Ouch!

Some news

Unfortunately we haven't been updating this weblog very often, I have mostly updated mine instead of our common one but we are doing very well, looking for houses at the moment. This week we have quite a few to have a look at, which will keep us busy.

We saw one beautiful apartment last week but the agency needed someone to move in very quickly and we didn't have enough money at the time to pay the bond and the first month rent. We will see if we get lucky with the rest of the places we are suppose to have a look at.

I just wanted to post a quick update on our common blog just in case :)

What a beautiful day

We've made it! We are in Sydney.

Sunshine and a great 17 degrees received us in a fantastic wednesday in this great city! We arrived last night at around 7 p.m. and Danielle's parents picked us up from the airport. The journey was good, a bit long but the service from Qantas was great, we really can't complain. The flight was full but not too many screaming babies or old senil ladies. We even got to have a shower at Singapore's aiport, that was great! Starting the last leg of the flight fresh, almost like if it was the only flight we had.

After a good night sleep, we walked to Tamarama and enjoyed the fantastic surf (in Bondi, we saw dozens of people surfing). The sky is blue, the weather's great, this city is fantastic and ... NO SPIDERS!!! Woohooooo! (it's too cold for the spiders apparently, not for me though).

I can't tell you how happy I am. It's still a bit strange, I can't really realize that I am in Australia and that this is my home now, that I will be living here for a while and that I am not a tourist here anymore. This is a great feeling and I really wish some of my friends could experience it.

Just for the teasing: the winter here is indeed nicer than summer in Amsterdam!

--B

Bye bye apartment

We've left our great place in De Pijp since the owner needed it back before we actually had to go to Oz, so we are staying at Donna's place (THANK YOU!!!!) until we leave. We don't have an internet connection at home so posts will be less frequent from now on. Sorry.

-- B

GPS for hiking

As I said in the previous post, I am a techie so I am looking at really techie things to use in our trek. Thanks to Google, I found this site. Here is an excerpt from the GPS for hiking page:

What features are important for a particular use are a very personal thing. And.. The features needed for hiking are a bit more extensive (and a bit different) from those needed for automobile navigation use. Below are my "essential hiking feature list" of GPS receiver features.

(I omitted features that are present in ALL receivers.)

1. "Map" screen (as opposed to just a numerical lon/lat position fix): Makes it much easier to see where you are relative to reference waypoints.
2. WaterProofness: Unit should be rated submersible to protect it from getting wet.
3. Long battery life: Keeps you from having to carry so many batteries. Some units with 2 batteries have longer life than some with 4.
4. Built in Maps: Not absolutely essential, but big help in orientation and estimating distance to nearest roads.
5. Route capability: Twenty Route capability is pretty standard, some have 50. Make sure you get one with at least 20 routes.
6. Waypoints: 500+ user entered waypoints are pretty standard, some can store many more. Make sure you get one that can store at least 500.
7. Multiple Datum capability is pretty standard: Make sure all the datums you will want to use are included in the GPS you select.
8. Fit nicely in your pocket and lightweight: This is a very personal thing, but you should consider it when you are thinking about hauling a unit around in the wilderness.
9. Bearing to next waypoint: Almost universal, but essential to hiking use.
10. Screen Size and your ability to read it are important especially if you have problems with viewing fine detail. B&W screens are fine for hiking and many color screens are hard to read in direct sunlight. TransReflective Color screens are the exception.
12. 12 channel parallel receiver system: Needed for best reception in difficult terrain and tree cover.

Not ABSOLUTELY essential features, but nice to have.

1. We recommend map memory of at least 20 megs for a mapping GPS. A minimum of 8 megs of map memory is recommended though you can "get by" with 1.4 megs or so if local topo maps for hiking maps are your only need.
2. Transreflective Color screens such as in the Garmin G-60C are easy to read in bright sunlight and are also modestly easy on battery life when the screen backlight is turned on at night.
3. UTM readout may be a consideration for some. This feature is available on a limited selection of consumer GPS receivers.
4. Topo Maps uploaded into your GPS: The Garmin USA Topo CD maps contain contour lines and small stream data very helpful in navigating in off-road territory. Magellan has a new TOPO map offering which is not quite as detailed as the Garmin offering.
5. For use under heavy tree cover or difficult (multipath) terrain conditions, an external amplified antenna will generally be helpful.

Read more on the GPSInformation.us site (where this excerpt comes from).

How do you plan a 1000km trek?

The date for our trip to Australia is getting closer. And as the time passes by, we are getting closer to have to actually plan the famous 1000km walk we want to do in september and october.

So, how do you plan walking for 1000 km and not suffering the fact that you take too much or too little? Or that you actually find yourself in an environment that forces you to need certain accessories that you don't have?

When talking to a friend of ours that has been on the road for the last year, he told us "don't have too much gear, that's a killer" and another friend also told us "Whatever plans you make, always know that they will change. You can't have a schedule when hiking".

I could imagine ourselves having large backpacks full of things, of course, the normal camping gear (like a tent, sleeping bags, cooking thing -very light-, etc), then some clothes (some warm stuff, even though the whole walk will take us through south western Australia, you never know), towel, maps, compass, knife. And then I kept on adding (mentally) my camera gear ... but wait ... we are planning to walk to 1000 km, do I really want to be carrying the very heavy camera/lenses/tripod/film combination? So, I started thinking that digital was the way to go, but again, camera/lenses/tripod/external drives/additional batteries ... I was again at the starting point. Maybe the idea is just to get one lens, the SLR film camera, no tripod and a bag full of film. That could be the light way to do it. This took me quite a bit of thinking, especially when everything you read about this region is related to their wildflowers and how fantastic they are, etc etc.

Being a techie, I also thought that we might need a GPS. But then again, batteries, reliability, weight, size, etc are all considerations to take into account. There are some interesting GPS devices that are waterproof and have all the things you might be needing when walking in the outback, for example the fact that you can use it under a cover of trees (no need for a clear sky) or have enough memory for many waypoints.

Another thing that's recommended when you are traveling in the outback in Australia is an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons (EPIRB) but since the track we will be doing is not so remote and is quite well marked, I think this might be a bit overkill.

And then water and food! And you keep on adding to the list. And then you realize that if you do all that, you'll be walking with 30 kg on your back for 2.5 months! NO WAY :-)

So, how do you plan? I guess you take the bare minimum and then, whatever you need, you'll have a town on the way where you can get more stuff. A small camera will do, if there are fantastic locations, take notes and come back next year, more prepared to be on a photographic expedition and not a hiking extravaganza. As for the techie gear, I think that an EPIRB might be overkill but it's so small, it doesn't hurt to get it on the backpack. The GPS can be replaced by a map and compass (that you should always take anyways).

Can you believe all that talk from me? No? Well, it was about time that I wrote something about this long journey that Danielle and I are planning, since it has been in our heads for quite a while now.

Last day but not last time

Well, our short trip to Berlin is coming to an end and in a few minutes we will head to the airport to catch our flight back to Amsterdam.

We had a very nice day today, as enjoyable as yesterday but we did other things. First step was to go and see a nice exhibition in a strange place, called the Palast der Republik. The exhibition was the terracota army from China! It was amazing! I found the building to be as interesting as the exhibition though! This army of terracota soldiers was discovered in the mid 70s in China and has been declared the 8th wonder. It is very impressive and tells stories about 2 million people enslaved to make those things. Anyways, it was great!

After that we walked through the Mitte (center) and ended up in an empty Asian-a-like food place, which was really mediocre but quite cheap (well, more or less). It was the fault of the Lonely Planet guide that pointed us out to a fantastic restaurant that doesn't exist anymore.

On the way back, we went to the Deutsche Guggenheim, which has a nice installation from Nam June Paik, called Global Groove 2004.

After that, I made the mistake to let Danielle choose what to do next and we entered the library (our guide talks about 9 million books), we must have made a wrong turn in the corridors, because it wasn't interesting nor very large. Anyways, we realized our mistake very fast and headed out to walk in the sunny afternoon, had a few more coffees and then headed back to the hotel to pick up our bags. We are now in the internet cafe, a few minutes away from heading back to the airport.

Danielle and I agree, we will be back in Berlin one day, it has been a great journey. Fear us Berlin, as we will be back!

-- Bruno

Berlin!!

We're in Berlin and it has been a fabulous day! After a great morning, we've been wandering around the city. We've seen Check point Charlie, the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, Unter den Linden and the fantastic Sony Centre, complete with massive wooden horse from the movie Troy. We've wandered through the huge park the Tiergarten, and we ended up at the Rote Rathaus. Then we went to Alexander Platz. It's been great. We've negotiated the Ubahn and the Sbahn, but mostly just used our feet. As we've walked , the reality of what a divided city this was, and somehow still reamins, hit home to us in many unexpected ways.

Some interesting things we've passed have been a balloon that was secured to the ground with surrounding cables, which usually lifts a human cargo in a cage underneath. It wasn't in operation because winds at 150 meters up were blowing too strongly. It reminded me of Brian Fitzgerald always saying that Greenpeace has to be careful when it uses balloons because the slightest gust of wind and they become pretty much unuseable. Greenpeace can only really use them at dusk and dawn.

The Reichstag building is amazing - its hard to describe how it totally dominates the area it is in. It has a huge transparent dome behind it that you can walk up. We decided that smelled like exercise, and so we lay down in the glorious sunshine and just watched all the earnest tourits going around like ants inside the huge dome, ascending the spiral up ramp. But everything here is enormous - the most imperial architecture you can imagine. The stuff that escaped the war is so beautiful and grand, and the new stuff is equally immense and imaginative. The Sony centre itself was really beautiful, you thought you were sitting in a glass castle. And then there was the big trojan horse. What more could one want in a dining experience?

Around the city are scattered the remains of the wall, here and there. A line of inlaid brick neatly traces where the wall used to be. Right through the center of the city, loads of construction is underway, as people build more embassies, condos, businesses, memorials and parks. It seems as if there is a heartfelt will to cover the gap that used to split the city like a wound. If there is less space between one side and another perhaps the ache will go away?

Berlin is a city suffering from its history, and its challenged by financial strain as well. The question it really makes you ask is, how can a wall be good for a city? Israel might want to look at Berlin and learn a few truths.

Geriatric Air

We are back in Amsterdam after a nightmare trip in Geriatric Air from Buenos Aires.

We arrived a bit late at the airport and we queued for a while. When we got to the counter, we didn't have any seats since we didn't make a reservation nor there was time in the system to assign us one (the flight was leaving in less than 20 minutes). Anyways, we went to the gate and we had to boarding passes waiting for us there, seats 26L and 26K. Fine we thought, we have seats (even though I was secretly -or not so secretly- wishing that we would be upgraded as the plane was full). Getting to our seats took us 10 minutes (more or less) and in our row, there was this 74 year-old lady, taking three seats, of which two were ours. Uh, excuse me signora, but these two are our seats... I politely said. ... (dazzled facial expression). She didn't know were she was sitting, she had all her bags over the seats. The flight attendents ignored the fact and said that's your problem, you fix it. Anyways, we manage to get her to move to the window seat and Danielle and I take the middle (me) and aisle (Dani). She immediately starts talking to me in a mix between italian and spanish, I found out that she collects her 540 euros monthly pension every year, that she is a widow, that she has the flu, ... no!? wait! Flu? Argh! I am sitting next to a virus menace!

30 minutes into the air she complains that her wallet disappeared. Danielle and I stand up and after she finally gets of the seats, I look all around the seats to try to find her wallet back. Nothing under the seats, nothing between the seats. I politely ask Are you sure it's not in your purse?. No she replies. Ok, we all sit back. 30 minutes later she finds her wallet in her purse and makes insinuations that it was stolen and returned to her. I don't say anything because the only thing that comes to mind is You have been sitting on your bags since we left the airport, what the hell are you talking about?. Anyways, trying to watch a movie, getting interrupted by the lady and by the worst-user-interface-design-ever personal entertainment system that didn't work! I would click to see Live and let die and I would get opera on the headphones and a blank screen. Danielle got an italian movie when she wanted to see the same movie as me. The movies would freeze in random places and start over again or skip 15 minutes forward!

These are samples of what happened, it's impossible to describe. My father told me back in Buenos Aires, that this airline was one of the worst. I told him that he was exagerating, but not, he was right!

You can imagine our happiness when we got to Fiumicino. But our nightmare was not yet over, as we had to queue for 1 hour waiting to pass the x-ray machines, among hundreds of travelers and all the retired people that were traveling with us. And the metal detectors must have been set on detect-even-the-filings-from-teeth setting as everyone had to pass three times, taking everything out (well, not stripping, which would have been very scary). Finally passed that and most of our terrible travel experiences were over. The flight to Amsterdam was more relaxed, as the plane was almost empty. We just had to wait for 45 minutes to get out luggage but that wasn't something to write home about.

Maybe our tolerance is decreasing or maybe traveling through Geriatric Air is indeed something worth of a nightmare.

Julio is disssed

Last night we went out (late - man they eat around 10 here!! How are you supposed to sleep on a belly full? Answer - don't go to sleep until 3.) We got to see Pablo di Noto, Juan and Luisa. At least thats what I think they were called. We had been all afternoon catching up with the Wamani crew, and then at 7 Pablo came to pick us up. We tried to go to a resturant at 8.30 but that was too early for a resturant to open. (Unbeliveable.) So we went to a cool bar down the road, where Pablo won my heart by also claiming to love Chizitos, which are huge snackies shaped like bullets. They taste fabulously synthetic and certain boyfriends have been known to say they are horrible. But this is pure fabrication. Chizitos are delicious, and would be perfect junk food if you were stoned.

After we left the cafe, went to this amazing traditional resturant, with huge racks of garlic hanging from the ceiling, big pictures of tango dancers and horse painted on the walls, and this drunken old guitar playing tango singer came around the tables, singing requests. I chose a request from a photocopied sheet called 'mano a mano'. He rolled his eyes and said in Spanish 'A woman wants this!' Then he sang a song from a mans point of view about a woman who was cruel, and walked out on her lover. It ends saying 'When you are nothing but old furniture glued together, come and see me.' Such passion in his voice! Such distortions of the face! Such clapping from the Argies sitting at the table, eating their body weight in meat! I thought that maybe I should have requested a love story but really I can't read the language. Posibly I could have tried but with my luck it would haev been the story of a woman who was so cruel she ate children for breakfast and then ran off with the painter. Everyone was singing along, and I thought how passionate these people are. Right behind me was an old fellow in an incredibly yellow shirt and he just started singing along with the tango guitar man. Beautiful voice.

Strangley enough, sitting on the plane a few days ago I asked Bruno what sort of music he likes. "I hate Julio Inglesias and all that shit" he said evenly. I looked at him for a few seconds and said, "You hate all those latin singers?". "Yes". "Buts thats your cultural heritage. " "I know. I don't like it. I like heavy metal."

ICE

Impressions from Argentina

Ice has made quite an imprint on me this journey. The first impression that will stay with me as a wonderful fragment is one of sitting at a table, opening up styrofroam containers, full of amazing icrecreams in the most delicious flavours. Bruno's mother Beatrice opened the icecream, and then took a spoon and fished out what was on top of the icecream - a chunk of dry ice. She deposited it in a glass of water and it foamed away, spilling clouds of vapour all over the table to my curiousity and delight. As she held it on the spoon, the spoon vibrated from the cold. Apparently they always have dry ice with icecream here.

And another encounter with ice. Yesterday we saw an amazing glacier, towering into the air, and I was reminded of stories of a friend of ours, Irene Berg, about her amazement and her sense of honour to have witnessed the prescence of a glacier. My mind tried to understand what I was seeing, yet it kept sliding away, and so the glacial wall remained mysterious to me. The mind can understand the ripples on the sand, the spiral of seeds inside a sunflower, or the continuity of the ocean waves. These natural patterns we can intuitively grasp. But the glacier hinted at a structure that we should understand, but it remains just a bit beyond your grasp. Everything we saw was of a type, and yet no fragment was like any other bit. So much novely of shape and tortured jagged splintery ice assailed the eyes, and yet it all held together, as if it seemed to say 'but of course it would be like this and no other way'.

Everyone looking at the Morreno glacier went into a subdued reverie. It reminded me of the inactivity and quiet waiting of fishermen. What were we waiting for? Something we could grasp from the immensity of the glacier, a crack, a dull roaring rumble, as a sheet of ice fell off and plummeted into the icy milky waters at the bottom of the ice wall. The sound was a deep rumble, a cracking break that immediately spiked the attention, making your eyes dart along the wall, hoping to catch the exciting moment of shards of ice breaking with the impassive gleaming blue faceted face.

Later we got into a boat and cruised along the wall, as freezing winds whipped around our faces. I thought how nice it would be to just have all the right clothes, so that only your eyes stared out at the world, while your body remained untouched by the whipping wind. We sailed past a large chunk of ice, possibly as big as a bus, floating in the milky water, and we gazed at the colours in this chunk. The opaque milky blue waters had been absorbed by the ice berg, so it seemed to glow blue, growing translucently sky coloured around the edges. Somehow this chunk seemed more understandable or definable than the immense glacial face that it had split from, and it was spiritually easier to contemplate than the jagged tortured wall of compressed ice that loomed above the boat.