Travellog About Me Itinerary People Airlines Tips It's not pretty. It's not technically brilliant. It's just a travellog, or perhaps a travelogue. Some people with swankier browser-exclusive websites aren't having half as much fun as I am. The other thing you should do to become a successful blogger is change your website to use dotted lines and unreadable tiny fonts wherever possible. -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to Blogging

Another Apple Expo, garnished with London and Brussels 23 September, 2006 It's that time of year again. Like last year, I used the Apple Expo as an excuse to go to Paris for a week. This time I was prepared... a while beforehand I started posting on a French Mac forum on the web so that I could get to know some people that I might be able to meet there. Also, I rented a studio for the week, which was cheaper than a hotel and meant that I could cook my own food. Before I continue, I'll give you a summary so that people who don't feel like reading this whole big ramble will still know what's coming up. I went to Paris (including the Apple Expo and Disneyland), London, and Brussels. On Thursday, Stephen Hawking will give a talk at my work. On 7 October, I will go to Zagreb and Belgrade for a Marie Curie conference. The Apple Expo went from Tuesday to Saturday, but since the previous Thursday was a holiday in Geneva (I guess they celebrate my sister's birthday) I took the Friday off work and went to Paris earlier. I also decided to stay until the Tuesday after the Apple Expo, because I planned to go to Brussels for a night or two for an open day celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Val Duchesse negotiations of the treaties of Rome. I knew nothing about the treaties, but I needed an excuse to go to Belgium and try the chocolate. In the end I didn't go until Friday, because a friend in Geneva wanted to meet up on Thursday. This friend in Geneva, henceforth known as David, was brought up in Paris, and he decided not long before I left that he'd go to Paris for a while to catch up with friends and family. Then he also had the idea that the two of us could go from Paris to London together for a wee shopping trip. So, that was pretty much the plan. I went to Paris on Friday September 8, and I don't think I did anything worth reporting on that day, I just wandered around a bit. Same goes for Saturday... if I recall, I bought some shoes (which I never get time to do in Geneva since the shops aren't open all the time) and saw some random not particularly touristic things. Well, I saw a huge and fancy-looking shopping mall called Les Halles, and later, while I was looking for a Metro station, I came across an impressive looking arch on Rue St. Denis. Paris is good like that, when it's getting dark and you're looking for a Metro station, you're fairly likely to stumble upon a well-lit tourist attraction. And where there's a well-lit tourist attraction, there's a Metro station. I spent most of Sunday indoors, relaxing, because I had some stuff to do and don't want finish my holiday in need of another holiday. But eventually I went outside and walked toward the river, where I found the replica of the flame from the Statue of Liberty. I'd somehow managed to miss seeing that the other times I was in Paris. It's right over the tunnel where Princess Diana died, and there are many tributes gratified all over the place. Now, like every kid, I always wanted to go to Disneyland, but it was always an impossible dream, what with Disneyland being on the other side of the world and very expensive. Even though I couldn't really remember why I wanted to go, it seemed a shame to miss the chance. So, on my third time in Paris, I thought it was about time I satisfied my inner child by going to EuroDisney. It happens that David used to work there, and he told me that the best day to go is Monday, so I went on Monday. There are actually two parks... Disneyland and Disney Studios. You can get a ticket to a single park, or a one-day or two-day pass which let you go between the two parks. But I don't think anybody could see both parks in a single day, and it's cheaper to get two one-day single park tickets than to get one two-day both parks ticket. So I just got the one ticket to one park and went to Disneyland, and if I go again some day I'll go to Disney Studios. Nearest the entrance is Main Street USA, which is mostly surreally decorated shops selling Disney stuff, with that famous castle at the end. Then there's Adventure Land, Discovery Land, Fantasy Land and Frontier Land, which have differently themed kinds of rides, attractions, shops and restaurants. There's something for everyone except for hardcore roller coaster riders. Things like the curious labyrinth which you can wander through on your own time without queuing, through to the slow-moving ride through the all-singing, all-dancing, 'It's a Small World After All', riding on a flying Dumbo carousel, and fast thrill rides like Space Mountain. And of course the famous teacups ride, which I remember most clearly from the TV show Full House, but I am sure it's been in many other TV shows and movies, and I have vague recollections of pictures of Princess Diana on it. In fact there were many attractions and songs there that were very familiar, after the first few it was getting hard to believe that all these pieces of popular culture came from the same source. Disney is a bit like Switzerland, there are so many things commonly associated with it that you'd be unlikely to come up with a complete list offhand. And for all that, I did not even see Mickey Mouse, because I didn't think to find out when the parade would be. I didn't get to do everything, partly because I did not get myself out of bed in time so I didn't get there until an hour after it opened. But I got to see and do most of the stuff there. And I'd say Monday was indeed the right day, the queues for rides were not too bad. Mind you, it all depends on what you're expecting... I was expecting awful queues because I'd heard about them from my uncle years ago. In any case I could pass the time in the queue eating junk food, without much worry of throwing up on the rides. And then it was Tuesday... the first day of the Apple Expo. I have to admit I was more excited on Tuesday morning than on Monday morning, and I got to the Expo just as it opened. Now, I have a habit of taking photos of people who are taking photos. Soon after the start of the Apple Expo, I achieved something I'd always secretly dreamed of but never really thought possible. I took a photo of the flash of somebody else's camera going off! Cool, huh? Well, I think so. Just humour me, okay? I spent that day looking at the various stands, which there's not really much point in describing here. I was looking for a replacement for my broken iPod wired remote control, and also a way to attach my iPod to my body while I'm not wearing pockets. While there were plenty of both, it was often the case that a particular iPod holder would not leave room to attach a particular remote, so it was handy to have all the vendors at the one expo so I could look for a good combination. Some stands were a little frustrating though, they only had products on display behind glass where I could not try them out with my iPod or see if they would fit with a particular iPod case. I understand that they do not want people breaking or stealing their products, but really, a stand where nobody can actually try the products is no better than a website. What's the point of them being there? What's the point of me going to Paris just to get to see a 3D version of a brochure? I also went to the stand of Le Pommier, which is a collaboration between several French Mac websites. I was hoping to meet people there from the site I go on, but there only seemed to be people from other sites I didn't know about. Not having much to say, or many French words to say it in, I didn't stay there long. One difference I noticed from the last Apple Expo is that the Apple stand did not have demonstrations in English. Last year they presented the new stuff in both English and French, but this time it was all French. Tant mieux for me, I wanted to be exposed to as much French as possible during the trip. That evening I met up with David, just to make sure we had everything sorted out for going to London the next day. Wednesday morning I got up at about 5a.m, to meet him at 7:15 and head toward Disneyland to catch our train to London. We'd booked a hotel room in Picadilly Circus, as a cheap addon to the train tickets. In London, we basically shopped a whole lot. And then... I saw an Apple logo! And this was not just any Apple reseller, but a genuine Apple Store. With a glass staircase and everything, like the one in San Francisco. Now you might wonder why I would want to go to an Apple Store in London while I was in the middle of a holiday at the Apple Expo in Paris. If you wonder that, then you're just not as much of a Mac geek as I am. I asked them about iPod cases and remotes. Later we went to HMV and I narrowly avoided buying too many DVDs. Well, you probably don't want to know what I bought, shopping is not really travel. David used to live in Scotland, so he knew of a good restaurant which had branches in London. We asked people where the restaurant was, and one of the people turned out to be someone from the UK version of Big Brother, so that was pretty cool. Well, I don't watch Big Brother, but it was cool for David, I'm sure. Anyway, the next day we went back to Paris, and went to Disney Village for dinner. Disney Village is just outside Disneyland, and has many of the same Disney shops, but it's open a lot later. There's music playing, and giant mushrooms, and things like that... so it's a fun atmosphere. The next day I was back at the Apple Expo. I'd signed up to go to a dinner that night with people from that website I mentioned, so I went back to the Pommier stand intent on meeting some of the other people that would be going. It still seemed to be dominated by people from other websites, and I was just as shy and incapable of making smalltalk in French as before, but this time somebody there was about to open the box of a brand new MacBook laptop. I love watching new Macs being born, so I hung around and took a few photos. The other guys who were watching attempted to talk to me and thought I was some kind of mute weirdo (well, they were at least half right), but eventually I asked whether they were going to the dinner. They didn't know about it, but before I knew it I was invited to one of their places. We all went there and watched silly movies (one about killer yoghurt and another about giant mosquitos) and then all nine of us somehow found places to sleep in this guy's house. I figured I'd be better at French with geeks, where we would be talking about computer stuff which I would practically understand in any language. That was true, to some extent, although most of the time I listen to the radio in French and I'm not familiar with the slang that young people use. It turned out that the real advantage of being with geeks was that in a roomful of geeks, it's perfectly acceptable, even expected, to type to the person next to you instead of talking to them. I'm much better at reading and writing French than speaking it. Sure, I went to Paris with the intention of getting more practice speaking, and I did get to do that to some extent, but it was also good to be able to type to people. I had planned to go to Brussels on Saturday, stay a night, and go to the open day on Sunday. But since I didn't have reliable internet access for most of my time in Paris, I didn't get around to booking a hotel room. So on Saturday morning I went back to the Apple Expo... the logical thing to do considering I had just stayed the night within walking distance of it. Then the geeks convinced me to go to the Mac LAN that night. That was great fun... I hadn't realised how much I missed staying up all night with a group of geeks and their computers. I don't play most of the games that people at the LAN were playing, but we did play tetris over the network and I won a few times. The next morning, someone from the LAN drove me to the station and I went to Brussels, just for the day. It's only just over an hour away. The first thing I noticed was a toilet roll dispenser in the train station toilets which had a character on it named 'Big Willy'. My day in Brussels was rather more tiring than I had planned, due to the fact that I had not slept all night, and I had my Mac on my back. I originally planned to leave it in the studio Paris but of course I had it with me for the LAN and we went straight from there to the station. I also had a backpack full of Belgian chocolate, since I did not know whether any shops would be open so I bought chocolate at the station when I arrived. I guess I could buy the same chocolate anywhere, but I can't go to Belgium without buying Belgian chocolate. So I didn't walk around at the open day too much, but I learnt a few things anyway. I hadn't had much chance to find out about tourist attractions in Brussels, so in the afternoon I mostly just wandered around with my Mac and my chocolate on my back, looking for places to sit down. Brussels gets my official seal of approval, because the first two cafes I found were also bookshops. I love cafes that are also bookshops. It happened to be during European Mobility Week, promoting ways of getting around without using cars all the time. So the public transport was all free, and the streets were filled with people walking, riding bikes and even Segways. It was nice to see. I eventually came across some Mobility Week festivities, with various stands selling food or giving information about transport and its environmental impact. According to the song 'Over There' by Jonathan Coulton, 'when you're in Belgium you can eat a lot of mayonnaise with your frites.' So I got some chips with mayonnaise. I've never really liked mayonnaise with salad (unless it's creamy mayonnaise) nor tomato sauce with chips... tomato sauce has a sharp taste while chips have more of a creamy texture, so they don't really go together. So, I tried chips with a big dollop of creamy mayonnaise and it was like I'd discovered the true purpose of the two ingredients. Yum! Anyway, I went back to Paris that night, slept a whole lot, and on Monday didn't do a whole lot, though I took the opportunity to buy some clothes, since there's not a whole lot of chance to do so in Switzerland, the shops are closed most of the time when I'm not working. Aah yes, I forgot a happy ending... when I got to the XtremeMac stand at the Apple Expo, they gave me an iPod case for free! I guess they're just really nice people, and maybe not so many people need that size of case these days. Anyway, I spent the rest of the expo looking for a wired remote that would be able to attach to the iPod while it was still in its case. Eventually I realised that with the iPod in this case instead of in my pocket, I could easily use the controls on the iPod without needing a remote. Here are about half the pictures I took. I put pictures of the Mac LAN separately. You can also see other people's pictures of some of the events, some of which even have me in them: Photo of Mac Portables at the Apple Expo Another photo of Mac Portables at the Apple Expo, with more portables but not me. LuxTourist's pictures of the MacLAN LuxTourist's pictures of the Apple Expo (with some pictures of the night at CodeZ's place starting here) Space Mac's pictures of the Apple Expo Space Mac's pictures of the Mac LAN More pictures of the Apple Expo and MacLAN, including a video I also took some videos of Disneyland and some other stuff, but they're kind of big and I'm already using up way too much space on this server, so I'll leave them for now. I also haven't made a tar file of all the full size images, because that would be huge. Zurich, Zurich... so big they named it twice 10 May 2006 I'm currently on the latest train home from Zurich, I should arrive back in Geneva at 1:04a.m, so that I'll get to work later tomorrow morning feeling like I need a holiday. So... Zurich. The first thing I noticed about Zurich was that it's big. I knew it was the biggest city in Switzerland, while Geneva is the second biggest, but I wasn't expecting it to be so obvious. The main train station is enormous! If it weren't so well signposted I could easily get lost in there. Also, buses and trams run even more frequently than they do in Geneva. In Interlaken there were bus stops but I hardly ever saw any buses, they were only scheduled for every half hour and only until some ridiculously early time like 5p.m. It was quicker for even me to walk places. In Geneva, you can't go ten minutes without seeing a bus or three. In Zurich, if a tram just left then another one is about to arrive. And like in Geneva, they run late into the night, so you can be assured of a way to get home if you go out somewhere to get drunk or watch a public lecture on quantum computers. That's the way it should be. Anyway, I went to weird Swiss guy's place, to find that the weird Swiss guy was not home from work yet, so I walked the short distance to the lake. I've seen some beautiful blue lakes and green lakes on this trip, but lake Zurich (I guess that's what it's called in English) was grey and boring. It had a small fountain on the other side, as a feeble attempt to emulate Geneva's jet d'eau. There were also some of those black birds with white beaks which I've seen in every Swiss lake. But in general, Lake Zurich is not worth as many sentences as I have just given it. It's geography rather than scenery. Mind you, the weather wasn't so great, I bet it looks better on a nice sunny day. I went back to Weird Swiss Guy's place (I will henceforth call him Marc for ease of notation) where he snuck up behind me after I had pressed the buzzer in vain a couple of times. There was no tourism that night as the weather wasn't good enough for the scenic drive we'd considered, so I won't bore you with the details. I am sure you realise by now that I have plenty of other details to bore you with. I will mention that Marc makes great pizza. The next day was rainy, and unexpectedly cold, so I was wandering around in a T-shirt wishing I hadn't left my jacket at Marc's place. Never mind, Marc had told me a few nice places to get warm. First of all a café which supposedly had great breakfast -- it was good but pretty much the same as I'd had at hotels previously. Marc also told me they had great cold chocolate, but unfortunately I forgot about that and had hot chocolate (the usual milk and Caotina) instead. The other shelter was more interesting. To get out of the rain I went to... a rainforest! At the Zurich zoo they have a big humidified greenhouse containing a mini ecosystem modelled on the Maosala rainforest in Madagascar. I entered it from the wrong end, where it seems the humidification is done, so at first I thought I'd miss out on a lot because my glasses were steamed up. Luckily only the area around that door was that bad. There were all sorts of interesting birds, chameleons, giant tortoises, Rodrigues fruit bats, etc. I didn't see any lemurs, but a few species of lemur were mentioned on the information sheets in the rainforest so I assume they have those kinds there, hiding. It's a nice place to be, especially when it's cold and raining outside. The only bad thing was that it's not bigger... from just about anywhere you can see the edge, so it's hard to pretend it's a real rainforest. Today the weather was better, so I was able to wander around the city and the old town a bit. I didn't do anything in particular, just wandering and looking at shops and buildings etc. I thought about doing a tour on one of the little tourist trams but by the time I meandered to the tourist information centre to find out where it left from, I didn't have time to do a tour. At one point I went on a cable car called Polybahn because I figured that since it was going up, wherever it went would have a better view than I had where I was. I suppose the Poly is short for polytech or something, because I found myself at ETH Zurich, another of Einstein's old haunts. There happened to be a recruitment fair going on so I pretended to be a student and looked at some of the stands. I got some information on the European Space Agency since they had leaflets in English. This evening we went out for dinner at a place at such a good location that the lake actually looked nice, though it would have looked better on a sunny day. It sure helps to be staying with somebody who knows the city. Phew, that's the end of my novella about Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The Grand Tour of Liechtenstein (and Switzerland) continues to continue 7 May 2006 The first thing I thought I ought to do in St. Gallen was go have a look at Lake Constance. I noticed on my map that there is a stretch of the edge of the lake named Neu Seeland, which is German for New Zealand, so I thought that would be as good a place as any to check out the lake from. I thought I might find a sign to take a photograph of, or something. So I hopped on a train to Rorschach, the closest train station to that part of the lake. Lake Constance looks pretty nice, for a lake, but there's only so many lakes I can describe in any meaningful way. I can tell you that it was almost the same colour as the sky, and it looked bigger than Lake Geneva and smaller than Lake Huron. In fact it is smaller than both, but wider than the part of Lake Geneva I normally see. I wandered along toward Neu Seeland, until I had to deviate from my path a little to go around a minigolf course. I then discovered that the minigolf course was attached to a swimming complex, a hostel, and many other buildings and fences. The next thing I knew I was walking along at the side of a main road, with still no way to access the lake. No Queen's chain around here. I went about as far as Neu Seeland, but I was still between a road and some buildings so it wasn't very interesting, nor was it the pleasant lakeside stroll I was expecting. On the way back I stopped at the town of Rorschach, which gave the impression of just being a normal one-train-track suburb without anything particularly touristic about it. Not a single souvenir shop. When I got back to St. Gallen, I read in an information brochure that Rorschach actually is pretty interesting, or at least pretty old. That afternoon I went to Dreilinden, which is basically a recreational area with three ponds, some grass and a nice view of the city, similar to the view from near where I was staying. I only went as far as the first pond, and sat around for a bit before taking a ride on the Mühleggbahnli, Switzerland's only fully automatic underground railway. It's also the shortest railway. I think after that I just wandered around the old town town looking at shops and finding the bears, which had been moved to different spots around town. The next day I decided it was time to do the basic Switzerland tourism activities... visit a chocolate factory and a cheese factory. I went to the Appenzeller cheese factory first, since they only make cheese until 2p.m. So I watched some cheese being made, ate something at the restaurant, and then went to the Swiss culture museum (free to enter with my Swiss Youth Pass) next door. I spent too much time there, and by the time I got to Flawil I was too late to get the bus to Shoggi-Land (Shoggi being Swiss German for Chocky... they like to change ck into gg.) Oh well, I will have plenty of other chances to visit a chocolate factory. I might go on the Chocolate Train when its season starts again. Next stop/nachster halt/prochain arret/prossima fermata, Schwyz, the canton that put the Switz in Switzerland. I got to the hotel I'd reserved a room at, to find that they were full, didn't seem to think I'd reserved a room, and didn't speak English or French. Oh well, I got a room at the next hotel I came across, which is not much more expensive and has a great view of the lake. Upon checking in I was given the timetable for the lake boats, and offered a drink while I waited for the next boat. It's a fair assumption that the first thing somebody will want to do here is go for a cruise on the lake (Lake Lucerne), it is a beautiful lake. As it happened I had recently been thinking it was about time I went on a boat, I used to do that in every city I visited and I hadn't done it at all on this trip. Anyway, I asked for a hot chocolate, and another of my recently formed hypotheses about Switzerland was disproven. I had noticed that, while in New Zealand you might sometimes get foam, sometimes cream, sometimes a nice design in cocoa powder on the top, sometimes marshmallows or even chocolate fish with your hot chocolate, in Switzerland if you ask for a hot chocolate you always get exactly the same thing... some hot milk and a sachet of Caotina. Well, not here. They have a selection of different flavours of Austrian drinking chocolate, which comes in sort of tablets to dissolve in a glass of hot milk. The first I tried was chocolate with chilli, which I've heard somewhere is surprisingly good. It was good, but not as good as I'd expected. That's the problem with expectations. Still, it gives new meaning to 'hot' chocolate. So, off on my cruise around Lake Lucerne. Actually, I've been on a cruise around Lake Lucerne before, during the Contiki Europe tour, but that was at night, and was basically just a party which happened to be on a boat. This time, I actually got to see the lake, and it's worth seeing. It was really just a normal ferry, not a special tourist cruise or anything, which was alright because it was included on my travel pass. The next morning I discovered that the included breakfast at this hotel is great... all the stuff that Swiss hotel breakfasts normally have, plus doughnuts. Still not quite as good as the full English breakfast I had every day in Manchester, but the best Swiss breakfast for sure. Why did I just write a paragraph about breakfast? That was this morning. Also today I visited two museums, both of which were free to enter with my travel pass, I'm really working that thing. I got to see the original Swiss Charter from 1291, and various other such documents as other cantons joined the confederation. Unfortunately I was running short of time and didn't get to read everything, so I still don't know the answers to the questions tantalisingly posed in the museum's brochure. Well, there's always the web. Tomorrow I'm off to Zurich to stay with the weird Swiss guy for a few days, and then I'll be back at work. The Grand Tour of Liechtenstein (and Switzerland) continues 3 May 2006 I went back to Geneva to go to the Salon du Livre et de la Press, which is basically a book expo. So naturally I bought too many books, but I won't bore you with that when I have so many other things to bore you with. I will mention that there was a stand with Romansh books and they had the same dictionary I'd just bought in Zernez, as well as an English<->Romansh one. Oh well, it's better to have one that I actually got from the Engadin valley. The next day I went to Liechtenstein. Liechtenstein seems so much like a 27th canton of Switzerland. They use the same currency, speak the same language (another Swiss German type dialect) use the same bus system, and the souvenir shops have just as many Switzerland souvenirs as Liechtenstein ones. The landscape is pretty much the same... mountains, vineyards, pretty pink, white and yellow trees in the Spring, and fields with cows in them. It's about the size of a small Swiss canton (Geneva, for instance.) The dessert at the place I was staying was a slice of vanilla and strawberry icecream arranged in a Swiss flag design. I even heard some Swiss cowbells, only they weren't on cows, they were on goats, and they weren't Swiss, they were Liechtensteinisch. I don't know what the adjective for Liechtenstein is, I'm tempted to follow the Palestinian model and say Liechtenstinian, but I know that's wrong, it's the wrong kind of stein. I suppose since Einsteinian is a word it should be Liechtensteinian. It must be annoying for a bell to ring every time you do some normal goat-like thing like gnawing into a tree, as the ones I saw were doing. I wonder if they get so used to it that they think the sound is a normal part of motion, and would panic if the bell were taken off. It reminds me of the joker in The Solitaire Mystery, whose bells warn others of his approach and remind him that he's alive. Anyway, Liechtenstein's pretty cool. I took the bus from one end of the country to the other, went up a hill to Gutenburg castle, from which there is a nice view of the town. After looking at the interesting sculptures outside the art gallery, and watching the tourists all line up to pay for a Liechtenstein stamp in their passports (I didn't bother... I could get a stamp for free simply by going to Austria and entering the country from that side, but why bother when there are so many other EU countries which I've been to and didn't get passport stamps for?) I took a ride in a little tourist train around the capital Vaduz. Mostly the commentary was about the history of Liechtenstein, with only two actual sights to see -- the red house, whose claim to fame is being very old, and Castle Vaduz, where the prince lives. We only saw that castle from afar, but it had the flag up to indicate the prince was home. I wonder if he ever takes the flag down on Saturday nights when he's home, just so that people thinks he has more of a social life. Another cool thing in Liechtenstein was that I discovered English really hasn't taken over the world, not even the world of tourism. I went into a hotel to ask for directions to the hostel I was staying at, and asked in German whether the person knew English. To my surprise (since people in the tourism business tend to know English), she said no, and asked in German whether I spoke French. So that's the second time in this trip that my French has come in handy for talking to a non-native speaker. I still didn't quite manage to find the place following her directions, but I asked a jogger in German (I don't really know German, but 'where is ... street?' was one of the first sentences I learnt), and as I know the words for left and right, I was able to understand his response. So now I'm in St Gallen for three nights. I thought Andermatt had quite a few bear statues. St Gallen has a whole troupe of them by the train station, some performing weird stunts, some just dressed strangely... one is all Salvador Dali style, with a giraffe neck, some melted clocks, and drawers painted on its back. If I know anything about Salvador Dali (and I do, because I went to the Dali exhibition in London) there's probably a bean on that bear somewhere. Other than that I haven't seen much of St. Gallen or the surrounding area yet. Well, actually I've seen a whole lot of it, because it's necessarily to go fairly high up a hill (and then down again) to get to the place I'm staying, and there's a great view. I can even see Lake Constance from up there. So that's one mission out of the way... I usually try to get up somewhere high to get an overview of a place.  Next Page