EXILE ON JAMES STREET

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE FOOTBALL STRIP

2011-06-28T20:40:00.012Z

It all started to go wrong towards the latter half of 1989. Strange detail started to permeate the shirts of England’s old First Division: white triangular expressionistic flecks on Liverpool’s Candy sponsored jersey; a terrible zigzag effect making a mess of Manchester City’s; a strange bark-like pattern upon Everton’s and a similar geometric mash-up staining Chelsea’s.

At least they still fitted.

Meanwhile, on the continent the football shirt had reached its nadir, Italy at the epicentre of it all. AC Milan and Inter Milano were exploiting stripes in a manner rarely bettered, with away kits that were possibly even smarter still, the Scudetto finishing off Inter’s very nicely.

Juventus’s black and white striped Kappa jersey sported nothing more than two stars – denoting in excess of 20 Serie A championship victories – their sponsor’s name, Upim, in white and the Kappa logo in black (they later got away with changing this to green on what was essentially the same strip).
Perhaps the best effort of all came from Maradona’s Napoli: an azure blue collared shirt that would not have looked out of place on a 60’s Mod or an 80’s Casual, sponsored rather pleasingly by the confectioners Mars.

In Spain, Barcelona were strutting around in a contender for the best football shirt of all time, an almost skin-tight affair that Gary Lineker was lucky enough to sport for the entire three years he spent employed by the Catalan Giants. Indeed, all across the globe football teams were emerging from their tunnels turned out in exemplary fashion, no matter who the kit manufacturer.

In fairness, English clubs too had contributed to this wealth of taste. Adidas and Umbro had dominated the market for years, collectively refining a classic template that would flatter the most incongruous of club colours; simple collars, minimal trim, paired down club crests adorning sensibly sized kits that flattered the physique. Back then, of course, it was not unusual for Football teams to wear the same kit for as many as three consecutive seasons, and so any changes to the formula came gradually. Tottenham and Arsenal, for example, were assured sartorial clemency until the summer of 1990, protected from those bizarre experiments that were introduced to Liverpool and Manchester a year earlier.

It was during Italia 90 that it suddenly became evident that those strange goings-on in England were more than a mere aberration. However, the English national team emerged from the tournament relatively unscathed in this respect. Sure, there was a spot of striped triangular buttoned-up tomfoolery playing about the collar, but the shirt in question fitted okay and the colour scheme remained as it should be (we’ll forget the third kit ever happened). Indeed, the better teams that qualified for that World Cup got off lightly, a slight loosening of fit the worst crime to befit the shirts of the hosts Italy, Argentina, Brazil, Holland and West Germany. Instead, it was in the kits of teams like Romania, Columbia, the USA, Cameroon and Czechoslovakia (all manufactured by Adidas, incidentally), that one could see sewn the prophecy of the football shirt gone mad – excessively silky fabrics, ultra wide v-neck collars and thick, misplaced stripes.

In 1991 Liverpool invested in a sartorial atrocity that was to set the tone for football kit design for almost an entire decade. Totally lacking in any shape, Adidas elected to drape three white lines over the right shoulder and attach a strange excuse for a collar about three inches wide. But things were about to get much worse. In 1992, Umbro put together a ‘third kit’ for Manchester United that might reasonably be considered the worst shirt to have ever graced a football pitch. A mess of blue and black, it was wisely dropped after just one season, but it was too late; the revolution was gathering momentum.

Even Italian kits were starting to suffer, looking like bad replica shirts bought down cheap weekend markets. Come the World Cup of 1994 there didn’t appear to be a team that wasn’t affected, although, ironically, the shirt that England would have worn, had we qualified, just about passed muster. Alas, the upturn in England’s fortunes that Terry Venables’ appointment as manager soon brought seemed to have quite the opposite effect on the quality of shirt we were forced to wear during his tenure – those four goals we put past Holland deserved better. Jesus Christ, what a shower of nonsense that top was; a badge the size of a crusader’s shield slapped bang in its midst; sky-blue trim finishing an oddly distended v-necked collar, and Umbro written in a type face one might expect to find on the front of a lorry.

It would be 2005 before England could again wear a shirt to be vaguely proud of, and even then it was marred by a stupid variation of the St George’s Cross playing about the right shoulder (what is it about the right shoulder?). Studying the various shirts that were being made in and around this time convinces me that 2005 – or there abouts – was the moment that kit manufactures revived themselves from their nineties induced torpor and started making clothes that actually fitted again. Amongst the faux technological advancements, the micro-fibres and the re-branded crests, kits were starting to resemble the sort of thing you put on to play football, as opposed to something one might wear to a Happy Mondays concert.

Last season Arsenal wore a kit worthy of the 1970s, the era that provided its inspiration, in fact. The year before Everton sported a shirt that paid homage to their 1983-1985 outfit, and probably the best they’ve had the pleasure of wearing since 1989. Clubs everywhere have been looking to the past, realising, perhaps, that the simplicity of the bygone era is all you really need. How long this fashion lingers remains to be seen, but I hope it sticks around for a while yet.

Rather than end on a negative note by listing some of the more diabolical kits to have graced a pitch, I instead leave you with a list of some of the finest. My inclusions will confuse those who do not understand what constitutes a great football shirt, whilst hopefully delighting those who do.

Top Ten All Time Greatest Ever Football Kits (in no particular order)

Brazil: 1980s

You can take your pick form a number of Brazilian shirts, but 1982 just about edges it over both 1970 and 1986. Is their a finer footballing image than the sight of a bearded Socrates resplendent in yellow, blue and white? I’m not sure there is.

Internazionale Away: 1988-1991

As if the home effort wasn’t breathtaking enough, the Germans at Uhlsport came up with this beauty. Emblazoned first with Inter’s short-lived Serpent logo during their victorious Serie A campaign of 1988-89, the Scudetto to commemorate the aforementioned triumph for 1989-90, before returning to Inter’s now familiar original signature (pictured above) for the 1990-91 season, it is a football shirt of rare simplicity.

England: 1984 -1987

Forget 1966 – get up close to that and it will remind anyone of a certain age of their unforgiving PE fatigues – 1986 is where it’s at. The qualifying version was best because it had elasticated sleeves that matched the v-neck. At that year’s World Cup itself England wore an ‘airtex’ version with loose sleeves to aid with the climate, but still with the same dark navy blue shorts.

Barcelona: 1982 – 1989

Enough said.

The Netherlands: 1978 - 1988

The Netherlands had been wearing quality kits for years when in 1988 a geometric risk was forced upon them. Oddly, it worked, and in retrospect we can see this shirt as a harbinger of the experimentation that was to come – it’s no coincidence that Adidas was responsible. (West) Germany got to wear a green version as their away strip, and the Soviet Union a red one for their home. As good as this kit was, it's probably a close second to the classic orange shirts of the late seventies and early eighties (pictured above).

Ajax/Arsenal: 1970s

Both these teams looked great in 70s and 80s, only for them to fall foul of the 1990s football shirt apocalypse. Arsenal showed admirable signs of recovery last season, wearing what was probably the best English shirt of 2010/2011. It remains to be seen whether this proves to a mere flash in fashion’s pan.

Meanwhile, the site of Johan Cruyff in his Ajax pomp poses a serious threat to Socrates’ reputation as one of the coolest footballers going.

Everton: 1984 – 1986 (Courtesy: Liverpool Echo)

Never before has the traditional blue shirt/white short combo worked so well – it’s the predominance of white that does it. This was the heyday of the British football strip with Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal all making worthwhile contributions to the trend. Everton edge it, though, for their subtle reworking of the colour blue – these things matter.

Napoli: 1986 – 1992 (Courtesy: E-Sport)

To be honest, you could pick any number of Italian kits from this era – Fiorentina, Torino, Juventus, AC Milan – but there’s something about Maradona that pushes this kit into a higher realm. Regardless of what you think of the man, he was a colossus.

Vasco de Gama: 1988

White with a black diagonal sash, a huge red ‘Order of Christ’ cross acting as the club’s badge, and – on the classic Adidas 1988 contribution that has forced its inclusion here, at least – Coca Cola writ large across the back. Actually, Brazilian club shirts are generally of a very high standard, and it wouldn’t be hard to make a case for Flamengo’s inclusion in my top ten too.

France: 1980s (Courtesy: E-Sport)

It’s 1986: France are 1-0 down to Brazil and it’s approaching half time, when suddenly Michel Platini pounces upon a deflected Rochetaeu cross, side foots it into the net before peeling away to celebrate his equaliser, on his birthday no less. I swear he’s wearing a St. Christopher around his neck, but photographic evidence proves inconclusive. It’s another fine French shirt he’s wearing, but take your pick: Mexico 86, Espania 82, Euro 84… Be it made by Le Coq Sportif or Adidas, as they invariably have been, it’s a kit with a fine pedigree.

MAXIMILIAN DAY: THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES OF AN INVETERATE FILM-MAKER

2011-04-15T18:58:00.013Z

Some six years ago now, I was granted an interview with self-financing auteur Maximilian Day to discuss his latest project, a contemporary reworking of William Shakespeare’s Richard III. Into the bargain was thrown the bizarre announcement that Day was about to commence work on what one may well have reasonably described as his most bewilderingly ambitious project to date; a film to be made ‘entirely under the influence of hallucinogenic mushrooms', ominously entitled The Psychedelic Experiment. It sounded like some wilful act of celluloid defiance, but any sense of foreboding was to prove premature. Ostensibly, The Psychedelic Experiment never came to fruition, with Day instead turning his attention to what one might consider more rounded works of cinema.

First up was 2007’s The Exam, a gentle, thought-provoking tale of a 16 year old boy struggling to come to terms with his place within the grander scheme of things. The film won him yet further accolades, whilst demonstrating a more visceral approach to film making with its pared back dialogue and colourful use of imagery.

Wild Oats followed in 2010, building upon the strong sense of mis-en-scene Day began to develop in The Exam, creating an almost baroque fantasy within which the protagonist once again wrestles with issues of identity and purpose. It is films like these that I imagine Day would prefer to be judged upon, yet behind him lies a strong body of work, often born out of adversity, each project typically taking upwards of two years to complete, but all perfectly satisfying in their own curious way.

We meet at a charming café in Richmond, Surrey, overlooking the River Thames. The sun is shining and the chattering classes are chattering, oblivious to the struggling artisan in their midst – and his mood appears conducive to discussion.
Last time we spoke I gratuitously referred to one of Day’s earliest works, 1995’s The Man Who Made Monsters, a flick that comes across like most flicks made by teenagers come across, albeit a little more bizarre than most, less fixated on gauche scenes of violence and containing moments of genuine cinematic flare. TMWMM found Day merging B movie sensibilities with sub-Nietzschian polemic, the influences of Jean-Luc Godard and Ed Wood very much to the fore. I do not think he would begrudge me for suggesting that it was, essentially, a learning curve of a movie.

It was also made during a period of great personal turmoil. Alongside TMWMM, Day had spent much of his gap-year filming Universe: ‘An attempt to formalise and systematise - like Dante - a classical structure for a post Einsteinian (sic) cosmos.’ Then, after developing an almost neurotic fear of death, he describes himself as throwing ‘an existential tantrum’, before leaving Brighton in 1994 to study Film and TV somewhere in West London, only to leave again after less than three months, disillusioned with that he was being fed there.

The whole experience would provide the inspiration for his next film – Wild Oats in its nascent form – a project that was to push him to breaking point. The story of his life thus far, the production fell apart when, after investing a huge amount of time gathering funds, casting characters and producing a script, the film stock he was using proved useless – or was, perhaps, used uselessly?

‘I tried to shoot it on 16mm. I raised enough money to buy film stock and hire cameras, and it was an unmitigated, apocalyptic disaster. None of the film came out,’ he recalls.

Maximilian Day subsequently decamped back to London but quickly fell into a deep depression from which it took well over a year to extricate himself - he had been alive for little more than 22 years.

It was to be almost four more years before Day started work on his next project. After two of them spent recuperating in Brighton, he returned to London – this time heading south of the river – where he eventually started work on Si Vive Solo Due Volte, which translates from Italian into the rather familiar sounding 'you only live twice'. According to Day, he awoke one morning to the sound of Nancy Sinatra’s rendition of the original Bond theme bouncing around inside his head, the remnant of a dream that he promptly committed to paper. It was this spontaneous act of script-writing that was to form the basis for his next film.

‘Si Vive was shot in February 2000, just as I was really beginning to appreciate the joys of living in London. I was intrigued by the psycho-geography of the place. Hanging out in the Sand Bar, drinking Mai Tais and listening to Andy Williams seemed to be the scene, and Si Vive sort of came out of that. I was living in a basement in Clapham, enjoying a promiscuous and itinerant kind of lifestyle.

I had access to really good actors from the Central School via my friend Jamie Martin, who also features. Owen McDonnell – who's now a big name in Irish TV – plays the mysterious Swede. We shot it all over a few days on a relatively tight and professional TV style shooting schedule. Simon Faulkner shot it and co-produced.
I remember dragging the lead, Keir Charles, all over London and making him work very long days, and he just bitched the entire time. We had to come back months later to shoot some pick-ups with Keir for the ending, so it wasn't completely without my usual troubles. In fact, the film wasn't actually edited until 2005 and wasn’t screened until 2007, 2008.’

Watching Si Vive Solo Due Volte now, after having viewed both The Exam and Wild Oats, it is tempting to see the film as part of an emerging trilogy. All three contain scenes of drug taking, casual sex and sporadic violence, and all three involve a central character who seems somehow at odds with the world. However, if this were true then Si Vive Solo Due Volte would represent the final third, given the age and location of the central character – who bears more than slight resemblance towards Day himself, incidentally.

‘There do seem to be these recurring motifs: searching for something, casual sexual encounters that have some apocalyptic significance, and ditto with the mysterious drug experiences. can't really comment on that other than that perhaps throughout these films I've been trying to perfect or develop these ideas.’

In truth, Si Vive Solo Due Volte is far more deranged than either of its suggested companion pieces, with more than a touch of David Lynch about the finale. Furthermore, at just under 20 minutes, it is less than half the running time of either work. Still, Day very much considers the film part of his repertoire and talks of it fondly.

‘I think it fits in with the general flow of my output but it’s something of an oddity, I guess. It’s a ‘dream’ film and I'd like to experiment more with that way of working. It reminds me of a specific time, too. I like the references to St. Johns Wood and I liked shooting at Speakers Corner. I'd like to shoot in London again some time.’

Day subsequently took a hiatus from filming, heading to South East Asia to satiate his sense of adventure. He then worked on a number of high-profile films, plotting his next move during his down-time, no doubt. He talks about this period of life with great enthusiasm, his experiences igniting an ambition for making bigger, bolder cinema. Richard III, no less, was his next project, and, once complete, it took the 2005 Portobello Film Festival by storm winning Day the award for Best Director. As long in the making as anything Day had attempted prior, it finally brought him the recognition he undoubtedly deserved.

‘2005 was really my breakthrough year,’ says Day. ‘Once Richard III was premiered in January the offers just flooded in. The Cannes adventure took place in May of that same year, with myself and film-maker Dan Hartley taking Jamie Martin to Cannes to shoot the short film Serial Filmmakers, which won us first prize (in the Cannes 24-hour Film Challenge). I went to Cannes every year after that, up until a few years ago.’

Whilst putting together Richard III, Day was gathering the footage that would eventually make up the bulk of All Tomorrow’s Parties, a strange self-obsessed monster of a movie almost following through on his threat to put together something ‘entirely under the influence of hallucinogenic mushrooms’ – i.e. The Psychedelic Experiment. Sensing an element of controversy, I tentatively ask him to expand.

‘The drugs were actually specified as hallucinogenic drugs – psychedelic mushrooms – although that wasn’t necessarily meant to be taken that seriously. A piece of work was produced that approximated something along the lines of that experiment. This was 2004, I think. Pretty much like the Stones tour movie Cocksucker Blues, it has very rarely been screened and usually only in my presence.

There were a few parties that went on in my house over that summer, during many of which the participants were under the influence of the psychedelic mushrooms that were, due to a loophole in the law, easily purchasable at the open market in Brighton at the time. You could buy them on a Friday and take them on the Saturday, and they were very effective. Every now and again we would get the camera out and shoot stuff, and this was then edited into a film, which was really an experiment in editing, an exercise of sorts – a joke, even. So, if anything, the psychedelic experiment did sort of get performed in that movie – All Tomorrow’s Parties. It’s only about 15 minutes long...’

Intrigued, I pursue the matter further: ‘So would it be fair to say that, rather than being your most ambitious project to date, it was more of a detour; an experiment that you felt you needed to get out of the way before moving on to The Exam?’

‘At that time Richard III hadn’t even been finished. In the end it took about two and half years to make Richard III. It came out in January 2005 – we screened that in Brighton – and then it went on to win awards in London Film festivals, received great acclaim, and that sort of triggered my renaissance as a film maker, which led on to The Exam. But I’m still proud of All Tomorrow’s Parties. I think that was as close as I got to the Psychedelic Experiment.’

Touched by his honesty, I drop the subject. The reality is that, entertaining as the film is, it is in no way a true reflection of the man’s ambition. It is like his Zelig, a strange one-off of a film, possibly reflecting a degree of megalomania, very much in the same vein as the Cocksucker Blues Day refers to. Except he’s not a member of the Stones, let alone a famous movie director, even if you do believe he really could be.

For the sake of completeness, I draw his attention to what was supposed to be his next project. Entitled Just Let Me Know, it was to be the tale of four students who move in with an Indian family only to inadvertently tear the institution apart. Principle filming was almost complete when the project was seemingly abandoned early in 2006. What happened there?

‘Another very difficult history. I mean, films start, they go into production and you do your best with them, but for various reasons they don’t always get finished. There are always logistical problems to surmount; organising people and arranging things. I’m not sure whether there was the impetus behind it to keep it going and to finish it.’

Rumour has it that the cinematographer working on the project was monomaniacally obsessed with perfecting each single shot, using up time the crew could ill afford; that the scriptwriter-come-producer nearly had a nervous breakdown, exasperated with the having to constantly re-edit his script; that some of the actors would turn up to the set drunk, or sometimes not all; and that Day himself was by now becoming more interested in filming what would end up as The Exam.

‘Perhaps. Really the problem… It wasn’t like there were problems with the script, but it became obvious we had to be less ambitious with what we were trying to achieve simply because of the physical restraints and the logistics required to make it, in terms of organising the cast and so forth. It’s a shame. I would have loved to have finished it, we did put together a lot of good scenes and there was a lot of good work that went on.’

I leave it at that.

Pumped up on caffeine, we venture forth to Richmond’s green in search of a public house in which to continue our discussion. We are entering uncharted territory now, and a change of scenery will do us both some good. After the dramatic intensity of Richard III – or the frivolity of All Tomorrow’s Parties, depending on your point of view – The Exam saw Day in a more pensive mood. His gentlest and least provocative film to date, easy on dialogue but high on imagery, it is, in simple terms, a coming-of-age story.

‘I’ll tell you this: After making Richard III, which was a very… not a painful project as such – actually, it was a painful, in terms of production. It was a very difficult production and it took a long time to make; a lot of scenes were shot out of sequence. It was really like a digital jigsaw puzzle, but it came together and was quite a success. And it was a very dark film, very violent, very wordy, intense, Shakespearian and aggressive and dark – not just dark in terms of the material but dark in terms of the approach to it. After that I wanted to do something a lot lighter, a lot more cinematic, to be beautiful and a lot more restrained.’

And restrained it most certainly is, with Matt Ingram delivering a sensitive performance a far cry from Jamie Martin’s grand effort as Richard III – or for that matter, Maximilian Day’s own turn as Hamlet, which won him an award at the Brighton Film Festival Awards in 2007. Indeed, given his own abilities as an actor, coupled with the often autobiographical nature of his films, Day’s relationship with his actors is an intriguing one. The original intent with Wild Oats, for example, was to have Jamie Martin play Alexander Knight – Maximilian Day by another name – whilst Maximilian Day would pop up as Jonny, a character loosely based on Jamie Martin himself.

‘There’s an old maxim that directing is 90% casting. On set you can’t make people do things, or spend the time teaching them how to act – they need to have brought that along with them in the first instance. Time is of the essence in film-making, and provided people have that instinct and you’ve chosen correctly…’ He trails off, before adding: ‘Directing is all about making choices.’

So that you might concentrate on the creative aspects of film-making, I venture?

‘Exactly. It’s all about time – time is everything in film making. It’s like waging a war really. There are tactics, timescales, limitations and you have to respect all of those things. So if you surround yourself with a good group of people that you know you can rely on, or who aren’t going to cause trouble, then the jobs a lot easier.’

Filming Wild Oats with Matt Ingram and Cinematographer Ben Cole

Which brings us onto Wild Oats, a film that has yet to receive the recognition or distribution that favoured both Richard III and The Exam. Possibly another slice of Maximilian life, I wonder what persuaded him to furrow his past for a second consecutive feature, especially given the traumatic experiences Wild Oats seems to mine.

‘I had a script that I’d written about 10 years ago but it took all that time before it became filmable. It’s only semi-autobiographical, I should add. Once I’d had some success with Richard III and The Exam, I was on the look out for scripts and this came up again. With distance, I thought I could maybe reflect on it better as a man in my thirties back on myself as a 19 year old boy. Matt Ingram was keen to make another film, maybe with more dialogue, so I thought, “I’ll give you dialogue.” I dusted off Wild Oats, gave it a quick re-write and we went into production.’

So Wild Oats is autobiographical, and it seems reasonable then to assume that The Exam is too – or elements of it, at least. A pattern is emerging. I wonder whether there has been some sort of agenda at work; a personal exorcism of his past, perhaps? I ask him if he sees these two films as companion pieces, and he warms to the idea, offering that they are similarly concerned with rites-of-passage and that The Exam could almost be a ‘dummy run’ for Wild Oats. The comparison is an obvious one; Wild Oats almost continues where The Exam left off.

However, whereas Matt Ingram’s twitchy lead in The Exam appears hopelessly curious, Alexander Knight – the protagonist of Wild Oats – is far more demonstrative, grabbing his destiny by the horns. Knight’s frustrations can almost be summed up in the single, touchingly desperate line, ‘I’m tired of being little boy lost.’

Yet, to interpret these films as mere reflective narratives, in the vein of, say, Le Chateau de ma Mere/La Gloire de mon Pere, might be missing the point; naturalistic they are not.

‘Wild Oats is kind of the ultimate rites-of-passage story and also relates very heavily to the idea of film making in itself. It’s about a young film-maker. It’s very much about me and the idea of creating art, creating films and the attendant life struggles that go along with that.’

And this is the crux: Day’s films may well be semi-autobiographical, but nostalgia alone is not the driving the force behind them. Broken down into acts of sorts, the journey charted in Wild Oats occupies itself with more than mere the transformation from ‘teenagehood’ into adulthood.

‘(I’m trying to) give myself a kind of mythic structure akin to Orpheus and Underworld, or Jason and the Argonauts – a man on a mission. It’s no accident that the central character’s called Alexander Knight, which I suppose also offers a counter-balance to my name – Max Day. It’s a mirror image, a reflection, kind of; Through a Glass Darkly, Alice through the Looking Glass. I’m playing with all those kind of things – Lewis Carroll, altered consciousness, dreamscapes, Jung, ancient archetypes, the connection between dreams and film-making in the way Fellini was influenced by his dreams and made films from them.’

If Wild Oats is to be read as autobiography, it should also be considered that the biographical elements in question are of that of a young man struggling to fulfil his chosen destiny – to make cinema on one’s own terms. Most aspiring film makers would think it enough to direct, but with Maximilian Day it is as if he strives for auteur-like status. Aware that he writes, directs, and even acts, in his own films, I assume his participation extends to editing too?

‘I do, yes although I’m looking for someone outside to help me. I think it’s important to have as many angles on things as possible. There’s a danger of getting too close to your material, especially if you’ve been responsible for shooting it. There might be a shot that took a long time to do, that you became obsessed with and you’re very determined it make the cut even if it serves little or no purpose. An editor on the other hand will have no vested interest in that.’

As for the script itself:

‘I write all the dialogue, although I’m always keen to make sure that the actors feel comfortable with what they’re saying. I don’t allow a lot of changes but it’s very important to me that the actors make the dialogue their own. I’m not totally precious about it, but at the same time I don’t like improvisation.’

There is an element of self-mythologizing at play here. On one level, Wild Oats deals with a boy struggling to deal with genuine existential trauma. On another, the film conveys something of what it might be like to want to make serious cinema at a young age when all those around you just see it as a bit of lark. And Day sees fit to film this not as some chunk of kitchen sink realism, but as the grandest show in town. The question is why? Do the ‘Fellini-isms’ serve the film’s message – such as it might be – or are such stylistic flourishes merely what floats Day’s boat. Or is the whole process more ‘organic’ than I give it credit for?

‘You have to be very careful about that. I guess they call it sophistry, when the Greeks, for example, were more interested in how they sounded, rather than what they were actually saying. This is where the concept of sophistry comes from – it’s a love of wisdom for its own sake.’

He continues:

‘Film making is like politics; it’s all about the art of compromise. You have to allow things to happen and not be too fixed on what you thought it should be. Weirdly, it can often be quite liberating to be constrained in this way because you allow what’s happening to be part of and help form the film. When I teach film I say “What does the audience know?” and ask that we imagine the audience know nothing. You have to start from this. This is why I refer to myths. Myth derives from the Greek word ‘mythos’ which actually means truth – as in an eternal truth. Jung would talk of these archetypes of experience that we’ve all had since the beginning of time – symbols – and these are the symbols that we tell stories with.’

Almost expressionistic?

‘Colour is its own language. Take The Exam: You’ve got a boy going into a green wood and the audience automatically assumes something – a right of passage – which is good because that is what I want to happen. The character doesn’t have to say anything. ‘Green’ is supposed to suggest that a character is about to learn something, because it’s the colour of enlightenment. It’s also the colour of jealously and movement. Red represents danger or passion…’

And yellow (The character of Chester in The Exam is aligned to the colour yellow)?

‘Madness, actually, but it can also be other things. In The Exam it represents sacrifice, tied in with spring – April is the cruelest month, as Eliot says in the opening line of the Waste Land. What does he mean? He is saying that we are learning again that we have to be reborn and there’s a cruelty in that, in the fact that we constantly have to be reborn. Renewal is painful, birth is painful… It’s glorious but at the same time painful.’

Through the alcoholic fug, I think I understand. It’s almost a cinema of the subconscious, an attempt to impart a sense of experience that can never be truly communicated through dialogue alone, a carefully selected soundtrack, or even via the power of performance. And yet, these last two films – Wild Oats especially – tell very personal stories. Do they benefit from the cinematic showboating, the grandiose set design, or the plethora of characters that contribute? I believe so, but at the same time – like Maximilian Day himself – they create something of an enigma. Yet, although they create a mythology of sorts, they do not seek to eulogise a confused past. Indeed, the stories they tell are sometimes sad, and the chaos of style heightens the real sense of madness that informs them. It is then left to us, the viewer, to decide if redemption is on offer – or not?

Max Day and Dan Hartley’s Serial Filmmakers, winner of the 2005 Cannes 24hour Film Challenge, can be viewed here:

http://www.roguerunner.com/Mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=88&Itemid=57

SOFIA 4

2010-06-04T15:53:00.002Z

It is Friday morning and we have approximately three hours to spare before making our way to the airport for a mid-afternoon haul back to Blighty. During that time we will pack, pay our city-tax, sip coffee, post postcards and have breakfast – in that order.
After checking out of our hotel we take the short walk over to Cargo, a café that we earmarked yesterday for breakfast, only to find that all it seems to serve is coffee, cakes and pastries. We stop for coffee regardless.
Determined not to fail in my self-imposed mission of sending home correspondence to friends and family (or just family in this instance – decent postcards are thin on the ground in Sofia), I make a dash for the central post-office, a building of which I have an address for but have been unable to locate thus far. With no obvious external markings visible, I’m forced to ask Bulgarians for directions, but find the post office I do and in posting my correspondence I succeed.
By the time I get back to Cargo Louise has ordered another coffee, so, not wanting to be out-drunk, I do to.
Pushed for time, I suggest we head over to Tsentralni Hall and take breakfast up on the mezzanine, to which Louise agrees.
Visually disappointed with the baguettes and baps on offer, we elect instead to enjoy a large slice of pizza. The results are pleasing.

The return taxi to the airport costs almost half as much as the one we took on our way in, the weather is humid, and the prefabricated blocks of flats we pass have seen better days. Mount Vitosha is as imposing as ever and, despite the fact that we have probably run out of things to do, I feel we could happily spend another day roaming the streets of Sofia, a city of few surprises but of perfect repose. I like Bulgarians, the pace of life, the changeable climate and the lack of expense. Sure, the place is a little shabby but most cities are.

SOFIA 3

2010-06-03T14:08:00.004Z

At last we make it to the Art Club Museum, an outdoor cafe around the back of the Archaeological Museum. Precipitation again appears to be on the agenda and, for a moment, it looks as if we might have to pull up roots and move to another table beneath a parasol. The menu is limited and the middle-eastern themed sandwich we manage to extricate from it, decidedly average. However, the location pleases and the coffee is good.

NDK Cultural Palace is our first part of call, a communist built monstrosity that I have erroneously assumed houses a shopping mall. It does not and is in fact the largest multifunctional congress, convention, conference and exhibition Hall in South-eastern Europe. The Monument to the Bulgarian State, too, proffers disappointment. This bizarre piece of sculpture is to be found encased within the dual shrouds of scaffold and tarpaulin, and, such is its reputation for ugliness,I speculate as to whether the authorities are in the process of tearing the thing down. Whilst we are down this way we may as well check out City Centre Sofia, a genuine mall, but not one to write home about.
We have planned out itinerary carefully though, and so, despite drawing blanks thus far, it is a very straightforward a process to turn down Vasil Levski Boulevard and seek out Traditzia, a European Union-supported project purportedly selling ethnic handicrafts. Alas, it seems that Traditzia no longer exists (our guidebook is over a year into its print). Collectively these failed expeditions leave us in a bit of a quandary as to how to fill the rest of our day.
A thunderstorm, coupled with a real need to regroup, eventually force us to take refuge in a cafe called Onda, and our route there means that we are about 100 metres short of completing a grand circle of a tour. Onda sits opposite the Russian Church of St Nicholas, just along from Victoria where we took dinner on our first night, and resembles Costa, Starbucks, or any number of chain-based coffee outlets found almost anywhere in the world.

Deluge over, Lousie succumbs to my suggestion that we visit the Gallery of Foreign Art, possibly on the premise that it will take us within striking distance of another one of those funny shops she loves so much. The Gallery of Foreign Art turns out to be rather good – this despite the fact that the third floor is closed for refurbishment. African masks are legion, as are Japanese lithographs, and they have an exceptional collection of paintings by the French artist Roland Oudot. There is also a work by Gustave Courbet that, by my estimation, must seem like quite a coupe to have in its possession.

The weather is glorious now – I reckon it must be about 25 degrees – but Louise’s shop disappoints, their stock being mainly geared towards the very young. Fortuitously there turn out to be another boutique very near that delivers exactly the sort of thing Louise likes to stumble upon and bring back from any vacation she takes.
From there I drag Louise through a park housing the Soviet Army Monument and on to the National Stadium. I look for a way in but to no avail. 'Man, we’ve covered some ground today,' so we he head on back to Sofia Garden City and to the café we drank at on our last visit there.

Louise has marked the cards of two restaurants that serve what is described in our guidebook as archetypal Bulgarian cuisine, and we have settled on Manastirska Magernitsa. First we will stop for a drink at one of the many roadside bars on Vitosha Boulevard, just because we like the idea of doing so
Manastirska Magernitsa does not disappoint. Occupying a 19th century tenement and kitted out in traditional Bulgarian regalia, we order the most expensive meals that we have ordered thus far, with only our visit to Victoria offering a challenge in the ‘billage’ stakes. Louise has a sort of lamb moussaka type affair, while I identify the nearest thing to beef goulash I can find, and, aided and abetted by a think hunk of fresh bread, it goes down very well indeed. My only concern now is being able to drink on top of the stuff.

It is dusk by the time we leave Manastirska Magernitsa and about to rain too, which is fortunate timing considering we just ate outside. We dive into some weirdly simple Irish bar whilst the weather does its thing.
More aimless wandering fails to throw up any interesting drinking holes, or indeed anything as utilitarian as And Why Not, so we return to Toba and Co, an establishment that has proved to be a reliable staple of our trip, both day and night. The music is better than before and we spend the majority of our last evening there before popping into Dada Cultural Bar for a nightcap.

SOFIA 2

2010-06-02T14:03:00.003Z

There is a bar pictured in our guide book that we had not been able to find on our initial stroll along Vitosha Boulevard. Instead we spotted the thing on our return journey, only after we’d taken coffee elsewhere. So we have decided that Upstairs might be a nice place to have breakfast, utilising its second floor status to watch the world pass on by below.
The bar itself is a little bit of a disappointment, as are the horrendous tunes being pumped out at this completely inappropriate hour, but we are sat on the veranda and immune to such distractions. The food is half decent, although, like at Victoria, a bit more expensive than one might find elsewhere.
What’s more, our balcony perspective provides the perfect vantage point from which to take in the bizarre spectacle of a completely unexpected city-wide couple of minutes silence in honour of Hristo Botev, a poet and national revolutionary who resisted Ottoman rule and was shot dead in doing so on 20 May 1876 – or 2 June using today’s calendar. Blitz style sirens wail and everybody stands motionless for a while, before resuming whatever it was they were doing beforehand.

Churches and the like are the order of the day and Sofia has many, its piece de résistance being the grand old Alexander Nevsky Cathedral located in what might be described as the heart of this modestly sized metropolis. The sun is shining, the weather warm, and so we head causally through Sofia’s grid defined streets in the vague direction that we need to go. Such an approach reaps splendid rewards; an interesting mural on Georgi S Rakovski Str. and a curious statue of Stefan Stambolov are both stumbled upon before finally arriving at the foot of Alexander Nevsky Cathedral.

Completed in 1912, the cathedral looks older than it actually is, aping Byzantine styles of long ago - gold and copper domes the most obvious signifiers. The interior is unreasonably weathered and one might expect some sort of restoration work to take place some time in the near future. Still, the sheer scale of the building welcomes some time spent wandering around the thing.
Across the road there is the older, simpler Sveta Sofia Church, which is also worth a look, and then, back across the road, there is a flea market selling average paintings, mostly, with a few communist-era trinkets thrown in for good measure.

The sun submits to the clouds being spewed forth from Mount Vitosha’s brim, a temporary meteorological blip that has subsided by the time we have returned to Sofia City Garden for coffee. It is a lovely spot to drink and take the proverbial five, before heading briefly back to the hotel – for no particular reason other than that we happen to be passing that way – and then moving on to inspect a Mosque, a Synagogue and Tsentralni Hall, a large indoor market separating the two.
The Mosque appears to be closed, although we don’t think it actually is, given the shoes deposited outside, so we try out the market first. I very much like the market. I have been to ones similar in Barcelona and Budapest, although I recall being less enamoured with Budapest’s take on the concept. Have I changed in the intermediate period or does Sofia’s version offer up a fresh interpretation on the subject? It is both lighter and airier than Budapest’s effort, and there seems more in the way of facilities too. Indeed, I make a mental note for us to return to one of the many cafes up there on the mezzanine.
We make the Synagogue with half an hour to spare before closing time. As it happens, half an hour proves ample - respite from a particularly heavy shower being the most significant benefit of our visit. Half a minute would suffice in the Mosque, the exterior belying the blandest of interiors.
Next up a café: Louise entertains the drinking of a beer but backs out at the last – coffee it shall be, then. Briefly back to the hotel, then to Classic Pizza just down the road and opposite the aforementioned café, which is a little disappointing; back to the hotel to change into footwear more capable of coping with return of the showers that have been a hallmark of the day thus far, and then to Dada Cultural Bar in the hope that the ballroom dancing has taken a back seat.

It has and, save for some truly awful artworks adorning the wall, it is a very pleasant environment to drink in for a while.
It might have been an idea to stay longer because from there we struggle to find a half decent bar to ply our evening trade. Eventually we stumble upon And Why Not, a local’s haunt of rare delight. Ramshackle and dominated by young males, it is not a hectic as I imagine it might be on days more conducive to drinking than a Wednesday. The bar tender, a bulky guy somewhere in his twenties, speaks little English, smiles even less, but is still as polite as his limited grasp of communication, of any kind, allows him to be. What is more the large bottles of Becks he seems quite prepared to serve for as long as we ask for them, are cheaper than any such consumables we have encountered so far – and for that reason alone I would highly recommend a visit.

SOFIA 1

2010-06-01T13:46:00.004Z

The spectre of any disruption resulting from British Airways strike action failed to materialise, and the transition from abode to airport and, finally, to aircraft, was a smooth one. The only incident of note was a thwarted effort to obtain batteries for my trusty film-utilising Pentax.
A very helpful member of staff volunteered to break open a packet of the envisaged batteries required to operate my camera, and, when they failed to kick start that the thing of beauty into action, did not in any way expect me to purchase the now corrupted goods for the their allotted £3.80 charge. Was it my camera that was at fault or was the type of batteries the incorrect means of energy transfer? I hoped it was the latter prognosis that applied.

Turbulence as bad as I’ve witnessed; clouds were legion. Sofia looked bleak from the window of our airplane but I was not loaded with preconceptions that rested upon the view being anything much in particular. The airport itself was functional, and the acquisition of a taxi to take us to our hotel, straight forward. The air was humid and the traffic heavy, without being too much of a drag. Our driver could not speak much English but his effort to furnish the passing landmarks with names and explanations was appreciated.
Hotel Arte, on Knyaz Dondukov Boulevard, was what I expected – a tenement of rudimentary convenience we booked for its location above all else. And so we finally hit the streets by about 15.00, Bulgarian time; two hours ahead of GMT.

Vitosha Boulevard is a long street running south from Sveta Nedelya Square, and it is where Louise and I look for somewhere to make our first coffee stop. The weather is clement and the lack of people makes for the perfect introduction to this holiday. Louise eats because she was somehow overlooked when sandwiches were handed out on the flight over; a strange oversight on any flight but one possibly attributable to BA having to employ cover for their striking employees.
Initial impressions are positive then, and those first digital photographs I am able to take from the middle of this oddly sedate artery will turn out to be some of the best of our trip; Vitosha Mountain shrouded in cloud providing the focal point beyond where Vitosha Boulevard vanishes from view.

To the galleries! First up is Sofia City Art Gallery, quickly followed by the National Gallery on the opposite side of Sofia City Garden. The former is almost a waste of time – although it is free – whereas the National Gallery throws up some very interesting artefacts, the early 20th century Bulgarian paintings being of particular note.

Clouds are jostling for position with the sun; a state of affairs brought about by the proximity of the mountain ranges that surround much of the city. It is warm though, and Toba & Co, situated just behind the National Gallery off Moskovska Street, is a delightful place to park oneself and drink coffee - if one so desires.

Inbetween there is probably a little more wandering than my missive so far might suggest, but before long we are heading back to the hotel to prepare for our first evening out, making a mental note of any potential venues we pass along the way – Dada Cultural Bar, in particular, catching our eye.

Victoria, a restaurant off Tsar Osvoboditel Boulevard, sounds like it might be a nice and turns out to be very busy – normally a reliably positive harbinger of the food that is to come. The décor is almost right, wavering somewhere between gaudy and rustic, and the subterranean nature of the environment sets the mood off nicely (As the holiday progresses it will become apparent that the prices are a little on the steep side, relative to the cost of food on offer elsewhere, but it serves decent fodder and the staff are most welcoming).

Our decision to follow up dinner with a visit to Dada Cultural Bar is nipped in the bud when, on walking back to said establishment, we find the place overrun with what appears to be people ballroom dancing. So we return to Toba & Co just around the corner, which proves to be a good move. Cocktails are reasonably priced, although the beer a little steep, and a DJ plays a set that only starts to dip around the same time we decide it might be prudent to try elsewhere.
Back on Knyaz Dondukov Boulevard the bars do not appear to be offering much in the way of atmosphere, so we look for tips from the lady working in the local off-license. Having spent some time living in London herself – and sporting a Union Jack emblazoned t-shirt as if to prove the point – she is thrilled at the prospect of helping us out. Alas, not even a phone call to a socially active friend of hers bears great fruit and all she can offer us is vague directions to an establishment she thinks is called the Buddha Bar(?).
We reach Garibaldi Square and still no sign of any oriental-deity related establishments. Louise gainfully asks two passing actors, on their way back from rehearsing a local stage production of The Full Monty, if they know of the Buddha Bar(?, or indeed anywhere else that might fulfil our needs. Having established that Irish themed pubs are not our thing, the younger of these two thespians offers to take us to a place he hopes we will find to our liking. Failing that, he knows of somewhere else – neither will take him very far out of his way.
He need not have worried about formulating a plan B. Taking a turn down a dark alley and knocking upon an old wooden door, we are ushered into what looks like was once an old stable. Candles provide the light and missing rafters reveal the eves of this run down husk of a building. It is absolutely spot on.

We stay for three beers on what we intended to be our earliest night of our stay, but ends up being our latest.

THE CEMETERY PALES

2010-02-25T12:17:00.008Z

In Brookwood, on the western fringes of Woking, there lies a cemetery of approximately 500 acres; a mortal waste of space of some unnatural beauty. Dispatched to a job at a medical practice buried deep within, I was able to appreciate the splendour first hand, having previously been oblivious to its very existence.
I had charted my path to the aforementioned establishment the night prior and had ascertained that making my way through the cemetery would be far more expedient a venture than taking the more obvious route of following Connaught Road east, then Bagshot Road south, before heading back west along the Cemetery Pales.

It had rained earlier that day and the atmosphere suggested that there was more precipitation to come. I passed by what I can only presume was once some sort of shredding device; a rusting hulk with a mysterious name emblazoned on its side that had me wishing I’d brought along my camera.
It was obvious to me, from the short walk I took through the grounds – along Pine Avenue, then down through Oak Avenue, around the Cemetery chapel, thus bisecting the Catholic quarter – that the cemetery had been denominated along a number of different lines. Aside from the obvious religious delineations, I observed signs for a Latvian enclave and a very deliberate attempt to reserve ground for military concerns.

Job done, I took the same route back to the station.
On mounting the platform in anticipation of my train back to London, I looked south and pondered the large trees that had been planted so long ago in an effort to make this cemetery ‘beautiful, spacious and tranquil,’ to quote its own website. Wood pigeons in rude health foraged in the branches and rain began to gently fall in a manner that reminded me of something I could not quite recall (the temperature’s being more clement of late I am tempted to speculate that the passing of winter and the welcome oncoming of spring could very well be the anamnesis in question).

Then that unmistakable rumble of a freight train caught my left ear and it did approach very straight and passed me by at not unreasonable speed. The young girl sat to my right did not look up once, entranced, perhaps, by the music she imbibed via her personal sound-system.
Impressive linear beasts are freight trains. I cannot fathom the mind that would not want to acknowledge these grounded leviathans, catching the various origins daubed upon their many crates – Hamburg and China amongst this particular lot.

ATHENS 3

2009-10-30T19:02:00.000Z

There are not the crowds that were gathered in the breakfast area as there were yesterday, but nor is there the salami. I seize upon the last three slices and a grab a boiled egg to make up the difference.

I have persuaded Louise into having coffee at a café on the corner of Ermou and Evangelistrias, a pedestrianised thoroughfare right in the heart of Plaka. I figure it will be a good place to watch the world go by and gain a richer understanding of what makes the average Athenian tick.

Piraeus is today’s destination, a municipality on the periphery of Athens itself and the last stop southbound on the ISAP Line 1, seven stops on from Monastiraki. We will actually abscond after six stops at Faliro so I can check out Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium, home of Olympiacos FC. Alas, there is no way in to inspect the ground’s interior and the exterior alone provides little reason to hang about, and so we are left with a long walk along the coast, passing through the harbours of Mikrolimano and Zea Marina before reaching the heart of Piraeus itself. The thing is, it is these very harbours that supposedly give Piraeus its character and I am not overly enamoured with either of them. They are meant to be lined with ‘buzzing cafes and bars,’ according to our guidebook, but there does not seem to be anybody about. The area in and around the town hall is vibrant enough but the cafes are all rather pedestrian – and full too, providing little incentive to stick around.We end up grabbing a slice of pizza each nearer to the Piraeus Metro itself, which is actually very tasty but not what I had envisaged coming here for. Having said that, I feel like we have experienced a side to greater Athens hitherto unbeknown to us and do not for one second regret our strange visit here.

We are now faced with a problem as to what to do with the rest of our day – I really had anticipated that Piraeus would have occupied our time more extensively. Louise would like to visit the National Archaeological Museum but I really cannot be bothered with it. I will walk her there however, and do so after stopping off at out hotel to pick up a spare roll of film, which I will not use.
Omonia, the area the area standing in our way, is Athens at its most utilitarian and provides us with our second alternative vision of Athens in one day. Louise successfully deposited at the museum, I take the opportunity to wander down alien streets, popping in to the Central Market when I happen to come across it. A local market selling foodstuffs for local people, the meat section is best avoided by those of a squeamish disposition.
Disappointedly, my best efforts to lose myself take me down a road that brings me out almost directly opposite my hotel. Ponder and decide to take the short walk back to Monastiraki in search of postcards or any random souvenirs that might catch my eye. Neither found, I seek solace in more coffee before heading back to Plaka to take photographs in the more forgiving light that was present on that first late-afternoon spent there.
Now I find postcards of a suitable enough quality (or not: I like to find postcards that appear to be at least 15 years out of date), before making my way back to Ermou where a 74 year old Athenian gentleman attempts to persuade me join him for coffee. I politely decline, offering my impending rendezvous with Louise as my excuse.

Mitropoleos is a pedestrianised street lined with identical restaurants selling identical food. Their speciality is souvlaki, made up of grilled meat (lamb mostly] hot pita bread, raw red onion, tomatoes and tzatziki; a sauce made from cucumber, yoghurt, lemon juice and mint, amongst other my minor ingredients. With chips on the side, the whole thing is a must-eat and its simplicity makes for a very cheap meal too.
Food consumed, we are back to Gazi via the metro. We start off with A Liar Man, which sort of pays off despite the expense, and then move on to The Hoxton Bar on Gazi’s main drag where the beer is more reasonably priced. There is a good vibe about the place, for sure, but that souvlaki is slowing us down. What is more, the clientele seem a little young and intoxicated and after three lagers we decide to head back to The Vintage Bar for another nightcap.

ATHENS 2

2009-10-29T16:48:00.010Z

Good morning.
The breakfast room is full so it is decided that we will return to our room, shower and try again in 20 minutes or so, running the risk that supplies may very well be depleted on our return. Fortunately the gamble pays off and, given that we have not eaten since the previous day’s mid-afternoon lunch, it is a most welcome feast.

The sun is tussling for supremacy with the nocturnal cloud cover, but seems to be winning. By the time we reach the northern edge of the Acropolis victory will be total.
Navigating the steep slopes is rather confusing. One minute you are passing Hadrian’s Library, the next you have found yourself down some crumbling back alley with only stray cats for company. Subtle signage instructs you as to whether you are on the right track, as do larger landmarks such as the vast and verdurous Ancient Agora one inevitably passes, should you decide to attack the Acropolis from its northern face. We stop for refreshment at this very juncture. Dioskouri has nothing much to offer, other than the view, and exploits its location en route to antiquity by charging good money for rather average coffee.

From there the views just get better, and so too does the temperature. Research suggested highs of 20 degrees were in order, at best, but by the time we have reached the summit it is comfortably higher – as much as 24 perhaps? On the downside, the higher one climbs the more people one has to contest with. This is not surprising and might only be avoided if one were to visit in, say, January, during which time the temperatures would not be so kind. You see the dilemma?
The effect, then, is slightly diminished. It is also affected by the scaffold-assisted restoration going on about the place. The Acropolis also suffers from a terrible familiarity. It is hard to appreciate it for what it is when its image is so firmly engrained within the European imagination, be it through films, art, travelogues or the general conveying of the historical significance of antiquity. And, surrounded as it is by the Athens itself, it is rather difficult to appreciate how progressive it might have once appeared occupying its natural habitat. Imagine Stonehenge, perhaps, located in the middle of Regent’s Park and I think that is what I might be trying to get at.
The views, however, compensate for any sense of disappointment, and besides, I’ve never been one for paying too much lip-service to the past for sake of doing so. Indeed, I rather like the effect of the scaffolding. It's like a scene from Jesus Christ Superstar, the movie.
Next up is the aforementioned Ancient Agora, a garden of sorts littered with plinths, pillars, busts and other classical remains. There is a museum too, a few stoas – or stoae – a couple of temples and several security guards ready to pull you up if you get dangerously close to anything of value.

......................................Street scene near Acropolis

We are to go Gazi/Keramikos for lunch, an upcoming distract just west of Monastiraki. Built on an old gas works the area is now seen as something as a hangout for the young and the hip but, amidst the gentrification, I can sense something of an edge.
A Liar Man puts such thoughts to bed. A lovely café-come-bar stuck down the end of an unassuming alley, the expensively priced lunches do not inspire us and so we settle for coffee. Back on Voatadon – the closest thing Gazi might have to a ‘main drag’, all be it a pedestrianised one – bars sit dormant alongside each other, but there are enough of them to suggest that this is an area that might be worth returning to come an evening.
There is still much of the day left so we decide to hop on the Metro Line 3 back to into Monastiraki, surface briefly for a kebab, and then join the ISAP Line 1 northbound towards Maroussi to check out the Olympic Park. It is a longer journey than anticipated, although most of it, mercifully, is over ground.
In stark contrast to the packed carriages that take us there, this broken monument to the Olympiad resembles a ghost town. Painted white, parallel metal girders held aloft show the way here, while huge perforated arches show the way there, but the grounds themselves are unkempt, only the stadium itself exudeding any sense of purpose. It is an impressive structure and visitors are welcome to wander around the terraces.

The journey back to Monastiraki is as uncomfortable as the one there and it is dark by the time we arrive back at our hotel. Tea is to be taken at Paradosiako, a humble eatery serving local fare where lamb seems to be the order of the day. It is delicious and reasonably priced too, so much so that we ponder an aperitif. Given the paucity of seating available and the local nature of the clientele we think better of it and dash across the road to a bar we caught sight of along our way. We do not stay there for long. Peter Andre is counting down the top 5000 ballads of all time on the plasma screen, and besides, we are pretty much the only people drinking there.
Considering the time of year temperatures continue to be kind, and after wandering back towards the vague direction of our hotel we happen upon the Vintage Shopping Bar, a surprisingly hip joint located just off the rather low-key Perikleous Street. Three drinks later we decide it is time to move on but figure we may as well have a quick nightcap back at Booze Cooperative along the way; this despite the fact that we actually have to walk past our hotel to get there.

ATHENS 1

2009-10-28T15:22:00.007Z

Terminal 5 – what a breath of fresh air. Within 15 minutes of my arrival I have checked in, flashed my passport, subjected my luggage to x-rays and found myself a seat in which to wake myself up via the medium of coffee.
Generally speaking, Heathrow Airport is neither a pleasant or well run airport, but it can at least now lay claim to a fifth of its operation running smoothly. Those who complained about the building of Heathrow’s fifth terminal missed the point. The infrastructure at Heathrow simply could not cope with the mass of flights it had to cater for. There are improvements going on elsewhere too, most notably at Terminal 3, so perhaps the future looks a little brighter that it once was, assuming the powers that be do not decide to build another runway, placing strain on an infrastructure that is only just beginning to cope.
This is the worry; that the existence of a fifth terminal might be used as a pretext for building a third runway, which would in turn precipitate the need for a sixth terminal, and so on. Thus the protesters had a point; that although extra terminals pose no threats in themselves, they can – and will – be used as precursors to the sort of expansion that allows for added flights.

Our aeroplane’s descent is taken too steeply perhaps; how else to explain my almost total loss of hearing? (Indeed, my ears will not fully recover until the last day of the trip). As such, the transition from plane to train and then, on foot, to hotel will not be the galvanising experience it often is. That is not to say it is completely devoid of impact. The view from the train is satisfying, if not spectacular, and I am rather taken by the shabbiness that finally greets me once extricated from the efficient clutches of Athens’ underground system. ‘Bangkok meets Istanbul’ I am tempted to surmise, although in reality it might bear closer relation to a more hemmed in version of Lisbon.

Hotel Carolina is well situated and the price one pays for that is a not unwelcome simplicity. For a budget end hotel I doubt you could do much better, the crumbling view from our balcony summarising perfectly the faded charm that pervades throughout central Athens. The presence of Booze Cooperative not two doors down lifts the spirits even higher.
In an effort to familiarise ourselves further with the surroundings, my companion and I decide to pull up a chair at Aiolis. Found on Eolou, a long semi-pedestrianised boulevard that has seen better days, Aiolis is a delightful place to take stock, grab some lunch and watch drunken tramps stumble on by. The Acropolis is visible to the right, the prices are not unreasonable and the standard of the cuisine top drawer. Now all that holds the day back is an almost tropical looking spot of cloud cover, the pall of a nascent cold that seems to have crept up on the both of us and the effects of too little sleep.

Onwards and upwards – the Acropolis awaits! It is too late to visit the Acropolis right now so instead we check out Plaka, the medieval conglomeration of buildings that cling to its north eastern-most aspect. From the tourist driven cobblestone streets we descend back down Monastiraki – whence we alighted from our train – and head in a westerly direction along Adrianou.
It is now 18.00 and night has fallen. Time for a drink we think. Café Abyssinia does the trick and the air is warm enough for us to sit outside. Settling for just the one revitalising tipple we then head home, checking out the district of Psyrri on route.
Our turnaround at the hotel is brief and then it is time to see if Booze Cooperative lives up to its name. It does, although you pay for privilege. The place is as hip a bar as I have ever come across – all bohemian fixtures and fittings and exposed infrastructure. I could drink here all night, but we decide to give Aiolis another blast before calling it a day in the hope that we might sleep off those colds that have been brewing.

SIGNED OFF: GOING 'FREE-LANCE'

2009-04-23T13:02:00.007Z

As should have been evident from my last missive I have recently ‘signed-off’. This is not to presume that one finds me in full-time employment all of a sudden. Au contraire; I have merely accepted to work in a freelance capacity for a transcription company, attending meetings and writing up the proceedings from the audio recordings I take. Early signs suggest it is often arduous work for sometimes meagre return but it frees me from the fortnightly tribunal that was signing-on, offers me a little more money in doing so and should provide prospective employers with a better impression of my capability.

It was with no regret then that I found my self phoning the Jobseekers help-line to chase up my P45/P60 and the outstanding moneys owed to me that logic dictated should have arrived in my account today, a trial that under normal circumstances might fill me with trepidation. I am a strange mixture of optimism and cynicism; looking on the bright side when things go belly up but almost expecting them to do so in the first instance.
I was in no mood for a fight though – the sun was shining and I was about to flee to Kingston for pleasure – so I decided to engage my adversary in a decidedly civil manner.

The young lady responded well. Oddly, I found myself morphing into some strange amalgam of Nigel Havers and Uncle Monty, but without the upper class lilt. I did not use the words ‘delightful’ or ‘splendid’ but I did describe her decision to chase up the outstanding payment, which should consequently deposit itself into my bank account by next Tuesday, as being ‘wonderful’. It is no wonder I didn’t add ‘my dear’ for good measure.
I really do not know what came over me; perhaps it was the relief that I had recently freed myself from the state’s fiscal clutches or the fact that I was on hold for a mere 10, 20 seconds tops. Or maybe it was the positive outcome that seemed strangely plausible from the nascent stages of our conversation? Was I just fortunate or did the exaggerated nature of my personable manner seduce my agent into complete co-operation?
If only all customer support encounters ended like this.

WIN SOME, LOSE SOME

2009-04-22T12:54:00.009Z

Sitting on Richmond Green on a gloriously sunny morning at about 9:30am; very tired after having had only six hours sleep (I need at least eight to maintain both my sanity and my youthful appearance – insert comedy winking face here) on account of loosing a document I was writing up at 9:00pm the night before, forcing me to start all over again so as to fulfil my obligation to have it submitted to my new part-time employers by 9:00 am the following morning, I pondered the varying peaks and troughs that force themselves upon oneself no matter what sort of life one leads.
After two weeks of almost non-stop socialising one would like to think that total sobriety might bring with it a sort of clarity, but this never proves to be the case. Those who see intoxication as escapism are wrong. Indeed, all intoxication provides is an alternate and often heightened sense of environment, no less and no more valid than that supported by its absence, and certainly no less lucid.

Sitting outside a café overlooking Richmond Green on a gloriously sunny morning at about 9:30am, this should be the perfect opportunity to connect with nature, what with the dearth of pedestrians and shoppers that I put down to the ever-latening opening hours around these parts.
But no; I just feel dazed from my sleep deprivation. I do however feel happy, jollied by the aromas generated by the steadily rising temperature.
And if my previous musings hinted at a wanton embrace of alcohol then I hasten to add that this past fortnight has been a victim of coinciding social happenings - like the H37 that runs between Richmond and Hounslow, seemingly in packs - rather than any latent dipsomaniacal tendencies lurking within.
I like sobriety very much in fact, not least for the physical wellbeing it provides.
The coffee goes down as well as the view.

Bad luck: Having ‘Word’ pull a fast one on you just as CSI: Miami is about to start, mere moments before your assignment is finally complete.

Good luck: Finding a vintage black St. Michaels tie for £2 in St. Luke’s Hospice charity shop. All my other ties are varying shades of red which limits one’s shirt options somewhat.

Bad luck: Having your neighbour intercept you as you’re leaving the house for work in order to alert you to a sinister damp patch on his ceiling that could only have come from a leak somewhere in your kitchen.

Good luck: Coming home from your early morning Richmond jaunt to find a tax rebate for over £500 from the Inland Revenue.

Bad luck: Falling for AOL’s pledge to supply your line rental cheaper, only to find that it flips out every five minutes and BT cannot/will not reconnect you until the 30th.

Good luck: Finding a pair of your favourite Levis jeans in TK Max in my own rather rare measurements, reduced from £80 to less than £25.

I do not believe in luck (fate maybe). Most people who think themselves unlucky simply dwell on the unfortunate things that happen in their life rather than the fortuitous.

Sitting outside a café overlooking Richmond Green on a gloriously sunny morning at about 9:30am I reflect upon the good and bad luck vested upon me these previous two weeks.

This is just ‘what happens’.

THE GREAT CHARADE

2009-03-23T12:25:00.003Z

“You should be creative and have excellent communication skills. You also need to be highly motivated, work well in a team and be adaptable. All applicants will need to be computer literate to at least a basic level. Being able to plan and organise a busy workload is essential. Having a methodical approach, using your initiative and being able to multi-task will also be beneficial on this placement.”

I cannot recall for which posting I lifted this job description, which kind of serves my purpose for quoting it in the first instance; it could have come from almost every other job description you might find out there on the market.

Job ‘specs’ are as nebulous as the covering letters one has to write to in response to them. Both are vague forms to be written in a code designed to portray all parties involved as being more ‘dynamic’ than they really are. Jobs are made to sound as if they require uniquely skilled individuals and the CV is designed to try and convey that you are that very individual.
It is all a load of nonsense of course, hinging on the low probability that the person who has the dubious honour of reading through your CV will somehow be fooled by whatever guff one has had to fabricate to convince of one’s suitability.

I have amassed a bank of CV’s for various positions that I cut-and-paste like a William S Burroughs novel, as the job I might be applying for demands. This exercise in itself could be seen as enough to prove one’s worth; demonstrating that one has the ‘nouse’ to know what is semantically required of any given job application.
Come the interview process – should you be invited to partake – everybody’s going to get found out, but that’s okay; it’s what they’re there for.

Alas, I’ve yet to be presented the opportunity to reveal my true colours.

PATRONISATION DOWN THE JOB CENTRE 'PLUS'

2009-02-24T16:57:00.008Z

I had an appointment down the ‘Jobcentre Plus’ today. That is what they call the place these days - like it offers opportunities that the DSS never did.
Nothing seems to have changed from where I’m standing.

Every so often you get called in for these sorts of meetings. Their timing is pretty arbitrary but if my previous experience of signing on is anything to go by then you can expect to have to attend one at least every six months.
So I must admit to being a little surprised when I was notified just over a week ago that an appointment had been made for me to see somebody on the day I was next due in to sign on. Because not only has not it yet been six months since I first registered my claim for benefit but my payment had been suspended from the 28th of January through to the 20th February, the reason being that I left my last job of my own accord. Why they suspended my payments when they did and for the duration that they did remains a mystery that I cannot be bothered to get to the bottom of.

I thought it was with great temerity then, that they had the nerve to ask what I had been doing to find work in this only recently concluded period of financial sanction. I was tempted to tell them that it was none of their business; that in enforcing such a fiscal embargo they had temporarily washed their hands of me and had no right, therefore, to check up on what I had been up to in the interim; that if I had taken to working for cash-in-hand somewhere dodgy then the circumstances they had put me in would have been responsible and there was nothing they could do about it. But I hadn’t been working, illegally of otherwise, and I had been looking for work so instead I just nodded and agreed with everything they said.

This is why I waited months before I signed on; because I was so loathed to enter into a contract that required I prove that my efforts to find work were genuine and sincere. After all, what motive would I have for a case to be made otherwise? From just talking to me this should be obvious, and a quick read through my employment history would surely be enough to lay any lingering doubts to rest? But no: ‘Jennifer’ seemed almost perversely intent on tripping me up and finding an opening that would permit her to make veiled threats.

“Have you checked the job points today?”

“Not yet,” I replied. “I was sent straight up here.”

“You’re supposed to arrive 10 minutes early, as agreed in your ‘Jobseekers Agreement’. That’s what the word ‘operative’ means,” she said.

That’s what operative means?

“Well, I do normally but then they usually end up calling me pretty much straight away so I end up looking after. And I was early actually.”

Never mind that she was 5 minutes late for the interview.

Jennifer then proceeded to ask me what sort of work I had been looking for, only to poo-poo my efforts for being too ambitious. Beginning to lose patience I informed her that I had an interview next week, some freelance work in the pipeline, and what’s more I had been making just over 20k a year at my last job, 'so don’t tell me that applying for jobs offering 17k is in anyway over-ambitious.'

“Have you ever thought about working in the hotel industry?” she offered.

“I used to actually - a long time ago.”

‘I’m sure it hasn’t changed much,” she said.

“I have though.”

It is because I am ‘young’ apparently (I’m 33), which means I am expected to ride out the current financial downturn doing something that might drive me to the depths of depression just to keep the government happy. The same government that likes to encourage every Tom, Dick and Harry to go to University, presumably so the post-graduate can eventually lay claim to large enough a wage to pay back student loans to a government that is too tight to pay out student grants.

I have got to go back in two weeks and produce my ‘ES 4’, a sort of jobseekers diary that one is supposed to keep up to date with all one’s efforts to find work.
This isn’t a problem. I had my ES 4 with me this time around but I was not required to show it, despite me letting Jennifer know that I had it with me.

“I’ll trust you.”

Thanks Jen. Your new found faith in me is truly heart warming.

I fear I shall not be so charitable if challenged at our next meeting. I left my job in good faith, without any intention to ever claim benefits. Last May when I handed in my notice the recession had yet to announce itself to the world, but this is not my problem. It is not my fault the government has allowed the world’s financial institutions to run riot. And if the powers that be really are interested in helping people back to work then the first thing they can do is give people like me a break and allow us the time to find something half decent to work for.

It was never like this signing on under the Tories, I can tell you.

COFFEE AND NO TV

2009-02-11T18:00:00.006Z

For some reason having so much free time in the offering has made me no more vulnerable to the evils of drink than when I was occupied in full time employment. My relationship with the days that run from Monday through to Friday remain largely undisturbed, based as they are on doing things I do not want to have to so I can do the things that I do want to do come the weekend.

My evenings still tend to revolve, not always favourable, around the TV, and my sleeping and eating patterns remain as unchanged as… just about every other facet of modern life that I can think of?
The weekend remains the weekend then and I must admit that I am still very much consumed with a desire to hit the pub come Friday evening and return there on a regular basis until Sunday afternoon (I hasten to add that it is not so much the opportunity for intoxication that draws me there these days; more the sense of social occasion). But there has been nothing stopping me from contacting those that are available to join me in a spot of midweek revelry should the desire ever have taken me. It is just that for some reason it rarely has. I have effortlessly resisted the temptations to make merry that undoubtedly do exist when one is no longer required to be anywhere at any given time. And if this all sounds a little bit too smug then it is only because there are people I know who sometimes assume that the case must be otherwise.

It is worth pondering this if only to satiate those who struggle to comprehend what I actually do with the time I undoubtedly have on my hands. There are only so many hours one can productively spend actively seeking employment - as the folks down the job centre like to put it - after all. I will admit that I initially spent rather a lot of time ‘surfing the net’ but it did not take long for that particular appeal to seriously pall. When I point out that I never so much as open the TV guide, let alone turn the damned thing on, people’s curiosity deepens still further.
The truth is I am quite happy doing very little at all. I go for walks, eat lunch, drink coffee and indulge in just about the same level of physical exertion as did when I had a job - my running still done in evening hours I might add. I have even been known to ride my bicycle as far as High Street Kensington and back, a round trip of some 14 miles or more, although not as often as I feel I ought. Aside from all this I am hard pushed to say exactly what it is that I get up to during a typical day.

The one daily constant I can be sure of is that at some juncture I will leave the house and go about finding myself a café to sit down in and have coffee. This in itself can take anything up to three hours out of my day, when one factors in the distances I am prepared to travel to drink somewhere new (you didn’t think I bothered cycling all the way to High Street Kensington for the shopping did you?). I have my favoured haunts of course, but about once a fortnight I am consumed by the urge to find somewhere completely unfamiliar - or long since visited at the very least.
I am quite particular about avoiding high street chains too, although Cafe Rouge is occasionally worth a visit. As a rule though the more low key and independently run an establishment the better. I have regular haunts in Isleworth, Chiswick, Twickenham, Richmond and Kingston and have also found myself drinking in Petersham, Kew and even as far afield as Putney.
Some cafes I go to because they are cheap, others as a result of how friendly the staff are, more still for the quality of the coffee but most because of the location and the opportunity they afford to relax and watch the world pass on by. I love Austins on Richmond Green for its serenity, the small café off Apple Market in Kingston for allowing me the opportunity to ‘people watch’ and The Little Olive on St. Johns Road in Isleworth just because I do.

Perhaps my favourite cafe of all though is the Hollyhock, which not only offers free refills on a £1.65 mug of very decent filter coffee but, tucked away on the slope of Richmond’s delightful terrace gardens with the most splendid view over the River Thames, also provides perfect sanctuary from the vagaries of day to living; succour from the rigmarole of sitting at home in front of a laptop searching fruitlessly for employment.

But it is not just in times of unemployment that I have chosen to frequent cafes. Really, it is just a continuation of my life up until now. From taking time out from the Saturday shopping for coffee and cake with my mother or skipping study periods to hunker down with a crossword and a pot of tea in, the now defunct, Coffee Plus in Plymouth with my sixth form chums on a Friday morning, to hanging out with college friends in Hounslow Treaty Centre’s long forgotten balcony café where a pot of tea used to cost not much more than 50p.

Yeah, cafes sure are great.

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT

2009-01-28T19:42:00.005Z

I have been unemployed for just over six months now. It has been a lot of fun for the most part, liberated from the pressures of the nine-to-five rigmarole that precipitated my liberation from work in the first instance. Indeed I would retire tomorrow if I could. Alas, money makes the world go round and mine is no longer spinning as it should be.

The government have taken away my income support for quitting work voluntarily (like I said, six months ago), my savings have almost been bled dry and there really is a paucity of jobs out there, despite what your typical Daily Mail reader might like to think. In many ways the outlook is bleak but I seem somehow inured to the fears and insecurities my impending penury threatens. I do not know why but it is at these depths I sometimes feel at my most emotionally virile.
Still, I need the money and the acquisition of such must remain my focus. The problem is, aside from the current economic climate and all that that entails, many of the job descriptions I find myself pawing over leave me seriously jaded. Oozing a cloying sincerity that eats away at my nerves, I am almost tempted to conclude that I might never work again. Fortunately previous experience tells me that those responsible for writing out these job ‘specs’ are fools. For some reason the majority of people who work in recruitment seem to have an unfailing conviction in the human spirit that would make even Margaret Thatcher Blush. They will optimistically list a set of demands from the client that seem almost protean in nature. Such stipulations will simultaneously include being able to work well as part of a team; being able to work under one’s own initiative; being from a media or sales background; having a minimum of two years experience in any given field, even if the job in question is targeted toward school leavers and/or graduates; management/supervisory experience with proven leadership skills and the ability to manage and motivate clients; experienced in ALL forms of IT and good at carrying out duties such as, accounts, admin support, project administration, research and event management. And this all for jobs that pay 20 grand, at best.
Man, you got to be good these days.

Except you don’t really. You just need to be able to get on with whoever you end up working alongside and, as long as you are reasonably intelligent ,the rest should follow.

Of course, most companies do not want the bother that comes with supervising their own recruitment because they know this will involve asking HR to deal with it and it is a known fact that everybody who works in HR is actually mad (in a nice way). So a whole industry exists based on this premise and the weirdest thing about it is that over half the jobs advertised on the larger recruitment websites seem to be for more recruitment consultants. It reads like some sort of pyramid marketing scam, targeting strange people who want to work in recruitment consultancy, and I cannot wait for the whole thing to collapse.

So I will try not to let these spuriously intimidating job descriptions get me down, no matter how frustrating a read they mostly make. But prospective employers can afford to be picky right now and they know it. I have seen jobs advertised and their deadline subsequently pass only for them to re-appear weeks later, the company in question presumably discontent with the rabble they interviewed the first time around.

This is the climate with which I have to contend and it is one where I would gladly worry over an impending interview if only one could be arranged to worry about.

THAILAND 6

2008-07-28T23:38:00.001Z

It’s Monday, and for once it is purely time and convenience that dictate I return to D-Café, rather than apathy or whatever it was that brought me back to this place on my previous six visits here.
It is 8:15 and Khao San Road has barely awoke, imbibing it with a peace and stillness that seems almost alien now.
I am not keen on these transient moments, it has to be said. The need to eat within a predetermined period of time and then rush back, wash, pack, check-out of one’s hotel and then sweat it out waiting for a minibus that you are never 100% sure is going to turn up, despite the apparent professionalism of the outfit that sold you the ticket. It is not the guy in the travel agency I do not trust, for he was the most helpful and polite of ‘Thailanders’. No, it is the guy who is going to drive us to Kanchanaburi who will happily pack fifteen of you into the back of a single van if he can get away with it, so he can save petrol and give his colleague the opportunity to make them extra money on the side. He is late too and for a moment the math looks daunting. Fortunately there is too much luggage and both minibuses will indeed be required to take us on our way.
I like minibuses. They are in fact my favoured form of transport in Asia. They are normally comfortable, very cheap and pretty quick too.

The views from Bangkok’s flyovers give pause for yet more reflection. I may have lost my sense of self these last few days, in amongst the plastic hippies, part time cosmopolitans and the often desperately poor locals living off the streets. I am a European son and will try and continue my journey very much aware of that. I am not a man of the world, nor even an intrepid traveller. I am a tourist, an observer and very much an outsider and I must try and embrace the fact.
The bag of fetid clothes accumulating in my rucksack remind me of better garments I have left at home, fearful of what the humidity might to do them. Summer clothes do not sit well with me. I want to feel like Bowie in Berlin; wearing a tightly zipped leather jacket and a pair of leather shoes – clobber that would serve little purpose here.

30 minutes from our destination we make a ‘comfort stop’. I am oddly ravenous, considering I finished breakfast not three hours ago, so it is the perfect opportunity to sample some Asian crisps. Crisps anywhere outside of Great Britain are often a disappointment but the varieties on offer at the mini-mart we pause at are not half bad. I also require water too, having polished off the bottle I bought for the journey before we had extricated ourselves from the city limits.

On our arrival in Kanchanaburi our driver executes a manoeuvre that reassures me that my earlier cynicism was warranted. Louise and I are two of four people now left in the van and we have decided exactly which guesthouse we would like to be dropped off at, thank you very much. But the driver is obviously on some sort of commission, which is nearly always the case when you hire these small private charter minivans, and there a re a few establishments he’d like to show us first. This is not normally a big problem – one just grins at bears it – except when we insist that we would still like to be dropped off at the guesthouse we had in mind, he gets the hump and demands more money to take us there. Well, to hell with that, and we make our way on foot, which only takes about 10 minutes under the weight of our back packs in the glaring midday sun. The weather really does seem to be getting its act together it seems. On finding Apple’s Guesthouse our act of collective sedition appears vindicated. There is a moment where it looks uncertain whether they will have room for all four of us but it then it materialises that, as long as we do not mind paying 350 baht a night, then they do. Sure, Louise and I are on a budget, but not that much of a budget and 350 is fine by us. They have hot water too (no TV).
The lady we will deal with to reserve our 3 nights in Kanchanaburi is ‘Noi’ and she is quite a character. Noi, very eloquently regales us with a very detailed anecdote involving a seemingly obnoxious English ‘writer’ (presumably of a travel critique bent) who requested – nay, demanded – free accommodation, that a TV be set up in her room and finally that Noi reveal the secrets of her locally renowned Massaman curry. Noi politely told her where to stuff this act of journalistic blackmail and quite rightly too.
Whilst our rooms are being readied we have some lunch on site before taking a stroll back towards where are petulant bus driver deserted us.

How quickly one’s sense of place can change. On surveying the landscape on our arrival, Kanchanaburi appeared to me to be a bit of a non-event. On the surface there does not seem to be much to this town and with the Bridge over the River Kwai left to pull in the punters perhaps it feels it does not need to try so hard.
But now, liberated from the anxiety of not knowing where our proposed Guesthouse is I begin to buy into the place. At the very least it offers much needed respite form the chaos of Bangkok and appears to do so in spades. There are hints of a more colourful landscape than what was visible from the window of our bus on the drive in. Taking a turn south down a road that leads to a bridge (not the bridge) crossing the river Kwai, there are limestone outcrops almost close enough to consider walking towards. This, coupled with the surfeit of peddle bikes for hire along the main drag, suggests there may well be more to do here than join the tourists in soaking up Kanchanaburi’s ghoulishly ignoble 2nd world war past.
And then there’s Fine, a lovely little café with brightly coloured furnishings, run my bookishly handsome and extremely affable young man serving the most refreshing fruit shakes I have had the pleasure of drinking in Thailand thus far. We will be coming back here, I am sure.

Apples has a good reputation so it makes sense to have tea here, a decision that very much pays off. Across the road there are a couple of bars that look worthy of visit too, although on closer inspection they seem a little geared towards the single, white male. So, after tea, we move on, stop off in the disappointing Gaoguck and No Name before discovering the Buddha Bar run by a young Thai gentleman as affable as the chap who owns Fine just across the road. So affable is he that we find ourselves ‘locked in’, post the 12:00 curfew, watching Thai game shows until one in the morning.

THAILAND 5

2008-07-28T23:00:00.004Z

It is a relief to know it is late enough to get out of bed. I really did have an awful night’s sleep and I am really not sure why this was given how rough I spent most of yesterday feeling. Could it be the symptoms of alcoholic withdrawal? Maybe it was those Irish girls who kept running up and down the corridor, pissed off their stupid little faces? Or maybe it was the anticipation of the forecasted thunderstorm that failed to materialise (there’s nowt like a good thunderstorm to help you drift off to sleep). Or perhaps I was just worrying about Louise?
If it was indeed the latter then I need not have bothered. Approaching half past nine she bowls into reception completely un-phased by it all (but then, she never had the dilemmas I was faced with 4 days ago, like finding somewhere to stay, deciding whether to hit the road and generally occupy one’s solitary time).
We upgrade our room. When there are two of you, you may as well. I am paying less for a bigger room now, although the amenities on offer are still the same. Then we have breakfast in D-Café and the staff are no friendlier than they were on my first, second, third, fourth or fifth visit – Bangkok’s just like that. I fill Louise in on my turbulent time here before taking her to that nice little cafe where I go to think, except I am feeling more relaxed now – a result of the company perhaps or simply a sign that I am finally beginning to settle in.
Less resilient to the labours of sleep deprivation than I, Louise suggests that she might need a nap. I take the opportunity to buy stamps for my postcards and write a few more over another cup of iced coffee. One hour and 40 minutes later I return to our room and almost succumb to slumber myself but manage to resist. I am eager to get out of Bangkok and now Louise is here, plans can at last be put into place. To my delight Louise sees no incentive to hang around. Our walk has opened her eyes to the reality of Bangkok just as it did me. She is game for a morning departure and suggests Kanchanaburi as a destination. Kanchanaburi is home to the bridge over the river Kwai and close enough to Bangkok to not drastically interfere with our long term plan to head south. We had speculated on the possibility of heading north to Chang Mai and it is with great reluctance that Louise accepts my prognosis that doing so would leave us very pushed for time. Having said that, my perception of Kanchanaburi is hardly setting my world on fire but my impulse to get out of Bangkok is too strong now and I calmly acquiesce. We shall be leaving at 9:30 in the morning which is good because it allows us to take tea as soon as possible, have a few drinks and hopefully be in bed by midnight. We both need the sleep.

I found a lovely little restaurant overlooking the river that I thought we might try and I think Louise is more than happy to let me set the agenda for the evening. It is a good call although Louise is left ruing her decision to elect that they serve her Green Curry with a bit of a kick.
After tea we go to Dong Dea Moon and share in how Bangkok has changed so little during the last five years. Then it is back to the Reggae Bar before grabbing a nightcap on Kao San Road proper and finding ourselves in bed by 11:30, which is defiantly the right thing to do despite knowing I could keep going for at least another hour or two. Fortunately Louise’s jet-lag knocks such latent tendencies on the head.

When all is said and done I cannot say that I regret my five days holed up in Bangkok, but it was far from being the easy ride I had envisaged. But then, would Saigon or Hong Kong have proved any less demanding? Probably not. And the money I that I found myself getting through suggested that my finances could have ill afforded the hit they would have taken had I made good on my promise to sneak in an excursion elsewhere prior to Louise’s arrival.
Either way, being alone in Bangkok resuscitated long dormant memories of the occasional horrors of being alive and maybe that was no bad thing. In retrospect though, an excursion to Kho Chang – an island not more than five hours drive away from Bangkok – might have been the more sensible option.

THAILAND 4

2008-07-26T23:43:00.001Z

It is gone noon by the time I extricate myself from my state of slumber, which is probably just as well given my escapades the previous evening.
I still manage breakfast (or should that be lunch?) with Gemma, which given the heat and my condition is no mean feet.
Today is probably the hottest it has been since my arrival. Sure, temperatures have pushed past 30 degrees on everyday I have been here thus far, but the almost ever present cloud cover has protected me from the worst of its effects. Today though, the sky is blue and as such it is not the best day to be visiting temples and the like. I feel an effort should be made though, if only to show Gemma aspects of Bangkok she will otherwise miss, and so we start our grim walk west, across traffic clogged arteries and along the brutally exposed pavements that encircle the Royal Palace.

At 300 Baht Gemma and I are reluctant to enter the Palace’s inner sanctum. This only equates to about a fiver but one tends to be financially cautious at the beginning of an extended tour of the Orient: after all, I am not paying a huge amount more for my air-conditioned room.
I offer solace in the form of the Reclining Buddha housed in the adjacent compound but first there are obstacles to overcome. The Thais peddling their wares in this area are more aggressive than those who ply their trade on the Khao San Road, I guess because there are more tourists carrying a lot more money.
Trying to find an entrance we are approached by an ostensibly helpful Thai gentleman who informs us that visiting the reclining Buddha at this hour is quite impossible. The temple is closed for prayer and we would be much better off doing this or that – I do not recall what he suggests. When we proffer that we are quite happy to walk in the direction of the Buddha regardless he seems to get quiet shirty. Lo and behold, when we reach our intended destination it is business as normal. As nice as Thai people are they are not to be trusted at any cost.
I like seeing the Buddha again and Gemma seems suitable impressed too.

Because of the heat, and because it seems like a nice thing to do, we catch a boat back to Banglumpoo, Gemma grabbing the most brilliantly purple dragon fruit ‘smoothie’ along the way. And then we stop for coffee before saying our goodbyes in that very low-key way only the British know how.
Our farewells through, the ‘horrors’ decide to make an unruly return. Given my now much I drank last night I suppose I have been winging it all day. Still, it is all beginning to get a little tiresome…
Alcohol 2 – James 1

I decide to have a night in and spend the first hour glued to my bed sheltering from the insanity that refuses to release its odd hold over me. After finally pulling myself together I venture outside for one of those kebab’s that saved me from total ruin on my first night here. I am tempted to eat two.
Then it is back to my room again. Casino Royale is on the box. Ordinarily I would not care for such a film but right now it seems the perfect antidote. Watching it I am given the idea that maybe I should endeavour to be a bit more like Bond; cold-hearted – disconnected somewhat – and indifferent to my surroundings.
Movie over I decide to head out. I do not want to drink tonight, even though it would probably sort my head out. Instead I settle down for an iced coffee in a quite café up the road and around a bit. Bangkok is at its most distasteful again. Although I have very much enjoyed the company offered to me these last few days, 90% of travellers are idiots. True decadence is a skill in itself and should be consummated with a degree of cynicism and respect (fear & loathing if you will), but ‘travellers’ have little understanding of either and if the male of the species aren’t leering lasciviously over the locals female contingent then they are busy drinking themselves into a strange oblivion, often loudly, on strong local booze.
It is almost embarrassing but the natives do not do anything to discourage this barbaric myth making, selling the stuff for so little they might as well give it away. It seems an ugly situation and can foster a sense of arrogance amongst those older and more sober, which can border on the distasteful in itself. Nobody made me come here after all, and only last night I too was at it full throttle.
I wander some more, strangely empowered by my abstinence but at the same time desperate to relax. An early night I think, and I try but barely sleep a wink.
Outside the party carries on, relentless, incessantly reminding me of what I have undoubtedly missed.

THAILAND 3

2008-07-25T15:58:00.000Z

Hangover; and it is looking like a bad one. I have two hours to ready myself for a 1:00pm rendezvous with the guess-who. More pineapple, crisps and juice are called for and by the time I have emerged from the shower it seems I have a decent handle on this alcohol fuelled beast.
Score draw.

For breakfast it is a tuna sandwich – always a good call when one’s hungover – a couple of cups of coffee and the pursuit of observation before I leave my friends and head back to my room to gather my things for the day. I am off to the National Gallery, which I am hoping has improved since my last visit all those years ago.
Turns out it has, although the shop has not been able to keep up with the pace, depriving me of souvenir postcards to show for my troubles. Still, I had not expected such a massive transformation and leave mightily impressed with what the lesser known artists of Thailand are capable of – for this the ‘National Gallery’ in name only, with more extensive galleries existing elsewhere housing works of more established names. I am pleased I made the effort and leave feeling as relaxed as one can with a mild hangover in 35 degrees of heat.

I return then to where I found solace over coffee but revelations are scarce this time around. Instead, my state of mind decides it wants going to slam into reverse, undoing the progress I felt I had steadily made in the last 24 hours. Paranoid, I scramble back to my hotel room in a concerted effort to cope. Why is this happening to me? Is it the heat perhaps? Is it simply a case of needing to acclimatise more fully? Fortunately my appetite remains in tact allowing me to remain physically in control. Once one’s appetite starts to wane one is on a slippery slope, my friend.
I attempt to do something I should have dome weeks ago: read up on Malaysia. Alas, this does nothing for my constitution. Indeed Malaysia appears a very pedestrian destination, bereft of the charms I am already struggling to rediscover in Thailand’s more exotic climate.
What chance have I got? Right now, the act of travelling seems a bizarre, almost masochistic venture to put oneself through. What on earth is wrong with me?

After tea at D-Café, which does only a little to ease my woes, I find myself back at Banglumpoo with the intention of meeting up with Dave and, by default, Andy too. Except on getting there, they are not. Instead I find Gemma, who had planned to leave town, and would have if the coach she had tried to book herself on not been full. Dave and Andy by contrast managed to find space on a bus to Kho Pipi. I ponder what might have happened had Gemma’s coach had room for her too?

We wander the streets of Bangkok aimlessly, putting off the inevitable and it is comforted to hear that I am not the only one who has felt on edge of late. We put it down to the booze although I am not entirely convinced. Still, I am grateful for the company.
I have not suffered from excessive alcohol consumption as yet but am reluctant to get into the habit so early in my trip. I suppose we last an hour or so before we succumb to some random bar but our drinking is very pedestrian. I suggest we buy a Sprite to turn our Changs into shandies, to which Gemma approves.
Around 11:00, after finishing off in a very sedate Dong Dea Moon, we go our separate ways. We shall reconvene for breakfast and then we will actually bother to see something of worth – the reclining Buddha with any luck – before she really does get that bus up north and leave me well and truly on my own. At least that is the plan: Her coach is booked at least.
And so I edge my way hotel-ward only to find that I have myself a bit of a problem. I have drunken just enough beer to give me a bit of a taste for the stuff. I have also drunk enough to stamp out the feeling of lethargy that had me in its embrace just a few hours earlier. One for the road then and I seek out the Reggae Bar for a civilised jar.
This is a mistake. I am just tipsy enough to strike up conversation with complete strangers and little be known to me the stranger sat opposite is a hard drinking Canadian with a hard drinking Norwegian drinking buddy who both fancy doing a bit of hard drinking tonight. What is more, this Canadian loves going native and implores me to try some of the local fare he’s carrying around in small polythene bags. There are spicy pigs ears to be had, deep fried locust, ants in lemongrass and some sort of grub. I try everything except the grub and actually find myself quite taken with the locust. The Reggae Bar shuts soon but these guys reckon there is a party on elsewhere. We join the Khao San Road but it seems the police are doing one of their random sweeps tonight. Ostensibly Bangkok’s licensing laws are no less draconian than those in England, except nobody really takes them too seriously and once the police presence has passed, and assuming there is enough business worth to make it worth their while, many clubs will stay serving well into the small hours. But it is relatively quiet tonight and after drinking a shop bought bottle of beer on the kerbside I decide that I may as well head off back to the hotel. The beer is going to my head and I am not going anywhere for the foreseeable. Fortunately it is late so the bars will not be staying open much longer, regardless of how I feel about it.
Except my new friends have a plan B. They know locals who are having a ‘lock in’ back down Banglumpoo. I say ‘lock in’ but it is more a fragrantly open booze up sat around a table erected outside a bar.
Being an Englishman, it seems my reputation proceeds me and any talk of baling out early is shot down in flames by my erstwhile Canadian chum who sees it as my obligation to defend my country’s honour and drink as much as possible. He adds a large glass of Samsong whiskey to accompany my large beer and given that it is all on the house I cannot really decline. Noticing the eagerness with which my Canadian friend keeps me topped up I make sure I add plenty of coke at regular intervals.
I feel I do myself quite proud really, before quite insisting, come gone four in the morning, that I really must be getting back. I finally make a break for it and walk home through the strangely sedate streets of Bangkok. Ahhhh, bed.

THAILAND 2

2008-07-24T15:33:00.000Z

Let’s face it; I’m not going anywhere.
After almost ten hours sleep I almost feel physically and, perhaps more importantly, mentally rejuvenated. I nip out to collect some water, fresh pineapple and crisps and return to my room to watch a bit of TV before considering thinking about what I might like for breakfast ‘proper’.

Watching television abroad serves a very different purpose to that at home. It is all about ambience; background sound and vision whilst you wash, think about what to wear and generally prepare for the day ahead – and catching up on the weather forecast of course. BBC 24 News is what I tend to go for, although sometimes I like to watch indigenous soap operas: CNN as a last resort.

Gemma and Dave find me at breakfast at just gone noon. This is not entirely coincidental, having mooted the possibility of meeting here for lunch yesterday, but given the random nature of our awakening it was by no means a sure thing. What is more, they ended up stopping out until gone two in the morning fuelled by horror that is the mythical ‘bucket of joy’; a mixture of cheap local whiskey, crushed ice and the local equivalent of Red Bull, all drunk through straws from a bucket and capable of inducing the sort of hangover normally the preserve of Stella Artois and the like. I am amazed they are still alive and I am grateful I left when I did, although they are some years younger than I.
Booze nil - James 1.

You can buy a whole cornucopia of dubious paraphernalia on the Kao San Road, among them fake ID Cards of varying description. It is all done very openly and despite their high quality I doubt they are made with intent to deceive; more souvenirs to amuse one’s friends back home. That is not to say that those who purchase them do so with such innocence.
Walking passed the samples on display a familiar face catches my eye. It is Peter Crouch, the Portsmouth and England centre forward.

Nothing seems to have changed much since I was last here over five years ago, a fact that I think may have contributed to my mild ennui yesterday, the awful range of smells in particular bringing to mind the more unsavoury aspects of this country I must have somehow neglected to register during the intermitting years. The poverty, the filth, the noise and the humidity (although mercifully very few insects) are all present and correct and contribute to the feeling of Bangkok as a place frozen in time, damned to serve the wretched souls that pass through so incessantly.
So it is with a degree of irony that repeating the same familiar walk I took during the first week of my travels here back in 2002, brings with it a feeling of immense well-being, for it is not for the familiar I bother getting on a plane for but the thrill of encountering the unknown. My sudden awareness of this precipitates a moment of almost comforting, yet sombre, reflection and an almost heightened sense of self awareness. I can look all I want but I cannot find ‘happiness’ just like that. No, I need to prod about a bit in the hope that happiness might jump out at me. Of course, conversely – prodding done – so might sadness. This is just the way things are, and it is completely beyond my control.
Nothing changes. This is my plight.

I am drinking coffee as I ponder such cheerful notions, on a road tucked away from the infernal hedonism that festers not five minutes walk away and I am very happy here, alone with myself. I have also accrued some great postcards from a little shop I found along the way and must decide who is to receive which.

In what seems to becoming a bit of a habit, I have arranged to meet Gemma and Dave at 7:00pm at their new digs in Banglumpoo. Dave’s friend Andy has now entered the fray and having briefly talked to him earlier when he showed up towards the end of breakfast I cannot decide whether I like him or not. I have no intention of eating with my new found chums simply because I am unable to wait that long, and instead I retreat to my room, watch some TV, write a few post-cards and press a few press-ups (a sure sigh that things are on the up) before heading back out to eat at Gulliver’s on the corner; an appalling thing to do but somewhere I want to go to for old time’s sake. Alas, the pork chops are not as satisfying as I remember.

I am running a little late but by the time I have reached Banglumpoo only Gemma is up and about and so together we return to Dong Dea Moon and get stuck into a couple of large bottles of Chang beer. It is a good hour or so before Dave and Andy show up and before long I am feeling really rather drunk. Beside us a Dutch guy is drinking with three French folk with whom Gemma decides to establish contact. Dave and Andy want to head uptown to explore the seedier side of Bangkok life but I am not game because I have finally decided that Andy is not really my type of guy. Nor is he Gemma’s so we follow the Dutch guy and is entourage to explore the bars of the Kao San Road. After much speculating we find the Reggae Bar down one of the undercover alleys that run parallel to Khao San Road itself. These are the sort of Bangkok bars I like, out of the way from the carnage that goes on elsewhere but still populated by people who like a drink – they just don’t make a song and dance about it. The downside to places like this is they are not large enough to justify staying open late and sooner or later one will have to head back to the strip, should you want to continue the party.
It is almost 2:00pm by the time I decide to jump ship tonight, after being dragged back to the abomination that is Gulliver’s, and I am left with the feeling that I will not be feeling quite as sprightly tomorrow as I was this morning.

THAILAND 1

2008-07-23T15:09:00.001Z

I didn’t think I would do this but at 9:00am in the morning I find myself a supping a pint in a Heathrow bar. I’ve managed to kill some time looking at the digital cameras in duty free but the tax-relief doesn’t seem to offer any massive discount and nor can I find any models that take my fancy. I have a camera with me - an old school Pentax ME dating back to the 1970’s - but I need something smaller for those anticipated wild nights and I’d quite fancied debuting a digital camera on this holiday. Maybe I can implore Louise to buy that Samsung I liked the look of in Dixons and she can bring it with her when she joins me in four days time? I never rush into these sorts of things and may well pay the price. Maybe it’s just as well though. I get paranoid that I’m going to loose, break or get stolen stuff of value when I am away, which isn’t such a problem on a weekend break staying in a reputable hotel but I’m effectively going to be on the road for five weeks, renting modest accommodation in an unforgiving climate.

I almost have time for a second beer but I think that might be pushing it. Maybe I can drink on the plane? I don’t want to get drunk, but time will pass quicker if I drink a bit, and I’m not exactly bubbling over with excitement either.

In fact I feel pretty low on the flight over. I’m flying Etihad Airways which means I’m surrounded by Arabs and their burkas, which isn’t the source of my misery by any means but it is a little disconcerting, as is the lack of any great leg room.
Watching ‘East of Eden’ eases the tension somewhat, as does the consumption of two Bloody Marys on what’s ostensibly a ‘dry’ airline. At this juncture my main concerns are that for £770 should I really be expected to make a transfer in Abu Dhabi, and given that I am should I have not at least arranged to stop over a few days and check the place out? Should I really be going to Thailand at all? I’ve become more decisive as I’ve gotten older but at what cost? To make rash choices like this? I should have chosen to holiday in Mexico: I’ve never been there.

Abu Dhabi itself seems to lighten my mood, as will the roomier aircraft that will carry me on the second leg of my journey. The terminal in which I have to kill an hour is a strange place; a three-dimensional arbelos, interiorly tiled in green and purple. Physically beautiful, it does not seem big enough as an airport, although I suppose there are other areas I am over-looking and am not permitted to enter, being as I am ‘in transit’. I still feel the need to consult somebody as to which way I will ultimately have to go to make my connection and the man who I ask (or who asks me, sensing my disorientation) is pleasingly helpful.

I am not a patient man and I think this is a lot to do with why I often get myself down on outward-bound journeys of any great length. I am afforded too much time to question whether it would have been a better idea to have found myself travelling somewhere else and also to degenerate physically because long haul flights are extremely punishing no matter how much leg room one might have; which in this instance is very little – relatively speaking.

Bangkok has built itself a new airport since I was last here and I am very keen on it. It is big, and airy, and efficient which is just what you need when you have travelled half way across the globe. I make it through customs in no time at all and find the bus I need to catch to the Khao San Road even quicker. I am not now as anxious as I was 10 hours earlier but that might be down to the inter-continental stupor I am wandering around in. I slept a few hours on the second leg, which is very unusual for me and a very good thing too given that I intend to realign my body-clock as quickly as possible – which will involve staying awake for a good while yet. But then, I do not think I could sleep now if I tried.

The bus journey soothes me and I am beguiled by the familiarity of the view from my window. I am forced into a verbal exchange with a bloke sat across from me and then the girl sat in front as these fellow solipsistic travellers pick each others brain for ideas as to where they might intend to stay. Dave and Gemma are younger than me and have not been to Bangkok before. I do my best to make conversation above the twin growl of the bus’s diesel engine and the howl of the air conditioning.
On arrival I feel it is almost my duty to wait for my new found acquaintances and show them where I plan to be staying – and I do so. First up is Chart, a place Louise and I stayed during the few days we had to kill before flying out to New Zealand after two weeks spent in Cambodia. I take a look at the rates, explain to my cadres that I am going to have a look at the Khao San Palace up the road and that I might catch them later. They seem like nice folk but right now all I want to do is find myself a room so I can have a shower and change out of a t-shirt that is beginning to buckle under the strain of over 20 hours on the go.
The Khao San Palace has rooms at very similar rates to those on offer at of Chart. However, they also have rooms with a television, a hot shower and air conditioning for not a huge amount of Baht more. Now, if I was to be stuck out here a few months or more, like I was previously, such luxury would be out of the question, especially given that I have nobody to split the cost with right now. But I am not and I feel fragile, and the thought of lying in a shell of a room with nothing to stimulate my senses other than the whir of the fan and the shock of a cold shower is too much to bear. So I go for the TV, air–con and heated water.

In my room everything seems right with the world. I turn on the TV, tune into the world service, unpack, wash, change into clean clothes and feel revitalised. After about half an hour or so, I am ready to leave the safety of my room, imparted with a sense of new found optimism. And then my world comes crashing down around me once more as the combined sights and smells of Bangkok, that I had somehow managed to disregard in my haste to find shelter, remind me how grotesque this city can really be. My rose-tinted spectacles are fractured and I am left to ponder quite where I can expect my fun to come from these next few days. Certainly not from my fellow holiday makers I am sure – an often despicable bunch of chancers, posers and loafers. But wait: Dave and Gemma seemed alright, as yet unspoilt by the bacchanalian excess of this licentious metropolis, and there they are, sat outside that there café!
I sheepishly join them and we sit, drenched in fresh sweat, drinking beer.
Just watch me now blanking the hustlers, the tuk-tuk drivers and their tat-touting cousins.

After an hour or so it is decided that we all have things to do. My new friends booked into the Khao San Palace too but, unlike myself, cannot really justify the expense, especially Gemma who has just come off the back of a year travelling and working (occasionally) in Australia and has a good few months ahead of her in SE Asia. So they might check out cheaper digs to move into tomorrow while I have really got to think about my next move. We arrange to meet back at D-café later for a few beers.

After skulking about in my room for over an hour trying to determine if I can really be arsed with flying again tomorrow and dealing with all the hassle that doing so will incur – like finding somewhere to stay and fathoming out unknown quantities such as foreign currency and unbeknown public transport – I decide it is my duty to at least look into the possibility.
I find a travel agent with public internet access (of which there are many in and around the Khao San Road) and do a bit of research. Flights to Vietnam are a lot more expensive than they were when I looked on Air Asia’s website a few months earlier but I guess that might because I am exploring the possibility of flying tomorrow. Flying to Hong Kong costs more still yet given the extra distance and my fondness for the idea of going there it seems a little more reasonable. Problem is though I would be spending a lot of time on various forms of public transport, soaking up time I can ill afford.
I try out a few more travel agents, asking staff this time, and I am thrown yet more curve balls in the form of visa requirements for Vietnam, costing in the region of 2500 Baht (about £40 at the time), and a possible 2 days wait. I am looking at paying the equivalent of about £150 if I want to get either venture off the ground and the prospect of leaving Louise in the lurch for the best part of 24 hours to boot, which I am prepared to do. So much for the short-notice-budget-travel-opportunities various people assured me would be on offer out here. I am starting to think that I should have planned a lot of this in advance: Of course I should have.

I find myself a bar and order a small beer to mull my options over. It is a desperate situation and one that is beginning to get me down. On the one hand the cost and the hassle make getting out of Thailand for a few days very troublesome yet on the other, the thought of killing four whole days in Bangkok depresses the hell out of me. There is the option that I travel over-land within Thailand itself but I am not thinking straight and give this idea short shrift.

It is almost teatime now and I bump into Dave wandering the streets. We opt to grab another beer at D-Café - a large bottle of ‘Cheers’ this time - and I share in my dilemma. The beer goes down well and calms me down a little. It is not long before Gemma has joined us too and we find ourselves getting stuck into a bit of a session. After a few hours have passed it is suggested I show my friends around and I take them to an area known as Banglumpoo and to a bar called Dong Dea Moon, a favourite of mine from my previous visits here. Come 9:30pm and the need to eat is rather pressing. We find a sort of street-side Kebab outfit just off the Khao San road that fulfils our needs perfectly, permitting us to return to D-Café and continue drinking without the fear of reprisal.
I am now part of scene I cast such negative dispersions on earlier in the day and I am loving it. I have joined the nightly carnival that is the Khao San Road, propping up a diaspora of drunkards from around the world. Americans, Australians, Kiwis, Brits, Israelis, Canadians, French, Scandinavians, plenty of Germans and plenty of Irish. There was a lot of Irish activity last time I was out here and today has proved no different. Every nation seems to think they have travelling down to a pat – Antipodeans and Yanks in particular. It is all about latex sandals, vests, labelled summer wear all coupled with the insouciant manner that can only be convincingly carried off when one travels in packs. For those who dare venture further there are piercings, hair braids and tattoos to be had; badges of travelling authenticity to wow your friends and relatives with when you get back home. I am wearing cut-denim shorts and desert boots; not because I am contrary but simply because I would feel daft wearing anything else.

Pretty soon I start to flag, although the English couple sat at the table next to us who intend to move on to Cambodia the next day provide me with the opportunity to play the whole drunken self-serving ‘you’re-going-to-love-it’ twat thing for a while. Gemma and Alan insinuate they haven’t much life left in them either so I announce my retirement, knowing that I am not going to miss out on anything vital. It is about 12:30am local time, and about 3:00pm GMT and aside from the few hours kip on the plain I have been going for about 32 hours. I will sleep well tonight.

NEW YORK 6

2008-04-14T13:57:00.004Z

Good morning.
Is it?
Yes it is. The baby didn’t even wake me during the night.
Ian has to work come lunchtime so we’d better get a move on. Tea and toast will suffice in the meantime.

Another sunny day. Spring is an unpredictable month at the best of times so Louise and I really have had it lucky these last few days.
We have to walk back down that big long scary road into Brooklyn again but, in the warm light of day, it doesn’t seem half as intimidating. This is the beauty of New York actually; that nobody seems to bother you. They don’t even look at you, no matter how out of place you might appear. With rucksacks strapped to your back and English accents emanating from our mouths, it really is most refreshing.

'Go Brooklyn!'

Charlotte and Ian are taking us to a diner which dares to serve up something different – no bacon, eggs and fried potato here. Indeed the imaginatively named Diner may have unwittingly invented the concept of the ‘gastro-diner’, serving dishes that include ingredients I am unfamiliar, and changing the menu from day to day. The food tastes first first-rate and it’s great to eat in what was once an original diner from the 1920’s. It’s like those archetypal diners you see in the movies with a bar running most of the length of its long rectangular form with stools where you can sit and have a shake with your date, should you have one. We sit at a table, though, like the adults we are.
Williamsburg itself rests on a north-western stretch of Brooklyn that overlooks Manhattan along the banks of the East River and after lunch Charlotte takes us on a walk up towards Greenpoint to give us a feel of the place. It feels more American to me than Manhattan, and Bedord Avenue in particular wouldn’t look out of place stuck on the end of Haight Ashbury in San Francisco, that most ‘American’ of settings. All in all, it presents another reason to get out of Manhattan, should you ever come here, with its charming cafes, comprehensive thrift stores and live music venues. I reckon the bars here would be real fun come the weekend too.Our walk finishes up with us kicking back on some landscaped derelict land off Kent Avenue with an imposing and unobstructed view towards Manhattan in front of, it but we’re not there for long before Louise and I have to think about making our way back to Newark to catch our plain

'Diner.'

New York has surprised me in so many ways, and yet, looking back, it all seems so obvious now. What initially didn’t feel like New York City now does feel like New York City, and all the obvious pointers – the police sirens, the leaking fire hydrants, the steam emanating from the circular holes in the man-hole covers in the middle of the roads – have all segued there way into my sub-conscious and connected themselves to the iconic preconceptions that were rightly there all along.
Despite our best efforts to spread our search far and wide, though, and our success in visiting four out of the five boroughs that constitute this metropolis, I’m still left feeling that there is a hell of a lot left to see. I still want to go to Harlem for instance. I want to take in a hockey or a baseball game too. I want to go drinking in Brooklyn, Queens, Greenwich and maybe even mix it up with the middles classes around central Park. I want to find somewhere where they play live jazz. I want to catch a train to Mantauk and see a bit of the surrounding area, and I’d even dare venture to the Bronx, which Ian assures me is NYCs’ roughest borough. But six days has seemed a sensible amount of time here and it’s not the cheapest place in the world to rent, eat and drink, which does put a limit on how much you can do in one visit.
Until next time then, my friend. I look forward to it.

NEW YORK 5

2008-04-13T13:50:00.002Z

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. It’s one of those slow burning hangovers that lulls you into thinking you might have gotten away with it but then creeps up on you as the day progresses. I have for myself no sympathy.
I would happily go to Sunburst for a third time, although I’m not sure Louise is bothered. It’s a moot point because the there’s no room to sit there today. Across the road and down a little bit there’s The Lyric, a diner more in keeping with Sunflower where we went on our first morning here. I drink plenty of water and most of my food but the unsavoury state of the toilets prevents me from finishing my hangover off.
The plan today is simple. Louise will shop and I will visit the Empire State before picking up our bags from the Carlton Amrs and catching a 6:30pm train to Queens to stay the night with Charlotte, Ian and their son, Euan. It’s not going to take a huge amount of time to do the whole Empire State thing so I’ve got a good few hours to kill in the meantime. First I shall head towards East Village to check out some thrift Stores I spotted on our way there Thursday night.
It’s a lovely day again and so I walk pretty aimlessly to my destination. I stumble upon Gramercy Park along the way, a private enclave surrounded by almost gothic residential tenements whose residents have private access to this beautifully kept haven. The walk from there is farther than I thought, explained to some degree by the realisation that the maps covering mid and down town Manhattan are out of alignment, which also explains why that walk to East Village on Thursday evening took noticeably longer than I had anticipated.
Alas, the thrift stores have nothing for me today, although you could see how they might do if I were to visit again. The sounds of A Tribe Called Quest’s second album ‘The Low End Theory’ provide a nostalgically pleasing back drop while I peruse rack upon rack of second hand clothes, and for that I am very happy. It must be about now that the fear that I may have misplaced my passport enters my head. I normally make a point of checking the essentials when I check out of a hotel but in this morning’s rush to vacate our room by the requisite 11:00am deadline I’m not sure I did? The walk back to the Carlton Arms, then, is an ever so slightly fraught one but, sure enough, on my arrival my passport and other particulars are all present and correct. At least it allows me the opportunity to use their toilets before I move on to the Empire State.

It’s a long drawn out affair reaching the top of the Empire State. Obviously there are the rather predictable security checks to go through but there are a number of extra diversions too. For starters there isn’t one elevator to take you to the top, requiring one to change at various floors and queue again for the next lift to carry you skywards. Then there’s the various businesses offering maps, super-imposed portraits – the normal tat you find on sale at major tourist destinations. It’s all worthwhile though. The view from the top is as immense as one might expect, even if there are dark clouds now gathering from all directions. I spend almost half an hour up there, picking out the city’s landmarks and taking photos from every direction possible. I don’t even get vertigo, a condition from which I sporadically suffer.

I’m meeting Louise outside the library again, but I’m early so grab myself yet another coffee. Manhattan is very quiet today and although it’s Sunday I thought New York might be inured to the traditional effects of the Sabbath. My kneed is playing up again too but I don’t let that stop Louise taking me to the Levis store before we head on back to the Carleton Arms to pick up our baggage. Maybe it’s the grim weather that’s decided to roll on in, or the fatigued hangover I can’t seem to shake, but suddenly everything seems rather bleak. Actually, it’s probably the thought of having to take the long journey to Queens that palls, but it has to be done.

Charlotte and Ian actually live on the boarder of the Brooklyn and Queens and it occurs to me that it’s not the best area for luggage laden tourists to be walking through on their own. The road they actually live on stretches quite some distance and the end we join it is Brooklyn territory, and feels slightly threatening. As we progress northward the houses get slightly bigger and the streets cleaner, although it’s hardly prime real estate whichever way you look at it. That said, their flat is twice the size than what you’d get for your money back in dear old Blighty and has plenty of charm to boot: one is instantly appreciative of why they moved here.
We arrive a little later than promised but dinner is still a few hours away so we drink beer and catch up, as one does in these situations. After we’ve eaten Ian takes me to a pub he hoped would be a bit more lively than it turns out to be. Instead there’s just one guy watching the baseball, but Ian’s stories of New York and its accompanying psyche more than make up for the lack of activity.
So my foreboding turns out to be misplaced and I realise that getting out of Manhattan is an essential pursuit for anybody visiting New York. Sure, we’ve been to Coney and Staten Island but I get the feeling we’ve only scratched the surface. Tomorrow we will have lunch in Williamsburg, a bohemian an up-and-coming area of the Brooklyn. The spectre of gentrification hovers around the corner anywhere in the world where people like to be.

NEW YORK 4

2008-04-12T13:33:00.004Z

To my surprise, Louise sanctions a return to Sunburst. I really liked my breakfast there yesterday and the place provides the perfect environment in which to kick start the day. Maybe Louise agrees with me? She’s taking a chance today, mind. Rather than joining me in the regular bacon, egg and potato based extravaganza we’ve become accustomed to, she wants waffles with maple sauce, another great New York staple. Personally, I can’t think of anything worse at such an early hour of the day.
From here we shall go straight out and, although the weather looks promising again, after yesterday’s late descent into more typical April metrological fare we’re not taking any chances and decide to wear our coats. This is especially prudent given we shall have to catch the ferry to Staten Island, New York’s oft over-looked 5th Borough and its most suburban, and crossing bodies of water invariably bring with them noticeably cooler conditions.
Staten Island doesn’t sound like it has a huge amount to offer but the ferry there is free and from it one can see the Statue of Liberty in a passing. The alternative approach would be to pay for one of the tour-operated boats that get right up close to the thing, but it’s a statue I have heard often disappoints close up, not being half as big as one would imagine. And anyway, there are supposed to be a few thrift stores and cafes across the bay, so it could be fun.

'Outside Sunburst'

On arrival at the ferry terminal we first consider we might check out ‘Ground Zero’. We make a few tentative crossings in the vague direction of this spectacle of ‘absence’ before our distorted sense of time and space beat us back. Maybe we’ll do it on the return journey, we think. It’s pretty hot too, so let’s get on that ferry before those dark clouds loitering on the horizon close in.
The view of Manhattan itself is probably more interesting than that of the Statue of Liberty and I’m glad we didn’t get suckered into joining one of the tours. I like sailing this utilitarian hulk too; it’s almost like joining the local rat-race, riding along with the commuters on their way to work, except it’s a little late for that and we’re travelling in the opposite direction (nobody who could afford to live in Manhattan would be able to do so on a Staten Island wage, I’m sure).
When we arrive everybody seems to scuttle off in various directions leaving us alone in an impressively modern terminus to work out a plan of attack. Our initial impression is that Staten Island is far quieter than we had imagined and I can’t for the life of me work out where everybody could have possibly been going to so quickly. There’s a modest baseball ground to our right, but it doesn’t look like much is going on there, some sort of town-hall type structure directly in front and derelict warehouses to the left. The further we walk the more the impression of Staten Island as ghost town is affirmed. Further still and, in the distinct minority, ethnically speaking, we began to feel a little uncomfortable. Up a hill and a strange warm humidity hits us, but thankfully the locals don’t. In fact they don’t even bat an eye-lid; not even the mad few hanging out on street corners. Our plan had been to simply have a wander and then stop off somewhere for a light lunch. Louise and I are happy that we’ve fulfilled the first requirement but, short of stopping off at Taco Bell – which is mooted only half in jest – we conclude that we might be better off finding somewhere to eat on our return to Manhattan.
At the last we discover a final quirk to Staten’s Island’s many; a thrift store staffed by the sort of people you might expect to find featuring in a left-of-field low budget American movie (think Ghostworld, Napoleon Dynamite – films like that). Alas, neither of us finds any cheap threads amongst the many on offer but the thrill of feeling like an extra in some hip indie-flick makes the whole effort of coming here seem worth the while.
Back to the modern looking terminus and there are hoards of people fleeing to Manhattan. Where have they come from and what is their business? There’s no visible demographic with which to discern their purpose but I’d love to know.

Safely on terra firma we decide that we haven’t the time to inspect the void that is Ground Zero and catch the subway to Chinatown instead. New York’s grid system forces us to take a few minutes to find our bearings but, soon enough, we find ourselves on Broadway searching frantically for somewhere to eat. After much dithering we settle for Café Mirot(?), a sort of chain establishment embellished with varnished pine, exposed pipes and red painted concrete. The focaccias aren’t bad either.
Given that this is our second daytime stint in and around downtown Manhattan I suggest that any shopping Louise might want to do around here she should do now. That way she can concentrate on shopping the midtown area tomorrow whilst I take a trip up the Empire State, which is something else Louise did on her previous trip and doesn’t particularly want to bother with again. She concurs.

My plan is to wander the streets of New York in search of photographic opportunities but, aware of the bargains there are to be had shopping over here, I figure I may as well take in a few shops along the way. Not that there are many that interest me, although ‘Urban Outfitters’ is always worth a look. To my surprise I find a pair of slim-fit 514 Levis cords reduced to $29 (that’s about £17 at the time of writing) and snap them up without hesitation. My souvenir trousers in the bag (quite literally), I move north to take pictures of where Broadway bisects West Houston Street before retracing my steps towards Greenwich in search of postcards and stamps.
It’s with mixed feeling that I chance upon the area that falls between Greenwich and Soho. MacDougal Street in particular seems to be a really happening area, and only a stones throw from the Belgian Bar where we drank the night before. If only we’d had more time to look around last night we could have found a whole different kind of night-life. One for later if the Lower East side doesn’t work out perhaps?
I have arranged to meet Louise back on Washington Square at 5:30pm where we drank take-away coffee on Thursday, and, without a watch, I hedge my bets and get there 5 minutes early (the clock in the coffee shop tells me this). Conversely, Louise is 15 minutes late and doesn’t even have the shopping to justify being so. I don’t mind that she’s late particularly, but today is Saturday and tonight is our last night in Manhattan and, whilst we’ve been out drinking every night thus far, I don’t feel like I’ve really let my hair down since we arrived. And this is New York City after all.
After Thursday’s epic walk home we opt to find a subway, although given the walk both to the station and from it at the other end I’m not sure it saves any time, but does serve the purpose of keeping Louise’s woes in check. We stop by the thrift store around the corner and Louise puts in an offer on the ‘object d’art’ she’s had her eye on every time we’ve walked passed and although they offer to ship it to her, should her bid remain unsurpassed come next week’s auction, neither of us are particularly optimistic it will do so.

I’m worried, given the hour, where food might fall into the night’s equation. Lunch was taken late and, no doubt, Louise will require time to ready herself for the evening. What’s more we intend to take our ID and have another go at getting into the roof top terrace bar, 230 Fifth.
It is getting on for 8:00pm by the time we get to 230 Fifth and I’m anxious over whether this diversion will be worth the sacrifice in time. I didn’t bother changing before we went out, which turns out to be rather fortuitous because I’m wearing a shirt today and there are people wearing t-shirts who are being refused entry. There had been no mention of a dress-code when we tried to get in here on Wednesday – only ID – but it is Saturday and I suppose they can afford to be more choosey. The irony is that some of these guys in T-shirts still look smarter than I, with their well groomed haircuts and clean shiny shoes. I guess when it is dark the state of your second-hand Chelsea boots don’t look so conspicuous.
The bar is on the 20th floor of what I assume to be a residential tower block and, judging by the fine condition of the atrium, anybody that might live here must be loaded. It brings to mind a time a friend and I visited a similar establishment in San Francisco only to be given the once over by the concierge and only allowed in on the condition that we stayed for one drink only. That had been on a Tuesday and a little earlier in the evening too (he was nice about it and we had been wearing trainers).
As we exit the elevator I’m relieved to find an opulent bar lacking in clientele. The place is bordering on the ludicrous, decked out in grey velvet sofas and pink adornments, and the bar staffed by scantily clad dolly birds whom one might imagine will expect large tips. Mercifully the drinks aren’t quite as expensive as the surroundings imply and we make our way to the out-door terrace as soon as we’ve settled the bill.
Out here it’s not so quiet – it’s heaving in fact - but I’m too taken with the view to care. Dusk is about to turn into night but the Empire State Building, towards which we are diametrically opposite, is lit up in all its glory. From street level I had found the Empire State to be a disappointment, its height diminished by the laws of perspective, but not so from up here. With a side on 20 storey view one can see to the significant degree it dwarfs most of the buildings around it.
We stay for another round in order to take in this sumptuous spectacle and imagine what it must be liked to be loaded and living in New York. I could happily stay for another too, if Louise was prepared to forget about food and throw caution to the wind. She’s not though and if we don’t find somewhere to eat now we’ll never make it to the Lower East Side.

Back on Madison Square and I spot a place called Live Bait and it seems to be playing the all American card. I’m surprised, then, when Louise so readily agrees we eat here and can only assume that she either recognises the urgency of our situation too or she’s just really hungry, (unlike me whose hunger has been kept at the bay with beer).
Live Bait is great. It feels more American than the whole of New York. It’s like what an American themed restaurant would be if one opened in another country; all obvious symbolism and gauche Americana, and the food is great too. We both opt for the chicken quarters in barbeque sauce, Louise with fries and I with mashed potato. Had I not suddenly developed an appetite the moment I walked through the door, stuff like this could almost be considered a little sickly; the portions are certainly big enough. But it hits the spot, my only concern now being whether we can digest this bulk in enough time to still get drunk.

'Live Bait; Madison Square.'

I don’t know if it’s because it’s a Saturday but Lower East Side gives off a more edgy vibe than East Village to the north or Soho and Greenwich to the west. Having said that there were tributaries off of 6th Avenue in and around Greenwich that suggested danger too, but we never ventured down them. Or maybe it’s just because Louise is wearing shoes that aren’t really made for walking and Home Sweet Home on Chrystie Street requires we do so, much to her chagrin. A girl complaining about the pain in her feet is enough to tip anybody over the edge.
Home Sweet Home occupies a basement and it’s the seediest place we’ve been to yet. The crowd is younger than elsewhere and the music hipper. There are stuffed animals adorning the walls and a dance floor situated towards the back of the club. If I wasn’t so stuffed this would be a great place to cut loose but instead Louise and I just sit there, comatose, soaking up the vibe. In an effort to encourage the alcohol to enter my bloodstream at a more economical rate I switch from beer to whiskey and coke. Just as this tactic seems like it might pay dividends the music takes a turn for the worse – from indie to bland pop via ‘Caught Stealin’ by Jane’s Addiction. It is a sign that we must leave immediately.

Our next stop – Schiller’s Liquor Bar on Rivington Street – takes us into the heart of the Lower East Side and its buzzin’. There are bars galore and we consider many before opting for Schiller’s. Decked out in tiles and brass, the place feels like it’s been around a while, a suggestion augmented by the pristinely kept wash-room in all its Victorian glory. We are lucky to find a seat, although we’re soon haplessly searching for a third chair to accommodate Enrique, a well dressed gentleman who takes quite a shine to us and ends up paying for the round we’d just ordered which, unbeknown to him, includes a Sambuca chaser to follow my last beer. He entertains us for over an hour and it’s the closest contact we’ve had with the locals since we’ve been here, and I’m glad for his company. He’s a democrat and sees Barack Obama as the country’s potential saviour. I hope he sees his faith in the man repaid.It is gone 4:00 by the time we leave and when we arrive back at our hotel I quite insist on taking a nightcap at the other Irish bar over the road, despite the fact that the place is obviously winding down. Louise, wisely, declines my invitation

NEW YORK 3

2008-04-11T13:27:00.003Z

Yesterday’s Deli did just the job and I spotted another on the walk back from Greenwich yesterday that I very muck liked the look of. Following on from a theme, the place is called Sunburst and it’s a little more homely than yesterday’s archetypal effort, even if the food is pretty much identical. Indeed, they’re going for a completely different vibe here. The walls are painted a dark red and there are plants and interesting light fittings. It’s more of a café, really, that just happens to do breakfast, a lot like cafes often do back home.

The weather is looking good again so before we catch the No. 6 subway to Grand Central we stop off at the hotel to rid ourselves of our coats. We’re meeting a friend from back home in England with the intention of visiting the Museum of Modern Art together. Charlotte moved here over a year ago with her husband, Ian, and they have since borne a child, but in that time she’s never been to the MOMA. We’re to meet outside the library on Fifth Avenue at 1:30 so, with time to kill, we have a wander around Grand Central Station, buy a few postcards, ponder the vastly cheaper digital cameras on offer across the road from the library, and finally grab a coffee to drink outside our rendezvous point.

Should have made that a large one; Charlotte is almost 20 minutes late but, with baby in tow, one can’t get cross. It does mean lunch is suddenly an issue though, more for the child’s sake than anybody else’s.

For some reason, we forsake the few cafes we pass on the way and end up queuing for what seems like an age outside of the museum restaurant itself, for food that is both over-priced and not particularly appetising. All this means that we only manage to spend about an hour together, taking in the art-works on display, before she’s forced to retreat back to Queens. No matter; we intend to spend our last night there with her family before we fly home on Monday.
By the time we’ve reached the top tiers of the MOMA, where the art is more recognisable and interesting than that on the first three, the building is beginning to fill up with patrons exploiting the free admission offered after 16.00 on a Friday. And when it all gets a bit too much, and we decide to escape this claustrophobic throng, we find the temperature outside has taken a bit of a nose dive, with rain almost certainly on the way.
And I didn’t even get to see any Hopper because they’d taken down the only picture of his they had a few weeks prior to our visit.

No sooner have we made it back to the hotel, with a few beers bought from the store around the corner, than Louise has a funny turn. I blame the food back at the MOMA.
This is a big problem, though. We ate later than originally intended and have only vague plans for tea. I’m now going to have to drink in Fitzgerald’s whilst Louise gauges her recovery. How long this will take she does not know, but for every beer I’m afforded setting aside time for teas will be a tougher proposition
I’m on my third by the time Louise appears and thankfully she feels a whole lot better. She joins me in a beer just to be sure, and to allow us the time to ponder our food options. As far as I’m concerned the simpler and sooner the better but Louise is putting a limit on how low I might be prepared to sink (kebabs are out). The plan was to hit Greenwich tonight and maybe eat at a place that supposedly does some of the best pizza in the whole of NYC, and it looks like Louise is going to get her way

To her horror, and my reserved delight, Joe’s Pizza turns out to be a take-away outfit off Sixth Avenue that asks we eat at a price and a pace conducive to the evening’s drinking that I’d been hoping for. You buy the pizza by the slice at Joe’s and its popularity guarantees it is literally fresh from the oven. It’s great pizza too and I end up eating two slices of the pepperoni instead of the one that I though might suffice (they don’t skimp on portions here). We’re perfectly placed to find the Belgium Bar we walked past on the way to BLT burger too, although pass it by it twice before we realise exactly where it is. I know not the name of this bar but it sits back off the stretch of West 4th Street that connects Washington Square to 6th Avenue. Comprised of two separate bars and a courtyard inbetween, it is the second bar where the customers seem to gather, ordering the almost exclusively Belgian tipples on offer (although given the character of the local beer, who can blame them?) It’s almost a shame to leave but Louise wants to return to the Meat Packing District at some juncture (she’s been here before, unlike me) and geographically speaking this is best opportunity we might have to do so.

A culmination of bad map reading, very heavy thunder storms and the lateness of night conspire against us ever finding the Meat Packing District proper but we do find a good bar on its outskirts and finish the night there, almost making friends at the end and notching up our third cab in as many days to bring ourselves back home again. I could have stayed all night but it seems bars here are not much looser with their opening times than those in England. Mind you, it must be way past 2:00am by the time we leave.
And man, what a thunderstorm.

NEW YORK 2

2008-04-10T13:13:00.005Z

I am confused and curious as to where we might go for breakfast and I am glad when Louise takes the bull by the horns and suggests Sunflower, a deli just across the road on Third Avenue that had totally passed me by. It is here that I finally begin to feel like I’m really in New York. Across from our chosen booth sit four elderly American gentlemen, possibly of Italian dissent, talking in that archetypal New Yorkian way, wherein ‘York’ is pronounced ‘Yoik’.
We order American breakfast from a dark haired man in his early fifties who doesn’t really smile a lot, and we instantaneously poured coffee. American breakfast, when it comes, is a combination of two fried eggs (cooked to your liking; in my case, ‘sunny side up’), much bacon, even more fried potato, and toast and jam. And there’s juice too, although that may be extra. Either way it’s a good value way to start the day, and - consistent with the name - the sun is shining.
When we leave the fire hydrant is enthusiastically leaking water onto the sidewalk.

'Coney Island Baby'

I decide not to wear my coat today. Sure, the incipient sunshine started to wane by the time we hit 5th Avenue yesterday, but there’s not a cloud in the sky and I’m feeling more than comfortable in a T-shirt and jumper.
We have to take Subway ‘6’ down to Broadway and Lafeyette and then change onto the D-train and stay on as far as Stillwell Avenue, which is effectively Coney Island. It’s as long a journey as that sounds, the last leg taking a good three quarters of an hour, and I must admit Coney Island initially disappoints. I’m not too sure what I was expecting knowing, as I do, that the place’s heyday has long since passed, but I still thought it would be a little livelier than it is. Temperatures though are well into the 20’s, and when you have a beach and the Atlantic ocean spread out in front of you there’s not an awful lot to complain about, even if there is little to do other than drink pop and take photographs.
We give Coney Island almost 2 hours and by the time we decide to lead I’ve grown fonder of the place. Coming here also means I’ve made it to Brooklyn, a place that resonates with my teenage years spent as an aspiring, if not very convincing, ‘B-Boy’.
There’s still a few hours left in the day to kill so we figure we may as well check out downtown Manhattan. This encompasses many of Manhattan’s more iconic areas (Chinatown, Soho, Greenwich, Lowe East Side) so it makes sense to get a handle on it as soon as we can. I elect we catch the Q train back to give us a different perspective from the window of our train (it’s mostly over-ground outside of Manhattan) and take us to Canal Street on the edge of Chinatown. We gingerly walk north along Lafayette before swinging west onto Broadway. Broadway is a bit like 5th Avenue is as it passes Rockefeller Plaza, except the shops aren’t quite as ‘high-end’. Regardless, I’m in no mood for shopping and, after letting Louise loose in a couple of stores, I have to insist we use our time more productively, given that I have already conceded that a day will be handed entirely over to shopping later on in our trip.
So we make our way to Greenwich Village, and find somewhere to sit and drink take-away coffee off Washington Square, and everything is very pleasant indeed. Our breakfast has done almost too good a job in keeping us going throughout the day because we have only just started to develop an appetite. Problem is, if we don’t act soon we’ll probably end up having tea rather late, bearing in mind the time it will take to get home, turn things around and head out again. Louise strikes gold for a second time in one day and suggests we amble up to BLT Burger on 6th Avenue and have tea RIGHT NOW.
I am not normally a big fan of burgers so I am initially wary of this suggestion. Indeed, it’s only the protection of the evening’s fortunes that keeps me keen as it means we shall have the time to allow our food to go down and then head out and drink with impunity.
It’s turns out to be a very good call indeed for not only do BLT do a lamb burger – my burger of choice – but it’s one of the tastiest lamb burgers I have ever had the pleasure of eating. What’s more, our accompanying chips aren’t legion enough to leave me feeling bloated or tired, and the environment too is a million miles away from what one might normally associate with the words ‘burger’ and ‘American’ in the same sentence. Only the Nevada Pale Ale lets the experience down a little.
And to think we almost couldn’t find the place because Time Out hadn’t marked it as being on the right side of the road (NB: Time Out’s maps have never been their strong point).

I figure we may as well walk back. There seems no obviously convenient route ‘home’ from here, that utilises public transport at least, and the roads are too rammed to go by cab. The last leg of our journey starts to drag a little but the finding of a diner that I rate as being conducive for the following day’s breakfast, and a vintage shop auctioning off all its stock ( in particular an ornament that Louise will end up putting in an offer for), leaves the strain quickly forgotten.

We’re off to East Village tonight. East village ranks alongside Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side as places I would like to drink on any visit to New York, and given we drank locally last night it’s imperative we tick one of these off today. So we’re off to East Village.

I’ve looked at the map and I reckon it’s walkable, which it is but we’ve done rather a lot of walking today and the half an hour it will take to reach our first destination has Louise running desperately low on patience. What’s more Death and Co. is full and although it’s very kind of the doorman to offer to take our number and call us back later when it is less so, I think he may be under the impression we haven’t eaten yet and therefore have the potential to spend more money than we actually intend.
We try another place a few doors down but no sooner have we taken our seats and we’re informed we need some sort of personal ID, which we do not have. A blessing in disguise perhaps judging by the inauspicious surroundings and the fact the recommended Against the Grain operates just a few doors down again. Against the Grain specialises in primarily Belgian beers. The place is tiny; a bizarre mixture of dark wooden panelling and ceiled in metal, there’s a good vibe about the place. However, there are only so many bottles of this sort of stuff I can drink in one sitting. What’s more, imported beer isn’t cheap so after 45 minutes or so, we’re off again. Fortunately for Louise we’re now firmly entrenched within the area I had our eyes on and Baraza is only a few minutes walk away on Avenue C. There’s a mixed crowd here, less indicative of the Latin music the Time Out guide suggests it likes to play. Indeed, Hip Hop seems to be the order of the day, although mojitos and caipirinhas are all present and correct, as are the body parts of dolls encased in glass tombs sunken within the walls.
It’s fun but not very busy and so, after a few, we move on to an Australian bar a couple of doors down, enticed by the two-for-one drinks offer I figure they have on promotion most days of the week. Predictably perhaps we end up rather drunk and catch our second New York cab of our trip thus far, home.

NEW YORK 1

2008-04-09T12:54:00.007Z

It is a strange film, There will be Blood, but I think I like it. I certainly enjoyed the performances offered up by both Daniel Day Lewis and Paul Dano, playing the pivotal roles in a film that does not have very many. Minimal one might call it, despite its full 158 minutes in length, and not an awful lot happens, really.
Daniel Day-Lewis’s character, Daniel Plainview, first learns how to drill oil, then finds oil to drill, makes large amounts of money from drilling and selling said oil before succumbing to the temptation to drink, out of boredom as much as anything else. Along the way Plainview’s 'son' is deafened in an accident, his long lost 'brother' makes a surprise appearance and he has a few run-ins with Paul Dano's self styled preacher who Plainview reasonably double crosses about half way through the film. And all to the strains of an eerily monotonous soundtrack penned by Johnny Greenwood of ‘Radiohead’ fame that I struggle to fully appreciate above the hum of our aircraft’s engines.
There will be Blood viewed, I then watch Lions for Lambs, an unfairly maligned political drama that actually enables Tom Cruise to deliver a performance of nuanced distinction for probably the first time in his acting career. He plays an ambitious young Republican – all smiles, spin and diplomacy – who convincingly out-manoeuvres the protestations of Meryl Streep’s altruistic TV journalist. It could be a role he was born to have played, or the role may well have been born with someone like Tom Cruise in mind. I just hope he doesn't go getting any ideas.

Newark airport rests not in New York City but in New Jersey, and I have since been reliably informed that it is a whole other world over there. I guess it is more American in that respect, the machinations of bureaucracy seemingly designed in a manner similar to those I encountered in Charlotte; all very serious and there to remind you that anything other than a strict adherence to this country's laws will not be tolerated.
America likes to think of itself as the quintessential land of liberty, but really it is anything but. British Euro-sceptics should be sent over there and placed in a series of perfidious situations so they can then see how European our mentality actually is in comparison. In fact, the USA has more in common with the narrow-minded ‘demi’-democracies of the countries it meddles with than it likes to think.

It takes over half an hour of being shifted from random queue to random queue, often for the worse, like we're playing some scaled up version of snakes and ladders, before Louise and I finally make passport control. Surprisingly, our customs official is actually rather playful, which makes for a relatively smooth and less intense transition than at one point looked likely, if a no hastier one. Together, we laugh at Ricardo’s cheeky remarks, regardless of whether they merit such, in an effort to keep solidly on-side with the man. One false move and this ostensibly genial symbol of power will not hesitate to recommend us for a full cavity search. Of that I have no doubt, such is the American way.
From there on in it is plain sailing. I don't even bat an eyelid at the confrontation on the train from Newark to NYC that briefly threatens to escalate into full blown violence. Maybe it's the strange views from the window, a parched post-industrial landscape that has been left to rust amongst the surrounding marshland and diseased concrete pillars that support the overrunning freeways.

Penn station lies beneath Madison Square Gardens and it is a difficult place to navigate, with signs pointing every which way but loose. After 15 minutes spent walking back and forth, debating which subterranean train might deliver us to our destination in the quickest time we finally opt to walk it; the map suggests it should take no more than half an hour, door to door.
My estimation turns out to be almost right, although having to stop at every other road we come across (of which there are many) for the traffic lights to turn green slows our progress somewhat. You cannot jay-walk here with quite the abandon one sometimes does back home. You give the police an inch and they might just take a yard.
I take us along 33rd and then swing diagonally south down Broadway with the aim of cutting through Madison Square Park, and voila, we're pretty much there. What started out as quite a hectic venture finishes smoothly; although I am left berating my choice of overcoat. I have dressed for anticipated temperatures of around 11 or 12 degrees, 15 at best, and I am confident this forecast has been surpassed already. So as soon as we check in I ditch the jumper and put on a lighter-weight T-shirt.
Next we must eat.

Everybody will have their own preconceptions of just about anywhere they might decide to go. The mind by its very nature makes associations and New York's affiliates are legion. So, if going on holiday is all about demolishing myths then nowhere is this more true than when taking a trip to the Big Apple. New York is probably the most mythical destination of the modern age, except for London maybe but that town sits right on my doorstep. Unless you don't watch TV, have never been to watch a movie at the cinema, have no interest in music and pay no notice to popular culture, then no one will have failed to build up a picture of what New York might ‘feel’ like somewhere within a corner of their mind.
To me that image has been informed by the films of Scorsese and Woody Allen; Superman 2; CBGBs and the music that entailed; Cagney and Lacey and, to a lesser degree, Taxi; Sesame Street; old school Hip Hop; jazz music and a whole host of mixed media that this city has confidently spewed across the globe on a regular basis since both I was born and many years before that.
And it is about ‘feeling’. If one sees a movie, one will have a feel for the images they are seeing. Is the place hot or cold? Does it smell nice? Is it peaceful or busy? But more than that, what does it feel like ‘internally’ to be there? This indefinable notion of ‘atmosphere’ is what I’m searching for when I go abroad and some places have a blanker palate than others. Yet it is often the places with the most association that might surprise you, simply because one has built a picture so precise that it can’t possibly be accurate.
And so it is with New York City.

Gramercy Park might not be the hub of Manhattan’s activity but it sure is peaceful for a sunny day. Perhaps this is where Michael Caine’s character in Hannah & her Sisters orchestrated those ‘chance’ encounters with Barbara Hershey? They were quiet streets too, allowing him to run frantically around the block so he could head his unrequited love off at the pass, excusing him the clumsiness of unsolicited approach.
Actually, to do that here, and right now, would be rather problematic because our hotel sits next-door to Baruch College on East 25th Street and there are students everywhere. Maybe they’ve just had lunch, or are about to, because it’s touch and go as to whether we’re going to successfully find a free seat in Subway just around the corner on Lexington. After a little hesitation and some opportunist chair grabbing, we do and very much enjoy taking advantage of our $5 foot-long sub-rolls. It is a dreary and rather predictable culinary introduction to New York but I have been in this situation many a time, and before one knows it one has spent an hour looking for somewhere to eat before being forced to dive into where-ever has then become convenient, the standard having fallen directly propionate to the growth of one’s appetite in the interim.

This first afternoon of our trip, and indeed any that finds one with the time to spare, will tend to cater for reconnaissance and whatever ventures can be fulfilled on foot. In this case Louise and I have decided to head up-town and check out first the urban hustle of Manhattan life and then, should time permit, the relief of Central Park. I also need to find a memory card for a borrowed digital camera and I will be unable to relax until I have done so.
Fortunately it’s not long before I find a chemist that can cater, at a reasonable price too, to my needs. Now I can relax.
New York isn’t really feeling like New York and thus the erosion of the myth has already begun. I am realistic about this but still want to feel like I’m strolling the streets of one of the most city-centric destinations of the western world and so, after walking up Broadway, photographing the Chrysler Building and popping in for a look at the iconic interior of Grand Central Station we decide that coffee is in order (my knee is hurting too, the result of a ten mile run I completed the previous Sunday).
We have a quick look around Rockefeller Plaza, where there is an outdoor ice-skating rink and a throng of assembled tourists taking pictures of themselves accompanied by its presence, before wandering up a few side-streets in search of liquid relief. We find a café tailored to the commercial interests that surround this particular area of New York and take a well-earned five. If one thing is becoming clear it’s that the distances implied on our maps are in reality longer than they appear. It is gone 4:00pm now and we wonder if we really have time to explore Central Park or whether such endeavour should not be reserved for another day? The sun that offered so much promise has since retreated behind clouds, and tomorrow – forecasted to be as nice as it threatened to be earlier today – has, accordingly, been ear-marked for a trip to Coney Island. After that who knows what the weather might have in store and with this in mind we decide we may as well take in Central Park now.
It is spring and given another week or so New York will probably be in bloom. As it is, the blossoms are doing their stuff but the leaves have yet to make a show. Central Park, therefore, only has so much to offer and I am glad we have opted to visit now. We’re there for not more than an hour before my knee starts to really play up and we jump in a cab back to the Carlton Arms Hotel, seeking respite.

Our hotel has been designed with ‘back-packers’ in mind, I think. There are rooms with shared baths and rest-rooms, and for a few dollars more there are those with en-suite facilities. But that’s your lot. There is no room service, no television and no mini-bar. What there is though is ‘art’ plastered everywhere. Each room has been given over to the individual endeavour of a particular local artist and everywhere else painted in random images, no less comprehensively. It makes for a nice vibe and a nice going rate too. The only let down is there’s no in-house bar, but with two Irish ‘pubs’ around the corner maybe it’s not really necessary?

Louise and I are still full from our ‘foot-longs’ and so we make a start in Fitzgeralds, one of the aforementioned Irish joints on Third Avenue. It provides exactly what one might expect and as such can only ever serve as a port of call on the way to more interesting hang-outs. The first such outfit on our list is 230 Fifth on Fifth avenue, but on going there it materialises we need ID to get in so, not having prepared for such a requirement, we walk to the Flatiron Lounge off 19th Street instead. It’s a modern kind of place occupying what the arched roof implies was once a wine cellar, except it occupies the first floor making this diagnosis a little unlikely.
After ingesting a few not unreasonably priced cocktails, given the area and its upmarket presentation, we search out the Park Bar a little off Union Square. Here we find ourselves drinking bottled European lager and listening to jazz (Grant Green?).
It’s suitably dark here and we would stay longer if the time difference did not determine that we are now haunting our 23rd odd hour of the day. It seems like we haven’t walked far so I persuade Louise that we walk home. I just about get away with it, although it’s another lesson in how deceptively large this city can be.

LISBON 4

2008-01-02T11:15:00.002Z

I had warned my cadres that I hoped to get up early and walk to some museum, and maybe find my way to one of Lisbon’s many football stadiums too – the Stadium of Light preferably. I would then hopefully have time to meet them for their proposed journey across the Targus to marvel at the statue there of Cristo Rei (Jesus Christ to you and I).

As a plan it is ridiculously optimistic and once we have surfaced, eaten breakfast, packed and settled the bill it is pretty obvious I will have to choose one mission over the other. I decide to go with the flow, continuing a pattern of thwarted football stadium visits right across Europe (file alongside stadia missed in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Nantes, Berlin, Istanbul, Copenhagen, Budapest and Cologne, although I did manage to spot the last from atop the ‘Kolner Dom’). I must say though, a boat ride across the Targus, and a bus journey through the suburb of ‘Cacilhas’ that sleeps on the other side, does sound like a potentially exciting adventure. We need to catch the ferry from around the corner of where we boarded the train to Belem on the first day, but rather than walk there, today we shall ride on the underground.

On emerging from our subterranean voyage it is not entirely obvious where the ferry port actually is; a result of the construction work and the accompanying hoardings and barriers that obstruct our view. It has started to rain too so I am despatched to find the port, and when I do so there appears to be quite a queue.
Once again Europe’s perceived efficiency is brought into question as we try to fathom how we might purchase a ticket that permits us aboard the ferry. It is implied that our travel cards should suffice but they need to be 'topped up' and 'topped up' in a specific manner. We eventually work it out, although we waste money in process, thinking that we can buy some sort of group ticket which is, in fact, an elaborate method of return. Or something like that.

Cailhas is quite a contrast to Lisbon. It resembles an old fishing village with a run-down bus terminus for company. I thought we might stop for coffee here but nothing's doing. Instead we wait patiently for the 101 which takes us through the sort of scenery one finds all over the less well looked after areas of Southern Europe. It could be a rather depressing pursuit if we had business to deal with other than the climbing of the ‘Santuario do Cristo Rei’.

When we get there we are ready for coffee, and duly order a round from the very modest café that is designed to cater for whatever tourism the view from Jesus Christ’s feet attracts; which today appears to be very little (it is off-season I suppose). It is a strange operation this. So obviously inspired by its Brazilian counterpart – Christ the Redeemer – Cristo-Rei occupies far less auspicious surroundings. It is true that, if one include Christ’s platform, Cristo-Rei stands taller than the Redeemer, but without a mountain of Corcovado’s scale to stand upon the impression is diminished somewhat. Indeed where Brazil’s Christ lurches a proud 40 metres tall, Portugal’s is a more modest 28 metres.

This is not to say the statue is without impact. From beneath Christ’s 82 metre pedestal it looks a mammoth structure, comfortably resisting the strong winds to which this exposed mount bears witness. But from across the Targus, which is a wide body of water by anybody’s standards, Jesus cannot help looking a little lost, preaching to an indifferent congregation of aquatic creatures, all doing their best to make a living.

The immediate surroundings, too, seem a little confused. From the humble café that serves us coffee to the half-heartedly landscaped lawns that circle Christ in all his pomp, and the optimistically large car-park that one has to traverse to get there. The gift shop, located on God knows what floor of Christ’s pedestal, is similarly rudimentary in form, selling antiquated postcards and religious paraphernalia that can only be described as ‘tacky’, in a wooden panelled environment that probably has not seen a refurbishment since the statue was completed in 1959.

Not that any of these things are necessarily pejorative in their effect. The view, the grandeur and the sense of austerity sit quite comfortably and serve as an interesting footnote to any trip abroad.

LISBON 3

2008-01-01T11:13:00.001Z

I fully anticipated today being a challenge, but man….
The full force of my hangover is almost instantly apparent before I haveve even hauled myself vertical, and I am not sure what I can do to get around it.
Louise, who is not suffering to quite the same degree, leaves in search of paracetamol and crisps. In the meantime I will have a shower, attempt to drink black coffee and then throw it back up; the latter activity being the first time I have partaken in a very long while.

It is about half past one.

Louise could not find any crisps but she has spotted a McDonalds open nearby. Normally I would balk at such a suggestion but it being New Years day and thus a national holiday, searching for an alternative could easily become a frustratingly laborious affair. Besides, everybody else is very keen on the idea.

My chicken nuggets, fries and sprite go a long way in repairing the damage done from the night before, although I am still feeling pretty fried. Appropriately the weather is a hellish grey in colour and rain looks very much on the agenda. Today is a day that could quite easily be spent eating and sleeping, watching bad TV and then eating some more. But we are abroad and there is still thngs that we want to see and do.

There is a castle in Lisbon, sat atop a hill the other side of the grid-like matrix of the old town to Bairro Alto (in other words, east) and we do sort of feel obliged to explore this area a little. To get there we have to walk down Avenida de Liberdade, where we walked on our first day, but instead of favouring the right hand partition we must prefer the left. By the time we have reached the hill’s base, purchased various refreshments and started our ascendance, it is almost 4:00pm. By the time we have popped into the gift shops that ply their trade just outside the castle gates, it is starting to get dark and threatening to rain. I suppose we have about half an hour of light wherein we can feasibly take pictures from the castle’s grounds, facing west over the bulk of Lisbon. After that dusk and some nasty looking rain clouds drifting in from the Atlantic conspire to obscure the view. If only I had not asked for those two Sambuca’s.
We take coffee, Neil eats a couple of tarts and we enjoy the sanctuary the castle’s walls provide us. The rain is slight enough to be ignored and dusk actually induces a sense of calm conducive to my fragile sense of being. We then discuss dinner and all agree that we should eat somewhere on the way home, maybe at one of the pizza restaurants we passed earlier. As we start our descent it starts to rain really rather heavily. By the time we are back at street level my feet are soaking and having food right now becomes doubly practical.
The food at Varanda da Uniao is nothing special but fulfils my want for pizza. I manfully take on a pint too and it goes down as well as can be expected in the circumstances. Then we get a cab home because it is still tipping it down, retreat to our rooms to eat, sleep and watch bad TV before Neil, Louise and I find it in us to play a spot of cards in the hotel lobby. Bed by 12:30; before we go home we have an appointment with Christ to fulfil.

LISBON 2

2007-12-31T11:06:00.002Z

No chance of a hangover then. I guess that is the upside of drinking a fair few pints, eating a large meal and going pretty much straight home after.
We have a plan that is very much dependent on the weather today and the early signs are that our plan can very much go ahead. But first, let us eat breakfast.
We have a similar set-up here to the deal on offer at the NH in Berlin, except with a selection more akin to that offered at the Hotel Flandrischerhoff in Cologne. That is to say, we are expected to pay a set fee for our breakfast, should we choose to indulge, and are privy to eat as much as we like at each sitting. I take the same approach that I did at the Flandrischerhoff, consuming first croissants and cold meats and then scrambled eggs, strange looking sausages and strips of greasy bacon, washed down with juice and cheap coffee. I find this sort of stuff does the job and I do not at all begrudge paying for it one jot.

‘Expos’ are funny affairs. The whole concept of an ‘exposition’ can seem rather anachronistic if one thinks about it. Their precedent was set back in 1851 when London’s Crystal Palace hosted the first of its kind, ‘exposing’ under the rather grand title of the ‘Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations’. One might consider this the pre-cursor to today’s trade fairs where nations (and at this juncture the British Empire was one of the most developed) would show off their recent advances made in primarily industrial realms.

Over the years the focus of these expositions would gradually shift to encompass more cultured and humanitarian concerns and by the time Portugal had the privilege of hosting in 1998 this by now global event, the Expo was being run along the lines of specific themes; in Lisbon’s case “The Oceans; A Heritage for the Future”.
‘Parque das Nacoes’ (literally, ‘Nation’s Park) is the legacy that the Expo has left and I’ve made my intention to visit this space very clear from very early on. Nations Park occupies a site that was, prior to the expo, a mixture of industrially orientated and derelict land overlooking both the Tagus Estuary and the longest bridge in Europe (Vasco da Gama Bridge) - the structure built to traverse it. The bridge alone then is worth a look but it is the odd mixture of potentially useless architecture built for the purpose of the Expo that really excites.
First up is ‘Gare de Oriente’, a truly amazing train terminus that is almost wasted on what is, residentially at least, quite a remote area of Lisbon. Still, every mode of transport seems to converge on this hub to some degree; the Lisbon metro (our angle of attack), high speed, commuter and regional train links and both national and international bus services. The ticket offices and station’s concourse are accessed from street level, beneath horizontal bows of supporting reinforced concrete. The railway tracks and accompanying platforms are accessed via escalators, as are a series of balcony cafes that occupy what is essentially the first floor of the building, the platforms being found on the second.

The platforms themselves are covered in a vaulted, almost cathedral-esque structure, that let light through their glass panels by day and reflect incandescent rays by night. A walkway then links the station to ‘Centro Vasco da Gama’, which was, from what I have gathered, the central auditorium for the original Expo itself. Today it serves the rather less auspicious roll of shopping mall; although the views offered from the plethora of balcony cafes and themed restaurants that occupy the centre’s south side offer succour from the more commercial pursuits that plough on beneath.
It is here that we take the first cup of decent coffee of the day and gauge the weather on this beautiful day. It is December remember, and although Lisbon is theoretically the mildest city in Europe at this time of year, there is no promise that this will always be the case, let alone that the sun should shine with such impunity.
From our south facing aspect we can take in the Targus, the wonderful Atlantic Pavilion Concert Hall to our left (resembling some sort of colossus beetle),the promenade and its parallel operating cable car and beyond that to our left the Vasco da Gama Tower and earlier referenced Vasco da Gama bridge. From here we shall descend to the base of the Atlantic Pavillion, walk west along the promenade, take pictures of each outside the industrial looking aquarium (the largest in Europe) and hitch a ride on the cable car towards the rather pointless Vasco da Gama tower. Then we shall walk back through the landscaped scenery, cut through the mall so I can pick up some new pants from H & M before descending into the bowels of the Gare de Oriente to sample some proper Lisbon coffee.

Buy a coffee from any of the syndicated cafés that you will find serving in every tube station foyer, and you will have the opportunity to drink coffee the way the denizens of Lisbon like it – ie: strong and short. It is a pleasing experience - if a brief one - and to compensate, Louise and I head straight to the hotel bar for a quick beer before we embark on the long process that is preparing for a New Year’s Eve rave-up.

It is probably comes as no surprise that the first thing I do on returning to our room is to take a quick shower and then change into one of my new pairs of pants and I have never found the experience of putting on a clean pair of pants more exhilarating. So exhilarating in fact, that as soon as I am dressed I head straight back down to the lobby bar to celebrate (I did no think wearing the same pair of pants for almost 2 days would be a massive issue but I was starting to feel rather uncomfortable back there at the Nations Park. You should see the photo of me posing back at the train station with my shot of coffee in one hand, H & M carrier bag in the other – I do not think I have never looked happier).

It is about 7:30 by the time my cadres start showing up in the hotel bar and I guess I have been drinking solo, writing postcards and making various notes, for about an hour now. I am joined by all in a surprise round of complimentary champagne supplied by the poor barmen doomed to see in New Year’s Eve waiting on other people’s whims. We insist he sup on one too.

Many of us quite fancied pizza tonight but the parlour we found most recommended in the guide book is shut for the season. So we have opted to try out O Manel, a low key outfit around the corner from theatre serving up traditional Portuguese cuisine. Here we will tuck into meat dishes of substantial proportion, drink both wine and beer before leaving late, positively bloated and a little bit drunk. The lateness of hour comes down to both the laid back manner in which food is served here and the difficulty we have in unearthing this gem of a place. Persevere if you ever visit Lisbon, because it is probably one of the most genuine culinary experiences you can find in this enchanting city.
Because of the hour I am concerned where we might find ourselves for that moment New Year kicks in, if only because we have elected to check out a bar on route to the ‘Praco do Comercio’, the square where fireworks will be released the moment the clock strikes 12:00. But if we do not go to this bar now I fear we never will. Had we had time the previous evening we would probably have made the effort then.
My navigation does not let us down and we find Pavilhao Chines in good time. I guess it is about 10:30pm, so we should have time to sink a few jars here. Pavilhao Chines is a bar not to be missed, if only for the manner one must approach it. The front door remains locked and to garner entrance one must ring a bell and wait for a butler of sorts to let you in and show you to where ever you would like to take your seat. That might sound rather intimidating but it is not, as the crumbling ceiling in one of the corners will testify. Rather, this place has a sort of odd character that helps cement a reputation as a ‘must-see’ (or ‘must drink’) port of call and I suppose it gives the proprietor licence to hike up the prices a little in the process. It is a grand place with an odd sense of interior design. Glass cabinets full of old fashioned toys, mostly of a military bent, cover the walls. Rooms break off in this direction and that. There is a pool table too, although it is taken right now. We could stay here all night long but then New Year’s Eve would probably pass us by; the place is not exactly buzzing, probably for this very reason. After two rounds we hit the streets and begin our walk south, pressed as we are for time.

It comes as no surprise in this day and age of the mobile phone to find that not one of us wears a wrist watch. And having not brought out our phones with us we have only a vague idea of the time. The sheer weight of food consumed earlier is making intoxication hard and it is on this basis that we stop for a quick port in a ‘locals’ local bar. We’re served with a look of complete bewilderment and not one trace of the hospitality we’ve become accustomed to on our trip thus far. No matter, because tonight we’re roughing it with locals and they have exemplary taste in cheap port. If only money could buy booze like this back home. It is sweet without being sickly and does not cloy after repeated sips the way common port can often do. It is lighter too, which makes it easier to drink quickly. We have two.

Which is just as well because it has just struck 12:00 – I think?
Yes it has. I thought those celebrations kicking off on the massive plasma screen standing proud in the centre of the bar was an advertisement of some sort, such was the insouciance with which the local clientele responded. But it is not; it is the real deal and we can hear the fireworks doing their thing just down the road.
Despite our relative altitude, rows of tall old buildings obscure our view every which way we try and catch a glimpse of the fireworks currently exploding somewhere above Praca do Comercio. Lisbon is very much a city of peaks and troughs and at present we are in-between the two. There is a park just across the way that could well be the answer to our problems except for the fact it is in the process of renovation and access is denied. Instead we venture fourth along Rua Sao Pedro de Alcantara, passing the spot where our taxi driver abandoned us the night previous and eventually finding Calcadoa Do Duque, an almost vertical side alley that can take us to ground zero in no time.

Alas, when we reach the bottom the celebratory fireworks have come to and end, as evinced by the crowds walking back towards us.

So what now? Well, I guess we will head back towards the Bairro Alto and see what is going down; it is after all what a large proportion of people seem to be doing. So many people in fact that we pause for thought on ‘Praca Luis Camoes’, sharing wine with some affable Portuguese youths along the way.
At night, the Bairro Alto is comparable to Barcelona’s Barri Gotic. People fill the streets drinking and the bars and clubs do their thing. There is no specific vibe here; no over-arching style of bar or music and everybody seems to be having a very nice time. We go from being tired and bloated after our heavy, late meal to really rather pissed in under 2 hours. I forget that spirits are served in unconstrained measures on the continent and consume 2 large Sambucas. On the way home Neil dives into a bar, very quickly re-emerges and then tries to convince us of the wisdom that paying 10 Euros for unlimited free drink represents. If it was not almost 5:00 am and I was not already off my face I would be forced to concur. Louise and Lori are having none of it and successfully find us a cab to take us very quickly home.

I do not remember anything beyond that, but apparently we sang Auld Lang Syne in the back of the taxi and then had a quick go at carrying on the party at the hotel - an attempt that proved predictably short lived.

LISBON 1

2007-12-30T10:54:00.001Z

I have the perfect excuse to kick back and take my time at Lisbon’s airport today. We are to take this holiday with friends, and due to the uncertainty surrounding who may or may not have been available to accompany us, arrangements were made separately. That Neil and Lori then are due to arrive in Lisbon about an hour later than Louise and I is not a source of massive consternation. The only real down-side is that our friends will have to spend a little more time than us at the dump of an airport that is Heathrow. I pity them.

As it turns out our flight is delayed, so the scheduled hours wait should not endure for much more than 40 minutes, and if I am honest, I have spent time relaxing in far more convivial termini than this.
My cheese and ham role is below par and my coffee, by the time I’ve finished ploughing my way through my foot long chore, is barely warm.
Neil and Lori arrive right on queue and unlike me, do not feel an affinity for airport breakfasts, so we arrange for a cab to take us straight to the Hotel Diplomatico in the very reasonable hope that we will still have much of the day to explore a bit of Lisbon.

I have never encountered any major calamity on my travels. I have never missed a flight, never forgotten my passport and my luggage has not once been misrouted, ending up in a separate country to which I have been flying. But on this holiday it seems I have forgotten to pack any pants…
This really is a first. I take pride in being able to pack light and being able to pack light swiftly. I tend to do so the day before I travel, leaving me the evening free to contemplate my impending venture, very often over a beer. Packing one’s bag in advance removes the pressure to get the process right first time which means that, without the stress of a ticking clock or a standing cab, one normally does. Sure, I might reconfigure the position of my boots a few times, but they invariably occupy the upper strata of my rucksack anyway and so any last minute footwear manoeuvres will be of little consequence to the overall composition of my luggage.
Yet for some reason the absence of my pants has managed to pass me by unnoticed. I am guessing - being that all my underwear is black - that I had assumed them packed along with my black T-shirt and my black jeans. What is more, the pair I have on are not remotely my favourite and have the potential to become rather discomforting if I am forced to wear them for much more than the next 24 hours; which I undoubtedly will be. No matter - we will find shops at some juncture, I am sure.

Given my pant situation, I decide it is good idea to take a quick shower. And it is quick and my colleagues too are quick and we are ready to explore Lisbon by the youth of the afternoon. A walk is in order and the weather is warm enough to wear light jackets, despite the date being the 30th December. This is not luck. This is the reason why elected we come to Lisbon; because it is one of the mildest of all European cities and we all wanted sunshine and the chance to leave our heavier winter attire back in chilly old Blighty. In these days of global warming, predicting the weather is more uncertain a pursuit than it ever is, especially in climate that occupies the Atlantic coast. But the early signs are good and I have even left my jumper back at the hotel, banking on a T-shirt and leather jacket being sufficient.

The ‘Avenida de Liberdade’ runs smoothly down hill towards both the ‘Praca del Pedro IV’ (or ‘Rossio’ Square, as it’s more commonly referred to) where the Targus and the Atlantic Ocean collude south of Lisbon’s shore. There are large metal numerals placed equidistantly all the way down to ‘Praca dos Restauradores’ the space that lies in-between (These rusted forms are sure to denote something, although what I was never to discover). The architecture that lines this boulevard is a mixture of old and new and is typically European in its execution. They say the road itself was built in emulation of the boulevards of Paris, although for me it brings to mind more Barcelona’s Passeig de Gracia. But then, I have never been to Paris.
We were hoping that Praca del Pedro IV would be a suitable place to stop for coffee but somehow it is not. Apart from the lack of coffee orientated establishments, the centralised nature of the location attracts tourists, beggars and a vulnerability to the elements not conducive to kicking back and watching the world go by. So we wander the wonderfully cobbled ‘baixa’ of lower-town Lisbon, a matrix of old streets endowed with plenty of charm. Still no suitable coffee shops of merit, although there are people selling illicit substances.
Out comes the guide book; there is a suitable sounding candidate westward, up towards Rua do Alamada and if that is not open then there should be one around the corner on Rua Garrett. Closure apparent in the former, we end up in the latter.

Café a Brasileira pulls in the crowds. It is frequented by both locals and rather a few too many tourists than the said locals would rather have to put up with. The prime draw could be the statue of a sitting Fernando Pessoa (the most “representative” poet of the 20th Century according to the critic Harold Bloom), and the obvious temptation there is to take a picture of oneself, or a friend, in an imagined discussion with this tacit bronze personification. But the coffee is good too although and the food rather expensive for what it is; pastries and tarts, etc....

Logistically we have decided it would make good sense to travel east along the waterfront to ‘Belem’ today and check out Jeronimo’s Monastery, thus freeing us from such obligation over the coming few days. One really has to take the train there and fortuitously we find ourselves only a downward sloped road away from the relevant station. It is great fun utilising various forms of transport abroad and trains are probably the most enjoyable of all with their random views, often ample leg room and - in my experience - very reasonable cost. We have to travel a distance that takes about 15 minutes to cover and costs little more than a pound to do so. You would be looking at double that back in the UK.
Once off the train it takes a little while to discern how to make our way to our chosen destination. Avenue’s ‘de Brasilia’ and ‘da India’ – very busy arteries it seems - cut the station off completely from its surroundings; only a light-weight footbridge at the end of the platform offers an escape. From there we have to cut through a few parks, negotiate the tour operated coaches and then queue a little before we can enter first the chapel and then the grounds of the monastery itself. Is this all worth it? I suppose it is, although the real action happens back over the other side of the tracks. Do not get too excited; it is only the waterfront and the Torre de Balem (Balem Tower) and, further up-stream back towards town, the Padrao dos Descobrimentos (Monument to the Portugese Discoveries), but here is a great place to watch the sun set and imagine what it must have been like to spot the many Armada’s that have passed by over the years. Loads more tourists mind.

Back at the hotel and I hit the hotel bar to pour over possible evening eateries. Today’s trip to Belem has hinted at a sense of scale to Lisbon hitherto unappreciated and I am wondering whether I will be able to persuade my companions that it is worth walking to wherever it is we end up wanting to eat tonight. I happen to think it is but we have had a long day and I am not sure anybody else will concur.
It is pretty much a given that we shall eat in or around ‘Bairro Alto’, the area we brushed the southern-most tip off when we stopped for coffee earlier today. The Bairro Alto is where the Lisbon bar scene is supposed to be at and it will be good to get a feel for it before we descend there tomorrow to usher in the New Year. A place called the Friar Contente has caught our eye, supposedly cooking simple but high quality cuisine.
The cab we end up hailing at the taxi rank that runs around ‘Marques de Pombal’ is driven by a man whose command of English is as comfortably bad as our command of Portuguese. So I show him on my map where it is exactly we want to go, comfortable in the power of cartography to communicate our mission. From the off ,our driver seems to take a route that never feels quite right and has me scrambling in the dark trying to keep up with our progress on the map. We are eventually deposited on a square overlooked by the church of Sao Roque and told to head in a direction that means absolutely nothing to me. Not that it should, but I like to keep a grasp on my environment and often manage to maintain a decent sense of which way is north, south, east and, therefore, west. Tonight I have not got a clue. It takes a few minutes and the comparing of various street signage to those marked on the map to get a bearing of where we are, and it looks like nowhere particularly near where we want to be. Indeed, by the time we have walked there I figure - quite accurately I would wager - that we would have been better off walking. I am now going to have to guide us along what I think will be the quickest route to the 'Contented Friar' possible and if that means heading down scarily gloomy and downtrodden back alleys then so be it. To be fair, nobody really complains.
Friar Contente found and it is a very busy. We are optimistically told that if we can wait or return within half an hour, there should be a table free. There is a bar a few doors down where we might spend that time, and on that basis we are sold.
We only stay for one drink in this so-called bar - more a kebab house licensed to sell booze - but in retrospect we could have killed almost 2 hours there. And despite the bright lights, plastic furniture and lack of any obvious charm I could have quite enjoyed myself there too.
Instead we rather optimistically return to the Friar after about 40 minutes and then spend at least another half an hour waiting for a table to become available and then well over an hour before our ordered food makes a showing. Fortunately we are provided drink in the interim and when our meals do eventually turn up they more than live up to our guide-book’s high recommendation. The food tastes glorious in fact, but all this waiting around does now mean we have not the time to take in any other bars on the way back to the hotel. We left the hotel at about 7:00 and it is now gone 12:00 and we are all very full and even more tired.
It takes about 15 minutes to walk 'home'.

ISTANBUL 3

2007-08-02T20:51:00.000Z

ISTANBUL 1

2007-07-31T20:44:00.000Z

COLOGNE 3

2007-02-23T23:59:00.002Z

I do not have a hangover today. This means breakfast should be an invigorated experience.

Which it is.

The debuting meal of the day is further augmented by a sort of faux-gammon type slice of meat I newly discover next to the scrambled eggs that I am sure was not there the the morning previous. So after ingesting two croissants dressed with butter, cheese and ham I make myself a German take on bacon and eggs on toast.

Yes, I very much enjoyed my breakfast today, and just as my morning meal has benefited from the absence of a hangover I see no reason why another visit to Cafe Rico would not either. After all, the complimentary hotel tea is only a marginal improvement on the complimentary hotel coffee. I also need somewhere to sit down and write some postcards.

The weather has turned out nice again and on this condition we have decided to cross the river Rhein, for no particular reason other than to gain a fresh perspective on our surroundings - our guide book suggesting that there is little else to make the effort for. Rivers can be divisive in more ways than one, with their respective banks often developing under separate auspices. Chances are you will find yourself spending the most of one's time on whatever side has the more favourable amenities, and so the bank less travelled takes on a very different sort of significance. Regardless of there being anything to see or do or not, one is offered a portal into another world; a chance to look back whence one has come and view it from an entirely different perspective

And so it is in Cologne. From the east bank of the Rhein it is evident to what degree the Dom dominates its surrounding edifices. Almost painterly in its juxtaposition, it is not too dissimilar an impression than the one garnered from observing St. Paul's Cathedral from London's South Bank. But where as London's effort has places to eat, galleries to visit and bars in which to drink the walk along the east bank of the Rhein offers even less than the west, where at least you were never far from a busier street. Looking at the map and peering between buildings it is evident that commercial interests of a more mercantile kind dominate here. We do pass the aftermath of a wedding though.

The next bridge back is Hohenzollernbrucke and we share it with trains. The weather is really hitting form now. It is just a shame that spring has yet to descend upon us, promoting nature to awake from its winter-induced torpor.

Way too early to take lunch, but not for coffee, we dive into a random cafe. There I take the time to finish writing my postcards before we pay a visit to our second gallery, the Wallraf Richartz Museum. Not as richly diverse as the Ludwig, it still contains paintings by artists to match (Munch, Rubens and Monet for example) and it is definitely worth a look. That Louise and I take it all in backwards and still enjoy it suggests it could be even better. The four floors are designed to work as a history of art through the ages, starting as far back as the late 1300's. Oblivious to this, we chance upon a lift directly to the top floor and work our way downwards, gradually realising our error from the fact that the paintings and their accompanying narrations stretch ever farther back in history the lower we descend. By the time we have reached the first floor we are dealing with some seriously dark medieval art. It is as if we have seen man regress from a thing relatively enlightened to a band of religiously fanatical Morlocks, executing almost everything in sight.

Wiping the sweat from our collective brow we buy more postcards from the gift shop; Louise Edvard Munch's 'Girls on a Bridge/Jetty', and I Gustave Courbet's delightfully bleak 'Seacoast'. And then we take lunch at another of the many branches of Merzenich there are dotted around town. Concerned for the amount of caffeine I have ingested already today I reluctantly settle for an orange juice with my turkey and salad roll.

Next we take a stroll around the shops. Considering how many times we have now walked up and down Cologne's pedestrianised high streets we have actually been in surprisingly few - there is not much you would not find at home. Then we go in search of a statue of the late local theatre impresario Willy Millowitsch but cannot find it near the theatre that bares his name and are forced to abandon this most fleeting of missions.

Louise now decides her legs have had enough and says she wants to go back to the hotel and relax a bit. She is right; our legs have had enough, but I do not want to go back to the boring hotel.

So I embark on another wander on my own, except this time I very quickly tire of walking around with nowhere in particular to go and within 15 minutes find myself ordering coffee at 4 Cani Della Citta, a joint cosmopolitanly located where Benesis Strasse, Ehren Strasse and Pfeil Strasse do meet.

It also happens to be where a lot of the trendier shops seem to ply their trade and, perhaps as a consequence, Della Citta is rammed. Not surprisingly then, it takes a while for me be served and even longer for my large coffee latte to materialise once I am finally asked to place my order. The staff are polite though and I have a seat to rest my legs. Indeed I make my latte last a good half an hour, initially for this very reason but then because of the spectacle unfolding across the street.

Two slovenly looking guys are engaged in what looks like very heated debate. It is unclear whether they know each other but intermittently their rancour erupts into full blown violence until the more normal looking of the two backs off, arms aloft pleading clemency. I am not sure with whom I am inclined to side with at first; the relatively normal looking guy whose street fighting skills seem to be found wanting, or the guy with skinhead, dressed in combat green and over-sized military boots. As one who normally favours the underdog it is tempting to assume I would stick by the former but the body language suggests that Combat Green would actually rather not be fighting at all and just wants the other guy to leave his dominion quietly. They are both in the late 30's at least.
One of the stewards from 'American Apparel' decides to casually intervene and things settle down for a moment until Relatively Normal Looking Guy says something else that rubs Combat Green up the wrong way and he starts getting physical again. Eventually Mr Green retreats back to an assorted group of punks and drunks on the other side of the street but Relatively Normal Looking Guy (hereby to be known as RNLG) is not giving up on his strange mission and decides to follow him. Combat Green is unmoved by this show of determination and removes RNLG's coat from the nearby scaffolding on which he has just hung it, and tosses it away from the group in a gesture that underlines the fact that, as far as Combat Green is concerned, RNLG'S is not welcome around these parts any more - if indeed he ever was. The punks and drunks lined up against the wall are not given much away but my feeling is they would side with Combat Green if forced to choose. Eventually the police turn up. I say police but they are the coolest looking constabulary I have ever seen and may well come under some other, more glamorous, jurisdiction. Tight bomber jackets, straight leg olive drab trousers and boots that border on the Chelsea kind. They have guns too - it is enough to make you want to sign up. From here on in it gets boring. Nobody is shouting any more and the body language has developed into something far too subtle for me to make head nor tail of. So I am off.

No sooner have I retreated to our hotel and I am back in Bruegal where the staff serve me with a nonchalance befitting of a man who has spent three evenings on the trot drinking Kolsch whilst waiting for his lady friend. Tonight though my spirits are not quite so high. Apart from it being my last night - which takes the edge of any occasion - we now have a good thirty minute walk back into town to find a steak house somewhere on Hohe Strasse that's been recommended in the guide book. I cannot complain mind; it was me who said I wanted steak, but I wonder why I could not have just settled for one here in Bruegal, and at least then reward our hosts with business extending beyond a couple of small beers.

Ultimately the stroll works up a much needed appetite, although initially it is hard to tell whether it has been worth it. The steak house in question is located on a busy road that bisects both the old and new part of town and if you blink you might just miss it. Situated on the second floor of in inauspicious office block, it is a surprise to find just how up-market this place appears to be. The service is spot on - they even provide you with complimentary sherry for you to sip whilst you mull over the menu. It is not the cheapest place to eat but considering the quality of the food and the pleasance of the interior design one would not consider it over-priced either. I have my steak rare with sautéed potatoes and béarnaise sauce. Louise has the most delicious garlic mushrooms with her medium cooked steak, an event that leaves me slightly envious and continues to establish a growing trend dating back to our visit to Budapest.

I am not taking any chances on our last night. Louise says she is prepared to head back to Paff or Um Bruch and I have no hesitation in electing the latter. When we arrive it is later than it was when we were previously here, and busier too. We still manage to get a seat though, a good thing when you are carrying over 10 oz. of prime steak in your stomach. Initially the barman from the previous night is not there but it is not long before he turns up to help a colleague who alone stands no chance of dealing with what is beginning to look like a strong Friday night crowd. This time it is 'Rock Dis Funky Joint' by the Poor Righteous Teachers that has me glad that I came here - another old School Hip Hop tune and one even more obscure than those played the night before.
It is almost a challenge to attempt intoxication under these circumstances (full, last night, it's late...). I give it a go with a token a whiskey and coke and then immediately order another Kolsch as a sort of chaser, a fact that the German barman finds hard to fathom. Our bill comes to 40 euros, so we must have drank quite a lot.

The next day I do not feel it. Breakfast is great despite the coffee but there is no time to hit Cafe Rico today. We make the airport in decent time, yet this provides less comfort than I would have imagined. The pleasing minimalism of the surroundings have now taken on a more impersonal character. Maybe it is the dearth of shops or apparent activity, but waiting to board is not as much fun as I had imagined it could be. Is it ever though? I do not know if it is, but Cologne never grabbed me in the palpable way a lot of places do, and given how well I physically feel I would anticipated my last few hours at the airport - drinking coffee or wandering around duty free - to be almost cathartic. They are not though: I am going home and I would rather not be. Credit to Cologne maybe?

COLOGNE 2

2007-02-22T23:59:00.001Z

My head hurts a lot.

I would like to be able to say that I thoroughly enjoyed my complimentary breakfast, but that would be a lie. There was not anything distasteful about it as such - it had juice, croissants and a variety or continental meats; all the things I would nromally want and expect from a continental spread (although no salami) - but more my hangover inhibited the relief normally associated with such sustenance the morning after the night before. When finished, I even had to lie down for an hour or so to allow my body to engage in digestion.

So it is 11:00am by the time you find us taking drinks in Cafe Rico just up the road. That was the other thing. The coffee at breakfast was pretty poor, but I guess that is to be expected in three star hotels offering complimentary breakfast (except in Italy of course). Pleasingly, Cafe Rico more than makes up for it. Louise had spotted this place on yesterday’s march into town but it did not look like a foody sort of establishment, otherwise we may have called in for lunch. But today all I require from a cafe is coffee and Cafe Rico does this with aplomb, in nicer surroundings than the identikit hotel decor we were immersed in earlier too. Pale green and bright orange set against plain white walls with tastefully minimal furnishings is the look in Cafe Rico, with prices that are noticeably cheaper than those in Britain too: This despite what the guide book says about Cologne being a little on the dear side.

The weather is nice today, considering the time of year and I have worn clothes to reflect that - my leather jacket instead of my pea coat for example, an item of clothing I fortuitously brought with me purely on the off chance, and am now very glad that I did.
It makes sense to climb the Dom whist the sun is shining so we waste no more time and make our way straight there, pausing only to buy faded postcards of our impending conquest on the way. At two Euros a head the view from the top is exceptionally good value, although it is rather ironic that the most impressive feature on Cologne's horizon is the building one is viewing it from. But no matter; the sun is shining and I catch a glimpse of FC Koln's ‘RheinEnergie Stadion’ to the west. Another football stadium to tick off the list.

Water is the giver of life and I find there is something atavistically nourishing about just being beside it. So it is rather baffling to me when a city's planning displays a complete indifference to a river it might have running though it. Like in Budapest, with its under utilised Danube, Cologne seems to take the Rhein for granted, its western bank a dusty concrete promenade and the eastern counterpart only marginally less incongruous. We are following its gentle curve from the train station North Eastwards so as to find the Botanical Gardens just opposite the zoo. It is a 30 minute walk or so but it should be longer. There ought to be places to sit and take lunch. It should be like London's South bank or Nyhaven in Cologne, but it is not and only it takes us 30 minutes to reach ‘Zoobrucke’ (Zoo Bridge) and our chosen destination close by.

The Botanical gardens turn out to be a bit of a let-down, although to be fair it is a victim of the time of the year as much as anything else. The restaurant and cafe are both closed and the flowering plants dormant, so after a turn around the greenhouses, Louise and I are pretty much done. Next we walk, first along Riehler Strasse, and then Hansaring in search of somewhere to eat, but it is not until we hit Hohenzollernring, not 15 minutes from our hotel, that we chance upon Romeo Romeo and decide that enough is enough and sit down for a late lunch .

Germans seem to have a rudimentary command of the English language at the very least but communication here is a real effort. Given the staff's very un-German appearance and what they have on the menu, I am guessing this place is run by Italians - which I guess explains the linguistic difficulty. We order salami, pepper, tomato and cheese topped ciabatta and when it arrives it looks more like a small French bread based pizza, and tastes as good too.

Our circular tour of Cologne and its northern district has brought us rather conveniently back to where we began and allows us to pop into the vintage clothes store that we had passed in transit from the train station to the hotel just yesterday. It is lovely place, so much so that I am moved to take photographs, but as far as goods are concerned we leave empty handed.
The next couple of hours follow the same pattern as the previous night’s limbo, except first I take a protracted stroll around the area surrounding our hotel to look for post cards or any other such oddities I might find. I chance upon an antique stall and then a record shop on Aachener Strasse but nothing else of particular note. I then go back to the hotel and change my clothes before heading back down to Breugal to wait for Louise. When she finally emerges it is 7:45pm (15 minutes later than we had agreed) and we head on down to Zulpicherstrasse where, apparently, all the students hang out. The bill at Rendezvous would suggest this to be true; a large Kolsch, one glass of wine, complimentary dough balls with garlic butter and two very fine pizzas add up to just over 15 Euros. The decor - bad wall paintings of archetypal American icons (Elvis, Monroe, Bogart etc...) in a variety of unlikely settings - is the only thing that lets it down.

Um Bruch over the road has been recommended in the guide book but we do not know that when we decide to try the place out. The guy behind the bar looks like a cross between Steve Buscemi and Jack White but is far more propitious than resembling either might imply. It is the same drill as at Paff here, except the Kolsch comes served in .3L measures as standard. It is still less than I would like and after three of these we decide to explore elsewhere, a decision I am almost immediately lead to rue. No sooner have we nade up our minds and start to play Brand Nubian's seminal classic 'All for One'. Then, as we finish paying our bill, 'Mistadobalina' by Del the Funkee Homosapien - another Hip Hop exemplar from the early 1990's that you do not get to hear in a bar, anywhere, everyday.

We proceed onwards down Zulpicherstrasse but the farther we venture the less action there seems to be and the more off the beaten track it feels. As a tourist it is important to explore your boundaries so this is no bad thing. After passing under a shady train bridge (which moves Louise to suggest that nothing ever good comes from venturing under bridges after dark) we cut our losses and stop in the last bar we feel we might encounter for some while - should we choose to venture still further. The place is no great shakes although they do sell beer in pints, which satisfies me on one count at least, but with the locals gathered to watch UEFA cup football it has the ambience of a late night cafe rather than a pub. What with this and the desolation outside it sort of feels like being in a Hopper painting.

So we cut our losses and turn back. It is an abject lesson in the grass never really being any greener on the other side because, after much soul searching, we end up returning to where we were the previous night. Should have stuck with Um Bruch.

Who knows what other New School Hip Hop delights they had still to play?

COLOGNE 1

2007-02-21T23:59:00.001Z

Flight - 7:40am from Gatwick airport. I like Gatwick. I enjoy its rotunda of shops and the view of the runway you get from the Metro Cafe Bar on the top floor. Sit back, order a coffee and watch the aircraft go about their business. Indeed, my companion and I get so comfortable that we forget that there is almost a 20 minute walk to a good deal of the termini here, and today ours is no exception.

By the time we arrive at our designated gate the only people there are a handful of agitated cabin crew, which could be rather annoying given that we checked in early enough to qualify as part of 'Group B' - a status that all but guarantees one can successfully annexe a window seat. But it seems not many people are going to Cologne - at least not at this time of day - and we have no problem in finding a pew by a window regardless. I guess this is why it is so cheap to fly on a Wednesday. Either that or Cologne is rubbish.

Cologne/Bonn has a very nice airport. It is a very good thing for a place to have a nice airport because when you arrive it reassures you that the rigmarole of travel has all been worthwhile - for the time being at least.

Unlike most British airports - with the possible exception of Stanstead - those responsible for the planning at Cologne seem to have adopted a rather more holistic approach than that evinced at most major aviation hubs. Terminal 2, at least, is not too dissimilar in appearance to the east bound Jubilee line extension on London’s underground; a minimalist celebration of untreated concrete and steel. It is one of the most agreeable airports I have ever been to (although had I landed at different terminal on my trip to Madrid I may well think different).

The train link comes very much as part of the package so it is not until one has cleared the airport by some miles that you get any real impression of what this part of Germany might be like - which does not seem as impressive as the airport, it has to be said. I believe a lot of Germany to be quite flat and, like Berlin, the area surrounding Cologne does little to prove otherwise. I suspect it is the southern half of the country that really delights, in terms of the great outdoors. But hey - who needs lush forest or limestone outcrops when you are on a city break?

It is about 10:00am by the time we have booked into the Hotel Flandrischerhoff and I seem to have developed a chronic pain in my lower back brought on by consecutively travelling on three separate modes of transport. What is more my failure to eat anything at Gatwick, due to me insisting on finishing off the remainder of the bread before we left home (as toast - with marmalade), means I am now absolutely ravenous. So we head into town along Schildgasse looking for somewhere to satiate these dual discomforts, eventually stumbling upon, and quickly settling for, a cafe that trades by the name of Merzernich; a kind of chain based outfit for the blue-rinse set. In our early 30's, we are by far the youngest people choosing to lunch here, a truth reflected by the slightly out of date, if very well maintained, interior decor. It is a bright place with thick red and yellow plastic diagonal stripes covering the rear wall and ceiling with rows of exposed light bulbs offering both a border to this gauche back drop and illumination for the counters below them. The produce on offer all seems to be a variation on the same theme; a miscellany of bread rolls filled with a selection of cold meats and cheeses, all garnished with lettuce, cucumber and tomato. It sounds dull but actually it is very nice. And the coffee is good too.

Our appetites appeased, but my back still hurting, we wander through town with the vague notion of stumbling upon the Kolner Dom, Germany's 2nd tallest cathedral and the jewel in Cologne's modest crown. The town centre offers no great revelation. Pedestrianised in a similar fashion as Copenhagen or Rotterdam say, one could be anywhere in central Europe, a sensation punctually interrupted every time one catches a glimpse of the Dom leering over the proceedings. At just over 157metres, and Germany's most visited attraction to boot, it dominates the city in many aspects. As one enters Wallrplats, the forum that houses this Gothic beast, one is instantly hit by the sheer scale of the thing. What also impacts is its black 'anti-lustre', which given its German character seems almost appropriate.

Unfortunately the weather has taken a turn for the worse so now might not be the best time to scale its towers and take in what would be a shamefully obscured view. Instead we take a turn of the transept before heading southwards towards Colognes 'altstadt' (old-town).

It is fair to assume that February is very much deemed off-season anywhere in Europe that is not a ski resort and the lack of tourist activity here is a case in point. What is more, we have come less than a week after the climax of Cologne's annual carnival, an event made conspicuous by the festive debris that is still in the process of being cleared up. If there were many tourists around then most of them have probably all packed up and headed home by now.

The weather, my back and the post carnival pall are taking their toll so we find a bar in which to sample the local beer.

Nice as the local brew 'Kolsch' is (and it is very nice) our potable breather is somewhat spoilt by the large mechanical Oompah band that the locals keep encouraging by way of their small change. It is a duke box with a Bavarian twist, playing all your old favourites at a volume not at all conducive with deciding what to do next with one’s holiday. Surprised by how early it is (barely 3:00pm) we decide we may as well, given the overcast climatic conditions both inside and out, take in an art gallery, and so head back to Wallrplats and take a chance on the Museum Ludwig.
There is plenty of art worth seeing; paintings by Seiwart, Picasso, a bit of Dali and a few Warhols, but it is the exhibition of Paul Klee's later works that make our visit really worth our while. Childlike and almost nonsensical in their apparent themes, it is a wonder that the assembled throng are not doubled over in the galleries, consumed with a collective hilarity. But they are not; indeed they seem to take it all very seriously, which for me only adds to the levity. Amused, we buy our postcards and head outside for somewhere to take coffee (or hot chocolate in Louise's case). By now it has actually decided to rain really rather heavily, so we dash into ‘Raffaello's’ not 10 yards away, from where we sip our drinks and watch life carry on by.

Given our position inbetween the old and new town, and the 2 kilometre odd distance from our hotel, we decide we may as well eat in Haus Zims, a bar recommended in our guide for its relative antiquity and the fact that it serves "good meat and mushrooms dishes". It is supposed to be one of the oldest pubs in Cologne and one of the very few to survive the 2nd World War's attendant bombings. Neither the decor nor the food disappoint and gorged we amble back through town, taking in a few shops along the way, something I would normally be loathed to do now it is so comfortably the evening. Incredibly, by the time we get home some 35 minutes later, I am not feeling too full anymore and arrange to meet Louise in Breugal, a bar that seems affiliated to our hotel in some way, given that the rear entrance backs onto the hotel lobby. Breugal appears to be a nice enough place to kill 40-odd minutes whilst I wait for Louise to do what ever it is girls insist on doing before they go out of an evening, and I have pretty much done two Kolsh's by the time she is done.

This sounds like a lot to drink in such a small space of time but my Kolsch was served in .3 litre measures which works out at about half a pint. Indeed, the only other measures available are .2L and .4L, although you will be hard pushed to find anybody serving the latter while the former comes pretty much as standard - as I am to find out in our first point of call; Paff on Friesewall.
Paff has all the markings of a cool place to drink. Affectedly down trodden with low lighting levels, it plays obscurely mellow music. It is rather empty too, although by the time we leave it has filled up a bit, with what one might describe as a ‘younger crowd’. It is here I also discover that unless you audibly intervene you will be continued to be served repeat orders of Kolsch until you request otherwise, a state of affairs that throws up many questions, like how to you tell the barman when you have had enough without seeming ungrateful, or that one has decided that they fancy something a little stronger next time around please?

I never found out what percentage Kolsch was typically brewed at but judging by how I felt after the four .2L measures I topped myself up with at Paff I am guessing it is certainly stronger than 4 %. And yet it doesn't really taste so. In fact it is probably one of most palatable beers I have ever had the pleasure of imbibing in.

From Paff we go to some local hangout where the sexagenarian clientele are about to see Liverpool beat Barcelona 2-1 on the latter's home turf; then to Salon Schmitz which has nice wallpaper and pleasing light fittings and finally to the more bohemian Cafe Bautrurm a few doors up. By which time I am drunk on the equivalent of about five pints of lager.

The next day I will feel rough but sometimes that is what the first night of a holiday is all about - getting a handle on the local booze so you know how to manage it for the rest of your trip.

MADRID 3

2006-10-27T12:02:00.001Z

It happens to me a lot abroad. When I find an establishment of quality to eat in I am more than inclined to keep going back there. Unfortunately Delic is even further from the train station than it was from our hostel, but just knowing somewhere of that standard exists has risen the bar to such an extent that almost everywhere else we take into consideration does not look up to the job.
But time is not on our side today. We want to catch a train to Toledo and take lunch there, so the longer we leave breakfast the more problematic our efforts will become. This, compounded by Louise's more forgiving taste, obliges we make do with filled croissants and obscure fizzy pop from some chain outfit we stumble upon along Calle de Principe. There is not really much in the way of seating either so we end up eating our breakfast sat atop the concrete posts that demark Plaza Santa Ana. It is not ideal but the atmosphere is convivial enough, the only other occupants of note being a small film crew and a large group of teenage school children noisily intent on sabotaging the former's attempt at local reportage. (Do you sense a theme developing?)

By the time we arrive at the train station the sun has decided to make a bid for the day. Buoyed by this meteorological clemency, everything seems to be going fine - Estadion de Atocha's modernity only adding to our sense of purpose. Unfortunately it is to be a short lived sensation. The room across the atrium with the queue stretching beyond the door turns out to be the ticket office. It is not even noon. I had assumed that anything relating to transport on mainland Europe would be a model of efficiency but it seems that I am wrong. A member of staff valiantly tries to assert control, directing people this way and that but she is fighting a loosing battle. I am an impatient man at the best of times and after moving something like 2 metres in approximately 20 minutes, and with at least 10 people still ahead of us in the queue, I decide to search for an alternative solution.
According to the lady (wo)manning the 'information bureau' I can purchase tickets from the automated machines back in the ticket hall. I like the sound of this and hurry back in a concerted effort to book our tickets before it is too late. The train is not due to leave for another 40 minutes so I am not overly concerned - not until I am informed by said ticket machine that the train is now fully booked.

How can this be? The next available train is not due for another two hours which would - should we choose to catch it - give us about 30 minutes in Toledo before having to turn around and catch the last train home.
The station might impress but the service here leaves a lot to be desired. Just think about that next time your train is delayed back in dear old Blighty.

There are terrapins occupying a large pond within the station to be admired before we depart. Indeed, the whole station is worthy of a gentle turn. Its splendour is part of the rejuvenation process imposed upon it by the 2004 bombings and the palms and the wildlife that have been introduced seem entirely appropriate and do not appear mawkish in the least.

Given the ad hoc nature of breakfast - compounded by the disappointment of not being able to make the train to Toledo - I am taking less chances with lunch. My plan is for us to walk almost the whole length of Calle de Atocha and then take a left forking down Calle de La Magdalena in the hope of finding Cafe del Nuncio at the end, an establishment pictured to charming effect in our guide book. It is a long walk but one that can also provide the requisite distance between breakfast and lunch.
Alas, on finding Cafe del Nuncio it appears to be closed. The doors are open, and there is even a waiter there busy cleaning glasses within, but a combination of hand gestures and broken English evince that we are not welcome here just right now. I have pushed my luck with the length and nature of our walk from the station and with this in mind decide to take a chance on the establishment that we passed on our way down the side alley on which Cafe Del Nuncio doth rest. Its road side location means it lacks the old world feel of Del Nuncio but it has got character enough and seems popular too, which is probably a good sign. Our coffees soon turn into lunch, a decision that we are not made to regret. Visually our meals seem humble enough but they represent far greater value than their aesthetics - or price - suggest. I have essentially opted for veal and chips, and Louise, chicken with the same. The chips are more like blocks of potato actually, but they taste divine. Our meats are not sauced in any way but there is a flavour to both that suggests the chef knows a thing or two about seasoning. Such pleasant surprises make up, in part, for such unexpected disappointments.

The 'sky tower' (a.k.a Torre Espana) at Moncloa is nowhere near as tall, or arresting, than the one built in Berlin's Alexandplatz. The Torre Espana at Moncloa is also closed to the public, which defeats the whole object of travelling to this rather drab part of town in the first place. Damn the Spanish train network! What is more, a morass of road works means it takes us a good 40 minutes before we make it to the tower's base and realise that this be the case.
Like the area that surrounds the Bernabau, Moncloa is a reminder that Madrid is a big city - a modern city - where people actually have homes and not every public utility is a rampant celebration of neoclassical antiquity or baroque pomp. It really is very dull, despite some rather large but fairly innocuous buildings that lines a boulevard, I assume, heads back towards town. You cannot have it all I suppose so we opt for a beer at a cafe sandwiched between the 3 lane highway and the large park that sits in the shadow of Madrid’s humble sky tower. The only other alternative would be to visit the Museo de America but we are not really in the mood for culture.

I have persuaded Louise to go for a curry at Taj on Calle de la Cruz. It gets a good write up in the guide and I feel like I have not been for a good Indian in a while. First I need to find an ATM, buy some stamps and, given that Louise will probably need an hour or so's R & R, check out a few final bars.
I always try and send three postcards when embarked on a city-break; one to my parents, a second to my grandparents and a final communique to a random recipient of my choosing. I enjoy finding postcards to send to people and I do not mind writing them either. The only phase of the process that I am not so fond of is the buying of the stamps and the subsequent posting. This is because I am never quite convinced the vendor from whom I acquire the requisite postage entirely understands my requirements and thus my postcard is destined for some Spanish sorting-room waste bin. I should not worry, given that I am so patently English it would take quite some stupidity to supply me with local postage, but, scarred by the memory of an amusing card I once sent from Laos intended to greet my brother on his birthday that subsequently took 6 months to reach him, I reckon you never can tell...
Postcards also fulfil another function. Aside from the fact that I enjoy collecting postcards depicting the works art that I have had the pleasure seeing, I also require them as an introduction to the photos I intend to collate in an album. I tend to shy away from the anything too predictable, like archetypical vistas or images of anything garrulously native. Still, I do like to establish some sort of connection to the place I am visiting, even if it's as something as simple as an advert for something made there, like the dated advert for Danish Hi-fi producers Bang and Olufsun which, almost as a footnote, mentions 'Copenhagen' in the bottom right hand corner - the city in which it was purchased.
As back up I have bought a few postcards of local bars but, although they're superficially amusing, the quality of printing is found very much wanting. You can imagine my delight then, when buying stamps in some pokey tobacconists, I stumble upon a collection of Art Deco drawings alluding to all things Spanish. I plump for a street scene that seems to be celebrating the joy of reading - a pink, yellow and pale blue medley of folk emanating from various walks of life united in their appreciation of the written word. 'Madrid - 1944' features somewhere along the bottom, almost apropos of nothing, and the words ‘Feria Nacional del Libro’ along the top, which I am guessing is a reference to the city’s reading resources. So perfect are these pictures that I even shun the original number I had selected for my Grandparents and buy them a finer example - my random friend becoming the lucky recipient of my octogenarian cast-off.

I then seek out La Soberbia, an outfit I've had my eye on just down the road from our hostel, to write my postcards and enjoy the sublimity of a final coffee in this most coffee-drinking friendly of cities.

Should it be of any surprise that curry houses vary so little across the globe? Probably not, and nor would I have it any other way. I went for Indian off the Koh San Road in Bangkok once that, had you been drugged and taken to in secret only to be then be told (once the drugs had worn off) you were dining in Hounslow or Brick Lane, would have had you proffering no objection to this ludicrous suggestion whatsoever. Taj offers no such challenge to one's preconceived notion of what a curry house should look like either, and as long as the food shares in this notion then that is just fine by me.

I know that an Indian isnot the best thing to have before a night out on the lash but this has not turned out to be that sort of holiday. Maybe it is the tapas or maybe it is the half pint measures and the enforced wait between drinking one and ordering the next, but I just have not felt particularly drunk here in Madrid. This is not a problem, despite my fondness for finding errant local bars at the end of a well oiled evening, but without at least one night of total inebriation I do feel a trip has lost something, even if I cannot say exaclty what that is.
And so we soldier on after what turns out to be a very fine curry indeed. If you ever find yourself in Madrid craving an Indian then Taj is most certainly the place to go.

There is one more bar recommended on our list that we have yet to visit and that is Salon de te Sherazade around the corner from Bar Dos Gardenias. Here you can indulge in a Huka pipe if you so wish and our preference for the local beer throws the staff some what. We persevere but, as much as Louise and I like the ambience, we are starting to feel slightly out of place. After tolerating a few more beers we decide enough is enough and move back to Dos Gardenias which is only marginally busier than it was on our first visit. This lack of action is only encouraging the soporific tendency brought about by our visit to Taj just a few hours earlier. In an attempt to stave such feelings of lethargy we head back to the bar we spent some time in our first night prior to eating a pizza. It has been my favourite bar of our trip (so much so that I do not even remember its name). It seems to me that it represents a sort of Madrid archetype with high ceilings, tiled walls, wooden bar-work and jovial staff. It also has the best tapas. Its irregular shape takes you diagonally right about a quarter of the way in and from here the street is no longer visible.
Despite the vivacity of all who drink and work here there is no way we are going to be dancing on the tables tonight - not even a bourbon and coke can wrest me from my torpor. We make it to just gone 2:00 before conceding defeat and heading home amid a throng that are in full flight.

MADRID 2

2006-10-26T11:59:00.001Z

The down side to staying in a Spanish 'Hostal' is that breakfast is not even remotely included. At least it is not at the Hostal Alaska (although they do provide fridge access, should you wish to store food in anticipation). But maybe this is not such a bad thing? After all, it obliges one to step outside the comfort zone of one’s hostel and venture swiftly forth in search of sustenance, maybe chancing upon somewhere you may otherwise have missed? Except I have never been one for brooding in my hotel/hostel room regardless so instead there is just an intense pressure to find somewhere quick that will do breakfast justice. Easier said than done in the absence of a greasy spoon or a complimentary continental buffet.

There is a cafe that comes highly recommended in our guide book with a view of the Puerto del Sol. On paper it sounds spiffing but the unfortunately reality is not quite so. The place itself is lovely and even has an upstairs galleria with an unobscured view that justifies the hype, but all it seems to sell is pastries and cakes. Which might be fine if it were 3:00 in the afternoon but, as far as breakfast is concerned, just will not do.
We walk some more - quite some more in fact - clinging to the hope that our second choice - the aptly named Delic - might prove more fruitful. On the way we take the opportunity to photograph both Plaza Major and Plaza de la Ville, the former a vast square similar in form to Barcelona's Plaza Reial but probably about twice the size. There are many places to eat here in fact, the seats spilling out from the colonnade taking it in turns to bask in the sun's trajectory, but the strong whiff of tourism is rather off putting and my instinct tells me that holding out for whatever Delic might have to offer is the right thing to do.
The walk there through La Latina is a pleasant one that reveals Madrid to be a more parochial entity than much of its Catalan cousin. Plaza de la Paja is a case in point, a peaceful oxymoron of a square sloping upwards towards its apex where we find Delic's customers happily eating their lunch beneath the shade of the many trees that line this irregularly shaped public space. For less than 5 euros I can have a chorizo and tomato ciabatta and a cup of coffee - which I do. There are no actual tomatoes per say, but the juice of the tomato transferred directly from rubbing the fruit against the warm bread which, infused with olive oil, makes for one of the most delightful brunches I have ever had the pleasure of taking on the continent. My coffee is good too, being thicker than I am used to, as if it were made with condensed milk, just as it is in the more local edifices of Laos. The whole experience proves worth the wait, although no sooner have we finished eating than we are over-run by hordes of school children that have very suddenly emerged from a nearby church. Spanish teenagers may not be as vulgar as their British counter-parts but are just as rambunctious, as I guess any large grouping of teenagers will be when out and about on a school excursion.
Given the juvenile throng that now envelops us, we decide to settle the bill inside and move on through La Latina's pleasantly soporific side streets. It is not long until we are heading down hill again and find ourselves outside Cathedral de la Almundena, which is not the most impressive cathedral in the world but certainly worth a turn around the pews. Next door is the Palacio Real but one has to pay to go there so we give it a miss. Besides, the weather is now too nice to spend the day stuck indoors, no matter how impressive the oratory.

With this in mind maybe we should inspect Camp Del Moro, a vast area of park land that occupies the hillside that stretches from the Royal Place down to the river Manzares. But we do not and instead head, via La Latina, back to Huertas and Santa Ana for another cup of coffee and the obligatory side of complimentary tapas.

Given the opportunity, I would have bothered every football arena in every city I have ever had the pleasure (or not) of visiting. Unfortunately a good many European football grounds are located out of town (or in the suburbs at least) and for this reason - as well as sometimes the company that has kept me - I have been able to trouble far less stadia than I would have ideally liked.

When I ventured to Rotterdam I held high hopes of visiting the home of Feyenoord FC, until my brother's residence there made apparent how convoluted an effort this would have been. In Nantes I was with too many people who had too little interest in visiting 'Le Beaujoire-Louis Fonteneau' and had to settle for a stolen glance from afar through a car window travelling east on the N23. In Amsterdam I did not even bother looking into the practicalities of visiting the 'Amsterdam Arena' and in Berlin I deemed the 'Olimpiastadion' a tube journey too far. In Prague, myself and my all-male companions (we were on a stag do) toyed with the idea of actually going to see a game at the so-called 'Toyota Arena', and would have done had Sparta Praha not been playing their weekly fixture the very day we were scheduled to fly home. 'Parken' in Copenhagen was again too far, and Budapest too weird a place to negotiate public transport. A few lower league grounds aside, that leaves Milan and Barcelona my only major triumphs, although if one intends on tracking down football stadia anywhere in Europe then these are two of the best places to do so.
And now, of course, I can add the Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid.

It is an inauspicious feeling that greets you as you emerge from the Metro at Santiago Bernabeu. Such is the brio with which the Bernabeu has been expanded over the years, little account for architectural impact has been afforded and the first impression one finds is of sheer concrete, similar in rendering to exterior of Twickenham Rugby stadium and no more functional than that of a motorway flyover. Structural minimalism need not be a bad thing (just as it is not at Twickenham) but aside from the spiralled entrance points jutting out from each corner of the ground there is little to excite the eye until you find your way around to the reverse of the grandstand. No sign of re-enforced concrete here; instead a huge glass frontage leans unerringly and diagonally upwards. Unfortunately a mixture of the club’s private offices and a surprisingly down market shopping mall forbid one from getting any closer to what is by far the external highlight of this imposing structure.
I had not known that tours were available but given that Real Madrid is one of the biggest clubs in the world I knew it to be a distinct possibility. Tours of football grounds are only of any real interest to those who are interested in seeing the structure in question in the first place. Unlike a grand ruin, a Cathedral perhaps, or an imposing monument, the enjoyment of the stadium is, on the whole, inextricably linked to that of its purpose (I would imagine the San Siro or the Luigi Ferrari in Genoa could be deemed exceptions). The scale of a stadium might occasionally impress but aside for that they are for aficionados only. And this is the thing; stadia are never quite as large as one might imagine from viewing pictures or seeing them on the television (this is as true of the Bernabeu as it is of Nou Camp - maybe more so given how steep the terracing is). From the outside it can be hard to tell either way, especially given that the pitch and first row of terracing are very often dug down a metre or so beneath ground level, but once inside there is something initially rather underwhelming about the whole thing. It is probably different on match day with the sensory assault of a full house, but, bereft of its capacity, a stadium is a humbler entity.
Another aspect of modern stadia that often takes one aback is just how functional they really are. Not just in the materials they use, which more often than not comprises of prefabricated steel and reinforced concrete, but in their actual finish. From above, for example, the Bernabeu's roof is a wondrous thing, a solid looking entity that you can imagine being lifted on and off with no adverse effects to the rest of the superstructure. From beneath though, the rawness of the construction is exposed for all to see; ethereal sheet metal bound over a trellis of steel - a far less substantial structure than that conveyed from an aerial perspective. The terracing too appears to be cast from low grade concrete and everything painted seems in dire need of another coat. At the end of the day though, this is a functional building built to handle nothing more than a huge influx of people entering the frame one moment only to then vacate the premises an hour and three quarters later (time added on permitting). Only the backrooms or the executive boxes give any indication of the millions of pounds tied up in this venture. But a stadium is just that - a place to watch whatever spectacle it is that regularly unfolds within its confines and the pitch at Real Madrid is a delight, a lawn of royal magnitude, resplendent in a green made all the more vivid by the almost industrial nature of its setting. For me, a visit to somewhere like this is time and money well spent, regardless of any aesthetic shortcomings.

Over hot drinks in a cafe next door to the where we ate the dodgy tapas, Louise and I discuss where we might venture for tea. Louise fancies a Mexican. The Time Out guide gives La Panza es Primero a good write up and, just as importantly, it happens to be within walking distance, set down a side street within the environs of Chueca, the district to the north of Huertas & Santa Ana. Not that I mind using public transport in foreign climbs but when it comes to eating out it is best to prepare oneself for any eventuality. As reliable as an up to date guide book should be, it can only offer an opinion and it is not impossible that having reached somewhere that sounded appealing on paper, visually it may not seem believably so. More mundanely, one might find a place fully booked or even closed completely, meaning a wasted trip and the rigmarole of having to find a viable alternative in an unfamiliar conurbation. If you have walked there these eventualities can be dealt with deftly, returning to an establishment that may have caught your eye along the way.

Calle Hortaleza is the colourful road we have to take to find our desired Mexican eatery on Calle Libertad and it paints Madrid in a seedier light than I have witnessed up until now. Whereas our first evening here had vigorously challenged the guide book's assertion that Madrid is a “city that never sleeps”, Calle Hortaleza makes an exceedingly strong case for the defence. Through a morass of tattoo parlours, random road excavations and sex shops we find La Panza es Primero and immediately like what we see. The decor has been designed in a rather ad hoc manner. There are strange paintings on the ceilings; on the walls metal advertising hoarding dating back at least 30 years and all sorts of other strange things attached randomly to any surface that can handle the load. The staff are welcoming and the smells emanating from the kitchen warmly reassuring. The menu is not easy to fathom but through a process of elimination we find what we imagine we might enjoy. In a cruel twist of fate Louise spots a variation on the very thing she expected she might like to order; Enchiladas covered in the house speciality: "Mol sauce". 'What the hell,' she thinks, and takes a chance.
Mol Sauce it turns out is some sort of chocolate derivative and not the first thing that you think of when one is ordering a dish comprised of chicken and melted cheese. Louise bravely tries to salvage something from the terrible mess on her plate but it is fast becoming apparent the price she will have to physically pay if she continues to do so. But the fun is not over yet. To ensure Louise does not leave with an empty stomach I order a second round of chicken tacos with the intention of sharing them with Louise. Faced with the barely eaten food on our table the staff twig to what is going on and proceed to cook us up a third round of tacos. Such a gesture of goodwill would normally be enough to smooth over any situation and restore one's faith in humanity to boot. Unfortunately an oversight on the restaurant’s part means that after paying the bill we realise from counting our change that we have been short changed by about 7 euros. The place is getting busy now and, given the evident communication problems we have encountered thus far, we decide to call it quits and assume it as the tip. We then make a hasty exit and only hope that they realise their mathematical error and do not think that we are a pair of tight English bastards.

Not being exactly stuffed we figure we may as well try and get drunk. We stop at an interesting bar we walked passed on Calle Hortaleza with cherubs painted upon its roughly finished mauve walls. We stay for a couple of rounds. From there we head back to Huertas, which is a lot livelier than it was the previous night. We try Populart for a spot of jazz, have a couple of beers at the antique filled and very low key Yesterday before finishing off at the almost 'pub-like' Parnasillo. Tomorrow we fancy getting a train out of town to Toledo and with this in mind we resist the temptation to stay out for a night that has seamless potential.

MADRID 1

2006-10-25T11:53:00.001Z

It must be horrible to miss your plane. I came close once, in Charlotte/USA, dealing with customs officials who seemed hell-bent on finding fault with my immigration card. Fault found (I had not elected to state where I was intending to stay – I did not know), they made no effort to resolve the matter in any haste; this despite the fact I had less than an hour to make a connecting flight to San Francisco, a fact to which the Nazis were very well aware. It was a situation that was, without knowing quite how over scrupulous American custom officials can be, completely beyond my control. It is also another story.
I did not miss my flight to Madrid either but if I had not come close then I would not have brought up my little episode in Charlotte, right? And this time it was within my control - or at least 'our' control, had my lady friend and I bothered to discuss in a little more detail our scheduled parking arrangements for the morning.
We have done this many times before - 'park and ride' - and twice from Luton, so on the surface there was not a lot to give cause for concern. And I woud like to think we can be forgiven for assuming single carriageways and road-works should not really be an issue at 5:00 in the morning. They are, but that was npt really the nature of our problem - more an exacerbating factor.

The problem was that we were not parking or riding from where we had parked and ridden from previously, but I had assumed that we... just were? Giving directions with this in mind, but finding no signage consistent with the name of our off-site parking consortium, our over-sight only became apparent when the finer details were salvaged from the boot of the car and the error of our ways duly realised. Under normal circumstances we would still have had plenty of time to make our flight, and maybe even a spot of breakfast, except;

a) after realising what had gone wrong and having to double back on ourselves we then had to negotiate road-works and lane closures for a second time.
b) The off-site parking facility was significantly further away from the airport than the company we had utilised previously, with a bus journey time of 15 minutes rather 3.
c) Despite checking in on-line to save time, Louise had now decided she no longer wanted to carry her belongings on board as hand luggage to avoid the risk of having to dispose of recently prohibited toiletries, a fact that had not been fully appreciated until that very morning.

I did not even have time for a cup of coffee.

Madrid's airport has recently won some sort architectural award and I am very excited about finding out why this is. I have seen pictures and the structure looks impressive, especially the interior with its undulating wooden vaults and effulgently coloured steel supports. Unfortunately for me it turns out this architecture is restricted to the airport's new fourth terminal. Easyjet flights are served from Terminal 1 where circumstances are a far cry from those pretty pictures I had seen in magazines. In fact the contrast is so great we do not even stop for something to eat, let alone that coffee I had been so cruelly deprived of back at Luton. Instead I have to settle for some lemon flavoured carbonated concoction garnered from a vending machine that looks like it has been sitting there since 1983.

Fortunately there is a tube link to town - my preferred mode of transport in actioning my transfer from airport to city . Taxis will charge you a mint and with buses it is hard to know exactly where you are and, thus, when to alert the driver as to your impending dismount. Walking back on yourself after missing your alighting point is no fun with a weekend's worth of clothing strapped to your back.
Within 45 minutes we have found ourselves in the middle of Puerto del Sol wondering which way is North and, hence, which way we must turn to find our digs. Which ever way it turns out to be it will only take us a few minutes to walk to our hostel ,which on the map appears not 100 metres around the corner. Hurrah for trains!

I can rarely recall exactly how it was I went about something the last time I did so. Simple but often crucial details get swept away in the muds of time leaving me ruing the fact I did not keep some sort of record, or at least make more of an effort in acknowledging the fundamental principles behind whatever venture it was I embarked upon. Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to organising a vacation. Booking flights is a simple enough process and one I always tend to execute over the internet, but how to go about booking accommodation? Sometimes I might charter my holiday as a package but that way I am always left with a feeling that I have been forced to stay somewhere devoid of any character, a last chance saloon for those careless folk who have left it too late. Occasionally, in an attempt to engender control, I will still book my accommodation on-line but with a completely separate travel company altogether. You tend get a wider selection this way but one is still limited to what is affordable once the internet companies have done their best to cream off their share. And I still get the feeling that a lot of these companies are in cahoots, sourcing their local information from the same pool, so to speak.
On deciding to go to Budapest I tried a different tact and found an independently run Hungarian website to do business with. This proved a great success despite the slight feeling of apprehension I was left with once I hdd booked ,which only fully abated the moment I arrived at my hotel and found my reservation did indeed exist and had not been, in fact, the figment of a convincingly presented on-line scam.
Booking direct, with a foreign hotel that does not even have a website, let alone some sort of on-line mediator, was something I had never even considered. Fortunately I have a friend who speaks good Spanish and it was she who made the reservation; all we had to do was turn up with the spondulix. (We need not have worried - the proprietor had immaculate and very well mannered English, although I would like to think he appreciated the gesture.)
I had not really known what to expect from the guide book whence I found Hostal Alaska, other than the fact that it was centrally located, oddly cheap and offered rustically simple decor. But it turns out to be exactly that; a tenement of down-trodden apartments divvied up into simple bedrooms with ensuite bathrooms which have, in all honesty, seen better days. But this is no bad thing. The whole experience is very different to your typical hotel sojourn, instead feeling as if, somehow, one has temporarily taken on the lodging of some sad, lonely artisan who likes to live simply in order to maintain a nocturnal life style centered around the bars and illicit drinking dens of central Madrid. All they need is a bed, a bathroom and a beaten up old desk at which to jot down their tenebrous thoughts.
The narrow windows intrude outwards into a quadratic void lined with hung linen that does its best to dry in the rations of sunlight that drop downwards for the few hours of the day that the earth’s orbit permits. Which today is very few because no sooner have we unpacked and the heavens let loose a precipitous deluge that South East Asia would be proud of. It is as brief as such too.

I am very hungry now which is primarily why we choose to lunch where we do in a charmingly pokey tapas bar down the road perpendicularly opposite to our own. It is a mistake. I thought I liked tapas but my experience is not exactly bountiful, so I am left wondering if I do indeed like this most Spanish of fares after all? The dried ham is indulgently salty (even by continental standards), the chorizo peculiarly oily and the remainder of our platter contrived of a variety of marine based toppings far too over-powering for me - let alone the fish wary Louise - to finish off. It is a situation that demands, first a second coffee to deaden the lingering flavour, quickly followed by a nervously hastened exit to avoid any embarrassingly searching questions.
From there we head straight to the Reina Sofia (above), one of three prestigious museums that constitute the Golden Triangle of Art gathered around the Paseo del Prado. Guernica hangs there, surrounded by children being asked to make careful note of this artistic leviathan, doing so in a manner that re-affirms that old adage about youth being wasted on the young. The Reina is a pleasing gallery, resplendently decked out in 'gallery white' with a yard located at its core where one can sit and reflect, although I am a little miffed with our failed attempts to find anywhere to ensconce and drink coffee. Post cultural refreshment is intrinsic to any gallery visit I find. Still, I am surprised when it is Louise who suggests that we go for a beer. The aquatically themed tapas proved particularly revolting for her and I suspect she is attempting to purge any fish like remnants lingering in and around her palate.
It goes down well, so much so that we end up on a triangular pub crawl in around Huertas and Santa Ana, essentially our 'manor' for the duration of the stay.

Eating is a vital component of any holiday and scarred by lunch we decide to play things safe for tonight and find a pizza parlour. Problem; everywhere in Madrid that serves what we presume is going to be half decent food does not open their doors to gone 9:00. This is what Madrid is supposedly renowned for, a licentious spirit that comes out to play late in the evening and proceeds to carouse until dawn. We do not know this when we come knocking on Pizza Nosta/Pasta Nostra's door but at 8:00 it is too late to change our plans so we head back to a bar we stopped off at on our way there. It is a dangerous situation because whenever you buy a drink in Madrid it invariably comes with a spot of tapas, most commonly a sliver of chorizo perched atop a slice of crispy bread with a tooth pick run through the middle. The upside to this revelation is that the quality of the chorizo here suggests that our earlier ordeal could well have been a one off. The down side is that by the time we are back at Pizza Nosta our appetites are rather depleted.
We persevere, with a greater degree of success than one had any right to expect, but from then on in it is a struggle to maintain the satisfying level of intoxication we had reached by pouring strong Spanish beer into virtually empty stomachs in the couple of hours we were forced to kill prior to the pizza parlour opening its doors to us. We try Burladero, a bar that very visibly celebrates the phenomena of the bull fight, and then to Bar dos Gardenias, an inn that would be quite impressive if it was not so empty of revellers.

We know when we are beaten and given how long we have now been awake, decide to call it day and head back to our strange condominium for a pleasant nights repose.

SOMETIMES A PONY GETS DEPRESSED

2006-08-07T10:13:00.002Z

I have bought a lot of music this last year and as a result the competition for a place on Sometimes a Pony gets Depressed has been pretty hot. The Fall, Comet Gain, Stereolab and Field Music, to name but a few, were all in contention but none made the final cut. It was nothing personal - like I said; I have been digging a lot of different bands of late.

And I know the reason for this. Welcome to the age of the down-load. Not that I 've been down-loading music you understand, but a hell of a lot of other people have. Hence, when you step into any modern record store these days, you've got to summon up some serious restraint not to leave with something new in your hands so low have the prices been driven by the inexpense and convenience of on-line music acquisition. It has only just turned August and already I have purchased 23 albums this year thus far, a fair few of these being sub-£5.00 bargains from HMV or FOP. Indeed, this must be the first such compilation I have put together where almost half the material has been recovered from compact disc (10 out of the 21 in fact, the rest being from vinyl - my staple format).

Recording in such a way offers its own unique problems, especially when putting togther an assemblage where the whole point is that the songs flow seemlessly together. The juxtaposition of a track recorded from vinyl next to one lifted from CD can often be horribly obvious and as a result the first five tracks here have all been taken from compact disc to ensure me the auspicious beginnings I always strive to achieve. This is especially important given that I was intent on following Nick Cave's Stagger Lee, a song I decided I had to include after hearing it in a cafe in Copenhagen early in the year, next to The Byrds's take on You Don't Miss Your Water, a tune I've been getting off on ever since late last summer. On the surface it's a difficult union but with a similar tempo and lifted from the same format I like to think I get away with it. It's not the best flow of this compilation though - that prize has to go the post-Adrian Pride fade in of The Supremes' underrated classic Come See About Me (I'd take that over Baby Love any day of the week).

Obscurity is not as well reprented here as it has been in the past, but that is okay. The aforementioned Adrian Pride provides the relatively unknown and excellent Her Name Was Melody and I suppose the Devo track is not an obvious choice but, Eddie Hinton's I Can't be Me aside, there is nothing massively abtruse here.

Best tune though? It is hard to say although I have not been able to get enough of The Bees' opener since I used it as such, a role it also fulfils on the album from which it was taken. It could also be The Velvet Underground's contribution, another song that takes me back to drinking in Copenhagen, or even the recently discovered The Research tune which was only included at the very last minute. It is a moot point because the real triumph of this years digest is the manner in which it concludes. From the Amboy Dukes to Leonard Cohen in three effortless stages, I do not think I've created a finale as good as that in some time.

1. THE BEES - These be the Ghosts
2. NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS - Stagger Lee
3. THE BYRDS - You Don't Miss Your Water
4. TEENAGE FANCLUB - It's All in My Mind
5. THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - What Goes On
6. ADRIAN PRIDE - Her Name is Melody
7. THE SUPREMES - Come See About Me
8. THE KINKS - Animal Farm
9. EDDIE HINTON - I Can't Be Me
10. BARBARA STREISAND - Guilty
11. DEVO - Enough Said
12. DAVID BOWIE - Red Sails
13. SILVER JEWS - Sometimes a Pony Gets Depressed
14. TOM VEK - The Lower the Sun
15. CLOR - Outlines
16. THE RESEARCH - When You get Home
17. LOU REED - Andy's Chest
18. FAIRPORT CONVENTION - Time Will Show the Wiser
19. AMBOY DUKES - Please Don't Go
20. ROLLING STONES - Sway
21. LEONARD COHEN - The Partisan

R.I.P SYD BARRET & ARTHUR LEE

2006-08-04T12:44:00.000Z

There are parallels - so they say - between Syd Barrett, who died 4 weeks ago to this day, and the musical west coast maverick that was Arthur Lee. Both were severely talented musicians, both were prone to increasingly eccentric behaviour, both were very handsome (indeed I have taken sartorial leads from them both) and both led their respective bands to the forefront of their respective music scenes - but then both somehow couldn't push beyond that, a failure more often than not attributed to their own personal follies than to circumstance. With Syd the situation seems clear cut. The recieved wisdom is that after he suffered a drug induced break down, followed by two timid - if delicately beautiful - stabs at solo artistry, he rejected everything the world had to offer and traipsed (quite literally we're led to believe) from London back to his maternal home in Cambridge. In the classic tradition of leaving your audience wanting for more Syd has been in great demand ever since, a fact that I assume he cared little for.

Arthur's existence was troubled too, for sure, although I'm not convinced to the same extent. There does exist a similarly apocryphal tale of him realising mid-gig that he'd lost one of his shoes only to immediately leave stage in search of said appendage, not to be then seen by anyone for a number of weeks. But - if true - it's hardly comparable to the road to Damascus young Syd appeared so determined to dredge. Lee seems to have been a character prone to impetuosity, a man who'd go missing to get his head straight but always with the intention of coming back stronger, fitter ( 7 albums to Syd Barrett's 3 almost testifies to as much). But the point is Lee would return no matter what, in spite of jail sentences, debilitating illnesses and personal upheavals, you couldn't keep the good man down. The key difference was that Syd was lost to the world a long time ago whereas Arthur constantly fought whatever inner demons he had - both physical and mental - to bring to the world the music he spun so delicately during the latter half of the 1960's, and continued to until acute myloid leukemia preventing him from doing so anymore.
Indeed to compare Lees' opus Forever Changes with Syd's equivalent manoeuvre The Piper at the Gates of Dawn would be churlish to say the least. Where Syd's offering to the world was a sonically ambiguous affair steeped in English eccentricity (the title of course being an alluding to Kenneth Graham's The Wind in the Willows) Forever Changes was a baroque masterpiece replete with brass fanfare and Spanish guitar. The mood's induced from listening to either are very different and where Piper probably triumphs in terms of sheer innovation you'd be hard pushed to find an album more beautifully refined or emotionally provocative than Forever Changes, and it is because of this that I find the loss of Arthur Lee the harder to take.

I was introduced to Love some 12 years ago by college friend and their first three albums consequently became the soundtrack to my second year at University.

When I embarked on my first regular job Forever Changes was the first album I updated to vinyl, already having it copied to tape.

After my cousin hesitated with her wedding invitations I refused to try and sell my ticket to see Arthur Lee play the gig which coincided with her nuptual celebrations, my justification being that I may never get the chance to see him play again.

I didn't.

LAMBETH PUB CRAWL

2006-05-19T23:09:00.001Z

My brother and I have not been drinking a while. In fact, we have not gone on one of our customary pub crawls since last year, so a few weeks ago we arranged to meet up on the 19th of May to rectify the situation. He wanted to go some place different. I suggested Lambeth and he agreed.

THE PINEAPPLE's decent infrastructure belies the fact that this pub lacks a certain amount of charm - but then, that could just be the effect the office workers, who congregate on a Friday evening here, have on the place. No, this drinking establishment - like the kids - is really alright, with a slightly left of field layout, low ceilings and decent light levels, you are instantly taken with the job of deciding where one is going to take one's seat and get stuck into the business of drinking (this is always a good thing). I enjoyed my few beers here, discussing football mainly before deciding where to go to next. As to when it is best to come I am as yet unsure, but as long as the suits are long gone you should be in for an decent time.

Good for: I am going for daytime afternoon and late evening.

The Pineapple - Lambeth

THE LAMBETH WALK is a boozer that has certainly seen better days; a monumental frieze covering the furthermost wall testifies as much. But do not let that put you off. An ambience of calm hangs over the vacinity as small caches of locals talk amongst themselves and solitary drinkers sit staring at the television. The latter would normally be considered an irritant but here it is preferable to whatever sensation silence might possibly impose upon proceedings - 'fear' I'm guessing.

Pass through for a few pints, and maybe a game of pool, and you will not go wrong. Whether this beguiling of establishments could hold one's interest over a whole evening I am unsure, but if you ever go drinking in Lambeth I would highly recommend you stop by for at least one pint here.

Good for: Any time but Sunday. I doubt it could handle the torpor.

Next up is THE SHIP, a pub that seems to get good reviews from those who have written about it on 'Beer in the Evening'. How wrong they are. From the outside it offers promise but once in you are instantly disappointed. Ergonomically retarded - you will find yourself slaloming between scattershot furniture on your way to the bogs - it is hard to decide when looking around where it is best to take one's seat (never a good sign). A slight air of suspicion pervades throughout the local clientele but what really ruins it for me is the complete and utter lack of any discernible atmosphere. There is nothing heinous about this place but there are no redeeming features either. Something needs a rethink, even if what that is I cannot quite say?

Good for: Passing families. Maybe

Finally we head to the STEAM ENGINE. Whereas the The Ship down the road caters for families in the truest sense, this pub seems to be more suited to the black sheep of the family unit - dipsomaniac uncles who want to get hammered and belt out old favourites on the karaoke, or impatient teenagers keen to embrace the seedy underbelly of life before they have any right to do so. It is hard to put your finger on why a place like this has got it so right when a place like The Ship has got it so wrong, because there is not a huge amount that separates the too. But with friendlier faces, subtler lighting and generally a much warmer feel, the Ship could do a lot worse than at least try and take a leaf out of this curious book. And I swear me my brother and I almost got chatted up to.

Good for: Hard to say, but I would not start an evenings' drinking here although I may well finish it.

Had my brother not been obliged to go for birthday drinks with some of his work colleagues prior to our 8:00 rendezvous we may have made it to the CROWN AND CUSHION around the corner and along a bit. Unfortunately my brother had enough. I have always liked the look of the Crown and Cushion too but I guess it will just have to wait for another day.

BUDAPEST 4

2006-04-08T20:55:00.001Z

As seems to be my want, I drank a little too much beer on my last night. Once I have had a few I am susceptible to the most desperate of logic, so no sooner had I entertained the notion that there was the slightest chance that this could possibly turn out to be my one and only visit to Budapest (I hope not), then I was doomed from there on in, compelled to give this city the sending off I felt it so thoroughly deserved. I do not actually feel as bad as I might and breakfast goes down a treat but I am wary that the worst of my alcohol induced woes are yet to come.

Our flight is not until mid-afternoon, which is rather an atypical time for me to fly when I have booked with Easyjet, given that such slots are normally priced out of the equation. I guess it is one of the perks of flying home on a Saturday. Accordingly we (read: 'Louise') have set aside this half day for a trip into town to shop. Louise wants a pair of Tisza-Cipo's and I must concede that since we discovered this most obscure of brands I have been fast coming around to the idea of buying a pair myself.

And what a day. I was not expecting much with the weather, given the time of year, but it has got progressively better since our arrival. Yesterday and been a mixed bag with enough sunshine to compensate for the dreary nature of the day before. Now there is not a cloud in sight and I cannot decide if this makes our circumstance better or worse? Should I be grateful for half a day of meteorological clemency when all we have in mind is to shop; or shall I curse under my breath at the mistiming of it all. By the time we are shopping for pumps in Tisza-Cipo I am doing the latter. The accentuated heat is doing nothing for my hangover and the staff do not seem exactly keen to make a sell. I try on one pair of trainers but they are too tight. Everything else I ask for is either out of stock or unavailable in my particular size - it is hard to tell given the wilfully remedial replies coasting my way.

Louise is having more luck; so much so that she cannot decide which pair to buy. I am starting to feel deliriously thirsty so we take time out and head off in search of some sort of convenience store. We waste a good quarter of an hour doing this, intermittently distracted by the large groups of English lads almost certainly on stag-dos, who must have all flown in late last night or early this very morning, so conspicuous by their very absence have they been up to now. Within these squandered 15 minutes we pass by at least 3 separate parties. As I did when I visited in Prague, I pity the poor locals.

Why do we not just head back to Katapult Kavazo and at least then we can sit down and you can spend as much time as you like thinking it over?

Katapult Kavazo is playing Lou Reed. I have been digging Lou Reed ever since I started re-digging the Velvet Underground after hearing them being played on my last night in Copenhagen. I take this as a sign. My coffee is a delight - probably the best coffee I have had since I arrived - but despite the cautionary orange juice I have to offset the diuretic effect, my heart is now racing and I have come over in a sweat. And then we return to Tisza-Cipo.
Louise - after much pontification - eventually makes a purchase (the trainers I tried on but did not fit, no less), and buys me a badge in consolation. She tries on clothes too but they do not fit so we call it day. Next it is back to Central Market to pick up tacky souvenirs for relatives.
Vaci Utca is very different today, maybe because the sun is shining or perhaps just because it is a Saturday, but there are people everywhere. It must be easily into the twenties and I have got on a coat that has, up until now, protected me from temperatures that have rarely pushed beyond 15. It is amazing how a place can change with the weather. I could be anywhere in Europe now; Italy, Spain, Germany, even the UK - think Torquay ten or twenty years ago maybe, but without the Riviera.
By the time we have returned to our Hotel to meet our cab I am having a major relapse. This hangover is not playing by the rules and I find this disconcerting. If I had been drunk when I woke up I was certainly sober by the time we had checked out of our rooms after breakfast but it has taken a good two hours for me to feel this bad - not the normal routine on waking up drunk and segueing into the hangover there after.

On the bus I have a chance to re-evaluate the Budapest suburbs. They do not look much better, despite the weather. There is a sinister expanse to suburbs can find anywhere. Rundown parks and simple cafes; motorway underpasses and half used industrial estates; out of date advertising hoardings and a general blanket of neglect that a council can ill afford to let fester in the centre of whatever town comes under its auspices.

At one point we pass a depot of rusted tanks and I cannot decide if we have passed a tank museum or a disused parking lot. And my hangover is getting worse all the time, so much so that I vow to make significant changes to my life style on my return. The whole thing would be laughable if I did not feel so depressed.

The chicken and chips at the airport precipitates a sequence of internal bodily events which seem to take the edge off my terrible state of being. It is not the normal culinary experience one might expect at an airport, the canteen resembling more a motorway service station, and a small one at that. But the portions are generous and we get rid of much of our remaining - and soon to be extraneous - forint. And my hangover is pretty much excised and my mild depression has passed. It is a bizarre way to end what has been a very enjoyable excursion in a country that, until just a few years ago, I would not have thought twice about visiting.

BUDAPEST 3

2006-04-07T23:31:00.001Z

From the Basilica

I think it is important to at least pay lip service to the past when visiting a country that has had to endure totalitarian rule, and Budapest suffered under the cruel might of communism along with the rest of Russia's soviet satellites. If you do not fancy taking in a museum then you can always marvel at the various buildings pock-marked with bullet holes, ghoulishly dotted around the city - it will suffice. If you feel you can handle something a bit meatier then the 'Museum of Terror’ could be the place for you.
This pre-war tenement was first the residence of Budapest Nazi party and then, once the Russians had pushed the Germans back far enough it subsequently became the Communist Party's headquarters. All sinister stuff then and the curators have done their utmost to ram home the horror inflicted by these consecutively brutal regimes. If you come out of it still thinking that the Communists had some sort of moral high ground over the Nazis then you are a very staunch Marxist indeed. Whereas the Nazis focussed their short lived reign of terror on weeding out Jews, the Communists seemed to have had it in for everybody, hanging and imprisoning anyone that dared so much as whisper 'dissatisfaction'. I highly recommend one visits the ‘Basilica of Saint Istvan’ directly after as a way of cheering oneself back up. At 500 Florins (about £1.30 at the time of writing) it is an absolute bargain with a 360 degree view of the whole city. After which time you will probably be ready for some refreshment.
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We head back to Liszt Ferenc in search of a cafe recommended in our Time Out guide but on discovering that it no longer exists, end up in the Karma Café opposite Menza for Goulash soup and coffee. The soup is better than that served at the Soul cafe, which was almost yellow in hue. Here it its coloured deep red, like the local paprika you assume it would be made with, and it comes with a generous side order of bread to boot. The only down side is that the waitress is annoyingly keen to point out that this dish is actually just an appetizer and that we really should consider ordering something more substantial to follow. Given our appointment at the in-demand Cafe Kor at 7:00pm we hold firm and order a round of Drehers instead, a beer that I am becoming really rather partial to. And then we look for a gallery down the most egalitarian of roads but when we find it looks more like a private residential address and do not dare ring the bell for fear that the guide book has made an error, something that Time Out guides are very capable of doing, I can assure you. And so we walk some more, take photos of each other pretending to make phone calls from public booths (at my insistence) before heading back to the hotel - Louise to shower and for me to write up this missive over another bottle of Dreher.

So that night, for just under 8 quid, I have myself the best deer goulash I reckon one will find in the whole of Budapest (maybe). This is a lot of money to pay for a meal in Budapest but it is worth every penny in Cafe Kor. It is actually one of the more expensive meals on the menu too. Louise has the tenderloin with Roquefort sauce, a dish that on sampling the meat has me thinking that maybe I should have gone for steak too. By the time we leave, the place is bursting at the seams again. If I could spend a week revisiting the numerous cafes, bistros, and restaurants I have eaten in around the world, on around Wednesday I would dine at Cafe Kor.
After that we pop into Kopia Kavazo located downstairs (as these bars often are) on nearby Zighy Jeno Utca. We had attempted to lunch there after our trip to the Basilica but it had been shut. It is worth the second attempt though, boosting a fantastically random array of retrograde furniture and the impressive works of local photographers adorning the walls (the lights could do with being a little dimmer mind).

After that we return to the bars we visited on our first night (except for Harry's) to see if they offer anything different at the weekend. They do (DJ's taking care of the tunes and more punters basically) and then we finish it all off with a trip to Kuplung because if there is one thing a bar lover should not miss when holidaying in Budapest for the first time, then it is the hedonistic beast that is Kaplung. Louise is as impressed as I knew she would be but we are both stuck in a bit of a post meal fug and after two drinks beat a hasty retreat back to our hotel.

BUDAPEST 2

2006-04-06T23:50:00.001Z

As a rule, hotels on the European subcontinent are want to serve up a good quality complimentary breakfast. Nowhere was this better exemplified than at the genuinely rustic hotel I stayed on the outskirts of Voltera, a small medieval town buried deep within the Tuscan hinterland. The juice was fresh, the bread and croissants of a perfect consistency, the meat procured locally, I am sure, and the coffee brewed to perfection. That it surpassed the culinary standard was undebatable and even though most other continental breakfasts never live up to such exceptional Italian standards, for the most part they still comfortably do the job.

And 'do the job' it does at the Hotel Pest. It is simple fare but all the vital ingredients are present and correct; juice, bread, sliced meats, cheese and, of course, coffee. Boiled eggs, toast and fruit are on offer too but I find these sort of things to be mere distractions when I am excising a hangover. That I manage to ingest two filled rolls before feeling ever so slightly queasy is a positive sign. Juice always goes down well but the relief liquid provides is fleeting. When dealing with the morning after, the ingesting of solids is quintessential. Within a few hours I should be as right as rain.

It has to be done and given the very central location of Hotel Pest our first stop will be the Hungarian Parliament. On our way though I need to find batteries for my Pentax ME, which I have only just realised is not functioning properly. It takes quite a walk up Bajcsy Zsilinszky Utca before I find a store that can attend to my needs, such is the dearth of shops of any kind along what initially strikes one as quite a busy type of high street. Fortunately it is in roughly the same direction as Parliament and only adds 10 or 15 minutes to our journey.
The seat of parliament reached, we stop and stare a while at this Gothic revivalist masterpiece before then taking photos of each other interacting with a couple of nearby statues. Coming from England and living in London, maybe we are a bit spoilt for buildings built in such a vein and it is quit possible that this particular structure is not having quite the impact that it should, and probably does, for somebody emanating from - say - the ‘New World’. To be fair, the Hungarian Parliament's eastern facade is not its best and so we try and make our way riverside only to find the marvellously engorged Danube halting our progress. It is what can happen at this time of the year apparently, as snow melts in the Alps, nourishing this brown mass that eventually reaches fruition at the mouth of the Black Sea. It is an impressive site in itself, completely submerging a road that runs past parliament and further along the bank of the Danube. Given this aquatic impediment we amble south following what has become the river's edge, before crossing over ‘Szechenyi Chain Bridge’ to look for somewhere to grab a coffee on the western shores of Buda and also sneak in that view of Parliament's better side.
Since we left the hotel the weather has not been great and it is beginning to look like rain. After about half an hour of fruitless foraging we decide we may as well cross back over to Pest and continue our hunt for refreshment there.
Parliament does look better from the other side.

Vaci Utca is the street in Budapest where one goes to shop. It is also the place to go if you are the sort of person who likes to eat out at Burger King and the like, regardless of where you might be. Thankfully we are not, but the more independently run cafes and restaurants along this pedestrianised thoroughfare are not grabbing us either. If however I want a flags, dolls or an imitation football kit then I am laughing.
At the end of Vaci Utca one finds ‘Central Market’. I have seen pictures of this in our guide book and quite fancied a visit, so we put our appetites on hold for a moment until we have determined what all the fuss is about. Alas, aside from some rather appetising local produce there is not much of any interest. For those who have been to Plymouth, Central Market sells pretty much the same disparate victuals as the Pannier Market at the bottom end of town, and what is more, seems to entertain a similar class of shopper (make of this what you will). We could in fact take lunch here, the parallels between the two markets being further enhanced by some very inexpensive looking eateries we find up on the mezzanine. I have never taken lunch in the Pannier Market's soup kitchen so I am hardly likely to dine here. I should add the caveat that, visually, Central Market is still well worth a visit; all wrought iron and wood it rather resembles a Victorian England train station in its pomp, and should one ever find oneself in a self-catering situation here, then central market would be more than capable of attending to one’s culinary needs - especially if you have found yourself short of tea towels.

Buda on an over-cast day

According to Time Out, there is nice cafe down a bit and around the corner on the supposedly rather hip Raday street. It is raining now and after establishing that the map in the guide book is a little bit off we eventually find what we are looking for. Soul Café looks up-market but I do not think it is. The interior decor has a rather colonial slant with a tiled floor, varnished wood furnishings and fixtures and huge plants photosynthesizing all about the place - it could be almost be 1932. I have the Goulash which tastes and looks nothing like any goulash I have seen before now. There is a subtle distinction in vernacular, but it seems what I am actually partaking in is Goulash soup. This is more of a broth really - a stew even - with a healthy combination of meat and a variety of root vegetables. It does the job and after two coffees (a result of the evermore enthusiastic rain precipitating out front) we head to the National Museum where Louise will be bored stiffless.

Sadly the museum does not have a cafe. I consider this fact to border on the obscene although a half decent gift shop compensates to a degree. I say half decent but it is only the postcards that interest me. It is around this time of the year (March/April) that I am hit with a gamut of family birthdays and, naturally, I am expected to send greeting cards to all involved. I have already forgotten one and I am due to miss a second if I am not too careful. I am hoping that the sheer quality of the postcards I have selected as proxy will compensate for any further delay incurred. They are of just the sort of thing I like; a mixture of pre-war poster imagery and faded photographs of the 1956 Hungarian uprising (you cannot go wrong with faded photographs of the 1956 Hungarian uprising). I like them so much in fact that I end up buying doubles of a couple. Such success so early in my trip is a rare thing. Now all I need is a coffee shop in which to start writing these blighters, except The National Museum has worn Louise right out and I am not so sure how willing she is to partake in yet another the search for cafes.
Obscure trainer shops are a different matter however. You should see her interest pique as we walk past Tizsa Cipo, the flag ship store for a brand of communist trainers that sentimentality for all things pre-capitalist has devised a market for. They do do nice trainers, I have to admit, and inspecting the price tag I should bloody well hope so. They pretty much cost the same as our bona-fide models back home, which would be fine if it was not for the fact that pretty much everything else we have come across has been really rather cheap, with pints of beer going for the equivalent of under a pound (always a good way of gauging the local economy). It is not that I would begrudge paying upwards of forty quid for a pair of eastern European trainers, because I doubt pumps come much more obscure - I just do not fancy perpetuating a brand that I suspect has been remodelled with some sort of Hungarian nouveau-riche niche market in mind. After all, they do not look any better made than a pair of Golas.

Louise and I have read good things about Cafe Kor and it is here therefore that we intend to take tea. Maybe everybody else has read good things about Cafe Kor too because when we arrive it is rammed - so rammed that we are told that they are fully booked for the rest of the evening. Instead we make a reservation for the following night and head back around the corner to bar that trades under the name of Negro to ponder alternative solutions over beer and bar snacks. Negro is the sort of joint that attracts the sort of crowd who I imagine are supposed to buy Tizsa Cipo. There is something rather staid and contrived about the place. It is a bit like Point 101 on New Oxford Street, a boozer that likes to think its rather suave, but really it is nothing more than a cocktail bar with modernist interior design.

There is a pizza joint on Dohany Utca the guide book promises offers a genuinely Italian experience and given that we fancy checking out some of the bars in its vicinity, looks like a good idea. But we cannot find it for love nor money and end up in some Dutch-owned place instead where the pizza really does leave a lot to be desired. This is a shame because so far the food in Budapest has been rather good. It has left me feeling a bit bloated too.

Budapest has its night life sown up. There are clubs apparently, despite us not being able to find them, but then that is not really our thing. The plethora of quality bars though are more than equipped to satiate my needs. Forget Negro and head down to Szoda, a bar in which had we found a seat we could have hung out at all night. Cut from the same cloth is Katapult Kavezo and here we find a seat, although it is only marginally less busy than Szoda. Both are decent bars in their own right offering a more imperturbable cool to that of Menza (which was a restaurant after all) back on Liszt Ferenc. Which is where we find ourselves heading for a night cap. Mai Mano Kavezo is a nice little bar although it is not very busy. It seems to have adopted a Byzantine sort of a theme. If you are feeling really daring why not search out the inconspicuously located Kuplung just off Kiraly Utca. The place used to be a bus depot and I have never been anywhere like it. One hears it before it becomes visible, which is not so surprising I suppose, but even after establishing from which side of the street the noise emanates it is still a struggle to find your way in; only the punters sneaking in an out of what looks like an old warehouse door give it away. Being on my own and English I think twice about making my entrance, considering it prudent maybe to return here tomorrow with Louise in tow - couples just do not seem get the same sort of hassle as blokes - on their own or otherwise. I need not have worried, to the point that the bar staff even seem to think I am Hungarian. I have one drink and call it quits. I shall be back tomorrow, I wager with myself.

BUDAPEST 1

2006-04-05T23:58:00.001Z

Ferihegy airport - talk about low key. Clean and tidy but low on amenities, it only takes a few turns of the foyer to realise that there is little point in hanging around. Normally I like to sit down for a while, drink a coffee and maybe grab a bite to eat, but not here. Not that the place is in any way unappealing you understand. On the contrary, the communist masonry is immaculate and its diminutiveness is a welcome change from the size your average airport imposes upon the traveller. There is just very little to keep one occupied. Fortunately Ferihegy's minibus charter is amply efficient and within about hour we are well on our way towards Hotel Pest.

Our German cohorts are to be dropped off first and we end up being taken on a tour of Budapest's back streets that sends my sense of direction dizzy. The words 'driving' and 'careful' are not tropes that tend to share the same sentence in Hungary, if its capital is anything to go by at least. Our driver enters into at least two vocal altercations and who knows how many other people are to be found cursing under their breath.
First impressions of Hungary are interesting. The place looks poor, it has to be said, like a crumbling, communist take on Gotham city. The weather sucks too which gives the place an over-arching sense of melancholy. Why did not we decide to go to Madrid instead?

Menza on Liszt Ferenc

Book into ‘Hotel Pest’ with friendly efficiency, take an imperative shower before putting on clean clothes and heading to the hotel bar to knock back my first bottle of Dreher, the local brew. The Dreher tastes good, but then I am rarely disappointed with the standard of lager on the continent.

Budapest's a fair old flight I suppose, especially compared to places like Barcelona or Amsterdam, and despite my efforts to book a relatively early charter it feels like the day is almost done. I guess it gets dark early around here too - it is October after all.

I have time enough to sample a few more Drehers before my travelling companion joins me, and then it is off to Menza for a spot of tea.
Menza would do the job practically anywhere in the world you cared to visit. Polite staff, reasonable priced, gorgeous food and an achingly hip retro decor that brings back distant memories of 1970's department stores. Or Habitat (not a massive difference these days). Judging by the crowd this place attracts I reckon we could have found the Shoreditch/Hoxton of the Hungarian Capital (If you are reading this a few years down the line then substitute the analogy for whatever part of London attracts cool media types these days). Not that this necessarily a bad thing because it is the young, cool, affluent and well connected that tend to drive the social scene where ever it is you go. It is certainly a stark contrast to the drive in earlier, but then the suburbs often are.
The place is heaving, so much so that we are lucky to get a table, but there is neither a wait to get served nor an impulse to rush you out of the door once one has finished one’s meal. For the perfect introduction to culinary Budapest you could not ask for much more.

My first taste of Goulash sampled and it is off to occupy what little there is left of this first night in a number of random hostelries dotted about the surrounding area. First up is the Irish tinged Harry's Bar (call of nature forced our hand - do not bother, unless you too need to urgently relieve yourself) which we find down Kertesz 'Utca', a very long and dark road that has us checking the map as soon as we are safely inside, just in case we have taken a wrong turn. We have not and our intended destination - Vittula -we are assured, is only a little further down the road.
It is - just. Blink and you will miss it but, once you find the set of stairs that take you down half a floor, you will find a bar that is delightfully shambolic. It is quite lively for a Wednesday, especially given that the anomaly that was Harry's Bar was almost completely deserted, and buoyed by this we decide to sample the cool mass of the Feszek Club on our way home. It is nice enough upstairs and I am expecting more the same when we descend into the basement, but no; it seems we have stumbled on a veritable labyrinth of rooms and drinking alcoves.

Despite being recommended Budapest by an American friend who used to lived in Berlin, I was not ever expecting the city to provide such a contemporarily vivid drink-scape, or at least not so readily. Sure, Vittula and Feszek both garner good write-ups in our travel guide, but we have barely had time to cast on objective eye over the listings. Despite this we have found two absolute peaches, picked purely on the basis that, as far as we could tell, they were the two bars within a five minute walk of Menza that might fulfil our needs. Auspicious beginning indeed...

COPENHAGEN 4

2006-02-14T12:59:00.001Z

Young Girl Braiding her Hair - Berthe Morisot, 1893

It is not important what you choose to see when you visit a foreign country but rather how you see it. Soak up the atmosphere, immerse yourself in the day to day life of the place and then, when you are done, maybe take in a museum or gallery. Of course if the arts are already your bag then it might make sense to indulge in them from the off, but the point is that going abroad should not be about wallowing in art or history for the sake of doing so. After all, culture can be found everywhere and anywhere.

It is our last day and Louise and I have decided to take in an art museum which is almost about right in terms of defining my priorities. I like galleries and do not mind museums but not at the expense of drinking and eating in bars and cafes, or even the simple act of walking around town, immersing myself in its actual physicality. Not unless there happens to be a particular work of art on show that I am predisposed to. So off to the Glyptotek to some kill time on our final day before our 16:05 flight home. Of course these things are usually worth the effort and although the artefacts in the Glyptotek are hardly legion, the actual place itself is rather charming - the sub-tropical winter garden at its nave of particular interest.
After a visit to any gallery I like to buy a postcard of whatever work of art may have come close to moving me, as a souvenir as much as anything else. I hope not to struggle to envisage what piece I would like to see in print come the end of my visit but of course one is not always guaranteed such luxury. There is no such problem at the Glyptotek with section designated to European Impressionism. Indeed I am afforded the pleasure here of discovering the works of Berthe Morisot, an artist hitherto unbeknown to me. Her 'Young Girl Braiding Her Hair' in particular is a startling delight, a painting that brings to mind Edvard Munch at his very best. I love the contrast of the golden browns and reds of the girl's hair; the wall behind her set against the deep dark blue of her jumper and the fair sky beyond struggling to make itself visible in the top right corner it has been allowed to occupy. I do not care if this study is anything more than an observation of a young girl doing her utmost to make herself beautiful amongst the penury of rustic surroundings. That is ample point enough for me.
They have a postcard of it too.

We had tried to have lunch in the design museum before we hit the Glyptotek but it was too early and I had to settle for a coffee instead. Rather than roam the streets of Copenhagen in search of an alternative venue we figured we would just hang on until after our visit to the Glyptotek. Yeah, I liked brunch at the Design Museum that much, which was to become my undoing.
I entertained the thought that the Design Museum might be the sort of place that put their food together depending on whatever ingredients they had delivered on any particular day. How seriously I took the likelihood of such an aberration I honestly cannot say but my instinct was to prove prescient.

The cheese, bread and meat of my repeat order all differ to varying degrees and the sandwich suffers terribly because of it. Instead of gouda I have brie, a cheese I am not overtly keen on at all; the ham is of a meaner cut than the fibril slices I was treated to previous and the bread has more in common with the dense slices I was privy to at Norden, rather than the light granary cuts I was served two days previous. The balsamic vinegar has been given shorter shrift which brings the taste of the pesto to the fore, an ingredient over which I am still very much ambivalent. Given the price, this is all rather disappointing and all I can do is souse myself in more coffee, grumble a bit before having to head back to the hotel to pick up our bags and start the long journey home.
Despite the last minute interest the Glyptotek has thrown up, I am suddenly left feeling a little bit cheated. Damn my hangovers, damn the brie, damn your lies!

COPENHAGEN 3

2006-02-13T23:08:00.001Z

I did not mean to do it. I was in perfect concurrence with everyone else, still weary from the night before, then slightly listless after eating and all set to go home after our visit to The Moose. But by the time we had left The Moose I had been visited by an ebullient second wind and had started to entertain the idea of popping down the road alone to The Spunk Bar for a nightcap. By the time I was done I was drunk again and I am feeling it today. It is a crying shame because now I have slept in and Ruth and Al are up and off, making good on their threat to head over the Oresund to Sweden, a trip on which Louise and I are both invited. If they could only give me an hour I might just make it but Louise does not fancy changing up money in yet another highly inflated currency and we are thus fated to be without our friends for the rest of the trip
(if it were not for Louise’s stoic reservations this a decision I might regret to this day).

When Louise and I finally feel worthy enough to leave the hotel we are left in the strange situation of being without any idea whatsoever what we are going to do with the day. First up is breakfast which we end up taking quite randomly at The Zoo Bar, some conspicuously trendy joint in deepest Indre By. It is not up to the standard set by the Design Museum, although the coffee goes down well. From here we can satiate Louise’s need to check out the shops and I must concede that the pedestrianised arteries of Indre By have also piqued my interest somewhat and I am quite happy to partake in the Danish shopping experience, for now at least.

There is quite a chill in the air today but after stumbling upon Orsteds Parken we decide that a walk in the park might make a change from all the urban sight seeing. There is nothing inherently remarkable about Orsteds Parken but the time of year has left a mark that makes it far more appealing than it might otherwise be. The lake is completely frozen over and whereas most of the snow that fell long before we arrived has all but melted everywhere else, here it has been granted a reprieve, sheltered from the heat and hustle of inner city life. And then it must be time for coffee again. I cannot see that there is much going on to the western side of the park so we return to the Latin Quarter to find our cafe.
It is rather sedate back in the Latin Quarter, to the point of cafe closure and one wonders if maybe the Danes have developed a taste for the more Mediterranean siesta. Eventually we find the basement wing of what I think is Roberts Café on Larsbjornsstraede, and settle down for coffee in their large leather armchairs to the sound of Nick Cave’s ‘Murder Ballads’. On a day like this it seems strangely appropriate, even more so when the only other people drinking here - two Polish chaps with shaven heads - attempt to engage in some very disjointed conversation from across the other side of the room.
I guess it is called killing time and it is an awful thing to admit to doing when one is on holiday but we have come to Copenhagen very much off-season and there does not seem to be a huge amount of things to do at this time of the year. So we decide that we may as well take a stroll over to ‘Marmor Kirken’, a St Pauls-esque Basilica next to Amalienborg where one can apparently find quite a view.

It seemed like such a good idea at the time. Unfortunately we did not read the guide book properly and although the church was open, the bell tower was not. We took some pictures – those of the interior coming out best when Louise set her digital camera to ‘party/indoor’ mode, rather than the ‘museum’ setting which she initially assumed would be more appropriate - before walking back to Indre By for yet another coffee at a rather expensive café called the Europa that sits opposite Norden where we dined on our first day. From there we decided to walk back to our hotel via Kompagnistrade to check out the look of a couple of jazz clubs recommended in the guide. Kompagnistrade is a quieter street than Frederiksberggade, its almost parallel cousin and the route home we had taken the two previous nights, and it was not in the mood for giving away what sort of a night out it might provide.

And with that we went straight home; Louise to take a shower and I to brood over a beer. Why I should have felt the need to brood I will never know but I came over all queer at the hotel. I was checking the internet one minute, exploring the rumour we had picked up that Belle and Sebastian were playing in Copenhagen that very night, and then it happened. I was drinking a beer and watching ‘Meet the Barkers’ on MTV in the hotel lobby and I began to develop a very strange and endogenous anxiety. For this I supposed food might be the best solution and as soon as Louise was available we left, on a mission to find somewhere to eat in Vesterbro, the borough to our hotel’s south and a region hitherto unexplored.

Unsure of what sort of food we fancy, Louise and I pull into a small bar for a beer in an attempt to ameliorate my strange mental situation. That alcohol brings me an almost instant succour I am not sure is a good thing, the effect upon my appetite being a concern. But we do need to eat and whatever happens, eat is what we shall do.
Vesterbro is very different from the parts of Copenhagen we have frequented up until now. Our visit to the Spunk Bar provided a hint of what can be found if one hits Istedgade running, but after a while the sex industry starts to take a back seat to a miscellany of bars and ethnically orientated supermarkets. Then the bars and shops peter out completely as the road bends sinisterly right towards what is supposed to be the more genteel suburb of Fredericksberg. On the crossroads of Enghaven and Istedgade is Vega, the club where we think Belle and Sebastian might be playing and, given our inability to make a decision as to where to eat, we may as well check it out.
It seems that twee Scottish popsters are nowhere to be seen tonight or any night soon, a fact that the assembled throng bare out, assembled as they are in more ‘rock’ orientated attire*. Satisfied that we are not going to miss out on such an audacious vacation-based coupe, we retrace our steps set very firmly on finding somewhere to eat.

(*It later transpired that B& S were scheduled to play the Vega on May 19th – which I assume they duly did. Where our wires became crossed I still have no idea to this day)

We had liked the look of Bang & Jensen on the way in but it was packed to the rafters. Now we can discern a few spare seats in the corner so without further ado we take the plunge. Judging by the clientele we anticipate that it could well be a little on the expensive side but a quick scan of the menu proves it not to be unreasonably so by Copenhagen’s standards. I decide to take a chance on the Chicken Tikka and Louise opts for the Thai Green curry. Thankfully the beers consumed why we wait for our food to arrive do little to dent an appetite that by now has inured itself to any such a suppressant.
The Best of the Velvet Underground: Words & Music by Lou Reed plays in the background. I know this because it is the only VU compilation wherein the track 'Beginning to See the Light' directly follows 'What Goes On' and tonight I decide these to be maybe the two best tunes the Velvet Underground ever recorded. Sometimes an environment can have a heavy impact on the music that inhabits it and with the food living up to the expectation the sound and vision levies upon it, Louise and I descend into a reverie of complete contentment.

2006-02-12T23:33:00.000Z

Christianshavn

COPENHAGEN 2

2006-02-12T22:57:00.001Z

I am hungover and hungry. It is always a relief to be found wanting for food when one awakes after a heavy night’s drinking, because in the absence of a hearty appetite the road to recovery will, in all probability, be a long and winding one.
The Hotel Comfort Europa offers breakfast but in what form we have been unable to fathom. We have missed the deadline anyhow so I am hoping the Design Museum might come up trumps. Alex’s whole reason for living around these parts is the study of product design so it is of little surprise that he wishes to take us there. I am more than happy with this motion, although without the precursor of lunch to be had I am not sure how keen Louise and Ruth would be. My only concern is cost. Denmark’s reputation as an expensive place to eat and drink has proven to be true (except in Bar Eiffel) and I figure the national design museum will be the last place interested in bucking the trend. Or course, if I eat something so suited to my condition that it provides instant succour then I will not care.
And it almost does.

The Design Museum Cafe

It is one of those posh sandwiches which is not really a sandwich at all but would be if you had a go at rearranging the ingredients. There is bread for sure, but it rests at funny angles, as if mimicking some sort of modernist sculpture, with strips of ham and cheese similarly splayed out in between. In and amongst this protein and carbohydrate symbiosis, dribbles of pesto and balsamic vinegar weave in and out of one another, occasionally surmounting the random sprigs of rocket they find in their way. The whole arrangement is so finely poised that eating this thing almost feels like an act of artistic desecration. But eat it I do, and despite my innate distrust of what exactly pesto both is and tastes like, I thoroughly enjoy the experience. I had initially opted for an orange juice to compliment my breakfast but now am quite happy to follow this up with a cup of coffee.
Or was it the other way around?

Ruth and Al want to explore the design museum proper but Louise and I are not too bothered, so after the purchase of postcards we scoot back to Indre By to give the area a more thorough going over. We have only an agreed hour or so before we have to be back at the museum but it is enough to explore Radhuspladsen, a sort of Leicester Square kind of space overlooked by the more demure Radhus itself (Copenhagen’s City Hall). It is a pleasant place to find oneself on a very pleasant day and the combination of good food and crisp fresh winter air has contrived to banish all memory of the alcoholic fug that held me to ransom from the moment I awoke. Which is just as well, given that we shall shortly be embarking on a mission to find the statue of ‘The Little Mermaid’ which lies as far north from Nyhaven as Nyhaven currently lies from us – and then some. Thankfully we will be spared the commercial delights of Frederiksberggade and will instead follow a route that takes in some of Copenhagen’s more anachronistic features.

It might have done to stop off at Slotsholmen or Chritians-borg, and explore properly these regal edifices with the attention they demand, but time waits for no woman who has their heart set on seeing the Little Mermaid. From Nyhaven we have to follow the rather featureless waterfront past the borough of Frederikstad, a walk only really enlightened by the spectre of the newly built Opera House that sits across the water on Holmen, a sort of sub-borough of Christianshavn.
I am quite forgiving, I like to think, when it comes to tolerating the more tourist driven pursuits that are occasionally imposed upon my being by people more keen to indulge in them. Sometimes I might even be pleasantly surprised and the fuss that surrounds the attraction in question can seem almost justified. Alas, the Little Mermaid is a thing I could have gladly gone the rest of my days without ever setting my eyes upon. Diminutive is not the word; you might very well miss her, were it not for the gaggle of tourists gathered along the quayside, clamouring for a photo; she can be barely more than three feet high. In fact, the two boulders that have been considerately positioned for her to rest upon are collectively taller. More interesting are the earth-works forming the remains of an old fort directly behind us. But not much more.

It is time for some refreshment surely? Fortunately my colleagues concur and we turn in the direction of town with our eyes peeled in anticipation.
The walk back takes us through Slots Plads, a large square enshrouded by the four palaces of Amalienbourg, home of the Danish Royal Family. Witnessing the changing of the guard, as an episode of pure chance, almost makes the walk up through Frederikstad worth the while.
It is not until we have reached Nyhaven that an opportunity to stop for a drink arises but by then they are legion. We plump for Nyhaven 17, a pub almost British in execution but with enough of a maritime slant to assume its own pleasing identity. It offers perfect respite on such a winter’s day in fact – all dark wood, low light and gleaming brass. We first have coffee (or something similar) before electing to order a round of something stronger. You would have thought a lesson was learnt yesterday, when drinking mid-afternoon we suddenly chanced upon a thirst that distracted us from taking tea, but we have decided we may as well eat as soon as we are done here and maybe even stay out for the evening. So we order pizza from the Italian restaurant a few doors down, which do not amount to anything special but fulfil a need, before popping into another nautically themed bar pretty much next door and then deciding to pass through the Latin Quarter to dust the night off.

The Moose is probably the most laid back pubs in the whole of Copenhagen, even if it does lack the character found at Bar Eiffel. But where the Eiffel was pretty straight forward in its design - all dated furniture, tinted mirrors and old fashioned art - The Moose has left it to the punters to improvise with the decor. This basically means that the back room is completely covered in entry level Graffiti, a bit like ‘Angkor What?’ in Siem Reap; Cambodia.

They keep the bar area a little tidier.

COPENHAGEN 1

2006-02-11T22:50:00.002Z

I was unable to book morning flights to Berlin last October. I wanted to, as I had done on consecutive trips to Barcelona and Italy, but I do not think my friends were too fond of the idea. So, utilising a generous offer from Louise’s father to drive us to Stanstead Airport at 5:00am, I have taken this opportunity to fly as early as possible.

Our flight departs at 7:30am and we are scheduled to arrive in Denmark by 10:15am local time. Another interesting feature of this trip is that it begins on a Saturday. With city-breaks one tends to fly late in the week, incorporating at least some of the weekend as a kind of climax to it all, but we are tied to the schedule of our fellow holiday-makers on this occasion - one of which is currently studying across the ‘Oresund’ in the Swedish town of Lund, the other going there to see him - and only these dates will do.
I am not sure how we are going to meet up with our friends. Ruth will have flown out the day prior to meet her husband Alex, before our supposed rendezvous on the Saturday. We are to be staying at the Comfort Hotel Europa (which will turn out to be anything but) and I guess we will find them there somehow.

I think Stansted is now one of my favourite airports. Copenhagen has a nice airport too but I expect that from a country of Denmark’s repute. The UK though, tends to take a rather more utilitarian approach with regards to matters of design and in this context Stansted is quite a pleasant surprise. The structure is effortlessly simple without taking on the appearance of a prefabricated building on an industrial estate – despite that being what it pretty much is – and possesses an air of calm and organisation that I have not hitherto witnessed amongst British airports.
Its glass clad frontage allows light to permeate throughout an interior mercifully uninterrupted from the pipes, air ducts or supporting pillars that often blight older or less considered constructions. Stanstead may not win any architectural awards in its life time but, none the less, it has been put together with the well-being of its clientele in mind, so it is a pleasure to take coffee here - although too early for breakfast.
Or is it?

By the time we arrive in Copenhagen I am pretty famished and more than happy with what the airport café has to offer; a variety of fresh bread rolls that the customer is required to fill themselves from a modest selection of meats and cheeses. It is one of the first pleasures one reaps from boarding an early flight, the luxury of being able to take your time at the receiving airport, be it for eating food, sitting down for a coffee or simply taking a moment to freshen up in bathroom. One should avoid the need to rush at every instance where travel is concerned.

Copenhagen’s central train station looks to have been built in the tradition of the great Victorian stations of Great Britain (such as they once were) and provides an even more rewarding spectacle than that offered at the airport. Were it not for our luggage I would almost suggest stopping here for another coffee – I could certainly do with it. Louise would be right to object should I dare to propose this motion, because not only does it turn out that our hotel is located less than a five minutes stroll from the station but on the way there we bump into our friends Ruth and Al, who happen to be on their way into town for a spot of lunch.

We are noy permitted to book in to our hotel yet, such is the early hour, so we drop off our luggage in Ruth and Alex’s room, eschew their offer to utilise their shower and join them in their quest to find somewhere nice to eat. Despite having eaten brunch not much more than an hour ago, we have been up for over six hours now and our DIY roll, as nice it was, has not provided us with sustenance that will last much past noon.

It takes about 45 minutes before we have found Norden on Oster-gade (I assume ‘gade’ translates, roughly, as ‘street’), and decided, what with its almost Edwardian interior coupled with a decent write up in our travel guides, that we would quite like to take tiffin here. And in those 45 minutes my impression of this town has changed with almost every other major turning we have taken walking trhough it.
Copenhagen, if one knows nothing of it, is both larger and dirtier than one might expect, or at least it appears so to me. All I have to go on are the pictures offered in my Rough Guide and they do nothing to expostulate the preconception I have of Denmark as a rather parochial place. But no; Copenhagen (at least) has so much more to offer. Amongst the spires and the 19th century low rise terracing, substantial modern architecture is rife - not all of it pleasant - but imposing enough to make its mark and provide an ambience befitting of a nation’s capital city.

Heading back past the train station along the utilitarian and completely expendable Vesterbrogade we crossed the road northwards and followed Hammerichsgade around to the southern side of an area known as ‘Indre By’. Indre By is the heart of Copenhagen - its old town - and incorporates the Latin Corner with its convoluted side streets and cobbled roads, a marked contrast to the conservative modernism that dominates much of Radhuspladsen, the area one has to pass through to get here. From there we picked up Frederiksberggade which soon morphed into Nygade which in turn segued into Vimmelskaftet - pedestrianised drags hosting nothing other than shops and fast food outfits, much like one will find in many a European city (Istanbul, Cologne, Budapest etc.) But it is at the top of this drag where we have found Norden and I have high hopes for the place.
Norden occupies two stories on a corner of a block that overlooks a central triangular ‘square’ and given such an auspicious location it comes as little surprise to find us struggling to find a seat. We do though and plot our meals accordingly before taking stock of our arrival and planning the rest of our day. As per usual Louise is pretty relaxed as to what we might do and equally predictably I am rather keen to continue our walk with an aim of winding up at a bar. Ruth and Alex have experience of this town and suggest areas that might fulfil my needs and I am more than happy to let them take control. First we must eat lunch and I have to say I am a little disappointed. I have opted for bacon and scrambled eggs but my bread is much denser than I am used to and the bacon so salty that I cannot even finish it off, leaving me grateful that I had taken the opportunity to eat at the airport earlier. Not that I would advise against a trip to Norden. It is worth a visit for the interior alone, and besides, my colleagues were happy with the food even if I was not.
From Norden it is a natural progression to follow the shops north-east up a street named Stroget until one joins Kongens Nytorv, a vast square located at what might be seen as the heart of Copenhagen. It has been set aside for ice-skating, a visual reminder of both Copenhagen’s latitude and the time of year. Considering this it is not as cold as it could be, although judging by the swathes of snow spread around the shadier corners of town it certainly has been and still could be given a few hours notice.
Perpendicularly east of Kongens Nytorv lies Nyhaven, an old harbour where large crowds of people are known to congregate during the spring and summer to soak up the rays of the sun that gather on its northern aspect. In winter it is an equally agreeable place to visit although a trip to one of its many bars is probably preferable to hanging your feet over the side of the harbour, as is popular during the northern hemisphere’s more clement months. This is Copenhagen as one might imagine; quaint, colourful and decidedly maritime. It is also the image one finds representing the capital on the front cover of the Rough Guide.
The theme continues as you follow the river’s edge as far as Knippelsbro Bridge and across it into the heart of Christianshavn. Ah yes, Christianshavn… I have been looking forward to exploring Christianshavn. This unusually shaped land mass is pretty much an island, save for a couple of bridges and narrow spits connecting it to the mainland, and it is as artificial as its oddly angular geometry suggests. Dating back as far as the early 1600’s, Christianshavn was formed from reclaimed land to offer a line of defence where there was previously none and was afforded autonomy at the time of its inception. As Copenhagen grew though, Christianshavn could not help but come to rely on the neighbouring capital and by the century’s close it had become just another borough, all be it one with advantageously mercantile and naval interests.
Many of the large warehouses born from such pursuits remain today, with offices and plush flats now utilising this attractive space. In between there is more modern housing and not much else to catch the eye other than Vor Frelsers Kirke (The Church of Our Saviour) with its impressively corkscrewed spire, and a few canals doing the rounds. And Christiania, which is what intrigued about Christianshavn in the first place.

I had marked the cards of a few cafes and bars in Christianshavn expecting, given its geography, that by the time we had checked the place out everybody would be ready for either something to eat or drink. We have eaten enough food for the time being so I am hoping a drink will be lurking around a corner somewhere and with this in mind we strategically work our way around to Christiania, the ‘free city’ of Denmark. In keeping with the original idea of Christianshavn as self-governing borough (deliberately or otherwise) the redundant naval barracks were colonised back in the early 1970’s by what we might pejoratively refer to as ‘squatters’. They were indeed homeless, but may well have been bound up too in the progressive liberalism that permeated throughout the 1960’s and, in many cases, beyond. The community that thrives there today certainly hints that this may very well have been the case.
The central drag is affectionately known as ‘Pusherstreet’ and it is here we find ourselves as we finish our pleasant walk along the bastions of the island’s eastern boarder. The change in atmosphere is palpable. There is the faintest waft of marijuana about the place, large dogs engaging in a close contact that walks a very fine line between playfulness and all-out aggression and anybody carrying a residential air has tattoos or piercings, but mostly both.
Alex is focusing his camera in the direction of one of the many colourful murals that brighten up the crumbling walls. “Nye Photo!” announces one such denizen whilst jabbing a finger upwards towards one such mural, depicting a giant camera with a red line crossed diagonally through it. Alex raises his hands in gesture that conveys his oversight and it is accepted as such. Plans to stop here for a drink are very swiftly put on hold.
I am sure Christiania is a lovely place really. All signs point towards a community that just wants to be left on its own to get on with the miscellany of creative endeavours that one finds in every direction you look, which is sculpture mostly. Like with any community that wishes to exist outside that that surrounds it, such desires are fraught with their implicit difficulties and the slight air of antagonism that one picks up on walking down Pusherstreet is testimony to this, I am sure.
So we make our exit to find somewhere else to wet our whistles.

Europeans are good when it comes to speaking our language and Scandinavians are often the best, so the fact that the lady working in the Bar Eiffel struggles to string two words - let alone sentences - together in our mother tongue takes us rather aback. Fortunately the simplicity of our chosen order (4 beers) is conveyed with ease and we very quickly find ourselves settling down in this strange tribute to the Gaelic drinking hole. It really is a beautiful bar, if a little run down, but what really makes it worth the visit are the assortment of characters that drink here. We are by far the youngest of their clientele and quite comfortably the cleanest, but above all else I gain the distinct impression that this is a bar designed to cater for the serious boozer. To back this supposition up The Rough Guide alludes to a shady past whilst The Lonely Planet mentions something in passing about a pervading aroma of urine.
But it is all OK, as evinced by the four relatively cheap rounds we knock back to the sounds of what Alex speculates is the ‘Allman Brothers’. So impressed am I with the early 70’s southern rock we are privy to as an accompaniment that I even attempt to ask what record it is exactly they are playing. A couple of broken sentences and a few hand gestures later and I have garnered that it is something down-loaded from ‘the net’ and our bar lady knows nothing beyond that (I have since discovered a pair of albums that lead me to confidently believe that we were, in fact, listening to early ‘Little Feat’).
I could drink somewhere like this all day and then continue on into the night but we should really think about eating somewhere soon and I would be very surprised if the Bar Eiffel catered for anything other than an appetite for peanuts and crisps - and even that might be pushing it.

The liquor consumed in the afternoon has put our appetites on hold and so after a swift pint with Alex back at the hotel bar we decide there is time enough to check out the amusingly named Spunk Bar not five minutes walk down the road. It is hard to know whether there is any double meaning here, given the location slap-bang in the middle of Copenhagen’s red light district. The bar’s interior is giving nothing away but again, rather curiously, we are warned against taking photos the moment our cameras make their inevitable appearance. The staff are friendlier in making this request than they were in Christiania mind.
We only stay for one because we all have pizza on the brain and so walk towards Indre By pretty sure we will be able to find somewhere there to cater to our needs.
We do not though and find the whole area surprisingly inert for a Saturday night and instead end up taking refuge in Café Floss, a “trendy low-life bar” where, according to the Rough Guide, “creative souls are known to gather for full-on drinking sessions”. It is hard to tell whether the punters are creative types but somehow we end up providing the full-on drinking session with rounds of roasted chilli nuts standing in for our tea. After forming a rather close bond with the local ‘Tuborg’ we decide there is time for a night cap and stop off at a gay bar, no less, on the way home. It has been a great night but I am sure we will be made to pay for skipping tea.