look for my ‘USB key’…
Cheers!
*In the time since this was written, I was up early today and on the ICE to Frankfurt, which, if the internet becomes slightly easier to find, will be the topic of tomorrow’s writings…*
Andy Mac shows distinct disrespect for the KVB vending machine...
‘Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.’ – Mark Twain
Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's off to The Bahn we go...
After what feels like months and months (probably because it has been) of going in and out of various embassies around Dublin trying to obtain visas as if they were as rare as hens teeth, using Google translate to translate websites in order to ascertain if trains in Asia really do take as long as they seem to make out and being on and off the phone to Air Canada’s UK (supposedly) call centre trying to reduce down the number of flights necessary to reach far flung corners of the globe, it’s time as old Mark above there would say to ‘throw off the bowlines’. I can’t wait. It’s been months of planning, months of working out in the airport and months of studying and college-work. So many people have helped this whole thing come together – although I still inwardly wonder if actually, it has come together or if I’m still just imagining things a little.
I’ve got my little laptop packed already and I’ll try keep everyone updated from afar with stories, pictures and the inevitable ‘incidents’. In the meantime, to everyone staying in Ireland for summer, have a great summer – looking out the window right now, it’s an absolute scorcher (which probably means, since I’m leaving, it’ll continue to be hot all summer while I’ll probably arrive in monsoon season in about 90% of the countries I’m visiting). To anyone who is going away as well, watch your backs out there. Anyway, no matter what everyone’s doing, keep in touch!
Which brings me onto the topic of leaving comments on this site – I’d love to hear from anyone reading so make sure to get in contact – to leave comments on the site (because I know it’s a bit cryptic), click on the title of the post or the little notepad thingy beside the title of the post and it’ll take you to a page where at the bottom, you can write in a little comment. I’ll try to reply as much as I can. Failing that, e-mail’s always good too, write to me at andrew [at] tpc-media.com and I’ll do my best to reply! Needless to say I’m already kacking it over bumping into a bunch of knick-knacks abroad but what can you do, it’s all part of the experience.
So that’s it, it’s going to be a wild summer and I’m looking forward to every minute of it – so until then,
Peace out!
Today, I deigned to make some changes to my Wordpress-powered site. I felt that, being a reader of a small, elite number of blogs, it was my cyber duty to spread the word about them, since that’s what the whole thing’s sort of about I suppose. Wordpress back a few years ago (when I was using blogger.com I’d imagine) implemented ‘widgets’ - essentially, blocks of pre-made menu options or content for you to throw on your sidebar quickly, without having to invest much thought. Theoretically.
But first, I should relay the story of what happened last time I tried to update the site. Firstly, everytime I logged in for about a month, Wordpress made a song and dance of telling me I was ‘out of date’ and that we were at least .1 of a version behind times, which it obviously deemed wholly unacceptable. So eventually I caved to its demands and downloaded the .1 newer version and set about getting it working. A quick read of their instructions seem, in hindsight to have been written mostly for satirical purposes; it included a welcome and talk of their ‘infamous’ 5-minute installation. Well, with the benefit of retrospect, I can assure you it was infamous alright, but certainly not for the reason set out.
5 minutes very quickly became 25 minutes before things were FTP’d (uploaded) and ready for action - so I moseyed on over to the upgrade page where I was quickly met with around a 130-line page of errors, warnings and code. Now to be fair, my web hosting company as anyone who’s tried to use the ‘Pics’ section can testify, does seem to suffer moments of extreme slow loading, particularly when it comes to loading anything larger than a static page. But the pictures were actually loading faster than ever before. Needless to say, it eventually transpired that it had something to do with Wordpress not managing to locate all my posts, etc - basically stuff it knew existed, but couldn’t find.
So when I noticed that ‘widgets’ just had to be added and re-arranged in the preffered order, I saw visions of whole hours being wasted. So I added one. And sure enough, the rest of the ‘widgets’ that you love and know like the calendar, archives, etc quickly disappeared into the Wordpress abyss. Anyway to cut a long story short, approximately one hour and a half after I began trying to just add a links section and an RSS feed as recommended, I think I’ve finished…hopefully. So that’s it, the links and RSS should be working and if they’re not, I almost don’t want to know…
Alright so that’s it, the last number of months you’ve heard my thoughts, I’ve done a bit of travelling but mostly things have been a bit disjointed - certainly for me personally, it’s been pretty much all over the place since about November. So that brings us to May and May means leaving Ireland to travel around the world for summer. So, I’m going to say now I can’t commit myself to any more rants for the month (well…there’s plenty of stuff I’d love to talk about) due to exams/work/travel-planning/etc and hopefully, next time you’ll hear from me I’ll be on the road.
This summer I’m going on a round the world itinerary to see how the other half (more like 96%) live, and will be visiting (in order of places being visited);
Dublin ->
Cologne
Frankfurt
Ottawa
Toronto
New York
Chicago
Tokyo
Osaka
Beijing
Dalian
Kuala Lumpur
Singapore
Bangkok
Phuket
Hanoi
Ho Chi Minh
Melbourne
Sydney
Auckland
Wellington
Delhi
Goa
Trivandrum
Chennai
Frankfurt
-> Dublin.
I’ll be bringing my cameras and netbook with me so make sure to keep looking in, as I’ll write a post whenever I can (probably way more than normal).
Until then,
Take care!
So that’s it, if you’ve read the rants below that have been no doubt posted in quick succession, you’ve just seen the result of a day’s boredom on a train to Cork – just imagine what summer’s going to be like! For anyone interested, I’m sitting on the train back to Dublin, somewhere between Thurles and…eh…whatever comes after Thurles. In stark contrast to the episode earlier that I joyfully seized upon in an effort to write an easy rant about the flickering light, the bumpy seat and the trains various other inadequacies, this is more or less perfect.
Ah, who am I kidding, of course it isn’t – the seat is bumpy again but I’ve made my peace that it must be something to do with the design of the chairs rather than me having two dodgy chairs one after the next. Similarly, I’ve yet to come terms with the fact that the on-board toilets have a ‘close’ button and then a ‘lock’ button – who closes a bathroom door from the inside and doesn’t wish to have it locked? What an unusual design feature. Also, the boys down in the Rebel County’s train station it would have to be said are by no means the speediest – whereas we got to board the train in Dublin just slightly less than 20 minutes beforehand (which I mused, was in itself, insufficient), we were granted a seat out of the cold in Cork only 7 minutes or so beforehand. Hardly ‘timely’. But there’s no doubt that when all is said and done, I’m actually
Still can't get over the shocking change...
slightly impressed – who could imagine that these trains, their comfort and their punctuality came from the same people who let those prehistoric orange ones ply the lines for so long. The adult return fare from Cork however is normally in the order of around 70 euro. The first-class fare is 111. To be honest, I could never justify paying that amount for any train journey of 266km each way, even if it was the Japanese bullet train. They say laziness breeds ignorance, or maybe they don’t and I’ve just made that up, but regardless, I wouldn’t want to let Irish Rail actually find this and think I’m content – the challenge I’d like to pass them now is to keep this comfort, this punctuality and more importantly, this fare, that I paid today (40Euro return) on a permanent basis.
Now, with a significant proportion of my past hatred for Irish Rail out of the way, it’s on to Cork. Sadly in my rush to get out of the house this morning, I managed to forget the directions to ‘The Granary’ (whatever that was) and so upon my disembarkation, I was left with no choice but to try and piece together what bits of the directions I could remember. There was definitely something about a red bridge, and a Subway, and some place called ‘Bridge Street’. And I reckoned that it was a left into the centre-du-ville as they say. So I came out of the train station and walked onto the main road. When I got there I debated turning right, or maybe swinging a left as I suspected it to be, or what about the houses in fron…holy crap! And there they were…the local natives, suitably attired in matching tracksuits and looking like they’d just come down from the Cork version of Cromlech Fields to find some visiting non-natives upon whom it appeared they wished to exert a less-than-friendly welcome. Needless to say, that sight coming from the right pretty much confirmed the decision to go left and proceed with haste. So I did. And then I turned around about 200m further down the road – crap! There they were, even closer than before! So at this point I decided the best tactic was to face my fears – yeah right,
Near the scene of the near run-in with the 'natives'...
I sped right up and crossed the next four sets of lights without stopping despite there being a ‘red man’ at all of them. I eventually realised quite aside from my fictitious stalkers, I hadn’t seen either a red bridge, a sign for Bridge Street or a Subway.
Oops. So if there was a bridge involved that must mean there was a river and I looked down a side street and sure enough, there it was, a river. So I went down and followed the quays as instructed but after 5 minutes got bored and noticing that all the main parts of the city centre were now behind me, decided to cross the river at any bridge and see what was going on over there. The answer was nothing of course, but as I continued walking, I came across another river! No way! There was two of them. So now, I began my assault all over again on the hunt for the red bridge but again, boredom kicked in pretty quickly and I soon found myself crossing at any bridge just to get over the river. After a bit more walking, I ended up outside this cathedral, which it would later transpire was St. Finbarre’s (not that that still means anything to me until I get to an internet connection and look it up on Wikipedia). After nearly an hour I finally realised that in fact, having created a miniature M50 of Cork on foot, the place I was looking for should only have been about a 20 minute walk. Oops. Obviously I blame the lack of street signs in Cork for this mishap. Nothing to do with my forgetting to bring directions.
So if you’ve made it this far from the first rant on either the swine flu or the rant on this morning’s antics trying to get the train and are still reading, then aside from congratulations, there’s not much else to say other than you’ve just taken a 532km trip with me so thanks for the company, it’s been great. By the way, I hope you didn’t mind having to listen to The Doves album…twice!
Next time, try to make the train…
