I've been in Zürich now for the past 2 and a bit days, staying in a suburb called Höngg. It's a pretty cool place, both literally and er peopley. The weather had been quite rainy for the past few days, but this morning I've woken up to about half blue skies.
Walking around the city, it has a nice ambience to it, and it feels quite young in places. Last night we (Ben, two of his PhD counterparts - Simone and Martin, and myself) went out to a gig in a place called Bazillus. It was to see this group calling themselves the Fusion Elektro something or the other, and was meant to be a jazz/electro group. While the group had it's moments, the band didn't quite live up to expectations. The DJ they had amongst them was limited to doing really basic scratching (following a rhythm and that's it), and not really doing much else - he was a bit of a glorified drum machine.
On the upside, we stopped in for these pretty good kebabs at a place just near the gig. I think the kebab should really become the official foodstuff of the world, since it's pretty much available anywhere.
There's broadband (for each apartment!) here, so I should be able to upload some pictures from the past week when I get some time.
I'm in Heidelberg at the moment. It's a very pretty town, but I can't help but be reminded of the various FPS games set in WWII Germany. Walking around Heidelberg castle, I keep expecting brutal looking germans wearing long grey coats to be talking about inconsequential things, only to shout "Mein Leiben" when a pesky American sprays them with his latest and greatest alien/supernatural armour peircing chain-gun.
Speaking of Americans, there are a lot of Americans here. Sitting in this internet cafe, which incidentally is a great deal cheaper than the last one that I visited, I have just witnessed the mass exodus of a bunch of Americans who were stopping here in the midst of a shopping trip. I think the large number of Americans has a lot to do with the American base which is, er, based in Heidelberg. Apart from that, I've seen a whole bunch of Japanese tourists (at least I'm pretty sure they're Japanese), and a few random Australians about the place. It feels sort of like being back in Australia..
My talk at the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ) went really well I think, and it looks quite hopeful that I will be able to start work on a PhD here sometime during this year. This means that I probably didn't need to do the stacks of sightseeing that I've done around Heidelberg, but I can feel happy to say now that I've climbed the 315 steps of Castle Wolfenstein - er Heidelberg, and seen the Bridge of the Monkey with Hemorroids. Willi had taken me around Heidelberg after I recovered from my train trip from Paris on Sunday (arriving at 5:30 am), and based on my memory of that excursion, I figured out how to see the sights without spending too much cash :). It's not too cold here today, but the clouds are quite grey, and it keeps threatening to rain.
I'd made an expedition earlier today to pick up a cable so that I could recharge my camera batteries. The one I picked up in New York officially sucks, as it loses it's charge within a few hours. I'll need to try and recover that battery somehow. Anyone reading this know how to fix a battery like that? It was a good experience walking around Heidelberg - the new part - looking for a place to find the cable.
I'm back on the travelling bandwagon again tomorrow, so I'll be stopping in to Tübingen (which is a completely distinct town to Bingen, be careful when asking for a train ticket "to Tübingen") to see Frau Jo, and that evening, I will be arriving in Zurich to see Herr Schulz.
Well, here I am again, in a strange country, using strange keyboards to type out these blog entries. Unfortunately, I don't even have the luxury of knowing tiny pieces of the language to get me by. A fear of asking for train/bus tickets has led me to just walk everywhere in Paris, which is very doable.
You should be able to do a whirlwind tour of Paris in one day, which is all in fact I could afford to do. The Louvre was pretty affordable though, and the beer is cheap enough at the hostel I'm staying at. I went down to see a Salvadore Dali exhibition today, it was pretty crap, and totally not worth the money, but it's solidifying my interest in Alice in Wonderland now.
In my grand tradition of spotting celebrities, I wasn't too far from the Dali exhibition, when the mqn who wanted to be the most powerful mqn in the universe walked past me. And I'm not talking about Skeletor! John Kerry, the original waffle walked right past me. I was pretty stunned, and I exchanged glances and shrugs with another random tourist, and wordlessly confirmed (I wasn't going to even try) it was the man himself.
Off to Heidelberg tonight. I'm a bit worried about getting in to town at 5:30 am, but I'll try swindling the hotel into letting me into my room early, as it is abso-fucking-lutely cold here.
I guess it's time for another update from my travels. I've been floating around in London for the past week and a bit, attempting to remember various bits and pieces of my former life in London.
London is an amazingly cramped looking city - the roads are choked with cars, and although generally speaking, the streets are about as wide as Australian streets, the cars parked on both sides of the street, as well as corners, and any available free space really make you feel claustrophobic here. Of course, there are some really really tiny streets running off other streets in Central london, barely large enough for one car. I'm feeling really comfortable making my way around London now on the public transport. I think after a few days in any of these really large cities, I kind of settle down a bit, and feel very comfortable travelling around and getting things done.
One of the things that I've spent a lot of time doing is meeting up with people. I've met up with all of my numerous (second) cousins who live in London (and outside London too), and it was a real hoot talking to them about the good old days. Another person I met up with - completely at random, was PaulM, ex PSL. I was walking down Oxford street, in search of a pair of cheap jeans, and walking down in the opposite direction was Paul, on a lunch break. After accosting him in the street, I met up with him for lunch the next day. Paul works in SOHO square, which is really nice and central to all the fun things in London. I hope to meet up with him later on this month, so I can go for Laksa (in Putney).
I've also met up with Oliver - a friend of mine from high school here who found me on the internet somehow. It was a trip to the local pub - an institution of sorts in this country, for a couple of quiet ales. Funnily enough, I ended up drinking Fosters here, which was surprisingly drinkable, or at the very least, not foul.
I'm off to Paris for a few days next, followed by a journey through Germany and Switzerland. I'll try updating as I go through there :)
Okay, so you guys are probably wondering where the hell I've been for the past week and a bit. No updates to the blog, and the last you saw of me, I was writing in pain from horse riding misadventures.
Well, the horse-riding thing was really a bad idea. My ankles, nearly two weeks later are looking quite ugly, and are not exactly fun to walk around with. Regardless, I soldiered on with my plan to carry on in Cuba, hoping that I could sort of work around the discomfort.
To try and aid the healing process, I made the extremely tough decision to go to the beach and just hang around there for a full day. The beach is about a 20 min coco-taxi ride from Trinidad, and I was there in a flash. Actually, the trip could have taken much longer, and I wouldn't have known, as I was doped up on antibiotics and really feeling quite out of it.
I spent the evening at Casa (something something) Musica - the hub of the local music scene. As I sat around downing Mojitos and drinking Cuba Libre, forgetting all about the sickening antibiotics I was on, I relaxed and enjoyed my time there.
The next day, I set out to Santa Clara, home of Che, to get ready for the Parandas festival that was on in a little town north of there. Getting the bill for my accomodation, I was a little shocked at how expensive my trip had been so far. My attempts to beat the Cuban tourism system had failed miserably. No matter though, it had been fun :)
The Casa that I stayed at in Santa Clara was run by a guy called Carlos, and his wife Rebecca. They were both really nice people - and I could see where the reputation of Cuban's being really nice comes from. I spent the first day in Santa Clara not doing very much really - just keeping off my feet as much as possible in the hope that my feet would automagically fix themselves up.
The night of the Parrandas festival - I was all set to head out and party. I had scored myself a cheap bus that would take me from Santa Clara and back again at about 4am. Total amount of worrying required - none! On the way to the bus though, things started going very very wrong. My stomach, possibly inspired by the proximity to the Che Guevara memorial, staged it's own personal revolution, and decided that it would have no part in any partying for the evening. I was literally about to walk onto the bus at this point of time. Talk about some terrible timing. I had to cancel my bus fare, and jumped on the nearest bici-taxi back to the Casa. I wasn't a happy chappy.
The stomach pain seemed to have all the symptoms of Giardia, and so I had to make a decision about what I was going to do for the rest of my time in Cuba. My feet were not making very much progress - still quite painful to walk around with, and now my stomach had decided to have a go at me too. My next destination had been the idyllic region of Pinar Del Rio, and in particular the town of Vinales. The only problem with that area though, was that it was really good for going hiking, which I figured that I wasn't in any position to do. So, given the cost of the journey so far - and doing a couple of back of coaster calculations - I would be really spending a bucketload of cash to stay in Cuba, whilst not getting very much out of it. I figured the best thing to do would be to grab a flight out, and see what I could do about recovering in Canada.
I'm disappointed that I had to cut the trip short - as anyone would be - but I will return to Cuba, where I shall stay away from horses, and possibly grab a car and drive around the country, a much better way to travel I think.
So, at the moment, I'm making use of the lavish facilities in the Maple Leaf lounge in Toronto Pearson international airport, after spending a week bumming around in Fenelon Falls (north of Toronto). My flight to London departs in about an hours time, and I didn't want to start on the Da Vinci Code yet. More updates when I get to London.
