Kin-Yat's European Adventure 2006

All Museum'ed out

2006-04-06T05:08:00.000+10:00

So, been a while since I last updated, but plenty of museums in the past week, and I have to say a bit museum'ed out ...

I had visited Salzburg on what was a cold and wet day (it wasn't much fun), and spent plenty of time going through the castle, reading all about how powerful religion was in what must be a spectacular castle in its day. Also visited the Mozart museum, what a waste of money ...

Then it was onto central Germany, staying at Mannheim on the Rhine River (near its merge with the Neckar). An high-speed ICE ride was had (although the trip from Munich only went up to 199km/h, but a subsequent ride to Stuttgart went at 280km/h for some minutes). Mannheim itself was a bit of a bore, and as I only used it as a base I didn't really see much of the city at all.

I was in that part of the world to visit the Technik Museums, two collections based in Sinsheim (an hour's train ride from Heidelberg) and Speyer (1/2 hour from Mannheim). At Sinsheim, these inclueded preserved aircraft like the two supersonic passenger jets, the Concorde and the Soviet Tu-144. Those are the most amazing museum pieces mounted on stilts on the roof of the museum building. Lined up side by side they're actually quite different, at least in the detail.

Plus, there's everything from Jan Ullrich's1997 Tour de France winning Pinarello to MichaelSchumacher's 1996 Ferrari, set-up appropriately toreflect his brilliant maiden Ferrari win at Barcelona,and Paris-Dakar bikes of different eras. Then there'sthe production cars - there's the F40, F50 and Enzo,911s, Countachs, old Maybachs ... steam engines, moreaircraft, and ... the list goes on. They must have a huge F1 collection as they also have a few significant F1 cars of the 90s that didn't make it, like the Benetton B194 and B195 (Michael Schumacher's title-winning cars in 1994 and 1995), as well as the Jordan 191 (again a Michael Schumacher car, this one in which he made his F1 debut - financed by Mercedes-Benz - in 1991).

It took me a whole day to go through the Sinsheim museum, and the next day went to Speyer. This one had a Lufthansa 747-200 mounted on stilts, about 60ft up in the air (which makes it look extremely imposing). I think this is just one of 3 747s preserved in a museum, the others being the prototype at Seattle's Museum of Flight, and the other is the Qantas one at Longreach. Even though I'd flown so many 747s and amassed 48 flight hours within this month alone, this was an experience. This one is truly special, you not only get to walk right through it but they also stripped out the cargo bay and back from the R4 doors, and you can see all the hydraulic lines, wires, and all the stuff you don't see when you step on an in-service 747. I spent quite some time climbing in and out of the cargo bay and just looking at various things, even the rear pressure bulkhead.

At Speyer there were also an Antonov An-22 and a German U-boat, both fascinating bits of equipment. All in all the Technik Museum is not to be missed for any of us interested in transport and engineering, especially its history.

Then I headed to Stuttgart for the Mercedes-Benz museum. Unfortunately, it was closed, as Mercedes (or, DaimlerChrysler, as they like to be called nowadays) is readying the brand new museum for opening in a few months. They did however still keep part of the old museum open, with the early Benzes still on display (I believe they're replicas, the real thing stored elsewhere), and some racing machinery as well. Still quite interesting, especially as the old museum is located inside the DaimlerChrysler HQ ... there really are no cars other than DaimlerChrysler products inside the gate!

Oh, and one interesting anecdote. If you're a DaimlerChrysler employee working at the Stuttgart HQ, you could save your legs walking if you rode a bike. That's right, for a car company, the bottom level of the covered car-park closest to the factory gates is actually for bike parking only, equipped with U-rails and PIN access. A sight for sore eyes ...

And so that was really it for the motor museums, still, a lot of cars, planes etc in a few days is a lot to take in.

I didn't count on arriving into Brussels last Saturday and seeing a vintage car rally pull through the Grand Place ... again there were some interesting machinery especially the Tour de france support vehicle of 1953, and a few steam engined cars.

Anyway, till next time ...

Beers & more ...

2006-03-27T06:32:00.000+11:00

I'm actually writing this from Munich in Germany, so naturally beer's what everybody thinks about when talking about Munich. Or, if you're a car nut, a BMW.

I flew into Munich yesterday morning from London, on a very early morning Easyjet flight. It was a Stansted flight so naturally it is very early start even though the flight doesn't take off till 8am. And Easyjet might have cheap fares (compared to, say, BA), but it costs you an arm and a leg to get to Stansted. My flight to Munich was £45 cheaper than the BA flight at roughly the same time from Heathrow, but by the time you pay £23 to the minicab driver (it took a full 20 minutes in a minicab from the Globetrotter at Ravenscourt Gardens to Liverpool St, so it was a long way, and glad I didn't take the first Tube at 5am), and then £15 for the Stansted Express, and £5 to buy breakfast, you save nothing. I did, however, promise myself to fly on Easyjet after watching one too many episode of Airline.

And it was a good planespotting opportunity as well, seeing something different from the usual fare at Sydney. Instead it was Ryanair (some very new 737NGs there - they look so clean without the "eyebrows"), Easyjet, Thomsonfly, and even a Maxjet 767. Stansted is a very nice airport, except that if you get off the transit at the wrong stop, it means trouble, and of course there are no screens to let you double check, unless you walk 100m there and 100m to get back ... yes, I found that out when I got off the transit one stop too late. And I wasn't the only one.

Still, the flight was very nice, on a brand new A319 (it made the BA 747 I flew to London on look positively ancient), and really that seat pitch isn't any worse than most airlines, cos the seats are even more slimline than most.

Wasn't too long before I landed at Munich. Or, somewhere near Munich ... it was a long wait for the Lufthansa airport bus, and a 40 minute ride to the Hauptbahnhof. I ended up next to a family who juggled three languages at once. Dad was a German, Mum was Chinese ... so, the parents talked to each other in a blend of German and English, Dad talked to the kids in English, and Mum talked to the kids in a blend of English and (mostly) Chinese - they never spoke to the kids in German. I have to wonder what the kids (one a baby and the other no older than 2) make of all this ...

Anyway, I got checked into my hostel (20 bed mixed gender dorm is a bit of a shock to the system, to be honest), and went out to explore. Being a Saturday afternoon, it was just buzzing, people everywhere, shops overcrowded, and of course lots of tourists. My lack of German doesn't hurt much, as everybody speaks English (and more willing to speak it than the French ...), and a bit of guessing never hurts.

I took the very lazy way out and instead of exploring the city on my own, I paid for a bike tour of Munich, which was quite good (I'm actually quite interested to know how much of the guide's humour is trained, cos it just sounds far too slick!). As usual, all that history stuff came in one ear and went straight out the other, I just looked at the nice architecture instead. One church and whatever religion / history it represents is much the same as the other, especially when they're almost all Catholics and all seemingly built 400 (or is it 550) years ago ...

Munich has a great system of bike paths (with bike signalling!), and the drivers are patient, what a refreshing change that is from the madness of Sydney's roads! There was a nice ride through the Englisch Garten (beautiful, even if it was slushy and cold), and even a stop at the Biergarten (I wonder what their insurer thinks about that!), where I had my first taste of Bavarian beer - and it was lovely. Prost!!!

Anyway, as with any city on the Continent, the architecture is just so different, the markets always so lovely, and there's always a McDonald's or Burger King on every street corner ... and, of course, the Americans are always as loud and obnoxious no matter where they come from and where they go, and do they ever stop comparing everything they see to "back home"? %^*%^*%^*!!! (Of all time I picked the spring break period when there's actually quite a lot of American uni students travelling, actually it's full of students everywhere, all these European kids are on school excursions and their teachers shouting everywhere)

I also spent some time just people watching at the Hauptbahnhof, so many different trains from the sleek ICEs through to the rather dumpy looking regionals, and so many people. Definitely something you don't see at Central Station.

I visited the Deutsches Museum today, and no wonder they think it's one of the best science and technology museum in the world ... the exhibits are simply amazing, especially those Viking ships, and the huge aeronautics display, which includes entire aircraft like the Junkers Ju-52, and a big section cut from the first A300 prototype, and more ... I spent so much time just looking through the aeroneutics section and there's never any chance to get this close to so many different types of old aircraft. Tomorrow I'll go visit their car and (more) aircraft collection in outer Munich (I was considering going to the Neuschwanstein, but I think I won't now). There's also history on virtually every other manufacturing industry as well. Simply fascinating and I didn't get anywhere near as much time to see all the exhibits, you simply wouldn't even if you had a full day.

Anyway, from here it's another day in Munich, then a day trip to Salzburg (a 2 hour train journey away), and then onto Heidelberg for yet another aircraft and motor museum - the Technik Museum, before spending the next weekend in Belgium and the Ronde von Vlaanderen. I see Tom Boonen has won a one-day race this weekend and so has Oscar Freire, so it should be a mighty interesting Ronde next Sunday!

London - a second impression

2006-03-27T06:01:00.000+11:00

I actually grew to like London this second time around, at least didn't think it was bad. I have to say I didn't do any touristy things in London this time, merely riding around on the Tube and the deckers. I love my British buses, having grown up around them in Hong Kong, and I don't get much of a chance to ride them, so ...

I've come to realise that the Tube is probably the world's most charming metro system, perhaps even more so than the Paris Metro - note charming here means quirks and eccentrics and basically just a not overly brilliantly designed or engineered system, which the Tube definitely isn't. I guess there's "character" in signal failures and I pondered that as I waited 25 minutes for a Tube to turn up ...

London's buses were a bit of a disappointment. Aside from the fact that life looks virtually perfect from the upper deck of a bus, they are now just so anticeptic and boring. So beautifully engineered the modern buses are now that they lacked that character (ie sqeaks, bad riding suspension, those narrow twisting staircases) that the older step entrance buses and especially the Routemasters all had. I didn't even bother riding any of the heritage routes with the Routemaster (if I wanted to get stuck in a traffic jam in a Routemaster on tourist work, I may as well ride the Sydney Bus Museum's example down George St).

Nowadays, the buses now all differentiate themselves in quirky exterior design (and some are downright ugly). Metroline's new Enviro 400 is a case in point, very nice from a passenger point of view, but so bland with so much perfectly moulded plastic bits, flat floor and straight, wide staircase. With each evolution comes more perfection and more blandness ... nothing like the roar of a front-mounted Gardner 6LXB engine reverberating through a cabin like in the olden (well, ok, my childhood) days.

And so I went over to the west of England to find some real British buses. It was a very nice train ride through rolling farmlands (and it was nice & sunny, if a little cold), with a stop at Bath. I have no real appetite for ancient history so all that stuff about Romans in Bath is of no interest. The orange bendy bus though, is ...

Not far west of that is Bristol, which I chose because of its ease of access from London (2 trains and hour, and only 1 hour 45 min away), and that it is a reasonably sized city with a good bus network. It didn't disappoint, with rides in some of the older Leylands (even an Eastern Coachworks-bodied example), and other buses which you actually had to step up to get on board, none of this low floor easy access stuff. It was good fun. Even caught a glimpse of a retired BA Concorde at the Filton airfield.

And before you ask, no, I didn't do anything else in Bristol ...

Still on transport, I ticked off one thing on my to do list for this trip, with a guided tour to the London Transport Museum Depot on Friday. Quite an amazing experience, the collection of transport memorabilia is simply stunning. From 1900 buses, through to some very significant Routemasters, the first (RM1), the first and only rear-engined example (FRM1), and the second (can't remember the fleet name, but being restored to the London Country specification). And a whole collection of old Tube carriages, from the era before electrification, a "padded cell" car, a de-icing motor (yeah, they actually had one of these to de-ice the third rail in the old days), and more. Not many were in a restored condition though. Those all reminded me of the beautifully preserved carriages at the New York Subway Museum, and the period design characters of each are just so similar.

There was also a huge collection of bits & pieces from running an enormous transport network, even the pots & pans from the staff canteen! There's old signs, advertising, station signage, uniforms, old maps, Tube posters & artwork, just an amazing collection. Even spare parts like spare bus engines, gearboxes, an early Tube escalator, signals ... Would love to be there on an open weekend one time to browse through in more detail.

Transport aside, I didn't get up to much else in London. I haven't seen the Tower Bridge, Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, or Oxford St ...

That said, it was great meeting everyone from the APT London and Topdeck. Great to put names on an e-mail to faces and fantastic to have a drink with you all.

Till next time ...

Long hop to get here

2006-03-26T07:29:00.000+11:00

Well, I'm actually sitting here typing this in from Munich in Germany, but let's just start from the beginning, shall we?

It's quite a few days since I flew from Sydney, and it feels like a world away too. I had a pretty nice flight, I got assigned the coveted single seat at the front of the premium economy cabin (not only do you get unlimited legroom, you also get half a seat beside you to store all your crap). The upside is that you can stretch out and get up as many times as you want ... but 24 hours in a plane is still 24 hours in a plane ... especially when the inflight entertainment was as crap as it was. Just movies and really bad sitcoms. Thankfully there is the game system to keep myself entertained, realising that the house really always wins in blackjack (that game got boring very quickly), and you can't beat a computer in reversi ...

You might think flying is pretty boring but if you look out the window often there are some nice surprises. I spent rather a lot of time hunched over in a contorted position at Door L5 and R5 (those are the doors at the back of the 747), looking out the window. Scenery included the Red Centre - I'm pretty sure that was Glen Helen Gorge and Mt Sonder I saw (the plane did pass west of Alice, and the Western Macs are as gorgeous from the air as it is from the ground). Later, the lights of Singapore are pretty good to see, as was the spectacular lightning show over the Melacca Straits. Flying over a clear India and Pakistan, you quickly realise why there's a billion plus people living there, just lights, lights and more lights. What I found rather surprising is the border between those countries - it's clearly one very long fence which is floodlit all the way (no prizes for guessing why), and on the clear night it just snaked on for hundreds of kilometres. Just goes to show the animosity between the two countries.

Later, it was onto the Caspian Sea and the lights of some very isolated cities, before getting to Europe and Germany, where lights are everywhere. Lots and lots of little villages. Not long after that came the lights of the Flemish coast, and the crossing of the Channel to the UK. And London is huge ...

So the plane dumped us at 4:30am onto a sleeping London. The city was just waking up, and even the Tube was pretty empty. I was feeling rather strange, my body not knowing what time it is with only about 4 hours of sleep over the last 36 hours, and it was now only just dawn ... my stomach was also complaining about something and kept complaining for 2 days after. That wasn't fun.

Not to mention it was bloody cold. At least London turned on some sun, so it could be worse, but it was about 0C when I landed, and stayed that way for the next 2 days. A bit of a shock coming from warm and sunny Sydney ... (I must admit people did look at me strangely when I walked through Sydney Airport with my big coat.)

Onto the Tube then, I actually just felt like I've come home, it looked so familiar. It wasn't long before I found the Globetrotter Inn, dumped my bags, and at even before 6:30am had hopped on a bus en route to central London.

Less than 48 hours to London ...

2006-03-20T22:52:00.000+11:00

Can almost hear the "Mind the Gap" announcements on the Tube now, less than 48 hours and I'll actually be riding the Tube, and the red deckers of London. Bloody busy trying to pack, and do everything else before I go. The packing bit is actually quite easy, although not completely stress free. I have no idea why I need an XL case to fit everything, and I'm trying to pack light already! Ever weight conscious, I think 15kg for a half-empty case (cos my smaller case barely fits) is too much. (Which gets me thinking, what on earth do the Americans pack into their cases that weigh 45kg?)

I'm actually looking forward to the flight, at least it will be a world of calm away from phones, internet and you can't actually do anything whilst in a plane ... once that door shuts and the plane pushes back ...

I've picked London to settle myself back into Europe, before plunging myself into Munich on Saturday. I haven't planned anything past booking the Easyjet flight to Stansted. Lucky I'm travelling off-season, hey?

"Get on board a fast train,
Travel on a jet plane,
Far away, and breakaway ..."

Until next time ...

Change of plans

2006-03-01T11:29:00.000+11:00

One of my "must dos" on this trip, a visit to the Airbus factory in Toulouse, doesn't look like going ahead ... which is a shame because I was really looking forward to it. it looks like they have very few tours during the "off season", ie non summer, and all in French.

There is just one option to do an A380 factory tour which would be absolutely brilliant but the dates don't really work, either. If only it was English-guided I might have made the journey ...

Looking on the positive side, not going to Toulouse mean less worry with transport (because it's so far out of the way), and two extra days to spend somewhere else.

One day I'll brave Europe in summer and do the tour then.

Other than that, my plans aren't too good. Which is interesting, given exactly 3 weeks from today I'd be sitting in a plane high above Russia, en route to London. Apart from flights and travel insurance I have practically nothing organised!!!

One step at a time ...

2006-02-17T09:49:00.000+11:00

Well my European trip is one step closer to reality with the arrival of my plane tickets, nowadays of course it is just a piece of paper printed from your garden variety laser printer and not one of those multi-coupon things. The Luddite in me thinks it's a bit too simple for something you paid so much for, but I reckon e-tickets are a godsend. You can't lose them and you can make multiple copies ...

Anyway, the aviation enthusiast in me wanted to fly as many airlines, visit as many airports and experience as many aircraft types as possible. Still, the practical idiot in me dictated that long layovers in Bahrain or wherever isn't a great idea. Still, I even entertained the idea of the Finnair ticket that allowed four different carriers (and aircraft type!) on each longhaul leg. Would have loved to fly a 777, MD11, A340 and 747 in the same trip.

Alas, I'm flying Speedbird, too good a deal in its premium economy cabin to pass up. And it'll be on the now familiar Kangaroo Route workhorse, the 747-400, passing through the now familiar Singapore and London Heathrow airports. Ah well, you gotta save money somehow ...

Just over a month to take-off now, still nothing other than the plane ticket organised. Well, I have 2 nights booked in a hotel at Roubaix, but that's about it.

Welcome to my adventure!

2006-02-13T11:37:00.000+11:00

Hi all,

Welcome to my "travel diary" for my European trip in 2006. So why have an online one? It certainly beats writing in a "real" diary, I find it takes too long, and I change my mind about what I write too often and pen and paper doesn't come with a backspace or a delete key (kinda why I've taken so much to digital photography as well!). And you can't really share a paper diary with anyone else.

I'll try and update this whenever I can, any chance I decide to sit down at a computer that is. This'll probably all be in text format, but I'll see if I can add photos whilst I'm on the road.

Eventually, stuff from here with the photos I've taken will get onto a website. Eventually.

Yeah yeah, you say you've heard this before ... I'll admit my last travel website is currently stalled in construction as I simply haven't found the time to add anything. Which is a shame but the enormity of the task probably overwhelmed me. Hope this time it'll be different. At least this time I'm only trying to post 3 1/2 weeks of travel instead of 320+ days ...

So why a European holiday, again, you ask? Last time I went to Europe in the autumn of 2003 was great, really enjoyed it and was an introduction to Europe, and there's so much I wanted to see in more detail, and of course there's so much of Europe I hadn't seen.

The last trip rekindled my enthusiasm in aviation and was an introduction to watching major cycling events. This trip sort of builds on this and more. At the moment I haven't put together an itinerary yet (you'd think someone who puts together itineraries professionally would find this easy, but it's not). Here though is a rough idea of what I want to do:

- London Transport Museum's tour of the Acton Town depot.

- Take the Airbus factory tour in Toulouse and hopefully see some A380 test flights from TLS.

- Watch some one day cycling Spring Classic races, the Paris-Roubaix and the Ronde von Vlaanderen (Tour of Flanders). Not sure how much racing I'd get to see but just to experience the atmosphere in two of the most prestigious one-day races of the year in the cycling-mad Flanders region.

- Visit the Technik Museum in Germany, home to a Concorde and it's Soviet copy, the Tu-144 on stilts, also a 747 on stilts and a collection of racing cars (it is close to Hockenheim!), should be paradise for me. ;-)

- Visit Belgium and hopefully Luxembourg, as well as Germany, places I didn't make it to last time round and really wanted to.

- Ride my beloved British buses, and this time visit another UK city to ride the "older" step entries that London has abolished. Hopefully see another UK bus museum.

- Ride the Eurostar from London to Paris in daylight ...

- Have a holiday ... I really want one.

Well, it's still more than a month until departure ... so a lot more still to come. Hope you'll enjoy this journey as much as I do.

Cheers,
Kin-Yat