Philip Hughes - a true cricketing tragedy

I never saw Philip Hughes play cricket.

By all accounts, he was a fine and exciting batsman, a typical attacking Aussie who loved taking apart the opposition’s bowling attack.  26 test matches and the youngest player to a score a century in each innings of one.  He was also a very popular man, both in his home country and in England where he played for three counties.  No-one seems to have a bad word to say about him.

So it is a true tragedy that at the age of 25 (so young!) his life has ended.  Struck at the base of the skull, where it joins the neck, trying a hook shot at the SCG, he collapsed and was rushed to a nearby hospital.  Despite major surgery he died two days later without waking up.  The artery in his neck was ruptured and blood seems to have poured into his brain.  The operation tried to relieve the pressure and repair the artery, but to no avail.  It was a complete freak – apparently a one in a billion chance, according to one report.

Such a sad loss, and my thoughts and prayers go out to his grieving family and friends.

It brought back many memories. 

 

I used to be a keen cricketer, back in the 1970s, before the advent of helmets and much other protective gear.  I only played for my local village team, for fun, and was no more than average even at that level.  I batted a bit, bowled a bit and kept wicket, and loved it.  One year I managed to win the club’s Single Wicket tournament, where individual players competed one-on-one against each other – 4 overs each (24 balls) to score as many runs as you could and get the other bloke out.  That was undoubtedly my finest hour, and to this day I can’t figure out how I managed to clean bowl the club’s best batsman for 6, the day after he had scored 80-odd in a match, in the semi -final (he went on to easily top the batting averages that season), nor to take 18 runs in the last over of the final off one of the best bowlers, to win the trophy.   One of the guys ran a book on the competition and somebody cleaned him out by putting ten quid on me at ridiculous odds before we started.

As I say, we had no real protection.  We had big old shin-pads to protect our legs, padded gloves to protect our hands (that’s if we were lucky – often the kit bag was short of both, and batting with one pad and no gloves was not uncommon) and a plastic cup to shove down the front of our underpants to protect our balls.  I shelled out about £30 to buy my own set of pads and gloves and a decent box to strap on and protect my manhood.  It was money well spent, and even after I stopped playing I kept it all, eventually donating it to another club about 30 years later, when I finally left England and accepted I would never need them again.

But even in those days and at that amateur level, the sort of ball that killed Hughes was common and an accepted tactic.  We quick(ish) bowlers used it to try and intimidate batsmen in exactly the same way as bowlers at the highest levels of the game do today (and frankly always have done).   If the pitch was a bit lively, we did it all the more, because often the ball would ping up high even when you weren’t aiming to do it, from a not very short length, and that made it even harder for batsmen to read and play it.   I was a comparative rarity, a left-arm quick bowler, so the angle I was delivering the ball at was a bit different and harder to bat against, at least at village green level, so I did pretty well.  That is to say, I hit a good few batsmen on the elbow or the glove or the ribs, and it usually did the trick – it softened ‘em up and gave me their wicket a few balls later.  It was part of the game, and we’d have a beer or two together in the pub or the clubhouse afterwards.

Because they would do exactly the same to me.  I had my fair share of cuts and bruises from the same kind of hits that I was dishing out.  I don’t remember breaking anything (either my bones or an opponent’s) nor inflicting any serious cuts, but I remember one kid at school taking a fast rising ball smack in the face, and his top lip was split from one side to the other and his nose broken.  It was nasty, especially for 14 year old him.  It didn’t stop him, though – once it had all healed up (maybe three weeks?) he was back playing again.   No fear – just like all kids, I suppose.

We got battered fielding as well.  Silly mid-on and silly mid-off – where you’re standing about three or four yards in front of the batsman and thus quite literally in the firing line – were the most dangerous positions to field, because you were totally unprotected – no gloves, no pads, no helmets, no box.  I got more bruises fielding there than I ever did batting.

But even now, years later, half a lifetime later in fact, I miss playing cricket more than I miss playing football – and that is saying something. 

So getting back to poor Phil Hughes.

He was just very unlucky.  Cricket is – and always has been – a dangerous sport: that ball is bloody hard.  The only things that have changed since my day are the increased use of protective gear, and the fact that today’s players are much fitter.  They are athletes now, gym-toned and strong, not the flabby joggers of my youth.  With that fitness comes strength, and agility, and speed both of thought and body.  Perhaps the helmets and body armour and so on have led to a touch of complacency, as these supremely fit cricketers perhaps feel more invincible now than at any time in history.  I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that were the case.  But even so, they are I’m sure acutely aware of the dangers – just as we were – but their love of the sport transcends that.

No doubt there will now be calls to re-design helmets (and that will probably happen) to offer even more protection.  No doubt cricketers themselves will recognise this sad wake-up call and re-think their attitudes a bit, perhaps temper some of the more naked aggression that exists (but not for long – the pressure and rewards of winning will see to that).  I’m sure there will be calls to ban or at least severely limit short-pitched bowling.

I hope that last doesn’t happen, because cricket would not then be cricket.  Jonathan Agnew, the commentator and ex-England fast bowler, put it very eloquently on Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine Show today.  That duel, he said, between the batsman and the aggressive fast bowler, the gladiatorial challenge that both participants absolutely love, is one of the elements that make the sport so challenging and enjoyable to watch (and play) and to dilute it in any way would lessen the sport and devalue it.

I’m sure that Phil Hughes, may he rest in peace, would share that view, and would not want change.

And a final thought.  Whilst cricket lovers rightly mourn the man, let’s not forget poor Sean Abbott, the 22 year old kid, who bowled the fateful ball.   How must he be feeling now, knowing that he has killed a man in this way?  No amount of counselling will ever change that fact.  That too is a terrible thing to have to bear.  Our thoughts and prayers should be with him, too.

Things I like about Amsterdam

Its compactness

The capital (and largest) city of the Netherlands has a population of around 820,000.  That’s about half the size of Warsaw, and it’s squeezed into an area about half the size too (200-odd square km against just over 500).  Greater London has a population of about 8.5 million crammed into an area of 600-odd square km (by comparison the entire population of the Netherlands is just under 17million – so twice that of Greater London – but in a land area of forty one and a half thousand square kilometres.  Much more spacious.).  Mind you, these figures come from Wikipedia so may not be 100% accurate – but you get my drift.  It’s a relatively small place.

So it feels like a small town rather than the bustling city it is.  A train will get you from Schiphol airport into the main Centraal Station in about 15 minutes – much as will its London equivalent the Heathrow Express.  A tram will get me from my apartment to the centre (or for that matter my office in the suburbs) in about the same time.  The Heathrow Express may be more modern and more comfortable but with a fare of £25 it’s MUCH more expensive.  Which leads me to the next Like…..

Public Transport

It’s very easy to get around the place.  There is a very efficient tram network, a smaller but equally quick and efficient metro system, and plenty of buses.  The metro is being expanded, but as with all such projects is behind schedule and over budget (much like London’s Crossrail and Warsaw’s east-west extension under the Vistula).  Main line railway services also get you quickly to outlying city areas in comfort.  All are served cheaply and cash-free by investing in an OV-Chipkaart that costs about EUR3 to purchase and you can top it up on-line (or at machines at all the major stations and interchanges) as and when required to enjoy unlimited discounted travel.  It’s like the London Oyster Card only much cheaper. 

I’m assuming at these prices there is heavy government subsidy for the service, but that is no bad thing, surely.  Call me old fashioned, but I thought one of a government’s main tasks, right after the security of its citizens and health care provision, was to provide said citizens with some services - be it public transport, refuse collection or something else.  This is normal all over Europe, but since The Blessed Margaret’s days such provision in London and other UK cities has always been largely paid for by increased fares (at decreased efficiency), and lots of “private enterprise”, under which shareholder return is more important than customer value.  Someone should make it clear to Cameron and Milliband and Clegg and (dare I say it….) Farage that there are actually other ways of quantifying the concept of “value” other than “lowest cost”.

In any case, I’ve used the trams and metros extensively since I’ve been here, and they are great.  My handful of mainline train journeys (to and from the airport) have also been comfortable enough, although I’ve had to stand every time – no surprise given the route travelled, and no hardship given the short journey time.  Last week I caught a bus from my office in Amstelveen to the airport – it took maybe 20 minutes, and was as good as any other transport service I’ve used.  As the bus stop is right outside the office it could be no more convenient either.

I’ve only taken a cab once, on my first morning here, from Schiphol to the office.  It was a very comfortable Mercedes at a very uncomfortable cost of EUR30 (for basically the same trip as my bus last week that cost EUR2-50), but lugging a heavy suitcase with a broken wheel it seemed the easiest and most convenient option.  I would not make the same choice again however.

Bikes.  Lots of them

Holland is a flat country.  In fact, a good chunk of it is below sea level, and there is an ingenious network of dykes that stop flooding from the rough wintry North Sea and rivers.  Schiphol airport is actually sited on the bed of a lake that was drained over many years in the 19^th century as part of the national flood defences (I’ve been told that the word schiphol means lake bed).  So it’s quite natural that the Dutch have taken to bikes like no other nationality, and Amsterdamers are no different. 

The city is chock-full of bikes.  The vast majority of them are the same traditional Dutch bike – a high upright frame with no crossbar, big old-fashioned handlebars, generally a carrying rack or two bolted on front and back to carry shopping or passenger.  A high proportion don’t have brakes as would be recognised elsewhere – you stop the thing by pedalling backwards.  Mountain bikes and racing bikes, popular all over the rest of the world, with their lightweight frames, drop handlebars, raised seats and multiple gears (mine has 18), are few and far between.

There are many ingenious conversions on the road too, with small covered passenger compartments for the kids on front and rear (bolted to extended frames and often looking home-made and a little unstable).   Kiddie seats are often attached to the handlebars, sometimes with a high windshield for further protection, and double up as a shopping rack.  And of course there are tandems (with their own kid seats as well), and a contraption I saw the other day that is low-slung like a two-wheeled go-kart complete with a bright yellow all enclosed fibre glass body shell.  I would love a go on that baby.

The main stations have multi-storey bike parks (even where there is no car-park), and every shopping mall, school, hospital, public square, church, park and office block – almost every street, in fact – has plenty of parking racks too.  They are even in the Red Light district.  Since all the bikes look pretty much identical, finding your own on a dark winter’s night must be a bit of bugger.

With all this undoubted popularity – cycling truly is a way of life here, from earliest childhood – the people are better riders than any I’ve come across elsewhere.  Making calls and texting on your mobile is commonplace.  Packs of riders bombing along laughing and joking and talking, a part of the scenery.  Carrying a passenger on your handlebars or rear-mounted shopping rack?  No problem.  The best sight I’ve seen so far was a young lady, mid-twenties maybe, 30 at the outside, riding through the business district by Zuid Station and the World Trade Centre the week before last.  She was riding no hands, talking on her mobile with one and holding up an umbrella in the rain with the other.  She shot past the pub doorway and straight across the pedestrian and cycle crossing on the main road without even slowing down, secure (???) in the knowledge that The Bike Is Always Right (this is the unshakable traffic code in Amsterdam).

And not a crash helmet in sight.

 

Everyone speaks English

‘Nuff said.

Oh, and they also speak a variety of other languages equally well…..and often all together.   A friend of mine is fluent in Dutch, English, Spanish, French, German and Italian. 

I feel quite inadequate.

 

The Architecture

I wrote in praise of Centraal Station on here last time.  It’s not the only impressive looking building in the city, there are others that comfortably match it, both ancient and modern (and sometimes an interesting mix of both).

The Rijksmuseum is similar to Centraal Station, all Gothic pillars and vaulted ceilings.  Along Damrak, running roughly south between the two, there are a number of other old buildings now converted to shopping malls and banks and offices that form an impressive skyline.  Further out, around the Zuid and RAI business district stations, within walking distance of my apartment, are modern office blocks, hotels and conference centres towering in glass and steel splendour way above the older 1970s apartment blocks that remind me of some parts of Warsaw and east London.

On the eastern edge of the city, at Bijlmer, are more bank towers and hotels and conference centres (and IKEA), but all are put to shame by the impressive Amsterdam ArenA football ground.  It’s a monstrous structure, and you can see it from miles away, squatting like some Spielberg flying saucer from the marvellous Close Encounters movie from 30-odd years ago.  I think it was the first stadium in Europe with a retractable roof, which initially at least caused problems with the grass of the pitch – it just didn’t grow properly and had to be re-laid about 4 times per season.  Ajax, the club that plays there, have a site outside Amsterdam that is used solely for growing and replacing the turf in the ArenA…..modern agro-technology has improved the situation somewhat, but careful management is still needed.   But it’s still a brilliant stadium, and is the only one I’ve ever seen that is elevated on massive pillars to allow a six lane motorway to run underneath it (roughly along the pitch’s halfway line apparently).  Note to self: must get to a match there soon…..

In the city centre, too, between the concentric canal network, there are many other lovely old buildings, offices and apartments and shops and galleries now, but formerly the homes and warehouses of the old Dutch merchants and traders from three and four hundred years ago.   They’re all narrow and tall, perhaps four or five floors high but only ten or fifteen feet wide.  This is a result of the taxes paid at the time, that were calculated according the frontage of the buildings: the narrower the building the less tax paid.  So although narrow, their original owners built them to stretch way back, often to the next canal, to have sufficient storage and living capacity.  All have the typical curved Dutch gabled roof, and lean outwards at the top, to make hauling goods from ground level to the upper floors easier and reduce possible damage to goods and building. 

 

The food choices

There is a great and varied choice of eateries throughout the city.  The usual suspects are everywhere – McD’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Starbucks.  There are kebab houses, takeaway sushi parlours, Chinese and Indian and Thai restaurants.  American and Argentinian steakhouses.  French and Italian bistros.  Spanish paella parlours.  And more exotic diners from Dutch colonies like Surinam.

And pubs.  Dozens of them, at least half of which seem to be Irish (or at least masquerading as Irish).  I’ve been to a couple and the beer has been unfailingly pleasant and the food variable.  This weekend I sought out The Old Bell in Rembrandtplein, an old watering hole from my original spell here 14 years ago that I had not been able to find a weekend or two back when I got here.  Back in the old days, we all used to meet up there and enjoy the food and beer in an atmosphere that I remember fondly.  The pies were particularly good, especially after one of the boys brought over some Bisto gravy granules and taught them how to use it.  I found it okay this Sunday, but it seemed scruffier and definitely quieter (though that was probably because half three on the Sabbath is not the busiest time of the week).  I sat outside for an hour or so, in the sunshine, reading my book and watching the tourists (and trams) go by, and enjoying the beer and food.  I had a pie, minced lamb, with chips and salad, and it was very tasty.  But no Bisto – the art has clearly been lost.  And the lamb was not minced, only diced into big chunks.  But I’m being a bit picky – it was fine.

There are lots of little chip shops scattered around as well, serving big paper or cardboard cones full of crispy deep fried chips smothered in mayo and/or ketchup, barbecue or garlic sauce.  Filling, tasty and for a couple of euros a good belly filler when you’re wandering around aimlessly sightseeing. 

And we mustn’t forget the pavement cafes and coffee shops that sell a decent cappuccino or double espresso and a pastry – and often substances that are still illegal in less enlightened countries (like the UK) and lend a sweet fragrance to the Amsterdam air and a smile to your face if you breathe in too deeply.

 

Schiphol Airport

On its lakebed site, it’s huge and impressive, with a six lane highway going under the main taxiway.  The taxi in on landing seems to take forever and it’s easy to believe the place is about the size of Liechtenstein.  At Heathrow, on the approach to Terminal 3, there is an advertising display for Etihad Airlines that comprises a couple of scale model Airbus planes.  At Schiphol, KLM advertises its domicile by placing a retired Fokker 100 airliner on the roof of its Panorama Terrace, where it forms a permanent museum attraction.  Can’t help thinking BAA and British Airways missed a trick when they retired Concorde…..

But despite its sprawling size the airport terminal complex is very well laid out and efficient.  The bus station is right outside the door and the railway station below the building, so access either way is easy.  There is a single massive shopping and restaurant complex in the space, and easy to follow signs to Arrivals and Departures, as well as a wealth of flight information and train schedules.  The departure area is up a moving ramp or escalator, and for Schengen travel couldn’t be simpler.  There are check in machines everywhere, offering a simple process to print your boarding pass either by using your Frequent Flyer card (for a number of different schemes), quoting your name and booking reference from your e-ticket, or most easily by scanning your passport.  It literally takes less than a minute.  A further couple of minutes’ stroll gets you to security, and you have the usual aggravation on unpacking your laptop, taking off coats and belts and shoes, and going through the scanners while your bags are x-rayed, but in comparison to say Warsaw or Frankfurt or Heathrow, it is quick and efficient.  When I flew home a week or so ago – arriving at the airport at 5:30 on a Friday evening: the rush hour – the whole process, from getting out of the bus to strolling into the bar inside the Departure hall and close to my departure gate took no more than 15 minutes.  Fifteen minutes to print a boarding pass and clear security – it’s unheard of.

There are of course caveats.  First off, I had no baggage except my laptop, nothing checked so no queueing at a bag drop counter.  Second, both Holland and Poland are in the Schengen zone, as are all European mainland countries, so there is no requirement for passport checks (why the UK stubbornly refuses to join I have no idea).  If I had a bag to drop or was travelling outside Schengen I’m sure it would be much more stressful – but that is why I’m happy to be back working in sensible Europe.

 

The TV and Radio

Like everywhere nowadays, it’s satellite and cable.  At home, my channel selection on Canal+/Ntv runs to a good 40, including dedicated sports channels so I can keep on top of the Premier and Champions League competitions.  But of that 40 odd, I have maybe 5 that are English language, and on three of them I have to actually select English as an option.  Everything else is Polish, and if the programme or movie is in English, the local language is (badly) dubbed over the top of it so that the original language is heard, more or less clearly, in the background.  To say the least, it’s a distraction, but one I’ve grown accustomed to over the years.

In places like Egypt and Cyprus and Qatar, where I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years, it’s a similar story – for Polish read Arabic or Greek.  Ditto Switzerland and Germany and Spain and Turkey – pretty much everywhere.  The main difference is always the quality or otherwise of that dubbing, and the English channels tend to be restricted to CNN and BBC World News, with bonuses of BBC Entertainment.  Gulf states also tend to provide their local equivalents of Sky Sports, with a panel of English presenters and pundits typically hired away from Sky.  But these are always premium channels and not all hotels provide them.

In Bermuda, I suffered three months of American television, which is every bit as dire as it’s made out to be, with BBC World News and BBC America thrown in, but for the latter the programming was dreadful – an entire WEEK of non-stop Doctor Who to launch the latest series, and endless repeats of Top Gear and Gordon Ramsey, entertaining though they often are, very soon wore thin.

So it’s been an absolute pleasure to get my basic cable channel package plugged in here.  I have at least 50 channels, including English choices of BBC World News, CNN, Al Jazeera News, Euronews, Eurosport, BBC Entertainment AND BBC One and BBC Two.  There are at least 10 other channels in the Dutch choices that broadcast English language movies and programs UNDUBBED (typically there are subtitles instead).  My radio choices, within the same basic channel package, include Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 4 and the BBC World Service, plus a whole range of Dutch genre stations (so for classical, opera, country, alternative rock and so on) where the music is good and the DJ babble kept to a minimum.  On the news bulletins for the Dutch stations, where an English speaking politician is being interviewed or sound-bitten, again there is no intrusive dubbing.

It’s great.

 

Finally – the people

They have been unfailingly friendly and welcoming.  The team at work, as usual, is multi-racial, and there are a good few that I worked with on projects 5 and even 10 years ago, and I haven’t seen them since.  It numbers people from Bulgaria and Switzerland, South Africa and Ecuador, as well as English and (the inevitable) Indians.   As we share a background and war stories, I would expect them to be friendly and welcoming (thankfully I’ve managed to make very few enemies over the years, and none of them are here).  The bank folk too have been great, helping me settle in quickly.

But the locals outside the bank environment have been great too, in the shops and bars and restaurants that I’ve used so far.  Always a friendly smile when I say hello, and an easy conversation in my language to follow.  It makes it much easier to settle into a new place.

This is typical of the Dutch though.  I’ve worked with many over the years, and indeed one of my closest friends at work (also a Warsaw based ex-pat) comes from Rotterdam, up the road.  They seem to have a relaxed friendliness that makes them easy to get to know and like.  Yes, they can be stubborn and grumpy – but then so can I (I put it down to my increasing age) – but generally there is an easy going, almost carefree nature to the Dutch that is right up my street.

 

I like it here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hup Holland!

So for the foreseeable future, my intercontinental work trips have ceased. 

In a way, I’ll miss them.  As an Englishman, I’ve always felt an affinity to the Continent since my first day trip to Calais in my dim and distant mid-1960s school days.   Being able to see France from the promenade at Dover made it seem within touching distance, in a way that the Americas or Africa or the Middle East never was, and the Far East and Australia might as well have been the other side of the Solar System (never mind the world) for all the likelihood of my ever reaching them.

Most of my travelling, for work and play, has been around Europe, and often has taken less time than my old commute from the Kent-Sussex borderland to central London – especially so when for a period of time that commute consisted of a drive up the A2 and through the Blackwall Tunnel to Docklands, or around the southern M25 from Dartford to Heathrow, or the old coach ride up the A2 into Central London via either Docklands or London Bridge – horrific journeys, all. The rush hours are clearly misnamed when a points failure or broken down lorry can add hours to your snail’s pace journey. 

All European cities seem to have a similar and familiar feel to them too – heavy traffic especially in rush hours, the same high street chain stores like Benetton and H&M, Adidas and IKEA, the same food outlets like McDonalds and KFC and Pizza Hut.  Of course, there are many differences too: Madrid and Rome are generally warmer and prettier than London, the waiters in Geneva surlier and less friendly or polite than everywhere else I’ve ever been (but the backdrop of the lake and the Jura mountains and the Swiss Alps tends to compensate for that).  More dogshit on Parisian pavements.  An interesting atmosphere in certain Amsterdam backstreets (breathe in deeply and feel the smile come over your face).  An air of disquiet, almost danger, in places like Bratislava and Riga and even parts of Warsaw, hanging over from the Cold War and the Fall of Communism. 

And once you get beyond the inevitable traffic fumes, they all smell different as well.  The ubiquitous trams make a pleasant and efficient alternative to cabs and buses, even if they can be cold and uncomfortable.  And of course the constant babble of foreign languages is an interesting and at times entertaining, though always incomprehensible, soundtrack to your day.

 

My European wanderings completely failed to prepare me for the more distant destinations I’ve been fortunate enough to visit, though.  Spreading my wings beyond European boundaries has been an adventure, at least to this old country boy.

Even the most run down and shabby parts of London and Warsaw cannot compare or prepare you for some of Nairobi’s and Beirut’s neighbourhoods.  The pungent spicy smells and the dusty, shabby apartment blocks, with lines of grubby washing draped across their crumbling balconies, and the constant hubbub of street vendors and hustlers and wailing half naked urchins can quite literally take the breath away.  The cripples and beggars trying to sell matches and cigarettes and clothes pegs, usually one at a time, often with a starved and listless child clutched under one arm, shuffling between the endless lanes of traffic in Cairo are pitifully depressing.  The armies of poorly paid migrant workers, literally dying daily to transform Qatar into a worthy venue for 2022’s FIFA World Cup, provide a sad and scruffy backdrop to one of the wealthiest and increasingly spectacular cities on Earth.

And the journeys to these far-flung destinations can be challenging too.  The Gulf States are relatively easy to get to now, with many direct flights from major European airports as their importance to the business world increases with each new towering office block or oil deal.  The flights are of a reasonable length too – direct from Warsaw to Doha takes about 5 1/2 hours, daily with the excellent Qatar Airways.  The direct Emirates flight from Warsaw to Dubai takes a bit longer but is probably more comfortable with its wide-bodied A330 jet versus the Qatar A320.

Beirut could be a little trying, changing at Frankfurt with the probability of lost baggage and arrival at a grubby and inefficient airport.  At Nairobi, the entry Visa (purchased at a desk just before passport control) had an official price of £20 but could cost twice that, depending on the mood of that day’s official at the desk.  Almaty was a long night flight, arriving at a Soviet era airport where efficiency and courtesy were not included in the local dictionary, and on coming home the line through security wound round and round the Departure hall and could take an hour or more to complete – and that was just to get to the Check In desks.  A similar line then wound through passport control to the gate area.

Trips to the US mean running the gauntlet of surly and trigger happy Homeland Security operatives and equally unfriendly immigration clerks at the Arrivals desks.  It also means having to collect your baggage and check it back in again if you’re a transit passenger, because the US Government, in its infinite wisdom, believes no other country on Earth can be trusted to properly scan baggage onto a flight and everyone, no matter the age or gender, is a potential terrorist and thus needs to be treated with suspicion bordering on persecution and outright contempt.  Thank you, Osama.  I have travelled through and to the US five times now, once through Orlando and Cincinnati, once through Newark NJ and three times through JFK, and have never had anything remotely like a pleasant experience (and two of the trips pre-dated 9/11, when terrorism was something that did not happen in America and Saddam was generally reckoned to be an okay guy).  Frankly I have no wish to go there again.

South America is just a long way.  My trip to Santiago meant gruelling night-flights both ways, and I was fortunate  enough to be travelling Business Class (I haven’t had that pleasure since).  I shudder to think how Economy Class must have been.  But my weekend trip to the Pacific Coast at the hippy haven at Horcon, and the earth tremors we had one sunny Sunday afternoon in Santiago made it all worthwhile and a memorable trip.  24 hours or more each way, door to door, is still a hell of a journey though.

And on all of those trips, that wonderful border-free Schengen zone seemed a distant dream.

 

Things will change now, though.  I’m back working in Europe, for the first time in 4, nearly 5 years.  And at one of my favourite locations over the past 15 years or so – Amsterdam.  Best of all, the project is a long-termer.

I first came to the city way back in about 1998 or so, in a previous incarnation.  I travelled from London by train via Brussels, and stayed one day.  The journey itself was a pleasure, travelling First Class on Eurostar, then on Dutch Railways via Antwerp and Rotterdam, even though it took a good 7 or 8 hours in total (this was before the London – Channel Tunnel high speed link opened so we had to follow a Network South East commuter service through Kent).  I stayed at a hotel quite close to Rembrandtplein, visited a bank the next morning for a one hour presentation, then caught the train home again.  As I had some preparation to do, I saw very little of the city, but decided that Centraal Station is one of the most beautiful pieces of architecture in Europe, and certainly the best looking railway station.  I’ve seen nothing since to change my opinion too much (Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, St.Peter’s Basilica in Rome and the wondrous Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona are all better, but that’s about it, at least in my experience).

Then in 2000, in my last job, my very first project was in Amsterdam, at a little Turkish bank in a southern suburb close to the airport.  I was here for maybe three months.  I stayed in a hotel in the centre, close to the station, but for the life of me can’t remember which one, there are so many in the area.  The ride out took maybe 40 minutes each way on a tram that wound through the touristy bit, past Zuid station and out into the leafy suburb – the bank was right at one end of the line and my hotel at the other so I always managed to get a seat.

We had two or three projects running in town then, so there were perhaps a dozen of us in the city at any given time, staying in a selection of central hotels.  We would meet in the evenings for dinner and a few beers, usually in the Old Bell pub in Rembrandtplein that sold a good selection of beers, including Irish and English favourites, and served up a menu that included things like lamb and mint pie with fries, cottage pie, various burgers, and fish & chips – all very tasty I recall.  Sitting outside watching the world go by in the spring and early summer was a pleasure new to me, and one I’ve continued to enjoy ever since in my travels.

I moved from that project to Warsaw, and my world changed completely – as I’ve written elsewhere on this blog.  In all my travels since, I’ve only made one other two day work trip here, in 2001, for a brief (and mildly successful) workshop.

 

And now I’m back. 

This time I’m residing in an apartment not a hotel.  It’s a good size, comfortably furnished with a selection of IKEA’s finest, and a five minute walk from the bank’s head office by Zuid station.  Certainly it’s one of the better apartments I’ve had over the years.  I’m working at another location, in that same leafy Amstelveen suburb, and perhaps 15 minutes stroll from my old Turkish bank.  It’s no longer there, having been taken over by one of the majors and moved elsewhere in the city.  Getting to work is easy and free – there is a shuttle bus running every 15 minutes or so between the two offices, as well as to a third possible workplace across the street from the futuristic Amsterdam ArenA stadium, home of Ajax (the best known football club in Holland and one of Europe’s finest), and by coincidence right next door to the bank where I had my brief workshop back in 2001.  It really is a small world in which I work.

I’ve been here just about a fortnight now, and I’m settling in.  I spent the weekend, as the sun came out, wandering around the city centre, getting my bearings and trying to find the Old Bell.  Somehow, although I knew where it was (I had spotted it in a similar excursion to the city centre when I had a daytrip for my hiring interview in early August), I couldn’t find it this time, but found instead a reasonably authentic Irish bar that served up a decent Irish breakfast all day, and a good cold pint of Kilkenny.  The city was crowded with tourists, as it always is – there is no on and off season here, the crowds are constant year round – and seemed to have changed not at all over the years.  Well, that’s not strictly true, actually: when I ventured into the Red Light district, it seemed seedier than I remembered, and most of the little windows that house the hookers displaying their wares (so to speak) were closed and shuttered.  In fairness, it was a Sunday afternoon, so it may have livened up considerably later on, but my previous two visits way back on my first project had both taken place on midweek evenings when they were full and busy so it’s perhaps not a fair comparison. 

The coffee shops were unchanged, the same sweet mary-jane smell drifting in fragrant clouds into the little side streets and alleys that mainly house them.  They seemed less crowded, but again this may have had something to do with the timing.  Perhaps there has been a further relaxation in the drugs laws because I saw several people wandering around the crowded streets openly puffing away at their joints as if they were regular cigarettes (which in a sense they are in Amsterdam).  It was all very familiar and somehow comforting.

As they have everywhere else, the price of things has definitely increased  and seem to be on a par with London, probably a bit less (as London has just been identified as the most expensive city in the world in which to live and work, in some survey I spotted on the web last week).  Certainly prices are higher than in Warsaw, but not outrageously so.  The OMV-Chipkaart makes travel on tram and metro and bus very good value: I bought one for EUR20 and still have about EUR12 to spend, despite a couple of return trips to central Amsterdam at the weekend.

 

 

So there we are.  I’m back in Europe, settling into a city and job that both promise much for the foreseeable future.  My first impressions of both are good, and once I’ve established a routine and stabilized finances I’m sure I’ll find plenty to do and write about. 

I might even get those books finished – The Match is probably 70% done so I hope to self-publish, probably via the wonderful world wide web, early next year, and I have a couple of ideas for other things firming up in my mind as I write.  Details will of course follow on here. 

In the meantime, onwards and upwards.

Happy travellin’.

A Turkish Delight

When you fly in from Warsaw, the final approach to Dalaman airport is spectacular, as the plane winds its way down through the surrounding pine clad mountains.  For much of it, even when the plane is low, a few hundred feet above the landscape, there is little sign of life – a network of unpaved tracks cutting through the trees (you can hardly call them roads) linking occasional clusters of abandoned-looking buildings that may or may not be houses in a small village or large farm, but there are no cars or trucks or tractors to be seen.  Only in the last couple of minutes, when you’re down almost to ground level, does that change, as you cross a motorway that when we flew in on a Thursday lunchtime had little traffic, then the town outskirts and warehouses surrounding the airport perimeter, dry looking smallholdings and olive groves, and you touch down at a small and slightly down-at-heel tourist airport.

The Arrivals and Baggage halls were a short walk from our gate, through a surprisingly quick and efficient passport and visa control – a cursory glance at our passports and on-line visas, a stamp on the page and a cheerful “Welcome to Turkey” – none of the chilly and unsettling waiting in line under the suspicious gaze of gun-toting Homeland Security gorillas that welcome you to JFK and Miami and the other US airports, or bumbling inefficiency and interminable queues at Heathrow and Gatwick.  By the time we reached the carousel, the first bags were emerging, barely ten minutes after the aircraft doors opened.  As arrivals go these days, it was a pleasure.

Another 15 minutes and we were on the coach to Fethiye, blinking in the hot sunshine as we waited for the last few passengers and the Itaka travel rep to join us.  Then we were off again, less than an hour after landing.  The drive to the hotel, just over 40km, was spectacular too, passing along a windy and undulating dual carriageway through those same mountains, through tunnels and dusty towns and villages with their gold-roofed mosques and tin roofed sheds and houses, all of which had water supplies in rooftop tanks like oil barrels.  Smaller properties had one tank, apartment blocks (seldom more than three or four floors) had perhaps a dozen, presumably one for each apartment.  Most had solar panels next to them, presumably for heating the water.  It was a far cry from suburban Ursynow.

On the road to Fethiye

 

 

Our hotel, the Jiva Beach Resort, lay at the end of a quite narrow and ill-maintained road, and was worth the trip.  It’s new, no more than three years old I should think (before we left home I found an aerial photo on Google of the resort next door, taken from just offshore, and the land where the Jiva stands was then scrubland with no trace of building work.  The picture dated from 2010).  It’s a clean and well maintained resort-hotel, with a selection of apartments and bungalows spread around the site, some with swim-up pools at their back doors.  The honeymoon suite has a larger deck and pool area, part enclosed for some privacy by thin curtains wafting in the breeze that also hide an outdoor Jacuzzi – very nice too.  We had a 2 bedroom family room, immediately opposite the honeymoon suite, and both had a lovely view west across a narrow road straight to the beach and the warm blue sea of Calis bay, dotted with dozens of little islands and providing the most beautiful sunsets.

Fethiye sunset from the Jiva Beach apartment

 

For entertainment, these is a good sized infinity pool with a generous allowance of sun beds and umbrellas, and behind it a splash pool with a selection of slides and a smaller toddler’s pool, again with sunbeds and umbrellas.  There is a decent pool bar with comfortable chairs, sofas and umbrellas, backed and surrounded by landscaped lawns and shrubs that form the venue for daily exercise sessions and darts matches.  There is also an outside pool table and a table-tennis set up that host tournaments too.  Further along is a small zoo (some ducks, chickens, peacocks and rabbits that seem to have the run of the place, plus a caged parrot), located behind the amphitheatre that caters for a nightly show of some kind, and close to that a building that houses the Kid’s Club.  So there was plenty to keep us occupied.  By the road, overlooking the beach and across from the honeymoon suite, is another larger bar, on stilts in the landscaped natural pool that runs down one side of the site, that stays open until midnight and serves a good selection of beers, cocktails and coffees as you relax in your armchair or sofa.  The pool itself houses getting on for fifty big fish – no idea what sort – and a colony of turtles that all seem to congregate around the bridge that crossed the pool to provide access to one of the apartment blocks (ours, in fact).  The ducks are frequent visitors too.   Finally, there is a big restaurant area, partly an outside terrace, that offered a good and varied daily selection of hot and cold meals, and a sumptuous range of quite delicious sweets – our diets were blown away within a couple of hours of arriving – and, below the main building that houses the reception and restaurant area, there is a spa facility offering a range of massages and treatments.

Our suite

 

The slides.....

 

....and into the main pool

All in all, it’s possibly the best place we’ve stayed at in our various holidays, and our all-in package (so including all flights, transfers, and all the food and local drink we could consume, for a family of four) offered exceptional value.  I’m told there are no travel agents in Britain that offer it, but we met one couple from Manchester so that may not be the case – or they may have booked direct from the resort’s web-site (http://www.jivabeachresort.com/) and travelled independently.  In any case, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

 

 

We were there for a very special day, not merely for a holiday: namely, my eldest son Doug’s wedding.   In the event, the timing was ideal and provided the chance to take a break between finishing one project in Bermuda, and starting a new one, long term, in Amsterdam, and at the same time spend some quality time with my family.  And not just Ania and the kids – my three nippers, all fine grown men now, from England were of course there with their respective partners.  We had been looking forward to the trip for some time (since the invite at the end of last year, in fact) but didn’t book anything in travel terms until August.  Doug had reserved accommodation for us in the same resort as everyone else – by coincidence the one right next door to the Jiva Beach – but finding flights from Warsaw was a nightmare.

We looked at many options, but whether we went through Frankfurt, or Paris, or Amsterdam or Istanbul, there was a minimum 5 hour connection between flights.  We even checked the possibility of flying to Rhodes (served direct by LOT) and then catching the ferry across to Fethiye – it only takes a little over an hour.  It might have been fun, but the return was again a problem, with the flight departing at 6:00 a.m., which would have meant crossing back to Rhodes the night before and staying at the airport for the night – a definite no-no.  The only direct flights from Warsaw were charters, linked to package holidays, which is why we ended up going the all-inclusive route.   In the event, the choice was brilliant, as the all-inclusive cost was only a little more expensive than the direct flights would have been (on any route) which made the value even better.

Of course, going this route mean having to leave the booking until the last minute to get the best price, and opened up the risk of not being able to get anything at all in the resort we needed.  But fortunately, we had met somebody, the friend of a friend, a good 5 or 6 years ago at a weekend canoeing trip, who worked in the travel industry, so Ania enlisted his help.  He came up with the Jiva Beach offer, and we would have taken it on cost grounds alone – but its location right next door (separated only by a narrow road) to Doug’s resort made it perfect.

The wedding made packing a little more complicated and bulky than a holiday would have been, since it included suits and smart shirts and ties and black shoes and beautiful dresses and high-heeled shoes and handbags, but we managed to cram it all into three cases – an impressive piece of work by my Beloved.  We also lugged down three sets of flippers, masks and snorkels for Ania and the kids to use – they alone took up half a suitcase.

The wedding was set for the Monday evening, so we had the whole weekend to enjoy the facilities and top up the suntans to look our best, and enjoy it we did.

 

 

Our room was very comfortable and well equipped (even though the only English language TV channel I could find was BBC World News – of course!) but the kids were quite happy watching Cartoon Network in Turkish.  As it happened we rarely switched the TV on – we would get up about 9, dress in swimming gear, shorts and shirts then head straight for breakfast and the pool.  And there we stayed all day, until about 6, then back for a shower, dress for dinner, after which off to the bar or the Amphitheatre for the evening’s entertainment.  Then bed.  It was terrific.

The kids had a wonderful time.  They both enjoy swimming and have been taking lessons for a while at our local pool (Kuba passed an exam back in July and has a certificate to prove he is a strong swimmer), but Ally up until recently has still needed arm-bands.  All that has now changed: we couldn’t keep them out of the pools (even if we had wanted to) so by the end of it she was doing lengths quite happily, diving in, clambering out, doing it again, turning somersaults under the water – the lot.  It was great so see.  And of course the slides were an absolute must for them.  It all gave Ania and I the perfect opportunity to just relax and enjoy the sun and various pool bar cocktails – which we did, a lot.

The kids also, after a slow shy start, got to know the girls from the entertainment team, and joined in a lot of the activities.  Every lunchtime, around 2, the team would line up at each end of the pool and do a carefully choreographed dance routine, and encouraged people to join in.  By the weekend, Ally and Kuba were up there dancing along with them – and very well too: they had all the moves.  In the evening there was a kid’s disco at the Amphitheatre and of course they were up on stage joining in all the dancing there too.  It was great to watch.  The girls fell in love with the pair of them, and at the end of the stay presented Ally with a signed tee-shirt and Kuba with a picture he had painted of Lightning McQueen from Cars, suitably inscribed – wishing them all the best, how much they had enjoyed their company and looking forward to seeing them next year.  They came to see us off on the coach when we left, and there more hugs and kisses.

On stage with the Girls in the Apmhitheatre

 

All in all, we had a quite brilliant time at the hotel, and would very definitely go there again – maybe for a couple of weeks, and hire a car to do a bit of exploring, and take some of the local excursions too – there are island cruises around the area, sea-fishing and snorkelling trips, and a day trip across to Rhodes amongst many others.

 

 

And what of the main reason for the visit – the wedding? 

It was great.  We were all bussed into the marina, across the bay at the far end of the resort, and boarded a pleasure boat all decked out in ribbons and flowers and so on.  On the top deck, open to the warm evening air, the tables were laid out for the meal, and the bar was below in the lounge.  The front deck was essentially the dancing area, with the music decks on the top with the food facilities.  We sailed out into the bay and cruised around for about an hour before anchoring just off a small island for the ceremony.  The boat was anchored facing west, so that the ceremony and subsequent picture sessions had the perfect backdrop of one of those beautiful sunsets.  It was all in Turkish, of course, conducted by a local official and translator, and went off with barely a hitch and lots of laughter.

I do.......

 

 

....I did!

 

Happy days......

 

 

 

 

 

Kuba and Ally were the only children there, and so were the centre of attention (after the happy couple of course).  They loved it, especially the dancing afterwards – a couple of hours or more of rave music (not at all to my taste, but still….) – where they joined in the whole time to the delight of everyone there.  And of course they were with their big brothers and their partners the whole time, which was lovely to see.  We have some fantastic pictures of them all jumping all over the place, and in Kuba’s case break dancing quite impressively (not sure where he got that from….) so captured some wonderful memories.  We pulled back into the marina around 11:30, and piled into a fleet of cars and buses, then drove at high speed through the town with horns blaring and lights flashing – a Turkish wedding custom.  The destination was a club in town where the party went on all night – we gave it a miss and went back to the hotel.

 

But it was pleasure to see Doug and Helen so happy, and I was immensely proud of all my kids, seeing them all happy and laughing together.  I even managed to get a good photo of us all, the first of me with my five offspring.

A proud moment for this old man.

 

It made the week complete.