Playing the gender card

You already know this is going to be about Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott, Alan Jones, gender, media and politics so I'm not going to blame you from clicking elsewhere... now.

All right. Hello, the two of you who are left.

I had a short stoush with someone on Twitter last week. This is quite unusual for me, because I'm used to whining into the ether that is the 140-character blue bird's blah stream and getting no response whatsoever from anything I say. (Actually, that's not true. I do get @ replies, comments, RTs and favorites but that's because I rarely say things that are controversial.) It went something like this:

So here's the situation as I understand it:

• Speaker of the House Peter Slipper once wrote a text message to his former assistant James Ashby describing female genitalia as shell-less mussels. 
• Slipper is currently under investigation for sexual harassment with regard to his conduct towards Ashby. The text was used to illustrate the sexualised nature of the exchange between the two. Ashby is gay.
• Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott proposed a motion to remove Slipper based on his 'sexist' text. Also because this would supposedly give the Coalition an edge in a hung Parliament.
• Prime Minister Julia Gillard responded in a way that is now famous, labelling Abbott a misogynist (see video below).

• Gillard was then accused of playing the gender card when it suited her.
• I got annoyed.

So it seems I got annoyed without actually clarifying what I meant by not trying to play a 'gender card' and taking it out of the equation. Because Gillard does play a gender card but by doing so, it should take gender out of the equation. I'll put it this way, Gillard cannot play the gender card unless it has already been played. It doesn't work unless it has already been played. So the smart thing for the Opposition to do is not bloody well play it. But intelligence has never been their strong suit and Gillard totally owned them in 15 minutes.

I almost clapped at the end of that speech. I'm not a Labor voter and I don't even like Gillard, but I respect her and I welcome her return to form because we need someone viable to be PM seeing as I've pretty much decided to leave the country if Abbott gets elected.

Other things I believe:

• Describing vaginas as shell-less mussels is not sexist. It's just embarrassing. And bad for the seafood industry.
• Even if the message were sexist, a text message that was never meant for the public domain should not receive the same weight as a political statement made for many: Slipper's perceived sexism is not equal to Abbott's.
• Abbott is not a misogynist. I think he has an outdated idea of what women can and can't do, which makes him sexist in an ignorant way but I don't think he goes out of his way to hate women. He just hates Gillard. He hates that she is not anything like what he believes a woman 'should be' (Christian and married with children, probably) and yet is Prime Minister.
• Women aren't suited to this type of politics. It's stupidly skewed towards a male idea of leadership and governance. Women need a paradigm shift that will allow the public to recognise their talents. At the moment these are being ignored because they are not prioritised by the male idea of what is useful in government and politics.

I want to share with you this great cartoon by Cathy Wilcox as well:

A note about Alan Jones
For those who need a quick overview: Julia Gillard's father died of shame: Alan Jones.

Something else I feel the need to tack on the end here: I do believe radio talkback host Alan Jones is misogynist. He has always been condescending about women and I actually believe he hates them and is prejudiced against them.

I don't believe he should have been hauled over the coals about his 'died of shame' comment, however. Although it was offensive I think it would have been made whether Gillard was male or female because that's how tactless Jones is. His following remark about people going easy on Gillard because she is a woman is patently wrong because she has certainly been given a harder time as a woman (can anyone think of a time a male politician has been made fun of in the general media because of his dress sense? Anyone?).

But he does deserve the heat he's getting now. The Gillard comment is what broke the camel's back. Gillard reacted because Abbott echoed the 'died of shame' comment in a different context. My partner believes he did this deliberately to get a rise out of her and show how emotionally unstable she was (possibly to link that to being a woman and therefore incapable of keeping emotion out of politics). Instead, she bit back with a very well composed retort. The tide then turned against both Abbott and Jones simultaneously.

Jones should actually have been fired/jailed/banished long ago for sedition (re: Cronulla riots), bullying and harassment. If that's not enough, there should be some penalty for hypocrisy. As soon as Destroy the Joint started picking off advertisers from his show, Jones started feeling victimised. Poor diddums. I wonder if he thought like that when he was the one encouraging people to act on their beliefs. I guess not.

So let me close this rant by saying I hate the idea we are playing a game with politics, the media and online opinion but I am learning to accept the way it must be. One can live in hope that it will all turn out for the best*, right?

* The 'best' meaning 'a country in which Tony Abbott is not the Prime Minister'. I have met the man and I don't like him.

Looper (film)

I want to start on a foundation that establishes that I had no real idea what this film was about but was keen to see it as I'd heard it was good. Also: time travel!

Generally speaking, it is quite good as an action film. The performances by the three leads are spot on, and the ensemble cast was also well picked and supported the drama where they were needed most—in the fray.

Also praiseworthy was Rian Johnson's concept of the future: in the USA you could see the divide between the rich and the poor clearly and the cityscape was dilapidated enough to be a believable version of an America that was once great but had devolved into a slum-like state; in the Shanghai scenes you could see the Pearl Tower (currently one of the tallest buildings in the city) dwarfed by taller ones still, indicating China's future growth, wealth and power. Pre-empting this visual presentation is a verbal encouragement by the boss character for Joe to learn Chinese instead of French.

The premise of 'Looper' is fairly straightforward: In the future, time travel is possible but it is outlawed. A criminal organisation uses it to send people to the past (before time travel has been invented) to be killed and disposed of without a trace. A looper is a killer who works for this organisation in the past. He is called a looper because eventually the person he kills is his future self, thereby closing the loop. When the looper kills himself he gets a huge payout and lives comfortably for the rest of his life until such time as he gets sent back in time to be killed. This is presumably so the mob have no loose ends.

*** there are spoilers in this review ***

I have a fair few problems with this. Firstly, why would you need a looper to know he killed his future self? None of his other targets are identified. Except for the payout of gold bars, the looper would never know that the person he just killed was himself so why tell him? Just keep using him and then retire him. Get another looper to kill the future self, who cares?

The second, quite major, problem is the time travel element. Now, I've heard a lot of talk about 'Looper' and I can generally put the audience into one of two camps: action movie and sci-fi. I tend to find that the action movie audience like the movie a lot more, they find it cerebral without being too taxing with enough shoot 'em ups to make it a pretty good film. They believe they have a grasp of the sci-fi element.

The sci-fi camp are less impressed. They understand all the concepts of time travel presented in the film but they don't buy it because writer/director Rian Johnson has chosen to use a few theories in the one film and those few theories cannot coexist.

For example when one looper, Seth, fails to close his loop the gang hunts him down and then carves an address into his arm, knowing that his future self will bear the scars. As old Seth makes his way to the address, bits of him disappear—a foot, his nose etc—because the gang is hacking off bits from young Seth. Now if young Seth has all these deformities, how does he then grow to be old Seth, who is able to run from the young Seth when he is sent back in time to be killed? You cannot have a 'one timeline' theory (old Seth being affected by young Seth's amputations) and a 'many worlds' theory (old Seth, who originally closed his loop successfully and went on to live a good life and this situation, where young Seth does not close his loop successfully so therefore cannot go on to live the life that old Seth has evidently already lived) coexist.

So this is a really bothersome part of the main story in which one version has young Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) close his loop and grow up to be old Joe (Bruce Willis) and a second version in which young Joe fails to close his loop and has old Joe beat him up and escape.

When the two later meet in a cafe old Joe tries to explain things by saying his 'memories' are vague and are full of possibilities rather than concrete recollections. The only things that are clear are the things that young Joe has already done, not the things young Joe is about to do.

This is problematic because at the end of the film young Joe kills himself to prevent old Joe from existing to threaten a mother (Sarah) and her son Cid, a future threat to old Joe. Except if we go by the 'one timeline' theory this means that old Joe should not have existed at all to come back to threaten the two. Only, young Joe would never have killed himself if old Joe hadn't come back and set all these events in motion, in which case we are dealing with a 'many worlds' theory. But in that case, young Joe killing himself would not have an effect on old Joe, who would have come from another 'version' of young Joe, one who had successfully closed his loop to become old Joe. GAH!

Even more problematic is the idea that young Joe has clearly made up his mind to protect Sarah and Cid and yet this understanding of the two has no effect on old Joe's decision to kill Cid, which proves that this old Joe is not derived from the young Joe we have followed throughout the film.

As for Sarah and Cid, the son is creepy and Sarah sleeps with young Joe for no apparent plot consequence. Also, the fact that they are telekinetic feels tacked on, even though telekinesis was introduced at the start and becomes a big deal as young Joe learns the consequences of Cid's powers.

All in all, the film appears all slick and macho and brainy but is actually a kind of mess. The only thing saving it is the performances by actors who probably didn't question Johnson's multiple uses of time travel theory too much and therefore gave a straight performance.

Film rating: 7/10 – actually quite a decent action film if you forgive all the time travel nonsense.
Enjoyment rating: 5/10 – except I didn't forgive it.

You don't know me...

I pass you on the street and I want to say 'hello', but you don't actually know me. You see, you're sort of famous. You were on that panel, the one with the funny guy who ran late. You spell well. You wrote a zine I thought was the best thing I read in 2004. You have a byline in a magazine that people have actually heard of. You've been published in Voiceworks.

I struggle a little when I go to the This is Not Art Festival (TiNA) in Newcastle. I've been to almost every one since 2000 when it was the National Young Writers' Festival (NYWF) and I was a young writer. I was a university student then. I commuted from Sydney twice because I didn't have accommodation and I remember teaching some cute guy how to make origami cranes.

I've been to NYWFs that were held in Newcastle Town Hall, the PAN building, a train yard. There were zine fairs in Auckland Street and Civic Park and panels held in abandoned arcades. I walk up past the lighthouse every year, sometimes in the windy night, sometimes in the blazing heat of the day. It's customary. Occasionally I make it to the obelisk too.

Before the Spelling Bee became a mainstay there were poetry slams, literary debates decided by Shantaram shotput, and Wriron Chef cook-offs.

I've called the YHA my second home while flirting with Noah's and Backpackers by the Beach and The Oriental when my preferred hostel booked out. Sometimes I bring friends and/or boyfriends. Sometimes I attend alone and make friends for a day.

I used to have Newcastle seasons: winter was The Shoot Out and spring was NYWF. The only year I've missed NYWF since 2000 was when I went overseas in 2005.

Unsurprisingly, I see a lot of the same people year-in, year-out. The hairstyles and clothes may change but in context they are instantly familiar. Some are NYWF legends: festival father Marcus Westbury, Geoff Lemon, Marieke Hardy, Benjamin Law, Dr Ianto Ware, Lee Tran Lam and Lisa Dempster. Others are panellists that I've come to recognise: Michaela McGuire, Elizabeth Redman, Cameron Pegg, Alex O'Neill, Zoe Barron.

The problem is that I suffer from a very particular kind of shyness that makes it impossible to treat many of these people as real people. Because they're famous. Because they're panellists. Because they publish zines. Meanwhile, I'm quite at home introducing myself to people at random events, such as other audience members or sharing a table at the Spelling Bee or, as was the case this year, being a ring-in of a literary trivia team.

I don't want to bowl up to these NYWF stalwarts and interrupt them. Or feel pressure to impress them. Or treat them as equals (they are special). And yet the NYWF is probably one of the flattest, most accessible festivals I've ever been to, where panellists from one session are gazing reverently at panellists of the next and audience members chat congenially to moderators over a post-panel tea.

For some reason I tend to forget that I'm not without credentials myself. Just editing a uni arts publication should've gotten me some cred in the beginning. Follow that with a diverse career in custom publishing, feature writing, magazine editing and freelancing and all the other odd writing jobs I've done and surely I'm not nobody.

But what am I supposed to do? Nod at these people who I don't quite know in acknowledgement and walk on by? Introduce myself and stand awkwardly fishing for an excuse not to stand awkwardly? You don't know me and I don't really know you but...

***

I have met these people before:

Marcus Westbury: Interviewed him in person about Renew Newcastle for a magazine I once edited, witnessed his and his wife Narinda's signature for their son Louin's passport at that meeting. Once bought him a panda hat and gave it to him at the Sydney Writers' Festival where I was volunteering. He probably finds me vaguely familiar.

Geoff Lemon: Once shared a stage with him at the Spelling Bee in 2010. I was second runner-up after Geoff and that year's winner Garth. Wouldn't know me from Adam.

Benjamin Law: He signed my copy of The Family Law after a panel at the Melbourne Writers' Festival and said my name was familiar. Probably doesn't remember what I look like, though.

Lee Tran Lam: For some years we met once a month as part of a writing group she initiated, which has since died. I used to go to university with her; we were never in the same tutorial but we did share an office: she co-edited the 8-issue/year Passing Show and I co-edited the annual Soma. We later met as junior journos at some PR thing. We exchange hellos but we don't hang out.

Lisa Dempster: Had her sign my copy of Neon Pilgrim. Later became an Emerging Writers' Festival Penpal (sponsor) when she was festival director. I like to think she has a passing interest in what I do. She knows my partner Boff as 'the dinosaur guy' after a brief nerdy stint on stage during a Spelling Bee sideshow he won by correctly naming a dinosaur or some such.

Cameron Pegg: Flattered when he recognised me (he was wearing a mask, so I had no chance) and tapped me on the shoulder at the circus-themed ball in 2011 and invited me to join his group to dance. We follow each other on Twitter. Does that count?

Alex O'Neill: After following her on Twitter for a year we finally met in person at the zine fair this year. She follows me too. (No really, does that count?)

If any of you have made it here, leave your mark below!

Ruby Sparks (film)

*** there are spoilers in this review ***

I wanted to like this film so very much. It has been too long since Little Miss Sunshine and directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris certainly deserved a free visit* after the masterful dose of quirkiness from that film.

The premise—a writer bringing a character to life from the page and interacting with her—had a whimsy I thought Dayton and Faris could really work with, and the trailer looked promisingly full of writer jokes. Someone also mentioned a surprise ending. Goody, I thought, something refreshing at last. It won't be something lame like he stops writing about her and she ends up being a real person. And yet the most surprising thing about this 'surprise' ending was that it was no surprise at all.

First I'd like to say a few choice words about the good parts of this film. The performances were excellent. The rather diverse (from Annette Bening to Antonio Banderas to Steve Coogan in support) ensemble worked well and the two leads, Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan, had great chemistry as a duo. Zoe Kazan had the light-hearted kookiness of that other Z girl, Zooey Deschanel, but played her role with more vivacity.

If seen as a journey for Dano's Calvin, the film works well. We get a sense of who he is because when he stops 'writing' her, Ruby is a foil for him: she enjoys a weekend with his family while the distance he keeps from his mother and her partner couldn't be more clear, his solitude is more stark against her easy friendliness and his discomfort with writer's block (his first book was a bestseller and he hasn't written anything as hefty since) is played out against her burgeoning creativity as an artist.

Calvin writes Ruby because he wants to change all of those things. He wants to be emotionally engaged with someone, he wants company and he wants to write freely. When he gives Ruby up, he gets all of that in the most metafictitious sense: he writes a novel about a girl who springs from a writer's imagination, which unblocks him and leads him to meet a 'real' Ruby. If you love it set it free, et cetera.

The other great thing about this film is that it is genuinely warm and funny. There aren't a lot of one-liners, but it is generally good humoured and anything that can be played for laughs is woven in without malice.

Where the film falls down is in the idea of Ruby herself. The film is called Ruby Sparks so we want Ruby to be more than a figment, then we want her to be more than an unsurprising surprise ending but she never gets there. Curiously Kazan, who wrote the script and starred as Ruby Sparks, didn't think to push the character further. So Ruby as a foil and an idea = good; Ruby as her own being = not well realised.

On the way home my partner and I thought of better endings for the film, or at least endings that weren't as predictable, things like Calvin's ex, who is also a writer and who we meet at his agent's party, wrote him but lost control of her own creation, which is why he ends up being more successful than her. Or, it was a magic typewriter. Or something about Calvin's mother also being a creative type.

The other factor that disappointed me was that the directors didn't play enough with the story in a story in a story format (Calvin's novel, which was Calvin's life with Ruby, which was the film). I mean, that's a meta meta fiction and an opportunity lost. If you want to see a good story in a story in a story, go rent Stranger than Fiction (2006).

Film rating: 6/10 – fair expectations, but disappointingly predictable
Enjoyment rating: 7/10

* Free visit: where you see a film because of a certain director/writer/actor even if you don't really know what it's about, because you enjoyed the last one of theirs so much. When you have a favourite director/screenwriter/actor and will see anything of theirs no matter what the reviews, it's called a magnet.

The Amsterdam Cram

20th August 2012 (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

Boff was apologetic about yesterday's botched travel plans so let me decide all the activities today. I managed to show him how to cram a lot into a day without it feeling rushed.

Anne Frank's House: We couldn't buy tickets over the internet or via our hotel so queued
up around the block. I sent Boff out for poffertjes and coffee and orange juice. The experience was excellent, everything a museum should be: preservation, explanation, anecdotes. I got incredibly teary when I saw Anne's room with the pics from magazines she'd glued up on the walls and I don't think I stopped feeling heavy until after I left.

Boff said it was the ultimate tragedy that Mr Frank, obviously a smart man, had put a lot of thought into saving his family. He'd tracked the Allies' movements via radio reports and knew they were on their way before they were ratted out by someone. The most tragic part was that he alone survived while the rest of the family perished in various concentration camps around Europe.

Photo of the day is of the street outside Anne Frank's house, a rather amusing juxtaposition. The thing about Amsterdam is that you have to look out for canals, trams, cars and bikes when crossing the road.

The Tulip Museum: A very different museum explaining the history of tulips, their journey from the Middle East, the Dutch obsession with them, the Tulip Crash, different varieties and current farming techniques. There were a lot of interesting presentation techniques that made this exhibition worth ther 3 euro entry fee despite its small size.

I decided we'd go to Rembrandthuis so we had lunch on the way at a typical cafe (I had croquettes and tomato soup and beer) and then sort of lost each other in a street market. I waited at the corner for 10 minutes then decided to go to Rembrandthuis and just sat in the foyer waiting for Boff to realise that that was the best place to look for me. This is the tragedy of not having working phones overseas. He did eventually find me.

Rembrandthuis: When Rembrandt went bankrupt, the repo people had to do an inventory of everything in his house, which is why the museum has such an accurate record of what it contained. While some of the objects are replicas, a lot of the furniture was actually Rembrandt's and has been preserved in the place where they were kept. Interesting snippet: People in those days used to sleeping sitting up because they believed you would die if too much blood went to your head. That's why all the beds are so small (not because people were 50cm shorter in those days, as I hypothesised).

Apart from containing the painter's domestic artefacts, the museum also held his and his contemporaries' paintings (he was a dealer as well as an artist), a storeroom for his interesting ephemera and, of course, his studio. The studio contained two demos that were also fascinating in themselves: a guy did a paint mixing demo and the lady did an etching demo.

Artis Zoo: We eventually found ourselves at Artis Zoo (what did you expect of 'my day'?!). It had just gone 4.30pm and the staff kept reminding us that they would close at 6pm. We told them it was okay, we would go through quite quickly. It didn't look like Artis had any animals that I hadn't seen before so we just headed for my favourites only to find out that there were a lot of areas where the animals roamed free, for example lemur 'island', which the ruffed lemurs could leave if they wanted to (there were no physical barriers) but were content to stay on.

Artis also had a few humid houses where they kept saki monkeys and iguanas and birds. These tripled-doored enclosures meant that observers could wander through in commune with the animals without accidentally letting them out. We got some great photos. I also saw a hyrax for the first time. Also sat in front of the penguin pool watching one female get chased by a dozen males and constantly escaping but then going back into the fray (crazy chick) and the seal pool where babies were nursing and the mothers barked while feeding them. Eventually a security guard on a bike told us we had to leave in 15 minutes, at 7.30pm; they had let us stay in an extra 90 minutes.

Had dinner at an Indonesian restaurant (this was actually Boff's suggestion but it turned out to be a good one because the banquet was delicious) and then visited the red light district on the way home. There wasn't anything there that I found shocking (no, we didn't go to the live sex show) though we did spend our last 14 euro or so on double entry to The Erotic Museum (see what I did there?). It wasn't as titillating as I'd hoped, but it did have some interesting historic stuff on the lower floors.

We spent a lot of money in Amsterdam, about 300 euro, which was about twice what we were doing in comparable cities. In some ways maybe it was a good thing we were only there for a day.

Meltdown

19th August 2012 (Amsterdam, The Netherlands via Lille, France and Kortrijk & Antwerp, Belgium)

(This entry will be much longer than usual as I have no longhand notes for this day and this will be my only record. Let's face it, I got lazy at the end of the trip and never wrote about it. Plus my travel diary ran out of pages and I was already pushing into the 'addresses' section, which was at the front of the book.)

Today was the day Boff decided to cram as much into as few hours as possible.

It actually began yesterday when at dinner we saw an ad for LAM, which I think stands for Lille Art Moderne. It was the first we'd heard of it. Apparently there were important works by artists such as Picasso there, and they had a sculpture garden, which I thought would be like the one in Hakone which I loved so much (you should go, it's fantastic). Boff had already decided we were going to visit Kortrijk and Antwerp on our way to Amsterdam, which we would get to by 8pm, he promised—ha!—but we couldn't miss LAM either.

So we went to LAM, but we got off at the wrong metro station. We ended up talking to a bus driver who said she would drop us off where we needed to be; half an hour later we ended up at the previous metro station, which would've taken all of 4 minutes (and no money because our metro tickets hadn't expired) to return to. By the time we got to LAM we were behind schedule by an hour.

LAM contained three main sections in addition to the sculpture garden: modern art, contemporary art and art brut. The first two were mainly quite good and we were able to see a lot in a short amount of time due to the clean layout of the gallery. The art brut collection contained works almost half of which looked like something kindergarteners would create, almost half of which you'd find in a tribal craft shop and the remaining 2% absolutely stunning (loved Willem Van Genk and Augustin Lesage). The garden was actually a disappointment. Let's not talk about it.

We returned to town and picked up our bags from the hotel and hopped straight on a train to Kortrijk, which is where we had to change for Antwerp, which is where we had to change for Amsterdam. The trains from Kortrijk to Antwerp go once an hour so Boff had devised a plan to visit a museum centred on a famous battle and get back within an hour. I declined to go with him, mostly because I hate feeling rushed, and instead took it easy in the waiting area at the station minding the bags. The temperature was an unusually high 35C.

Long story short, Boff was supposed to be at the station, luggage in hand, by 2.45pm but he'd gotten lost on the way back from the museum. We hotfooted it to the platform anyway, only to see the tail end of the train disappear. We'd missed it, so we had to wait another hour for the next train. I wasn't mad with him, just annoyed that I had to wait in that boring station for another hour and disappointed that he hadn't kept his promise. He kept insisting that I was actually angry, though, which made me angrier than I was at the initial event.

We eventually made it to Antwerp. I remember The Chocolate Line, where we bought one of almost everything and then had to protect the box from the warm afternoon, its Grote Markt and something about a giant's hand, and a castle. Photo of the day is a statue mime drawing a portrait of a young girl next to one of the Grote Markt buildings, I forget which.

I was too tired to insist that we catch the 5pm train to Amsterdam as planned. All I wanted was to check into the hotel and go to bed so it didn't really matter which city we spent more time in, Antwerp or Amsterdam. I was just sad that spending all that time in Antwerp happened so late in the day so we didn't get a chance to go to its famous zoo.

We ended up getting into Amsterdam at 10pm. Our hotel was a funkatronic venue located in the World Trade Center office building next to Station Zuid. Convenient, but a little too cool for school. At least it had air conditioning.

The Swimming Pool Gallery

18th August 2012 (Lille, France)

Alan Hollinghurst once wrote a book about a library in a swimming pool. I don't remember a lot about the book, not even the metaphor, except that I liked it. I went to a museum of art in a swimming pool today. The musee was pretty much the only thing open in Roubaix. It had a lot of 19th and 20th century sculpture, drawing and painting—even fabric and fashion.

Around the pool the art tried to be water-themed; all the nudes were bathers and all the tigers were fighting lions next to the river.

The photo of the day is a silhouette of a sculpture backlit by the Art Nouveau stained glass window on one end. It took me ages to get the shot right.

Outside, the temperature had hiked above 30C so I was grateful for the coolness of the museum and probably stayed there half an hour longer than I would've otherwise. As I left the Musee de la Piscine, a father and his sons had tumbled out of their van, towels in hands.

(This next conversation take place in French.) The father asked the way to the entrance to the pool and I had to explain to him that it wasn't actually a pool. Then as I reached the street I spotted a local map and called him over to point out where the actual pool was located. He was trying to memorise the turns and I suggested that he take a photo with his phone. He looked at me like I was the smartest person he'd ever known.

I walked to Roubaix, which is a largish town in the Lille metropolitan area. Everything was shut because it was the weekend and even the town hall was unavailable for gawking at, covered in scaffolding due to renovations. I caught the metro back to Lille proper and confirmed my suspicions: the metro trains are driverless, which is why they come so often and travel so fast.

I popped into old Lille for a big pot of oolong at Unami, a teahouse I passed a few days earlier (which was closed during the public holiday) then visited L'Hospice de Comtesse, which the Lonely Planet led me to believe was a lot of horrible religious art stuffed in a Flemish style abbey but it was actually a cool old abbey that happened to have some boring religious paintings in it.

Boff and I met up in old Lille and had tarts for dinner. Not a euphemism.

Pissed off

17th August 2012 (Brussels, Belgium)

I wanted to take an express train to Paris, just one hour from Lille. The TGV, in association with Eurail, had other ideas. Apparently you need to book 24 hours in advance on a Eurail pass and you can't do it at the station, you have to call the Eurail line. I called for the 18th but was told I could only pick up the reservation from Paris Nord or Germany, or they could send it to me by post, which could take "one or two weeks".

I can't figure out what's more stupid:

• Having to book 24 hours in advance, whether or not the train is full.
• Having to book via telephone when one's hotel is 50 metres from a train station.
• Needing a physical manifestation of this reservation that mysteriously can't be emailed, faxed or sent by carrier pigeon.
• Needing to use a postal service that could take "one or two weeks" when you bloody well operate a network of fast trains.

Paris' loss was Belgium's gain, however. As I sat brooding in my room it occurred to me that Boff had been to Brussels and I had not, plus they had some kind of big deal flower thing that I would see but he would not. I hopped on a train. It was supposed to take two hours. There was some delay and it took three...

It also happened to be one of the hottest days of the summer, something in the vicinity of 35C. By the time I arrived at Bruxelles-Midi I'd run out of water and had to buy some from Carrefour.

On the train I'd pored over the map Boff had given me, so confidently headed north towards the Grand-Place (you need to say that in a French accent). Unsure at a turning, I stopped only to discover that I'd lost the map—probably in Carrefour where I'd been gratefully rehydrated. Nevertheless, I blundered in the right direction and managed to find encouraging signposts that took me to a street of Asian restaurants (Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese) at the end of which was a cafe that served me rabbit and chips with a big cold beer, probably the most delicious meal of the trip.

Then it was just a short way to a giant square surrounded by grand Belgian buildings filled with flowers. The balconies were packed so I avoided them and managed to find myself at a Dali exhibition.

It was around this time I began to feel ill, not quite nauseated, not quite headachey but really very tired all of a sudden. I'm not sure if it was the heat, the beer, the rabbit or all three. I parked myself in front of an air conditioner in the exhibition and napped for 15 minutes and then found a room with sofas for watching a Dali doco, told the attendant I had a headache and napped for another 30 minutes. The exhibition was okay but not as good as Berlin: it had a lot of Dali's commercial work including ads he did for a hosiery company, magazine articles, and some first editions of his books.

Groggily I stepped outside and found myself wandering toward the Manneken Pis. Photo of the day is a waffle shop's tribute to Brussels' favourite son with some tourists beside him for scale. Also managed to catch a large jar of Nutella in the frame—yay Nutella!

So Frenchy, so frilled

16th August 2012 (Calais, France)

Boff had a day off from the tournament, which is to say that it was the day for the semi-finals and finals and he didn't make it, so we went on an excursion to the seaside. Calais is best known for being where the lace industry really took off and for not being Normandy.

As the only building higher than four stories, the town hall dominates the cityscape with its substantial belfry (apparently it's pronounced 'bel-free', not 'bell-fry'). Out the front is Rodin's famous scuplture, The Burghers of Calais. You can take a lift up to the top of the belfry but for some reason it was closed until the afternoon.

We instead spent the morning at the lace museum. It was really Boff's day and he wanted to go because the jacquard cards they use to make lace in a machine is akin to a very early computer program. I thought it'd be boring. Actually, it turned out to be the best thing about Calais. Who knew lace had a history that could weave together design, technology and business so effortlessly? We also saw a demo of a jacquard loom for which I had to translate the Q&A between Boff and the dude but I think I did okay. I like the English word 'lace' better than I like the French word 'dentelle'. I think 'lace' represents it better.

Photo of the day is a floral peacock on Calais' major roundabout. You can only see it like this from the belfry, which we visited after lunch. The belfry guide said it represents the intricacy of the lace for which Calais is renowned.

Boff went and had a look at a bunker museum while I sat in the park and watched people play petanque, then we took a bus to the beach. Alas, it was too hazy to see England, but I ate a violet ice cream and all was well. (No, the ice cream was not as big as my head.)

Mess and noise

15th August 2012 (Lille, France)

Lille has a cute little zoo near the Citadelle with free entry. Considering this, I was quite impressed with the kinds of animals they had, including two white rhinos and a kinkajou, the first time I've seen these, quite a collection of American animals like tapirs, capybara (with babies), mara and macaws, and semi-exotics like red pandas and a fishing cat. I witnessed a small capuchin monkey teasing a baby pelican.

I'd budgeted the morning for the zoo but was struggling after just over one hour so went to the Palais des Beaux Arts. Upstairs they have European paintings from the 16th-20th century (and take particular pride in their Rubens—is the plural of Rubens 'Rubenses'?) but I found a lot of the paintings of religious saints gazing in agony during martyrdom boring compared to the temporary exhibition on Babel.

Photo of the day is a Tower of Babel made with books. No particular books, just lots of them. There were a lot of photo collages done by Chinese artists with tower-like structure showing the end of civilisation which were also striking, plus the original Bruegel, on loan from somewhere or other. I found the sculpture section interesting too.

I emerged from the museum a few hours later only to find that it had been a public holiday the whole time and a lot of the cafes and restaurants were closed. I ended up having a supermarket lunch by the fountain before going to meet Boff, who had won his afternoon game.

He wanted to see the zoo so we ended up walking there despite the fact that he thought I should be conserving energy to fight my lurgy (well, we had no choice as buses and taxis were scarce) and then ate dinner at a restaurant that used to be a porn cinema. It was one of very few open.

We decided to catch the metro back to the hotel and had these horrible children flock around us trying to steal our money without taking it from us. I put money in the ticket machine and a girl pressed the 'cancel' button and a boy shoved his hand in the return slot to grab it. Another girl stood nearby as a lookout, I'm guessing also to provide cover from CCTV. Luckily we were cluey enough to figure out what was happening so Boff covered the buttons so the girl couldn't press them and I guarded the return slot shoving the boy's hands out of the way shouting "ne touchez pas" (don't touch). Oh the irony: I didn't have enough French to swear at them.

Chilled Lille

14th August 2012 (Lille, France)

Pretty much spent the whole day in bed exhausted by whatever illness I caught in Poland. I'd visited a pharmacy the day before and with what French I had managed to convey to the pharmacist that I had had a sore throat and now I had a cough. She sold me cough medicine. I can't read medicine bottles at the best of times so when it's in French it's even more difficult, but I managed to figure out the dosage.

At 5 o'clock I went to meet Boff at the Grand Palais following his afternoon game, which he'd won. We walked into town and then around the Citadelle, which is a five-point fortress designed by a famous fortress designer (is there a proper word for that? Defence architect, or something?), Vauban. Vauban's work can be seen all around the northern borders of France and some towns in Belgium and The Netherlands.

The Citadelle, I'd found out the day before, is only open on Sunday to a limited number of people on a tour conducted by the tourism office. One needs to sign up by the Thursday prior: I tried but the Sunday tour was full and we'd be in Amsterdam the following week.

We then had galettes (pancakes) and crepes at a creperie downtown in rue des debris St Etienne. Yes, two types of pancakes for dinner.

Photo of the day is of a guy who stands near the central fountain making large bubbles for donations. He only gets one out of 10 going and most of the time those are popped by voracious kids but I managed to catch this photo.

Pret-a-manger

13th August 2012 (Lille, France)

I may not have explained this spontaneous trip to those I haven't seen in a while. Basically, Boff was invited to play for the Australian go team at the 2nd World Mind Sports Games in Lille, France. At the time he was invited, he had already planned a trip to Greece with his sister and Greek brother-in-law—both former modern Greek lecturers at UNE—and a couple of weeks of wandering around Eastern Europe. By extending his trip it turned out he could see more of Eastern Europe and attend the Games. As you can imagine, I was not at all happy about spending two months alone at home by myself so I decided to tag along for the last month.

The Lille posts may not be very interesting for a couple of reasons. One is that because I didn't do it in 'intense' mode, not as many interesting things happened on each day; the other is that I capitulated to the malady I acquired in Poland.

Photo of the day is from my 'blitz' tour of the town centre. This is the Eglise Saint-Maurice. The girl sitting on the steps was begging for money. I ignored her and went into the church to have a look. While in there I started to feel bad that I'd ignored her so I went back out and asked if she wanted something to eat. I have passable French but it turned out she had a severe speech impediment which meant she couldn't speak, but seemed to understand me. I went and bought her a vegie baguette from a nearby boulangerie. She gestured a lot, then she wrote something illegible in my notebook. I played a game of charades with her: she seemed to say I had seen the light or seen god... or something.

A Flemish fling

12th August 2012 (Ghent, Belgium)

Ghent is a lovely Belgian town that isn't as busy as Bruges but, according to Boff, "shits all over it" (a phrase he had to translate for the lovely lady who checked us into Hotel Flandria. Gotta love Australian idioms).

We spent a typical day there: took a canal tour with a guide that spoke five languages (Flemish, French, English, German and Spanish—the Italians on the boat had to content themselves with written guides) then visited the Gravensteen, a proper medieval castle with proper gap-toothed parapets and proper slitty-windowed turrets.

Photo of the day is of one of the busier squares from the top of the castle. You can see the steep pitch of Belgian roofs and a tram for good measure.

We also visited STAM, a museum on the history of Ghent that was interesting in some respects but baffling in others. For example, they spent a couple of rooms explaining the theft of a panel of The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb and about the same amount of room explaining Ghent's role in the Industrial Revolution.

We finished up at Citadelpark where there was an art installation with headstones of famous art museums (The Museum Graveyard project by Leo Copers, apparently) before we caught the last train to Lille at 8pm. A short, satisfying Flemish fling.

Evidence of someone else's good time

11th August 2012 (Cologne, Germany & Ghent, Belgium)

Had a bad time of it on the train. There were no sleeper cars so I set myself to sleep in a seat, which is usually very easy for me except I was surrounded by this family who then proceeded to eat pungent oniony burgers (at 3am) and pass serviettes, drinks and rubbish over me. Imagine a 4-seat arrangement in which the father and son are in A and B, I'm in C and the mother is in D. I didn't want to swap with the mother because my seat had my destination on it so I would be woken up at the appropriate time. It then turned out they were in the right seats but wrong carriage but when they departed they left their pungent oniony rubbish behind. Then someone's phone kept ringing. It's 3am dude, you're on a train—who the hell is calling you?!

So I stopped over in Cologne for a few hours. Unfortunately, the hours were 8.30-11.30am on a Saturday, which meant all the things that I might have wanted to see were open at 11am instead of 10am, i.e. not enough time to see and then catch a train.

The main hit is the Dom. Let's just say they don't hide it in some back alley; it is the first thing you see when you exit the main station and I can tell you, you don't see much else for a moment. I might have thought of it like how Sydney visitors always see the Harbour Bridge and Opera House from Circular Quay Station except that I've been to Rome and there's a much more impressive analogy with the metro station next to the Colosseum. Cologne and the Dom are somewhere in the middle.

My photo of the day shows its two towers on the left. It was one of the few things open early that I didn't actually care to see (I was really hoping to visit the chocolate museum...). Instead, I took a walk over to the other side of the river where I found evidence that Germans may sometimes have a good time.

I arrived in Ghent intact but desperately needing a shower and a nap. Boff and I took it easy in the evening just walking around the canals. I've never been in Europe in summer before so I didn't realise that when 'sunset' is at 8.38pm, it actually means it gets dark at 10pm. Slow dusk! What will they think of next?

Knots

10th August 2012 (Munich, Germany)

Somehow Boff and I managed to get our dates mixed up. As a result, he thought I'd be in Bruges (it's in Belgium) today to meet him, while I was still pestering him for the address of where we were supposed to be tomorrow. This was not helped by the fact that our prime method of contact is WhatsApp, which we can only use when we both have wifi.

The best train to Belgium left at 3am in the morning via Cologne. The ticket attendant told me the train from Cologne to Belgium was full so I just booked the first leg to Cologne and hoped for the best. Once Boff and I got our wires uncrossed he decided we should sojourn in Ghent instead "because Bruges is full of tourists and I've taken my hypocrisy pills". I returned to the station. The train (the connection from Cologne to Brussels) wasn't any less full, so I took the option of waiting in Cologne for three hours. Sorted. Ish.

I went to Munich Zoo in the morning. It was a lovely zoo and I saw capybara for the first time. There were also a lot of animals play-fighting—sea lions, gazelles, siamangs—some of which I caught on short videos and will put up in due course.

Photo of the day is a pretzel bigger than my head. I had reserved a packet of crackers and a small tub of not-Nutella from the breakfast spread for snacks but was still hungry, then saw this beast and had to conquer it. It was 3.50 euro. It was a lot of carbs. But I ate it.

Under construction

9th August 2012 (Munich, Germany)

After the 'pinakothek' conundrum, I set out to find out what 'fahrt' meant. I have a rather juvenile view of the word 'fahrt', so suddenly einfahrt means 'one fart' and ausfahrt means 'a fart from down under' (as opposed to blowing raspberries, for example). Turns out it just means 'ride', hence fahrkarten = 'ride card' = ticket.

Spent a great deal of the morning in the Residenz sector, which is where some Bavarian royalty used to live. The touristy bits are the Treasury, the Palace and the Theatre, which I did in that order. The Treasury, as you might expect, was full of bling including stuff that you kind of go 'why the hell would you encrust that in jewels?', like plates and prayer books. It was not as interesting as I'd hoped.

The Palace was a lot better, although a lot of the rooms had been destroyed in World War II and have since been rebuilt and then redecorated in the style of the curator's choosing from the millennium or so that the Ludwigs have lived there rather than the latest use of the room. So there were a number of offices that suddenly became bedrooms again, for example. There was a lot of gilt as well, and a fair number of portraits of people I forget now.

The Theatre was lovely, but a very disappointing 'tour'. Basically, you went in, you came out, no behind-the-scenes action or view from the boxes, for example. Photo of the day comes from that venue, though: it was being cleaned at the time. The red drapes aren't really drapes, you see, but some kind of plaster imitation, Rococo style. The guy in the photo uses a brush to dislodge dust and a nozzled vacuum cleaner to suck up the dust. I thought it represented Munich quite well. The city is mostly under construction, after all.

After Residenz I paid a visit to the Viktualienmarkt, which is a food market area just south of the city centre. I met a guy called Klaus at a cafe table and argued with him about smoking (he is pro, I am anti). Then had to find a nice way to ditch him so I could go to the Englischer Garten, which is a massive green area in the north.

The Lonely Planet recommended the beer garden near the Chinese Turm, so I headed there. It was big but not that exciting, so I changed course and aimed for the Japanese Teehaus only to find, when I arrived, that it's only open one weekend a month and you have to book ahead for sittings.

For dinner I tried another Lonely Planet recommendation, the Baader Cafe, which happened to be in an area similar to Newtown, except the street was less King Street and more... Wilson Street. The waitress didn't treat me as a dumb tourist so I ordered my random dinner with false confidence. I ended up with duck, couscous and zucchini for my main and a crepe with berries for dessert. Only the crepe was filled with, wait for it, sauerkraut. WTF?!

All the painted ladies

8th August 2012 (Munich, Germany)

I don't know what the word 'pinakothek' translates to*, but I went to two—the Moderne and the Neue—the afternoon I arrived in Munich. There is also the Alte (old) Pinakothek nearby. I don't think it helps that I keep thinking of it as 'pinkotheque', like a discotheque for socialists.

Anyway, the Moderne (Modern) is a contemporary gallery for design, art and architecture of the 20th Century until now. I quite enjoyed it despite the fact the venue had a very confusing layout with some hallways curling back on themselves and others leading nowhere. Quite post post post modern They had some Warhols, and the photography and design section was particularly good.

The Neue (New) is full of paintings and sculptures from the late 18th through to the early 20th century. It was comparatively very well set out with a clear path through the displays. The selection showed suprisingly good taste (thanks Ludwig!) and the collection boasted some masters including Van gogh's famous 'Sunflowers' as well as works by Manet, Monet, Rodin, Sisley, Cezanne, Pissarro and, as you can see in my photo of the day, Gaugin.

All galleried out, I walked down to the popular pedestrian area, which is a strip between Karslplatz and Marienplatz in the city surrounded by old buildings that have been overtaken by retailers. I had some kind of pork schnitzel with mushrooms and potato for dinner (my first choice wasn't available so I asked the waiter to recommend something and still have no idea what it was). It was just after I drained my beer that I realised I hadn't eaten properly since the Indian I had in Warsaw so I got tipsy very, very quickly. Fortunately there's almost nothing that a raspberry cake and a pot of tea can't fix.

* I'm guessing 'painting' something. Maybe 'painting gallery'? It took me ages to realise 'kunst' was 'art' because I kept reading it another way.

Off the wall

7th August 2012 (Warsaw, Poland)

Went to the Chopin Museum with Dan and her partner Shane. I have only a passing interest in Chopin but I'd heard the museum was a highlight so I was keen to go. We're in luck: it's the museum's free ticket day. The museum doesn't disappoint. It has a lot of artefacts including score manuscripts, letters, photos and items like the last piano Chopin played, as well as a huge multimedia element where you scan your entry card and swipe through content including short videos and music in your language. Its biggest downfall is that it seems the curators have paid so much attention to the multimedia, they've forgotten to give each area a clear context and tell Chopin's life in a cohesive narrative.

Photo of the day is from the street just outside the museum. I think it captures just was Warsaw is like: they may not have border-to-border grand buildings, but what surfaces they do have they paint a mural on. Berlin has graffiti; Warsaw has murals.

Shane then went to the Copernicus Museum and Dan and I serendipitously caught a bus that went straight to the Museum of Uprising only to find it was closed on Tuesdays. By the time we got to the Copernicus Museum the line was so long I knew I didn't have a chance to see it before I had to catch my train so we ended up walking along the river finding random photography exhibitions and Warsaw's mermaid (how cool is that? Warsaw's mascot is a mermaid with a sword!) before I had to be at the station.

Wash and burn

6th August 2012 (Warsaw, Poland)

I went to Warsaw to see my uni friend Danielle, who now lives in London. We've only seen each other a handful of times in a decade so this trip seemed to be an ideal way to catch up, apart from the fact Boff wasn't interested in Warsaw and decided to go to Belgium instead.

Before meeting her, though, I needed to get my laundry done, which required finding the nearest laundromat and how to get there. Turns out there are very few in Warsaw so I ended up catching the train a number of stations south to an outer suburb and still had to walk a fair way to find it. The train stopped at every station for about three minutes. There were announcements in Polish that caused a bunch of people to get off, but a lot of people stay on and some join the train so I stuck with the original plan.

When I got to the suburb, I ran into trouble because it's so far out my map didn't cover it. I managed to communicate with a newsagent who points me in the right direction. At the laundromat, the boss gets her daughter to translate for me. I've never really wanted to learn Polish before but at this point I feel not knowing the language is actually an imposition on the people. I eat my way out of this dip with 500g of raspberries costing a mere A$2...

Finally met with Dan and went into the Stare Miasto (Old Town) to have lunch. I decided once and for all to try fried camembert, which sounds like a heart attack except for the fact that I hadn't eaten properly for more than a day, so I forgive the kilojoules. We take lots of photos of the architectural and decorative features that make Warsaw a great city to explore, and find odd things everywhere, such as a bench made of pipes next to a statue of some inventor guy. Photo of the day is Dan next to a tiny car we found parked on the street.

We also eat one of those soft serve ice creams that are bigger than your head, which we conclude is probably a joke played on tourists given what it looks like to eat one.

Dinner is Indian. Yes, Indian. Very good Indian. And dessert is a plum vodka (70%) and a sea buckthorn liqueur that are both impossible to quaff because they burn going down.

There is no bunker

5th August 2012 (Berlin, Germany)

Took it easy in the morning and had brunch at a cafe near our hotel. You know it isn't a tourist spot when the menu is only in German. We ordered the big breakfast, which looked like it had some sausages, egg, bread and yogurt and indeed it had all those things except the sausage was sliced as part of a cold meat platter. I really don't understand why people eat cold meat for breakfast, it's gross. It seems to be popular in Central and Eastern Europe. Can't wait until I get to France where it's croissants and brioche territory.

We returned to Checkpoint Charlie to get the souvenirs we missed out on the day before, then on the way to the Stasi Museum dropped in on a couple of hipster souvenir joints where Boff fell into a friendly argument with the proprietor about whether Alexander was a better film than Troy. (Fuck, I can barely remember either of them and in my mind they blend in with that horrible Sam Worthington movie, Clash of the Titans and that other one about Titans and the one about Medusa. Those may all be the same film, who knows.

The Stasi Museum was free of charge but sparse and we got more value for time going to the Berlin Wall display down the road where a section of the war remains and below, in the old ruined building where the Gestapo used to meet, they have a timeline from pre-World War II to the fall of the wall.

Photo of the day is how I will always think of Berlin, full of trains and graffiti.

Quote of the day from the souvenir store guy: "There is no bunker."

Ich bin kein Berliner

4th August 2012 (Berlin, Germany)

Berlin has two zoos: the oldest one is located in the west (just a couple of train stops from our hotel—merely a coincidence, I protest) and the newer, bigger Tierpark was created after the wall went up in the east. As a result, Berlin has the most zoo animals of any city.

We went to see the original one and were lucky to catch a lot of active animals, in particular the primates, a pacing panda waiting to be fed, and swimming, playing penguins. Photo of the day is some baboons. The little one scrambled down the rocks then turned around, only to lose its footing; luckily there were some helping hands close by.

We found it hard to leave, mostly because we couldn't find the exit but also because we kept seeing animal displays we hadn't seen before.

Headed to Potsdamer Platz and the Dali Museum. I'm still not entirely sure why it's in Berlin as opposed to his native Spain but I'm not complaining. It was the third Dali exhibition I've seen, the others being in Melbourne and Singapore, and different to both of those. The Melbourne exhibition focused a lot on his paintings and some sculpture and objects, while the Singapore exhibition had a lot of sculpture and illustrations. This one consisted of commissioned illustrations in the main, as well as sketches, commercial commissions (medals from the LA Olympic Games, travel ads etc) and a couple of sculpted works. Every time I see his work I'm reminded how much of a genius he is. Have you noticed the way he draws hair?

Boff wanted to see a bombed out church in the Tiergarten but we got to where the map said it was and there was a perfectly intact church in its place. We later found out that they decided to build a church next to the ruins so we "missed it by that much".

Also went up the Victory Monument, which cemented the fact that Berlin just isn't a very interesting city from above, and then went to Checkpoint Charlie where there is a vast museum that the owner started after World War II, even before the wall went up.

We arrived a touch under 80 minutes before closing and had to convince the cashier to sell us tickets because she was adamant it would take 90 minutes to do the whole thing. Well, after doing what ended up being a cursory tour of the place, you could spend three days there and still not see everything. My favourite part was all the escape stories (I don't care much for the politics) and even they were hard to single out among the collage of stuff in the place unless they had an artefact attached (e.g. cars in which people smuggled other people).

After the museum closed (the cash register closed, giving us no warning while we were browsing the souvenir shop) we went out to take photos of Checkpoint Charlie then, in true Berlin style, had a kebab for dinner.

P.S: The title of this post is a reference to JFK's speech in which he utters the words "Ich bin ein Berliner"—I am a Berliner—whereas mine says I am not a Berliner.

Pergamon, I choose you

3rd August 2012 (Berlin, Germany)

We arrived in Berlin in a couchette, which, if you've never been in one, is a train carriage that gets converted into two rows of triple bunks. As you can imagine, space is tight and no one gets to sit up in bed. Boff and I thought, since we'd arrived at the station early, we'd get dibs on the biggest luggage space. Unfortunately the carriage already had four people in it from a previous stop so we were forced to take up what little floorspace there was with Boff's suitcase and my bag.

The good thing about couchettes: sleeping flat and a croissant and hot chocolate for breakfast.

We checked into Hotel Amadeus, which is a modest 2-star place in Charlottenburg, which happens to be right around the corner from a large erotic retail store (with kino!) but very handy to Charlottenburg Station.

We then wandered into town to see the Brandenburg Tor (gate) before heading to the Pergamon Museum. The Pergamon was on Boff's must-see list. I had no idea what it was but tagged along anyway. It turned out to be an awesome thing made of stuff, by which I mean, an archaeologist excavated at Pergamon, an ancient Greek city located in modern day Turkey, and then brought all the artefacts to Germany. Then he recreated the bloody thing in the museum so there is a scale re-creation (with real pieces from the original) of various ancient structures.

Photo of the day is the Ishtar Gate, which is actually from Babylon but whatevs, it's still a thing made of stuff.

We then had German tapas at a place called Zum Schwarzen Hasen (Black Hare) nearby. The food was really well presented and delicious and not too expensive—recommended, especially if you're not too keen on German food but want to try lots of different things without rolling home.

Finding ourselves at Alexanderplatz, we decided to take the lift up the TV tower to see Berlin by night. I can tell you now, it's not a very interesting view so don't bother going late. I did read all the corresponding info about the monuments and special buildings, though, even though I couldn't see them.

[I'm typing this on the day I'm to leave Warsaw. I had a bad night—some idiot in my room woke up at two-hourly intervals for a smoke out the window, which of course drifted into the room. In the middle of the night I think he also had a puff in the bathroom because when I went in shortly after, instead of just the after-smell of a smoker in the cubicle, there was actual smoke clinging to my hair when I left. Yuck, yuck, yuck.]

Generations

2nd August 2012 (Prague, Czech Republic)

Boff and I did Prague Castle, and when I said 'did' I mean we bought the 'long visit' tickets, which suggested the various attractions would take about three hours to see. Five hours later we'd seen The Princely Collections, St Vitus Cathedral, Old Royal Palace, The Story of Prague Castle museum, St George's Basilica, Golden Lane with Daliborka Tower, Prague Castle Picture Gallery, Powder Tower, and Rosenberg Palace.

I liked Golden Lane, which showed how people used to live on the castle grounds, including a tavern, a goldsmith's workshop and the houses of a fortune-teller and a film buff.

The rest was all worthwhile to varying degrees. I found The Princely Collections of great interest. It traces the family tree of the Lobkowicz branch who owned the castle, which they then lost to nationalism during Russian occupation, and then which they later regained after the Velvet Revolution. The audio tour was narrated by the American descendant of the Lobkowiczes, who now lives in Prague to look after the collection. His father used to live in the palace and had to flee the country during the Russian occupation, hence junior's upbringing in the States.

The influence of the Lobkowiczes can't be understated. Lobkowicz VII paid Beethoven an annuity, which allowed the composer to create his own works rather than under the patronage system where he would have had to take commissions from said patron. This meant that Beethoven had the freedom to do whatever he liked, which in some ways you could say revolutionised music. 'Eroica', originally written for Napoleon, was thus dedicated to Lobkowicz VII.

Photo of the day is one of the rooms in the Old Royal Palace decorated in the heraldry of the castle's previous owners. I suspect one of them started doing it and the rest felt compelled to add their own generation's mark.

After leaving the castle we wandered down to the Old Town square and saw the Astronomical Clock (it does stuff on the hour and when I say 'does stuff', I mean a bunch of figurines roll around on a lazy susan above the clock—quite an anti-climax, actually).

There was a gallery with a Mucha and a Dali exhibition. The ticket seller wouldn't sell us tickets because, she said, it would take us one hour to see each exhibition. Not to worry, we assured her, we have 45 minutes until close, we will just see (local boy) Mucha and go through quickly. But apparently that wasn't good enough and we couldn't convince her to let us in. Honestly, bureacracy has a lot to answer for.

We took a walk through Old Town past the colourful synagogue, which was lovely in the dusky light. All the synagogues I've seen thus far in my life, admittedly not many but certainly more than 10, have been pretty drab so this was a welcome aesthetic addition to my understanding.

Our dinner waiter tried to rip us off by claiming we owed 1000kr, when the bill actually came to 750kr, then when he didn't accept card he suggested that we pay him 48 euro, which was way over the going rate. Instead I darted across the street in the rain to the exchange bureau and swapped some AUD for a really poor rate (if you change $50, the rate is 25% lower than if you change $300 apparently—ergh) but still better than 48 euro. We put 750kr on the table and left.

Then there was a lot of waiting around for our 4.29am train to Berlin, which was marred by the fact that the train station closed until 3.15am and then the train came in 45 mins late. I've never tried sleeping outside a train station before, but managed to grab 30 minutes sleep. Not quite vagrancy but a tiny taste of what it must be like.

Tour de tower

1st August 2012
(Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic)

Cesky Krumlov (chess-key croom-lov) sounds enough like a character from Harry Potter, or at least the slutty sister of a character from Harry Potter—maybe the Bulgarian quidditch player, yes?—that I still giggle a little every time I say it. It's a town in the Bohemian region of the Czech Republic, which meant Boff and I had to leave our Prague hotel at 4.30am for the 5.16am train. We arrived just after 9am due to a 'buses replace trains' incident.

It's a dignified place with a castle as its central feature and more modern outskirts. The castle is the tourist magnet, though, and that's where we headed, down cobblestone streets into the old town. I'm starting to think no pair of shoes I own really deals with cobblestones all that well: the soles keep catching on the edges of the stones. It seems I didn't learn any lessons from visiting Edinburgh.

We take a self-guided look at the castle tower, then a couple of the guide-only castle tours, one that takes us through some of the rooms, which have been set up as they would have been back in the day, and another that shows us the Baroque Theatre, including under the backstage area where stagehands would've changed scenery etc.

The deal is that there have been three main families who have owned the castle, the Rosenbergs, Eggenbergs, then the Schwarzenbergs, and three main types of architecture: Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque. The weird part is that despite the wealth of these families, none of them seemed to have very much taste in painting. There's a lot of bad trompe l'oeil (the Castle Tower and the courtyards surrounding it) and a helluva lot of portraits of male and female children who all look like old men.

And they have a moat! With bears in it!

Photo of the day is of a statue just on the bridge above the bear moat. In the background you can see part of the the Castle Tower and its bad tromp l'oeil.

When we returned to Prague we passed through Wenceslas Square so I was compelled to stop and sing the song to the statue of the Good King (except I could only remember two verses of the five, which greatly annoyed Boff who didn't want me to sing to the statue at all. Carol crusher). Of course, now whenever I think of Prague I get a Good King Wenceslas earworm.

(Also, whenever I think of Cesky Krumlov I sing it to the tune of U2's One: "Krumlov, we get to share it..." Just thought you should know.)

Is the Czech Republic a civilised country?

It is 2.10am as I type this sitting outside Prague Central Station as Boff and I wait for our train to Berlin. The reason we are sitting outside the station is that our train doesn't leave until 4.29am and we had no idea that the station closes until 3.15am. There are no benches outside and apparently the park nearby is full of dodgy types (I consider a comparison to Belmore Park next to Central in Sydney). Does this make the Czech Republic a civilised or uncivilised country?

Smoking allowed in restaurants = uncivilised

Intact castle with thriving tourist trade = civilised

Taxi drivers and cafe waiters tricking up the bill on (maybe) unsuspecting tourists = uncivilised

Beer is cheaper than cola = civilised

Beer is cheaper than tea = uncivilised

Public toilets that cost 5-10kr (25-50c) to use but have automatic gates?

Bureaucrats who won't let you into an exhibition she says will take one hour to see 45 mins prior to closing time?

Having a working funicular?

The impossible princess

31st July 2012 (Prague, Czech Republic)
You know, this 'photo of the day' blog business was supposed to be one photo with an extended caption designed to keep everyone vaguely informed about what was going on during my travels. Unfortunately the writer in me wants to explain everything we did and saw even if it wasn't all that interesting so I'm going to pare back my keyboard enthusiasm and stick with the main points.

Prague is one of those cities that visitors go misty-eyed over when they recall their holiday there. It's beautiful, cosmopolitan and full of such a wide variety of art and architecture that anyone would fall for it. When you're in Prague you feel like a tourist; only after you've done Prague do you feel you can go back to being a hip traveller type going to some obscure place where foreigners are rare two decades before it becomes popular.

So it's true that Prague is one giant tourist trap. The food and drink and accommodation are cheap, at least by Australian standards, but she gets you at the door to any of her many attractions. It's $5, $10, $15, $20 here and there, and by the end of the day you find you've blown a couple of hundred bucks. And she's so impossibly pretty you let the princess have her way. And you like it when she bleeds you like that.

We weren't up to doing Prague Castle itself but we took a walk down Charles Bridge into the castle district and had a look around. The Kafka Museum was really something; all they had were some letters, manuscripts, photos and first editions and they managed to make some of them into Kafkaesque installations. Highly recommended, even if you only have a passing interest in his work.

Photo of the day is what looks like an outdoor art installation by the Vltava River with the Charles Bridge and a viewing balloon in the background. What I love most about this place is that it is proud of its history but also embraces the new. Where else would you find a wall of John Lennon-inspired graffiti on an official 'city features' guide alongside the world's largest castle?

May contain salt

30th July 2012 (Wieliczka & Krakow, Poland)
The conversation went something like this:
Boff: "I want to go to Krakow."
Me: "Why? What's in Krakow?"
Boff: "Well, it's a day trip to Auschwitz and there's also a salt mine."
Me: "!!!"

Who knew there were such things as salt mines?! Who mines salt, anyway? Not the Poles any more. They got rich centuries ago with the discovery of rock salt but stopped when it became unprofitable in 1996. Amazingly, they used horses to do some of the work down there (once down, the poor things never saw the surface again) and the last horse must have led a strange existence until its death in 2002, not working for six years but not retired in a meadow either.

Anyway, the salt mine is located in Wieliczka, about a 20-30 minute bus ride out of Krakow. It's a fairly sophisticated tourist affair, with 2-hour tours leaving every hour for something like six different languages. Boff and I caught the 10am English tour and took the 340 steps down the mine. I thought they should have had a fireman's pole arrangement, myself.

The tour is part fascinating history, part being herded around. Because of the number of tours, each guide needs to time his/her group to perfection so there's no hanging around the bits you find interesting. There are, however, many interesting morsels of information, such as the horse thing. Also, except for the first century of operation, miners were all paid rather than slaves/prisoners. And all the sculptures in the mine were done by miners, not artists.

Apart from the operational parts of the mine, there are some incredible rooms. One was a salt lake chamber where the guide played us some Chopin. There are also (inexplicably) two chapels, a small one a few metres long and the photo of the day, the cavernous version replete with a nativity scene, sculptures of Jesus on the cross, the Virgin Mary, former Pope John Paul II (who apparently used to visit frequently as a student but never made it back there after he was made Pope). The photo is of a salt rock carving of The Last Supper, a couple of salt rock chandeliers and a horde of tourists.

At the end of the tour you need to line up to catch a lift back to the surface. Our English tour guide left us in the hands of a more militant shepherdess who stridently yelled "There is holy mass, so please be quiet!" as we filed past an empty chapel.

When we returned to Krakow, Boff left for Auschwitz and I decided to go to Oskar Schindler's factory. Unfortunately I decided to go via a currency exchange bureau (which was located next to a sex shop and manned by a guy who looked like he was about 15) and the markets to stuff my face full of berries. By the time I caught the tram down there the factory museum had closed to admissions, which happens 90 minutes before they shut for the day. Bummer.

Ended up at a place called Demmers Teehaus and had three pots of tea: one was pu-erh with cherry rum and the other two were green tea with pink grapefruit and pink peppercorn. I bought the second one, the pu-erh was too smoky for me. My friend Skippy says I have an uncanny ability to find teahouses wherever I go (I've found ones in inner city Brisbane, for example, that she hasn't even heard of and she lives there).

Tried to see the mummified monks again but the church was completely closed so failed at that, then wandered around one of the minor squares and hung around the very Melbourne looking Bunker of Art. That too was closed.

Had a hearty meal at Babci Maliny, which had decor that was a cross between an elegant hotel lobby and your grandma's place. The food was good and the service even better—I even managed to try honey vodka. Two thumbs up.

Caught the train to Prague, which Boff joined at Auschwitz. Our carriage contained a Nigerian student who is doing his Masters in Petroleum Engineering in Norway and a guy from Manchester who has worked at Nando's for so long he has long service leave. He's using it to travel around Europe with his mate (who snored the entire way to Prague).

P.S: Those of you who have heard of salt mines may well ask how I thought we obtained salt. I was always of the opinion that we evaporated it from briny water.