THIS IS ONE THING I find ridiculous about Britain. Not only are our skyscrapers embarrassingly squat at a mere 50-floors maximum (pah!) ~ but our goods trains are far too short. They should be like this American one, only longer.
And doesn't it sound amazing!)
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
The train to China!
THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT is planning a transcontinental high speed rail link that could take passengers from London to Beijing in as little as 48 hours!
Now I know where I wanna go by train next after Berlin!When I'm in Beijing I'd love to take the Himalayan express to Lhasa in Tibet. At 15000 metres it's the highest railway in the world, with oxygen tanks on all trains in case passengers get altitude sickness!
As well as the Euro-route, the Chinese government are also planning a line via Korea to TOKYO.
The future's bright. The future's on rails!
Huge Bag Found on Street!
SURELY THIS IS A SIGN! I found an enormous sports bag ~ almost big enough to hold golf clubs and hence lots of German books and clothes ~ with trundlesome wheels on the bottom at the end of the next road along from me yesterday afternoon, so I thoroughly enjoyed trundling it behind me, imagining I was on the way to the Saint Pancreas International for the beginning of my Berlin expedition.
I know what y'all are thinking: Let's wait and see what actually happens. I've heard enough bluster and guff from this blogger to keep a fleet of hot air balloons afloat!Well I am going to Berlin. Berlin is one of my top three "most want to see" cities on earth, along with New York and Tokyo.
I don't know how on earth I'm going to get there, by the way. Not a single website I've found will sell me one all-in ticket London to Berlin return. I don't know why. Only last month I heard a government minister blustering about high-speed rail infrastructure. What's the point of all those whizzy trains and new tracks if you can't go where you want? I am NOT going by plane, unless I really have to. It's the stopovers along the way (and it's looking like Paris at the moment, with a €50 sleeper "couchette" each way, which would push the cost of tickets up to £170) that are half the fun. If I took the Eurostar out of London on a Sunday, I could see the Paris bird-market, which is amazing. All those feathery little pixies tweetling away on the pavements...
Today I found a book by my illustrious old German teacher, who (I found out years later) was being tipped as a potential Nobel laureate ~ until he died in a car crash in 2001. Austerlitz by W G Sebald. He was known to us at UEA as Max Sebald and he taught my German grammar class. OK, I seem to recall it might have been just once when the ordinary teacher was sick, but he did teach me German grammar!Click here for a beautiful blogger's writeup on the marché aux oiseaux in Paris ...
I'm going to Berlin!
200mph/320kph GERMAN ICE TRAINS will run direct London to Frankfurt in three years' time, it was announced last week. I found out at the same time that Deutsche Bahn offer fares (one-way though ~ there had to be a catch!) from London to anywhere in Germany for under €50! The only (other) catch is you currently have to change trains at Brussels. A rail website gave two prospective rail routes to Berlin.ROUTE 1: Eurostar London to Brussels Midi; Brussels to Cologne; Cologne to Berlin. Each journey taking about two hours.
ROUTE 2: Eurostar to Paris Nord in late afternoon; metro (or just walk 10 mins) to Gare de l'Est; night train direct to Berlin. If you don't get a berth and are willing to camp out in an ordinary seat the fare is under €30 one way!
I LOVE TRAINS anyhow, but it's the fact that you're hardly allowed any luggage on budget flights that really swung it for me.
I wanted to return home with a couple of year's worth of brilliant German books. That is, a weight-restriction-busting entire suitcase full of weighty tomes. Which you can't even keep with you on an aeroplane, and then if you kick off at the terminal because your luggage has basically been STOLEN, BA will prosecute and slap you with a lifetime ban (if you're Naomi Campbell)...
(A THIRD OPTION could be to fly, e.g. by Air Berlin ~ and buy a Kindle!)
SO I THOUGHT ~ if this is possible on one ticket; and most things are possible if you want them enough ~ it might be nice to overnight in Brussels, take a late night train to Cologne, spend the day there, moving on at night to Berlin arriving late at whatever room I've booked there (or park bench/space under a bridge (joke! I'm not into that kind of holiday any more. I "celebrated" new year 1991 going into 1992 with a crazed Japanese tourist, sleeping with homeless Berbers at Fez station. My Welcome to 1992 came at 6am when an angry station master started hitting my companions with a broom. He stopped what he was doing and looked aghast when he spotted my blond hair and pale face. In a way it was good he woke us up as I'd woken at five, convinced the poor old man next to me had died in the frosty night.)
Anyway, back to Berlin. I'm so excited. I'm going somewhere! At last!
Now I need my eyes and teeth seeing to. No cig-stained gnashers and new glasses or contact lenses. I'm not travelling Europe with my current intellectual scarecrow look.
Also I was looking into taking a night train to Budapest or Prague. (Budapest, I think. Everyone does Prague.)
I'm so excited! All these years of German and did you know, I've yet to set foot on German soil!
You'll all know when this happens as pictures of clean streets and exotic posts shall suddenly appear ...
In times past, I had always assumed this type of expedition would have to wait until I'd cleaned myself up enough to be OFF METHADONE.
I didn't realize, you see, that I'm allowed to travel with methadone ~ which they'd give in pills to prevent spillage tragedies. All I need do is provide proof of travel (ie a ticket) and enough notice and the druggieservice will give a certificate saying I'm entitled to hobnob across the EU with hardcore narcotics in my possession...
It's nearly 12 years since I went anywhere abroad. My feet are itching now, even more than that pussing wound on my leg!
***I JUST CHECKED AIR BERLIN's prices and was quoted €294.95 departing London Stanstead on September 28, returning from Berlin on October 7! Something tells me it's gonna be the train.***
Deutsche Bahn: bahn.de
Rail Booking: seat61.com
European Rail Ticket: raileurope.com
SNCB Europe: b-europe.com/Travel
British Rail Tickets: thetrainline.com
AN INTERRAIL (EURAIL) PASS valid for travel on 5 days out of 10 costs only £224!
http://www.internationalrail.com/interrail/interrail-global-pass.aspx
Chalk Figures ...
ENGLAND'S BIGGEST TOURIST ATTRACTIONS ...
The Uffington Horse, Oxfordshire
In Wiltshire there are several realistic White Horses ...
When I was tiny, I had an old maiden aunt, who lived in an ancient cottage with metre-thick walls deep in the Wiltshire countryside.
The house was near The Westbury White Horse
Trotting White Horse, Wiltshire Hills
Baby White Horse, Devizes, Wiltshire.
The newest chalk horse, produced in 1999
(To make these, you just excavate the grass and the chalk's right there; they only need filling in with fresh chalk when they get really old)
The leaping Folkestone White Horse in Kent
The Long Man of Wilmington is a 70 metre tall giant on a cliff south of the village of Wilmington in the South Downs, between Eastbourne and Brighton in the county of East Sussex
But the most famous figure stands "only" 55 metres high in Cern Abbas in Dorset. He is best known for being "excited" ...
The "excitement" stands 3-4 metres high ...
(Visitors to the site keep making it bigger~!)
The figure is generally believed to be an ancient fertility god
But the historian Aubrey Manning posited that he is in fact a caricature of the only president (1649-1658) England has ever had, Oliver Cromwell!
He kind of looks surprised to be stark naked ...
In 2007, Homer Simpson appeared next to the giant
Executed in white paint, the figure was a publicity stunt promoting the latest Simpsons movie
The Uffington Horse, Oxfordshire
In Wiltshire there are several realistic White Horses ...
When I was tiny, I had an old maiden aunt, who lived in an ancient cottage with metre-thick walls deep in the Wiltshire countryside.
The house was near The Westbury White Horse
Trotting White Horse, Wiltshire Hills
Baby White Horse, Devizes, Wiltshire.
The newest chalk horse, produced in 1999
(To make these, you just excavate the grass and the chalk's right there; they only need filling in with fresh chalk when they get really old)
The leaping Folkestone White Horse in Kent
The Long Man of Wilmington is a 70 metre tall giant on a cliff south of the village of Wilmington in the South Downs, between Eastbourne and Brighton in the county of East Sussex
But the most famous figure stands "only" 55 metres high in Cern Abbas in Dorset. He is best known for being "excited" ...
The "excitement" stands 3-4 metres high ...
(Visitors to the site keep making it bigger~!)
The figure is generally believed to be an ancient fertility god
But the historian Aubrey Manning posited that he is in fact a caricature of the only president (1649-1658) England has ever had, Oliver Cromwell!
He kind of looks surprised to be stark naked ...
In 2007, Homer Simpson appeared next to the giant
Executed in white paint, the figure was a publicity stunt promoting the latest Simpsons movie
Keeping Mum
A KINDLY GANG-MEMBER from Da Local Baby Gangsta Crew let me have some drugs on tick today. I paid half and owe half. I only had money to spare because all plans for today fell through, leaving me at a loose end, exceedingly "peeved", to put it mildly and in need, so I thought, of a chemical emollient. (Not an exfoliant, that gets off hair. An emollient. That soothes.)O man the effort I put into today. All for nothing!
I was supposed to see my Mum. I got up, crystal clear. Cleaned myself up as best I could, physically speaking. But to be frank I just looked like a heroin addict on a daytrip.
I had checked train times and prices etc etc etc. I had the option of going in and out of London or taking a long couple of bus rides across town. The bus rides seemed cheaper and got me to a station further up the right line.
So I took this bus. Got to station. All was silent. The ticket machine utterly refused to take my £5 note. Not that it was bulimically constantly regurgitating the thing. I think this machine was anorexic. Its mouth refused even to open.By the way I know someone who used to work on the Eating Disorders Helpline in Norwich who said that without exception bulimics verbally spewed and spewed, while anorexics were barely willing to open their mouths and thus said barely anything at all... Isn't that fascinating...
So anyway this ticket machine refused my money, which hardly bothered me. I chucked 10p in the Permit to Travel machine. This meant I was covered if an evil ticket inspector chose to pounce on me like a barn owl on an unsuspecting harvest mouse... as frequently happens on London suburban trains. If he queried whether or not the machine was in fact working, I would just tell them to check CCTV. Britain does not have the oft-stated 4 million cameras (surely it's many more than that now as that figure's a decade old) for nothing. For once I might use one to my advantage. I do not trust ticket inspectors after having the most almighty altercation with two on a platform having been told my ticket, which I'd checked in advance was good for it, was invalid on my chosen route. Something, incidentally, which tended not to happen before rail privatization. The worst ever move by the Tory party, in that particular line of activity. I got my money back and a grovelling apology. I always do. Or did. When I could be bothered with such things.
Anyway long story short, I got to the interchange station to find it surprisingly quiet. I hadn't taken the train, I'd walked because it was so near the other one (but wrong for the bus). I thought I'd let the train take the strain. In the end my feet did. And this station was empty with almost unreadable electronic notices saying something I could not understand. It transpired the entire line was down, and if I did want to see my Mum I'd have to take two trains in the wrong direction, with no guarantee how long they might take. Full of misery and fury I phoned her and said this is impossible. So we had to leave it for another day. Such a shame as Branzy my step-Dad wouldn't have been there earwigging in every word. In other words we might have done something else except discuss 25 topics I don't care about, skating merrily over life's surfaces, yet barely scratching them.
I went directly to the nearest cyder-selling shop and got two White Stars. Well I wasn't gonna need this money for train fares any more. Poured them into Lucozade bottles to spare myself disgusted glances. Jumped on bus. It was well over an hour till I got home, and then I phoned that heroin dealer who "kindly" ~ if you wanna call it that ~ provided that lump for half price.If I don't cough up tomorrow I get a bullet through my brainbox!
Anyway all this just goes to show, I'm stone cold sober and it still goes mammaries up. Oh what a day ...
Illustrated: selection of ultra-modern British trains. Especially the top one.
Very top pic: HM the Queen mysteriously riding public train (no wonder she looks glum)...
Yesterday, all my troubles seemed...
YESTERDAY MORNING I was drunk and maudlin. By drunk, read "alcoholically intoxicated" ~ not falling over, puking, fighting with lamp-posts. By 11am I'd had 2 or 3 of my special cocktails, which are based on cyder at 7.5% in 500ml cans, so you can do the mathematics yourself. 6 cans a day is the amount of alcohol advised by Her Majesty's chief doctor in a WEEK. Then again I'm cynnical. Very cynical in fact ~ about this "a couple of big glasses of wine a day is doing your body all manner of wrong". You may see a junkie making excuses. And yes I do believe I drink too much. But I think the Government's recommendations on dangerous levels are ridiculous in the extreme. I'm totally against altering the drink-drive limit (making it even lower) ~ if it ain't broke, why fix it?
While we're on the subject, I also believe the amount of Calories nutritionalists let us get away with is ricidulous. MOST of the world survives on 1000 to 1500 cals a day. I've been to India. Only the Indian police are overweight.
I've eaten in their equivalent of a truck driver's caff, where you get a ball of rice smaller than a tennis ball, with perhaps ~ at most ~ as much fish as would fit into a small sardine tin. This came coated in a thin batter so it looked more than it really was. This is considered a working man's lunch. Oh and I forgot, three tiny bowls of dips ~ pickles, chutney and sauce.
Incidentally, the Indian food I ate, betweeen Goa, Bangalore and Chennai (aka Madras) was nothing like the fragrant delicately spiced to raging hot array of dishes on sale in British curryhouses. What I experienced was more like ultra-hot Mexican ~ ie mostly chili-spiced. I don't recall ever eating anything resembling "curry". And no tikka masala, jalfrezi, balti or anything of that nature. All that food comes from the north. In Tamil Nadu they sold lots of Thali (pronounced Taarlee ~ without that burred R, you Americans!) , which is usually vegetarian and involves a great many bowls of things to mix and match dipping-wise. Another speciality, and this cost about 5 rupees a portion, each portion being cupcake sized, was bhel-puri. Which is sold at stalls. There's about four variations and it's really nice.
Indian takeaway food in India was what would here be considered "Chinese!" Though no attempt was made to decorate the stalls and restaurants with Chinese characters, red lanterns/etc. And it wasn't called Chinese food at all. It was just greasy stir-fried noodles and it was the best Chinese takeaway (if you wanna call it that) I've had ANYWHERE. And you know how much I like my Chinese.
If you wanna know the exact location of the shop I'm afraid my ex who I always called "Libra" here, went out, but we were staying at a cheap hotel that literally backed onto the tannoy at Chennai railway station. So it's walking distance from there. And well worth doing an Elvis-style expedition to get some (you know: I'm talking about the peanut butter sandwich story or whatever it was Elvis Presley had flown across America from his favourite diner just because he loved it so much. Though judging by the state of him towards the end of his life I find it difficult to believe it was only one ...
Now: what do you wanna hear? Me maudlin drunk. Well that had to do with my realizing the total death tally these past twelve months is at least FIVE probably SIX. I am not sure, as I do not care to ennumerate. Two heart attacks, two suicides. Another alleged heart attack... (Come on, you leave rehab, have a mysterious heart attack that very evening and it's not crack? Gimme a break. But that's the received version. It was just a somehow hitherto unnoticed heart complaint that decided to manifest just after leaving drug rehab...)
As far as Pinky & Perky go, I've not been in touch with anyone since the funeral. To be frank I don't think I was particularly missed on the day. I would have been tolerated like a particularly noxious, wafting fart that nobody would admit to. What I didn't post was that this group of friends involved a person with whom I was once in a close substitute mother-son type friendship (she used to tell people we met I was her son) and that person... well makes the situation less than simplistic. She invited me. But that doesn't mean she wanted to see me.
After the event: not a single phone call. For all she knows I could have been hit by a truck on the way. And I'm not (probably) telling this one the full facts. I don't trust her not to pass on a revved up bitching version to Pinky.
Yeah don't I have wonderful friends. Ex friends. I apologize.
Pinky and Perky were people I used to see every week but through this other person, with whom friendship has withered on the vine. So do you get it now? that my feelings were mixed from the start. That to go there would be... slightly weird. And as I said, to be frank I'd rather write personally to Pinky, not an apology for not being there. I doubt she very much noticed. But to put my own written eulogy (is that the expression?) My feelings on the life of Perky, who had so very much life it's hard to believe she's actually gone...
Apart from that, I bought two huge bags of gear on special offer. About 1.2g+ for £35 (usually bags that big they won't discount, unless you buy several). I had two or three hits and knocked myself unconscious the entire day yesterday.
Early that morning, I met somebody on the street and asked after the local dealer who drops off one minute from my house. I encounter people waiting on him all the time and I still haven't had an introduction. Every time, the situation falls through. Or I'm told by someone else that his gear's shyte. I've heard a lot of times that his gear has been shyte which is, I spose, what put me off bothering with this intro.
Anyway: long story short ~ I fessed up to this friend of mine/acquaintance/whatever you wanna call him about the Funeral Scandal (as it is labelled in my own personal mythology).
And he said to me "does it have little black bits in it?" and I said "what you mean minute black specks that cook down so the hit looks black?" (ie not "tea leaves, which are big floaters of something inert that you only find in drought or ripoff gear ~ these little bits look like a fine powder, as fine as cheap preground white pepper or black talc, if you can imagine that)... anyway he says yeah he knows someone who took the bus one stop and woke up in Trafalgar Square. Another started fighting with his best mate. Whenever it's taken, chaos ensues. I don't know what this weird black stuff is, but it's obviously pharmaceutical. And it's not heroin. In druggie language you could call this "B+" that is it's B (brown heroin) and strong enough to pong of brown, both in the bag and while cooking up, and the smell of brown heroin base is unmistakable. (Nothing like vinegar, incidentally. Vinegar is what Mexican tar and some China white heroin smells of.) The plus, whatever it is, is some pharmaceutical agent, probably either a benzodiazepine like Rohypnol or a barbiturate like Seconal or Phenobarb, or methaqualone ("quaaludes") or both.
What it cannot be is sleeping pills crushed down. Bearing in mind that a small pill weighs 200mg minimum and a large £20 bag weighs 600mg and I'm using a third of a 600mg bag at a time usually (ie "two points" or a fifth of a gram) ~ how much sleeping pill is going to fit into that? Nowhere near enough to knock me out for the day, no matter what the potion. So whoever's adulterating this stuff surely has access to illegally-manufactured knockout drops, probably from China or Central Asia. That is knockout stuff in its pure form.
One of yesterday's bags was the Midnight Black, the other just ordinary heroin. It's the second kind ~ just heroin ~ that I've had today ~ so I feel crystal clear!
The very fact that I've more than half the gear left over says how strong it was. Ordinarily I could get through a gram-and-a-bit in an afternoon, if I wanted to.
My head is not in a particularly good place. I wander about stricken by guilt over times when I was four and crushed a ladybird. And other such nonsense. (This is depression.) I tell myself this is depression to console myself. Perhaps recognizing some of the psychological tricks and mind-games of the condition gives me an edge over it. Not much of an edge, but something.
And that, my friends, is that.
Now I have to go. I have to think of something to post in German..!
Have a good day everyone :-)
While we're on the subject, I also believe the amount of Calories nutritionalists let us get away with is ricidulous. MOST of the world survives on 1000 to 1500 cals a day. I've been to India. Only the Indian police are overweight.I've eaten in their equivalent of a truck driver's caff, where you get a ball of rice smaller than a tennis ball, with perhaps ~ at most ~ as much fish as would fit into a small sardine tin. This came coated in a thin batter so it looked more than it really was. This is considered a working man's lunch. Oh and I forgot, three tiny bowls of dips ~ pickles, chutney and sauce.
Incidentally, the Indian food I ate, betweeen Goa, Bangalore and Chennai (aka Madras) was nothing like the fragrant delicately spiced to raging hot array of dishes on sale in British curryhouses. What I experienced was more like ultra-hot Mexican ~ ie mostly chili-spiced. I don't recall ever eating anything resembling "curry". And no tikka masala, jalfrezi, balti or anything of that nature. All that food comes from the north. In Tamil Nadu they sold lots of Thali (pronounced Taarlee ~ without that burred R, you Americans!) , which is usually vegetarian and involves a great many bowls of things to mix and match dipping-wise. Another speciality, and this cost about 5 rupees a portion, each portion being cupcake sized, was bhel-puri. Which is sold at stalls. There's about four variations and it's really nice.
Indian takeaway food in India was what would here be considered "Chinese!" Though no attempt was made to decorate the stalls and restaurants with Chinese characters, red lanterns/etc. And it wasn't called Chinese food at all. It was just greasy stir-fried noodles and it was the best Chinese takeaway (if you wanna call it that) I've had ANYWHERE. And you know how much I like my Chinese.
If you wanna know the exact location of the shop I'm afraid my ex who I always called "Libra" here, went out, but we were staying at a cheap hotel that literally backed onto the tannoy at Chennai railway station. So it's walking distance from there. And well worth doing an Elvis-style expedition to get some (you know: I'm talking about the peanut butter sandwich story or whatever it was Elvis Presley had flown across America from his favourite diner just because he loved it so much. Though judging by the state of him towards the end of his life I find it difficult to believe it was only one ...
Now: what do you wanna hear? Me maudlin drunk. Well that had to do with my realizing the total death tally these past twelve months is at least FIVE probably SIX. I am not sure, as I do not care to ennumerate. Two heart attacks, two suicides. Another alleged heart attack... (Come on, you leave rehab, have a mysterious heart attack that very evening and it's not crack? Gimme a break. But that's the received version. It was just a somehow hitherto unnoticed heart complaint that decided to manifest just after leaving drug rehab...)
As far as Pinky & Perky go, I've not been in touch with anyone since the funeral. To be frank I don't think I was particularly missed on the day. I would have been tolerated like a particularly noxious, wafting fart that nobody would admit to. What I didn't post was that this group of friends involved a person with whom I was once in a close substitute mother-son type friendship (she used to tell people we met I was her son) and that person... well makes the situation less than simplistic. She invited me. But that doesn't mean she wanted to see me.
After the event: not a single phone call. For all she knows I could have been hit by a truck on the way. And I'm not (probably) telling this one the full facts. I don't trust her not to pass on a revved up bitching version to Pinky.
Yeah don't I have wonderful friends. Ex friends. I apologize.
Pinky and Perky were people I used to see every week but through this other person, with whom friendship has withered on the vine. So do you get it now? that my feelings were mixed from the start. That to go there would be... slightly weird. And as I said, to be frank I'd rather write personally to Pinky, not an apology for not being there. I doubt she very much noticed. But to put my own written eulogy (is that the expression?) My feelings on the life of Perky, who had so very much life it's hard to believe she's actually gone...Apart from that, I bought two huge bags of gear on special offer. About 1.2g+ for £35 (usually bags that big they won't discount, unless you buy several). I had two or three hits and knocked myself unconscious the entire day yesterday.
Early that morning, I met somebody on the street and asked after the local dealer who drops off one minute from my house. I encounter people waiting on him all the time and I still haven't had an introduction. Every time, the situation falls through. Or I'm told by someone else that his gear's shyte. I've heard a lot of times that his gear has been shyte which is, I spose, what put me off bothering with this intro.
Anyway: long story short ~ I fessed up to this friend of mine/acquaintance/whatever you wanna call him about the Funeral Scandal (as it is labelled in my own personal mythology).
And he said to me "does it have little black bits in it?" and I said "what you mean minute black specks that cook down so the hit looks black?" (ie not "tea leaves, which are big floaters of something inert that you only find in drought or ripoff gear ~ these little bits look like a fine powder, as fine as cheap preground white pepper or black talc, if you can imagine that)... anyway he says yeah he knows someone who took the bus one stop and woke up in Trafalgar Square. Another started fighting with his best mate. Whenever it's taken, chaos ensues. I don't know what this weird black stuff is, but it's obviously pharmaceutical. And it's not heroin. In druggie language you could call this "B+" that is it's B (brown heroin) and strong enough to pong of brown, both in the bag and while cooking up, and the smell of brown heroin base is unmistakable. (Nothing like vinegar, incidentally. Vinegar is what Mexican tar and some China white heroin smells of.) The plus, whatever it is, is some pharmaceutical agent, probably either a benzodiazepine like Rohypnol or a barbiturate like Seconal or Phenobarb, or methaqualone ("quaaludes") or both.
What it cannot be is sleeping pills crushed down. Bearing in mind that a small pill weighs 200mg minimum and a large £20 bag weighs 600mg and I'm using a third of a 600mg bag at a time usually (ie "two points" or a fifth of a gram) ~ how much sleeping pill is going to fit into that? Nowhere near enough to knock me out for the day, no matter what the potion. So whoever's adulterating this stuff surely has access to illegally-manufactured knockout drops, probably from China or Central Asia. That is knockout stuff in its pure form.One of yesterday's bags was the Midnight Black, the other just ordinary heroin. It's the second kind ~ just heroin ~ that I've had today ~ so I feel crystal clear!
The very fact that I've more than half the gear left over says how strong it was. Ordinarily I could get through a gram-and-a-bit in an afternoon, if I wanted to.
My head is not in a particularly good place. I wander about stricken by guilt over times when I was four and crushed a ladybird. And other such nonsense. (This is depression.) I tell myself this is depression to console myself. Perhaps recognizing some of the psychological tricks and mind-games of the condition gives me an edge over it. Not much of an edge, but something.
And that, my friends, is that.
Now I have to go. I have to think of something to post in German..!
Have a good day everyone :-)
More about Chogstable the Nightingale
SOME GOOGLING into the subject, has revealed that Chogstable, my nightingale, is probably a boy. And that there might well be two or three of him. Or else he has severe insomnia, because he's frequently to be heard singing at all times throughout the day. Nightingale is said to mean "songstress of the night". But the two assumptions ~ that it is the female who sings and at night are wrong. It is, so I read, the male nightingale who does most of the singing. In the early hours of course his song becomes far more distinctive for lack of warbling, tweetling competition. But nightingales are to be heard chirruping away at all and any times during the 24 hours.
If you ever go on holiday to Togo or Chad and think you hear Chogstable twittering his head off at 4:30am ~ you're not going crazy. It might actually be Chogstable himself! Nightingales winter in Western and Central Africa, returning here by mid-April (so how come I first spotted Chogstable in January? Looking like a small thrush without the speckles (ie just like a nightingale), hanging out around dense vegetation ie behaving just like a nightingale. Every night I spotted him around the same tree he sings in today.) How could Chogstable be here, when he ought to have been having a chirp in some mango-grove in Gabon?
The little nightingales are said to cross the Sahara Desert in one fell swoop (so to speak) sleeping as they fly (which some birds can do), thrumming their tiny wings nonstop. On they flutter, across the Straits of Gibraltar or wider Mediterranean Sea, finally touching down for a long-overdue roost in Southern Spain or Italy.
May is said to be the best month to hear nightingale song, when the birds are breeding. In June, they are tending their nests of babies as couples. By July they take to the skies once more, thrum-thrum-thrumming away, off to their second homes and luxury gîtes along the Gold Coast, the Côte d'Ivoire or the Congo or Volta rivers...
Actually having read their supposed migration-timetable, which implies they ping too and from Africa not once a year, but twice. I'm confused. If anyone has better information, please let me know...
LINKS:
Wikipedia nightingale
Wikipedia nachtigall
Springerlink: First arrival dates of nightingale to Central Croatia
Any good videos (if I can find 'em) und Deutsche Übersetzung kommen später/coming later.
SPEAKING OF SINGERS
This is pretty remarkable:
ROSLYN KIND: CAN YOU READ MY MIND
What do you think of her voice? Whose does her singing remind you of?
An old clip:
If you ever go on holiday to Togo or Chad and think you hear Chogstable twittering his head off at 4:30am ~ you're not going crazy. It might actually be Chogstable himself! Nightingales winter in Western and Central Africa, returning here by mid-April (so how come I first spotted Chogstable in January? Looking like a small thrush without the speckles (ie just like a nightingale), hanging out around dense vegetation ie behaving just like a nightingale. Every night I spotted him around the same tree he sings in today.) How could Chogstable be here, when he ought to have been having a chirp in some mango-grove in Gabon?The little nightingales are said to cross the Sahara Desert in one fell swoop (so to speak) sleeping as they fly (which some birds can do), thrumming their tiny wings nonstop. On they flutter, across the Straits of Gibraltar or wider Mediterranean Sea, finally touching down for a long-overdue roost in Southern Spain or Italy.
May is said to be the best month to hear nightingale song, when the birds are breeding. In June, they are tending their nests of babies as couples. By July they take to the skies once more, thrum-thrum-thrumming away, off to their second homes and luxury gîtes along the Gold Coast, the Côte d'Ivoire or the Congo or Volta rivers...
Actually having read their supposed migration-timetable, which implies they ping too and from Africa not once a year, but twice. I'm confused. If anyone has better information, please let me know...
LINKS:
Wikipedia nightingale
Wikipedia nachtigall
Springerlink: First arrival dates of nightingale to Central Croatia
Any good videos (if I can find 'em) und Deutsche Übersetzung kommen später/coming later.
SPEAKING OF SINGERS
This is pretty remarkable:
ROSLYN KIND: CAN YOU READ MY MIND
What do you think of her voice? Whose does her singing remind you of?
An old clip:
Strange flashes of life ...
I KEEP HAVING THEM. Strange flashes, where I feel, or I imagine, that I'm actually living. Flash-backs or flash-forwards? I don't
know. I smell things. I feel things. I feel anticipation. Not the anxious-tinged waiting for a dealer... Unless I know them really well I cannot trust them. I mean, in the most basic way. I've only been properly ripped off a couple of times. But every time I score, the reality is there: it might happen. Then I would be doomed. Not that I'm not doomed already, I can hear you say.Doesn't it happen to us all? The magical feeling we only get on awakening after a vivid dream? When present situations are bathed in a new light. When new things seem possible.
I dream of France. Repeatedly. Paris.In my head I wind backwards to Morocco. My blogospherical friend Gattina was posting from Morocco last week. This was the first place I went to on my own, off my own back, for no particular reason except that I had the chance to go. I went by train (and boat) all the way from Wales. Through London, down to Dover, crossed the Channel. Calais to Paris Nord. Metro. Gare d'Austerlitz to Hendaye. Hendaya (as it's known on the Spanish side) to Madrid. Madrid to Malaga. In a little urbanización called Mijas Costa I spent a week over Xmas with my Mum. Then I took the train to Algeciras, a boat to Tangiers ~ where I saw an old man smoking hashish on the street, who looked like a wizard from a Rupert Bear story. I got out of Tangiers as soon as I could, on the night train to Marrakesh.
Waking up first thing in the desert, an oasis went floating past our windows. It was an old-fashioned compartmentalized train with tourists lined up along the corridor, just gazing at the views.The sights and sounds and smells of Morocco constantly come back to me. Arabic cigarettes and black coffee first thing in the morning. Tangerine juice and hot flat bread for 15p. Courtyard hotel rooms for less than £3 a night. The view from the window was like a scene from Arabian Nights.
Sunrise in Rabat. The burnt colours of earth: umber, sienna, ochre were flooded in gold. I wandered the entire perimeter of the palace walls,
gazing at tangerine trees in the first light, thinking over and over: Wow I'm in Africa! Later that morning I found the Royal Gardens, which were open to the public. There were storks' nests up the palm trees. I wandered down a lush pathway, alone. It was like an Islamic paradise.All these things come back to me still, with the golden dream that they could happen again. And I don't feel trapped any more in an eternally revolving present, between drowsiness and despair.
Somehow, I know, I won't always be like this.
4:24am: Chogstable the nightingale, who shares the cherry tree with Flapper, is chirruping her head off as we speak. She's amazing...!
04:24 Uhr: Chogstable die Nachtigall, die oben im Kirschenbaum mit Flapper die Ringeltaube lebt, zwitschert laut! Sie ist wunderbar!
Typhoon Lagoon
Typhoon Lagoon is the best water park by Disney. It is one of the two water parks operated by Disney. It has Castaway Creek which is a 2100-foot continuous river raft ride lets guests aboard inner tubes meander through rain forests, caves, open grottos, waterfalls and a waterworks area. Children must be accompanied by an adult along with Gangplank Falls which has huge inner tubes holding four guests careen down rapids and through special water effects and rock formations on this 300-foot family raft ride.
Humunga Kowabunga ,
The Humunga Kowabunga
The Storm Slides
Typhoon Lagoon
Typhoon Lagoon tube rides
Falls
Typhoon lagoon has Humunga Kowabunga which travels at speeds up to 30 mph as you are whisked down one of the triple enclosed slides and through caves on this 214-foot ride. It also has another mind jolting ride viz. Keel Haul Falls.It'll hop aboard your inner tube and slide down one of the "soft foam" slides, passing through caves, waterfalls and special effects along the way.
kiddie area Typhoon Lagoon
Blizzard Beach
Typhoon lagoon has two separate inner tube rides, huge lazy river, huge wave pool, kiddie area, two types of body slides, water coaster, snorkel with live fish Snacks, drinks, and lunches or bring your own. It has plenty of seating areas for best group celebrations. Take an underwater camera and you'll have thrilling experience while clicking coral reefs and other marine organisms. Rush in for snorkel in tank and water slides. Typhoon lagoon is an amazing vacationing delight along with Disney, Seaworld, Universal studio & Kennedy space center which ascertains that you are getting best value from your Orlando vacation rentals.
Typhoon Lagoon tropical paradise
Typhoon Lagoon huge lazy river
Typhoon Lagoon Humunga Kowabunga
Typhoon Lagoon is certainly the most beautiful, a true tropical paradise. This looks nothing like typical water parks that have slides with exposed superstructures and wave pools that look like giant concrete tubs. It may not have the most, fastest or highest slides, but it does have the largest surf pool with waves up to six feet high that sits at the base of a hundred foot high manmade watershed mountain and is surrounded by a sandy beach and a lush tropical forest.Ketchakiddee Creek is a play area for young children featuring small slides and fountains. There are water features that spray everywhere including a tugboat and a mixture of whales and seals throughout the play area. A small sandy beach is also provided.
Typhoon lagoon has Humunga Kowabunga which travels at speeds up to 30 mph as you are whisked down one of the triple enclosed slides and through caves on this 214-foot ride. It also has another mind jolting ride viz. Keel Haul Falls.It'll hop aboard your inner tube and slide down one of the "soft foam" slides, passing through caves, waterfalls and special effects along the way.
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typhoon Lagoon water park
The Great Falls "diamond in the rough"
The Great Falls of the Passaic River, located just 12 miles from New York City in the city of Paterson, New Jersey, is a not only spectacular natural attraction in the nation’s most populous state, it also gained historical significance in the early stages of the American industrial Revolution by supplying water power to the nation’s first manufacturing center. The falls now 77 feet high, emerged approximately 13,000 years ago the end of the ice age. As the glaciers ice melted, the Passaic River swelled and rerouted it's way around the north end of the Watchung Mountains, carving out the spectacular falls from the basalt base.
Early habitation of the surrounding falls began with the native Lenape Indians, followed by Dutch settlers in the in the 17th century.
The Great Falls of the Passaic River
The Great Falls
the Passaic River
The Great Falls of the Passaic River New Jersey
The Falls also has a place in history with the American Industrial Revolution as one of the nation’s first manufacturing centers that benefited from the falls water source to generate power to run mills that manufactured locomotives, guns, silk, and aircraft engines.
The Great Falls of the Passaic River winter
In 1778, after visiting the Falls Alexander Hamilton, first realized the water power potential for industrial development and when he later became the country's first treasury secretary, he spearheaded the development of the nation's first planned industrial city.
Two manufactures of prominence, The Rogers Locomotive Works and Colt, where the first Colt .45 revolvers were produced, benefited by the water power from the falls.
The Passaic River
The Passaic River is prone to flooding from heavy rainfall or snow-melt, and during those periods of flooding, the Falls is at its best as an awesome sight with the tremendous down pouring of water cascading over the falls.
In the second week of April, 2007, 8 inches of rain drenched the area and produced the "Great Flood" that flowed down the Passaic River and over the Falls.
The Great Falls - A National Historic Park
In 2009, President Barack Obama signed the legislation making The Great Falls and its surrounding 35 acres a National Park. This legislation now provides protection and increased funding to the park.
The Great Falls - A National Historic Park
The Great Falls - A National Historic Park 1
The Great Falls National Park
The Falls is a natural "diamond in the rough" and the foundation of America’s economic development. A master plan or design vision has been developed for the recovery of the Great Falls, the surrounding area, and historical industrial sites, to create and orderly plan to integrate them into one spectacular new public space. This new integrated public park is intended to commemorate the Great Falls and its place in the history of the American Revolution while preserving the viewing and natural beauty of the Great Falls.
Best Place to View The Falls
The falls can best be viewed from three spots; Hamilton Park on the south, from the bridge down river from the falls, and Overlook Park on the north.
Great Falls Historic District Visitor Center
Located across from the Falls, The Great Falls Historic District Cultural Center is a great place to learn about the history and many of the initiatives underway to develop the area.
Early habitation of the surrounding falls began with the native Lenape Indians, followed by Dutch settlers in the in the 17th century.
the Passaic River
The Great Falls "diamond in the rough"
The Great Falls and the American Industrial Revolution The Falls also has a place in history with the American Industrial Revolution as one of the nation’s first manufacturing centers that benefited from the falls water source to generate power to run mills that manufactured locomotives, guns, silk, and aircraft engines.
The Great Falls winter
The Great Falls winter 1
Two manufactures of prominence, The Rogers Locomotive Works and Colt, where the first Colt .45 revolvers were produced, benefited by the water power from the falls.
In the second week of April, 2007, 8 inches of rain drenched the area and produced the "Great Flood" that flowed down the Passaic River and over the Falls.
The Great Falls - A National Historic Park
In 2009, President Barack Obama signed the legislation making The Great Falls and its surrounding 35 acres a National Park. This legislation now provides protection and increased funding to the park.
Best Place to View The Falls
The falls can best be viewed from three spots; Hamilton Park on the south, from the bridge down river from the falls, and Overlook Park on the north.
Great Falls Historic District Visitor Center
Located across from the Falls, The Great Falls Historic District Cultural Center is a great place to learn about the history and many of the initiatives underway to develop the area.
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