Dick & Jo have a Travel Blog

Leaving Belgium for the UK was a convoluted day of travel. First we had to drive the Opel Porridge (I think that was the name) to the city named after everyone’s least favourite Xmas lunch vegetable, where we boarded the Eurostar train to cross the channel. I was a little more cunning and happily volunteered the window seat to Jo on the assumption it would allow me to plead equity and get a window seat on the plane trip home. Yet to see if the plan worked, but here is the view from the Eurostar as it crosses the channel.

After the Eurostar we transferred from the St Pancreas Station (I couldn’t be bothered fighting autocorrect over the name) to Kings Cross to board the Tube to Heathrow where we caught a shuttle bus to an airport hotel. Why weren’t we living it up in some luxury digs in Mayfair? It seems there is some tennis match is coming up and all the hotels are full. So we spent 2 nights in 2 star crap hole out at the airport for 5 star prices. I can’t whine too much, we have had a good run so far by booking day to day on booking.com.

So the next day we tubed back into town to visit the sites we were too cheap to visit last time.

We started with Westminster. Now I am a guy who travels regularly to Jakarta, but I will admit I was twitchy the whole time we were around Westminster and not sheltered by some sort of substantial masonry. So it was with a little dismay that we stood out in the open at the end of a very long queue.

So after parting with a substantial wad of fun coupons (not for the last time that day either) we entered Westminster Abbey. While they do provide the full audio guide experience (not quite as sophisticated as the Monash Centre, but still very good), there are signs everywhere saying ‘no photo’s! Now prior to this trip I was under the impression it was some sort of church or cathedral, but in reality it is really a vertically integrated graveyard. As soon as we stepped in the door we found we were standing on greats:

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There was no way I was leaving without a photo of Darwin’s grave. I snuck these photo’s in, but they were soon onto me.

There is a form of discrimination at Westminster. All the physicists are behind a velvet rope (Newton, Rutherford, Hawking etc), while the Biologists like Darwin and Florey are our where the public walk all over them. No justice there! Yes it’s all very good we can fly to the moon and have TV to watch, but it would be all to no avail if you were dead from Sepsis.

So we wandered around for 2 hours keeping out of the rain and trying to pick the graves of the good and the great out from amongst all those people whose greatest achievement was brown nosing a King or being related to one. It was delightful.

But with St Paul’s you get the special bonus of being able to climb up through the dome (somewhere between 500 and 600 steps and rungs). Now this doesn’t sound like fun, and it isn’t, but it is very interesting seeing the way a cathedral is built. For avid viewers of documentaries on the ABC, the dome of St Paul’s is famously created as a double wall with a gap in between. The stairs make their way up through the gap and you see how the whole thing was built. Along the way I observed a surprising amount of Oak holding the whole thing up, some of which had seasoned with some rather large splits. I was expecting more stone and brick myself – in the photo you can see some big oak beams bracing the dome. I didn’t mention the splits to Jo as she wasn’t looking that comfortable with the vertical spiral staircases anyway.

But eventually you get to the tippy top. Here is Jo with what can best be described as a ‘rictus grin’ as she is not all that happy with heights. To illustrate the feat, there is a photo below of the dome from ground level and if you zoom in you can see people right up near the gold bit at the top. That was us.

Now Westminster, while full of the great and good, is also stocked full of the bodies of those aforementioned who simply happened to be related to, or good buddies with, the king of the day. St Paul’s is a little more discerning and has some of the big names like Wellington and Nelson. I put Nelson in for brother Chris because I know the Navy have their heroes too. We need the Navy, someone has to transport the Infantry.

But what was really fascinating about St Paul’s is that since it was built after the fire of London it is relatively new. All the bling is still bright and shiny and you get a real impression of what a cathedral should look like when you keep the maintenance up Note to Italy – lift your game. (Probably a little unfair, Italy is full of conservators cleaning cathedrals at an excruciatingly slow rate with a wet paintbrush – and I bet they need a PhD for that).

So the next day we hit the road in another rental It was a good Asian made Hyundai Santa Fe this time. It drove well but curiously was still a manual gearbox, they must make them specially for Europe.

I believe the English rural scenery is meant to be quite nice, but at the beginning of summer when all the hedgerows have had a few months of solid growth, mostly we were driving through a green ditch and couldn’t see a thing.

When I go anywhere new I do enjoy examining the Geology and the Botany, it’s a great filter to view the world through. In Europe the Botany is more a product of the Geology than in most places. Only 10,000 years ago, just about everything Jo and I travelled through was either glacial ice, gravel, or tundra at best. In Australia our bush looked pretty well the same is it does now, just sometimes in different places. So in the last 10,000 years most of Europe was a clean sheet that had to be repopulated from Asia and Africa and remnants down along the Mediterranean Sea. (Europe isn’t a real continent, it’s really just the western edge of Asia.) On top of this, Humans have been busy managing the landscape for the last couple of thousand years. So when we look at the English forest below, we are not seeing a mature ecology, but something still changing. There aren’t the big canopy trees and layered forests that we have, the English forests are mostly what we would think of as understory species, especially if you chop down and use the Oak trees to make a navy. So when convicts and settlers first landed somewhere like Tasmania and South Gippsland, it must have truly freaked them out. No experience of the English scrub could have prepared them for it. But it does growth thick and lush.

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We managed to pick a nice gap in the weather when we took our turn to stop by and visit Bob out at Sutton Veny. As previously reported by others, everything was in pristine order and the locals have done an excellent job of looking after our boys. Warminster, the main town nearby is a long time Garrison town (even the Romans used it and the Army are still there) so there is no doubt they appreciate the need to care for our diggers. The church is surprisingly large and ornate for such a little village and is big enough to have a side chapel dedicated to the AIF. But a word of warning to those who like us may consider stopping in Warminster for breakfast or lunch – never eat a Wiltshire pastie. It’s like a real pastie but with the contents blended into a paste. Bleah!

Anyway, here is Bob’s grave under his tree. I did apologise for not dropping in last year for his centenary as originally planned, but stuff got in the way. The flag was from a previous visitor.

And then on to Bath to get our Jane Austen on. Our digs were rather nice, we were in the beige building.

Now my dearly beloved has some surprisingly strong opinions on town planning (strange for a woman with an orange house with blue trim). And Bath certainly fits her ‘somewhere on the spectrum’ world view of uniformity and order. Here you will see a couple of photos of Jo celebrating Bath’s endlessly variable architecture.

One of these 28 houses has a Yellow door! Splitters…….

Note to Melbourne – you can make Apple toe the line.

Thanks to Jane Austen (and more notably Colin Firth’s role as Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice), it is now acceptable to stare out the window, focused on the middle distance, saying nothing and if you do it in a place like Bath, it is considered Romantic! This is a role I have a lifetime of training for and I think I pulled it off admirably. So after a suitably romantic dinner we retired to our ornately furnished room only to be woken by dawn streaming through the huge Georgian windows at 4:30. WTF? I’m in marketing, I didn’t even know there was a 4:30……

So after a lovely English breakfast we hit the main attraction – The Roman Baths. Unfortunately we were accompanied by about 4,000 Italian schoolchildren. Why you would take Italian schoolchildren to England to see Roman ruins, I really don’t know. Perhaps it is some sort of long term strategy to keep the EU together (if they really do Brexit, we can get them back in with a couple of Legions, we did it before).

Then off to Avebury – the ‘thinking mans Stonehenge’. Being exactly mid-summer, almost every flower child and wannabe Druid in Britain was heading for Stonehenge. So we snapped a photo from the road and moved on. It’s smaller than you think.

Along the way we saw a Horsey on a hill.

Now when we got to Avebury, which according to Wikipedia is Europe’s biggest Neolithic site with a full on ‘Henge’, they were getting ready for a big night of ‘communing with nature’ for the Summer Solstice. We happened to time it for the biggest night of the year for new age druids. The communing must be pretty full on because they had bussed cops in from everywhere.

Now we should put this achievement of our ancient forbears in some context. About 40,000 years after the Aboriginals were able to construct watercraft substantial enough to sail their families across open ocean over the horizon to cross the Wallace Gap separating Australia from Asia, our ancestors stood some rocks up in a ring and danced around naked. Makes you think.

Out amongst the rocks we could see lot’s of flower children and wood sprites connecting with their earth mothers (or some such). There was a lot of rock hugging going on, which made the Police presence looked a little heavy, but they had also fenced off the pub the same way they do the Dan O’Connell on St Patrick’s day, so it must liven up later. But looking at the amount of cheesecloth and crystal pendants in the crowd, I hope no one turns up with measles as resistance will be low here.

I gave rock hugging a try, but I’m not sure Jo put her heart into it.

With our 3 week Odyssey almost over and having communed with our ancient forbears, it was time to turn for home. But on the way to the airport we had time for one last really important site. Right under the flight path for Heathrow is Runnymede, where the Magna Carta was signed. Really strangely, it seems the Magna Carta memorial was installed by American lawyers. It certainly isn’t a local design.

so on signing off I would like to make a final note for those interested in our journey through the Western Front and the answer to a question that I know has bugged a lot of people. We checked the registry at Tyne Cot, the largest cemetery on the western Front and the registry at the Menin Gate where the bulk of those with unknown graves are memorialised. You will be pleased to know they we couldn’t find either Captain Blackadder nor Private Baldrick, so it looks like they survived.

So we ventured North-ish to Belgium. Through a quirk of history we have inherited the ‘Dead Mans Penny’ of Tom McMahon (59th Battalion, 5th Div), a great Uncle of Jo’s who died at the Battle of Fromelles. If you haven’t seen one, the Dead Mans Penny is a bronze medallion slightly smaller than a bread and butter plate that was given to grieving families after the war. So in order to pay a visit to the final resting place of a young man who’s penny graces our wall, we set the in-car GPS and drove through the wide, flat, wet paddocks of Flanders to the cemetery at VC Corner.

Now unlike the Cameron brothers who survived a couple of years of the Western Front, young Tom only arrived in France a couple of weeks before the great slaughter at Fromelles in 1917. He was the son of a very Irish mother who strongly objected to him going. Like many others, Tom doesn’t have a grave but still lies out there under the fields, but he is inscribed on the wall with hundreds of others.

Now the family legend is that he was he was hit by a shell while carrying bombs into the attack, which I would like to think is exactly the sort of job a Serjeant would give the new bloke in his first battle. Obviously this unfortunate confluence of events would have given him an awfully quick ending, but it meant there was no body to bury. But as Jo adroitly observed, it may be some consolation to know that this young Irish lad from Northcote is contributing to this great crop of potatoes growing around the memorial.

Now I am in 2 minds about which is more cruel, to die within weeks of arriving in France or to struggle though 2 years of the worst fighting (and 2 Somme winters) only to die of the Spanish Flu a week after armistice. There is no answer to that.

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So we were booked into the Novotel in Ypres (pronounced eepers I think) and I can hugely recommend it for the location which is right in the rebuilt mediaeval part of town and only 1 block from the Menin gate.

Now as you can see from the photo above we arrived in Ypres late Sunday to find the whole centre of town fenced off for some sort of summer carnival. Since we were famished, we set off amongst the market stalls to find some yummy, tasty treat we just knew would be there. Soon we found ourselves surrounded by an endless choice of sausages. When I say endless choice, some were longer than others and some were over-cooked. Now to anyone reading this and looking for a great business opportunity I say that the first person to drive a Taco Truck to Belgium is going to crack the market wide open. Even when we made it to dinner our choice was simply cheeseburger or stew. This is a country badly in need of a change of diet, or Metamucil.

But there were some good things happening, like the Belgian National Beach Volleyball Championship. They were exactly as good as you expect Belgian Beach Volleyballers to be and really weirdly juxtaposed with medieval architecture.

And we found my new favourite brand of beer – the 1 litre beer. Yes, you need 2 hands to drink it.

And obviously the nightly Last Post ceremony held at the Menin Gate is a lovely, moving experience.

Now Jo tells me that in a previous blog entry I was a bit harsh by implying Belgium is flat, green and boring. She thinks I should blog some sort of apology. Now I will admit that Ypres is a delightful town that has recovered nicely from the 1914-18 civic renewal project that we and the Germans conducted there. They have done this in the now traditional manner of rebuilding the really nice buildings and putting hotels, bars and shops in all the gaps.

So let’s balance the ledger on Belgium.

The bad:

1. Cyclists. The buggers are everywhere and they observe no rules. And pedestrians don’t even look before crossing the road. Nearly scored a 1200 euro excess on the rental a few times.
2. The food. It really is dreadful.
3. Traditionally visitors have not done well when playing away in Flanders, as neatly illustrated by these photos from Tyne Cot Cemetary at Passchendale.

The good:

1. Big on beer. And you can’t just order a beer here, you need to browse the menu. (Whereas twice we were told the wine list consisted of ‘a red one or a white one’ – it’s a beer market here).
2. Wonderful cities like Ypres and Ghent.

But I think there might be one thing that swings me in the favour of Belgium – the relaxed attitude to road safety.

Now I come from the Nanny State of Victoria (it should be on our number plates) where driving is a wicked thing conducted by sinful people who must be punished! And where any flake in a Hi-Vis vest has power over all traffic. I have seen traffic slowed to 40 because some guy was working on the footpath.

In Belgium they are more in favour of the driver. Note below we had to slow to 110 because there was roadworks. Not 40, but 110. Because cruising speed is 130 and trucks are obliged to stay in the outside lane.

Now as you can see, the rental was a manual. The gearbox was like a wooden spoon in porridge and it had floaty suspension, so it was perfectly designed for tight, cobbled streets. But driving it around the dozens of roundabouts was harder than Chinese algebra. But it would happily nip along at 130 and the sky did not fall in, nor were there blazing piles of carnage along the highways. It seems grownups in modern cars can actually drive faster that we did in 1972 when tyres were cross ply’s and brakes were drums.

So all things considered I have to agree that Belgium is a great little place.

It’s impossible not to shed a tear when you first enter a Western Front cemetery because no matter how much you think you know, it isn’t until you see all the headstones lined up that you understand the scale of loss. When this cemetery was founded we had already started winning, so I am not looking forward to seeing Flanders tomorrow where the real waste happened.

Today we started at the Villers-Brettoneux cemetery and the Sir John Monash Centre and it was a cracker of a morning. Twenty two degrees and blue skies with puffy clouds made for a perfect morning to spend underground watching extensive (and expensive) multimedia. Now I don’t want to say to much about the videos in case there are people who haven’t already read the book and don’t know the ending. But 3 things are clear from the presentation:

1. When there were setbacks, they were British setbacks.
2. When there were advances, they were Australian advances.
3. Even though the centre is beautifully built and fitted out, Tony Abbott didn’t budget quite enough money for real German actors because zum of zee ak-zents ver pretty bad.

There is evidence that German tourists have made known their displeasure at the poor Germ-lish in the multimedia as there are some bullet holes in the memorial tower. The plaque says they are meant to have been left by German soldiers in the 40’s, but they look way more recent to me.

But having said that, I can’t recommend the experience more highly. The multimedia is a bit technical, in fact I have never seen a system like it. It is truly state of the art and allows you to walk though the whole war at your own pace and is not at all jingoistic. But it does get a bit vivid – I haven’t actually seen an audience come under a simulated gas attack before. They have ‘escapee doors’ for those who find it a bit vivid.

The cemetery and Monash Centre are on the ridge halfway between Villers-Brettoneux (the place where the Australian Army halted the final German offensive of the war on ANZAC day, 1918) and Le Hamel where John Monash invented Combined Arms tactics and used them for the first time in history to defeat the Germans in 90 minutes, on the 4th of July, 1918. All the other Allied Generals went ‘hey, cool battle, can we borrow the plans?’ and the war was over in 100 days. ‘Nuff said.

Here is a view overlooking where the Australians advanced to Le Hamel, forever changing the course of history and beginning the end of the war. It’s a beautiful sea of Poppies, Daisies, Wheat, Barley and Potatoes. In all likelihood it probably wasn’t a lot different 101 yeas ago as the Germans had pushed the Allies way back from the old trench lines. This wasn’t the trench warfare of the previous years.

There were a couple of Cameron’s there and our mission for the day was to follow the course of the Australian advance up the Somme River to find the point where mum’s uncle Bob was wounded.

Now the Somme Valley is spectacularly fertile and at this point the Somme is a lovely little river with an adjacent canal winding away through the plains. A bit like the Loddon River, but a damn site greener.

Now I had done a little research before leaving and we know that Bob’s 37th Battalion had moved upstream with the rest of the Australian Army to a little town called Cléry-sur-Somme. The day Bob was wounded, the Battalion diary says they were attacking some ridges directly to the East of Clery. In such a flat landscape it was no difficulty finding the right ridges so here you are, a photo looking uphill at the place Bob was likely wounded on the 30th of August, 1918. You can see the 2 ridges that needed to be captured as they have a copse of trees on the top of each. The strategic importance was that the ridges overlook the town of Peronne and the whole river valley, so they needed to be taken before the Army could advance and take Peronne.

And here is the view backwards towards the town of Clery (hidden in the trees). You can see one of the Billabongs around the Somme, although I’m not sure they call them that here.

So after our detective work it was back to Villers-Brettoneux for refreshments where we found some early examples of Tourism Marketing (note the name of the cafe).

After a quick beer at the Melbourne Cafe, we adjourned to nearby Amiens. For the history buffs, the Australians were sent to Villers-Brettoneux as shock troops to stop the German advance because Villers-Brettoneux sits on a hilltop overlooking Amiens. Amiens was and is the key railway, canal and road junction in Northern France. If the Germans had of taken Amiens then most historians think they would have driven on to Paris quite quickly.

Now unfortunately Amiens suffered no war damage, so they have no excuse at all for the ugly architecture that makes up most of this small city. But right in the middle they do have a vibrant little CBD that on our visit was jumping with jugglers, tumblers, puppet shows and crowds. They also have the most beautiful cathedral, within which lies an Australians and New Zealand chapel. The design of the Amiens cathedral is very tall and it is propped up by flying buttresses to make Notre Dame envious. But the highlight is the huge windows letting in a lot of light and making for a very airy feeling.

And here is the chapel devoted to Australia and New Zealand and Canada.And this picture Jo took and made me put in the blog because she thought it was beautiful. I think she is the patron saint of changing the sheets.

The train system here in Europe is huge and wonderfully modern. The stations support InterCity Express (cool looking bullet trains), InterCity trains (almost as fast and cool), Regional Trains (often double decker) and every other variety right down to little 2 carriage jobs that shuttle locals around like a bus. And they are run by multiple companies who share the lines (although Germany is dominated by the Govt system).

In contrast to the incredibly efficient Italian system, one of the most surprising things about the train system in Germany has been the frequently late trains and the relaxed attitude everyone takes about it. Considering that when you make bookings when the system usually only gives you 8 or 9 minute transfer times between platforms, the fact that nearly all our trains in Germany have been at least 5 minutes late (and often much longer) has been a little alarming.

While waiting at Mannheim, our connection to Cologne was over 15 minutes late when this train pulled in. I was only slightly concerned as I understand the locals have gotten over their habit of loading people onto cattle trucks.

But soon enough our train rolled in and we were off to Cologne. We knew we were in Cologne when we saw the advertising in the station. Remember this from the ’70’s:

I suppose the Colognians are very careful about spelling. You can see they have used ‘isch’ to indicate that 4711 comes from Cologne where we might more naturally use ‘ic’. But that would make 4711 out as Colognic water which doesn’t have the same marketing appeal.

Now at some point we have to address the topic of German food. There was a theory I have developed that I was keen to explore. After 20 years of travelling to America (surely one of the most hateful destinations for someone who actually enjoys tasty food) I had concluded that the American cuisine is actually German. In the USA food is heavy with added potato and cheese even in sunny places like California. When there I eat Mexican as much as possible, but the heavy diet is unavoidable. So to explore this theory we felt we had to venture into a traditional German restaurant:

It was as yummy as it looks. But the locals were lapping it up. So after this experience we chose Tapas for our last night in Germany……

We did find a great market in Munich where we loaded up with bread, cheese and sausage for the next train leg. We did see an ‘exotic’ fruit stand which had really weird stuff like bananas and oranges. It sort of illustrates the happy go lucky German attitude to vitamins and fibre.

A surprising thing to find in Cologne was an exhibition of German romance (yes, you read that right). The main bridge across the Rhine is weighed down with what seems like millions of padlocks put there by couples. At least it proves the fence is well made.

Now Cologne is another place that took a fair pounding in the war and the Cathedral had to be rebuilt nearly from scratch. And it is a big bugger.

Now the clue to the dark black colour of a cathedral where much of the stonework is less than 70 years old is found by looking at the map. There is a town up the road called Solingen which is a name every bloke should remember from having it stamped into the blade of his pocket knife when he was a boy. While Cologne is all clean and green now, it is right in the middle of Germany’s coal and steel belt – the industrial heart. The cathedral is being slowly cleaned of all the accumulated soot – it is naturally a lovely light sandstone like you see in Sydney. The little square entrance to the underground car park in the lower right hand corner of the photo shows the colour the cathedral should be. It’s a big job, but I’m sure there is a model in the Karcher range that is up to it.

But the coal industry here seems to have passed on with no particular regrets, you can still see the odd little coal fired power station from the train (easily identifiable by the coal elevators), but they are surrounded by windmills. So good news for the Gippslanders and Novacastrians there – the wires and infrastructure doesn’t go to waste after the switch away from coal. France is even more so, on the drive between Brussels and Amiens (about 250 km) we were rarely out of sight of windmills, there were hundred of them.

So the blog has happily skipped from Cologne in Germany to Amiens in France with barely a mention of Belgium.

This is Belgium:

So there, I have mentioned it.

Free WiFi on a 6 hour long Fast Train – the perfect tool for a wandering and unfocussed mind. I have already researched that the current model pantograph that collects the current from the overhead wire on super-fast trains was invented by Louis Faiveley in 1955 but they still use graphite for the contact point as invented by Walter Reichel at Siemens here in Germany in 1879. Fascinating, huh? And I haven’t even got out of the suburbs of Munich.

More topically, as we look out over miles of lush wheat fields I can see why the Bavarian wheat farms typically yield 4.5 tonnes per hectare compared to 1.5 tonnes per hectare in the Mallee (with some as low as 0.4 tonnes per hectare last year according to DPI). Probably more importantly, here in Bavaria they get that yield every year. Makes you wonder why Aussie farmers bother?

But the Bavarians seem to have a few other crops as well. When they cut and bale hay, the grass is so thick the big round bales are dropped only a few metres apart. Some of the cockeys here are pretty diversified too, they have wheat, hay, maize, barley, even flowers, tree crops, windmills and solar panel arrays. Here is a typical scene with a couple of crops going and you can see some pretty big windmills at the back.

On a topic that has been obsessing me for years. Why is it that every country other than Australia can decentralise? Even little New Zealand has industry spread all through both islands, but in Australia everything is concentrated in Sydney or Melbourne. Both those metropolitan area’s are huge on a world scale, both are bigger than the famous Bay Area of San Francisco where really big companies with huge economic impact are based (Apple, Google etc). In contrast to Australia where towns barely run to a Woolworths and a Bank, the little towns we pass through in Germany often have some pretty significant factories doing all sorts of complex manufacturing, so there is employment everywhere. With high speed rail for moving people around and the famous autobahn network for freight, everything is decentralised.

You can see some good sized factories out in the sticks:

This explains why the cities are so small – they are financial and service centres only. All the economic power is out in the countryside with the farms and factories. We would probably consider doing something similar in Australia, if it wasn’t just easier to dig up coal and iron ore and ship it overseas for processing.

It also goes some way to explaining the fetish for rural life. You see it everywhere in the shops (rural couture!), restaurants, souvenirs, even in murals on the walls. Everything celebrates a traditional farming life. Gotta stamp that s&#t out before it goes too far. You don’t want the hayseeds getting ahead of themselves or they go all Barnaby Joyce.

And the German train system runs an incredibly cool app. You can see your speed, location and key sightseeing opportunities you missed all along the route.

After a change at Mannheim, we travelled up the Rhine to Cologne, a region famous for making the second best Riesling in the world. As you can see, German Riesling is obviously hand picked, possibly by abseiling down the rows. I am sure the grape pickers here would wear a roofers safety harness. Ideally they would get on the job a little earlier, it would make the end product a bit less sweet.

Now the trip downstream to Cologne is picture book stuff, any photo’s taken out a train window are an injustice to the scenery. Little castles are dotted along the river on any spur with an imposing view (historically to allow collection of taxes from passing traffic) and the towns are regimented rows of neat little white, square houses. There has been no new work for architects here in a hundred years and weekends on the Bunnings paint desk would be a breeze. It’s so pretty that any man who doesn’t immediately sell his worldly possessions (like a stupidly oversized black motorbike) to take his wife on a luxury cruise on the Rhine is a BUM.

I thought the European Union thing was all about erasing borders and having passport free travel?

Well we first had our passports checked by the Italian Police at the frontier with Austria, then the Austrian Police had a look 5 minutes later, before the Germans had a crack after them. The nice Austrian policeman spent a couple of minutes trying to find my entry stamp for Italy before finally giving up – I have a well used passport and I don’t look all that Syrian or Eritrean. At the same time, along the road beside the train line we could see literally kilometres of parked semi-trailers I assume are lined up to be checked for illegal immigrants. An hour later they would be lined up cooling their brakes after a fierce downhill run.

But the scenery really gets its Eidelweiss on – I think the locals were amused at the 2 goofy Australians oohing and aahing at every new panorama. The photos don’t do it justice as they were shot out the slightly dirty window of a fast moving train, but I think you will agree on the biscuit tin lid quality of the scenery.

And then there is Innsbruck, clearly the most beautiful view from a railyard you can imagine.

But Austria is a blink and you miss it sort of place. For us, Austria was literally mostly downhill as the train raced down from the Brenner Pass and about 90 minutes later we were in Germany with the rivers were all flowing North. The German Police made a very cursory passport inspection – I suppose historically they have been able to rely on Austrians to be fanatically picky about who they let in.

A note on Austrian agriculture. For those reading this blog who may be familiar with the steep paddocks of South Gippy – have a look at these Alpine fields all around this peak. I am pretty convinced most of these are not natural clearings but are summer grazing.

An hour or so later we arrived in Munich. Amazingly, 10 minutes out of the city centre we were still looking at Wheat crops – they are nice and compact these European cities. Having missed lunch entirely, we were soon having dinner at a nice Italian restaurant in a Munich equivalent of North Fitzroy (but a little more vertical).

On why you should always take good photo’s before you start a war.

So for our full day in Munich we trotted down to the Marienplatz, which essentially the centre of the ‘old town’ of Munich. When I say old, most of the buildings seemed to be less than about 73 years old (count backwards, you’ll work it out). Due to the quality work of Messeurs Lancaster and Boeing, Munich had a fantastic opportunity for urban renewal which they used to essentially rebuild all their pre-war buildings but with straight lines and better plumbing. This work was so well done that it wasn’t immediately obvious as Jo and I had admired the lovely condition of the Cathedrals and Kirks (churches) that were so much better maintained than the Italians could manage, before Jo found an information board showing devastating bomb damage. So apologies to the Italians, but it is amazing how much better these old buildings look with new plaster and a lick of paint.

What was completely unexpected was the Bavarian tendency towards pastel colours and baroque plasterwork. If you have ever browsed a BMW or Volkswagen colour chart where even the red cars are grey, you would not expect the very bright building facades you see in Munich. And the church interiors were at least as ornate and way less somber than the Basilica’s and Cathedrals south of the Alps.

Now one of the great delights of the day was discovering that Tradies in Bavaria wear Lederhosen! I offered to let Jo buy a German leather outfit if she let me buy leather shorts, but no dice…….

Now there are a lot of Cuckoo Clock shops in Munich (if your tastes run to that sort of thing), but the Rat-haus (what a fantastic name for a seat of government) has the worlds biggest cuckoo clock built in. It takes till about 12:20 to finish chiming noon. Fully sick.

Verona, a pretty flashy place. The footpaths are actually marble (I kid you not). But the main attraction is right in the centre of town. A real, honest to goodness Colosseum!

Well naturally you have to do your best Frank Thring impersonation and condemn someone to death. It’s a momentous thing being able to plonk your posterior right down on the spot where innumerable Romans sat a couple of thousand years ago. We were even able to walk around the tunnels underneath – well worth the standard 10 Euro’s. They still use the Colosseum in Verona, it was being set up for an Opera while we were there.

In amongst all the mega expensive stores, we did spot this add in a Nescafé store promoting Australian inspired coffee. Coffee has now gone full circle – Italians are now being sold Australian coffee.

So the next morning we boarded the train over the Alps to Munich. It’s a little over 5 hours and instead of going from the sublime to the ridiculous, we went to the ridiculously sublime. As you head up the valley it almost immediately becomes incredibly scenic, little stone villages with churches perched high on escarpments as the train winds it’s way along through vineyards – even though it is exactly what you expect, it doesn’t make it any less delightful. Surprisingly after 2 hours threading our way up a deeply glacier carved valley, we were still less than 300m in elevation. You can see snowy Alpine peaks all around, but the valley is thriving with agriculture and industry. It would be an excellent place to retire except that as you can see from the photo – the local river is unwadeable, at least in late spring.

Even before you leave Italy, the signs switch to German giving a good indication of the historic fluidity of borders in Europe. But it also illustrates the ambition that separates real leaders from the rest of us. It is known that the average load carried by a Roman Legionnaire was about 30kg – the same as today’s infantry. Now if Julius Ceaser had of had ambition like me, instead of being the man who led his legions to smash the Germanic tribes, subjugate Gaul and tame the Britons, he would be the man who conquered Balzano, a nice little town surrounded by grape vines and just before the steep bits.

I would like to make 2 observations about Italy just before we leave:

1. The Good – one thing to like about Italy is that no one over the age of 12 wears runners unless they are actually running. While many people put on clothes in the morning, the Italians seem to take the time to get dressed. There is a big difference.
2. The Bad – Italy seems to be the last place on earth where people still think they look cool smoking. And they do it a lot – almost at Japanese levels.

Well, 24 hours in Venice and 2 full laps of the main island and I still haven’t seen a Venetian blind! But on the upside, Jo did her research before leaving and we were able to seamlessly navigate the canals and alleyways to find probably the only cafe in Venice that can serve a flat white. Burnt and watery it may have been, but it did kick off Sunday rather well. We chose the ‘inside’ price of 1.50 Euro’s per cup and stood up to drink our coffee and scoff our croissants, and declined the opportunity tomspend 2.50 per cup to sit ‘outside’ in the blazing morning sun.

In summary, years of dining out in Melbourne have immunised us against Venetian Tourism Pricing for commestables. We are well used to paying $25 AUD for a quick pasta while I feel the Europeans are hurting a bit.

So after brekky we hit the tourist sites. Our planned trip to Murano was off because of an annual boat race and being Sunday, it seems all the churches were busy with some non-tourist stuff. Who’d a thought? We did get a 10 minute sprint through one of the many large basilica/cathedrals dotting the islands where I had a life changing moment. Gone are my plans for a traditional burning boat Viking funeral, instead I want to be planted in my own shrine – just like this one.

Look closely at the distraught and bereft expressions on the tearful women trailing death into the tomb. I can only imagine this will match closely the impact of my passing. The winged Lion mourning over a book representing lost wisdom will obviously have to be switched for a Golden Retriever, but the effect should be the same.

So why is this entry titled ‘That will be 10 Euro’s please’? Well the entry price to absolutely every attraction that isn’t a church is exactly 10 Euro’s- so choose carefully. The good news – churches are free and they have all the best architecture anyway – often all crammed together in a single building. You can drop 50 cents into the slot and lift a candle and if you are lucky there might be a choir going. Interactive attractions with a floor show – beat that EuroDisney.

So while crossing the Rialto Bridge again we found the boat race that cancelled our trip to Murano. Whatever deep Gondolier traditions lay behind this boat race it was clear it had evolved into the worlds biggest corporate challenge.

So after a tour of the Museum at St Marks (a bargain at 5 Euro’s but not photo’s allowed and strictly no talking) we headed for the ferry stop to ride back to the Hotel. Having mastered the ticket machine previously we headed for the correct pontoon where we and about 50 other people waited patiently in the midday sun for 30 minutes. When a boat did arrive the decky threw all existing passengers off and told everyone they were shutting down that route for a few hours because of the boat race. He did kindly give us advice which pontoon to go to that would get us on a ferry that would take us round through the docks to a point a couple of hundred metres from the Hotel. So after about 2 hours in the heat we finally got home – the object lesson in Italian public transport this week is always have a plan B.

Venice – a great place to visit and you know the rest.

Now we are off to Verona. Now I reckon I could convince most people that these are photos of Werribee South. But seriously check out the wheat crop. The paddocks are too small to even turn a Mallee Combine Harvester in, but the yields look pretty high, especially when you compare them to the Eyre Peninsula in SA where the wheat plants are sown about a foot apart. Italian wheat grows like lawn and makes damn good bread. A lot of maize on the flats as well.

The train system here is great. Our last couple of tickets have been on the slower, local trains rather the the high speed FerraReccia intercity trains. But even the slower trains will hit 150 kmh at times and cruise along solidly at 130. The trains are exceedingly comfortable and whisper quiet and there are a lot of them.

One last comment on Venice – the city has done itself proud in helping tourists find their way. Helpful signs like the one below do a great job of making sure you know exactly which direction to take and if you get in trouble there are always little shrines to assist lost tourists seek divine guidance.

After a lovely pasta dinner people watching in one of the many Piazza’s in Padua, we retired early as we were booked into the first tour at the Cappella degli Scrovegni which as we all know is famous for the Giotto Murals that formed a critical advance in Western Art. Or we do know that now that we have paid our 10 Euro’s each and seen the little video they show you before you get into the church.

It seems Giotto was the first guy to paint people with expressions on their faces and not just as flat looking stick figures looking out of the painting. (That noise you can hear is Finella banging her head against the table because she just read that explanation – but it was in the video so it must be true). Anyway, as you can see from the pics below, that while Giotto could certainly daub, had a fairly active imagination. Don’t zoom into the picture of hell on the judgement day mural below unless you can deal with a couple of nights of troubled sleep – there is some seriously twisted s@&t going on.

Then we toured the attached gallery of literally hundreds of Renaissance paintings and sculptures, any one of which would have it’s own wall at the NGV. Unsurprisingly there was a bit of a theme because even though Giotto was a bit of a groundbreaker with perspective, he and his mates did toe the line and only painted religious topics for the next few hundred years. Not a lot of landscapes and still life’s to be seen. I include a representative picture of poor San Sebastion, he seemed to be a favourite of the Catholics and his arrow pierced body seemed to be on nearly every wall.

So then we returned to the Piazza de Fruitti (grocery square in English) for a light breakfast and to peruse the produce stalls. It only takes a few minutes browsing the wonderful smallgoods and cheeses to realise that in Australia we are sorely shortchanged by a cabal of protectionist dairy and pork meat interests hell bent on preventing us from accessing the fine produce of the European continent. Tear down the trade walls I say so that we can have delicious cheeses and salamis at a fraction of the price we currently pay. And why can’t we buy ripe tomatoes in Australia?

$5 will get you a loaf of bread and a wad of ripe, soft sheep’s milk cheese for lunch. All I can say is, bloody yum!

A short train ride into Venice (Padua is almost a suburb of Venice) and we were standing by a canal outside the train station.

Now the sound track to Venice is the constant clack of tiny suitcase wheels being dragged up and down stone staircases as tens of thousands of tourists move in and out every day. But luckily for us we have travel packs and were able to move swiftly and surely the hundred yards to our luxury Hotel. Booking accommodation on the edge of town near the train station turned out to have been the best thing we could have done. The place is a nightmare maze and full of hot, exasperated tourists dragging huge suitcases down little alleys while staring at tiny phone maps, hoping the gps can get a signal amongst the buildings. Marriage ending stuff. So here is the view from our room (in the other direction you can see about half a dozen huge cruise ships). We can say from experience that the people on the tables under the umbrellas are eating some truly great pizza (and cheaper than the price of a beer).

So we loaded up and went for a walk to find some sights to see. How hard could that be? Well no map can truly convey the complete navigational disaster that is Venice. I remember doing a bush walk in the Mallee many years ago – trying to keep your sense of direction while walking for hours through 5 meter tall scrub with no landmarks is the closest thing I know to walking in Venice, but Venice is harder.

Walk past the Venetian mask shop, turn at the place that sells glass baubles, keep going down the little alleyway, if you see a pizza bar and a handbag shop you know you are on the right track and the place you are looking for is on the canal next the the little bridge. Those directions are correct for ALL of Venice.

Hot, exhausted and dehydrated we eventually we found St Marks and St Marks Square. Good to see they saved a few bucks when building it by using marble offcuts from every other job going in Italy that century. Ummm, not to my taste.

At this point we were really glad to say we saw Venice while it is still a little off the beaten track – had the place to ourselves really. It will be terrible when the crowds move in.

So we made our way through the throng through a series of increasingly expensive fashion and handbag shops normally found only in Airport Terminals until we found the Rialto Bridge. Try getting a photo of that without a Gondola in it.

But the best thing about the Rialto Bridge is the adjacent ferry terminal -$15 Euro’s and 15 minutes later we were back at the hotel for drinks and dinner. Here is Jo enjoying her ‘poor mans Gondola ride’ home.

Architecturally speaking we went from big, square houses with gardens around them, to big square houses with veggies around them in our trip from Bellagio to Padua. At times you could have convinced yourself you were in Werribee South. So many things about Melbourne make sense when you see Italians in their natural environment.

We spent a rest day exploring the lanes and gardens around Bellagio. Now it seems the Italians don’t go in for footpaths as you can see from this photo, should you be clipped by a Fiat coming round a blind corner, there is surely a little shrine built into a wall nearby to give you some succour in your final moments.

We dropped by a house that looked like it could be George Clooney’s to view the gardens. I can see why George bought a place up here, you can pick up a nice little fixer upper for less than the deposit for place in Melbourne. The gardens were beautiful and full of little grotto’s and hidden paths to keep it interesting.

The house was originally owned by the Duke of Como and the had a little family chapel (I think that was the 15th century equivalent of a home theatre – a useless room only built to impress your neighbours). Check out the plasterwork.

So, with a bit of careful planning we worked out we could hop on the car ferry to Varenna, take a commuter train to Milan and then grab another train to Padua, getting into town for a late lunch. Easy.

So we grabbed the 8am ferry and waved goodbye to lovely Bellagio.

We hit Varenna station (nice station, even has a bar – could you imagine that working in Aust.?) only to find there were rolling train strikes across Italy (remember strikes?). We did manage to get tickets for the last train of the day, the 9:05 to Lecco which is 30km down the lake towards Milan. At Lecco we found a Ford Transit Van Taxi willing to drive us into Milan for about $250, so we split it with 3 Danes heading the same way and got dropped off at Milan Central Station just before noon. The only trains still running were the super fast ones and then only business class seats were available. So we ended up in Padua actually a little earlier than planned, having had a full travel experience.

Padua Station: note the camo Landrover in the corner with the security guys on guard. Always reassuring to see a little extra security…….