Springtime for Czechoslovakia July 14, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Czech Republic, Europe, Hotels, Insurance, Moscow, Museum, Prague, Sightseeing, Tickets, Tour, Trails, Travel Clinic, Trip, Vietnam , 5commentsIrena lived in a late-Seventies block of flats on the edge of town, half a mile from the Russian barracks, part of an ugly outer-urban sprawl. After buying me lunch in a new concrete hotel called, romantically, The Interflora, she drove me back at high Skoda speed through the centre of town — choke full out, engine howling in second gear as we skidded across wet cobblestones, clipping kerbs and narrowly avoiding the numerous potholes and dug-up sections where slow attempts were being made to repair the water mains, shattered by the minus-twenty-five February temperatures. The only vehicles Irena took any notice of were the thin double trams, locked inscrutably into their own system, clanging their way up and down the narrow streets making unmistakable tram noises. Saturday afternoon shoppers shared the pavements with soldiers in iron-grey overcoats wandering about in twos and threes.
“You can tell the difference by their boots,” Irena told me before I’d had a chance to ask the question. Some of the Russian soldiers (pull-on boots, no laces) looked Mongolian and very young. (more…)
My Thailand Travel Diary part 1 June 12, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Bangkok, Hotels, London, Thailand, Tokyo, Travel Clinic, USA, Vietnam , add a commentTokyo, the Okura Hotel. Girls in kimonos and obis stand by the elevators on each floor to greet arriving and departing guests, with a great deal of bowing. After unpacking soiled clothes, I anxiously fill out a list stamped with the warning: “Garments badly worn out will be returned unlaundered.” Ergo, my frayed shirts and frazzled underwear will probably be rejected. The room-maids trot, rather than walk, and they bow low both before and after turning down the bed.
The drive to Kunitachi Hall, in Tsuyama, takes two and a half hours on streets even more clogged with Toyotas, Isuzus, Hondas than Manhattan’s. The average age of the players in the Kunitachi Orchestra is only twenty. But they are lightning learners, good-looking, well-dressed, polite, and harder-working than American and European orchestra musicians would be able even to imagine: we rehearse for four hours without intermission or break. (more…)
