If you’re fortunate enough to be in a position where you can uproot yourself quickly and move to another country to work, finding long term accomodation can often be a real pain. Furnished apartments aren’t always easy to come by, and in some countries, where real estate is highly sought after, the costs can be high and the agency fees astronomical.
One option that might be worth considering is living in a hotel. Admittedly, I’ve tried doing this for a month, once, and it nearly drove me mad – but each to their own. Russell Coker has two good articles on living in hotels – firstly in London and then some more general tips.
Sympathy must go to any travellers currently in France or planning to be there in the next day or so, as a strike by rail workers has currently crippled most of the French system.
Be warned, however that if you plan to try to avoid the strikes by somehow escaping to Germany, rail workers there are planning to strike on Thursday, also. I would recommend heading for Belgium or Spain, instead…
After ten years of work, London’s history St Pancras railway station has been restored to its former glory, and reopened by Queen Elizabeth, in a ceremony on Tuesday.
Passenger services from St Pancras International, which previously went to the rather unimpressive Waterloo International station, will begin on November 14th, to Paris (two hours, fifteen minutes) and Brussels (one hour and 51 minutes).
One of the many certainties of travel is that a trip to Rome or Venice will have you negotiating your way through crowds of other travellers, competing with them for accomodation and queueing behind them to enter museums and other historic attractions. This is to be expected, of course, given the world-renowned status of these cities.
After a while, however, the throngs of people wear you down, and the sheer business of tourism takes much of the authenticity away from these cities. Is it possible to see a piece of historic Italy without having to share it with thousands of other alien invaders like yourself?
Perhaps it might be worth putting Genoa on your itinerary, and bypassing the larger towns, as recommended in this article.
Located on the Italian Riveria, not far from the French border, Genoa has a history old city, parts of which are recognised on the UNESCO World Heritage List. With a population of only around 600000, it is not a large city by world standards, and doesn’t get anywhere near the amount of tourist traffic seen by its more popular Italian siblings, which makes it ideal for a relaxing trip.
Genoa is served by several InterCity rail routes: Milan (1.5 hours), Turin (1 hour 50 minutes), Florence/Pisa (3:20/2:10), and also by international trains from Nice (3 hours) and Zurich (6.5 hours). Additionally, there are overnight services to Naples and Palermo.
If you’re heading to Europe with a Eurail pass, you’ll probably have been given a small booklet which shows European train routes and times. What they don’t tell you, however, is that this booklet lists only major railway lines and is generally limited to Intercity, Eurocity and Intercity-Express trains – it doesn’t carry any information about regional railways and local trains, and in many cases you may not even be aware that they exist.
Fortunately, Thomas Cook publishes the European Rail Timetable and Overseas Timetable, which I consider to be essential luggage items for any trip that involves a considerable amount of train travel. They contain timetables for all rail services in their designated area, as well as detailed route maps, ferry timetables, and long-distance bus timetables for those area that don’t have rail transport.
The European edition is published monthly, and the Overseas edition is published every two months. Each new edition has a special feature; the December edition of the European timetable has a feature on night trains, and the November/December edition of the Overseas timetable looks at trains in Australasia.
Admittedly, they’re not small (the European version is around 500 pages), but I didn’t find that carrying one added significant weight to my backpack, and it made my trip considerably easier to navigate while on the move.
There have been a few articles on destinations in the former Soviet Union, this week. Firstly we have The Age, with a story on Moscow’s club scene, which is currently booming; mind you, the price of the recommended hotel at the end of the article isn’t exactly geared for the independent traveller.
Next up, the New York Times spends 36 hours in Riga, the capital of Latvia, now proudly out of the Soviet sphere of influence and firmly ensconced in the EU.
Finally, for a really out-of-the-way trip, The Guardian recommends visiting Almaty, previously the capital of Kazahkstan, now just its largest city.
Getting There
Unless you’re planning on cheating by flying, a trip to Riga or Moscow will most likely take you through Poland. Riga is a tad inconvenient to get to by train, requiring a journey from Warsaw to Vilnius, and then another from Vilnius to Riga. Moscow, on the other hand, is quite straightforward – there are a number of direct services from Warsaw, and even one or two from Berlin.
Almaty is another story altogether; a train trip from Moscow takes an excruciating 78 hours, departing at 22:40, arriving at 7:11, three days and eighteen hours later.
It’s always wise to study a bit about the culture of your destination before you depart, if for no other reason than to avoid accidentally committing a faux-pas and leaving a bad impression upon your hosts. To this end, The Guardian has published a list of the Top 10 Travel Faux Pas.
I am somewhat inclined to disagree with their fourth entry, however, with regard to Australia – I don’t believe there’s anything at all wrong with inquiring about the state of Aboriginal affairs here, although, sadly, the response you get is unlikely to be accurate, if asked in urban areas.
Many of the principles that Kevin outlines for laptops can be extended to any valuable item that is carried while travelling.
Typically, when I travel, I divide my luggage into three groups; those things which I must not lose under any circumstances; items which would be a major pain to lose, but not necessarily a showstopper; and those items which, if lost, would be an inconvenience, but otherwise I’m not particularly concerned about.
In the first group go important items like passports, drivers’ licences, plane and train tickets, credit and ATM cards, travellers’ cheques and money. I carry all of these in a money belt, worn under my clothing. Now, this may seem inconvenient, and I’ll admit, the first time I tried it, it did feel strange, but I quickly became accustomed to it, and now when I travel, I don’t notice that it’s there at all. The number of items that I’ve listed makes it sound like I’d be carrying a brick around my waist, but in practice, it’s not large or heavy at all.
The important thing to note here, however, is that the money belt must be worn under your clothes to be effective; that means underneath your trousers and shirt. If you wear it on the outside of them, you’re just asking for it to be pick-pocketed. Pick-pockets rely on not being detected while stealing your valuables – it would be a particularly brazen pick-pocket that attempts to get a money-belt from underneath clothing, and you’d be bound to notice them doing it.
The second group of items tend to be expensive equipment, like cameras, mobile phones and occasionally laptops. I try to keep these to a minimum; there’s nothing worse than lugging heavy equipment around with you. The one time I’ve travelled with a laptop was on the way home from an IT conference, and it became an awful pain. I carry all these items in a small backpack, which never leaves my side unless it can be stored safely away in a locker (for example, at railway stations). On the rare occasions that I do that, I padlock the small backpack to my larger backpack, as the two bags together would be somewhat cumbersome to a thief (of course, they could just slash the bags open and steal the contents).
The final group of items are mostly clothes, towels and books; generally things that a thief doesn’t want, and while it would be inconvenient to lose them, it’s generally easy to replace them while travelling. These go in my main backpage, and while I make all endeavours to prevent it from being stolen (eg, padlocking or chaining it to furniture), there are always going to be times when that’s not possible. Plenty of youth hostels and backpackers’ hotels, for example, do not provide lockable lockers, and luggage either has to be left in an cupboard, at best, or on top of your bed at worst. Obviously, you’d be mad to leave anything of any value in your bag in such a situation.
Finally, if you’re still under any illusion as to how pickpockets work, then it’s well worth checking out this video:
One of my favourite TV travel documentary series has been that put together over the last two decades by former Monty Python member, Michael Palin. In fact, it was probably his documentaries that first sparked my interest in travel, as there were few other travel shows on television here in Australia, at the time, that showed off-beat and hard-to-get to destinations. Amongst many other countries, Palin did a marvellous job of opening up Russia to the world, in his programs, as it was just starting to emerge from decades of isolation from the West.
Now Palin has turned his sights on somewhere a little closer to home – in his latest documentary, New Europe, he explores Eastern Europe, visiting some the new members of the EU as well as some prospective members.
The show is currently screening on the BBC in the UK, and will be shown in November, on TV ONE in New Zealand. No word on when it will be shown and who will show it in Australia, the US or Canada.
There’s an interview with Michael Palin on stuff.co.nz here.
The series has an accompanying book of the same name (see advertisement above).
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