Krakow

We’re on our last day in Krakow now, and leave in a few hours on the night train to Prague. Everything has gone frighteningly swimmingly so far.

I’d heard from various people that Poland can be a little racist and unfriendly to Oriental-looking people, but so far the most viciously racist comments I’ve encountered have pretty much been from Alec. We’ve received impeccably professional, extremely pleasant service almost everywhere, and everyone has been very forgiving of our lack of Polish and general bumbling nature.

We have had meals of such high quality (at an absolute pittance too – the best restaurant in Krakow for £40 in total, including wine) and such variety that Alec hasn’t even felt the least craving for Chinese food yet. (This is to be contrasted to our return from Budapest, where we spent the entire tube ride from Heathrow trying to decide which Chinese restaurant we’d rush to as soon as possible.)

Krakow itself has been great. The city centre’s got that usual European charm, but trekking along green fields and phallic rock formations in Ojcow National Park and being wowed in Wieliczka salt mine have been nice breaks from city strolling. Holocaust “sightseeing” can be harrowing but very worthwhile – we explored Kazimierz, walked over the river from that to the dingy factory building which would be completely unremarkable if Oskar Schindler hadn’t used it to save thousands of Jews, and yesterday, finally made the journey to Auschwitz.

All in all, this has been so fantastic I fear the cosmos have something bad planned for us in Prague. Fingers crossed.

Unlikely Budget Destination

Just bought my travel insurance. According to the brochure, I pay higher premiums for travelling to Europe than I would if I were going to Iraq.

Even More Un-PC Than Me

I was discussing upcoming holiday plans with Alec, specifically the Eastern Europe part of the trip. We were considering the cost viability of a railpass by trying to see if all the places we wanted to see were actually on good train routes.

Alec: Well, we all know you can definitely get to Auschwitz by train!
Me: ……
Alec: ……
Me: Okay, next topic of conversation.

Postcard

Hello folks. I’m perched on a stool at an Internet cafe in Hua Hin, Thailand. Alec arrived on Tuesday, and since then I haven’t had the time to write any entries, although quite a number are planned for when we get back to Singapore on Christmas Eve. In the meantime, we’ve been having lots of fun muddling along in classic Alec-Michelle style, despite the dismaying tendency of things to not exist or screw up every now and then, and my bitter resentment at having to pay farang prices for most things because of my choice of travelling companion.

But ignore my little gripes, which I enjoy making rather too much to really be serious about. I’d forgotten this is what it feels like to be blissfully happy. See you all soon.

Over My Dead Body

I’m assuming the only reason London or the Scottish Highlands aren’t in this list of 50 Places To See Before You Die is that it’s a BBC site, so the voting emphasis is on places out of the UK.

Out of the 50, I’ve seen:
2. Great Barrier Reef
8. Sydney
18. Venice
27. Paris
35. Rome
37. Barcelona
39. Singapore (duh)

But all I can say is that the people who voted on this quiz seem to have different travel sensibilities from me. For one thing, call me a party-pooper, but I could so easily go the rest of my life without setting foot into Florida or Las Vegas.

I’m pretty astounded not a single place in Turkey made it onto this list – Istanbul? Cappadocia? Ephesus? And people would rather go to Florida than Jerusalem, which doesn’t even make the list? (Granted, you might die before you have time to see much of Jerusalem, but it’s an amazing place nonetheless.) In Europe I’d also rate Berlin more highly than Paris, Rome or Barcelona, but maybe that’s just me. (Russ? Views?) And I like Melbourne more than Sydney, but yet again, it’s not even on the list.

Lastly, I applaud the noble efforts of the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board, really I do, but who in their right mind would actually put Singapore as one of the 50 places you should see before you die??? More worth seeing than Bangkok? Marrakesh? Dubrovnik? St Petersburg? Don’t get me wrong, I think my country’s quite a fascinating place, and it’s certainly more interesting than the backpacker travel guides and Western media would have you believe, but one of the top 50 places to see before you die? Come on.

A Bleak Future In Gambling

I admit it, I’m stuck in the past. I sit here and try to think of something to write, but because my current life is boring beyond belief, and generally involves little more than me sitting in front of this laptop typing exam notes about judicial politics in France, me sitting in front of the TV watching Beyonce’s (fine) ass, and me sitting at the dining table eating chicken rice, I need to go back to a time I had fun. I’ll tell you about Ireland.

We were there to go to the Galway Races. And according to a secret plan of Alec’s, to also make me go up in a very small plane and make some pretence of learning to fly it. I don’t think he was planning to tell me this until I was actually thundering down the runway bug-eyed, but James let it slip earlier in the day. Fortunately or unfortunately, my date with the deathtrap had to literally take a rain check when weather conditions were unsuitable for flying, but I’m sure he’ll find a way of bundling me on another one some time in the future.

The Galway Races turned out to be quite similar to the Wimbledon Greyhound Races, except the things running along the track were bigger, and the chicks were better dressed. The major point of similarity between my two experiences with gambling is that we lost every bet here too. In the biggest race of the day, I scanned the 22 horses that were running and one stood out to me: Nearly A Moose. “Guys? I like Nearly A Moose! How about Nearly A Moose, huh guys?” The general response was that me liking the name was all very well, but look at its mediocre track record. I bowed before those who I thought knew better, and bet on another horse. Guess who won with odds of 52-1.

Further reliving our creeping dejection is too painful. I turn now to our creeping drunkenness. On the way back from the races, we stopped at a number of pubs. I forget how many exactly. At some point I revealed to Alec’s organic farmer friends that he often sought out organic food in the supermarkets. This brought much ridicule for him and hearty chuckles of “Take it from us, organic farming is bollocks!” At some other point I was at the bar ordering a round when the giggling ten-year-old boy beside me asked me if I was single on behalf of the very drunk old man beside him. We left the last pub around 1.30 in the morning. The third farmer brother had to milk the cows at 6. When we stopped along the way home to drop his girlfriend off, he decided to follow her, and did so amid shouts of “But what about the cows?” Poor cows.

Low/Radiohead (Bergamo Arena, Italy)

I’d initially been really excited about the fact that Low was opening for Radiohead. I missed Low’s gig at the Union Chapel earlier this year because it was Valentine’s Day weekend and I grudgingly recognized the need to do something romantic rather than drag long-suffering Alec to yet another gig. The sacrifice was more than worthwhile, but I always hoped I’d get another chance to see Low, and this was it. The problem was that their beautiful, deliberative harmonies were completely incompatible with a jabbering crowd of people who didn’t seem to give a damn about them. Little Argument With Myself, so well-suited to late nights alone in my room, lying on the bed in the dark waiting for sleep, just didn’t work in a huge outdoor venue. With twilight more than an hour away, that sublime climax of “Cos there’s nothing as sad as a man on his back counting STARS” fell flat, or at least it was hard for me to feel much while trying to shut out the clamouring Italians around me. Oh well. Great band, wrong place and time. A pity.

So finally, Radiohead. What can I say except that they were a dream come true, and by this I don’t mean the kind of dream where all my teeth are falling out and I can taste the blood but the kind where I’m roller-blading and I’m amazing, I can jump and turn and land and do all the cool stunts, but of course I’m not weighed down by all that pesky safety gear ‘cos I don’t need it, I’m amazing, and at the end I even start to fly.

Here’s a setlist:

  • There there
  • 2+2 = 5 (Thom swats flies which keep clustering around the mike, nice parallel with “I swat em like flies but like flies the buggers keep coming back” in the song although I don’t think he could possibly have planned it.)
  • Lucky
  • Talk Show Host
  • Scatterbrain
  • The National Anthem
  • Backdrifts
  • Sail To The Moon
  • Kid A
  • Bones
  • Where I End and You Begin
  • I Might Be Wrong
  • Fake Plastic Trees
  • A Punchup at a Wedding
  • Paranoid Android (Thom: “This is a song called Paranoid Android.” As if you needed to name it.)
  • Idioteque
  • Everything In Its Right Place
  • The Gloaming
  • Pyramid Song
  • My Iron Lung
  • Like Spinning Plates
  • Exit Music (For A Film)
  • Sit down. Stand up.
  • Karma Police

The feelings of inadequacy that plague me every time I try to write about music are slapping me around the head with a vengeance here. I feel almost, well, unworthy to review a Radiohead concert. We are not on the same musical plane, they and I. They make music and I learn to like it, it’s that simple. This doesn’t require much effort, but I sometimes need a fair amount of time to get my head round the music, which leads me to the first thing I was going to say.

Most of the songs sounded pretty much similar to their studio recordings, which is not a bad thing given that their studio recordings sound bloody fabulous, but I guess I was hoping for more radical reworkings. I’d have quite liked to work more to figure out the songs, rather than recognize them instantly from the start. On the other hand, this may not be the best way to do a big outdoor summer gig which people don’t expect to be “difficult”. So I’m not too sure what to make of their rather happy romping versions of Kid A and Everything In Its Place. They were certainly interesting to listen to, but they featured nothing I’d liked about the recordings. The piano version of Like Spinning Plates, however, was heartstopping.

In general, HappyThom was the order of the evening, dancing like a loon to Idioteque, doing Karma Police like a massive goodbye singalong with none of the claustrophobia or despair of the album version, no venom at all in the middle section of Paranoid Android where he used to spit “Kicking squealing Gucci little piggy.” Dancing crazily is rather endearing, but I’d have rather liked a bit of the old bitterness in the latter two.

This isn’t to say that everything was sweet and fuzzy. Guitars went mad in Backdrifts, which is even more fantastic live than it is on the album. The National Anthem, Bones, and I Might Be Wrong rocked hard, and the buildup in Sit Down Stand Up to the frenetic “The raindrops” climax was brilliantly agonizing.

Would I have changed some songs in the set? Well, yes. I’d have taken out Scatterbrain, Kid A, Bones, Pyramid Song and My Iron Lung, but only because I like them less than Black Star, No Surprises, You And Whose Army (make that most of Amnesiac, actually), I Will and Wolf At The Door.

Okay. Enough of this attempt at objectivity, balance or good writing. I SAW RADIOHEAD!!! THEY PLAYED LOTS AND LOTS OF SONGS!!! I REALLY REALLY LOVE RADIOHEAD!!!

A Bellagio By Any Other Name

Although the main purpose of the Italy trip was a Radiohead gig in Bergamo to fulfil my dream of seeing them live before I leave, we also spent two days in the Italian Lakes. We based ourselves in Bellagio, a little village on Lake Como. If you imagine Lake Como (see this map for best guidance) as a lithe, sinuous dancing girl in mid-step, you will come to realize the exceptionally pleasing location of Bellagio.

On the first night, Alec presented me with an inflatable sheep. I have received many bizarre love tokens from this man, including purple punk whore boots and a cigarette with “I love you” written on it, but an inflatable sheep complete with mascara’d eyes, coquette-red lips, beauty spots and, er, orifice, did rather push the boundaries. He said he could explain. He said he’d been thinking about how annoyed I get when bad weather on holidays makes for lousy photographs, but remembered how much I like sheep, and so he decided to get me a sheep so that I’d be happy even if we ran into bad weather. I think I’ll name her Bellagio.

Italy, Croatia, Hungary (Easter 2003)

Should probably have popped in here before I left for Italy, Croatia and Hungary to mention that I was going to Italy, Croatia and Hungary. But now you know.

It’s been a worryingly hitch-free holiday so far – Alec’n’Michelle holidays aren’t meant to be this way and we’re waiting fearfully for the fall. There was the small inconvenience of train strikes in Italy on the day we were hoping to travel to Florence, but ultimately all it meant was that we got another day in Venice, which was far from a hardship. We also got to grumble about lazy greedy Continentals, which is always fun. Meanwhile, Croatia is fabulously beautiful (scenery, old towns, people – on Easter Sunday the church was full of men in suits. I was very happy. Less happy about standing through two hours of the Good Friday service in Croatian, but never let it be said that I shy from the tough bits of the faith), and hopefully Hungary will be just as great.

For now, I had better log off and go join Alec, who is patiently reading (either American Psycho or the Bible, I’m not sure which) while waiting for me.

Newcastle: Fun Amidst Shittiness

[I didn’t go to Newcastle to enjoy myself. I went because John said he needed me. The fact that we ended up having a good two days is what I’m going to concentrate on writing about, despite the sad circumstances surrounding my visit. So a lot will necessarily be left out.]

On my first day in Newcastle we walked through Jesmond (which, in John’s words, is like a bit of Hampstead that wandered out of London and got very lost), Georgian Grainger Town, down the elegant curved Grey Street to the Quayside with all its lovely bridges especially the Millennium Bridge that opens and closes like an eyelid to let ships through, and lounged in chairs like big embracing egg-whites in the very cool Stereo bar. John was getting concerned – I was thinking Newcastle was lovely, despite his strenuous efforts to persuade me to the contrary.

So the next day he took me to see the Gateshead multi-storey car park. I was suitably cowed by this, but then we went to the fabulous Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (lots of pictures of it here), and watched life-size plaster casts of people being worked on for Antony Gormley’s new work Domain Field, and saw the Cobra exhibition described as too good for the North, and before long there I was going on again about how I would go back to London and become a Newcastle crusader.

Right then, said John, we’re going to Hebburn. We walked out of the Metro and gazed upon an industrial wasteland. Down the road was “Upper Crust”, an optimistically-named sandwich shop. Next to it was Jeanette’s Hair Design & Greeting Cards, where I hope Jeanette was aware of a synergy between the two products that eluded me. In the town centre we got Saveloy Dips, which were basically sausages, pease pudding and stuffing, in a bun. Apparently this Northern specialty is getting harder to find in shops, so I guess I was just lucky to be with someone who knew where to go. On the door of the town library, a poster proclaimed “The Internet has arrived!”

In the park, we read graffitti. John likes to keep himself informed on what’s been going down in the neighbourhood. Apparently Tino went to jail and got off with a lad. And I started feeling nervous about the Hebburn Hash Heads, a ubiquitious and most certainly menacing collective which left their mark everywhere. We climbed a hill, and I said “Nice hill.” “Oh, it used to be a slag heap,” John said. Bede’s Well was once revered as a source of miraculous cures. On Tuesday it was a trough in the ground clogged with beercans. One suspects the Bede’s Well Guest House nearby in Jarrow has been having permanent low season for a while.

In the corner store, a nice old lady gave John a big hug and said how sorry she was to hear about his mother. While making him a sandwich she chatted to me, asking me where I was from and little pleasantries like that. In hindsight I’d agree that she did say “And you’re going back” as more of a pointed comment than friendly question, but I didn’t pick up on it until we left and John mentioned that this nice old lady once told him how she thought the National Front was damn right.

In John’s house, we told his sister and her boyfriend about everything I’d seen. She pointed out that I hadn’t seen the River Don yet, and when all 3 of them burst out laughing I knew we were on to something. We got in the car and drove there past morose young men and angry teenage girls, all in tracksuits. The River Don didn’t reflect the sky the way water usually does. We walked along it, breathing in its bouquet of sewage and decay, and stopped on a bridge that led to some boarded-up derelict warehouses. “I wonder what’s in the River Don today,” John said cheerfully, and we peered over. There was a cooker, a microwave, and a shopping trolley.