Guy Beres

This weekend is a long weekend in the fair United Kingdom, and hence for the first time in a little while at least I will be vacating the country. The destination this time around is Berlin, which should prove an interesting destination indeed. I am particularly enthused about just being there amongst all the tragic and dramatic history that has unfolded over the last century. The Jewish Museum and Checkpoint Charlie Haus should be fascinating, and I am also looking forward to getting out to Potsdam, of Potsdam Conference infamy.

I won’t have access to the Internet until Tuesday (when service will resume), but next week after I return I may deign to pose a few happy snaps. In the meantime, take care and do have a good weekend.

Some family have come to visit from Australia, and so for the next week, I am going to be out and about with them around these parts and will not be posting. Until then, take care and TTFN.

Travel has been a great educator. I had never heard of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona while in Australia, but it truly is an astonishing site, and for my money, one of the top two or three most fascinating churches in the world. The extraordinary facade, concocted by mad Spanish architect-prince Antoni Gaudi looks like it is a CGI graphic that has been super-imposed on the real world. The tall, arched stained glass windows let in a pretty amazing kaleidoscope of colours, creating a place of beauty in a way that very few places of worship I have seen do. And to top it all off, the church is still after about a century, a work in progress. Even today, it seems the church is 50% construction site, and 50% place of worship, started in 1891, and scheduled (perhaps optimistically) to conclude in 2026.

Astonishing. Go there.

I am not sure I am happy or sad about some of the jobs that tourism creates. Everywhere we have gone on our travels we have seen both the good that tourism brings and the strange developments it fosters. I am not sure whether I should feel happy, sad or indifferent about the fact that this chap in Rome needs to cavort around as someone from Ancient Rome to make a buck. Well might we say that tourism has provided him with a source of income. Well might we wonder whether there might not be better things folks like him could be doing in early Winter when tourist numbers are down. I wonder how he conceptualises it all - is it a way to make a few extra euros on the side, or is he forced into doing it through desperation and circumstances? Is it a laugh, or does he hate it to death?

Should I feel bad that I really don’t want a photo with him, even though I wonder whether I as a relatively wealthy tourist should be helping him out?

They must be mad for George Clooney in Spain. Either that, or they must be driven crazy by the sight of him seemingly everywhere, from amusingly exuberant Martini ads like this one, to his pleased looking face on Nespresso billboards. The hotel where we stayed in Barcelona was located nearest to the Clot metro station, which was perhaps fitting given the amount of ham, chorizo and cheese we ate while we were there. Every night in the evening, after a full day walking around and taking in the city (for my money the best in Spain), we came home to Clot, and hence, to George, whose absurd expression greeted us when we exited the metro station each night.

He is clearly a shameless man, but on the other hand, this ad brought a smile to even this Clooney shunner’s face every evening we enjoyed there.

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Palermo for the uninitiated (we weren’t, at least initially) is the capital of Sicily, and an interesting clash of your average cosmopolitan city in Western Europe and somewhere just a bit more lively and exotic. One of the highlights of our trip there was stumbling on a restaurant for dinner just as a massive and unexpected religious procession unfolded in the main square before our eyes. Seemingly without any warning, soon after a barrage of fireworks were released literally fifteen or twenty metres from where we were standing, with people in the crowd even closer than that to the action. The locals, of course, seemed to be going about their daily business as usual, acting as if all this was normal. Apart from general appearances which are in any case a dead giveaway, you could certainly tell who the tourists were that night from the shocked, pleased and bewildered looks on their faces.

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Okay, well I lie slightly, but your correspondent at far right of shot is shooting a glance back at the Colosseum in Rome as he waits to purchase a painfully overpriced panini and bottle of water from a vendor. Upon arriving at the site and admiring its site and scale, we were rushed quickly through the crowds by a student offering us a tour. Although we were somewhat sceptical and there was some initial confusion (there must be about two dozen tours being operated at the same time at any one time at the Colosseum), it turned out to be well worth it to provide a deeper layer of context to what we were seeing. We also took a guided tour of Palatine Hill, run by a frankly quite excellent archaeological student from New Zealand who made us quite proud of us antipodeans and our kiwi mates.

Rome was one of those places where it is virtually impossible to take it all in and appreciate the full scope. There’s just too much important history there, literally around every corner and on every street that you walk.

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Of all the places in Europe I have visited so far, Belgium was probably one of the most enjoyable. What is in Belgium, I hear you ask? Well, the answer is really quite simple and can not be underestimated: beer and chocolate. Now I am not much of a beer drinker, but when confronted with the almost absurd array of beers on offer in Brussels, you can’t help but feel a little curious. While I’m not much of a beer drinker, I am much of a chocolate eater. There are chocolate shops all over the place in Brussels and Bruges (where this photo was taken, under an hour by train from Brussels), from Godiva, to Pierre Marcolini (recommended!), to Leonidas… and I could go on, and on…

The touristy alfresco restaurant culture of Bruges is reflected in the background.

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We visited Florence, Venice and Pisa as part of the same trip. Florence was a pretty interesting city to say the least, forever marked as it is by the presence of Michaelangelo’s David and one of the world’s greatest art galleries, the Uffizi. In what has become something of a tradition on these trips, on one day we managed to get quite remarkably lost in Florence. Despite many desperate map consultations and the strong and persistent general expectation that we were in fact heading where we wanted to go, we eventually ended up quite a long way from where we thought we were. The irony of the fact that the name of the street where we “found ourselves” on the map again was named Machiavelli was inescapable.

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One of the great things about travel is that you never really quite know what you are going experience along your way. Obviously one has expectations about certain sights or places that one is about to visit, but part of the real joy of travel is stumbling upon something unique and interesting that you didn’t quite anticipate.

I am going to be away over the Easter Weekend and actually until Wednesday next week, so for each of the next five days I have stage-published one of the photos from my travels, each with a bit of a story behind it. Each post will have a smaller version of the image on the main page, with a larger version of the image over the fold for those who want to see a bit more detail and have a decent net connection. The posts will go online at 7AM AEST daily.

In any case, I hope everyone has an enjoyable and safe Easter.

My first visit to Italy was to Venice, and despite my expectations about the city, I couldn’t help but be shell-shocked by just how otherworldly it was. All in all, perhaps the only negative aspect to the experience were the swarms of tourists about the place (we went in peak Summer) - to the point where the place really was somewhat overcrowded. One of the unexpected little delights of visiting Venice was a visit to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. Besides a pretty great collection of modern art, the museum boasted a beautiful, shady green courtyard filled with sculptures, and I couldn’t help but notice this somewhat unconventional headstone.

It lists the names of Peggy Guggenheim’s deceased babies - her dogs, all buried together in what one presumes was her favourite place in the world.

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