Travel

Fancy trucks

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Just as in Europe or the U.S., truck drivers who are owners/operators usually like to decorate their trucks.  Perhaps the Indians take it to the next level, as this snap from a truck stop in Rajasthan shows:

In this snap, the owner is on the left.

True story: The first snap I took was of the empty truck – no people.  Then two guys (on the right) jumped into scene and wanted to be photographed.  Then the owner came along, tried to smash his two younger “lakeys” with a big stick he was carrying, made it clear to me that HE was the owner . . . and he had me take a photo with him on the left, and his “hired hands” on the right.

Moral of the story for me: first ask – and be careful of truck drivers carrying sticks.

(PS. In case you are interested, I priced out Indian trucks like this one. At current conversion rates, trucks like this one can start at about $15K – but a Kenworth in the U.S. can easily cost ten times this amount. Believe it or not, if I did the arithmetic correctly, and adjusted for local currency, Indian truck drivers can earn “more or less” the same as their American counterparts.)

Let sleeping camels lie

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I took this picture of a sleeping camel in  Rajasthan, India:

What is really interesting, and what I never really thought deeply about until I saw this picture, are the various patches of calloused skin, particularly the one in the center between the front two legs. When camels stand up or sit down, it is this part of their bodies that presses against the ground.

I’ve seen camel roadkill, and it is much, much worse.

Following Jason and the Argonauts

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One of my favorite all time stories and movies is called Jason and the Argonauts. All the scenes were memorable, but who could forget this especially memorable scene:

Many historians believe this chronicles events dating back to around 1300 BC.

So on a recent trip to Turkey, it was a thrill for me to take this photograph of the Bosphorus Strait opening to the Black Sea – the original location that the Gods tried to destroy Jason’s ship by rolling huge boulders into the water to crush him.

This ship about to cross into the Black Sea looks pretty safe from huge metal statues and any boulder hazards.

Hungry seagull

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Well, probably they are all hungry, all the time.

This fellow joined me for lunch at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida:

I’m not making this up: this fellow was so used to humans that he not only ate out of my hand but ate WITH me, sitting next to me and taking whatever he wanted from my plate.  I wonder if this is how the race of dogs originally got their start?

Swimming pool

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That’s a swimming pool high in the sky, spanning these three towers in Singapore:

It’s called the Infinity Pool, and it belongs to the Marina Sands hotel. Coincidentally, I was visiting on the day that the hotel management was doing the handover from the building company, and I got to watch the “walk-thru.”  SCARY STUFF, talking about cracks, defects, etc.

Fish, chips, and mushy peas

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Even though I am an American, I’ve long known about fish and chips. In fact, I can still sing the Arthur Treater’s (“the original fish and chips”) jingle – and what you might not know is that Arthur Treater’s is an Ohio establishment, from just a few miles from where I grew up!

So when a good friend of mine invited me to try some real fish and chips and mushy peas – in the part of Northern England where it’s most famous, no less! – I immediately thought: Peas? Mushy peas?  What do peas have to do with fish and chips? And are English cooks so bad they can’t cook up nice, firm peas – do they have to be mushy?

Well, here is what one of the best fish and chips restaurants in the seaside Yorkshire town of Whitby:

And those green things: that’s the mushy peas.  I would have never believed it until I tried it, but mushy peas do go well with the fish. And of course the fish itself – I can tell you, this batter fried fish is in a completely different category than anything I’ve ever tasted.

Oh, and that plastic bowl in the middle contains little pieces of batter that have dripped off into the oil. Not shown is the mash vinegar that the English love to pour over their fish.

(Correction:  Above I stated “one of the best fish and chips restaurants” but I have since learned that this was Hadley’s, which has been rated THE BEST fish and chips restaurant!)

Hidden canals #3: Vanishing near the Rivetoile

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The nineteenth century saw an explosion of canal building, and with good cause: railroads were a monopoly, and trucks and automobiles had yet to be invented.

But today, many of these canals are disappearing fast – but not overnight. So they present a wonderful opportunity to watch how and where they slowly slip from reality into archaeology.  I’ve provided some examples here and here.

Below you’ll see a new landmark site in the middle of downtown Strasbourg, the Rivetoile “complex.” It’s a shopping center / underground parking garage / apartments / movie theater all rolled into one.  The old historic cranes are a reminder of the industrial past, and the water looks wonderful, filled with seagulls, swans, and an exploding community of muskrats:

(By the way, a few years ago it was rare to see a single muskrat, but now there are so many – including some really big, fat ones – and they are not shy about approaching visitors and begging for food. This is probably why the population has exploded.)

But this is about all the visitors and tourists will see. If you don’t mind the smell of urine and the occasional homeless person, you can explore further down the canal and you’ll find the original railroad tracks that were used to pull the boats down the canal:

Back in the day, even this would have been quite modern.  The earliest canals relied on horses to pull the barges along.

Stone sculptures in Sofia

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When I was building an IT organization in Bulgaria, I’d often take long walks through the capital city of Sofia.  It’s a wonderful old city, whose intrinsic and ancient beauty was still visible underneath the more recent Communist neglect.  Anyway, in addition to the old stuff, there was plenty of new stuff there as well, such as stone sculptures like this:

and this:

and this:

I’m not sure if they are still there or who the artist was. As soon as I find out, I’ll update this blog!

Oldest building in Sofia

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In Bulgaria you can see some of the oldest buildings and ruins and structures in all of Europe.

This is the Church of St. George, dating back to the year 400:

What’s just amazing is that you are free to enter the church, touch the old stone walls, and even walk on a real section of a real Roman road located outside!

The writing on this placque looks Russian, but be careful – it’s not!  The Cyrillic alphabet  was created by two Bulgarian brothers, which just adds to the wonders and great gifts that Bulgaria has to offer!

School discipline in Hainan

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I took this photo of schoolchildren, lined up outside their school, in Hainan, China. The temperature was 35 C, and the children stood in this organized manner for 2 hours, without moving. Here’s what it looked like from my hotel room on the 55th floor:

And here is a blow-up of the children in the school yard – amazing.

Ash in Alsace

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Ash – POTASH, that is.  I first learned about this after driving around the Alsacian countryside and discovering this abandoned mine:

To make matters more interesting, it is located in a small town called Pulversheim,

After a bit of Internet research, it turns out the history is very interesting. Potash was discovered here in 1904 – and at the time, the only other source of potash was in Germany, leading to the Germans having a monopoly on the market. So naturally it was a huge benefit to have a second source.  One good source for more information is this site, Les Mines.

Rambo’s adversary

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This is an authentic Russian Mil Mi-24 attack helicopter, of precisely the sort that chased Rambo.

I took this picture just outside the National History Museum, in Sofia, Bulgaria.  Imagine a national history museum that greets visitors with this – how cool is that?!

(Believe it or not, Sylvestor Stallone visited Sofia just a few weeks after I took this picture, planning to film a new movie here.)

Red fishing boat on the Bosphorus Strait

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This is one of my favorite pictures, which I took from the Asian side of the Bosphorous Strait in Turkey:

You can see the spires of mosques in the background. And I can only assume the strangely attached smaller boat that it’s pulling is evidence that the Bosphorus and the Black Sea don’t have the rough seas and huge swells you’d find in the Mediterranean Sea or on the ocean – but naturally I never got the chance to ask the Captain.

Lake Thun

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This is a beautiful panoramic of Lake Thun, taken from a top secret vantage point that I often take visitors.

The tall mountain in the center is the active “Mount Niesen” volcano. Some scientists have speculated its eruption could destroy most of central Europe.

Interestingly, the castle shown here in the town of Oberhofen is one of seven castles that surround Lake Thun, and I remember somewhere that they were known in the Middle Ages as the “seven gateways to Jerusalem.”