77 posts tagged “2005”

On the way back to Leeds we stopped in the thriving metropolis of Lincoln to catch up with Megan for New Years. A fun, but quiet New Years resulted, the highlight of which was the New Zealand lamb for dinner. We considered going out but the crowds, the fact that most place charged an exorbinant cover and put their drink prices up put us off.

Otherwise, New Year's day was also quiet - mostly exploring Lincoln and going for a couple of walks with Korina and Megan. Drama of the day was probably the 2 hours we spent rescuing a sea gull that was hooked by one wing to a phone line half way across a canal. I don't much like sea gulls, but the poor animal was in such distress we had to do something. After we tried a number of techniques to rescue it a fella came out with a large stick which had a knife taped to the end and managed to cut the line trapping the bird. So a happy end, but for a while it looked like no one was going to give a crap about the poor gull.

Some might say that a weekend at the Christmas markets with seven women sounds like either:

a. Some sort of bizzare mormon holiday; or

b. Hell on earth for any normal male with an aversion to shopping.

Nevertheless, this is the situation I found myself in on the weekend. Korina and I jumped on a discount plane to Cologne for the weekend, and met Meghan and a few other dietitians from New Zealand and Scotland. Luckily there were at least a few of them that were more interested in the mulled wine than the thousands of craft-type xmas decorations on sale in every one of the five or so markets that we visited.

In line with similar trips with groups of dietitians, sampling the local fare played a significant role in proceedings, not that I was complaining! In terms of Germany, this meant pretzels, spicy sausage, strudel and various other types of local food, washed down with Gluwhein (mulled wine), Alpenpower (alcoholic punch) and beer (being cheaper than water or juice!).

We also got a bit of snow, which was nice in terms of adding to the xmasy feel to the whole trip.

Aside from the shopping and the xmas festivities, we managed to wrap in a few other activities such as climbing to the Cathedral roof (which was similar to the one in Milan, except having no lift and being covered in graffiti). From this I took that religion had played a far less dominant role in the life of the average German (as compared to Italy). 509 steps up and it was a chilly outlook over Cologne from 100 metres up.

A great view, but what really struck me is quite how much of the city needed to be reconstructed after WWII. Apparently 95% of the town was levelled, meaning that there are almost no old buildings except for the Cathedral.

It was quite trippy as Grandad was a navigator in WWII, so in all likelihood directly responsible for at least some of the devastation that this city must have had. Germans are still not particularly well liked in England, but the feeling tended to be reflected by the Germans who seemed to believe anyone speaking English must be from England.

That aside, Germany was a pretty easy place to travel around as most things are signed in English and in German, and a lot of the people speak a little of both. We were particularly helped by a friendly German at the train station that directed us onto the correct train into town - which was greatly appreciated due to our complete absence of ability to speak/read any language other than English!

It was also a little strange as Bruce, my father was born about an hour north of Cologne following the war. Although he only lived there for 2-3 years, it was interesting for me to imagine what it must have been like back then. This was the time that my Granny used to carry a hand-gun on her at all times to fend off the local Germans and protect her and her son (as the country's economy had collapsed).

Still not knowing anyone in Leeds, we decided that an orphan's xmas with Katie, Martin and Sam in Kent would be a better option. Being the middle of winter, we expected nasty weather, but as it panned out, xmas day and boxing day were both very sunny but cold - strangely reminiscent of a Dunedin summer!

As you will see from the photos, we all did very well from xmas - I received a lot of very much needed casual clothes and also gave myself a new snowboard jacket. Unfortunately my present from Korina did not arrive due to the xmas mail, and we are still trying to locate it. I gave Korina a 'Red Letter Day' - these are a really interesting concept over here, that you can give someone 'an experience'. This could be anything from driving a Ferrari to going bungee jumping or learning how to cook / garden with a tame celebrity. Check out http://www.redletterdays.co.uk/home/index.asp for more detail...

For Korina I chose a day at a Rally driving school - where she gets to learn how to do hand brake turns, power slides and generally drive like a lunatic! I was a little apprehensive whether it was something that she would like, but as luck would have it, the gift was a big success. Much crazy hand waving ensued.

Otherwise on xmas day I enjoyed the feast that Katie and Korina prepared with some help from Sam. The girls each made one dessert each, so it was a little like the West Malling chapter of the Women's institute! (sort of an old-fashioned association over here for wealthy ladies that make chutneys and the like)

Although a little disappointed at the lack of a white xmas, two days later we were not to be denied. A cold snap came through dumping 10-20cm of the white stuff on most of England. Much hilarity ensued playing with the snow, making snowmen and pummelling the neighbourhood kids in a snowball fight...the snow did make it a bit difficult to travel up to Lincoln for New Years, but with some assistance from Katie and Martin we managed to find a train that was running and we were then on our way...

Thanks to everyone that sent Korina and I gifts this xmas. It was a little strange being so far away from everyone, and it made it that much easier knowing that we were still a part of everyone's thoughts back in NZ.

Another weekend away - this time inspired by some cheap train tickets and some equally cheap chunnel tickets to France in Katie and Martin's car.

The weekend started poorly, with me missing the train and needing to pay another £60 to get on the next one which did not bode well for an affordable weekend. It also meant that I got in pretty late, so most of the trip was lacking a lot in the sleep department.

Saturday morning started early, rising at 3am for the drive down towards Dover and then over to Calais. Some rather lax border control procedures later and we were on our way down to Boulogne-sur-mer - a coastal village famed for its old town, great food and xmas markets. We spent the day sampling various pieces of French cuisine and walking around the old town and market. The dietiticians amongst us were amazed at the quality and availability of the food and much raving was to be heard.

Unfortunately the weather was, well, quite crap, alternating between Artic breezes and heavy rain, but we managed to get a good look around before the poor weather really set in as we got there pretty early. After it got a bit moist, we headed back towards Calais stopping for a late lunch in a little fishing village. Again, amazing but simple food was appreciated by all.

No British trip to France would be complete without stocking up the boot full of cheap booze. Three bottles of good wine (there were tastings) for 10 euros and 24 european beers for £7 (this is very cheap for the UK) were the best examples. The car weighed down and bottles clinking in the boot, it was then back to Kent, and for me, a nap as I had been feeling pretty unwell off and on for about 2-3 days.

Sunday saw an improve in the weather so Katie, Korina and I went for a walk in the pretty countryside. We were taking a shortcut down a public accessway which crossed a rather muddy orchard when some yappy little terriers ran out. Ignoring them turned out to be unwise as one walked up behind us and nipped Korina on the ankle, drawing blood. I then spent the next few hours speculating out loud what combination of Tetanus and / or Rabies would result, with the effect that Korina is getting a Tetanus shot today!

After the walk, we then headed around to the local pub for a Sunday lunch (another food story - guess what happens when you hang around dietiticans!). Roast turkey, and it was great!

We then chilled out in the afternoon before proceeding back into London and up to Leeds later on in the evening.

Well, we've now had a couple of weekends in Leeds, which although uneventful have been good in terms of getting a bit of a rest. December looks quite busy, so we'll need any energy we can muster! Weather has gone completely pear shaped, snowing today - although not settling on the ground so i am hopeful that I will get home OK.

Speaking of snow, yesterday I went to Xscape (www.xscape.co.uk), which is 1/2 way between home and my work along the M62. It was a fun, if quite expensive couple of hours (£31 for two hours). Cost more than a whole day on a real field in NZ! Good to get back on the board, and think it was probably good practice for Korina before our longer ski trips later in the season. However, two hours was enough - the slope did not have a very steep gradient and with no jumps or rails, it was not long before I was seeing how fast I could ride switch down the slope, and generally acting like a fool. I'll have to get down there on a Thursday / Friday night after work when they have booters, rails etc set up for everyone to wreck themselves on...

Saturday was my second game of rugby. We lost, and I spent far too much time on the sidelines as a reserve. When I came on it was in the centres, which was quite hair raising as I have never played there before. Didn't make to many areas, and certainly felt fast enough in the grade I'm playing in (although hard to catch the ball as it was so cold!). All in all, pretty disappointing, especially as I got back late and missed both the AB's final match and the Kiwi's tri-nation success.

Well, its a sad end to a great buy, but yes, Fritz the £300 BMW is no more.

This tale of woe starts with Fritz developing fuel leakages all over our street which led me to get Korina to take it in to the mechanic whilst I was at work. The mechanic suggested that the fuel tank was so riddled with rust that any examination would cause it to drop out of the bottom of the car. He added that the diff was completely rooted and leaking oil all over the brakes, which were in turn also shot.

I responded to this unwelcome news by listing Fritz on a 2nd hand car website over here. Guys that I car pool laughed when I put '...genuine reason for sale...' in the ad - stating that the reason was because the car was poked.

Interestingly enough, every response to the ad was from a different group of dodgy refugees. We had some Pakistani types that purchased the vehicle (paying the full asking price), some guys that sounded like Lithuianian gangsters and a guy that wanted to drive it to Holland!

The dodgy Pakistanis purchased Fritz, suggesting that they were going to break it up for parts. In an unrelated incident, a police woman was shot dead in Bradford, 5 mins drive away. Kept waiting to hear that they were looking for a battered BMW with a NZ flag on the back!

The Lithuianian gangsters did not take too kindly to me selling the car to the first available buyer - ringing up swearing and being generally obnoxious. So we spent the rest of the night with the lights off, just in case they felt inclined to come for a visit. So far, so good...

Another weekend, another trip away. This time it was some cheap train tickets to Edinburgh (£20 return each) that caught our eye. Went up Friday afternoon after work. Train ride was mundane enough, but turns out that the hostel bar was having a massive party which we were unfortunately too buggered to attend for longer than a beer or two. The party was obviously a great success for the slutty Spanish girls in our dorm room who tried to bring their scores back at 3am only to find out that they were now sharing their room with us, meaning that they had to find somewhere else to continue their dodgy escapades (which they subsequently did).

After this early morning interruption Saturday proceeded as expected - another round of tourist spots - the highlights being some buried Medieval streets (Mary King's close) under the old town and Edinburgh castle itself. Managed to short change the guy at Mary King's close, which I considered to be a major achievement (ripping off a Scotsman!). Edinburgh castle had cool views, an even cooler wind and a variety of interesting displays - particularly for me, given to my family links to the area through Grandma Bruce.

After the Castle we went and found a pub to watch the ABs demolish the Irish, but unfortunately missed the first half as we were not aware that the game started so early. Still enjoyed the second half. The ABs seemed to garner a far higher level of support in Scotland than they had enjoyed in Dublin the week before - not sure why. Think the Scot's have lost to the other home nations teams so often in recent years, they're just keen for someone else to beat their southern rivals.

The remainder of Saturday night was spent catching up with some of Korina's friends from Invercargill that now live in Edinburgh.

Sunday was somewhat disappointing as a number of the Museums were unfortunately closed as it was, well, a Sunday. However, still managed to find the (original) Robbie Burns statue, go to the Queen's Palace (more castles...) and have a look at the Forth Rd / Rail bridges.

Later on, there was just enough time to have a wander around the 'New' town, which was immediately adjacent to, you guessed it, the 'old' town. At 200 years old, the new town was not particularly recent by New Zealand standards, but still significantly younger than the Medieval old town. What was really interesting about the new town was the fact that about 90% of the streets had the same names as those in Dunedin (the original Viking name for Edinburgh), and even some of the town layout was the same (e.g. Moray Place a circular street around a park - George and Cumberland sts being the main ones and being parallel...etc).

After this little exploration, it was a matter of having enough time for another hot drink to warm the chilled bones, purchasing a vegetarian haggis (not brave enough for the real thing!) and jump back on the train then home to Leeds again.

In a break from tradition, we actually managed to make our flight to Dublin with no problems after work on Friday night. It helped that we were flying out of Leeds-Bradford and did not have to fight traffic across to Liverpool or Manchester. Dublin is a city with masses of construction fuelled by its roaring economy, particularly in the late 1990's. In practical terms, this made finding our hotel nearly impossible, and the taxi driver needed to ask several times as it was not on the map.

It turns out that the 'hotel' we had booked from www.lastminute.com was the residence associated with the IMI - the Irish Management Institute - so it was kind of like staying in the Executive Residence at Otago Uni. Everyone else there was attending some conference or other which was a bit odd - but otherwise a nice place, if quite concrete intensive.

Saturday initially saw a round of relatively unsuccessful touristing - starting with the Guiness factory which had several hundred people cueing outside it, and then on to Dublin Castle - which only takes in tours of 35 people at a time so you need to be early. Tip here is to go to the factory outside of the peak hours of 1-3.30pm and to be at the castle 15 mins before the first tour.

So we ended up in a traditional pub in central Dublin, just in time for the kick-off of the rugby. I had thought that the ABs might garner at least a little support, but it was an entirely hostile crowd, which did not greatly appreciate our clapping every referee's call that went the AB's way. Turns out that the ABs are actually in Dublin next week, so I guess we didn't organise this particularly well! The welcoming committee is ready in Dublin, with several pubs already having notices up barring Tama Umaga!

After the (much-enjoyed) game, we then went on a 'literary pub-crawl', which involved actors giving performances of different authors that frequented some of these establishments. Not being particularly literary-ily inclined, Korina and I took this opportunity to sample much of the Guiness that we had missed seeing earlier in the day (which also provided a simple explanation why we did not return to the brewery the following day! Felt very unwell in a way in which a Thomas hangover is reknowned).

So a slow start to Sunday morning, but ended up looking around the centre of Dublin, going to the Castle (it had been a few day's since our last castle) and sampling traditional Irish fare. The castle was OK on my Castle-o-meter, above Howard House although somewhat below Dover and Scarsborough Castles and the Tower of London). The Irish fare was somewhat more difficult to find than I had expected, although eventually I found a nice Irish stew.

We finished up Sunday by going on a bus tour of 'haunted Dublin'. Aside from visiting an ancient graveyard that surprisingly contained Captain Cook's widow's grave, the highlight was visiting the 40 steps - apparently the most haunted site in Dublin. This was not a highlight because of the 'haunted orbs' in our camera shots, which looked suspiciously like a reflection from a foil packet of crisps, but because of the image that appeared in a guy's cellphone next to us.

The story goes that on this site people always see strange things and cameras frequently malfunction. The guy's cellphone initially refused to take a picture, and when it did, a strange hooded, ghostly figure appeared in the corner of the shot - completely freaking out the tour guide, the photographer and most of the rest of the group. Upon closer inspection, it looked to me like a guy in a hoodie - and looking around the group it turns out that I was the only person wearing one with the hood up. So my theory is that when his cellphone initially did not go, he turned it around to take a look, and in the process managed to take a blurred black and white picture of me!

So all in all, a booze addled but amusing weekend in Dublin. Dublin felt quite safe and quite a bit more laid back than most English cities, despite the surprisingly numerous homeless people that seemed to congregate in various doorways around the city centre...

Finally arriving in Milan around 9pm, we whizzed across town in the subway, checked into our hotel then went into the centre of town for dinner around 10pm. By the time we had finished our delicious pizza and salad (total 30 euros including wine) the time had crept on to 12.30am. Now, I knew that the subway was likely to close, but I considered that the existence of trams and buses would prevent this from being a problem. However, did not realise that these also finished relatively early. We got the last tram around 1am which got us as far as the Central Station, still a good couple of hours walk from the hotel and in a relatively dodgy area - so we decided a taxi was the only choice.

The cue for the taxi was around 50 people, but it moved quite quickly and surprisingly enough the cab driver did not seem to run us up too bad. All the same, by the next morning I was starting to suffer from lack of sleep. No matter, we were up early for a full day of sightseeing and shopping. Luckily for me, some of the shops were closed on Sunday, although of those that were open, most were over Korina and my price range.

So the day was mostly spent sightseeing - firstly the Duomo - the impressively large cathedral covered in scupltures and then later on at the local castle (we've got our castle average to maintain!). The front of the Duomo was covered for restoration which was disppointing, but we went inside and had a look around then went up to the roof for a closer look at the Gothic styles and the somewhat grey view.

After sampling some more excellent Italian food (most notably some random fruit desserts we purchased on the street) we then made our way over the the Castle. The castle itself was of an impressive size but the restoration seemed a bit random and the muesums held within were not overly interesting. Korina enjoyed messing about with varioud random cats that seemed to hang out there (despite my winding her up about getting rabies from them!).

As we were starting to run out of time, we then adjourned to the local pub for a quick beer before the flight home. Beer being what it is, it was not long before I needed to use the establishment's ammentities, which turned out to be in an alley out the back door. There were a whole lot of people standing around in the alley, and not being able to speak Italian, I just pointed at the toilet door and said 'si', 'no' and 'banyero' a few times (yes, no and toilet in Spanish - I assumed the translation would be similar).

After some gesticulating and a bit of pointing I concluded that they were not waiting in a cue, so I walked over a opened the door, unfortunately surprising some random Italian guy mid-wipe. With much mutual embarrassment I slammed the door shut, only to get his jacket (which was hanging on the door knob) jammed in the door. Much to the dismay of all concerned I then had to re-open the door, unhook the jacket and close the door again (repeating this series of actions several times before success was finally to be had). I then skulked quickly back to the bar. Several questions arose in my mind such as

• why did the people outside the door not try tell me there was someone inside?
• why on earth did the guy using the banyero not lock the door or otherwise indicate that it was occupied?

Thankfully, quickly enough it was evening and we had another 60 min bus ride to the nearest regional airport to look forward to. This progressed smoothly although for some reason I was not feeling that flash once we arrived at the terminal. Purchased some cheap bottles of duty free Italian wine, then headed on through to get on the plane.

When we went to cue up, we were standing next to a rather weird guy who, from the brief look I got at his passport was either from Israel or some Arabic country. He was disconcertingly nervous and kept trying to board the plane before they were ready - trying to push past the kids they were loading first etc. I was relieved that when we got on the plane he sat quite far from us.

Hoever, he then decided to change seats and sit directly in front of us. His fidgiting did much to further unnerve everyone around him including Korina and myself. He refused to put his briefcase in the overhead locker and kept playing with it, as well as throwing himself back into the seat and generally being weird.

We were not sure what to do, and whether to report him to the air hostess - but then the plane started up and took off, and we had to put up with his antics for the next hour until he settled down. I kept telling Korina he was probably just a nervous flyer (as she is), but the truth of it is that he gave me the creeps - I didn't tell Korina this though. I remember thinking if started towards the front I would have to try do something, perhaps utilising some of my recently re-acquired rugby tackling skills!

But as it turns out, he settled down and the remainder of the flight progressed uneventfully.

We then landed and went through customs. Although 90% of the people were UK passport holders, I still got though before Korina as they made all the dirty foreigners wait until the British had passed through and safely made it to the baggage claim area.

The next mission was to get back to Leeds. We started off before quickly discovering we were almost out of gas - which required us to return to Liverpool. Three gas stations later (one that seemed to have three guys in hoodies mucking around inside) and we actually found one that was open. Then my credit card would not work - apparently because its pin-chip has been damaged (I later found out). Sorted this out with Korina's card and a 1.5 hour drive in the driving rain saw us arrive home at 2am in the morning. Getting up at 7am this morning was hard, but as I was car-pooling with guys from work I managed to switch my brain off for an hour until I got to work. Since then it has been a caffeine fuelled Monday at work.

So overall, a fun weekend, but not without its challenges, adventures and dodgy moments!

Well, our weekend in Milan was beset by various dramas, despite which, a great time was had. As we were flying out with Ryanair from Liverpool at 6.15pm on the 21st, our last reporting time was at 5.35pm - at 5.38pm I finished my 500M dash from the car park to be told that the flight was closed and that they were pushing the plane out onto the runway (despite the boarding close-off being 5.40pm). After a great deal of arguing we had managed to get absolutely nowhere with the check-in hostess enjoying immensely telling us that there was no way they would let people on after the cut off as they get fined £1000 per minute late departure (important later on).

After a bit more arguing we managed to settle on the compromise that they could shift our flight to the Saturday for the completely unreasonable charge of £40 per person. Given that their only flight to Milan arrives at 10pm this still wasn't going to fly, so a bit more arguing and we ended up being booked to Venice, the catch being that we would then need to find our own way over to Milan.

Stayed the night in Liverpool then early the next morning boarded our flight to Venice. At 20mins late departure, we calculated this to have cost Ryanair £20,000, so its lucky they managed to extract another £80 from us!

The flight to Venice arrived at a little regional airport in the middle of nowhere - around 45mins from downtown. Ryanair runs buses into town, which is a good service, except you have to buy a ticket before getting on board. With only one ticket counter this process took over 2 hours to complete and get into town which was a bit frustrating considering the earlier delays.

Venice was really cool. Enjoyed wandering around the main part of the city, doing a bit of shopping, enjoying the absolutely great Italian food (and really, so cheap compared to UK - where else can you get an excellent espresso for 1 euro?). Didn't get time to go punting on the canal, but went for a bit of a walk around and did quite a bit of sightseeing.

Despite some dodgy moments when purchasing the train tickets from the ticket machine (50-100 person cues deter the use of the customer services office), due to the pidgeon English on the screen - we managed to get some relatively cheap seats through to Milan. It was pretty amusing, you could get even cheaper ones than we went for, but you are not guaranteed a seat at all - so luckily we did not go for these or we would have had to swap seats or sit in the corridor.

We ended up getting into Milan around 9pm Saturday night (continued on the next entry).