31 August 2005
Online again!
Finally, finally, finally I am back online. It's been a very long six weeks or so, but we've finally achieved it and my computer's stopped bluescreening every time I turn it on (hope it's not listening as I type this), and our ISP has managed to get our order right (third time lucky), and I've been able to get the wireless card working too, so... I'M BACK!
OK. Enough of the burbling. The travel has been ever so dramatic - I got sick in Singapore and couldn't eat anything, was nursed back to health by my marvellous friend Su in Kuala Lumpur, just in time to move on to London, where the jetlag hit with a vengeance and it took me 4 days or so to get over it.
Spent a fair bit of time wandering the lovely streets and park of Greenwich, stopped by the Victoria & Albert Museum (henceforth the V&A) for an exhibition of the International Arts & Crafts movement (very very fabulous), then hopped on a plane to Cologne. Cologne was great - a really nice town, although I missed the Rhine, which a friend of mine tells me is nearly impossible to do when you catch a train from the station (as I did) because the station is right next to the river. Oops. Guess I'm just talented. I did have an offer to see it - from a Moroccan man who attempted to pick me up in bad German (I declined in worse German), asking me to go for dinner and a walk along the river with him.
I caught a train to Brussels, and got pretty lost trying to find the B&B I'd booked myself into, but the owner was very nice when I got there and we had a lovely chat. But she was going away the next day and left me (as the only guest) in the tender care of a friend. I'm not sure if there were wires crossed or something, but I ended up being all alone in the house, the dogs stole my dinner (bread & cheese due to a financial crisis) and the second night decided they didn't like me and started growling and baring their teeth and all in all being hugely threatening. I ended up packing my bag, gently pushing my way out of the house, using it as a shield, and fleeing to the marvellous wonderful Youth Hostel (Centre Vincent Van Gogh if anyone's interested) up the road. They took me in and gave me a comfy bed in a ten-person dorm and brekky the next day too!
The financial crisis was occasioned by the Belgian banks not recognising that my card has both a visa and a savings account attached to it and only allowing withdrawals from the credit card, combined with all of my purchases since I'd left Sydney suddenly making their presence known, all in a clump, and my poor mother, entrusted with my internet banking, accidentally locking my account so nothing could be moved anywhere. But she came to the rescue hugely by Western Unioning me some cash so I could run away on a bus back to the UK - everything was going so disastrously and I was getting very ill again, so it seemed better to abandon ship (or more accurately my return flight from Cologne) and just hop on a bus. The plus of this (which I hadn't realised when I booked it) was that I got to see the White Cliffs of Dover because the bus went on the ferry, not through the Chunnel!
But I'm getting ahead of myself here. In spite of everything, I very much enjoyed Brussels - it's a great city, with marvellous museums. I didn't get to see too many of them what with being flat broke and all, but the Musical Instruments Museum was great, and I enjoyed the Royal Palace. The Grand Place was très grand and - of course - absolutely packed with tourists, and every day there was something different on - an archery competition or a classical music DJ or a flower market or something. The Manneken Pis was scarily kitsch - and in my penniless state I confess I went to visit him three times, to see what he was wearing (the clothes definitely scary). I also paid my respects to Jeanneke Pis and Zinneke. Zinneke is definitely my favourite of the trio. I walked for miles though - Brussels has some rather nice parkland and some very fine buildings, and the best way to deal with poverty and digestive unpleasantness, I found, was to just walk and walk and walk. Got back to the UK a good deal thinner than when I left the boy in Sydney :-) (I had another Moroccan man try to pick my up in Brussels in reasonable French. I turned him down in poor French and a little English)
We stayed with the boy's sister in Lewes for a couple of days, visited Brighton, and then moved up to London. We moved into our little house about 3 weeks ago. Very nice & cosy with a nice little courtyard out the back, backing onto the Picadilly and District Lines, along which the trains trundle very rhythmically.
I started my new job just after we moved in, and it's coming along just fine - nice people, nicely placed office (near St Paul's), good coffee from the coffee cart, and we've been spending our weekends dealing with settling into the house and doing a little regular sightseeing - Crystal Palace Park and its 19th century dinosaur display, the National Portrait Gallery, Oxford Street - and last weekend a brief jaunt down to Dorset for the Bank Holiday. All in all, a marvellous time being had. Hopefully the next installment will be a little more intelligent. I'll come back and link in more photos as they go online...
