I’m not dead. Just not getting much access to the internet.
I did an assessment drive in an articulated truck yesterday. Yes you heard right. I really enjoyed it. Boy do those babies shunt when they are unladen! So I have booked up for the second stage of my licence which will be a week of training and testing in mid August. So that’s me with something to prepare for for the next two weeks.
When I rode to Italy last year I was so stoked with the Alpine scenery that I promised myself I would go back as soon as possible. I started planning this in February and hoped to be there mid-May. But the house sale dragged on and on then came through quite suddenly. So I ended up moving into this flat and setting off three days later.
For various reasons I wanted to get the overnight ferry to Holland; mainly because it would mean disembarking at 7.30am so having a whole day of travel. I was really impressed. The cabin was compact but big enough (I once had a room in Amsterdam that was smaller) and very modern and comfortable. It even had an en-suite toilet and shower, and no smaller than many B&Bs. I loved the whole sailing experience and would do it again in a minute. No more fighting through shell-suits on the Dover-Calais run for me.
It was another amazing trip. about 2,500 miles all told and quite physically demanding. The weather was really not so good. Overcast and showery lots of the time with some pretty torrential rain but some fine weather as well. And being mountainouns means you go from hot sunny valleys to freezing passes in minutes. Even experienced some snow and a white-out. I won’t say much but I am posting some pictures here: http://imageevent.com/captainhaddock/alps2007 And for those with maps the places I stayed in order were: Harwich-Hoek of Holland, Cochem (Mosel valley), Freiberg (Germany, Black Forest), Lech (Austrian Alps), Mazzena (Italian Alps), Vent (Austrian Alps), Mittersill (Austrian Alps), Bad Tolz (German foothills), Kaiserslautern (shithole in Germany), Hoek of Holland and home.
Why so much in Austria? Well I would have preferred to travel more in Italy as I can speak a bit of la lingua but Italian breakfasts are rubbish: cakes and sweeties and pastries. Germanic breakfasts are more muesli, dark breads and cold meats which is what you need when you are a fietskrieger. Germany has only foothills hence Austria. Further West is France/Switzerland. All you get in France is coffee, croissant and attitude and Switzerland is pricey.
Also Austria is a bit like home for me. There’s lots of folk music that sounds like Boeremusiek and their popmusic sounds just like SA pop music. At breakfast one morning I was listening to a song that sounded identical to Glenys Lynn. The cultural cross over is uncanny. (And they really do go for that lederhosen oompah stuff – they had a tv channel of it!)
I got back on Sunday morning wherupon it promptly pissed down and has continued to do so for the past three days. Welcome back to Blighty.
Amazing trip spoiled by only a couple of things – rain, and German road signs. Am already planning the next.
Posts are a bit erratic as I still don’t have a working telephone line therefore no internet though I have been chasing BT for three weeks now and are at the recorded delivery letter of complaint stage.
Well I am now comfortably ensconsed in my new abode. The move went pretty smoothly apart from one or two little blips one of which remains unresolved.
It also rained almost continuously for the entire week. Which made the process of making repeated trips between car and hallway even more dreary and miserable than it should be. And as the house emptied and started to echo more and more sepulchrally with each box moved, my little home for the last five years ceased to be a home till it became this odd hollow shell. I don’t think I am going to miss it much. I’m certainly not going to miss running up and down the stairs for specs, books etc that I was always leaving in another place. Or climbing the stairs then standing on the landing wondering what I came up for.
Organising the services wasn’t too bad except for the telecoms – now don’t get me started – but it took three days to get through to BT to arrange a line. On Wednesday when I finally got through I was promised the line would be working by the next day. There is a live line – a dialling tone at least – but it is not activated and can’t be used. I can’t get through to them to sort this out. I have to write. Can you believe that a telecommunications company is so useless that you have to write to them to get anything done?!? Gas, water, no problem. But to get a phone I have to get reacquainted with snail mail.
Ironically I don’t even want a BT line. But I do want an internet connection and for this I need a BT line. And there is no-one else to go to. BT runs a monopoly and as such can impose monopolistic practices like tying me into a one year contract that I don’t want but have to have. Now wasn’t that situation meant to end twenty years ago when BT was privatised. Whatever happened to Mercury? Answers on a postcard please.
I desperately need to get away from this bleak miserable little country for a bit. It has rained on and off more or less daily for over a month. And you probably saw the floods oop North. Hopefully I can get above the clouds.
Well gentle readers, I am writing this at a public terminal in my public library. Can you get much pikier than that? Err yes, using the public terminal at the Job Centre and we haven’t sunk that low yet.
But it does mean I am about to run out of my alloted time and I won’t get a chance to update this till about a week and a half unless I can get access to a terminal in the Alps. Which I doubt.
