Helsinki

After spending a few days in the Swedish country side, visiting Stockholm, taking the fery to Turku and driving through the Finnish country side to Helsinki, I've finally realised the futility of bitching about the cold. This is spring, all 5 degrees and no sun of it.

Last night I ate Rudolph (he was in delicious stew form with mashed potatoes and ligon berries). The Helsinkians are generally impossibly blonde and fair (or adorned with fake tan), and very hip.

And now to abandon the free internet and dodgy keyboards of the Finnish tourism agency in favour of a chilly ferry ride to Suomenlinna -- cold ho!

Amsterdam

The sun is shining, the birds are singing and people are ambling. The city is laid back, kinda scruffy with smile wrinkles. Amsterdam for me feels like the exhibitionist and bohemian aunt that the rest of the family disapproves of but that you secretly adore.



Space cookies. They are deceptively tasty and take a few hours to kick in.
And then suddenly every moment lasts an eternity and the present feels as
though it's a memory while you're experiencing it and anything that's
outside of your field of vision (which seems to be tunnel vision -- no
periphery whatsoever) doesn't exist and you're aware of action happening but
you don't experience it you can only remember it. What kind of idiot eats a
space cookie hours before having to take a train to Copenhagen and change
trains midway in Duisberg so that the entire experience is an eternity of
uncertainty of ever reaching her destination? Well, natch.

So, obviously I'm not stoned anymore, because there's no way I would be able
to string together a coherent sentence, let alone type it, if I were. It
felt like a fucking miracle to wake up yesterday and not only be in control
of my mental faculties, but also to be on the right train.

London

What can one say, using the Queen's English of course, about London?

London is a big city, with lots of people and events going on. It has a certain, soulless charm. Not my most favourite city ever, but certainly very easy to see how a person could let themselves get lost in the crowd and unthinkingly like it.

So far the best thing about London has been catching up with Bec, Gav and Briony of Willo fame and meeting Ash's friend Mel.

Other than that, it's been the usual touristic faff -- Hyde Park, Kensington Park, the Thames (I appear to have chosen to visit Britain during the one stretch of good weather it will experience this millenium), the National History Museum (the dinorsaur bones were great, but having read Bill Bryson's a Brief History of Everything, I spent the entire time in the dinosaur gallery wondering which ones were fakes), London Tower and Bridge, the new Monty Python musical and an arvo in the pub. Today it's the Tate Gallery, Millenium Bridge, St Paul's Cathedral and hopefully a curry for dinner.

I've had a sore throat for the past few dys and noticed this morning that everyone else in the household is coughing or feeling poorly too (am I causal or symptomatic?) Woe woe woe for being sick on holiday!

Venice

Riding a vaporetto up and down the Grand Canal. It can't be beat. Go on, take a photo. Take lots of photos. Don't feel self conscious, everyone else is a tourist too. Lots of churches. Lunch is pizza, flan and an Italian hot chocolate so thick and syrupy and creamy and frothy and utterly delicious that you think you've just about died and gone to heaven. The Peggy Guggenheim Museum where there is a shitload of modern art. So freaking cool.

Rome

Last time I was in Rome, it was for 3 hours and I had just enough time to walk to the Colosseum, Trevi Fountain and the Parthenon before my train left. This time I had 5 hours and it was just enough time to visit parts of the Vatican City and Castell Sant'Angelo. In hindsight, planning to do this on Easter Saturday was not my best strategic move ever. There was a 45 minute wait to get into St Peter's Basilica (just to get in and be checked by security -- then you had to wait again to visit the tombs and the cupola. But, evil mastermind that I am, I visited the tombs first because the line was shorter and then got into the cupola without waiting because I followed a nun in through the cupola exit. Mwhahah!) The line to get into the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel was INSANE. It snaked right around the Vatican city walls for about a kilometre. Sorry Michelangelo. You just aren't worth the wait.

Bern

What to do when you are waiting in the capital of Switzerland on Good Friday and you have 8 hours until your train arrives? Well!

Walk around a lot. Up and down hills, LOTS of hills. Bern is so picturesque it breaks your heart.

Go to the community recycling centre and watch the young bloods obediently recycling their numerous beer and wine bottles after a big night of drinking.

Spend some time in a park, watch the fluffy, snow white swans drift on the adjacent river and marvel at the people sunbathing and swimming even though (by Australian standards at least) it's pretty darn cold.

Visit one of the many museums open despite it being a public holiday -- my choice was the Kunsthaus, where the best piece of art was a diorama of a street in China which was the length of a wall, where all the people, cars, lamp posts, animals, EVERYTHING, was a tiny, immaculately cut out photo.

Succumb to the season and buy some chocolate easter eggs and a gingerbread bunny.

Go to the main cathedral in town and watch the devout lining up to get into mass.

Eat one of the best chocolates ever -- it's called the Caramelina and it has beautiful Swiss chocolate encasing smooth, flowing caramel, dark ganache and is topped with crunchy pieces of caramel. Oh yeah.

And then have raclette. Which, I was told, is Swiss cheese on toast. In actuality, it was a cast iron frypan, 25cm in diameter, lined with thick, crusty bread, topped with slabs of chees and slices of apple and baked for 20 minutes. Delicious, but a LOT of cheese.

And watch Mr Bean's Holiday.

Montreux

Very pretty but very touristy. Lots of Americans. The Avenue of Flowers is a walk along the lakeside lined with the obvious. I think my mum, who loves gardening, would really enjoy it. Tulips, irises, pansies, daisies ... Actually I'm just naming flowers, I don't know if those are the actual flowers that are planted there. I'm the opposite of a green thumb. The Avenue is part of a 90 minute round trip (on foot) from the train station to Chateau Chillon. You could probably take the bus and it would take you 10 minutes to get to the castle, but what would be the point? You'd miss the lake, the markets, the people, the sunlight on your face.

Lausanne

Perth, Australia: Clear, westerly winds at 7km/h 18°, relative humidity 76%

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Broken clouds, north easterly winds at 14 km/h, 27°, relative humidity 74%

Lausanne, Switzerland: Overcast, north north easterly winds at 23km/h, 4.9°, relative humidity 59%

Forget culture shock. Weather shock, much? Today I wore: underwear, socks, stockings, jeans, a singlet, a vest, a long sleeved t shirt, a jumper with a hood, an overcoat, a scarf, gloves and shoes. So very many layers. Here's how the city looked at high noon:

The appalling lack of springtime aside, Lausanne has a pretty stunning cathedral great views of the Alps and Lake Geneva and a plethora of museums and galleries, one of which has an amazing collection of L'art Brut -- that's pieces of art made by criminals and psychos in lay terms. Disturbing, fascinating, disturbingly fascinating...

Putra Jaya

It's 20kms south of KL, houses 40 000 workers by day and 8000 residents by night. There was a landslide there last week. My uncle has repeatedly referred to it as a ghost town. My dad thinks that the billions of dollars spent on developing the area could have been better spent in other areas. (Surely existence is worthwhile enough for there to be beauty as well as utility?) I think it has kick ass architecture. Even the lamp posts are artistic. How awesome would it have been to be an architect at the time with Mahatir going, "Just do something interesting lah!"

Convention centre

Bridge


Entrance to a government building

Footbridge

Millenium Eye: It's the hip new thang

Guess what I found on the shores of Lake Titiwangsa?

Well, if you'd read the title, you wouldn't really have to guess at all! The Eye on Malaysia is up and running, but for this year only, to celebrate Malaysia's 50 years of nationhood. (What was it prior to that? Say, 1956? Not a nation, obviously. Just the same peninsula with pretty much the same people living on it -- but not a nation, oh no.)

It's not the Thames, but there's bugger all lines and you do get a nice view of the lake!