Thursday, December 30, 2010

Wild Travel Encounters, Part One (of Four): The Old World



A friend emailed: “So it’s actually happened - you’ve fallen off the end of the earth”. Forgiving her lack of logic(this email could only ever be either incorrect or never received), this repeated a flattering number of requests for updates and stories for news beyond one-liner emails confirming that I still breathe. Flattering because I think of this writing as more of an open journal than something that people other than Mum actually read.

But with all that has happened over the last 4 months I had to find a way to sum things up as succinctly as possible (a constant challenge). Luckily, two nights ago we were in a bar and I found inspiration in Brady Barr’s attempt on National Geographic’s Wild Dangerous Encounters show to quantitatively analyse, summarise, and evaluate the “wildness” of various animals. So I am going to attempt to do the same with my various experiences over the recent undocumented 4 months. Unlike the tiresomely enthusiastic BB, my goal will not be to find the “Most Incredibly Ultimate Wildest Wild Animal” (or travel experience), but merely to give a brief summation of places, people, highlights and lowlights of everything since the last post…and to share just a bit of the fun that’s been had.

BB used the categories of: Icon of the Wild(when you hear the name, does your hair stand on end?); Weaponry(how wicked-cool are the eagle talons, poisonous snake fangs, or sheer size and strength of the bear?); and Danger(the probability of being maimed or killed by this beast, usually measured in deaths/year).
Since travel isn't quite as dangerously cool as wild animals, I’ll be adapting these categories for travel (using “Travel Icon”, “Fun Factor”, and “Grit Factor”) while retaining Dr Barr’s pseudo-scientific approach of trying to squeeze entirely subjective and qualitative data into a scale from 1-5.


Lyon
Still reeling from the music, food, history, and romance(despite being two travellers) of Paris, we had 3 days to take in France’s second city.
Travel Icon: 4/5. If it’s French food or wine that you’re interested in, Lyon is where it’s at.
Fun Factor: 2/5. A very “nice” city, we spent our days cycling through the beautiful parks and watching young families picnic. The sort of place which makes having young children seem like heavenly bliss rather that total chaos - dangerous, in that it may convince one that this may not be such a bad idea at some point in the future. We managed to scare/impress/entertain a few locals with our attempts to save 1 euro on bike hire by doubling on the handlebars around the traffic on the city streets. By night, we discovered that it’s not people from Lyon who deserve the reputation of being snobs -it’s the people IN Lyon… even the foreign exchange students wouldn’t spare any time for these Kiwis!
Grit Factor: 1/5. See above - it’s cultured, sophisticated, interesting, tasty, and well polished. But not in a bad way.


Lutry/Lausanne, Switzerland:
For just under a week we stayed with Anne (a school friend of Emma’s Mum) in the small village of Lutry on Lake Geneva. It was the most homely pocket of comfort that we had experienced since home itself, with Anne and her three children (all back home from around the world for family reasons of the unfortunate kind) made us very welcome. Thank you!
Travel Icon: 4.5/5. Look at the snow capped mountains as you cycle along the shore of Lake Geneva to Lausanne to visit the global HQ for the Olympic movement, and get into the geek-zone to imagine the Large Hadron Collider smashing particles together deep underground to push the frontiers of human knowledge…you’ll probably be able to justify a pretty high score for this category.
Fun Factor: 3/5. Approximately 3 weeks of no exercise jarred me into an unfortunate experiment that so many former swimmers undertake - an attempt to become a triathlete. But if I was going to do it - where better than here? So I jumped on an old road bike from under Anne’s house and took to the highway, doing my best to drag off a member of the Swiss national team before he managed to see that the lights had turned green. The halfway point was a picturesque village 4km along the lake, which was at the same altitude as my starting point (lake level) while managing to feel like many thousands of feet below it, making the ride home reach near-death levels of exertion(or exhaustion). But this was just the start - I still had to train for the swim leg, which meant that my shaky legs had to power at least ten bombs off a diving platform which someone had built in the lake, before fuelling this finely tuned machine with a donut from the bakery before the run (read “walk”) up the hill to the house. Such is the life of an athlete.
Grit Factor: 0/5. Days filled with home cooking, Kiwi Mum hugs, walks through vineyards, art galleries, and swimming in the lake. Everything works like it should - efficiently and on time - and if it doesn’t, people speak friendly English with an attractive Swiss-French accent. This was our much needed and appreciated comfort zone.


London:
Like a good brother I spread my filthy travel kit over Brad’s floor in London, and even managed to bring Emma along too for some of the time. For a week before heading to Ireland, then another week before Spain/Portugal, then another couple of days before heading to Africa, the much-missed Herring brothers show was in town. Around this I managed to get a feel for this great city, catch up with the Kiwi diaspora which is a permanent feature of the place (for example, unexpectedly running into someone that you haven’t seen since 4th form basketball), and stock up on the necessities for the next 6 months of travel.
Travel Icon: 5/5. It’s London. It’s the centre of (what was) the British Empire. It’s the Queen and those guys in the red jackets, tall black hats, and no sense of humour. It’s black cabs. More often, it’s the Tube. It’s food, pubs, parks, deer, galleries, museums, churches, palaces, all under a (usually) grey sky. It’s every country in the world, all in one city.
Fun Factor: 4/5. In the morning I would meet Miss Pizey (for those who don’t know her - a good friend and fellow Kiwi traveller) at a prearranged Tube stop. She would arrive on time, I fifteen minutes late. She with two bags of breakfast goodies, I with a spoon, pocket knife, cup, and smile. We would find a park bench - on the Thames, in a park, or in front of Buckingham Palace. The Buck’s Fizz (a superb blend of sparkling wine and orange juice) would flow, the croissants and donuts would come out, and the grapes would fly. People would look sideways at us, but, being British, would never say anything. And we would discuss everything from politics to sexuality to the benefits of a diet high in vitamin C. The day would take us through galleries, museums, cafes, and more. London days were fun, much more so due to good people.
Then of course, at night - wherever I was - it was Herring humour (does it get better?).
Grit Factor: 3/5. This was a hard call. London is one of the most developed and sophisticated cities in the world, but I was sleeping on the floor above a carpet shop. One night I went for “Fusion Cuisine” overlooking the Thames with friends working in corporate finance and local government, but on the way home had to walk around a police cordon and a large pool of blood from a stabbing outside a major tourist attraction. I could wake up, walk outside and two doors down to buy fresh fruit and veges from all around the world, but 5 hours earlier I could have just stood on the doorstep and bought hard drugs. There’s grit if you want it - but it’s balanced by everything else. Variety is the spice of life.


Dublin:
A week in the home of Guinness to visit former flatmate Yulia and old friend Ed O’Farrell before meeting Em and Ellie on their way back from Cork.
Travel Icon: 2/5. There’s the Guinness factory and Trinity College, but if it’s leprechauns and four leaf clovers then you’ll have to leave the city. Don’t worry Ireland, I’ll be back.
Fun Factor: 3/5. I knew that the Irish drank. A lot. But seeing is believing. Dublin’s nightlife is a lot of fun, and the people are friendly and talkative like nowhere else. So much fun that it’s a major destination for Londoners to have stag/hen nights. The daytime is like the night time, but without the friendliness ie. People still drink, there’s still not much light, but the fun people are generally at work.
Forty minutes south of the city centre, on the seaside, is the home of Ed. And craziness. Which are pretty much the same thing. Whether I was talking my way out of going paddle boarding in the near-zero water, playing indoor soccer in my trekking boots(and being taken to school by fiery Irishmen in their sixties), or just watching movies, it was great hanging out with the guy who hasn’t changed since I saw him five years ago in NZ (except for having grown himself some girly locks and bought two very girly dogs).
Grit Factor: 3/5. Taking Ed’s two tiny fluffy white dogs for walks along the seaside - negative grit. Sitting on a bench in Dublin city council grounds, eating a sandwich, and watching a junkie shoot up in the bushes - significant base levels of grit.


Picture: Triathlon training in Lake Geneva


For more photos, check out...
France: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=492677&id=808690304&l=8b3e9d75b1
Switzerland: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=492680&id=808690304&l=2a05d1ed70
London: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=558558&id=808690304&l=d3885c0ff2
Dublin: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=558554&id=808690304&l=563619362e.


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