optimism

the 21st country i visited in 2011 was Turkey.

after all the other places the year has taken me, it stood out like an amazing blast of slightly smug sunlight.....it is actually on the way up! whilst much of this year has been spent going to places like Portugal, Greece, Spain, Italy, France and Ireland with their financial woes and endless apocalyptic predictions. Istanbul was a surprisingly pleasant change from all that. the turkish economy is seemingly booming. Istanbul is covered with construction cranes as new flats and shopping malls are being built across the city. even the people seem optimistic, and perhaps a bit smug- after all the fuss Western countries, and leaders like Sarkozy, made a few years ago about merely contemplating allowing Turkey to join the EU, it is now Turkey that might be having second thoughts. Some of my friends have started murmuring that they dont need the EU, nor do they need to be subsidising countries like.....Greece. i sat and smiled inwardly at some of these comments, but i cant help but be happy for my friends, all of whom seem to be doing well and succeeding. it is nice to know that some where people are seeing their living standards rising, removed from the chaos we seem to have here in Western Europe.

ok ok mea culpa

everyone is on my case for not having written anything in ages....nearly 2 months in fact, which is probably a record.

my excuse is that i have been busy. i started a new job (in the same company) on the 1st of November and i have been rather caught up in things. i have joined my companies consulting team, at the traditionally busy time of the year and projects on a variety of odd subjects have been flowing my way.

so that is my excuse, i realise it might be a bit lame, but all i can say is that i will endeavour to do better in the future.

Tense in Tunisia

I frequently get mistaken for a journalist. I like to ask random questions, especially of strangers. People you know, or who think they know you, sometimes feel the need to say certain things, or cover their answers with messages they think you want to hear. Strangers don’t tend to do this as much. plus, a lot of my job involves talking to strangers and trying to learn as much about their concerns and challenges in a short space of time, so I suppose at this stage it is ingrained in my subconscious to interrogate people. Random Tunisians are happy to talk. They are generally a chatty bunch it seems, but the current situation must be adding to their willingness to give a stranger their views.

Tunis is a bit tense at the moment. The country will have its first post-revolutionary elections on the 23^rd, which combined with the situation in neighbouring Libya has created a rather conspiratorial atmosphere. My hotel is filled with wealthy Libyans who have decamped from their country to Tunis to sit out the crisis. The hotel lobby has been turned into a designer refugee camp, as everyone sits around in Chanel and Dolce and Gabbana, drinking tea and watching little children (also in designer clothing) running around.

Everyone has a view on the situation, and it seems cab drivers have especially strong views. Over the past few days I gathered that:

1. Everyone likes Libyans (“our cousins”) and thinks Gaddafi was sick, but no one agrees where he is. Several said Venezuela, others Niger, others said he will never leave and will need to be dragged out, Saddam Hussein style.

2. There is not much love for Algerians and Moroccans are naïve/ stupid/ fundamentalists (who would have thought?)

3. Ben Ali was a good leader, the problem was his wife and her family, they were robbing the country

4. It will take 10 years for real change to be felt in Tunisia. Up till now, the changes in daily life have been almost non existent- with the exception of the freeing of the media.

5. some assured me the votes are rigged (by the americans, or by Sarkozy) to get a result 40% for Ben Ali's old party, 20% for the main islamic parties and so on. other assured me the results are totally up in the air.

As one of the guards escorting me about said at one moment "i have a hard job now. i dont know what is happening or what will happen, and i just want to sleeping peacefully at night." he didnt look angry, or even upset, he just looked fatigued.

oh well whatever, nevermind

Over the past few weeks, I have been getting messages on facebook and email reminding me that it was exactly 20 years ago that Nirvana released their album Nevermind.

It is bizarre how one album defined my entire generation. I can remember sneaking off with my friend C to go buy the album (we had pretended we were spending the afternoon in the library, but ran off to the local music shop as soon as we could). I had only recently started to pay attention to music, and this sounded totally different than everything else out there, so I remember being a bit scared to admit I liked it. millions of other kids must have been thinking the same thing. But what was it about Nevermind that made it so defining? Was it because it was the first of the Seattle scene to make it big? Or because its grittiness represented the total rejection of 1980s excess we were all so sick of? Was it because Kurt Cobain killed himself? Because his life from Nevermind to death pretty much put a timeframe on the movement? By the time he died, his fame was global. I remember walking up and down stari arbat in Moscow and seeing his name and image graffitied everywhere, right next to Viktor Tsoi. 20 years later I bet most people my age could still come up with the lyrics of Smells Like Teen Spirit, if no other song from that period…who would have guessed it in 1991?

And i forget just why i taste

oh, yeah, i guess it makes me smile

i found it hard, it's hard to find

oh well, whatever, nevermind

snapshot of the US

i dont understand why the food in the US has got to be so bad. i went into several supermarkets, and they all featured decent looking fruit and vegetables at highly reasonable prices. maybe the vegetables dont taste as good as they look, but still, with such a selection it should be possible to eat at least healthily. Alas, i didnt have a single decent meal in the country. the restaurants were appalling. the stories are well know, so i guess i am only confirming them, having seen them with my own eyes: every thing is over sized, two of us shared a main in every restaurant, and we sometimes couldnt even finish that. the muffins are bigger than my fist and come in odd flavours with neon toppings. the dish pictured here was listed on the menu as "grilled shrimp" you can actually see the prawns in there if you look carefully, they are in the top corner of the plate, behind the chips.....and they were fried, not grilled. the restaurants were particularly shocking as they seem to be improving all the time in both Europe and Asia. Cities like Moscow and London have improved the quality of their foodservice considerably over the past 20 years, expanding in both choice and levels of quality. so it is surprising to see a country that actually seems to be in decline. places that i remember being decent 10 years ago now seem greasy and grim. i find myself at a hideous Italian restaurant that i had once enjoyed with a couple i have know for decades. they live half the year in DC, half in Paris. they say it is not that the quality is declining due to a lack of standards, but rather it is adjusting to peoples tastes. as they point out, the restaurant is packed.... scary thought..

On US infrastructure

I fly into Dulles International airport. I have been here many times before, but this is the first time in just over a decade.
In the summer, planes always hit turbulence in the last 30 minutes before landing at Dulles. I have been told it I because of the heat and humidity encountered as the plane descends, but I have always been a bit dubious, because it doesn’t happen with such regularity in other hot and humid airports. But the last minute bumps are the least of Dulles’s, or DC’s issues.
Dulles is the main international airport for the capital of the United States. It is one of the countries busiest, and it reflects much of what is wrong with American infrastructure- or the lack thereof. The airport was built in the Kennedy era, and has failed to evolve adequately over time. The facilities are truly pathetic, the duty free’s selection is worse than a 7 Eleven, and the “restaurants” are basically all hideous fast food chains. When you land, the passport control, as in increasingly all US airports, a disaster. The passport booths are understaffed and those who turned up for work are grumpy. After waiting in the passport queue for over an hour, I get hauled over by customs and quizzed about my bag, which they suspect is too small. I point out that I will be there less than a week, and they are still suspicious. I add that 1) I am a small person (unlike everyone else about- but I don’t say that) 2) it is 40 degrees outside and therefore multiple layers are not going to be needed 3) it is not a work trip so I don’t need much anyway. They persist in their integration until I finally open my bag and demonstrate that I actually do have one pair of clean pants and one clean T shirt for every day I will be on US soil, as well as folding travel toothbrushes and hairbrushes and regulation sized travel cosmetics. Finally at that point they give up and let me go, but by this stage I feel about as grumpy as they do, but at least I didn’t have to wait for my luggage, since I travelled with carry on only.
But it doesn’t get easier. Dulles has no public transport running to central DC 40 kilometres east, and no cab will take me to the Virginian city I need to go to (120 kilometres south). I had anticipated this, and therefore took a cab to the centre. Arriving at 8pm, I had missed the last train of the night (!!) to where I was going, and had to spend the night in a hotel near Dupont Circle. The trains might have finished for the evening, but life in Dupont Circle hadn’t. I checked in to the (unimpressive) hotel on Embassy Row and went for a stroll. The place was packed with young people, all of whom seemed noticeably more fit, smily, and well-dressed than the US standard. The packs of 20 somethings crammed into the outdoor cafes and bars had me slightly puzzled, until I remembered it was indeed the dreaded Summer Intern Season. Every year, DC fills with overly earnest people hoping to be the next generation of congressmen. I sat down on the terrace of a café and the conversations around confirmed it was indeed Intern time again as the guy next to my moaned "dude, its like just so hard to break into politics, you know what i mean?" others around him seemed to be frequently quoting either their fathers, or the congressman they were interning for. i wanted to ask a few of them if they would promise me to do something about the airport if they actually got elected. A train connecting it to Union station, efficient immigration procedures, orderly check in and some duty free shops would be nice. alas, however, i was too tired from jet lag to bother.

York

I am not a fan of the North.

Actually, excluding Oxford, Cambridge and maybe Brighton, I find most of England outside London quite scary. So I wasn’t thrilled to be informed that my company was sending me up to York for work. My last company had sent me to some northern towns (Manchester, Leeds) and they had certainly left me underwhelmed.

York, however, proved to be somewhat different. I actually enjoyed my trip up there. I was lucky with the weather, it was warm and sunny most of the day, with the rain starting only as I was already heading back to the train station for my return, and I had time to walk around and explore in the sun. The city centre is quite small and quaint. I was surprised that there were actually a fair number of tourists about, a surprisingly large number of whom were German. Before my trip, my mother had reminded me that my favourite museum when I was a child had been the Jorvik Centre, which I clearly remember adoring when I was about 10 or so (the last time I was in York). Curious to see if it would hold up to my childhood memories, I went to have a look. The museum is dedicated to the period in the late 9th century and first half of the 10th century when York was the centre of Viking operations in Britain. It attempts to recreate parts of the city as they would have looked under the Norse Kings, based on excavations done in the area. Clearly, it is a museum aimed at children. You go downstairs and hop into a little pod that looks like something from a ride in a theme park, which is used to transport you around the recreated city. Seeing it as an adult, it struck me a bit kitsch, but still interesting. The museum is well put together and it certainly examines a fascinating period. it also gave me a better appreciation of the streets above ground and structure of the city as it is today, so when i resumed my above-ground wanderings, everything seemed better put into context.

snapshots of Korea- history

when HS, one of my young Korean acquaintances, was 7, he came over and asked me what car my parents drove. i said Toyota. he looked interested and came over and whispered in my ear that he liked Toyotas, but i should tell his parents that. when i asked why, he said it was because Koreans dont like Japanese cars.

Koreans have reasons to dislike the Japanese, and the Japanese, unlike the germans, have failed to apologise for their wartime atrocities. That said, the Koreans get their revenge in their history, or so i gather visiting a prison that has been converted into a museum in North west Seoul. It was constructed beginning in 1907 while Korea was a force protectorate of Japan, and it was used during the Japanese occupation as a torture centre, where many Korean patriots lost their lives. the museum is anxious to remind everyone of this, and walking around, you cant help but coming away with the impression that the Japanese were sub human barbarians. What the museum rather draws a veil over is the fact that the Japanese occupation ended in 1945, and the prison was used continuously by the South Korean government, which at times failed to recognise the civil and human right its own citizens, until 1987. However, that last 42 year period is ignored to filled the walls of tales of "patriotic martyrs" dying for Korean freedom. I wonder if Asia will ever revisit its wartime wounds.

snapshots of korea- portraits

A lot of places i go, especially in the provinces, i see portrait studios where families can get their portrait done. this appears to be a massive industry and appears to provide an interesting reflection of the values that are important to provincial Koreans. there seem to be two main types, the massive portraits that include several generations and have everyone in traditional dress, and the more modern, showing just an immediate nuclear family. in the latter type, everyone wears modern Western clothes. the fathers all look like respectable salary men. the women have floral like tops and pearls. the son, if there is one (and there are always 2 children it seems) is often in military uniform, preferably what looks like officer wear. the daughters always look serious but feminine. i wonder how many families commission such works? do they hang them in their living rooms?

snapshots of korea- suwon

the Seoul metro is amazing. it goes out more than 40 kilometres in various directions. so, for just over one GBP, i was able to take the metro out to Suwon, a city of over 1 million people about 30 kilometres from the capital. It is traditionally known as "The City of Filial Piety". the cool thing is that it is a totally walled city, the last remaining one of its kind in South Korea. you can spend the whole day wandering the palaces and the exterior wall. If friends hadnt pointed me to it, i never would have known of Suwon's existence, reminding me how lucky i am to have local guides. without them i think it would be easy to miss alot in this country.

Snapshots of korea- my hotel

i decided to stay in a more traditional hotel. i dont know why. i was seriously tempted by some of the ultra modern posh hotels like the Park Hyatt, and they were even quite affordable. but i have stayed in a lot of 5 star business oriented hotels, so i decided to go for something different. i think it was a good choice. i found myself near a major market, up a winding street past several small restaurants and great smells. the hotel was still 4 star, but it had an older feel. it had the typical and ever baffling Asian-hotel light system, controlled by a box by the bed (you know- the one where you press 5 buttons and turn on every light in the area before finding the total off one for sleeping!) and slippers for every occasion. it even had a box that looked like a microwave for disinfecting things and a toilet that got disinfected several times a day

snapshots of korea-the provinces

i try to do some trips outside the capital, and i go to the capital of the old Silla Empire, Gyeong ju. the town is really spread out, so i rent a bike and cycle around. i dont see a single non-Korean the whole time i am there. i wander through parks and watch people working. i have a massive meal in a restaurant after barely making out, having just learned enough of the alphabet to get by. it seems impossible to put in words how spectacular this city must have been back in its heyday when it united the Korean peninsula for the first time....back when Europeans were locked in the provinciality of the dark ages, the Silla Kingdom conquered the other two kingdoms in the area,Baekje in 660 and Goguryeo in 668. we were behind even then....

accidentally, i wander past a wedding party and get invited to join, and i do with pleasure

snapshots of korea- palaces

there are amazing palaces in Seoul. I tried to go to as many as i could, although Gyeongbokgung was definitely my favourite. architecturally, they are amazingly intricate, with inner layers leading on to other inner layers followed by gardens and more layers. it astounds me how little we know in Europe about Asian kingdoms, their architecture, history and way of life. but Asians themselves are far from ignorant of their history- all the palaces were filled with tourists. The tourists were overwhelmingly Korean, although i did see some Chinese and Japanese. representing the Western world, i saw one small group of Argentine tourists....and that was it. it is our loss really, we are missing a lot by not paying more attention to this fascinating civilisation. on the one hand you would think the Korean government would do more to encourage tourism, given that Korea has the makings of a tourist mecca- affordable and decent hotels, beautiful nature, great shopping and a rich history.....but they dont seem to do much propaganda abroad. maybe they dont want our dirty, uncouth western tourists? i might not blame them.....

snapshots of korea- teenage fun

i have known two korean kids since they were 4 and 7. i knew them in Moscow, and they took the time to show me their Korea when i was in Seoul. we got slurpies at smoothie king and wandered around the shops of Myeongdong. we went into the "cool" shops like Codes Combine, Giordano and Bean Pole and ate amazing food and drank soju. The big teenage korean fashion rage is wearing fake glasses, sometimes with fake lenses, sometimes with no lenses at all. We went by the movie theatres to see what was on. We then went to their house when their cousin was playing video games obsessively. amazing.

random notes on packaging

my new job has required me to focus alot on consumers and their behaviour- what make people do the things they do? why do people in one country buy an item obsessively, whilst elsewhere the product cant sell at all. obviously these are large questions that necessitate a book long answer, but my point is just to say that as of late, i have been a bit more observant of random matters like packaging. most people dont give the subject a whole lot of thought, although it is a multi-billion pound industry, and based on what i see in seoul, I would imagine packaging gurus are flourishing in this country. I realise i am generalising horribly here, but i have the impression Koreans love packaging. everything i buy comes beautifully packaged, often with several layers. the supermarkets resemble a museum of packaging ideas, with items seemingly packed for the sole purpose of showing off their clever packaging. the shelves of supermarkets are filled with neatly arranged and brightly packaged items. everything looks neat and organised. I am sure it must be an environmentalist's nightmare, but i am simply mesmerised by aesthetic elements, and the time and effort planning something that will ultimately be ripped up and dumped in the bin.

food

Everyone know my love of Korean food. Along with Chinese and Indian (ok, and Mexican), it is one of my favourites. I had it from time to time as a child, but it was really living in Moscow that I started to become obsessed. There was a cheap Korean place in my dormitory building at Moscow State University that served a cheap bipinbop. It was the best culinary option around (the other being stolovaya) and although it wasn’t brilliant, I became a regular. Later, working with Koreans in Moscow, I was able to experience more refined (and better quality) Korean cuisine. I soon came to know all the Korean places in Moscow, and to frequent them. Korean friends taught me to make kim bop. Moving to London, I quickly made a point of finding the best Korean restaurants and supermarkets where I could get my Kimchi fix. So when I booked my tickets to Seoul, food was the first thing on my mind. Despite the disadvantage of being vegetarian (which is a massive minus in Korea), i ate well everywhere.

Of course I immediately rushed to try the Korean dishes I already knew- bipinbop, kim bop, and the ever-present kimchi, but there were also many dishes to discover.

One of the great things about Korea is that there are open air street markets everywhere that serve local dishes, and the hygiene standards are so high that, unlike in some countries, you can select whatever you want knowing it will be completely safe. The markets are also great because you can see the food, decide what looks interesting, and have a small portion, before moving on to the next stall and trying something different. I spent several evenings wandering around trying different dishes, many of which I had never seen in Korean restaurants in Europe, such as Ddeokbokee- rice cakes in a spicy red pepper sauce that had me addicted from the first bite. On my first evening in Seoul, I ran into a friend from childhood and we spent the entire evening wandering the length of Gwangjang Market, sampling everything we could. But the culinary delights of Korea are certainly not confined to the markets, there are excellent restaurants all over the country. Koreans seem to prefer their own cuisine, as I found very few foreign restaurants there. But you would struggle to walk down any street without stumbling over a series of eateries, many of them quite small, as though they had been set up in someone’s front room. That said, many of them serve stunning food at very affordable prices. Even the larger restaurants in posh districts of Seoul are affordable. My Korean friends claim it is easy to live comfortably without ever having to cook, there are just so many options available. When I went out with Korean friends, I often allowed them to order for me, so I would invariably end up with a surprise...cold brown noodles in red pepper sauce with egg, pancake like creations and delicious banchan at every meal. The culinary wonders of Korea are not confined to Seoul, in small towns in the countryside the selection was overwhelming. People would find it strange that i dont eat meat, but plenty of food was always found for me. I will definitely be going back.

on korea

So I think we western white folk should just give up and accept that we are behind Asia.

The signs are obvious and will become more so. In 1952, the UN declared South Korea to be the poorest country in the world. Today, it is a developed country. It is not just that the country has achieved economically, it has also invested its gains wisely, and in ways that will help it keep growing. its infrastructure is infinitely superior to anything I have seen in the “western world”. It actually makes me rather embarrassed for my comparatively underdeveloped homeland. Korea’s accomplishments are in your face literally from the moment you arrive, and are greeted by efficiency and style. Its new Incheon Airport is routinely cited as one of the world’s best, it is incredibly user friendly and, miraculous, everything works and runs smoothly. Within 30 minutes of getting off the plane, I managed to clear passport control, collect my luggage, clear customs, navigate my way jet lagged through the airport and hop on the train to central Seoul, all with minimal fuss. Less than an hour later, I was in the ultra-modern Seoul Station, where I changed to the equally ultra-modern Seoul Metro and went to my station. The entire process was smooth and cost me less than 5 pounds- a change from my commutes out to Heathrow. Some days later, I found myself back at Seoul station where I took a high speed KTX train to Gyeong Ju in the south of the country. The train went 300 kilometres an hour, arriving at its destination in 2 hours. Again, compared to any European trains (and yes, I am even including French and German), it was a sobering experience. Even the provincial train stations are spectacular. Korea is a country where things work. Meetings run smoothly, supported by technology that is not only advanced, but designed in a user friendly way so that they effortlessly serve their function without fuss, unlike in some European boardrooms, where I have routinely found myself surrounded by technology so complicated no one in the building knows how to use it. Then of course there is the “cool” technology, where again Korea is infinitely ahead of us. On the metro, people get on, sit down, and start watching TV, to which they all have access for free on their mobile phones (which work on the metro, unlike in London). All the houses I visited had ultra-thin massive TVs (60 inches seemed standard). People use their mobile phones to get in and out of the metro. Such technologies are perhaps not strictly necessary, but they are certainly impressive none the less.

When it comes to infrastructure, Koreans have managed to make everything work in such a way as to promote the country’s continual growth and development. Good infrastructure is key to the economic advancement of a country, and in this regard we are falling behind in Europe, and the US remains in the dark ages. But this level of quality requires foresight and investment, which we seem to increasingly lack in the West, and as a result I expect we will see ourselves falling further and further behind.

race to brighton

In July 2010, a bunch of colleagues and I signed up to do a bike race in June 2011. It seemed like a good idea to raise money for a noble cause (the British Heart Foundation), a good physical challenge, and a good day out. Most importantly, it seemed so far off that signing a few forms didn’t seem to actually imply commitment. So, I signed up for my first competitive physical activity event in probably 2 decades, and promptly forgot about it. Sometime around February 2011, people started talking about it again, and I figured doing a bit of training might be necessary. In the gym and on the roads around London, I began training. I tried to steadily increase the distance I could ride. At first 10 kilometres seemed a lot, then 20, then 30. When I left my last company, my colleagues, knowing I would never survive the race on my little Brompton, chipped in and got me a gift certificate to get a new racing bike for the occasion. I got a beautiful Kona Honky Tonk a few weeks before the race and had just enough time to get used to it before the big day.

So it is 56 miles from Clapham Common to Brighton beach. First, I had to cycle 4 miles or so down to Clapham for the 8am start. Once I got down there, I found my colleagues (by now ex colleagues as I had already changed jobs) and we moved towards the starting line. It was an exciting moment. What amazed me the most about the entire experience was the tremendous sense of community spirit. As we road through little communities on back roads down to the coast, people lined the roads to cheer us on, kids held out their hands for high 5s and adults had bake sales, with all the proceeds going to the BHF. I was astounded to see so many English people out in the streets yelling and cheering for us, especially when we approached the finish line down on the beach, thousands of people were screaming and waving flags and balloons, and even though I was exceptionally tired, I had to smile. It was an amazing moment….

…..but then I had to cycle back to the pick up point in Hove, and then back across London from Clapham, with every muscle in my body aching, and that was almost heart breaking.

And despite the incredible pain I felt the next day, I have signed up to do it again next year.

a challenge to Monocle

So every year Monocle publishes its Quality of life city list. The annual survey ranks cities based on a variety of different criteria, including social and economic circumstances for residents, public health, education system, infrastructure, and ease and availability of local transport. It is, of course, not the only company involved in such a ranking system, the consulting firm Mercer does a similar one, and even my company has views on the matter. The results are pretty similar. Germanic Europe and ex British colonies (but never Britain) lead the way as analysts debate the superiority of Zurich, Vancouver, Munich, Vienna, Sydney and Auckland. Helsinki topped the list this year.

Having been to all of the above places, I can certainly appreciate what such surveys are trying to achieve. They are looking for the ideal “nice” place….but would you really want to live in a nice stable city where everything works all the time, people are polite to each other and nothing ever happens? What about adding a fun-factor to the equation? Of course Zurich is safe, clean and has great transport links- but would you want to live there? I certainly would not. It is a great city to hold a conference in, but not to spend your free time.

So I am making my own alternative list, ranking cities on my criteria, which includes good restaurants, good book shops, shops that have late closures, interesting architecture, comfortable people watching spots, good museums and ideally a beautiful natural setting. It would be nice to have decent flats that are not overpriced. Even better if there are some nice, close by weekend excursions to be had without much difficulty. The ideal city should be a hedonist’s paradise. Finally, I like a bit of urban chaos-I need some drama in my life. Because I am advocating a bit of disorder, these cities are not in a strict order of preference:

1. Mexico City- one of the best museums (Museo Nacional de Antropología) I have ever seen, great food, and incredible diversity of entertainment options. Plus historic sites like Teotihuacán are a day trip away.

2. Moscow- wins for absurd people watching opportunities, great bars, good bookshops and never a dull moment.

3. Hong Kong- amazing shopping, incredible food, and some of the most incredible markets to wander through

4. Buenos Aires- the best bookshop in the world (el Ateneo), phenomenal shopping, great buildings and cafes with some of the world’s best people watching.

5. Rio de Janeiro- Cape Town and Rio deserve to be here for their natural beauty alone, but Rio also has centrally located, clean beaches and some great places for cocktails

6. Cape Town- gorgeous like Rio, and with amazing excursion destinations all around (Robben Island, wine tasting, cheetah parks….)

7. Istanbul- Some of the most stunning buildings and structures around, followed by amazing food and a vibrant atmosphere.

8. Rome- the whole city is a giant museum, you can probably explore a new historical monument every week for the rest of your life without repeating, combined with excellent shopping and food.

9. Mumbai- the Food! that alone makes it worth it, but add to that a highly entertaining degree of urban chaos, great spots for people watching, my ideal climate and some of the most amazing cinemas imaginable

10. Bangkok- trouble on every corner. You can dine out like a king and party all night, with pristine beaches never far away.

So this is my list as it stands at the moment, but I am open to revision. If you have suggests, send them over. I have already been told I am missing Shanghai and Tokyo. I am off to Seoul in about a week to scope it out, forever looking for the next great urban jungle…..

Munich

As everyone who knows me knows, I don’t normally have too many nice things to say about Germany.

I never took to the language, I find the food vile, and ….well….i could go on….. but I have to confess (even if somewhat against my will) that have just returned from what might have been The Perfect Business Trip to Munich. No matter how hard I try, I cant find a fault anywhere in the whole trip, in fact, it was basically the model of how I wish all trips went: the plane arrived early, the transport transfers were flawless, the people organised and efficient (ok, that you WOULD expect from the Germans). The office meeting rooms were spectacular- on the 32 floor overlooking the entire city, and they were kitted out with everything the perfect meeting room should have:

· excellent IT facilities that are no so high tech that no one understands them, but intuitively do everything you need them to, with computer to plasma projections

· a conference phone with a proper speak, I prefer the spider looking ones

· a gorgeous wood round table for discussions

· decent coffee

· water bottles at everyone’s place

· a nice writing pad and pens with company labels at every place.

· Good acoustics and soundproofing

· A good view

· A good selection of biscuits!!!!

So this meeting room managed to tick every one of the above details, and it even managed to be designed with discretion and taste, with Fresh flowers, cloth napkins and nice china.

But it wasn’t just meeting room itself, the people were responsive, friendly and knew what they wanted. They were also keen that I spend some time exploring their city, and after the meeting, the hand drew me an extensive map with all sorts of tips and advice before packing me off in a car to the centre.

I diligently followed their advice and spent the late afternoon strolling around the streets spinning off from Marienplatz. I hadn’t been to Munich since the summer of 1997, when I and my best friend from childhood spent a summer on central European trains. Munich was out base of operations then, as C’s sister was living in nearby Garmish. However, most of my memories from that time involve C’s cousin’s rampant alcoholism and flamboyant behaviour, so it was basically with completely fresh eyes that I was seeing the town this time around. Munich is a surprisingly pretty city, even though much of it currently appears to be under renovations at the moment. It has some spectacular buildings, decent shopping and nice pedestrian streets. Strangely, it also has a curious memorial to …..Michael Jackson.

So it seems, Germany on a number of levels has managed to surprise me.

greece, again

I have made 2 trips here in 2011. On the first trip, in March, the mood was already one of gloom and doom, but that had turned positively apocalyptic by the time I returned in late June…but still I don’t have the impression of crisis.

I go out to a beachfront café with a bunch of Greek professionals slightly younger than myself. The café it totally full. The 3 people I speak to complain bitterly about their falling living standards and the tax rate that is supposedly increasing whilst their salaries are not. Yet they pay 25% tax (in the UK I pay, 40%, which is not the highest bracket), and in their late 20s they all own their homes (I rent with a friend).

I take a road trip from Athens to a provincial city called Halkida. The roads in Greece are better than in England, and so is the metro. The infrastructure in general is new and well designed. Over the weekend I go to nightclubs and bars, some we have to leave after a few minutes because they were simply too full and it was impossible to move or order anything. Everyone seems to have a drink in their hands, and most are smoking. Everyone is well dressed. At lunchtime the restaurants are full, the food is excellent and the portions are massive. Many families not only own houses, but weekend homes as well. I observed this on my last trip, but it was easy then to think that maybe these conditions only existed in a certain refined and affluent world in a small pocket of Athens. But on this trip I travel to random provincial places, and it is the same everywhere. Greeks seem used to the good life, a better quality of life than most people can afford in Northern Europe. Suffering is always comparative, people see themselves as suffering when they suddenly have a worse deal than they were used to, or they have less than those around them, which is why the young Greeks in the beach bar were complaining so bitterly, despite having a lifestyle that I with a much higher salary can only dream of. When I tried to suggest that maybe their lifestyle was unsustainable and they might have to get used to less (and live like the rest of us) they got very upset and said that their lifestyle was reflective of Greek culture and it was not the place of “northerners” to force them to change their way of life (their civilisation, upon which all the rest of European culture is based!) but this isn’t true, Greeks didnt always live this way, as my friends older parents are at pains to point out. They didn’t always have high wages and big cars, even my friends admit to having been “poorer” growing up. The increased wages started appearing just as my generation started working, so I guess it seemed like it was all the result of hard work, and not endless government borrowing. As I look around at the people lounging in beachside bars at 3 am on a week night, I seriously wish I had spent the last decade in Greece. I am sure it was all fun while it lasted.

budapest

Given that I used to live there, and that even after I left I used to fly back quite often, the fact that it suddenly two years had flown by since my last visit surprised me. But then walking around, I cant believe I ever lived here at all, I look back at memories of my time here, and although they all run through my brain with absolute clarity, it is like remembering a film I watched, and I don’t recognise myself in my own memories. It is like I am remembering someone else’s life, not my own. The only friend I have left in Buda I knew before going to school there, so that doesn’t help recall my senses either. So it is all rather surreal and disconnected. It seems almost by accident that I remember the names of bars and where to turn on streets.

just when i thought i was out....

i have taken to watching the Sopranos at the gym. this is very un-me. i hate TV normally, and i think this is the first series in years i have actually got addicted to. it started when i was training for bike racing, it was still winter and cold and weekdays i started training on the bikes in the gym, just to build up my endurance. but riding a bike in the gym is boring, so i started downloading the sopranos onto my ipod, and then plugging it into the exercise station. it makes time go faster.

actually, there is a lot in the sopranos i find connects well with my job, and Tony Soprano reminds me of one of my relatives, so i have found it interesting on a number of levels.....and it immediately popped into my mind the other day at work. there is a character in the show (i think it is Pussy) who likes to do impressions of Italo-American gangster movies. there is a scene he likes to imitate from the Godfather (of course) where Michael Corleone says "just when i thought i was out, they pull me back in..."

When I signed up with my new company, part of the agreement was I would not be dealing with Russia. I agreed, somewhat sadly and somewhat relieved- I have done well working in Russia, but it is a pain to get things done there, as we all know, and escaping from contracts that require 14 stamps and signatures per page seemed a positive thing.

But liberation from Russian bureaucracy didn’t last long. I got back to the office last week to find there had been a bit of a situation- and how fast did I think I could get to Russia? 15 minutes later I was in a cab, off to the embassy to beg for an emergency visa (which I got, amazingly), and I was on a plane the next morning. British airways was full, so I ended up on good old Aeroflot, for the first time in years.

the next thing i knew, i had "important people" calling me at all hours of the night and numbers whizzing past my head like bullets.

days passed, until they finally said i could go home.

as i had flown in on Aeroflot, it meant i had to fly out from Sheremetevo, the old Soviet era airport. In my memories from childhood, this aeroport certainly deserves a special place, as i would land here several times a year going in and out of the Soviet Union/ Russia. I remember it when it was still nearly empty and felt like a ghost town. In those days, Aeroflot was the only airline that had the right to fly in and out of the Soviet Union, so we would fly on the more comfortable Finnair to Helsinki, the closest Western city, before boarding the required Illyshin or Tupalev to take us the last leg to Moscow. At Sheremetevo, airport officials would board the plane before you were allowed to disembark to enquire if any one was carrying "printed matter". Some years later, in the early 1990s, corruption set in, and bags started vanishing, requiring intensive negotiations to get them released. By the early 2000s, the immigration officials had become a bit more smooth and rarely bothered with poor students like myself, but the tremendous rise in Russians travelling meant the airport had become overcrowded and a total zoo. When Domededevo opened, it provided a much needed relief, and BA started flying there, acknowledging that Sheremetevo was an unmanageable dinosaur. i hadnt been back to SVO in some time, but on this trip, i was pleased to learn that there is now a train that goes directly from Belorusski vokzal to the airport in 30 minutes (as opposed to 2 hours or more by car). The train was fast and efficient, leaving me pleasantly surprised at the advancements in infrastructure taking place....then I got to Sheremetevo. it was 33 degrees outside, the airport is filled with huge glass windows, which in the bright sunshine had turned the place into a greenhouse.....and the air-conditioning was broken. the Russian solution to this was to allow extra beer and ice cream vendors in to stroll around selling their goods. with over an hour to kill, i bought a Baltika, sat down and tried to block out the body odours around me. by the time i actually boarded my flight to Budapest, almost all the passengers were drunk.

Just when I though I was out.....they pull me back in

amsterdam

I guess my life must seem odd to others. After years of moving about and international schools, I have friends all over the place. Sometimes they get messages from me asking if they have time for a coffee or a drink in whatever city they are in. I guess they think I never work, as I often do end up with seemingly endless time off in random places, and I appear to be able to go out drinking in the middle of the afternoon and then stroll through museums or go shopping. Except of course, it isn’t exactly like that. For every afternoon I spend lounging in Madrid or Moscow, it usually means a Sunday morning back in the office in London, catching up. My friends in London can testify- I am not on an endless paid for holiday. often I don’t get to see anyone or anything when I travel for work, just the airport, the office I visit, and the airport again. From my perspective, it is odd as well. I pop over to different cities, meet old friends, catch up for a few hours and then I am back in London, whilst their lives continue “normally” in their place. When I am with them, time has stopped and we pick up with the last conversation. But of course, it hasn’t stopped, I just haven’t been part of the action. The quick visits also give me a twisted perspective on cities. There are a lot of cities I think I know, because every time I am there I am comfortable and seem to know where everything is….but actually I probably hardly know them at all, I just happen to go to the exact same random places every time I am there. Take Amsterdam. I know the horrible industrial area of sloterdijk ( I am sure the Dutch manage to spell that totally differently) really well, because that is where my meetings always are. I know the train station and Schiphol like the back of my hand because I have been there many times. And I know the very centre of Amsterdam around the train station because that is where I walk to kill time waiting for connections etc. but outside of that, I know basically nothing, and I can imagine that I have probably missed most of the city entirely. But time is short, and habits are comfortable, so I find myself in Amsterdam for the afternoon, and a friend living in Rotterdam pops over to see me. So, of course we meet at the train station (she is coming from Rotterdam, me from good old sloterdijk) and what do we do? Well, I remember (and so does she) that if you walk out of the station and sort of veer to the right, there are lots of “cute” streets with equally “cute” canals and walkways. So, not knowing much else, this is where we hear, after all, the point is to catch up. And the area doesn’t disappoint. We soon find a nice terrace bar on a canal and park ourselves down for a catch up chat/ gossip. The scenery confirms our (foreigner) stereotypes of “dutchness” and we are happy taking it all in. from my friend, who has been in Rotterdam just over a year, I am able to get some glimpses into what living in Holland might be like, although clearly still through a foreigners perspective. I am sure it is an interesting (if I gather somewhat impenetrable) society, and I wish I knew more about it. She confesses to having had a difficult time meeting locals, especially outside the work environment- it is a country where school ties and local intrigue seem to matter dearly.

updates, paris again

so i have started getting complaints about not writing any updates as of late.

I apologise. i have been busy.

i started a new job at the beginning of May, in some ways with mixed feelings. I had had a good time at the old place, and as everyone knows, i certainly had plenty of adventures. but it became clear the time had come to move on. so a month into my new career, i can definitely say it was a good move, even though i still have a lot to learn.

to answer the question everyone has been asking- yes i will still be travelling, although perhaps not quite as much, and not to such interesting places, sadly. my first trip with my new company was to the exact same city as my last trip with the old one- Paris. my general views on that city are rather well known, but even so, it turned out to be a pleasant trip. the weather could not have been better, it was about 28 degrees and sunny the whole time. in the end, the whole thing turned into a bit of a culinary excursion, as I was in the company of some foodie, which gave me a good excuse to return (with an expense account) to some of my favourite haunts, eat some of my favourite foods, and even get a bit of work done on the side.

I dont know how long i will stay in this new company. i am thinking 1-2 years. i think they might be good.

Rome

Rome is a lovely place for a business trip, if you can succeed in ignoring the business side of the experience. As i have noted in several previous posting, getting business done in italy can be execeptionally stressful, the bureaucracy makes Russia look efficient and the decision making process is absurdly convoluted. However, despite a national phobia of taking decisions, the people are extremely pleasant. Whilst in Milan, people constantly apologise for the their grimy and cold city, in Rome they are very proud of the city and its traditions and anxious to put on a good show. After a day of meetings, clients frequently insist on taking us for tours all over Rome, which invariably involve plenty of good wine and food.

One of my last trips for the company i have been working for this past year takes me for three days to Rome, where i have to do a handover to the person who will be replacing me. i stay one last time at my regular Rome hotel, La Griffe on Via Nazionale, in my usual room 201. I eat dinner one last time at my favourite La Taverna Trastevere on Via del Politearna with a favourite client. I dont know yet what i will be doing and where i will be going in my new job, but i will certainly miss these trips to Rome.

Gardening Leave (I am bored)

i have been on gardening leave for nearly a month, stuck in limbo as my current company assigns me no new work, but i am not allowed to start a new job elsewhere. so, i am essentially given permission to sit in the office and do nothing. i have read several books, gone for 2 hour lunches, arrived late, chatted on the phone to friends, watched movies, poured over the last Monocle magazine in detail, and played on the internet. in general, it has been quite fun and a nice change from the normal pressure, but i have to confess that after a month i have now got bored. i actually need to be busy sometimes to feel useful i fear. of course if i had known i was going to be changing jobs more in advance, i would have made plans to go somewhere, especially given all the state holidays we have been having lately, but naturally i did not know that out of the blue i would be made an offer i couldnt refuse, and thus made no plans until it was too late. thus, i have waited out my notice in the office, eyes wide shut. tomorrow, however, it is all coming to an end, and soon i will have to get myself back in gear and remember how to work.

wish me luck.

i wouldnt say that Tran Anh Hung's film rendition of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood was a great film, but it certainly is a beautiful one.

And i cna imagine the Murakami's books would not be the best suited for film anyway. I have long been a fan of his books, even though i find they need to be read seperated by some months to prevent them all from gelling into one in my brain. i discovered him when i was still living in russia, where for some reason he is epically popular. my flatmate, not normally much of a reader, was so engrossed in the Wild sheep chase that he couldnt leave his room for a whole weekend. as a result, i ended up reading most of his works in Russian. given the apparent russian love of murakami, i suppose it is not surprising i ended up watching the film in russian as well. perhaps it is available on DVD in the UK, but i havent seen it (not that i have gone out of my way looking, mind) but on my last trip to moscow, the film was all over the place, for sale in supermarkets, the metro and in my favourite bookshop. the dvd i got was certainly worth the 500 rubles i paid. the plot line is somewhat limited, and the book was more psychologically sophisticated, but the film is so visually stunning that none of that mattered. the story is set in Tokyo in the late 1960s, amidst the student unrest of the era. whilst protests are taking place all around, Watanabe is struggling to manage adult life and finds himself torn between to drastically different women. in the meantime, they all have amazing clothes, amazing hair and live in amazing flats and listen to the Beatles. the film is done in a way to highlight the beauty and draw it out in front of the viewer- stunning all around.

Middle England, Part Two

most of my travels around Britain have been to fairly industrial areas- Sollihull, Slough and Newport come to mind. my father complains that i have developped a skewed view of england as consisting of foreigners (in London) and masses of working class estates (outside). so i was quite intrigued to be invited to have a glimpse at a posher side of the country, being invited randomly to a wedding in Beccles, East Anglia. As i went as the date of my great friend H, and we are both determinded travellers, we decided to make a weekend spectacle of the whole thing, and use it as an excuse to travel around East Anglia. so we jumped on a train in London Liverpool street and headed off into the great English unknown. it didnt take long out of London for the scenery to start to change. by the time we got to Chelmsford, i already felt i was in a foriegn country. We were exceptionally lucky, the weather was gorgeous. it was a bit on the cool side, but unusually for England, there was bright sunshine. the wedding itself was a very English affair. H and i didnt know what that entailed, but my flatmate was able to walk us through the routine beforehand, and these things obviously follow a script, because everything he said, no matter how improbable it seemed at the time, proved to be spot on. Once I was actually there, even i was able to recognise a few things that are clearly part of early 21st century wedding traditions. For example, someone from my office got married a few months ago and asked some of her friends to do readings at the wedding. One of the readings was a Lovely Love Story by Edward Monkton, which her friend adapted for her, and which got read out to us in the office after the wedding.....and sure enough, when H and i got to the wedding in East Anglia, the ceremony featured selected readings by friends, including the very same Lovely Love Story, adapted slightly differently to fit this couple. clearly it is the hot poem for wedding planners to recommend! In the hotel in Beccles, our room was filled with wedding brochures, as that is apparently an industry there, and one of them featured a cake made of discs of posh cheese on the cover. the article inside informed me that old fashioned wedding cake is now passe, and that you should serve a dessert first, then cut a cheese wedding cake which later gets turned into a cheese spread for the guests.....i had never heard of this, but obviously i dont go to enough weddings, cause the exact same looking wedding-cake-of-cheese-discs appeared at this wedding, indeed after the dessert. i was quite happy with this arrangment i must say, as the dessert had been average, but the cheese selection proved to be most delicious.

in addition to the wedding, H and I also made a tour of the region, as we had plenty of spare time the day before and after the wedding. Before the festivities started, we had a lunch in Beccles in an all pink tea room. we hadnt exactly intended to end up there, but the 2 pubs we found were full and the one restaurant we passed was booked for another wedding. we were the youngest in the tea room by probably half a century and i felt vaguely like i had suddenly been given a provincial English grandmother and plunked into her dining room. the food was like something from a French person's imagination of English food...the only vegetarian option was baked beans on a jacket potato, whilst H's involved mushy peas and chips. Sverall of the guests were elderly women sitting on their own, mainly consuming tea and biscuits. they all ate very slowly whilst seemingly staring out the windows. H and I were often the only ones speaking which made me feel vaguely self conscious. in moments it reminded me of visiting my own grandmother, if you ignored the very English food, much of the rest of the scene was elderly home universal. Beccles itself was a lovely little town with views of green fields and all the postcard style images, but the average age must surely have been at least 55. the few young people we saw seemed to be wedding tourists, walking around as i was with a camera. we spent the night in Oulton Broad, which proved to be overlooking an inlet waterway which we explored in the morning, after a breakfast which consisted of even more baked beans than the previous days lunch. that afternoon, we made our way to Lowestoft, where signs informed us we were in Britain's most westerly town. Lowestoft was more of a town than Beccles, and in some ways it is sort of a mini- Brighton, minus the notoriously raunchy gay party scene. like Beccles, the average age was high, and we ended up chatting on a bench with a lonely widower, his wife had died in December of last year and he was still trying to sell the house. He had noticed H and I, clearly not from the area with our wierd accents and tendency to walk around speaking Serbian, and had approached us, looking for company. from the lookout pier, the widower had a beautiful view of the sea, looking out towards Scandanavia. We joined him on a bench and followed his gaze. The wind blew gently over our faces. it was a beautifully peaceful place.

But after 2 days i was desperate to get back to East London!

Middle England, Part One

After a year of travel all over Europe, to some of the world's most exciting capitals, my last trip with my current company sent me to....Basingstoke, middle England.

Basingstoke doesnt have too many claims to fame, Elizabeth Hurley was born there, but that is about all i can think of. although i had actually never heard of the place before starting my current job, in the past year i have made more trips than i would like to recall to this odd location, and each time i have felt completely like tourist. many of my english colleagues dont believe me when i say that, but then many of them are from small english towns that might well be very similar, so i guess it doesnt hit them as incredibly different as it does me. london is an international city, where you can find anything you want, and thus we are quite isolated in london from english reality. a reality which is utterly terrifying.

you walk out of the train station and you will see massive newish yellow housing complexes on your left. but i always have to walk straight and down the brick steps in front of the station. they take you into a nasty fleabag shopping centre that is currently under reconstruction, but which leads (eventually) into a newer and slightly more posh shopping complex. i am not one for shopping complexes in general, but this one is worse than most. yet the town is designed in such a way that it is nearly impossible to get from the train station to where i am going without going through the mall. but the mall is massive and i manage to get lost everytime, even though everytime the analyst i travel with and i try to record exactly where we need to turn and so on. after i eventually manage to find the correct exit, i have to wander through the supposed "old town." basingstoke often gets mistaken for one of the post war "new towns" along the lines of Milton Keynes, but it isnt. it has actually been their for several centuries, it just manages to feel as soulless as an artificial post war invention.

i frequently have to kill time in basingstoke, waiting for meetings or for trains back to London after meetings have concluded. there are a few pubs that colleagues and i have tried. there is the one that has handcuffs behind the bar and neon drug prevention lights in the toilets, where your feet inevitably stick to the floor. there is the one with the beer garden filled with people in track suits. they stare at us as we walk in, three outsiders dressed in suits. there is a tattoo parlour and a dominoes pizza. and i know this is not as extraordinary as i think most of small town britain looks exactly like this...which is precisely why i rarely venture beyond zone 2....

Paris

Walking around on a random Thursday afternoon, i look around and find it hard to believe i ever used to live here. i spent 16 months living and working in Paris, in fact it was living there that i started this blog. it wasnt a very happy year, and i always knew i was in sort of a holding pattern, waiting for the next academic year to begin so i could start my PhD in England. in attempts to save up for my studies, i had very little money and lived out in a dodgy banlieu. Accordingly, i rarely ventured out after dark. i hated my neighbourhood, and i hated my job even more. i found the work environment stiffling and overly rigid. in the begining, in an effort to make a good impression, i set out to work harder than my colleagues, putting in full effort and asking for overtime. After some weeks, the boss took me aside and said i was setting a bad example for the other employees and upsetting people. if i was working longer hours, i could risk showing them up in front of higher management, and that would be bad for team morale. i was specifically ordered to stick to my 35 hour perscribed work week and 2 hour lunches. i had a similar conversation with the same boss when i arranged to stay at a friends and walk into work during one of the city's chronic transport strikes. again, i was told that my going out of my way to get to work was "setting a bad example," the correct behaviour was to call in the morning of the strike and simply explain that you couldnt get in. at some point, i gave up and stopped trying. like my colleagues, i came to regard my job as a minor annoyance interupting my life and proceeded to indulge in 2 hour lunches and afternoon walks in the park. but leisure time is harder to enjoy when you are poor and broke. Paris has great museums, but i could rarely afford to visit them, and the restaurants were virtually off limits to me. i wandered all over the 20 arrondisement on my long breaks, and in the evenings as i avoided having to take the RER back to the ghetto i lived in. i know pretty much all the streets of Central Paris perfectly, probably better than i will ever know London. i also spent a lot of the year reading. i bought used paper backs at Gilbert Jeune and then swapped them with friends or trader them back in when i was done with them and wanted something new to read. whilst i enjoyed reading lengthy sagas, i would have prefered to work harder, earn more money, and live better. France was clearly not for me.

that said, even though i doubt i would ever want to work in France again, i still enjoy going back for the odd visit, especially if i dont have to actually do much work with French companies. if the weather is good, i like going for a nice wander. Paris, unlike London, is centralised, so you have everything of remote interest in the 20 arrondissement, and then absolute nothingness out in the banlieu, where there is no point in going unless you are unfortunate enough to live there. but i always end up wandering down the mouffetard. some family friends live in that area, and finding myself with a free evening in the city, i agree to meet them for dinner at our usual haunt- Cafe Delmas on Place de la Contrescarpe. but i arrive in the area early and go for a wander while waiting for them. when i lived here, i used to come to visit them every few weeks or so, and, knowing that i was broke, they were always kind and would take me for dinner. in those days, compared to my horrid banlieu, the contrescarpe seemed like paradise. i felt like i was crossing between different worlds, which actually i was. after a nice evening out in the civilised part of the city, i would feel a sinking sensation in my stomach as i got on the escalator to the RER at Gare du Nord, for that is the moment you feel you are descending into the ghetto. if i had dressed up in the day and had to travel back late, i would often change my clothes before going down that escalator, for fear of attracting attention to myself. even though i had an ipod even back in those days, i would put it away before i got on the escalator, and hide it carefully in my bag, knowing it would be stolen otherwise. today as i sit in the contrescarpe, able to pay for my own drinks, i find that i still find the place very pleasant, perhaps even more so as i do not have the feeling of impending dread as i leave.