At last! A trip....to Cairo

My first extended trip of the year – I discount the week arguing with Latino Americans in Orlando – is to Cairo.

I’m scheduled here for just under three weeks.  This is my fourth day, and frankly I can’t wait to get home.  My project manager has been here three years – he deserves a medal for perseverance above and beyond the call of duty.  In England people have received knighthoods for less.  But then he is German and they tend to do things like that all the time.

So I’m taking a deep breath (but not out of doors: I’ll explain that in a minute) and getting on with it in true company style – you do what you have to do and get the hell out as quickly as you can.

I am counting the days…..

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Getting here was challenging. 

There are direct flights here from Warsaw but not every day.  Only LOT can explain why the days they do run bear no relationship to the Islamic working week where the weekend is Friday and Saturday and Sunday is a working day.  Faced with the choice of awkward midweek arrival and departure that would have been unacceptable to the client, I’m taking the scenic route.  Outbound, via Frankfurt with an unpleasant early morning (as in 2:30 a.m.) arrival, and home via Brussels – a daytime departure that will mean leaving the hotel at 6 a.m., and a wonderful five hour connection time in Belgium, to arrive home late in the evening.

Now, I should have expected no less – over my 12 years travelling the initial trip to a new destination is always a bit of a problem, especially when the journey takes me through Frankfurt.  Other posts on this blog have told of painful journeys to Almaty and Beirut and elsewhere through Frankfurt, and less than enjoyable first times to the Gulf through Paris and London.  This trip was, then, par for the course.

It started ok.  The usual efficient on-line check in on Friday and an equally painless bag drop at the airport 45mins before boarding Saturday evening.  I just had time for a quick coffee in the newly decorated Business Lounge and onto the plane for a simple hour and 20 minute hop to Frankfurt that lifted off bang on time.  Which is where the fun started.

We went into a holding pattern over the city – after the third circuit I, at least, noticed we were going nowhere, even if no-one else did.  After about 20 minutes of aimless meandering around the sky, the captain finally came clean and explained the situation: unexpected bad weather passing through, we’ll be doing this for another twenty minutes or so – but don’t worry about your connections, nothing is taking off either so you won’t miss it.   Now that sounds like fun….

It was.  The landing was very scary, the worst I’ve had in 12 years, like riding a rollercoaster in torrential rain, thunder and lightning.  We made it ok, the pilot thoroughly deserving the round of applause he got from the passengers (an odd Polish tradition that, for once, made sense).  We were bussed in to the terminal, and I got to my gate 10 minutes before boarding. 

We got on the plane.  They closed the doors.  We sat there 15 minutes.  The pilot came on and announced Bayern Munich were a goal up, oh and by the way we’re held here for at least another hour and a half because of the weather, sorry about that.  Five minutes later: it’s 1-1, extra time.  And no change, we still have no slot for take-off…..and still the thunder roared and the rain poured down.  

We were given water and magazines.  I listened to Jimi Hendrix and read my book.  At 11:30, we were told that there was still no take-off scheduled but it would have to be soon because the airport closes at midnight…..oh, and Chelsea won.  Clearly, he was no longer a happy man.  At a quarter to 12, the engines started, and stewardesses started running around telling everyone to sit down, switch off that laptop, do your belt up, we’re off…… and we were, in a hurry, despite the continued downpour.  Clearly someone had decided that trying a take-off was better than putting another hundred or so people in a hotel for the night…..  As it turned out, the take-off was fine, as was the flight to Cairo.  Due in at 2:20, we actually landed at 3:35……..

I got into the terminal, bought my entry visa at a branch of AlexBank, joined a short queue for passport control, and was through in 10 minutes – pretty good.  The baggage came through quite quickly too – except for my bag.  Despite there being the best part of two hours to do so, it wasn’t transferred between flights in Frankfurt – presumably someone didn’t fancy getting wet.  Brand new bag, too, never used before…..  So another hour passed while I filled out forms and got a receipt for the key (that was needed so the contents could be cleared through customs when eventually the bag arrived) and off I went.  Now then, ATM…..  No problem, got some cash, then followed by half a dozen competing cab drivers I wandered across to a limo hire desk – I had been told not to risk the locals as the cars were crap and I wouldn’t get a receipt.  The limo desk was closed – by now it was nearly 4:30……  So I had to take a local.  He demanded 250 pounds.  I offered 150.  We agreed on 200 with him giving me a receipt.  Welcome to Egypt where haggling is expected for every damned thing. 

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The cab was indeed crap, at least 15 years old and falling apart.  The driver wasn’t sure where the hotel was and had to ask directions.  It was a long drive, maybe 30km across town, on terrible roads that even at this ungodly hour were busy with trucks and mini buses, motor bikes and horse drawn carts full of vegetables – and all of them without lights.  But at least it was getting light now.
My hotel is listed on its website and elsewhere as 4 Star.  It’s within sight on the Pyramids at Giza, and offers “excellent views” of these wonderful old monuments.  It has a couple of pools and a health centre, and a range of restaurants for guests’ pleasure.

Well, yes – if your criteria for awarding stars to hotels are very generous.

For a start, right outside the front door is a huge flyover that carries traffic 24 hours a day on the city’s ring road.  At ground level, and parallel to this road, is the approach to the hotel – and a more filthy and unpleasant thoroughfare would be hard to find, even in this dirtiest of cities.   My taxi pulled up outside and I paid the guy my 200.  He gave me the receipt and told me to fill in the amounts myself as he couldn’t write – I presume he mean English.  He then demanded another 20 pounds to pay a toll (that was way back at the airport exit).  I told him to piss off, as I’d already paid over the odds and frankly, at just after 5 a.m. after a long and tiring journey I was in no mood to haggle further.  I got out and left him to it.

The place was deserted apart from the guy at Reception.  He checked me in efficiently enough and took me to my room.  The hotel is in three buildings that form three sides of a square.  I’m on the top floor of a side building, overlooking the pool area – a quiet room, as I asked for.  It’s no more than average.  The “king sized bed” is actually a standard double, but is comfortable enough.  There are only 6 hangers in the built-in double wardrobe, but at least it has adequate shelf space and the safe works.  There is a fridge I assumed to be the mini bar but it turned out to be quite empty.  The tv is a nice enough Sony flat screen, but the choice of viewing is, shall we say, limited – a selection of Arabic channels, a couple of movie channels showing English language films with sub-titles, and two news channels.  Not the usual suspects (CNN and BBC World) but NHK Hong Kong and CCTV Beijing – both English language but heavily Asian (well, actually China….) slanted so of little interest.    Then there are a couple of comfortable but shabby brown armchairs, a grubby and threadbare carpet , a small coffee table and a desk with internet connection at a cost of 50 Egyptian pounds for half an hour (that’s about EUR6.50, or nearly PLN30) – very expensive and not what you would normally expect in a 4 Star hotel.  There is a separate WiFi connection in Reception that is free however……I tried it and it’s very slow and unreliable.

Anyway, I sent a message to the PM and told him as I had no clothes I wouldn’t be in the office and settled down to a good sleep.  I woke at lunch time, and explored a bit.  My room does indeed boast a view of the Pyramids – across the flyover and between a couple of tatty looking apartment blocks.  I would guess only rooms on the top floor would have the view, and not all of them – so the claims on the website are little exaggerated.  There are a couple of ludicrously expensive shops flogging jewelry and local clothes and souvenirs and guide books.   The Thai restaurant it turns out has closed down because the tenants running it had not paid the rent (a pity – I quite like Thai food).  There is also a scruffy looking Italian restaurant that is closed during the day, a couple of pool side snack bars and room service.  The health centre turned out to be a ladies only spa and wellness centre – so no exercise bike for me.  I tried room service.  The “service” wasn’t, really – it took half an hour and four attempts before someone picked up the phone, and the food was no more than acceptable: I had a steak sandwich with fries – the steak was cold, the melted cheese hadn’t melted and there were perhaps 20 chips.  But I ate it anyway.  Monday night’s offering was not much better – chicken Gordon Blue (I think they mean cordon bleu….) with fries: a few more fries this time, but the chicken was very tough and unpleasant.  Last night the Italian place was open and finally a decent meal – minestrone soup and ground beef calzone plus a beer – Stella: the local one, not Stella Artois, Belgium’s finest.

My bag arrived from the airport about 8 on Sunday evening.  I asked at Reception for an iron and ironing board so that I could press my shirts that had been stuffed in the case for over 24 hours.  There are no irons, the guy said, you must use our laundry service.  This is off-site and of course costs money.  I told him to forget it, and I’m now wearing slightly rumpled clothes to the office.   But for a 4 Star hotel that is just unacceptable service – as I told the bloke.

So far, then. I’m not over-impressed by the place.

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And what of Cairo?

Well, safe to say it’s the dirtiest, noisiest, smelliest city I’ve ever been to.  If Beirut looks unfinished, largely due Israeli inflicted damage in various conflicts, at least the roads and pavements are (generally) swept and washed clean.   Any city in the world with a significant traffic problem – be it London, Almaty, Beirut or wherever -  has less than fresh air to breath, but they all pale when compared to Cairo.

On the way in from the airport, we followed the flyover for three or four kilometres before we reached the hotel (yes, it’s that big), and along the whole of its length below the structure are piles and piles of dirt, broken rock and concrete and assorted trash, perhaps three or four feet or more in height.  For much of the distance the road we were on was narrow and unlit, with scruffy and unfinished-looking (but nonetheless occupied – you can tell by the washing hanging over every balcony) apartment blocks.  The gutters alongside the road are clogged with dust.  I had put this down to unfinished roadworks, from the relatively new construction of the flyover, but it’s not – it’s city wide.  Abu Dhabi is a dusty city, despite the efforts of legions of migrant workers, but the dust there is mostly sand blown in from the desert or from the beach.  In Cairo, it’s fine grey concrete and gravel dust, so it looks just dirty.

The buildings, as a consequence, are also dirty, covered in a coating of the stuff.    Like buildings everywhere in the Arab world, they all have an unfinished look about them: big blocks of grey or sandy concrete with no plasterwork or paint to improve their appearance, with small balconies festooned with washing lines, and the usual proliferation of tv aerials and satellite dishes.  They make the city, any city, look slummy and uncared for.  In somewhere like Beirut or Gaza, Homms, Jerusalem and so on, it’s understandable, since they are all (or have recently been) conflict zones, but it’s difficult to find an excuse for it Cairo.  Despite the disturbances last year there wasn’t any wide-spread military activity to cause the sort of damage that characterize the other cities I listed.  It just seems to be very badly built and ill-maintained.

There is little point in cleaning your shoes because a ten yard walk along the footpaths (that are as bad as the roads) covers them equally in this crud.  Windows are grimy and dull, and to add to it all is the stinking petrol fumes from the worse traffic I have seen in my life.  I had read that Cairo traffic is bad, but I wasn’t prepared for how bad.  Beirut traffic was fun, in a way, heavy on most roads, particularly the highway from hotel to office, as I’ve written here previously, but at least there are road markings and traffic lights there (even if everyone ignores them).  Kiev was bad in places, but that’s down to the amount of development going on in the city.  London and New York and other major cities have high traffic volumes, but generally speaking it’s managed efficiently (more or less) by road markings, traffic lights and strictly enforced codes of conduct.  Plus drivers in those cities tend to know what they’re doing.

So far here I haven’t seen a single white line or traffic light.  The sheer number of vehicles on the roads, of all kinds, is horrendous.  There are huge numbers of cars – taxis and private vehicles – and the majority of them are old and poorly maintained.  There are fleets of Volkswagen, Toyota and Hyundai mini-buses that serve as a sort of bus-cum-taxi hybrid: again many of them have seen better days, and drive around with their bonnets open (these are mostly at the back of the vehicle) to keep the engines cool-ish – or at least try and prevent them overheating.  Then there are the buses themselves – old and in the usual Egyptian state of disrepair.  There are motor bikes, some converted to sort of three wheeled trucks for carrying stuff – I saw one yesterday piled ten high with plastic cages containing live chickens.   The (very) occasional bicycle wobbles along.  Carts piled high with vegetables or assorted junk, or merely empty, being hauled along by horses and donkeys, and pushed by some poor perspiring kid.  Then there are pedestrians crossing the road, weaving around traffic that is often stationary because the buses and taxis just pull up to pick up or drop off passengers wherever they are asked to do, with no attempt to pull into the side of the road, thus blocking every other vehicle.    As well as the pedestrians there are desperately poor people selling packets of tissues, matches – anything to raise a few coins to live on, or simply wandering between rows of traffic asking for donations.  Most of them are old, men and women, but there are young mothers carrying infants too.  Little kids, the age of my two (so 6 and 4) play on the concrete strip between carriageways while the parents and grandparents do this.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  Everyone is trying to weave from line to line to overtake, squeezing through non-existent gaps, leaning on the horn all the time.  It is complete and utter chaos, and only seems to quieten down after midnight (and then only briefly).

All this traffic spewing out petrol fumes, added to the dust being kicked up everywhere, and the reek of horse shit (and other stuff that doesn’t bear thinking about…..) is added to by everyone smoking and adding to the fume.  It’s too hot to drive with the windows closed, so as a passenger you’re exposed to this lung-busting shite as you pick your way through the traffic, windows open in the hope of generating some air circulation to cool you down – but rarely travelling fast enough to do so.  The cars have nothing remotely like air-conditioning fitted, of course.   Then your taxi driver decides to have a quick puff and lights up some foul and cheap local cigarette, and adds the smoke from that to the general fug in the car.  It’s no good asking him to stop, because he’ll look at you as if you’re insane, shrug his shoulders and ignore your request, probably blowing smoke at you as he does so.  It’s his car and his choice to smoke, and tough luck if you don’t like – you’re only a fare paying passenger after all. 

The 7 kilometre drive from the hotel to the office or back in the evening can take well over an hour with all this – and by the time we arrive I am feeling physically sick from it all.

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So all in all, I’m not too happy with my lot. 

Work itself is fine, the people are friendly, both ours and the bank’s teams, and at least I have a desk and all the connectivity I need – and all set up within an hour of my arrival: a pleasant change to the usual new site experience.   The office is a dump, probably one of the more modern buildings, but still a mess and dirty everywhere. 

It could be an interesting couple of weeks, too.  Today and Thursday see the first Presidential election since the Arab Spring last year, and I had an e-mail from the Foreign Office about it yesterday, basically warning me to stay away from crowds, be vigilant and on no account go near a Polling Station.  As if I would…..  The taxi passed half a dozen Polling Stations on the way in today, and there were queues around the building at all of them – separate lines, of course, one for men and another women.   Clearly they are taking it seriously here, though, and a high turnout is expected.   Then next week the verdict in the Mubarak trial is expected.  Civil disorder (for which read violent demonstrations and cops wielding clubs and tear-gas) is expected, at least if you are to believe the Foreign Office’s prognosis (which I don’t; they have a tendency to over-exaggerate potential issues – according to them nowhere is safe to travel).  It may well be that once all the political uncertainty has been put to bed and life returned to something like normality things will improve.  But that will take years.   In the interim, Cairo will remain a dump.

I plan a stroll to the Pyramids at the weekend, to take a load of pictures and ignore the beggars that throng all the tourist spots here.   I can remember visiting them some years ago – I wrote about it here, in Egypt: Ancient meets Modern.  There were huge numbers of beggars then, and mostly kids I remember: I wonder if they’re still there?   I also plan to spend as much time as I can in the pool, or lying on a couch beside it working on the tan.  I hope to find some decent food and beer by then as well.   I have my music and a couple of books to work through.  And a magazine to finish. 
I’ll be ok.   But I’m still counting the bloody days – 15 now.

Kiev - Euro 2012

Well, football fans, you’re in for a treat next month with the Euros being held in Poland and Ukraine.   Poland I’ve written about before, since I live there – it’s a great place, and increasingly Westernized so you’ll feel right at home.  The beer is good too.  And the food.

But Ukraine?  I had no opinion as I’d never been there.   So a couple of weeks ago, as we had two public holidays here and my company owed me some time off after weekends travelling to and from Orlando over Easter, we decided to take a trip there for a week.  We had the advantage of Ania’s brothers being there, for business reasons, for some months, which meant no hotel bills and decent guides.
 
So off we went.

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From Warsaw, it’s a fair old trek to Kiev, over 800km.  The train does it, with a couple of changes, in about 12 hours.  Flying time is only an hour and a half but the ticket costs were ridiculously high.  So we drove.  The first couple of hundred kilometers through Poland were ok, through Lublin, past the Majdanek concentration camp (I wrote about that previously on here) and on to the border crossing at Dorohusk.  I drove that quite happily, and the road has been improved since my last visit to Lublin the best part of 10 years ago.  Between Lublin and Chelm there is an extensive stretch of road construction still going on, probably part of the program of infrastructure improvements being undertaken in preparation the Euros, and it will no doubt improve the journey still more.  Will it be ready next month?   No.  Absolutely not.

The border crossing started well enough.  On the Polish side, they took our passports, checked there was no obvious contraband in the car and waved us through.  Terrific.  We drove half a kilometre to the Ukrainian customs post.  They took our passports and checked the car, again cursorily, and we made ready to head off to Kiev.  An hour and a half later we were still waiting.  The problem was with my passport – presumably recent stamps from such outlandish places as Abu Dhabi and Orlando confused them.  In any case, they took the thing away and carried out (unspecified) additional checks that presumably meant they had to contact someone in Kiev or somewhere, check a database or two to make sure I’m not a spy, then scratch their arses a bit more before stamping it and waving us through.  It was all very frustrating – keeping two little kids occupied and amused while sitting outside a customs booth is not easy at the best of times.

Anyway, we were in, and Ania took over the wheel for the remaining 600-odd kilometres.  The road was good, motorway standard, we had a Google Map of the route, and Ania had already spoken to her brother on the Polish part of the drive and got a better route from him, so we were well set.   Ten kilometres on and enjoying the scenery, we were waved down by the local constabulary.  Every 50km or so along the roads there are little buildings, like two storey sheds of corrugated iron or clapboard.  These are manned by the boys in blue, who watch for unsuspecting motorists whose number plates are not Ukrainian and flag them down.  Our Polish plates were a dead giveaway, and sure enough P.C. Plod flagged us down.  We had been warned this might happen and told to make sure we had about 500hryvnia (the local money) just in case – problem was the ATM at the border wasn’t working so we had none.  We managed to muster EUR5 and USD5 plus about PLN100, and Ania (who speaks some Russian, in common with all Poles) went off to discuss things with the fat, smug looking officer.    It seems we were doing about 3km over the speed limit, but more to the point didn’t have an insurance Green Card.  The fact that we didn’t even know we were expected to have one was of no consequence.  There was some discussion to and fro, apparently, and he relieved Ania of our zloty, advising us that there was a place at the next garage, a couple of hundred metres up the road and on the other carriageway, where we could buy a Green Card.  So off we went, made our way back to this garage and bought to document we needed for another hundred zloty or so (fortunately they accepted Visa).  It had been an interesting introduction to Ukraine and its endemic corruption: the money went straight into P.C. Plod’s back pocket in return for his not issuing an “official” ticket that would have cost us a lot more to settle.

From there, the drive up to Kiev was ok – but long.  We stopped a couple of times on the way, once in a small village where we spotted a cash machine (I had to climb a set of very rickety home-made wooden steps to get at it but it worked ok and we got some cash) and once in a forest for a comfort break.  The road was quite empty of traffic and of a surprisingly good standard – better than Polish roads in fact – so we made good time across the huge and seemingly unending Ukrainian plain.  The place has some of the best agricultural land in the entire continent, which makes the famine and widespread poverty dating back to Stalin’s time all the more criminal.  With good management there is no need for there ever to be grain shortages there.  But of course resource management was never one of Stalin’s or Communism’s strengths, was it, despite what the propaganda would have us believe.  It’s beautiful country, wide open spaces and forest and rolling meadows, a rural paradise, but very poor still.  We saw many horse driven wagons rumbling along the roads, including bizarrely on the motorway when we rejoined it (and at one point, hacking along at 170kph were terrified when we saw ahead of us a couple of people lurching drunkenly across a pedestrian crossing pushing bikes – you would never see anything like on any motorway anywhere else in Europe, I’m sure: certainly not on the M25….).  Another time, as we came round a corner into a typically poor Ukrainian village of bungalows and bars with the ubiquitous gold domed  Orthodox church (but no obvious store, school or surgery) we had to brake hard and weave our way slowly through a herd of cows being shepherded back for milking by a couple of women on bikes. 

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We arrived in Kiev around midnight, after nearly 12 hours travelling, and Ania’s brother met us on the outskirts of the city.  He led us another 20 or so kilometres across the river Dniepr to the far side of Kiev, where the apartment is.  Our first glimpse of the city therefore was of a brightly lit modern city not dissimilar to Warsaw or Frankfurt or even London – plenty of high-end shops and night clubs, many very good quality cars (Bentleys, BMWs, Infiniti, Jaguar, Range Rovers….) and an equal number of jalopies like Ladas and even old Russian Zil limos, plus equally scrappy trams and buses, and once we had crossed the broad expanse of the river (that here makes the Thames look like a stream; it must be over a kilometre across with islands midstream and marinas and docks along both banks) clusters of apartment blocks and huge sprawling railway yards and factories that reminded me of Almaty and Warsaw and other Eastern European cities.   The apartment, when we arrived, was in such a block and very reminiscent of one I used in Almaty a few years back, except that the block itself, while not of a particularly high standard, at least had functioning lifts that didn’t smell of stale cabbage, tobacco and piss, and had 24-hour security at the entrance and car park.   The flat was fine, very comfortable and spacious and on the 6th floor.

                                                  Furniture shopping - Kiev style
The next day, we all piled in Radek’s car for a tour.  Kiev is a big city – at least as big as London, and sprawled out on both sides of the Dniepr.  The roads, given the good quality of highway up from the border, were surprisingly poor, full of potholes and badly maintained, lacking white lines (at least clear ones) so making driving challenging at best, but with plenty of traffic lights that were often ignored.  We crossed the river by one massive bridge and at the far side hit a big maintenance operation, with rollers and tarmac spreading machines and workmen everywhere – but no effective traffic control.  There was a guy waving a small red flag that was tangled around the stick and everyone ignored it anyway, but no barriers or temporary lights as you would find anywhere else.   The traffic flow, including us, basically weaved around the various bits of machinery as they continued to work, and cut each other up as cars made for road entrances that were haphazard to say the least and lacked any intelligible signs – and those that were visible were of course in Cyrillic script and meaningless (to me at any rate).   It reminded me very much of Beirut.

But Radek happily carved his way through and we were soon at one of the main shopping areas, close to a big square and parkland.  The street was pedestrianized, and we parked in a side road (half on the footpath) and strolled along the broad avenue.  It was the day before the big May Day celebration (still big in Eastern Europe, and a public holiday) so there were plenty of entertainments along the street.  There were many people singing and playing guitars, individually and in groups, balloon and toy sellers, a guy renting those Segway two-wheeler vehicles you see at a lot airports these days, jugglers – the lot.  At the top of a flight of steps on the other side of the street were many ice-cream and burger bars and a lovely old carousel that Ally fell in love with.  It was hot and sunny – the weather was great all week, up in the high 20s Celsius – and we enjoyed the walk and the ice creams (though not as good as the ones you get at the seaside in Poland). 

                                                              With some new friends
We went to a park along the end of that street, on the side of a hill overlooking the Dniepr – the views up and down stream and across to the other bank were spectacular.   There were the usual Stalinist monuments to the Glorious Soviet Workers, straddled by a big arch that after dark was floodlit in many colours like a rainbow, several burgers stalls – and a small funfair (well, one highly dangerous looking ride – a kind of rotating pirate ship - , a kid’s trampoline, bumper cars and a guy renting out pedal cars for kids to ride in circles around the trampoline.  Our kids had a go on them and did very well, and got a good long ride for the money.  But I couldn’t help wondering how Uncle Joe would react if he were resurrected and found all this materialist entertainment at the Worker’s Monument….probably kick off another pogrom, I suppose.

                                           Monument or fair...what would Uncle Joe think?
We went back the following evening, as it was getting dark, and it was super.  There was a carnival atmosphere still, and we spent a good couple of hours wandering around eating McFlurry’s from the inevitable McDonald’s outlet, riding the carousel and enjoying the street entertainment.   At the end of the street there is a big square that will be one of the viewing areas for Euro 2012 – the big screens were being assembled and there was some kind of bar or UEFA exhibition centre under construction, designed to look like half a football.   I would guess there will be a great atmosphere there.  Then sharp at 10, alarms went off, and a couple of police cars cruised from one end of the street to other and back again – and the street was no longer pedestrianized but open to traffic.  Efficiently done.

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Close by was another park overlooking the river.  At the top is the Museum to the Great Patriotic War (that’s World War 2 to you and me).  Surrounding the building is a good array of tanks and armoured vehicles, field guns, jeeps, helicopters and in one separate section some aircraft and Soviet era missiles.  The aircraft ranged from WW2 fighters, through Korean War MiG fighters, 1970s and 1980s Sukhoi supersonic fighters (one of them, for a fee, you could sit in) and, a bit incongruously I thought, a US manufactured Dakota freight plane.  We had a stroll around and paid the extra for Kuba to sit in a MiG 21 fighter – got some decent photos – but I have to say the exhibits were not in the best condition.  Probably standing outside in all weathers (and Ukrainian winters are vicious) doesn’t help them much.

                                                  Once they used to be scary....
The museum itself forms the plinth for a massive statue to the Mother of the Nation.  It’s a huge statue, not unlike the Statue of Liberty, but carrying a bloody great sword and shield rather than the torch of peace, and instead of white marble it’s made of stainless steel and towers 62m above the Museum roof (overall the height goes to over 100m – 330 odd feet).   It’s an impressive monument, especially when floodlit at night.  You can see it for miles. 

                                                     Statue or Museum?  You decide....
The Museum itself is circular and on three floors so you kind of spiral your way up from the lowest to highest, and of its kind is pretty good.  It’s well laid out and has some great exhibits, but at the end you’re left with the impression that the only combatants between 1939 and 1945 were the USSR and Nazi Germany – no-one else gets a look in.  Now I know there were more Russian casualties than any other nation during the war, and that their switching sides after Hitler ordered the Barbarossa attack in 1941 essentially ensured that the Nazis would lose in the end but still….it’s an incredibly inaccurate and slanted view of history that Uncle Joe would be proud of.   Whatever else it may have done, the USSR did not save the world.   I wonder if Ukrainian educationalists are doing anything to change that, and owning up to some of the more blatant untruths and inaccuracies……  Do they admit the famines that decimated the local population in the 20s and 30s were Stalin’s fault?  Do they admit that behind every patriotic regiment advancing fearlessly on the Nazi lines there marched a regiment of NKVD killers who were to shoot dead any soldier retreating?

Probably not.

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There are still, 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall that precipitated the demise of Communism, many monuments to the Old Guard scattered around the city.   My favourite was one to Lenin, in typical pose, head thrust forward in mid oration, that stands perhaps twenty feet tall and is in a little park area at one end of the main shopping drag.  The thing I liked about it was not the statue itself (that is no better or worse than any other of its kind) but that on the little paved area at the foot of the plinth there is a small tent topped by the old Red Flag, and in the tent were a group of guys in military fatigues who were keeping watch on everyone who paused there for photo opportunities or whatever.  Whether they are genuinely members of the Ukrainian army or merely a bunch of unreconstructed Communist sympathizers who are enjoying playing soldier I have no idea, and the banners and placards draped over the tent, as they were of course in Russian, were meaningless to me.   They left us alone while we took our pictures, as did the police on duty (the adjoining road junction is quite busy at all times) – even when we pulled off the road and parked on the footpath next to the monument and, later, reversed back into the traffic flow.

                                           Some Russian bloke.....with a LOT to answer for!

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Another trip into town gave us the opportunity to ride a funicular railway up the side of the hill from the main road alongside the Dniepr to the top of the hill and visit the beautiful Cathedral and Monastery of St. Michael.  The building is exquisite, painted a pastel blue with white pillars and stunning gold domed roofs.  Inside, every flat space on the walls, the floor and the ceilings is covered with beautiful frescoes.  There are a number of places to light prayer candles (that can be purchased from a small shop just inside the main door), but no seating – everyone stands.  When we visited, a monk or priest was leading a small ceremony of some kind: there was no congregation, but he was chanting his prayers in a deep and sonorous voice, with responses coming from the choir of monks in a balcony facing him.   Although I understood not a word, it was very moving somehow, and beautiful.   Like most such places, no photography is allowed inside, which was a shame – I would love to have been able to shoot off a bunch of pictures because this paragraph just doesn’t do the building justice.

                                                              St. Michael's Cathedral
Before visiting the Cathedral, we spent an hour two strolling in the Botanical Gardens in the sunshine.  They’re pleasant without being spectacular, but at the bottom of the hill there is a rather tatty looking building that is home to a collection of tropical butterflies and other exhibits likes snakes, chameleon, tortoises, lizards and parrots, all in cases and cages – except the butterflies that are restricted to a central atrium and fly to and fro above your head.   There were also several display cases with dead and pinned collections of insects and spiders that were impressive or scary depending on your point of view.  I don’t like spiders at the best of times, and some of the exhibits – in particular one bloody great hairy tarantula as big as my spread hand (that’s a good 9 or 10 inches across) - made me shudder, as did a pinned grey cockroach about 6inches long with even longer spread feelers.  Disgusting things……but the kids, predictably, loved ‘em.

                                                   *          *          *

One evening we went swimming.  There are many lakes and pools scattered throughout the city that provide popular outdoor swimming and sunbathing areas: most of them are man-made, like flooded quarries or refuse pits with a few tons of sand dumped around to make a beach.  The weather all week was hot and sunny, so we saw that a lot of people were making use of them, even in midweek and the first week of May, despite them being generally alongside busy roads to and from the city centre and surrounded by apartment blocks.  Apparently topless bathing is de rigeur in summer…..

However, we went to a pool complex.  It was an hour’s drive, into the city, then across a bridge onto one of the biggest islands in the river, and along its length through the most affluent area we saw all week.  The pool was on the top floor of a massive and modern shopping mall, and was without a doubt the best I’ve ever been to, anywhere in the world.  Once you’ve negotiated the communal changing room (all the lockers together in one big open space, with small cubicles dotted around to change in – no concept of separate Male and Female rooms here) you go through a shower area into the recreation space – and it’s huge.  There were four or five pools, including a water polo area, two kids pools that had a wide range of slides and stuff to play on (a bit like a Total Wipeout course), one that had a wave machine, and a selection of slides and flumes into their own individual splash pools.  There was also one ride where you sit in an inflated tyre and get washed around a little course under bridges and through little white-water rapids areas – great fun and very relaxing that one.  Some of the flumes are pitch black inside, so you barrel down in darkness, lit on a couple of bends with strips of multi coloured light that you pass in an instant, mildly surprised to find that your tyre is on the wall not the floor……Kuba loved that one.

Every pool is surrounded by sun loungers to relax on while you watch the kids play, and there are pool and table tennis tables, dart boards and fussball tables everywhere, plus a couple of snack bars and a real bar.  As there is no limit to admission times, once you’re in you can spend hours there trying all the stuff in your own good time.  We spent a couple of hours there, and had an absolute blast.

                                                       *          *          *

The next day we headed home. 

Once we had cleared Kiev (that took the best part of an hour, including a ten minute Drive-Through McDonalds stop) we made excellent time.  We followed the same route as before, and again the traffic, once we had cleared the fifty kilometres or so of road works just outside Kiev, was light so Ania was able to put her foot down – which she loves.  The 600-odd kilometres to the border took a little under six hours – very good, with only one comfort stop by the side of the road and one pit stop to fill up with cheap Ukrainian petrol.  We left the apartment around 1:30 and were at Dorohusk before it was fully dark.  The Ukrainian guys this time accepted my passport without question, and waved us through.

Then the fun started.  There is a significant amount of smuggling between the two countries, the vast majority of it being in a westerly direction, so the Polish border controls are much stricter than those in Ukraine.  Part of it is due to the price differentials – many Poles living close to the border happily cross into Ukraine to buy certain goods – notably cigarettes and booze – because in Ukraine it’s massively cheaper.  The temptation to exceed the legal allowance as obviously there, and many people I’m sure do just that, so the customs guys do their best to catch them.  There are also high levels of organized crime in Ukraine, so narcotics smuggling into the EU from Ukraine and beyond funnels through the Polish frontier – more reasons to be vigilant.   People smuggling is not unheard of.

The upshot of all this is that, once we had cleared Ukraine, we joined an ever-lengthening queue of vehicles filtering through the half-dozen or so open Polish customs booths.  There were cars, Transit vans, HGV trucks, coaches – you name it, all in lines with their engines switched off waiting to be called forward.  Most of them carried Ukrainian and Polish number plates, but there were German and Dutch too, and the Toyota in front of us was from Estonia (clearly taking the scenic route).   Now and again, a line would move forward a car or two’s length before stopping again, and at times tempers were a bit frayed.  Some people, exclusively Ukrainian, were desperately reversing out and trying to jump from line to line to speed up the process and get into the EU quicker – that little stunt went down like a pork chop in a synagogue with other driver patiently awaiting their turn.
If the crossing from Poland to Ukraine the previous week had been bad at an hour and half, the homeward one was tortuous.  We inched forward, and finally got to the booth – it took three hours.  The officer was apologetic when he saw two tired kids (who were wonderfully patient and well behaved throughout) sitting in the car, and told us we should have asked earlier to be expressed through, it wouldn’t have been a problem….  Great, now he tells us, I thought.  Anyway, the guys did a fairly cursory search of the car (we opened the bonnet and boot, all the doors and he shone a torch underneath) and told us to get the passports stamped.  Ania joined a small queue, and we were soon on our way again.  The total crossing time came out at just under three and a half hours.  I’m glad I fly everywhere usually….

From there, we had another couple of hundred kilometres (and one fuel stop at Lublin) to go.  Ania drove again, insisting she wasn’t tired, and we made pretty good time still.  The traffic, after clearing the roadworks at Lublin, was pretty light again and we were home indoors in Warsaw by 1:00.   Despite the interminable border crossing, we had made door to door in a little under 12 hours – over 800km that Google Maps reckoned would take around 11 ½ hours. 

My wife is brilliant.

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So.  Final thoughts.

Apart from it being a great trip, and so good to see the brothers after many weeks, Ukraine is a country that from its sheer size offers massive potential.  We saw relatively little of it, but it’s beautiful and I’d like to see more – the coastal resorts on the Black Sea on the Crimean Peninsula are lovely, I’m told.   Kiev is an interesting city, huge and sprawling and diverse, with plenty to offer the tourist.  By western standards it’s cheap, but because of the country’s recent past it’s still very poor (unless of course you’re a successful businessman or, like many, merely corrupt).  The contrasts in Kiev were at times stark – on one of our trips into the city, in Radek’s Infiniti four-wheel drive (a luxury car, very popular in Kiev) driving from one of the more affluent neighbourhoods, we passed a big and sprawling rubbish tip.  Whole families were there – parents, kids, even grandparents – scavenging amongst the crap, trying to find something that could be salvaged to sell and make a few hryvnia to live on.  Street beggars were common – although to be fair you see them everywhere these days.

So for anyone heading East for the Euros next month – I’m sure you’ll have a blast.  Ukrainian beer is good, the food ok, there are plenty of restaurants and clubs to spend your evenings, at least in Kiev.   Just make sure you base yourselves in Kiev or for that matter Donetsk, the other city where England is playing – remember, that place is another 500 or so kilometers further east.  What the trains are like, or the roads, east of Kiev I have no idea – I’m told the roads are ok (and based on those between Poland and Kiev I can believe that) but the railways less so.  If anyone is thinking of basing themselves in Krakow with the England team, and travelling by road to the matches – forget it.  The roadworks in both countries will slow you down, and I dread to think what the border crossing will be like when the traffic volumes inevitably increase during the tournament.  I only hope the FA have had the common sense to charter a plane to fly from Krakow to Ukraine and back for each game – they’ll never make it by road.

Behring Breivik - Monster or merely misguided?

On 22 July last year we were on vacation, at Mieroszyno on the Baltic coast.  The weather over the two weeks was patchy, but on that day it was hot and sunny, and we had a good day on the beach.  When we got back to our lovely rented cottage by the edge of a forest we switched on the tv, while we got showered and changed for our usual stroll in the town for chips and ice cream.

The lead item on the news was the shocking events in Norway that day.   We saw the government building that had been badly damaged, with consequent loss of life, by the car bomb – that was bad enough.  But then the story switched to the carnage and awful events unfolding at the youth camp on the nearby island of Utoeya, and learned that in total 77 people had died, many of them kids, at the hands of a lone gunman. 

Over the next days, as the gunman was captured and the pictures of him in paramilitary uniform, toting an automatic rifle and other killing gear were released, the shock gave way, at least to me, to a feeling of confusion.

Things like this happen, all too regularly, in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, even the US where college lockdowns are a regular feature of American life.  Israelis and Palestinians have lived under the threat of terrorist atrocities for years.  New York and Madrid and London have experienced their fair share.  Even the beautiful holiday resort island of Bali, basking in South Pacific sunshine, has suffered terribly.

But Norway – one of the most affluent, tolerant and well-ordered countries in the world……

Unbelievable.  How did that happen?

                                                         *          *          *

It emerged that the perpetrator was one Anders Behring Breivik, from Oslo.

He had acted alone.  He had toured around the country assembling the ingredients that went into the bomb he manufactured himself, in his little apartment, using an internet guide in how to make a bomb – there are, apparently, plenty of militant websites that carry that kind of information if you know where to look (I don’t, and have no wish to).  He did it as a protest against an, to him, alarming increase in Moslem immigrants to Europe generally and Norway in particular.  Quite how slaughtering so many innocent young Norwegians was supposed to stop that remains unclear.

When he was taken into custody, he freely admitted carrying out the acts and in the months since then has shown not a shred of remorse.  The fact that he was arrested unharmed is, in itself, remarkable and demonstrates the pacific Norwegian way.  Can you imagine New York’s Finest, the NYPD, showing that kind of leniency?  Or any other US police force, for that matter…  The French gendarmerie?   Non.  Even the Met?  Well, possibly.    But a bullet riddled corpse would be the most likely outcome, once his whereabouts had been discovered.

But no, arrested he was, quite safely, and he has been incarcerated since then while his sanity is investigated.  Since he’s admitted the killings, it’s not an issue of guilt, but a question of whether he was of rational mind when he did it, or just off his rocker.  A madman.   A monster. 

He is now on trial in Oslo, and for the past week he’s been presenting his defence.   The court has to decide whether he is insane – in which case he will serve a sentence in a secure mental institution – or rational – in which case 21 years or so in the slammer await him.  Neither verdict will satisfy him – he has already stated in his testimony that the only verdicts that in his opinion are respectable are complete acquittal (and probably a vote of thanks for standing up for the rights of every Norwegian citizen) or the death sentence.  Since Norway does not recognize capital punishment neither of those will happen.

He has of course been widely condemned as a madman, a psychopath.

But I’m not convinced.

                                                              *          *          *

Although shocking in the way he has presented his testimony, complete with clenched fist fascist salutes at the start of each day (a practice he politely stopped after complaints – reverting to normal manners), he has not come across as crazy, at least to my eyes.  He clearly put an awful lot of thought into his preparations for a start, with careful selection of his weapons and bomb making equipment, and his choices of targets.  He then carried the acts out with a cool precision, and in his own words fully expected to die that day – a fate he was happy to accept.  He has been eloquent in describing his reasons – the huge numbers of Moslems that are coming to Europe from various middle eastern trouble spots, to him, represent a clear and present danger (to borrow Tom Clancy’s phrase) to Western – for which read white Christian – society, and more than that a danger that governments across the western world seem unable or unwilling to confront.  He has stated that there are many people across Europe and elsewhere who share his views, and has referred to a shadowy organization called the Knights Templar that is dedicated to fighting this Islamification of the Continent……although he insists he is not a member and was not working for them when he carried out his crimes.

Predictably, these statements have been roundly condemned in court and in the press.  The parallel of an essentially white anti-Islamic terrorist organization to a historically factual Christian and chivalrous company of knights in shining armour is very uncomfortable to most people, me included.  But then you consider that the original Knights Templar were formed specifically to fight the spread of Islam 800 or so years ago, and spent many years on Crusades in the middle East, sacking Jerusalem, fighting the armies of Saladdin (a Moslem ) and in later years formed a protective barrier to the eastern-most regions of Europe – well, it’s not such a bad comparison. 

I have no evidence that Breivik is doing more than fabricating this organization – but to me it’s plausible enough to hope that the security organizations across Europe and the US and elsewhere are taking it seriously enough to at least investigate the claims, and if they find some truth in them, then DO something.

                                                                     *          *          *

You see, I happen to accept his words when he states that there are many people across the world who share his views, and that he has merely had the “courage” to do something other than talk about it.

Over the years, certainly since the London bombings about 7 years ago, I’ve noticed an increase in anti-Moslem e-mails circulating on the internet.  I tend to receive a few in any given month, forwarded by various people I know, who in turn have had it forwarded to them, and so on.  The vast majority of them are relatively harmless, being a selection of very lame and unfunny jokes, attempting to ridicule Moslems and their faith.  Some are actually thought provoking – I received one last week, allegedly a “true story” (aren’t they all?) from a guy in the prison service with an MBE to his name who had attended a seminar where representatives of various faiths (Christian and non-Christian) gave presentations with the aim of helping prison officers understand better the cultural needs of their inmates; the guy claimed to have confused and embarrassed an Imam by questioning him about the meaning of the word “infidel” – the Imam had been unable to provide a non-contradictory answer when questioned.  

Others, and it’s a very very low percentage, have been, for the want of a better word, sick.  There have been cases in the recent past (so this year, and we’re only in April) where pictures have found their way from the internet into reputable newspapers showing American soldiers urinating on Afghan corpses, or waving suicide bomber’s dismembered body parts around.  Rightly, they have been condemned and one hopes that the morons in the pictures, and those who took them, will be suitably and publicly disciplined (though I’m not holding my breath).  But frankly these have been mild.  I’ve received in the past (and a few years ago now) grotesque and violent movies of a clearly military origin that I have no wish to describe.  After seeing the first piece of film on each (the Subject line was suitably innocuous) I deleted them.  All of these mails – the mild or the monstrous – have ended up in my in-box as a result of a simple forwarding process, and there is no telling how far they have travelled, nor how many times they have been forwarded, before their arrival.  Their origins are equally opaque.

The point is, there is quite definitely a strong anti-Islam feeling in many Western countries, especially those with growing Muslim populations.  This past weekend for instance we have seen Presidential candidates in the French election standing on an anti-immigration platform, and the country has in the recent past passed legislation that is clearly discriminatory against followers of the Islamic faith.   I freely admit to knowing next to nothing about that religion, but branding every Moslem a potential terrorist and danger to society is quite simply ridiculous.  It’s like back in the 70s and 80s branding every Irishman a member of the IRA, or every German a Baader-Meinhoff sympathizer.  The difference of course is that nowadays, with the internet being such an integral part of all our lives, it’s so much easier to concoct and circulate this poisonous crap – and there are many idiots who are quite happy to believe it.

                                                                      *          *          *

It seems to me that Breivik is one such idiot.  I’m not taking sides here, by any stretch of the imagination.  Massacring a whole bunch of people in defence of a vague ideal, as he did, is wrong.  Palestinians firing rockets across into Israel is wrong, and a disproportionate Israeli response is equally wrong.   The recent case in France where a lone gunman, who alleged he was “associated with al-Qaeda”, carried out a shooting spree that led to a number of innocent deaths (including schoolchildren) and his eventual shooting by the police after an overnight siege of his apartment, is to be condemned.  The 9/11 attacks were evil.  So were the Madrid train bombings and the London bus and tube attacks.  So is what is happening in Syria right now – that is no less than state-sponsored terrorism and no-one seems to be taking strong enough action to stop it.  The unrest last year in Egypt and Libya and Bahrain cost many more lives that Breivik took in Norway, but were all in the name of freedom from oppressive regimes – an argument he has made to defend his own actions. 

It seems to me the main difference between Breivik’s actions and all the others is that clearly, and on his own testimony, he acted alone and not as part of a wider conspiracy.  He admits to spending hours on the internet looking at some of its more extreme websites and no doubt has thus seen far more and far worse than I have.  And no doubt these images have influenced his thoughts and his subsequent actions – he has admitted as much already.

But does this make him insane?  No.   Rational?  Well, that’s questionable.  But if you define “rational” as being an ability to carefully plan and execute some task (whether good or evil, it makes no difference) then I would say the bloke was perfectly rational and should be treated and punished accordingly.

But then, I’m just an ordinary man, not a psychologist.
 

Lake Mary, Fla - way out country

Well, Lake Mary is ok, but very quiet.  I’ve been here five days and seen very little except the hotel, the office and the road between them, so that judgement has a huge caveat attached to it but still….I’ve been in far worse places.

It’s way out in the sticks, a good 30 miles from Orlando and in the middle of the Florida peninsula.  Until relatively recently – as late as the 1980s I’m told – the area was largely swamp, occupied only by alligators, birds and mosquitoes.  But the tourist boom fueled by the various amusement parks around Orlando – the Disney one, Universal Studios, the Epcot Centre, not to mention the dozens of golf courses – generated a need for land and support amenities as people moved into Florida to staff the places.  The climate helps too.  The state has long had a reputation as America’s Retirement Home, and there does seem to be an inordinate number of seniors around: lots of grey hair and blue rinses, baggy shorts, sun shades and varicose veins.  I feel quite at home….  

At any rate, there have been massive reclamation projects, creating thousands of acres of green and pleasant land, dotted with hi-rise hotels and hi-tech offices; pristine bungalows with their American flags and blue pools; and the inevitable shopping malls surrounded by more acres of parking space (they do love a car here – I haven’t seen a bus since I passed through Orlando apart from the odd yellow school bus).   As for trains: forget it!   Interestingly, I don’t recall seeing a taxi either, although they must be around somewhere as I’ve booked one to take me from the hotel to Orlando airport Saturday morning. 

Everything looks like those Ideal Home American townships you see on the movies and tv.   My immediate impression was of Spring Valley, from the Back To The Future films, and Wednesday night, sitting at the local Applebee’s restaurant demolishing a good plate of chicken tenders and fries and a Sam Adams beer or two (and very nice it was) I spotted a guy at a nearby table who bore a spooky resemblance to Doc Emmett Brown.   No sign of Marty McFly or the DeLorean though…..but I’m sure Biff Tannen’s pick-up drove past. 

                                                                *          *          *

The landscaping here is a bit bizarre.  It’s as if the entire town has been magically picked up and transplanted between the 15th fairway and 7th green of some expensive golf course.  The land between neighbourhoods is undulating, with green trees swaying in the warm breeze and there are lots of little, mostly man-made, lakes and ponds, some of which, incongruously, have fountains squirting twenty or thirty feet in the air.   There are lots of bright flowers too – marigolds, roses, tulips, daffodils, plus many local species I don’t recognise – growing everywhere, in well-tended beds alongside manicured lawns.  The township must employ an army of gardeners to keep it all looking so spick and span.  Apparently when the flowers start to wilt the night shift digs them all up and replaces them with a whole new batch, of exactly the same flower in exactly the same place so that, in theory at least, no-one will notice the difference.  Interesting idea, and the place does indeed look pretty, but I can’t see it catching on in somewhere like Luton or Gravesend.

Apart from the Interstate, that runs through Lake Mary in a deep cutting (so as to protect residents from undue traffic noise I suppose), the roads seem to have relatively little traffic on them – it’s like a Sunday afternoon most days  driving to the office and back.   Yesterday morning the local tv station, in its Breakfast Show traffic bulletin, showed a security-camera film of a stretch of the interstate at Lake Mary, with a commentary warning of heavy rush hour traffic and probable delays.   But there are more cars on the road passing my apartment block in Warsaw at 5 a.m. on a Saturday than appeared on the film.  These people really don’t appreciate how lucky they are.  Petrol (sorry, gas) is about $4-80 a gallon – that’s around PLN15 - : back home I pay around PLN5-90 a litre, which comes out at about PLN22-50 a gallon – so a good bit more expensive, especially when you consider the disparity between the average US salary and its Polish equivalent – and this is a wealthy area.     And rising petrol prices (amongst other things, of course) are threatening Obama’s re-election chances this year.

The hotel is fine, a Marriott Residence.  This means that my room has a proper kitchen area if I want to cook for myself – which I don’t.  But it’s very comfortable and has a fitness centre and a small pool, neither of which I’ve used as I’ve been late back from work every day (a busy week).   American tv has not improved since the last time I watched – it has way too many advert breaks (although it could be argued the ads are the best part of the viewer experience).   The Residence is next door to a regular, and much larger, Marriott, and all its facilities are available to Residence guests.  I used the ATM in the Reception area once and that’s it.  But the Residence is one of the better hotels I’ve used so I have no complaints on that score. 

Behind the hotel complex is a small mall that seems to be largely restaurants (including the Applebee’s where I spotted Doc Brown), and a larger mall is across the street.  I went there last night, as there is a recommended Irish bar there.  It’s called Liam Fitzpatrick’s, and very good it was too – in fact one of the best Irish joints I’ve visited over the years.  I had a couple of Smithwick’s beers – a new brand for me, not unlike Murphy’s stout, and it was delicious – and a soup and shepherd’s pie: good, well-cooked Irish food.   The soup was particularly good, a creamy potato and garlic soup with finely chopped spring onions and chunks of fried bacon, sprinkled with grated cheese.    I asked for the recipe, but the kitchen staff for some odd reason refused to give it out, so I’ll have to experiment a bit when I get home.  About 50 yards along from Fitzpatrick’s is a bar with the wonderful name of The World of Beer.  That one I intend to try tonight…….work done, successful week, time to celebrate. 

The office, meanwhile, is big and spacious and well appointed.  It’s in a new building in carefully landscaped grounds, a couple of miles from the hotel, and has desk space for maybe 200 people.  There are half a dozen conference rooms with teleconferencing facilities, a fully equipped training room with projectors and desks for about 20 trainees, and a kitchen with half a dozen coffee machines and a water fountain, a huge fridge full of complimentary cokes and soft drinks, a microwave, tables and chairs.   This week, there have been no more than a dozen people here at any given time.  With my home office being closed (and I heard this week of another closure, this time in Moscow, with more redundancies) I do wonder how long this one is likely to remain an economically viable proposition.

                                                           *          *          *

As usual, I’ve watched quite a lot of CNN this week, the parent version rather than the international one I usually catch.   It had a familiar feel though, as many of the programs and presenters are the same, as is the whole look and feel.   Inevitably, this being America, there are far more advertising breaks though.    I also watched a bit of ABC’s flagship Good Morning America show, and couldn’t believe how awful and lightweight it is.  I am struggling to remember any reporting worthy of the name: interviews with an American football player who because of his Christian beliefs is known as “God’s Quarterback”, when there have been earthquakes off the coasts of Mexico and Indonesia, the North Koreans have failed dismally with an alleged ICBM launch, people continue to be slaughtered by the Syrian government in defiance of UN resolutions and this is an Election year in the US, do not for me make it a credible news program.   

The news has been dominated by two main stories all week – the US Election and the shooting of Trayvon Martin.  In the Election, the Republican Party is going through the ritual of deciding its nominee for the Election in November against Obama.  There have been the usual arguments, slurs, ad campaigns costing millions of dollars, photo opportunities and scandals, but it all seems to be boiling down to the selection of Mitt Romney.  The guy looks pretty slick and Republican presidential – all white button down collar shirts, neatly pressed suits, polished shoes and hair, and a permanent grin.    But he has a number of problems that are preventing him from sealing the deal, even though he’s streets ahead of the other contenders.  First off, he’s a Mormon, and the US has never elected a Mormon before – indeed the sect is still deeply mistrusted, not only in America, and the subject of some ridicule because of some of its beliefs and its insistence on wearing ankle-to-neck all-in-one underwear to prevent temptation.  He also made his fortune running Bain Capital, a venture capital outfit – an investment banker, and a highly successful one at that.  Ordinarily, this should actually be a great recommendation for the Presidency, but unfortunately as everybody knows bankers generally and investment bankers in particular are not exactly flavour of the month world-wide just now.  And if you are a rich and demonstrably successful investment banker – well, you’re a pariah.  So here we have a lovely paradox: a pariah running to be President of the US – and being probably the best qualified guy in the race (including the incumbent).  Many in the GOP just cannot bring themselves to endorse the bloke, and so the race is dragging on even though all bar two of his opponents have dropped out and the two left in are so far behind in the race that they have no realistic chance – they’re staying in out of sheer bloody mindedness.    This week, Romney’s nearest challenger dropped out, effectively handing the nomination to him, so hopefully now we can actually start discussing the issues rather than slagging off the opponent.  But somehow I doubt that will happen.  US politics just doesn’t seem to work that way.  Expect more vitriolic ads and slur campaigns from both the Republican and Democrat parties, and more entertainment value before a decision is made in November. 

The Trayvon Martin case is typically American, and happened only a few miles from here, in Sanford, Seminole County, Florida.  Like many towns, there is a neighbourhood watch scheme in operation – we have them in the UK too.  They are staffed by volunteers and the idea is that communities will look out for each other and take some of the workload off the police.  Now that’s all well and good, except that here in Florida (and one assumes the same is true across America) the volunteers are armed – it’s the constitutional right of all American citizens to bear arms in self defence, after all.   What seems to have happened here is that some six weeks ago, one of the neighbourhood watch volunteers spotted a young black kid acting suspiciously (he was wearing a hoodie, after all), followed him home despite being ordered not to by the local police, whereupon they had a bit of an altercation and the black kid was shot dead.     The neighbourhood watch guy of course claimed self defence, despite there apparently being no credible evidence or eyewitnesses to back him up, and the authorities tried to sweep it all under the carpet.   Not surprisingly, there was a public outcry, demonstrations and so on.  Most people, especially the local black community, called it murder.  The protests spread nationwide.  Lawyers were hired and the Florida prosecutors had to do something.  They announced an investigation.  The neighbourhood watch guy hired defence lawyers then promptly did a runner (as he was entitled to do, no charges having been brought).  This week, the prosecutors brought in a charge of second degree murder, and the neighbourhood watch guy promptly gave himself up to the police – he’s now in solitary confinement for his own safety at the County jail – but not before his legal team had walked away from the case, stating that as they had not spoken to him for a couple of weeks they were not going to represent him anymore.  They were roundly condemned on every network for making the announcement at an outdoor press conference.  The media circus is in full swing – every night there are prime time interviews, mainly on CNN but elsewhere too, with both families, both sets of lawyers (the neighbourhood watch bloke quickly found a new lawyer who seems to be well known local ambulance chaser), with pundits and politicians and other legal talking heads, all speculating and arguing about the case.  In a sick way it’s entertaining tv – better than some of the regular programming.  But in terms or fair and honest justice – well, let’s see.  With all the nationwide publicity the case is being given, jury selection could be tricky for a start.   The only certainty is this one will run and run, and no-one will be satisfied with the outcome this time next year.

Incidentally, on one of the news items to do with the case I spotted a familiar face.  The victim’s family was watching the live tv announcement that charges were being brought (in front of their own set of cameras, naturally), surrounded by their legal team and assorted minders, and there, right in the middle, standing directly behind the victim’s parents, comforting hands on their shoulders, was the Rev. Al Sharpton, gaudily dressed as ever, a sombre expression on his face.  Now the last time I saw him was in the front row of Whitney Houston’s funeral.   The time before that was regularly during the trial last year of Michael Jackson’s doctor, with the Jackson family.  In both cases he was described as a “friend of the family”.   Now he’s turning up prominently in the tv appearances of another sadly bereaved black family – is he their friend too?  Or is he merely a publicity-seeking activist who by his antics really does nothing to foster racial integration?   Judging by the fact that he always seems to turn up where there is some high profile legal case or tragedy involving a black family, innocent or otherwise, like an old carrion crow, oozing sincerity and “hallelujah, Jesus!” cries,  I suspect the latter.

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And that’s it really.  Work done for the week, and I think we achieved what we set out to achieve.  Tomorrow I have an early start, and an entertaining journey home via Minneapolis and Paris, arriving at my apartment sometime around Sunday lunchtime.

It’s been a good trip, and I quite like Lake Mary and what I’ve seen of Florida.  The weather has been perfect, sunny but not too hot (mid to high 20s – I can suffer that constantly) and not a sign of rain.  No jacket required, as Phil Collins once said.  The people have been very friendly and helpful, the food good, the beer fine, and I could happily move here.   I didn’t see Orlando or any of its tourist attractions – not a Mickey Mouse cap in sight – and I can’t say that I’m particularly sorry about that.  They are not the sort of places to do solo.

I still think the country is a little bit crazy, but at least here people seem to have a smile rather than a scowl on their face, and a welcome for visitors that I found sadly absent when I visited and transited New York in past years….I guess we can thank Disney for that.  I would like to come back sometime, for a holiday – the beaches, as we flew over, looked wonderful, and I know my kids would love to do the theme parks (so would I actually….).

One for the future then.

The Magic Kingdom - Mickey Mouse travel.

Well, well - at last a trip, the first one this year.

Orlando, Florida for a week.  Home of Mickey Mouse and Disneyland.  The Magic Kingdom.

Which means tons of expensive branded tat on every street corner, I'm sure - Donald Duck donuts, Mickey Mouse baseball caps with dumb-arsed ears on them.....you get the picture I'm sure.

I guess it's a great place to vacation with your kids - being Florida the weather is pretty much guaranteed hot and sunny - and besides Disneyland, you're within reach of other major tourist attractions like the Universal Studios fun park, Daytona Beach, the NASA launch centre at Cape Canaveral and about a million golf courses and Everglade national parks.  But for business.....well, I'm not sure.

My company, true to form, chose Orlando (or at least the Lake Mary suburb - sounds lovely, doesn't it?) to site its main US Services centre.  We have premises in New York and Miami too, but they're mainly sales based - the workers use Orlando.  It makes travel there, inevitably, more difficult.  As a major holiday destination there are plenty of flights from all over the shop - BA, Air France, Lufthansa, all the Yank carriers have direct flights - but depending on when you're travelling booking is a bit tricky, especially if you leave it late.  So of course, that's what happened here.  Last week we decided a meeting is necessary because of some problems from my friends in Chile and I have to go to Orlando to help resolve them.  It has to be done week of 9 April, because all our team are back to Santiago the following week.  Please book your flights, Bob....

Check the calender.  April 9......Easter Monday.  Terrific - that's cocked up my family's holiday then, because I'll have to fly on the Sunday to get there for 9 in the morning at work.  Now in Europe this would be less of an issue, since pretty much everyone has a public holiday on Easter Monday.  But not, it seems, our God fearing ex-Colonial Cousins across the pond, who work instead.   So after apologizing profusely to my Beloved (who I must say took it very well - clearly she's sick of tripping over my feet at home; she actually cheered when I told her) I sent my flight request off to my local travel agent.  It took two days to get flight proposals back - a right collection too.  Of course, being the Easter period seats were at a premium and direct flights virtually non existant.  A range of combinations was on offer, passing through and changing planes at destinations like Montreal, Houston, Minneapolis, Chicago, and over this side of the Atlantic Frankfurt, Paris, Munich and London.  I chose a slghtly circuitous route that used my good old Star Alliance and thus meant lounge access (no Business Class this trip I'm afraid, despite the distance contravening my doctor's guidance for the hip problem) but the powers that be Over There insisted I took a combination that was slightly less circuitous, means no lounge access (because it's using Air France and I'm not in their Skyteam alliance) but, most important, is EUR140 cheaper!  So to save that princely sum, I flew out from Warsaw at 7 a.m on Easter Sunday, changed planes at Paris (horrible airport, in my experience matched only by JFK in terms of surly and unpleasant staff who take the phrase "customer assistance" to be the most foul and abusive language imaginable) with a near 5 hour layover, but direct to Orlando.  Going home next Saturday I have a morning flight to Minneapolis, another extensive layover, followed by a night flight to Paris, an hour's wait there before my connection home to Warsaw, by this time on Sunday morning.  Deep joy....  Remind me to arrange a bloody wheelchair at Okecie for my arrival, my hips will be shot to hell by the time I get there!).

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Anyway - the journey.

Well, I've had more pleasant experiences......root canal fillings spring to mind,.

The first part was ok, Warsaw to Paris, despite the breakfast comprising a choice of stale croissant or a stale chocolate muffin, with tea, coffee or water.  At least the flight was on time.  Then in Paris, where it was sunny but cold, things went a bit pear shaped.

I had to change terminals, from 2F to 2D.  Not a big problem you would think, since the two are wings of the same building.  Ah, but zis is ze belle France, where ze word "organized" does not exist, no?  Once you come through the jetway, you're confronted with a big, crowded corridor (since all the gates feed into the same concourse).  Now that's ok, same as Heathrow or any airport really.  So you follow the sign that says "Terminal 2D"  It takes you to an exit, but the exit leads to more gates, a satellite of 2F, where a very pleasant ground hostess tells you you're going the wrong way, and directs you back the way you have come.  So back you go, and sure enough, just beyond the sign you foolishly followed is another that says "Terminal 2D" and points in the opposite direction.

So off you go, and walk perhaps 250m until you reach the TGV railway station, where you turn right, cross the concourse roof, then another left, 50m and up an escalator to Terminal 2D Departures.  You then basically walk around a bit until you find a sign that points to the gates, follow it through a corridor between two blocks of check-in desks (of course, since you had the foresight to get a boarding pass in Warsaw you don't need to worry about them) and then join a long line (scrum more like) of several thousand people all trying to get through the same area to the gates.  Helpfully, there are several groundstaff pointing you to either the Green, the Orange or the Yellow line, although what criteria they use to decide this is anyone's guess.  This line takes you to passport control, because you are now leaving the Schengen area.  Beyond passport control, you then join further and equally long lines for security screening - but at least the departure gates (or at least their duty free shopping area) are now in sight. 

You load the trays with your stuff - as usual, one for the laptop, and another for everything else, the watch, the phones and of course the belt - and clutching your trousers so they don't fall down go through the scanner.  No bells and whistles go off, and you wait patiently for the your trays to come through, which they do eventually, a couple of minutes after you.  You go to pick up the one with your belongings and the security guy says: "Wait! I 'ave to check zis!"  The machine is supposed to do that, surely.....but anyway - he picks up your watch and studies it for a couple of minutes, then puts it back.  "Sank you, m'sieur." 

Now what the hell was that all about?  Maybe I was just unlucky, but it happened exactly like that.  But I was there, in 2D, by the departure gates - and it only took an hour.

Which, if that is normal, is a bit of a worry, given my connection time next Sunday, going in the opposite direction, is 55 minutes.....

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Time passed slowly.  I wanted some breakfast, but the only place I found was a little stall selling water and soft drinks, a variety of salads and sandwiches, and slabs of average and cold quiche in various flavours, all of it at extortionate prices.  I waited nearly 10 minutes for a cafe latte that came in a paper cup not much bigger than one from a vending machine.  Total cost, EUR19-50, for the coffee, a bottle of water and a chicken curry roll without the curry sauce.  Starbuck's would make an absolute fortune there - but of course it will never happen because the French government would never grant them the franchise.....way too protective of French jobs and culture.

I read my book (Churchill, an excellent biography by Roy Jenkins).  I listened to my music.  I watched the clouds roll in and the planes fly away.  I watched and photographed our plane's arrival at the gate, an grizzled old 747.  The crowds rolled up for boarding, and the groundstaff arrived, all eight of them.  They spent half an hour adjusting the lines that were erected to filter business and economy class passengers through separately, even though they had worked perfectly for the previous flight to Chicago (I watched it board).  They announced boarding would be delayed 15 minutes, but everyone lined up anyway.  Then we started boarding, and the groundstaff were giving out conflicting directions so things got very fraught.  I pointed out, politely, to one lady who turned me away that her colleague had told me to go through her entrance and could they please make their minds up.  More passengers joined in. Voices were raised, mostly American so naturally loud anyway.   She let me through.  Her colleague checked my boarding pass and passport, and then pulled me our of line so the security people could search my hand baggage thoroughly - which meant taking everything out and repacking it when no firearms or narcotics were found.  I love the French airport staff - they are almost as unpleasant as at JFK - arrogant shits the lot of them, and probably trained by ex-KGB staffers.

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So we were an hour late taking off.   My seat, chosen by myself I hasten to add, was very average, even for Economy class.  It was on the top deck, and a window, so that was ok.  There was a little bit of extra legroom too (essential because of my dodgy hips) and extra low level storage space that was useful.  But the main luggage bin, when opened, hung so low you almost had to crawl to your seat on hands and knees, unless you had the aisle.  When the entertainment started there was a good selection of films, but my headphones didn't work so no soundtrack.  I couldn't be bothered to ask for a new headset, so I just set the moving map and read my book and listened to my music.

Dinner was ok - some kind of salad that was drowned in vinegar, a reasonable if small portion of chicken tikka with rice, two fresh rolls with camembert cheese (the best part of the meal actually) and a very small chocolate eclair.  Plus vinegary red wine and an odd yellow brandy liquer that I took with me and drank as a night cap at the hotel.  And a beer.  Ho hum.

It was a long and dull 9 hour flight.  Next to me was a young girl who I think suffered from mild Tourette's, she was twitching and jumping and yelping all the way, poor kid.  But it made sleep impossible - I'd just be drifting off when - bang! - a sharp juvenile elbow to the ribs or something would wake me up.  I didn't say anything to her - not her fault.  Her dad was with her, and was holding her hand and soothing her constantly.  I admired him, and was glad my little Princess doesn't have similar problems - a hell of a temper, yes, but that's all.

Orlando was hot and sunny when eventually we arrived.  And I had a pleasant surprise there - I had been expecting another JFK exeperience (that is to say, unpleasant) but actually it was a breeze - perhaps 15 minutes to get through Border Control, and the officer was friendly and smiled and wished me a nice stay.  Perhaps he was on drugs or something.

Once I was though with my bags (again only a short wait) there were more minor issues.  The ATM didn't like my credit card and refused me cash.   I found another, across the hall, same bank - and it worked perfectly.  I had been told there was a free shuttle bus to my hotel, but no-one at the airport had heard of it - odd, as I'm staying at a Marriott - so I got a cab.  I made the guy's night - the drive is 40 miles, the fare $90 or so......it turns out our office is not in Orlando at all, and Lake Mary isn't really a suburb of the city but a totally different township.  But it was a pleasant drive in the sunshine, and as we passed downtown Orlando the guy pointed out the Magic's new basketball stadium (very nice it is too).  Then at Lake Mary the bloke got lost.  God know's where he went wrong, but clearly he did, because after we left the interstate we started going round in circles looking for the right road.  I showed him my Google map (nothing if not prepared, me....) but he insisted he knew what he was doing - which clearly he didn't.  He was constantly banging on about a "big Marriott" and insisted my little Residence was nowhere near it.  In the end I told him in no uncertain terms to go the big Marriott and I'd ask for directions there.....reluctantly he did so, and lo and behold, my little Residence is right next door.  Twat.  But he gave me a discount on my fare.......just as well, the mood I was in by that time.

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So here I am.  A twenty hour journey.  A decent night's sleep - that made a change - and it's Monday.  Let's see what the day brings.

I still have no clue about Orlando or this area at all......so there will be further news later this week.

I bet you can hardly wait.