In which our narrator reaches his quasi-arbritary destination and reflects on his voyage.

Almost at Mykines. It's hard getting the road-sign in the picture when you are taking the photo yourself.


It’s fitting that on such a journey, I don’t take the quickest route to Mykines. From Athens’ train station, by train along the coast to the tiny isthmus (now bisected by a canal) that makes the Peloponese a peninsula. I get off at a phantom-like station, in between the ruins of an ancient, wealthy city (Corinth) and a somewhat limping-stray-dog new one (Korinthos). Three bus journeys and some supermarket olives and bread later I am walking a narrow road through fields of orange trees that seem to be singing to me in Ancient Greek. I’m on my way to Mycenae.

The village of Mykines understands why people come here. Almost every shop has windows filled with its hoards of ‘museum replica’ statuettes and urns. Much better than seeing ‘I tried to find Ancient Greece and all I got was this stupid T-shirt’ at any rate.

And then I see it, crowning a foothill, perched majestically, the site of a centre of government and commerce from more than three thousand years ago. The walls so formidable that later greeks named them after the giants they believed to have built them: Cyclopean.

Guarding a pass, with a view over the plain below, the place is powerful. And the surroundings are beautiful. The now-familiar greek terrain, parched, stony and semi-barren, weathered cones, scraggy with limestone lie behind me, and in front, plains planted with olives and oranges stretch in a wide vista towards the haze-disguised hills thirty kilometres away. Sitting in a tiny cube walled by stone, once a guard room at the gates of Mycenae, I reflect on the journey that brought me here.

As exhausting as it has been fufilling, as wondrous as it has been tedious: it has been a time of extremes. The big pull to come, and the reason I am still in Europe, has been my dear, generous, loving and very lovable British family, the hefty clan, from Douglas and Sarah in Newcastle to Tullis now in Barcelona. In fact, through my conversations with Nana and Grandad, I’ve got a sense of my tipuna, my ancestors; a process that led me to stand with cousin Alison at my maternal Great-grandparents grave. Coming to know my kin, young and old, has given me an valuable sense of connection with my past, with the world outside my own skin. I’ve been learning my whakapapa.

In other ways too, I’ve seen what has largely influenced our pakeha culture in New Zealand. Our culture’s genealogy. The marks that this continent, splintered by mountain ranges and great rivers and human squabbling into various language groups and cultures, uniting again under a common bureacracy and currency and through the steadily increasing osmosis and flux of immigration.

I’ve glimpsed some of the peculiarities of anglophone culture, having being asked to view it from Nordic, Central European, Mediterranean and Germanic cultures. Our subtlety (or dissemblance) the flexiblilty (or rootlessness) of our language; our strong grasp on personal liberty (or selfishness). I’ve seen Kiwi culture through another’s eyes too. ‘you’re all so relaxed’ they say. (really?)

I’ve been motivated to learn languages that meant nothing to me when they belonged in textbooks, all linked (except for Hungarian) by that mysterious ancestor ‘Indo-european’
I’ve been surprised by insightful expressions and delighted by exotic sounds. I’ve been stared at by kids in incredulity when I fail to grasp the meaning of their sentences.


It’s been an emotional journey too. Countless shrugs and glares (luckily nothing more hostile) have been directed at this witless foreigner in a dozen countries. On the other hand, even more people have opened their minds, their homes and their hearts to me.

It has been a year and half of this, two trips around Europe, thousands of kilometres by bus, train, bike, hitching, boat and two flights. About 50 nights with 13 different couch-surfing ehosts, 35 in my tent, including 13 wild camping, 15 in hostels and the odd cheap hotel, The bulk of nights staying with friends, family or employers. I’ve been paid to decorate flats, pick grapes, pack hampers, assist in a library, wash dishes and barbeque wurst. and converted money between eleven different currencies. I’ve set foot in 18 different countries and said ‘thank you’ in 14 seperate languages. And I’m getting ready to say goodbye to Europe. It just might take some time.

The first Academy

view from the Aeropagus, where ancient aristocrats ruled from and St Paul preached

Athens lives up to expectations, surpasses them elegantly. It is crowded and chaotic on the streets, but still and meditative on Aeropagus next to the Acropolis, or in the National gardens.

It is a city of 4 million, yet when I ask a teenager for directions he walks half a block with me to show me the exact place, just as if it were a village.

Of course the Acropolis, an imposing rock, an island against potential invaders, rises like a fist in the midst of the city and draws all attention to it. Whenever I catch a glimpse of it, it always lifts my spirits... an effect, I learn, that is quite universal.

On or around it, you can see and touch history... the theatre where the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Aristophanes were performed, the agora where Socrates questioned and Diogenes disgusted the public, the little temple to the god of healing erected when besieged Athens was struck with plague... I could write screeds. Great things happen everywhere, all the time, yet in Athens we have records of them... many records.

Even the underground stations here are museums. Got some free space...? bung up a replica of the Parthenon freize. Better yet, display the ruins we discovered when digging this place out. Sometimes you can't move in Athens for ruins.

I've heard at the Acropolis in September you can't move for tourists - well, just a month later, it is a spacious place except on Sunday (Sundays November-March are free). It's also very warm and comfortable outside, unseasonably so... climate change is definitely noticeable to Greeks. There are down sides to travelling in November though... most sites close their gates by three oclock, meaning I have to plan my days quite carefully in order to see all the old stuff I want to see.

Standing on glass above the ruins that surround the foundations of the new Acropolis museum

No closing hours on the sites of my own personal pilgrimages though: through hints in history books and talking to local shop owners I manage to find the ruins of Plato's Academy, in a park in a district near Larissa train station. Well outside the walls of the ancient city, I rest here for a while, as people walk their dogs and scooters buzz near me. Visiting these old schools is rewarding for me. For the first time I can imagine the students here in three dimensions: some skiving off from a lecture to drink wine, some enthralled, some with a crush on their teacher. Here, the intellectual history of our world is not a sterile thing, it lives and breathes and gets bored and excited just as we do.

"No!" day

"Was it worth leaving Belgrade for this?" Agneta is embarrased to be at the "Oxi (No) Day parade. "Don't tell anyone I am here."

October 28 is the date of Prime minister Metataxas' probably apocryphal one word reply to Mussolini's ultimatum. My guidebook mentioned folk dancing, so I rushed to get to Greece in time. There was a little dancing, but we missed it. What we did see was a little more disturbing. Dozens of squads of school children of all ages, in uniform (only worn for the day) marching straight-armed behind a proudly waved Greek flag.

Two things surprise me about Greece as soon as I arrive. One is the level of english. Quite different from other mediterranean countries I have visited, everyone speaks amazing english. As usual in such countries, most American movies are shown with subtitles. Cause or symptom, of language proficiency? Both I expect.

The other is the level of nationalism. The Oxi Day parade we went to was the small 'academic' one. The main one involved a parade of, among other things tanks. There's prejudice and xenophobia too. Albanians, in particular, are a target. Usually the best student in the school carries the flag for Oxi day. If they are Albanian immigrants, however, they may be barred.



Another example. I'm listening to a greek hip-hop album. "They started out anarchist" says Agneta. Then in their second album they went mad about Ancient Greece." I ask her what she means. "Well, they rap in ancient greek, and they are saying that, because of our past, we are the best country in the world".

At dinner in a Taverna, Dimitrious expands on this theme. "You know the story about the Argo, Jason's ship?" It was meant to go at the speed of thought. Some people, stupid people, actually believe that happened, and they believe Greece is absolutely the best.

Budapest to Belgrade

Ah the wonders of long distance train travel!

For some ridiculously small amount of forints I ride a comfortable train across the Hungarian plain. It is brown and pretty boring landscape, really, but the company is good. Maddy is a student from New York who has been spending several months in the region digging through archives and getting fed up with life in Bucharest and Novi Sad. She studies the growth of nationalism in the Balkans ad Romania evidenced in the 60's student press.

'It's great' she says 'hardly anyone studies this stuff, so there's still a lot of interesting things to say'.*

Jonas is a teenager from Baden Wittenberg, Germany. He plans to get to India, and is taking the train to Istanbul, from where he will take a plane.

And Anna is taking a trip through Eastern Europe on her own before she succumbs to regular work.

As we draw close to the border, the train gradually empties, until it is almost only us four solo travellers in our carriage. Then we pull into the first town in Serbia.

'Get ready, we are about to be invaded by Serbs' says Maddy.

I feel a flush of anxiety. But, as I have learnt time and time again, people over the border are really just like us. Some pretty, some ugly, some drunk, some dreaming, some singing along to pop songs in a different language. She's right in one sense though, the carriage fills up, and suddenly it feels no longer comfortable to chat away in English about the breakup of Yugoslavia. Everything else is fine.

*Her thesis is to do with the way the civil war of the 90's was due more to constructed ideas of nationality, rather than deep-seated ethnic differences.

Edit> Her focus, as far as I can remember it, looks at the alliances and growth of various right and left wing student movements during the sixties.

Which city?

Pretty, paint-peeling, buskers that know they are bad, riverine, statuesque, the most amazing spas, inexpensive hidden hostels.

(posted via email)

To the mountains

I originally planned to 'city-hop' from Prague to Budapest, to Sofia, to Athens or Salonica, but after living for two months in Konigstein, it felt almost painful to rush through language groups, alphabets and especially landscapes like that. I'm also somewhat overwhelmed by the mass of tourists (and tourist prices) in Prague. So I did what any good Golden Bayite would do, and headed for the hills.

First I head to the hills north of Prague...



Then next, to some bigger hills, actually the Western Tatra mountains, a tight cluster of granite peaks around 2000 m high that lie about 12 hours by train and clunky bus away from Prague, on the Slovakia-Poland border. They are gorgeous.




It's the first time I've shared a park with bears. and the excitement is enlivening, especially as it is spiced up with signs in Polish. I understand the picture of the bear. That's all.

I stay in a 'shelter' (more like a hostel) in the Chochowolska valley. The building is made seemingly of boulders and Polish enthusiasm. Like the Norwegians, they seem to love the outdoors On the Friday and Monday, I am practically alone, but during the weekend the hills are peppered with gung-ho Poles racing up peaks.

About to climb into the Western Tatry valleys for a few days.

Finding mountains in a foreign country can be suprisingly hard, considering how large they are! Actually the Tatrys are small in area but high.

 

For the sake of safety, I plan to stay at Polana Chocholowska and do day trips.

A moment in Prague

With Libor and Petr, my Czech friends, we pop into the grand Prague 'Castle' (more of a palace complex, I would say) . The guards at the gate are as solemn and imposing as outside any palace. The president inside, however, doesn't have his head screwed on. He's a global warming denier.

'A few years ago there was a bit of a scandal' Petr tells me. Some of the guards, apparently, have starred in pornographic films in their official uniforms. "We have no respect here in the Czech Republic" he half-jokes "not the presidential guards, no-one"

(photo: petethepainter: creativecommons attribution noderiative licence)

Museumuferfest and Degenerate Art

At the start of September, Frankfurt celebrates it´s museums during the MuseumUferfest. By a twist of fate, I happened to be there two years in a row. People pack the banks of the Main, thronging around food stalls, bands. (I discovered one traditional sounding oompah band... but sadly they finished as I soon as I found them)

With my boss Stefan I drink traditional Apfelwein, wander through the museums (This year I learnt that you can pay 5 euro to see all the museums during the festival) see strange performance art, watch a tubby man in a tuxedo totally wig out to African drumming outside the Museum of World Culture. There was a theme this year of ´Turkey: where the west meets the east´, but everything only very loosely revolved around that.

In the Städel Museum we pay our obligatory respects to Goethe, the most famous former resident of Frankfurt, depicted lounging in Campagna by Tischbein. (See picture below)

(public domain)

More moving for me was learning that during the rise of the Third Reich, Hitler condemmed basically all modern art as ´decadent´and ´degenerate´, destroying and holding public mockings of works by everyone from Wassily Kandinsky to Oskar Kokoshca, to a favourite of mine, Franz Marc. The Städel´s modern works were not spared, and it´s present strong collection of German Expressionism is due to a careful reaquisitions.

Liegender Hund im Schnee - Franz Marc (public domain)

For the final fireworks over the Main, lights along the river are turned off, and the sound-clash of public music dies away. Fireworks explode, reflected on the river and the huge glass towers of this town, sychronised with the ululating song of a famous Turkish pop singer.

It´s a pity Frankfurt aint always like this!

Ninety hour weeks at a catering company....

Are not conducive to blogging. But not bad for Deutchsprachenlernen

Germany

Berlin is wunderbah

My dictionary tells me that there is a phrase ´das ist mir wurst´ which literally means, ´that´s sausage to me´, but figuratively, ´that´s not my problem´

(thanks Jen!)

I did a touristy thing for the last couple of days

Johanna, Stoffe, Lars and I went out on a slow boat to Sandham in the Stockholm Archipelago, then came half way back and camped on Grinda, where we shelled and ate shrimp, and swam. Totally stunning, from the ostentatious summer houses and launches to the amazing lime green Baltic seaweed to the sheer number of islands (30,000, even when you discount rocks of less than 50 metres diameter)

Scandinavian Skullduggery

Well, not quite. Maybe my ad lib title reflects my memories of visiting the Historik Museet today, looking at old viking swords and the loot won with them.
I´m in a quiet Stockholm suburb called Älta.

I love searching for the Swedish letters on the keyboard `ö´ , ´ä´, and my favourite ´å´ (pronounced ´awe´) Once again the immortal verdict of Vincent Vega comes to mind. They got the same shit over there they got here, but there it´s a little different. Just three extra letters. My old friend Johanna maintains one good reason for not taking her husbands name (Stål) is that it has a Swedish letter in it. ´Causes so much hassle when you are travelling´.

I have been learning a very specialised set of Swedish vocabulary The words I´ve learned, Johanna reminds me, aren´t very sophisticated or even useful. I can say ´hut´, ´doggy´, ´blanky´and not a lot else. You might have guessed - I have been spending quite a bit of time with her one year old.

I thought Norway would make me a bit homesick. It actually made me feel comfortable, it was so like New Zealand. Well, New Zealand at sixty degrees latitude with a very cute lilting language. Sweden seems more, well, developed. Stockholm (pictured below) is a real city, the kind that roars a bit; the mountains are all up north; and people are nationalistic without a sense of irony. (There are 30 or so specified days a year when traditionally you raise the Swedish flag on the, ahem, flagpole in your garden)

Image: Windowlicker (CreativeCommons-Attribution-Sharealike Licence)

Nature is still incredibly close to hand. Just like Oslo, the forest starts before the city ends. Beautiful mixed forest of birch, pine and fir, smelling amazing, with a carpet of wild blueberries. Sprinkle liberally with small lakes and you have yourself a nice wee hinterland. I´m having a good time.

(Image: public domain)

Hiking in Norway.

I get out of the car at Dyranut, and step onto the Hardangervidda Plateau for the first time.

(photo: threedotscreative commons attributionsharealike licence)

It is a vast treeless landscape, a lumpy plain a kilometre above the sea, coloured in ochres and browns ringed by dark blunt peaks and to the north, the imposing, disc-shaped glacier, Hardangerjokulen. Winter has left her footprints here, great patches of snow lie, seemingly at random over the land. But her mementos are fading fast: sometimes I stop to watch a bank of snow drip itself away. Meltwater is the dominant feature: bogs and marshes are everywhere, and gushing streams emanate from the most tiny catchment.

I am on what we would call a tramp, but to Norwegians, it is a Tur. They are mad for their `turs´, excursions which could be cross country skiing on lighted paths in the Oslomarka, or a jaunt up the local mountain… the possibilities are endless.

One possibility is to take your brass quintent through the mountains, playing for your room and board to appreciative turists. This is the option that Fannraken take, and on my second night I hear them at the grand hall of Sandhaug. their music sounding precious and fragile in this windswept wilderness.

The third day the landscape starts to change: I get closer an imposing looking monolith and the peaks start to rise around me. I consider taking a detour to pass between two of the more impressive, but the the chill in the air and Thor throwing his hammer about discourages me.

I have just decided to pitch camp when the rain hits – massive drops that saturate. The wind is not too pussy either. Somewhat frightened by the ferocity of the storm and my inexperience with my new tent lead me to the ´unmanned hut´ in the valley below.

(photo: leo avalon: creativecommons non-commercial no derivative works attribution licence)

At 60 degrees latitude in July, it never got darker than this

Even an unmanned hut is still far from basic. Sheets, stashes of food available on an honesty system and cutlery. A lot of cutlery. Six cheese slicers. Cheese slicers are very important. The hut, like those in New Zealand, is full of German tourists. And a nice ranger who comes every year for the first week of the summer season. I ask her about my personal hero, ecosopher Arne Naess. ´oh yes, he loves it around here, he has an old cabin up by the glacier.
´He´s still alive?´
´yes I think so, maybe he´s almost a hundred. You might see him if you go up to Finse´

The next day dawns cold overcast but there´s no rain, and I start the long trek down the valley to Eidfjord. Again water is everwhere. Here, where the land is steeper, it rushes in great torrents over the granite bedrock. Like tears over the land´s cheeks.

There is movement going up the sides of the valleys too, in the shape of a female moose that I surprise. I watch it kinda wobble along, majestic-like until it leaves my sight over the ridge. I continue, exhilarated.

I´ve made it to Oslo. No time or energy to write a proper post!

Summer lovin...

Jaumes Meneses (Creative Commons AttributionSharealike licence)

Bags not sticking my finger in this baby.

Summer solstice and it is one of those days that seem to shout joyously at you ´you´re overseas, friend, and it is bloody weird over here´. From the copious windmills to the orange furry top hats on the tram, it was a very dutch time indeed.

image: Greg E (CreativeCommons Attribution-Non-commercial-Sharealike licence)

Mum and I are staying with Brian, a family friend, resident in an outlying suburb of the ´Dam. Together we drive to Harlingen along the giant dyke the dutch forged over a decade in the 20's and 30's. It´s a huge wall of rock, bricks, sand and now motorway that turned what was once a bay into a lake. (The original plan was to fill most of the bay in, but after a few polders, the locals valued their new lake more than the land that could be claimed from it.) ´With typical Dutch romanticism, they named it Afsluitdijk, which means the closing dyke´ Brian drily quips . We stop at Harlingen, the port where it seems most of Holland is leaving for the freisan islands, riding bikes loaded with several months worth of camping supplies strapped to any possible surface

Oh the bikes in the Netherlands! I could rave for hours. H.G. Wells said, ´When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race´ I´m the same, so in the Netherlands I am optimistic to the point of absurdity.

Image: Gen Gibson (creative commons attribution licence)

On the return trip to Amsterdam I follow the thinnest of leads concerning a gig by an up and coming soul band and we end up in the dormant satellite town of Monickedam looking for what I assumed was a little festival… Besloten Feest. After asking some locals and receiving some skewed glances, someone finally cracks the code for me… it is not Besloten Feest, but a besloten feest – a private party - one I wasn´t invited to and had little chance of finding. Luckily I have a good plan b, which is going to the city centre to watch the…

Euro 08 quarterfinal Holland v. Russia

image: Ron Layters Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike Licence

Over the past few days, Amsterdam has gradually turned visibly orange. Orange hats, wigs, all manner of orange clothing, and of course, strings of orange flags flutter from buildings. I considered buying an orange inflatable hammer and an orange boa, but in the end decide to save my euros for impending emergency hostel stays and visits to Norwegian supermarkets.

Instead I pick up a freebie orange hair-net and rip it apart to make an impromptu hat band for my trilby. Looks kinda odd with it´s elastication and jagged edge. ´you look like you´ve got panties on your head´drawls Dean, a random Texan I meet. We both shrug.

As the teams tussle, with Russia looking dangerous, I move from crowded bar to crowded bar to a spacious but depressed coffee shop (´who’d watch the football in a coffee shop?´ - Tikitu) Finally I settle in a bar on the lively Spuistraat. Nearby graffiti quotes Raoul Vaneigem: Those who speak of revolution and class struggle with no explicit reference to daily life, without understanding what is subversive about love, and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, they have a corpse in their mouth.

Yeah, yeah, how subversive can football be? At least there are no corpses here, - some guy at the window is yelling home-grown commentary through a megaphone. An Italian is blowing a whistle and initiating chants with his minimal Dutch. ´I don´t really care about football´ he tells me, `I just know it will be a good party if they win´ Me too.

I don´t know much about football, but it doesn´t look good. The Russian team (coached by a renegade Dutch manager) has looked swift, organised, and lethal. They have almost scored numerous times, and been ahead for most of the second half. The dutch finally equalise, sending it to extra time. Much tension. The Dutch keeper Van der Saar is screaming at his team-mates. The Russians seem calmer. Then Russia strike twice. By the time Arshavin sends a cheeky strike between Van der Sars´ legs, their style has won the respect of many as well as the game.

I watch the management of the bar desperately trying to erase the depressing effect of the impending loss by switching the soundsystem to dance music instead of the commentary. They respond to shouts and switch it back. Many people are leaving for home already, but the die-hard fans remain, stunned.

The party is over, the city is in mourning. I see the Italian who was acting as cheerleader. ´catastrophe´ is all he says.

Leaving my second home.

On the eve of leaving for Amsterdam, Scandanavia and European realms unknown, I'm reflecting on what England means to me. First in the mind and the heart is the wonderful support, reliable and warm, that my extended family shows me. There's not many Kingstons in Aotearoa, and whereas over here, we had sixteen family members helping blow out on the 96 candles on Nana's birthday cake. I'm starting to understand the joys that extended family bring. (Now just keep putting up with the overstayer, when he comes back 'kay folks?)

British Wildlife Report #2

For a long time I've been meaning to write about the wildlife here - subtle and cryptic, seasonal, evocative.

When I first came it boggled the mind to have no substantial wilderness around, now the little woods and moors bounded on all sides by development seem normal. Another aspect to the countryside that took getting used to was the smog-haze. Sometimes on a clear day, even in rural areas, a hill one mile away can seem hazy and indistinct. Anything more than 15 miles away can be virtually invisible! It's a combination (an interaction?) between moisture, dust and pollutants. More recently though, I've noticed the variation in this. Some days, especially in summertime, after rain, the atmosphere is as clear as in New Zealand - you can guess I relish those days!

I also relish the seasonal changes here - I caught the end of Autumn in Sussex, with its glory of russet and gold, then the bleak winter in Northumberland, Argyll, Derbyshire and London, when the land lies truly naked. (In most parts of the country, evengreens seem to account for just a few percent of the trees around) I watched the trees dress up again, one by one - beginning with the chestnuts and ending with the limestone-loving ash and the elegant lady: northern beech. Then, to cap it off, the sea of bluebells that rises to lap among the trunks in early May was breathtaking.

I can't put my finger on the particulars, but there seems to be birds around that weren't here in winter - the birds of prey in particular. I should check their migration details out. The kites with their v-shaped tails and the astounding kestrel (you may know G.M.Hopkin's The Windhover) are favourites. The crow family was faithful though, and have stuck around enough for me to identify between jackdaws (gregarious, whitefaced) and ravens (large, curved beaks, mainly solitary). Both were plentiful as I walked the vertigo-inducing path along the clifftops in south-west Cornwall. Crows and rooks are harder to distinguish. Readers' digest tells me rooks appear to wear 'baggy breeches'. Dubious

Jackdaw (Photo by John Haslam- CC Attribution licence)

There are three animals I wouldn't have seen without the aid of keen British wildlife-watchers. Walking along a canal towpath in Derbyshire, an elderly gentleman is staring at something on the other side of the canal. 'It's a grass snake'. Indeed! With the naked eye, it looks like a stick, but we are offered the view through others' binoculars and zoom lenses (by now there is a crowd). It's funny to say this, but, my first impression was... it's got no legs! A brain, a tongue, eyes.... but no legs! Like a fish, but on land. Weird.

Amazingly, it transpires it is not just one grass snake but two. Trying to eat the same toad. Incredible, to watch the drama of these three creatures, maligned in our folklore but beautiful. It is again, a fellow nature junkie who shows me the peregrine falcon chicks, perching on the custom-built nestbox on the spire of Derby Cathedral. They are fledglings, at home in the city centre, with their aggressive curved beak and comical head-bobs.

Badger, of course! (Public domain)

In Devon, around 10pm, my cousin's neighbour calls up to tell us 'the badger is here'. We head to his kitchen and watch it through the large window. It is out, on the steps, thinner than i imagined, but many times more beautiful. It picks up the bread left out for it nightly, and scoffs a slice in the shadows, before returning again and again for more. I am entranced.

345 to South Kensington

It makes sense to write about local transport first - in London the topic fills our conversations, the printed page, and even the cinema. It is why my 35 hr week leaves me tired as. The underground system doubles as a navigation system - If you’re going to meet someone, chances are, you will choose a tube station as the spot. People find their way around London not by street names but by tube stations, in association with the Mondrian-esque trance inducing tube map. People didn’t know what to say when I told them I was a couple of miles from the nearest tube.

For the first couple of weeks, to get from Camberwell to my work in Chelsea, I would take the bus and then the tube. One upside was the the guide-book-sanctioned experience of emerging from the brushed steel interior to see the Gothic grandeur of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben's tower. Once or twice I tried the 345 bus to travel the four or so miles to Chelsea, and found it took longer than a bus from Nelson to Motueka.

A quiet tube

And I didn’t enjoy standing all the way to work, I didn’t enjoy the feeling of breathing recycled air, I didn’t enjoy spending five quid it on it every day. I didn’t enjoy reading trashy free papers to avoid eye contact. (My sister sent me a text telling me to scan the tube map to find the only station name that contains none of the letters M,A,C,K,E,R,E,L. “something to do on the tube when you don’t know where too look”) So learning how to bike to work was good.

With the help of Sustrans and Transport for London's cycle maps, I bike through Camberwell, two hundred years ago a satellite village, now very urban, with its not-very-trendy bars, 'Sophocles Bakery’; an olive vendor, the smelly Chinese grocery, and evangelical churches. I keep pedalling, overtaking gridlocked cars and buses, through Kennington, dominated by the Oval, London’s second cricket ground. I dismount to navigate the tangled crossroads of Vauxhall (once 'Folke's Hall') I like to see the collection of contemporary architecture here- the very ostentatious spy headquarters, and apartment blocks that look like the construction of a hyperactive child and the new Vauxhall station itself, with token solar panels on the steel rooves sheltering those waiting for the buses.

[photo - Johnnie Blows - licence: CC ShareAlike]

Then I meet 'Father Thames' and follow him upstream past the wasted hulk of the iconic Battersea powerstation, past a particularly hairy and unavoidable roundabout, and to Battersea Park. I hesitate now, as urban oasis is an overused metaphor, but this collection of playing fields, tennis courts, a gaudy peace pagoda, gardens, cherry trees white-blossomed against a slate sky, is my five minute refreshment - and as I reach it, I stop pedalling, and sit up straight and swallow.

Then it's Albert Bridge over the river. Seeing it lit up after dark adds to its charm. It’s an old shaky bridge this one and troops are advised to 'break step while crossing the bridge'. From there it's a short ride across the latte suburb of Chelsea to my work on Old Brompton Rd.

Albert Bridge at Night

There's the question of the danger and difficulty of cycling, but I'll leave that for another post. For now, I just want to dwell on the fact that biking to work makes me feel the city is a much more varied and lively place than hurtling under it does. My 45 minute morning ride takes me from tower blocks to topiary, from grime to glistening marble. Freewheelin.

(unless otherwise noted, images are in the public domain or distributed under GNU free distrubition licence)