It takes all sorts to fill a river boat at Christmas time. Generally, though, you only find yourself on a cruise at Christmas if you meet one of the following criteria:
• You’ve lost a husband (husbands, compared to wives, seem surprisingly easy to misplace, the proportion of female to male widows we’ve met being at least 10-0)
• You hate your family
• Your family hates you
• You’re a loser with no friends.

I’m not sure where Cara and I fit on this list, but it seems clear that happy, well-adjusted, ‘family’ people don’t normally take cruises at Christmas. We met representatives of each type on our cruise up the Rhine River (thanks, by the way, to Air Miles, and in turn to Safeway’s incredible 10 x Air-miles rewards program at the pharmacy). We met parents who were avoiding their children; we met children who were sick of their parents; and we met a guy who wore nothing but a muscle shirt and sockless sandals for the entire trip, even outdoors in the snow. We placed him in the ‘loser with no friends’ category, though he could just as easily have occupied a category of his own: ‘scary.’ One thing unified the majority of this motley crew: they were mostly American Republicans. Not that I actually discussed politics with any of them (except with a guy named Larry who was an old hippy from California. I safely assumed we shared a few of the same opinions.) I make this clever observation because most of them were from Texas, spoke too loudly, and looked, frankly, like Republicans. We did overhear one creepy guy wish that he could set fire to Obama. Nothing like evoking Southern lynch mobs to get into the Christmas spirit.

Cara gave me a book for Christmas by Richard Dawkins subtitled ‘the Case for Evolution.’ I found myself hiding in my room to read this book like it was an instruction manual for terrorists. I was somewhat embarrassed by this self-censorship. Certainly, it would be polite to hide a book called something like “Fat and Loud: Why Americans Suck,” but this is evolution we’re talking about here. No one seriously doesn’t believe in it. Except the 40% of Americans who claim that evolution never happened. I also find myself a little confused to be reading it in the first place. It’s not like I’d ever bother reading a book called “Gravity: Could it Really Exist?” Do the Creationists have so much power that I feel like I’ve got to re-read grade four biology?

Still, it was a wonderful week of pampering, clean sheets, unlimited food, and lovely views. Sadly, our boat threw us off in Cologne (remember Fred Flinstone throwing his protesting sabre-tooth cat outside every night? Like that.) From there we took the train to Berlin where we are now spending New Year’s Eve.

And every New Year’s Eve, one asks the same question: have I gained or lost weight this year? Sadly the answer is always the same. Gained. Gained, gained, gained. We’ve been learning a lot about the relative merits of various diets on this trip. In Norway, we learned that the starvation diet works best. Nobody can afford to eat in Norway, and the food is generally not that edible anyway. In the Faroe Islands, we learned that Pylsurs-the only food that we could afford there- might look like hotdogs, but the horrible sugary mustard they’re coated in beggars the culinary imagination. Also, if you’re the type of person to be disgusted by the various bits of pig they put in hot dogs, just think what kind of offal comes from a cod. That too is an effective diet. On the other hand, we learned that one could stuff oneself to the gills, as it were, on fresh grilled seafood in Croatia and still lose weight. Amazingly, in Italy, we learned you could also eat unlimited quantities of gelato and experience the same benefit. In Egypt, we found that gastro-intestinal distress is excellent for weight loss. Alas, then we hit South Africa and an all-meat, all toffee pudding diet. Here, we packed on the pounds like we were taking lessons from the hippos. With my toothpick legs, pancake butt and ivory complexion, I now look like a medieval Virgin Mary. Things aren’t looking much better for 2010 in Berlin. Wine is five dollars a bottle, and our self-catering apartment came equipped with no other cooking utensil than a gravy spoon.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

A Tale of Two Sandals

I bought my sandals in Glasgow at Millets, the venerable English supplier of outdoor equipment. Millets is the type of store that probably supplied Sir Baden Powell and his hearty boys with canvas tents and leather underpants back in the glory days of institutionalized pederasty. Millets went bankrupt weeks after I bought my sandals, about the same time that those sandals began emitting a most awful smell. I’d wash them or leave them in the sun for a couple of days, but minutes after putting my feet back into them, the smell would return. Food, moisture and warmth: that’s all an ambitious bacterium needs to start a family, and my size thirteen feet supply lots of each. Whatever bacterial culture it was that started as a backwater banana republic in my sandals has now gained first-world superpower status and is ready to supplant Canada’s seat on the G8.

So long as I keep my sandals low to the ground and my sizeable feet firmly wedged in them, the odour is relatively diffuse, and its source is difficult to locate. This is what has saved me so far on this trip from being lynched by a righteous mob, especially once we embarked on our seventeen-day minibus tour of South Africa. My companions on this trip—5 of them squeezed into a van with faulty air conditioning—probably thought they were smelling elephant dung, and I hope they will forever recall that smell with fondness, the way we think of horse poop in Alberta. But removing my foot from one of these fetid cauldrons is like waving a bowl of unwashed tripe around the room and Cara has been making me take my sandals off before we enter any accommodations and watches me as I scrub my feet in the tub.

Two weeks into our tour, we arrived in Oudsthoorn where we bought supplies at the largest supermarket we’d seen since leaving Pretoria. Being unable to find Odour Eaters - possibly because all of the signs were in Afrikaans and I was too embarrassed to ask for them by name - I bought a bottle of Dettol, a bright orange disinfectant that comes with its own Geiger Counter and instructions to ‘consult your physician if mutations occur.’ The instructions were to dilute the Dettol with five parts water, but I smeared it straight onto the blackened soles of my sandals and let the goo settle in for several hours before rinsing the sandals in the room’s garbage bin. The Dettol masked the smell of my shoes in exactly the same way a string vest fails to mask a hairy back. Rather, it gave my shoes an eye-watering pungency, like rotten canvas soaked in gasoline, that was impossible to ignore. I wrapped my sandals in several plastic bags, bunged them under a seat, and spent the remainder of the tour barefoot in the van.

I’m looking forward to spending Christmas in Germany for many reasons, but mostly because it’s going to be cold there, and I won’t need my sandals any further. We’ve chased the summer for nearly six months now, so it’s time to greet the winter, albeit a milder one than we’re used to; my sandals will remain in Cape Town where the powerful North-Easters that blow through here might suffice to limit their destructive power .

South Africa

Game Drive
Spotting animals in the bush can be tricky, but if you look carefully, you'll be able to find a steenbok, a boar, a kudu and an elephant in the following photographs.









More Freakin' Dogs
On the fifth day of our tour of South Africa (we’re with a group of five, plus a guide, onboard a mini bus for 17 days) we were left to occupy ourselves in a tiny coastal town called Coffee Bay. The town is disparaged by some as a “hippy hangout,” but this term could only conceivably be applied to the smattering of White inhabitants who live along the beaches behind razor-wire fences. The people on the wrong side of these fences haven’t got the time to hangout. The vast majority of the area is formerly a “homeland reserve” for “natives:” it is occupied by displaced Blacks, the poorest of the poor in South Africa, who were shunted into these remote areas by White colonists, and who now eke out a subsistence raising sheep and goats on the nearly barren slopes of the Transkei.

Our group decided to leave the safe bubble of our tour van for the day, and walk the ten kilometer coastal path between Coffee Bay and the nearby settlement of Hole-in-the-Wall, another tiny White enclave. The path takes walkers to outrageously beautiful ocean views and through numerous “native” villages-loosely scattered collections of thatched adobe huts populated by shepherds. Joining us in our walk, uninvited but persistent, was KD, the hotel dog.

KD is a playful hound/pit bull cross, and was initially a welcome addition to our party, except that he soon attracted his own companion, a village stray with an aggressive streak. The two dogs together were uncontrollable, oblivious to our attempts to shoo them home or to command them; using us as their ‘backup,’ the dogs would dart in and out of the bush, harassing any animal we encountered, returning to our feet at the first sign of returned aggression. At first, the dogs were mostly interested in donkeys and cattle, animals too large to be particularly threatened, but an hour or two into our walk, we blundered into a small flock of sheep.

The dogs tore into the midst of the flock, scattering them over the hill. The aging Xhosa villager who was tending them, and who would now have to gather them again, was enraged. As we passed his hut, he stood by the side of the road, shouting and shaking his staff at us.

We tried to explain, with a desperately inadequate series of hand gestures, that the dogs didn’t belong to us, and that we’d make them go away if we could. To emphasize the point, I leveled a weak kick at KD, which I hoped would send him packing for home. Instead, he sat rapt with attention at my feet, the very picture of a doting pet, ready to obey the merest whim of his “owner.” I shrugged at the unimpressed shepherd, then walked away, KD at my heels.

Another kilometer or so along the way, the situation became much worse. KD and his companion flushed a goat and her kid from the bush, and fell upon the kid. We threw rocks and shouted, and the kid managed to struggle to its feet and flee into the bush, followed closely by the dogs. A few minutes later, the dogs emerged from the bush, licking their chops. The villagers have next to nothing, and now ‘our’ dogs had killed one of their goats. I have no idea what would have happened had the villagers witnessed this wasteful attack.

The dogs seemed sated by their adventure, and I was able to grab KD by the collar and fashion a leash from my camera strap. With KD on a leash, the village stray also fell into line, and although we had no means of securing him, he kept close to us. For the remaining five kilometers to Hole-in-the-Wall, KD, the village stray and I walked arm in leash like old companions. KD probably felt chastened. I felt like I was chained to a smoking gun.

Arriving at the Hole-in-the-Wall hotel, we tied KD to a fence and walked away, leaving instructions with the proprietor that if our hosts in Coffee Bay wanted KD back, they’d have to come and get him. KD bayed pitifully, but nothing could soften our hearts. Several hours later, after finishing our dinner at our hotel back in Coffee Bay, we found KD at his dog dish. He looked at us suspiciously, tucked his tail between his legs, and loped sullenly out of sight.

Rome to Egypt

I have genetic predisposition to choking, something I share with my mother. I’ll choke on anything, pepper especially, but I’ve been known to choke half to death on my own saliva. So I always figured I’d die by choking on something stupid like a lentil. But the universe reminds me every so often that there are many stupid ways to die, and that I have no idea which of them is going to do the job for me.

We ended our month in Italy with a few nights in Rome. Great hotel, but because in Rome it’s still 25 degrees during the day, the management hadn’t turned on the central heating, so a little too cold at night. There was a little wall-mounted electric heater above the sink in the bathroom, useless except to heat the bathroom itself, but I figured that I could improve things in the bedroom by removing the heater from the wall and propping it up outside the bathroom. After unscrewing the heater (using my Leatherman Tool, of course) and unraveling a length of wire from the wall, I found that I could at least get the heater onto the floor of the bathroom, facing the bedroom, thus warming things up nicely.

It wasn’t very intelligent of me to decide to have a bath in the circumstances, but it isn’t often that we’ve been lucky enough to have a tub in our rooms on this trip. I say ‘tub’, but what I really mean is a fixture about twice the size of the bidet (I’d like to note at this point, that in the entire month we’ve spent in Italy, I haven’t made a single joke about bidets. They worry me a little, so I ignore them.) The idea is that one sits in it, while using a hand-held nozzle to spray oneself down. While I was preoccupied with trying acquire the skill of washing one’s bottom at the same time as one is sitting upon it, I lost track of the precarious bit of folding glass that I think was intended to be a shower curtain, and didn’t notice that I was spewing gallons of water out onto the floor of the bathroom. By the time I’d got the soap from my eyes, as it were, I’d managed to flood the bathroom with a good half inch of water, enough to submerge the feet of my code-violating heating system.

I gallantly asked Cara to place a wooden chair in the bathroom and then stand on it to yank the cord from the wall, while I stood as still as possible so as not to create waves that could reach the element. No-one was hurt, but I have sent the Darwin Awards my stats to save them time when I am eventually included in their literature.

We’re now in Egypt, sort of. We’re staying in a four-star resort at the Hilton in Sharm el Sheikh. The purpose of this resort is to persuade Russian and British tourists that they haven’t actually left home, but that it’s miraculously become really hot outside. The illusion is pretty good, so long as you can accept that bacon is made from chickens rather than pigs.

Cara and I find ourselves in the unfamiliar position of being the least understood English speakers here. The Egyptian resort employees are so used to the Pidgin English spoken by the Russians (and the British, come to think of it) that they understand them with ease. American and Canadian tourists are so rare that our accents cause complete bafflement every time we open our mouths, even to ask for drinks. I asked the bar tender for a guava juice for Cara and an apple brandy for me, both of which items are on the list of six ‘all-inclusive’ drinks. The bar tender looked so confused that I pointed out the two items on the menu (written in English, of course), and he understood completely: that I wanted an apple brandy made with guava juice instead of apples. He had no problem at all understanding the Russian tourist who wanted a sextuple pina colada, hold the coconut and pineapple juice, at 11:00 am this morning.

I realize that this blog so far is rife with stereotypes, and that this will make it somewhat less certain that I will win anything at all from the Nobel committee next year.

The Truth About Paco

Tuscany

When I grow up, I’m going to be Italian. I remember thinking something along these lines when I turned thirty, except then I thought I’d grow up to be Colin Farrell. When I realized that Colin Farrell was nearly a decade younger than I, it hit home that some men grow up to be Colin Farrell while others grow up to be more like Rick Steves.

Still, once can always hope, and maybe I’ll eventually grow up to be the fifty-something Italian fellow we saw chatting amiably to his neighbors in Siena’s Piazza Il Campo early one morning after a night celebrating this year’s Palio di Siena winner: “I am Italian,” he said “ I have caroused manfully all night, and have not been home this day. But you will agree, I am beautiful, no? If you like, I will carouse with you today, but you seem tired; perhaps you should eat something.” I’m sure that’s what he said.

This Palio thing: Siena is built, physically and culturally, around the Palio, an insane horse race (ten horses, three times around Il Campo) that has been run every year since medieval Italians wore armor and went around poking each other with lances. The race itself is run in August, but It’s now mid October, and the victors are still celebrating. On our first of ten nights in Siena, this year’s winning “Contrada,” the Owls, were holding an enormous celebratory supper in the piazza. We didn’t know it, but the supper was just the beginning…

Each night, for all ten nights we were in Siena, we were treated to the same scene directly under our apartment window, sometimes at midnight, sometimes much, much later. There were subtle variations each night; sometimes the boys would dress up as girls, sometimes the girls would dress up as boys, but always the same song, which translates roughly as “we are winners; the rest of you are girly-men.” Six weeks after the event. For ten nights in a row. The Sienese are charming, gracious, kind, friendly, and totally unsportsmanlike. Despite the sleepless nights, Siena is now my favorite city.

We are now staying for a few days in the heart of Tuscany, in a tiny hill town called Radda-in-Chianti, as in Chianti wine. It’s somewhat surreal seeing the actual grapes that actually go into actual bottles of actual Chianti; and then actually drinking a great deal of that Chianti. Like meeting the cow in the field- in the flesh as it were- that you’ll be eating for supper instead of in a styrofoam package.

Many millions of words have been written on the extraordinary beauty of Tuscany by authors gifted and not so much, so I won’t add any to the glut, except to say that even the most gifted of them fall short in their ability to convey the beauty of this place. As for me, my enjoyment of it is only slightly tempered by the presence- here at our little vineyard apartment-of Paco. Paco is a six-foot-seven canine of a breed conjured up by the Italians for the purpose of eating elephants. He weighs at least three hundred pounds and could easily be a linebacker for any American football team known for its enormous linebackers. He has a bark that could silence Big Ben. I am afraid of Paco, and I am not comforted by our hostesses’ cheerful repetition of the phrase “ni mange, ni mange” every time we encounter this fearsome predator. I believe she is telling me that Paco does not intend to eat me; she could just as easily be saying “Paco has not eaten his elephant today. Run!”

Hvar

Prior to arriving here in Hvar, we spent the week at another of Croatia's more-than one-thousand islands called Korcula in a little town called Vela Luka. For Cara, this was a week for welcome indolence, daily walks along the sea paths into town, and lots of reading. For me, it was a week of diving, which in Croatia means, mostly, playing with octopii.

I say "playing" of course in the same way a pre civil-war Virginian cotton plantation boss might claim to have had a "few Africans over for dinner and light entertainment." The harassment of Croatian octopii is this century's greatest civil rights issue.

The trick with octopii is to coax them out of their hiding spots by wiggling your fingers in a fishy fashion. Then, when the hapless creature investigates, you grab it and pass the terrified, ink-squirting creature from diver to diver for close inspection. ("You say they 'came from above, John, and probed you?' " says a concerned octopod therapist in a post-scuba encounter session. "Would you like to Reality Test this one, John?")

Octopii are extraordinary, curious creatures. You can approach them openly if your movements are slow, and you are polite. They will often tolerate--and even seem to enjoy--a gentle rub between the eyes. When an octopus grows tired of this, it'll glide a tentacle up and wipe your finger from its head. You can also place a small shell or stone at the entrance to a hiding spot, and in a few moments a timid hand will reach out and take the gift into its hole for further inspection. This is why it is wrong to eat them, and why the delicious octopus salad I had at Vino's Grill still troubles me.

Which brings me to this murderous fellow...



While we were dining on the harbour front we heard a sickening wet slap on the pavement. We turned to see the fellow above haul an octopus from the water and bash it to death on the concrete in front of the horrified yachters standing about attempting to look chic in their blue-and-white-striped shirts and bottles of expensive Croation wine, it now dawning on them that this is how their meal for the evening was beginning its journey to their plates. The next morning, we caught this fellow going for coffee and snapped his picture for the coming Day of Retribution (I've just finished reading "A Tale of Two Cities." If there is a octopod Madame Defarge, may she soon forget my goggled face.)

It is my temperament to look skeptically upon things, which is but one of the reasons I would make a bad travel writer, which is a profession devoted to capturing and sharing the romance of a place in order to make readers at home feel inadequate. But skepticism has only a slight hold here in Hvar. Yes, the harbour is crowded with yachts piloted by people who are wealthier than it is morally acceptable to be. Yes, it's difficult to see the ancient stucco walls behind the rows of restaurants and knick-knack shops. But the walls are nevertheless there in varying shades of ochre; rich and buttery in the Adriatic mid-day sun, pink and glowing as the sun sets. The marble paving stones have tiled the piazza for twelve centuries and have been polished smooth and gleaming white by the feet of sailors, merchants, warriors and tourists alike.

We are staying here in Hvar with Virginia, Mateo and his sister Maria. Maria in loose clogs, spends the day clopping around the courtyard, talking to herself, singing tunelessly along to the radio (what's big here is a revamped version of 'Super Trooper' by ABBA) and sometimes yelling at the stray cat who claims this place as her own. Mateo makes wine and "schnapps" from his own grapes, and olive oil from his own olives. The pensione reeks with the yeasty smell of fermenting grapes. By day, Mateo exercises his alchemical arts in the basement, and by night he cooks us whatever fish his friend has caught for him that day. Maria cooks the side dishes, which Mateo always invites us to admire at the end of a meal--'The Salada Maria! Good!'--so that she is included in the praise we heap on him for his skill at the grill. Virginia-who speaks English with a French accent, having spent a month in Southern Ontario as an au pair- breezes in twice a day to coo at her turtles and guinea pigs and to feed the chickens and two donkeys that reside in the back. As their only guests, we have fallen into the rhythm of this family; we have given up our itinerary, and do as they tell us to do, and eat as they tell us to eat. Which so far has not yet included octopus.

Lopud Island, Croatia

Most children who grow up with cats, if they have a slightly cruel streak, at some point will probably apply little strips of sticky tape to their pet's ears and paws. A cat that is abused in this manner becomes instantly immobilized with horror, much as you'd react if you found yourself suddenly covered in raw sewage. They won't return to any semblance of themselves until the tape is removed and a formal apology offered.

This is how I feel about sunscreen. There are times during the day that I could tear my own skin off. I mention it only because I want my friends who are now teaching to know that a day spent here...

...is not all calamari and cold beer. We, too, are suffering.

We three (Kim Clayton joined us a few days ago) are now on a small island called Lopud which is just a kilometre or so off the Croatian coast. Lopud is gorgeous, Mediterranean,and car-free. The village of Lopud, cast like a handful of stones along the coast, dots the narrow beach for a few hundred metres. Rough, paving-stone lanes bounded by crumbling stone walls, draped with lemon, pomegranate and fig trees wind into the steep hills behind the village, mostly terminating at tiny, crumbling chapels. Walking through the village, you pass modest, soviet-era hotels, long abandoned and ruined, among which a new breed of young, hip, hoteliers offer clean rooms, wi-fi and fluent English. A walk into the hills takes you to the ancient fortress walls, slumping into heaps of overgrown rock.

As we progress through our year, I have been draughting an increasingly onerous Constitution to govern how we shall go about the business of travelling. The first law on this document is "Always go for a sure thing." There might very well be a nicer, cleaner restaurant somewhere down the street, but often there isn't, and a hungry Bruce is just no fun to be around. Cara tolerates these edicts with equanimity, just as long as it's clear that she has the authority to repeal any law at any time.

Anyway, my most recent addition to this document is "Bruce will no longer take any form of travel that includes the adjective 'night.'" The night train from Paris to Venice should have been romantic. It was, instead, a steamy six-berth compartment stuffed with belching, shirtless, Belgian youth. The night ferry from Italy to Croatia seemed promising, too. Except that there were no cabins and we spent the night in the so-called bar sittting in upright plastic seats. Except that the large Italian woman sitting on top of us began vomiting. Except that the ferry staff, suffering from seasickness themselves, wanted to go to bed and refused to assist anyone to clean up the mess and told us we'd have to live with it until morning.

Cara's tenacity in these situations always astounds me. While I was thinking that my only option for the night would be to stand politely in a corner, occasionally dabbing at my soiled shoes, Cara roused a young attendant from her stupor and demanded that we be allowed to sleep on the couches in the locked restaurant. Not even the surly Italian waiter who opened the doors at five A.M. to start breakfast dared to disturb our righteous sleep.

Long time no blog. We’ve had minimal internet access, and what little access we did have was committed to a long-distance war with UPS. I could be dull, and explain the whole thing, or I could just ask you to trust me when I say that if UPS and all its ugly brown trucks and all its ugly-brown-shorts wearing employees were to burst into flame all at once, it would be no bad thing. Even if you hated Tom Hanks in “Castaway,” go FedEx the next time you need something mailed.






Since the last entry, we’ve been to Glasgow, Edinburgh, London, Normandy, Paris and Venice.


Glasgow has a whole lot of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, which is nice; but, really, when you spend time around CRM, you realize that he really doesn’t like people very much. His genius is unquestionable, but it wasn’t so expansive that it included “cushions” or “people with bums.”




The fellow who invented bagpipes didn’t like people much either, but unlike Charles, he did understand cushions. A well-filled bagpipe would make an excellent pillow so long as you could keep it quiet. As Cara and I were leaving Glasgow, we arranged to have ourselves piped out of town. Quite special.







Britain, in general, was like a homecoming. I don’t mean because I have Old Albion in my genes; it’s because the British know how to form queues. Scandinavians don’t know much about queues. They’re Vikings, so they don’t smile, ask permission or wait their turn. If you dig an open grave anywhere North of 60 degrees, it’ll be immediately crammed with Scandinavians who, seeing an open space, will hurl themselves at it just so they can get through it before anyone else. The British, in contrast, queue with astonishing precision.



To illustrate: while in Edinburgh, we queued for a Fringe show, and the line began across the street and about a dozen yards from the entrance meaning that the back of the line was actually directly in front of the entrance while the front was some thirty people beyond it. In Iceland--had anyone been foolish enough to have begun a queue in the first place--the last people in line would simply have done the logical thing: run like hell for the door the second it opened before any of the luckless buggers in the front could figure out what was going on. In Britain, however, the most astonishing thing happened: when the attendant opened the door, the line bent double in one synchronized movement, crossed the street, and entered in precisely the correct order. It was like an Esther Williams movie. I nearly cried.

And if you think Canadians like to say “sorry” you should hear how the British go on about it. It’s like they’re still feeling guilty about the whole Empire thing, and they want you to know that, sincerely, just because they momentarily blocked your passage, they’re not going to install a Governor General in your country. Promise.


Now, let’s be honest, shall we? I know that many of you are just about to head back to the classroom after what I hear was a pretty crappy summer. You have my deepest sympathies, and for that reason, I won’t tell you about Paris or Venice. Yet. In the meantime, I’ll be thinking of you all, and I wish you the best semester yet.

Cara and Bruce climb Ben Nevis

The following is a photo montage of our attempt to climb Ben Nevis, Britain's highest peak.

OK, so it wasn't quite that bad, but we still didn't make it to the top. Still, we had a fine walk the day before. Pictures of "The Ben" to follow.

Norway

Given the kind of things the Norwegians like to eat, it's wise to be cautious, particularly if the food you're about to taste is called "Rommegrot." It wouldn't be unreasonable to assume this translates into something like "rotted whale snot." This is Cara eating Rommegrot, which we bought from a cheery grandmother at a Trondheim farmer's market. It turns out that Rommegrot is a very tasty dish of soured cream, butter and sugar. They don't measure this stuff in calories, but in kilojoules of energy. They power cities on it.

Our reason for being in Trondheim was to board a charming coastal ferry called the Hurtigruten. Put on your best Swedish Chef voice and pronounce this like you're doing your best to make fun of the Norwegians. You still won't make it sound funny enough. That's Norway for you: they think they're vikings, but they're not. They're Muppets. The coastal Norwegians are fond of the Hurtigruten since it's cute and it delivers them the mail. For tourists, the Hurtigruten delivers superb views of the Norwegian coastline, though this is really just a preview of Norway's best scenery.

We spent two days hiking in Bergen. A steep well-paved mountain path leaves from the edge of the city and takes you within a couple of hours to some astonishing views.

There's always a cat to make friends with in every place we visit. This one joined us at picnic lunch in Bergen. When he saw we weren't sharing, he popped into the bushes and returned a few minutes later with his own, still kicking, lunch which he sat down to eat in front of us. Very companionable.

What a party!

The fellow in the photo looks like he's just stepped out of Faroe Island Fantasy: Buffet and Exhibition. He hasn't, though; he's just some guy standing in a doorway having a smoke. On St. Olaf's day, almost all of the Faroe Islanders put these traditional costumes on and wander around town. They don't do anything, in particular; they just hang out looking fantastic.

Actually, they mostly wander around pushing prams. The Faroe Islands are remote, cold, wet and, from a teenager's perspective, pretty dull. Nevertheless, despite being a population exporter, the Faroese seem to be breeding like rabbits. Everywhere you look is a couple barely out of their mid-twenties already towing two or three children. It's clearly a robust culture.

St. Olaf's day is a blast. It begins with rowing races in the harbour and then, like a virus, the fun spreads into town, and by late afternoon the streets are packed with drunk Faroese. They look so elegant in their tailored costumes, but they're all pissed--even the ones pushing the prams. On every street corner is a different band: brass bands, rock bands, folk bands and Salvation Army bands, all blaring away at the same time.


The Faroese don't do any of this for tourists. They are largely oblivious to our presence, and will not acknowledge our desperate, though timid, attempts to ingratiate ourselves. Even though we wander around town nodding and smiling like bobble-head dolls, no-one will flirt with us. I grow so shy that I stop trying to take proper photographs and just start shooting from the hip at anything that seems interesting.

St. Olaf's day in Torshavn

My dad is a very good landscape painter, but he tends to choose deliberately Freudian images-- lots of tunnels and chasms with things going into them. I couldn't help thinking of his paintings as we took a very intimiate boat tour of some Faroe island cliffs.

We're here in the Faroe islands just days before St. Olaf's day. This is the Stampede, Thanksgiving and Easter all rolled into one: the Stampede because men and women who work in banks are suddenly kitted out in traditional gear. Not stetsons and boots, but rather fetching black coats with lots of shiny buttons; Thanksgiving because this is a time when Faroese families return from abroad (many, it seems, emmigrate to Denmark for work) to spend a few days with the old folks and eat whatever they eat. We haven't figured what it might be yet, but I'm sure it involves salt and fish; Easter because it's a religious holiday, and there's lots of sermonizing and such going on. 80% of the Faroese belong to something called the "State Church." There's really no separation of church and state here; tomorrow is the first day of parliament, and it involves parliamentarians and clergymen alike walking to the parliament building to open the doors.

Actually, there's not a lot of separation between the state and anything else here in Torshavn (the capital of Faroe). That little cluster of sod-roofed houses in front of the row boat is the parliament. In Iceland, they boast that you can look up the prime minister's number in the phone book and chat with her. Here, you could pop in for tea. Or fish cakes.



For those of us who are passing through, the real attraction of the islands is, well, the islands.

Ouch

It should not be possible to get sunburned in Iceland. It shouldn't be possible, especially, when you're soaking in the Blue Lagoon, a milky blue hot pool shrouded in about three feet of mist. It really shouldn't be possible on a cloud-covered, freezing cold day in the Blue Lagoon. But I'm English, which means that it happened, and two days after leaving Iceland I have a pulsating red memento of the trip on my back. Before the invention of silver nitrate, it was well known that an Englishman could be used rather than a photo-sensitive plate to capture images; you'd just toss him in front of the scene and his ultra sensitive skin would just pick it right up. Skin the fellow, and you'd have a nice image to hang on your wall. Kind of like a sepia-tone photograph, but redder.

We're in the Faroe Islands right now, which is probably the most beautiful place I've ever seen. More on them later.

Iceland is full of this kind of thing: holes in the Earth spewing hot stuff. Fantastic. If you listen carefully, you can hear a greatly excited Bruce exclaim "Oh Boy!" What an expressive fellow.

Another thing Iceland is known for is puffins.



Puffins, as you can see from the photo, are tiny birds about the size of a moderately big bumble bee. They're very common on certain islands just outside the Reykjavik harbour, but even more common on the dinner menus of various restaurants around town. I have a sneaking suspicion that puffins are not actually eaten by the Icelandic people; they just think it's funny to feed them to the tourists.

You can get to know a people by how they present themselves in their advertisements. Really, there's only one big advertiser in Reykjavik-- "66 Degrees" clothing company. Everywhere you turn, there's a poster featuring one of its brawny models posed against a steely grey sky, looking really tough, sore or cold. They like this image of themselves, the Icelanders do. Freezing, pissed-off Vikings. Even the little girl they feature looks like she would happily split you in two with an axe if you so much a mention "capris and a nice light cotton t-shirt."

Voyage on the Queen Mary 2

After three days in Boston—two and three quarters of which we spent without luggage— we left our hotel in Boston amidst the throngs of people heading to the July 4th celebrations on the Charles River. We’d been told it would be nearly impossible to get a cab on the 4th, so we left for the cruise terminal several hours earlier than necessary. Far from finding ourselves in the Queen’s lap of luxury, we found ourselves in a vast warehouse: steel walls and girders, no amenities, no food or drink, and only a few metal fold-up chairs for the dozen or so elderly passengers who were milling about waiting for clearance to board the ship. The Queen Mary 2 only docks at Boston once a year, so she berths at a commercial wharf and pier that is not equipped to handle anything that hasn’t arrived in a steel cargo box. Still, we had a pleasant nap in a little park on the shore with our luggage while watching the Boston harbor police conduct drills. They’re small, these police, all of them under 5’6” and all of them rotund. I expect that if you’re in the Boston police service and you fail your physical, you end up on a boat. I guess they figure the longest you have to run as a harbor officer is the distance from bow to stern of an average ship, which isn’t much even on a mammoth boat like ours.

There is only one question that matters when it comes to a big ocean liner like the Queen Mary 2: just how big is this thing when you park it next to various well known landmarks? It’s an obsession with Cunard, the owner of the ship, and you see images everywhere of this mega-boat and its predecessors balanced upright on their rudders next to the Empire States Building, or sitting aslant on the Great Pyramids at Giza, or parked on 59th avenue at the bottom of Central Park in New York. And yes, they really are huge. They’re immense. We get it, you have a really, really big ship, Mr. Cunard. In a fight between the Queen Mary and the Sears Roebuck building, I’m backing the Queen, no doubt .

The Queen Mary 2 is the grandest of all ocean liners; which is to say, she’s the biggest one they’ve ever made. Really, though, it’s not quite right to call her grand: all around us are references to the really grand ships, the pioneers that set the standards for elegance and style in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The QM2, though technologically unrivalled, is a pastiche of these older, more revered ancestors, long since sunk or salvaged. The Queen is grand in the way a really nice convention center is grand. Still, it’s really nice. There are 1300 people working on the boat to satisfy the needs of 2400 passengers, and satisfy them they do.



We’ve seen a lot of pictures of the Cunard ships and their occupants of the last two centuries. The passengers are almost invariably the picture of Victorian vigor and youth: hale young men manfully posing around the freezing pool or grappling with Jules Verne exercise machines, elegant young ladies hosting equally elegant, and always chaperoned, young suitors in fire-lit staterooms. Perhaps crossing the Atlantic a century ago was a more formidable business, suitable only for the young and the trim. But now, it attracts an older and decidedly sleepier crowd. The majority of the passengers on this ship don’t so much attend shows as find different venues to sleep in throughout the day. The phrase “exit strategy” has an entirely new meaning aboard the Queen referring mostly to how aging men with aging prostates will situate themselves in the theatres.

This is Cara looking remarkably pleased to be standing upon about 15000 corpses in King's Chapel cemetary, Boston. Don't be fooled by the nicely laid-out stones: those are for show. Underneath those stones is essentially the graveyeard equivalent of "Tetrus." Bodies stacked ten deep, often buried standing. Very cosy if you're dead.

Every Canadian, at some point in their lives, will be shafted by Air Canada. It's a rite of passage like circumcision or colonoscopy, but much less pleasant. After three days in Boston, we're checking out in one hour, just two hours after Cara's luggage was delivered to us this morning. Our successful reunion with our luggage had nothing to do with Air Canada's diligent customer service, by the way. You see, when you call Air Canada to say "I still have no luggage, and tomorrow is Independance Day in America, and the streets will be closed, so could I please have my luggage tonight," they say "Actually miss, my calendar tells me Independence Day is on July 3rd, so there's no problem." Really, they do. Because they're in India, not in Boston. Apparently, in India, they don't make very good calendars. Anyway, our luggage is here only because Cara did some remarkable detective work and determined that her bag was at a Japanese language school in Andover. And Mr. Y Mori's bag is here with us. Did I say "every Canadian gets shafted by Air Canada"? Apparently, Air Canada's ambitions are more global than that.

Apart from our increasingly fetid underwear, we've had a very pleasant stay in Boston. We watched the dress rehearsal for the Boston Pops last night, we did a ton of walking, learned all about America and visited MIT, the SAIT of the South.

Itinerary

This is our travel itinerary so far: everything is set until September when we're going to be a little less planned.

Wednesday, July 1: Depart
Our trip begins on Wednesday, July 1, when we fly from Calgary to Boston.

July 1 - 3: Boston, USA
We have three days in Boston, staying at John Jeffries House. We're going to be staying right across from the Boston Harbour during "harbour days," so lots of American bands, re-enactments and ceremonies.

July 4 - 11: Boston to Southhampton via New York
We'll be travelling on the Cunard Line, Queen Mary 2 "Eastbound Transatlantic" voyage (hence the name of our blog). We stop for one day in New York, and then on to Southhampton, England.

July 12 and 13: South Coast of England

We'll be wandering around the South Coast for a couple of days, visiting the spots that Bruce used to visit as a lad. We'll be staying at the Spring Cottage, Felpham, West Sussex

July 14 - July 17: Oxfordshire, England

Bruce's parents live in a town outside of Oxford called Abingdon. We'll be staying with them for a few days before we head North.

July 18-August 06: Iceland, Faroe Islands, Norway

We fly from London to Reykjavik on July 18. We'll have five full days in Iceland.

On July 24 we'll make our way to the Faroe Islands, a small archipeligo about 800 kilometres from Reykjavik. We'll be staying at the Skansin Guesthouse in Tórshavn.

We leave the Faroe Islands on Wed. July 29 and fly to Oslo, Norway

In Norway we'll be following a very popular tourist route that combines an inland train tour and a coastal ferry trip to cover Norway's highlights. In fact, the tour is called Norway in a Nutshell, and you can see it at http://www.fjordtours.com/hurtigruten/

The tour in Norway proceeds as follows:

July 30: Trondheim, Norway
July 31: on Hurtigruten (boat)
Aug 1-Aug 3: Bergen, Norway
Aug 4: Flam
Aug 5 and 6: Oslo

August 7: Glasgow, Scotland
We leave Norway on August 07, flying from Oslo to Glasgow. We'll spend the day in Glasgow before heading to Glen Nevis for a few days of hiking.

August 8-11: Glen Nevis, Scotland
We'll be staying at Achintee Farm at the foot of Glen Nevis. We'll spend a day on the Jacobite Steam Train and then a few days of hiking on Glen Nevis (which is the flat part at the bottom of Ben Nevis.) Our host at the Achintee Farm disagrees: he thinks we'll be holed up at the local pub while it pisses with rain the whole time. That's Scottish tourism for you.

August 12: Glasgow, Scotland
We return to Glasgow en route to Edinburgh. We'll be staying at Adelaide's Guest House.

August 14-19: Edinburgh, Scotland
We're mostly in Edinburgh for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and to spend a large portion of our budget. We'll be at the Edinburgh Central Hostel.

August 20,21: London, England
We'll have two days in London, Aug. 20 and 21. Among other things, we'll take the Riverboat to Kew Gardens

August 22, Orpington, England
On Aug. 22, for the first time in decades, we'll be re-uniting with Bruce’s extended family. All three of them.

August 23-28: Normandy, France
We'll be staying with Bruce's parents, siblings and nephew in Normandy. We'll be at Le Quesnay, a 17th century stone farmhouse. We're given to understand that the plumbing has been updated since then.

August 29-30: Giverney

On Aug. 29 and 30, Cara and Bruce will leave the Watsons and stay near Monet's famous garden in Giverney. We'll be at Le Coin Des Artistes.

August 31-Sept.1 Paris

We'll have two days in Paris, Aug 31 - Sept 1, en route to Venice

Sept. 02-05: Venice
We'll take a sleeper train from Paris on Sept. 2, arriving in Venice on September 03. On September 04, Kim will join us in Venice. We'll probably stay for a day or two and then move on to Croatia

Sept. 05 -?: Croatia
We haven't planned Croatia much at this point. We'll be with Kim Clayton for about a week(some of you will remember Kim, and some of you will remember that she is Rosalie Pederson's sister), probably touring the Dalmation Coast. Once Kim leaves us, we'll find somewhere in Croatia to settle down for a few weeks. Kim, Cara and I will light a candle on September 07 to honour my soon-to-be-fallen comrades as the new semester begins at SAIT.

That's it for the summer. The rest of our trip is tentatively scheduled as follows:

SEPTEMBER: Croatia
OCTOBER: Italy
NOVEMBER: Italy / Egypt
DECEMBER: somewhere for skiing / German Christmas markets
JANUARY: South Africa
FEBRUARY: Spain
MARCH: Portugal (including Azores Islands, Madeira)
APRIL: United Kingdom
MAY: United Kingdom
JUNE: France