Oslo is expensive

Originally posted to Posterous on 11 May 2011

Some sample costs - $AUD 1 buys approximately 5 NOK, 1 Euro buys approximately 7 NOK:

- Cup of filter coffee from 7/Eleven: 25 NOK
- Fee to exchange traveller's cheques: 35 NOK per cheque
- Adult ferry ticket: 50 NOK
- Airport express train ticket: 170 NOK
- Children's Björn Borg t-shirt: 299 NOK
- Postage for package up to 10kg in weight to Australia (to reduce size/weight of suitcase) plus roll of packing tape: 550 NOK
- Hotel room per night, including buffet breakfast plus free and very fast wireless internet: 1215 NOK
- Free public transport for wheelchair users: Priceless

Slartibartfast's Award

Originally posted to Posterous on 11 May 2011

Arthur Dent: The Earth! 
Slartibartfast: Well, the Earth Mark II, in fact. We're making a copy from our original blueprints. 
Arthur Dent: Are you telling me you originally made the Earth? 
Slartibartfast: Oh, yes. Did you ever go to a place - I think it was called Norway? 
Arthur Dent: No. No, I didn't. 
Slartibartfast: Pity. That was one of mine. Won an award, you know. Lovely crinkly edges

"The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (TV Series) 

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy[1] is a BBC television adaptation of Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy broadcast in January and February 1981 on UK television station BBC Two. The adaptation follows the original radio series in 1978 and 1980, the first novel and double LP, in 1979, and the stage shows, in 1979 and 1980, making it the fifth iteration of the guide.

The series stars Simon Jones as Arthur Dent, David Dixon as Ford Prefect, Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox and Sandra Dickinson as Trillian. The voice of the guide is by Peter Jones. Simon Jones, Peter Jones, Stephen Moore and Mark Wing-Davey had already provided the voices for their characters in the original radio series in 1978/80. In addition, the series features a number of notable cameo roles, including Adams himself on several occasions.

Although initially thought by BBC executives to be unfilmable, the series was successfully produced and directed by Alan J. W. Bell and went on to win a Royal Television Society award as Most Original Programme of 1981, as well as several BAFTA awards for its graphics and editing.[2]


We got up early yesterday to catch a train to Bergen - one of the only early starts on this tip, and gee it was hard, but worth it.  The train departed just after 8am and arrived in Bergen on Norway's west cost just before 3pm.  A long journey, but the scenery was worth every minute.

The train traverses rural scenery, passing through small towns, past farms, holiday houses, through beech and pine forests, hugging lakes and rivers.  Initially the scenery is so typically Norwegian, almost stereotypically Scandinavian, that you'd almost think you were in a Norsca deodorant commercial.

Then the train starts to climb into mountains, and despite the cloudless, blue sky and warm weather, there are smudges of snow on the hilltops.  Then as we climb higher, there are larger patches of snow, growing so that when we reach the highest station on the line, Finse, at 1222 metres above sea level, the snow is everywhere, banked up against the wooden tunnels.  The snow is melting everywhere though, creating waterfalls running down the mountain sides, and rapids in the rivers.

Words don't do the scenery justice - it was simply breathtaking - better than expected or advertised on the NSB's website at http://www.nsb.no/our-destinations/the-bergen-railway-article37778-4384.html.  Bear in mind too, that this is not a tourist train like the Rocky Mountaineer in Canada, but a normal passenger train that takes everyday Norwegians from Oslo to Bergen and places in between.

Bergen was very pretty too, and surprisingly, it was not raining.  (It rains very frequently in Bergen.)  We had fish and chips at the old fish market, where they still sell fish, and somewhat disturbingly, whale, before flying back to Oslo with SAS.  The flight was a quick 50 minutes in an old Boeing 737 - so old that it still had ashtrays in the seat arms, and no TV screens, so we got an in-person safety demonstration.

Photos from Bergen plus some video from the train can be seen at http://gallery.me.com/honningbi67#100324.  

On the move - Berlin to Oslo

Originally posted to Posterous on 9 May 2011

On Friday afternoon, we left Berlin by train, catching a very crowded InterCity train to Hamburg, then changing to an even more crowded Regional Express train to Kiel.  (Note to self - best not to catch trains in Germany on a lovely Spring Friday afternoon.  Everyone else decides to do the same!). Despite the crowding, both trains were very fast and accessible, including on board accessible loos.  The ease of travelling from absolute central Paris or Berlin, without the need to check in an hour or more in advance, or take off shoes and belts through security screening, or be swabbed for explosives, or any of the other indignities that go with air travel, cannot be understated.  

Berlin to Hamburg is approximately 290 kilometres (i.e. roughly the same distance as Canberra to Sydney), but took only about 100 minutes by express train.  And when you arrive, you can either walk to your destination or catch a local train or bus.  It must be time for Australia to think seriously about fast trains between Sydney and Canberra or Brisbane or Melbourne.

Our final destination on Friday was Kiel though - paradise for a ferry fetishist like myself, with Color Line (http://www.colorline.com) sailing to Oslo in Norway and Stena Line (http://www.stenaline.nl/en/ferry) sailing to Göteborg in Sweden from the inner port.  Check out pictures of beautiful big ferries we saw in port at Kiel at http://gallery.me.com/honningbi67/100300.  

Ferries were the main attraction of Kiel, unless we missed its other charms.  Tova ventured out early on Saturday morning to buy coffee and encountered police in full riot gear, anticipating an influx of fans for a local football match.  Looking like characters from Tom of Finland artwork, complete with carefully groomed handlebar moustaches, but without the improbably large appendages, both German police and football fans mean business.

Likewise our hotel in Kiel, which had the charm and personality of a multiple-storey car park.  Normally hotels like this make up for a lack of charm with a comfy bed, but the bed was terribly uncomfortable.  However, it was right behind the railway station, and an easy walk to our ferry, plus we could watch our ferry dock (stern-first without aid of tugs) from the breakfast room, and this made up somewhat for the hotel's lack of personality.

On Saturday, we boarded Color Line's ferry MS Color Fantasy just after 1pm for the overnight sailing to Oslo.  This ship is part roll-on, roll-off ferry, and part cruise ship.  You can put your car on the ferry and it carries freight, like the Spirit of Tasmania ferries, but the ship has multiple restaurants and bars like a cruise ship.  Our cabin was cosy, and the sailing was extremely smooth, not surprising given that we were in sight of land (Denmark or Norway) for much of the trip.  The highlight of the journey was buffet dinner on Saturday night.  It was very expensive, but for 268 NOK per person (it's too painful to convert this to Australian dollars), we were able to select from mussels, crawfish (yabbies), caviar, smoked salmon, marinated salmon, steamed salmon, cod, beef, lamb, pork, chicken, salad, potatoes in two or three styles, vegetables, desserts and cheese.  The smoked salmon was delicious, as was the roast pork.  To top it all off, we could see Denmark's Storebælt Bridge as we sailed underneath it around 6pm from the restaurant.

This morning, we watched the ferry glide through fjords into Oslo from the sun deck and our cabin, docking at a very civilised 10am  It was very beautiful, and somewhat reminiscent of sailing on the InterIsland ferry from Wellington on New Zealand's north island to Picton on the south island.

For the rest of today, we explored Oslo a bit, taking advantage of free entry on Sundays to the National Museum to see one of Edvard Munch's paintings of "The Scream".  Oslo is very expensive, and quite a shock after the comparative cheap eating in Berlin and Paris.  Who would have thought that Paris would be considered a comparatively cheap city?

Berlin

Originally posted to Posterous on 6 May 2011

So our sojourn in Berlin comes to an end tomorrow, and I'm somewhat undecided about this city, i.e. whether I like it or not.  

First on the plus side, Berlin is a city on a much more human scale compared with Paris.  It's like Canberra to Paris' Sydney, fewer people and tourists, less noise and busy-ness.  Berlin has a young and funky vibe, obviously attractive to younger travellers, but with plenty to entice older fogies like myself.

The food is great, surprisingly since one doesn't often think of great food and Germanic tradition in the same thought.  And cheap.  Rolls filled with salad and meat for a few Euro in bakeries everywhere.  Curry wurst at streetside stalls.  Great Turkish pita filled with yiros-style meat.  REALLY good Thai-style food - best I have had outside Thailand.  And berliners and streusel buns and cakes and all manner of sweet baked goods.  We have had excellent lunches in department store cafeterias - the best in KaDeWe (http://www.kadewe.de/en) where I had a fillet of salmon cooked to order. (Sidenote: why did Australian department stores abandon cafeterias?  This was a grave mistake, IMHO.)

The public transport is excellent, frequent and whilst not as cheap as Paris, still cheaper than Adelaide.  On the intersection where our hotel sits, we have a bus route, three tram routes and an underground train station, all of which are wheelchair accessible.  And the weather has been mostly excellent - sunny, with some cold spells.  

So why the hesitation?  This should be everything I like in a city to visit?  Reminders of the Holocaust are everywhere, as you would expect, but a certain mindset must need to be acquired to prevent thoughts of what happened to the people who lived here - including Tova's relatives - from pervading every interaction and action.  

We visited the Holocaust Memorial (

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe[1] (German: Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas), also known as the Holocaust Memorial (German: Holocaust-Mahnmal), is a memorial in Berlin to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, designed by architect Peter Eisenman and engineer Buro Happold. It consists of a 19,000 m2 (4.7-acre) site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or "stelae", arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. The stelae are 2.38 m (7 ft 10 in) long, 0.95 m (3 ft 1 in) wide and vary in height from 0.2 to 4.8 m (7.9 in to 15 ft 9.0 in). According to Eisenman's project text, the stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason. A 2005 copy of the Foundation for the Memorial's official English tourist pamphlet, however, states that the design represents a radical approach to the traditional concept of a memorial, partly because Eisenman did not use any symbolism. However, observers have noted the memorial's resemblance to a cemetery.[2][3][4] An attached underground "Place of Information" (German: Ort der Information) holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims, obtained from the Israeli museum Yad Vashem.

Building began on April 1, 2003 and was finished on December 15, 2004. It was inaugurated on May 10, 2005, sixty years after the end of World War II, and opened to the public two days later. It is located one block south of the Brandenburg Gate, in the Friedrichstadt neighborhood. The cost of construction was approximately €25 million.

The memorial is controversial, and was described by Ignatz Bubis, the then leader of the German Jewish community, as unnecessary.[citation needed]

), which was very moving, but unexpectedly disturbing that a full security screening is required before entry.  Indeed, it was distressing that there seemed to be a very visible police presence at most identifiably Jewish sites we visited, including the remains of the Neue Synagogue and the Beth Cafe where we had coffee today.  Even the old cemetery in Grosse Hamburger Strasse, where only Moses Mendelssohn's reconstructed grave remains, has multiple security cameras.  

However, as much as these sites affected me, the memorial that most gave me pause for thought was the simple plaque acknowledging the location of a villa where the systematic 'euthanasia' of people with disabilities was administered during the 1930s - a program known as Aktion T4 (

Action T4 (German: Aktion T4, pronounced [akˈtsi̯oːn teː fiːɐ]) was the name used after World War II[1] for Nazi Germany's "euthanasia programme" during which physicians murdered thousands of people who were "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination".[2] In October 1939 Hitler signed an "euthanasia decree" backdated to 1 September 1939 that authorized Phillipp Bouhler and Karl Brandt to carry out the programme of euthanasia (translated into English as follows):

"Reich Leader Bouhler and Dr. med. Brandt are charged with the responsibility of enlarging the competence of certain physicians, designated by name, so that patients who, on the basis of human judgment [menschlichem Ermessen], are considered incurable, can be granted mercy death [Gnadentod] after a discerning diagnosis."[3][4]

In addition to 'euthanasia' various other rationales for the programme have been offered, including eugenics, Darwinism, racial hygiene, and cost effectiveness.

) that served as a means to refine methods of mass-murder that would later be used on Jewish people.

So many words have been written about the Holocaust - perhaps it's better to use someone else's:

"Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair. I remember the killers, I remember the victims, even as I struggle to invent a thousand and one reasons to hope."

"Elie Wiesel - Nobel Lecture". Nobelprize.org. 5 May 2011 http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1986/wiesel-lecture.html

Wheelchair access on train from Paris to Berlin

Originally posted to Posterous on 2 May 2011

On Saturday 30 April 2011, we travelled by train from Paris to Berlin.  The tickets and assistance were booked by email and fax through Deutsche Bahn's (http://www.bahn.de/i/view/overseas/en/index.shtml) Mobility Service Centre.  The journey involved a change of trains in Mannheim - from a French TGV train to a German ICE train.  (The night/sleeper train from Paris to Berlin appears to be the only direct train, i.e. without a change of trains.)

The tickets were quite cheap at 109 Euro for me and about half this for Tova, as she travelled free between Paris and Mannheim.  The tickets were more than 100 Euro cheaper per person than if booked through the agent for French and German railways in Australia (no names mentioned).  If you don't need special assistance, buying tickets directly through Deutsche Bahn's website looks easy enough to make me wonder why anyone would use the Australian agent.

Whilst long - we left Paris just after 9am and did not arrive in Berlin until approximately 6:30pm - it was nevertheless an enjoyable trip and definitely better than dealing with airports and airlines.  On both trains, I had the option of sitting in my wheelchair or sitting in a train seat, there were wheelchair accessible toilets close by and room to move around. 

The transfer in Mannheim was straightforward.  Staff from Deutsche Bahn met me with a portable lifting platform at the door to the train, and advised me where to wait for assistance to board the next train on the opposite platform.  We had deliberately allowed extra time between transfers, but in retrospect, we could have easily made the next connecting train to Berlin (20 minute transfer).  Instead, we had a bit over an hour in Mannheim station, which allowed time to go to a toilet that doesn't move and to buy drinks and something to eat.  We have learnt to keep coins on us though for trips to the loo in railway stations - 0.50 Euro to 1 Euro appears to be the going rate.

Of the two trains, Deutsche Bahn's ICE train between Mannheim and Berlin was the more comfortable, with more room to move, more staff (and friendly staff too) and better condition of the train's interior.  That said, the French TGV was more than adequate.  I had understood from TripAdvisor that the journey's scenery would be nothing special, but we found it interesting and pretty, with small towns and villages, fields and forests, plus the train stops in Frankfurt, so you get a good view of that city's skyline.

Finally, we arrived at Berlin's Hauptbahnhof (main railway station), which, with its glass canopy, is incredibly beautiful and modern.  Selected pictures of our train journey can be seen at http://gallery.me.com/honningbi67/100276.

Wheelchair access and Paris

Originally posted to Posterous on 28 April 2011

I had feared the worst about wheelchair access in Paris, but mostly, I have been pleasantly surprised.  Paris is a city for walking, and generally the footpaths in central Paris have been manageable, with kerb ramps at intersections and pedestrian crossings.  Cobblestones, where they appear, are challenging, but still mostly OK to traverse at low speed.

The tourist office advised that the tourist boats and buses that take visitors around central Paris are not wheelchair accessible.  Access to the boats on the Seine is via steep steps; the tourist buses are high floor buses without ramps or lifts.  However, the public transport authority, RATP (http://www.ratp.fr) offers many wheelchair accessible bus routes, and publishes detailed information on a website at http://infomobi.com, including downloadable maps of accessible bus routes.  The accessible buses are frequent and cheap with low floors and ramps.  And entire routes are accessible - not just selected buses on certain routes.  The buses we have tried so far have wound their way through impossibly narrow streets, giving a great view of street life.  Tomorrow, our aim is to circumnavigate Paris by bus, taking in Montmartre, the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower.

Another pleasant surprise has been free and priority access for persons with disabilities to museums and art galleries.  We have visited the Louvre and the Centre Pompidou without paying entry fees, nor (and this is far more important) queuing to get in.  The queue for the Louvre when we arrived early on Monday morning was several hundred people long, but we were ushered to the priority access entry, and didn't need to wait at all.  Normally, I'm not a fan of 'special' access, but avoiding the Louvre queue was impossible to turn down.  My companion joked that the free access was probably to compensate for not being able to see anything past the hordes of people in the museum, but we were ushered (again!) to the front of the crowd to see the Mona Lisa, and had the best view in the house.  Magnifique!