Sweden! Uppsala

I'm sitting in a train on the way to Stockholm after spending the week in Uppsala, a small city north of Stockholm. It's just past midsummer, so it never really gets dark and - OH I JUST SAW A STEAM TRAIN, puffing its way across a bridge with olde carriages. Here is the steam train:

Now we are going really fast past a lot of fields, definitely faster than Sydney trains and much faster than NZ trains. Anyway, I’ve been in Uppsala at a conference (which was good), and in the meantime have been wandering around the older parts of the city, which has a canal, lots of cobblestones, many many bikes and very few cars. We had 30 degrees ones day, which I was not prepared for, but then it fell to 17 the next day so I suppose it balanced out.

Uppsala also has the largest cathedral in Scandinavia, with construction starting in the 13th century and several rebuilds since. The stone interior has been painted with beautiful repeating patterns of flowers and other motifs, different in every small chapel to the sides of the cathedral, which at first I thought was original, but then found out it was repainted in the twentieth century, so more in the spirit of the original. It made me think about buildings as living, and wonder why many of the buildings from the English reformation haven't been renewed - perhaps to do with continuity of use and political stability, as well as displaying the scars of the past.

Eating out in Sweden is quite expensive, apparently due to the high tax on luxuries. There are lots of restaurants beside the canal that runs through the city, looking out to the water and the small bridges that cross, some decked out with flowers. The route from my hotel to the conference venue took me along the canal, beneath the castle (pink), along cobbled streets around the cathedral, and past some grand old apartment houses (one painted sky blue). People in Sweden tend to live in apartment houses in cities in Sweden, with parks nearby and a very compact form with fields not far from the centre of town. There are trees everywhere and rough paths through the parks which gives everything a sort of half-wild quality. Linnæus of the botanical scientific naming system lived and worked in Uppsala, so there are lots of references to him - cafés, a tourist walk, and of course his house and garden. We went through the garden beds where he cultivated a whole host of different plants, for instance about ten types of thistle in one bed, laid out by genus and Latin name.

Dinner one night was in the state hall at the castle, which we found out later is not generally accessible to the public. It's a huge space, with a musicians gallery around one corner, and long tables with candelabra. The waiters were extremely well-rehearsed, at one point carrying in silver platters of icecream over one shoulder, turning to stand in a line with military precision and lighting the flares sticking out of the icecream. We were also treated to some musical comedy (spex) by a male choir with their mascot, Flora the cow skull. They'd chatted to one of my colleagues outside and now asked for her to come up to the stage so they could sing her a love song, but she hid so they asked for volunteers, and ended up singing their song to a guy, with much feeling.

As I write this last bit I'm in a train on the way to Copenhagen at 200km an hour, passing fields and forests, red farmhouses and little lakes. The weather's beautiful, with blue skies and a crisp morning. I'll get onto my Stockholm adventures in the next post :)

Shanghai Museum, Tianzifang, Yuyuan Gardens, French Concession and the Maglev :)

There are many, many milk tea shops in Shanghai, some with long queues outside. It's a little more difficult to find coffee shops (especially ones that aren't Starbucks or Costa) but we managed to find a good one near People's Square and had coffee and a muffin for breakfast on Saturday, then wandered through the park at People's Square, admiring the extremely impressive giant floral sculpture before checking out Shanghai Museum. We saw ancient bronze artefacts and jade ornaments, beautiful pottery from ancient times up until the late nineteenth century, calligraphy and lovely paintings. There was also a visiting exhibition of landscapes from the Tate Britain, so a whole range of things to see.

We found a nice restaurant and had dumplings, shallot pancakes, rice cakes and Chinese broccoli for lunch (so much food) then wandered through Tianzifang, which is an old area of former workshops, now with many small shops ranging from boutiques and art studios to souvenir shops and little craft businesses. There are winding alleys like Xintiandi, but many more of them and not so perfectly manicured, which gives it more of a charm I think.

Mr Dr L was on shopping duty at the Baby Sale to End All Baby Sales, so we had running updates through the day on the 70% off deals for baby Dr L, arriving in September. We met up with him in the evening to go to Yuyuan Gardens, where the ancient temple of the city god is, but the main attraction here was the newer streets of old-style buildings with lights on all the roofs and shops and food everywhere. The place (like most places in Shanghai) was buzzing, and we spent a while trying to find the best place to get a stone seal carved with my name in Chinese. In the end, the best price and the nicest stones were from a man at a little store, who power-drilled the characters into the stone and demonstrated the seal on gold-leaf-sprinkled rice paper.

People were wandering around with large dumplings with straws sticking out of them, which I had heard of before and wanted to try. They were sold out at one busy food court place, but we found a small restaurant that did them for 20 yuan (about $4 Australian), which Mr Dr L thought was expensive, even for a large dumpling. It was good though - crab soup inside that you suck up the straw, and then pull apart the rest with chopsticks. I also tried Nanjing rice balls with sweet sesame filling which were pretty good, served in a clear soup.

On the way back to the metro station, we passed several large groups of older people line dancing to multiple sets of loud, duelling music. Apparently this is outlawed near many residential buildings because of the noise it makes, but it's extremely popular with older generations, and the younger generations complain about the noise and people dancing late into the night...

My final day in Shanghai, we went to find the French Concession, which is actually a very large district that contains Xintiandi and Tianzifang (so we'd actually already been there multiple times). After a good brunch in Xintiandi, we walked down streets lined with plane trees and tiny shops to find a neighbourhood of some old French Concession buildings, Si Nan Mansions. There was a market on with stalls of jewellery and tea, as well as a man who was making candy floss flowers. Most of the buildings here have been converted into shops, restaurants, breweries or Starbucks/Costa, though some still seem to be lived in. We came upon Zhou En-Lai's house, which is now a museum describing the shaky times in the 1940s when the Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Party were vying over rule - the Kuomintang posted secret spies across the road, which the CPC guards had to keep an eye on.

After some more wandering we found Bridge 8, which is an old car factory now turned into a creative district with a huge art and design bookshop with books all up the three-storey walls, but which was invitiation only (a bit frustrating). Across the road there was an art gallery with an exhibition that Dr L said was from Korea - I didn't realise until later that she meant North Korea. The many, many paintings were beautiful, but a huge range of styles all mixed up together, with impressionist cherry blossom scenes, idyllic farmland, happy workers in a factory, stylish young women in traditional or modern dress, horses, mountains, romantically crashing waves upon cliffs... I was particularly struck by a wall-sized seemingly-dystopian painting of Blade Runner-like modern towers at the edge of a harbour with traditional fishing boats moored below, wreathed in mist, juxtaposed with a natural landscape on its adjacent wall. Definitely an experience, and one I quite enjoyed.

Next up was Fuxing Park, which is one of the oldest public parks in the city and beautifully manicured. There were lots of families running around on the main grass area and people flying kites, people sitting under wrought iron arches with ivy running over them, around fountains and the swirling rose garden beds. By this time we were getting quite tired, so we looked for a cafe that wasn't Starbucks or Costa and managed to find a beautiful one in an old house near the park, filled with interesting antiques, a verdant bricked courtyard and an upstairs with a bar, Tiffany lamps and 30s music.

Soon it was time to get my bags and make for the airport for the next leg of my trip. Dr L and Mr Dr L kindly took me to an easy transfer point for the maglev train to the airport, which takes 8 minutes to go the 30km to the airport. Some of them are express trains and go over 400km/hr, but unfortunately I didn't get one of those and we only got up to 301km/h. Amazing to see everything speeding past like you're in a plane about to lift off.

And then I was onto my 18 hour trip to Stockholm...

Sydney to Shanghai: the plane, Xintiandi and the Bund

Every few years I do another post saying 'Wow! It's been X years since I last posted! I should do more on this blog!' So here's the latest one. :)

Wow! It's been 5 years since I last posted! I'm on my way to Europe via Shanghai for a conference in Sweden and roadtripping with my bro and his beau and friend, so I thought it'd be good opportunity to document some stuff :) I went to the US for the first time in the middle of last year, and Austria in November/December (coincidentally, about the same time I was there in 2012) but the travel diaries from there are on paper and scrivener... such as I did them.

In any case, I'm now sitting in my seat taxiiing down the runway in Sydney while the safety video plays and everyone ignores it. I was going to walk to the airport (I live half an hour walk from the Sydney International Terminal which is awesome!) but it was kind of raining and cold and my clothes are geared for summer so I took the 2 minute $18 train ride instead. I successfully checked in and notified the airline I'm doing a 144 hr TWOV in Shanghai (transit without visa), and have been reading the inflight magazine, which informs me that China Eastern now flys directly to Stockholm! Unfortunately I've booked with Air France, so will have to stopover at Charles de Gaulle... There's lots of interesting tourist information about Sweden though, with such gems as "A winter's day is long and cold in Sweden and life cannot be without cheese".

***

Almost there! I've watched Woman in Gold (excellent), Mermaid (a Chinese dramedy involving mermaids, also excellent in a very different way), done a reasonable amount of work and have been practising my Mandarin. So far I've got hello, thank you and good bye down, but still working on I'm sorry (duì bù qî) and 'how much is this?' (zhège duōshao qián?).

***

I successfully managed to get through the 144 hr visa queue and get my 'transit without visa' visa! Then, with the help of my friend Dr L on the other end of the phone, I managed to get a taxi to her place :) I found out from some small print on the back of my departure card that I needed to register myself as a temporary resident within the first 24 hrs, so our plan for Friday was to check out Xīntiandi and the police station, then the Bund and Oriental Pearl Tower.

After xiaolongbao and soy milk for breakfast, we took the subway to Xintiandi. This area is a former residential area of Shinkumen (stone gateway) houses which was redeveloped into a boutique-restaurant-cultural quarter, with the building that was the site of the first meeting of the Chinese communist party at one side. It's an incredibly successful development that with a mix of historic buildings and new additions, alleyways and hidden corners to explore. We had lunch at a nice Spanish place, then went to find a police station.

Registering as a temporary resident is something your hotel does for you if you stay in a hotel, but if you stay with a friend you need them to show proof they own the property you're staying in...! We think it's probably the same procedure as for long-term temporary residents, and they haven't caught up wth the new short transit visas. It was a bit of an adventure, because we had to go to the police station twice, once to find out all the documentation we needed and a second time to hand it all in, with photocopies. Then we retired to Dr L's and had hot chocolate before venturing out in the rain to the Bund.

The Bund is technically 33 buildings built in different European styles by invited architects, lining the west side of the Huangpu River. Reclamation in the last few decades created a wide promenade beside the water, from which you can look across the river to the newer Pudong district and see the Oriental Pearl Tower and Shanghai Tower (over 600m tall). It was just on dusk when we arrived, with light rain, and we wandered along the promenade admiring the brightly-lit older buildings on one side and the phantasmagorical light shows playing out on most of the modern buildings. Some of the buildings have advertisements, as if they're Times Square billboards at 100:1 scale, and some have beautiful patterns, like the building with a golden butterfly slowly moving its wings. We took the ferry across the river, which is a really good way to see the lights, especially given it's only 4 yuan, but halfway across the river, I realised I’d lost my camera somehow. Once we got to the other side, we asked the ticket office man to call back to the opposite bank ticket office, and waited while they checked to see if they could find it. Luckily, they did! I've now attached my camera to a lanyard, which makes me look more like a tourist, but at least I won't lose it. Though I probably shouldn't jinx it by saying that...

We met up with Mr Dr L on the Bund side of the river for Shanghai fried buns (really good) and dodged the rain (not very successfully) back to their place for the night. I got pretty excited in the metro, because they have flashy light displays on the tunnel walls that show ads as you're speeding past them. It must be something similar to a frisbee I had once where you could make it spell out your name as you threw it, but a lot more sophisticated... unfortunately it doesn't photograph or video well...

Birds From Hell

It is really time to resuscitate this blog. I have been busy the last few months with work and university (that's no excuse, I tell myself sternly), but now I'm going to get back into it. Otherwise I will have no record of my life, and there's a good chance that I'll forget everything.

So I have been thinking about blog posts, and what I could put in them, and have created a list of possible topics. The first topic is the Escalators of Doom. The second is my weekend out of Sydney, up the coast with the Pirate Pianist (who has returned from Germany, and is living there with Pirate Boyfriend. And I'm really not kidding about the pirate bit. He has a cutlass), and the third is Birds From Hell. Then there's also probably the International Fleet Review, and Oktoberfest on the Beach.

I think I shall start with Birds From Hell, as you may have guessed from the title of this post.

So I was minding my own business, walking to university one day, when I passed under some trees and was hit quite hard on the side of the head. I jumped and ducked and looked around, but couldn't see anything that might have hit me - no pinecones, no balls. I'd walked past a girl a few weeks before who'd just been swooped and who warned me about magpies, so I guessed it might have been a magpie. When I put my hand up to my ear, it came away with a spot of blood, so I walked the rest of the way to uni and went into the library to ask where the nurse was.

One of the librarians was very enthusiastic and got out her first aid kit and patched me up, and I went up to the research room and decided to go a different way next time.

Five days later, I walked a slightly different way, which would take me on the other side of the road to the trees. I wore my hair differently. I wore different clothes. And I had just turned onto the footpath on the opposite side when something black hit me on the side of the head.

This time, it was definitely a bird. Right, I thought, if I can't go on the opposite side of the road, I'll go through the park next to the trees, and follow the guy on the bike who isn't getting picked on by magpies.

So I followed the guy on the bike, rather quickly, but I had only just entered the park when something hit me again. I began to run. Something hit me again. I ran faster, covering my head with my arms. When I thought I was far enough away from the trees, I slowed a bit, but the magpie hit me again.

I ran right to the other side of the road, and here it seemed I was no threat to the magpie, and it stopped attacking me. I went, rather shaken, to uni, and as it was quite early in the morning I couldn't find anyone who knew where I could find a first aid kit. A lovely lady who volunteers for ambulances finally appeared, took a look at my ear and said I should go to the medical centre.

At the medical centre, a doctor looked me over, cleaned up the blood, patched my two cuts with special plasters and gave me a tetanus shot (I can never remember when I've had tetanus shots. So now, here, a record! September 2013!). She said it was the only time she'd ever seen magpies actually draw blood.

Yesterday, for the first time in months, I went underneath the magpie tree. I had an umbrella, and I was not attacked! A slight victory (probably because the magpie didn't know it was me).

And then last week, we had a party for Melbourne Cup day that I was late for, because I was doing a presentation for university. The presentation went well, but everyone else had had a good brunch and I needed food. I stopped at the Hungry Jacks (aka Burger King) at Circular Quay, which does two-for-one Whopper Juniors on Tuesdays, and decided I'd get the deal even though I didn't think I could eat both. Someone else was bound to be pleased with one.

I was a few bites into the first burger and walking along the quay when a seagull swooped down and tried to steal my burger, raking through the bun and dropping lettuce everywhere. I promptly dropped the rest of it in a bin and got out my second burger, then ate it under a roof with my shoulders hunched up.

I'm pretty sure Australian birds hate me.

Apart from the pigeon I saw the other day which looked like it was wearing spats. I don't think it hates me... it didn't try to attack me, at least.

Nightingale Floors, Cats and Excellent Books

My flat has a nightingale floor (there's an awesome book called Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn. Go. Now. Read it.). Around the front door and entrance hall, the floor boards creak and sing, I imagine to warn of any intruders - the boards don't creak anywhere else in the house. I have made it my task to cross this nightingale floor without it squeaking. Haven't managed it yet. Possibly my flatmates think I'm a bit weird, treading back and forth, back and forth and grumbling when I still can't find a good non-creaky spot.

I will succeed!

I have made friends with a Siamese cat called Jazz, who looked pretty confused when I followed him down our driveway and along the road calling here kitty kitty, but came around the next day when I managed to pat him in the back garden. I still haven't witnessed any rain in Sydney, and it's great to be able to sit out in the garden in the warm sun and not get sunburnt (this is what I like about early spring - warm but not 8min sunburn warm).

On Friday I found out that Untold (sequel to Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan), a book I was resigned to waiting for until late September, had actually been released in my territory. Having little to no self-control, I immediately got it for my Kindle app, made dinner (some self-control!) and sat down to read it into the night. It was excellent! It's fun to see characters and their relationships change over time, especially when they go the way you want them to (mostly). I knew there would be some Terrible things happening (that's what makes a good book), but those events were balanced out nicely by the good things. I can't really tell you anything about the plot because it's a sequel, but the first one is about an intrepid girl reporter in a sleepy village in England, who happens to have an ever-present imaginary friend and a long-suffering best friend who hates people in general and only wants to take naps. Good stuff, in other words.

I should probably get back to looking for jobs and studying (I'm enjoying being back studying. Learning things is good!). Have a good week!

First ten days of Sydney: organising and wildlife

So I have a flat! I have a nice little almost-routine going with my university work and my looking-for-work work. I have a membership form for the library. I am waiting for my tax number. All those little things are slowly coming together.

I spent the first few days with my friend The Angel, and made great use of my unlimited travel card. I took the ferry out to Manly and sat in the sun to do readings, as well as check news sites to see exactly what had happened in Wellington with earthquakes (I'd heard some people on the ferry say 'earthquake' and 'Wellington', so thought I should check it out). On the way back the captain said to look out to the right of the boat, and there was a spout from an orca.

I found my flat over the weekend. It's not too far from the beach, and has lovely flatmates who make things like cauliflower-base pizza. On Monday I had a nice meetup with my friend the Pirate Pianist (complete with cutlass), last seen in Germany, and had dinner with Fifties Filmstar on Friday evening.

I've been on the lookout for wildlife - not because I want to see anything (you may remember my squirrel obsession in the UK), but because I don't want to see anything. Anywhere else, I'd pay the barest attention to ants. Here, I know that some ant species bite you really really badly, so I'm terrified when I see any. Ditto for spiders. And snakes? Urgh.

So far the worst I've seen is a dead cockroach (on the footpath) and a dead skink (also on the footpath).

Hopefully it'll stay that way. Not much wildlife in the big city, right?

 

Sydney Sydney Sydney

So I'm off again! This time, not so far away - Sydney, which is really just a quick hop from Auckland. Three hours rather than thirty, which I appreciate. I'm now sitting beside a large sculpture of an erupting volcano, listening to birds and tinkling water. Ooh, some chanting too. The lava changes colour from blue to purple to red and green. I have my suitcase-I-found-on-the-side-of-the-road-two-years-ago, which I predicted two years ago would not last much longer. Ha. It's been to Sydney, Tokyo, North London, Other North London, Greenwich, North London, Greenwich, North London, Greenwich, Auckland and back to Sydney (I used it to move house).

I should probably make my way to the gate, and see what China Air planes are like :)

Later...

It turns out that China Air isn't PRChina China, but Taiwan China. My plane was full of people going to Taipei via Sydney, and I'd checked in early enough to get a nice window seat (though of course by the time we lifted off it was dark and you couldn't really see much). After some trouble with my headphones (I was plugging them into the wrong armrest), I watched How to Train Your Dragon and Suits, and then we were landing through some pretty rough turbulence in Sydney.

My awesome friend The Angel picked me up and I found out just how terrible I am at passing along directions in a car. After a bit of circle-driving, we got back to her place and had a nice evening with movies and I tried to get used to Sydney time.

On Tuesday I took a few buses to university and enrolled, then wandered round the campus figuring out where things were. Enjoyed the weather, which was sunny and warm after the hail in Auckland. Later I ended up in town and we went to see a scary movie called The Conjuring, which did its job pretty well.

Hopefully sleep will come tonight....