Day 27/63

Here I am, down under. I am sure my husband and I have never been so happy to see civilization in our lives. We dumped our luggage to wait for a room in our hotel, the Menzies in Sydney and got on with the sightseeing. This is my first ever day in Australia and I wasn’t even out of the taxi when I realized that these people are very, very happy with their lives here, far away from Europe.

It was supposed to be the only sunny day during our three-day experience in Sydney, which meant that we really wanted to take all the pictures possible and do museums and things later on. We took a walk through the beautiful botanical gardens, on the spot where the convict boats first landed on Sydney and started to chop through the trees. Of course the bark and the size of the trees itself was so huge that they could only chop out a layer, after which it all crew back. Some of those trees are still there, impressively.

For a European, this is an alien location. It’s also my second other continent, so in the same way as I felt when landing to Xi’An (my first encounter with Asian soil) in 2006, I felt the presence of another world. The trees are huge. The birds are all alien looking and even the bats are out there – on broad daylight! After a while, touring around the garden we got the first look at the Opera house, which is a gorgeous sight, and I bet my life it looked much better to me, after a week in the dodgy Shanghai with all the mud and the junk all around.

The reason why the Opera house is a shape of shells, was cleverly picked up by the Danish architect who designed it. They say that when the British first came with their convict ships, they met a sea of shells on the shores as the aboriginals had been piling them up there, presumaply after eating what was inside. We picked out our tickets for the ‘Mikado’ for Saturday night.

After the whole breath taking sight of the attraction number one in Sydney, we decided to head for a lunch in the Rocks. We browsed through the shops in the harbor area… The Australian tat is basically: Boomerangs, Digeridoos, Aboriginal paintings and patterns on clothes, bags, coasters and fridge magnets. Australians seem to be even slightly more obsessed with magnets than the rest of the world.

I find their language to be difficult to understand. It’s the vowels that does it for me. But I am trying to get a hang of it. It’s so strange to be in a country where suddenly everyone understands what you are saying… And you have to use knife and fork instead of chopsticks. We got a pub lunch with some fish’n’chips just to make sure we are back in the mother land… Or at least somewhere that was conquered by James Cook for the British.

We had a well-needed nap in the hotel before making a lovely trip to Manly with one of the ferries that leave from the harbor. Manly is a small piece of land between two beaches and you can tell that it’s a wild, beach lifestyle there. The sea was too cold for me and I didn’t bring a towel anyways, but at least I can say I went a beach! The Australians were canooing and surfing away. We had a gorgeous Indian for dinner – but forgot what you should remember: Restaurants have a BYO policy (Bring Your Own) for wine, so you bring it and they make you pay a small fee to cork it. I know it’s weird, but I can see how that is much better than spending a fortune in a restaurant for booze.

Just one day in Australia, but I am already, totally in love with it. Everything they say about it is true: People are just happy. Pure and simple. They are like Europeans, but they have evolved. You know how Allan Ball took the Sookie Stackhouse novels and created True Blood – that’s what I mean. Take the good parts, dump the shit ones and make an entire big world around it.

Day 9/63 of the RTW

We’ve been in Japan for ten days. Doesn’t seem like, but so it is. Today was our extreme Hokkaido sightseeing day. In the morning after well deserved sea chicken (tuna-mayo) onegiri (ricecake) breakfast, we head for the hill. There was a couple of shrines, a statue of samurai and two churches, one orthodox, one supposedly christian. The Christians were having some sort of Sunday morning shindig, in which they played very gay songs, including the jungle song from Lion King… Good way to start a day.

It was looking like a rainy day at that point, so we had museums planned. We got to the previous Russian consulate, in which, in a very Japanese fashion, you can dress up into a russian woman… This meant BIG dresses and hair extensions with tacky jewelry and your picture taken with the reluctant husband collection who try to hide when the Barok concert is going on in the main hall… Quite amusing as it was, I felt like I was not here to see what the Russians are like… I can do that back home!

Next was the British consulate… The tat shop sold tacky tea cups and London tea shirts. This I can do even easier at home: Next! We had lunch at the harbour in a Viking restaurant. I am pretty sure that the selection of food had nothing to do with the vikings, but it was one of those ‘all you can eat in 60 minutes’ deals… The selection was awesome for a Finn as you can imagine. My favourite was calamari stuffed with rice while my husband happily showed down Japanese curry down his throat. There was tons of different kinds of scampi, prawns, tentacles, octobus, you name it… And sushi as well. I was quite a happy Finn after this fest.
After lunch our mission lead us to the ‘Ainu’ museum, which is a museum of Northern people on the area. This means basically the escimos of the northern islands. I don’t know why but I find these people utterly fasinating. Their patterns of clothing decorations are their very own, they are no Japanese, Nore Chinese, Nor Russian. If I were a historian, I think I would probably do research on the Northern cultures. Somehow those have always facinated me… There was a wooden tray been sold in the gift shop, but was not mad enough to pay 120 euros for it, however cool it would be to have an Ainu plate at one’s home…

Museum number one after lunch was quite dull. We have so far figured out that if the Japanese call something ‘a memorial hall’, it means ‘like a museum, but we’ve ran out of things to show’ so there is probably a video, some posters and possibly some chairs to sit on… In any case, at this point we realised that we were just going to do the whole Hakodate in one day and head to Sapporo tomorrow.

Quick trip back to the hotel and then off to the great, huge pentagon fortress on the other side of the town. Hakodate has a good system of trams, so we took one of those. There is a tower looking over the pentagon, which all and all was a great experience, even if it was just a view and some gifto shoppus. I bought some samurai tat to be sent home and came to the conclusions that some things *are* too huge to fit even to my wide angle lens. Perhaps I will get a fisheye sometime…

We also visited the actual fortress and the park that is in it, and the museum of Northern seas that was next to the tower. Museum of Northern seas was great value for money: Real stuffed Polar bear, Valrus, Seals, Fish… You name it. My previous surname had the word ‘Kuutti’ (means a baby seal in Finnish) in it, so I am always overly enthusiastic about seals. They are so cute!
Sun was going down when we reached the Hakodate station and I finally got my two weeks rail pass. We bought tickets to Sapporo for tomorrow morning at 8:30. It is three hours one way, but as it’s not costing us anymore money, I thought – why not? It’s unlikely that I’ll be in Hokkaido very much in my life. If not at all after this. Even if my husband and I bought thought that we’d happily live here. I think Finns would be happy to visit – it’s cool enough and there’s not as many people as in the southern parts of Japan… Who knows, maybe one day.

El Greco is our hotel by the very Beach in Rethymnon, east from Chania. The hotel is four-five star and is designed to entertain their visitors, preferably so that they never leave the hotel on their trip. There is no need. The breakfast, lunch and dinner are served with fabulous variation of buffet Greek food. Lots of Greek salad to serve mummies, stakes and fries to serve daddys, macaroni and cheese to serve the kids and possibly 12 choises of pudding, including chocolate mousse, tiramisu, meloni, greek yogurt with honey – even its own ice cream cubing possibility. After browsing the salads, I find olives and feta. I know what I’ll be having for the whole week. It’s going to be both easy and hard to keep one’s diet in here – on the other hand, there’s good salad options, but then you are spoilt for choise with all the tastes around the huge area of food…

This is a holiday destination for many, but a work for me. I would probably never pay for this kind of place for a holiday – Even if swimming, eating and sunbathing might be someone’s dream, I’m a Finn with a milky white skin, all my skin does in the sun is burn. Therefore, and for reasons of interest, I would much rather climb mountain, shoot temples or statues with my camera or find some interesting people talk to. Even to sweat like a pig kicking high, rather than sitting in the sun. Don’t get me wrong, I love that work has sent me here for a week, I am lucky, because I get to be here as my job and I don’t have to choose it as a holiday. The sea is stunnigly beautiful in colors and I cannot remember the last time I swam in one.

The hotel has its own shop that sells pretty much everything, including make-up and german novels. I can see this is not a Finn-resort, they would never pay these prices. The cost of a room is 172/night and then there’s also food on top of that. There’s about 3-4 pools for what I have found so far and of course the sea is twenty metres away, so one can pretty much find their own spot and just stay there. Must be very nice for those with kids. Somehow, I still feel like in a prison. It’s too hot to go anywhere else, so I am stuck here. Also, there’s no wireless in the rooms – I am going to go and check if there’s wireless in the lobby though. But if not, El Greco for me is missing the one thing that I cannot work without… I am tempted to go for a swim, but decide to leave the bikinis in my suitcase for a couple of more hours, the non-sleeping last night has caused a real need for the siesta. Work begins again at 5pm. I plan to be ready.

You know how some hotels give you chocolate as the treat? This one has given me a bottle of white wine and a fruit basket. Could be worse. Looking for a little more carefully – white wine *and* red wine. I am wondering if my husband and I will some day have half Finns and say: fuck it, we want an easy life with pools, sea, sun and wine poured on to our room and just come down here… Who knows.

When the sun sets with glorous red dusk over the Mediterranean, I walk in the sea with my legs getting soaked. The unbearable hotness has slowed down by the cool air breeze and it’s the best time of Greece. Just at sundown, perfect light, sea’s voice is harsh, call of the poseidon, somehow feels like heaven for a second. It’s the same as with so many times in my life when travelling, I wish I were here with someone else. I once was in Samos with my dad. Sometimes you get only one chance like that. But that time might make all the difference. Because it at least happened and I was there. Life is so momentary and fading, he said to me. He might be dead, but goes on with me.