Airport Security

One of the small frustrations with travelling in the post 9/11 world, is the security concerns in every airport.  Our experiences with security had some interesting turns.

The rule about flying is that anything that looks like it can be used as a weapon has to go in the luggage that gets checked in. The words they use are “all edged or blunt objects.” That is just about everything!  In your hand luggage you can take books and some clothes, but snacks and liquids become another challenge.  The agriculture guys get you if you have any fruit or veg because of the threat of contamination, a la Dutch Elm disease.  Any liquids are presumed to be the makings of an improvised bomb, and quantities are severely limited. Normally all liquids and pastes, etc. need to be in containers of less than 100 ml, and need to be carried in a see through zip lock bag separate from the rest of your stuff.

So in each airport you now have a massive cadre of minimum wage security personnel checking every passenger. The job is mind numbing, and it likely doesn’t attract the most brilliant or the best. They spend hours each day arranging the things you carry in your pockets in little plastic trays so that the stuff can go through an x-ray machine, and so that you can go through a metal detector without getting the dreaded ‘beep’.  The guy looking at the x-rays has the worst job of all. 

I am sure that after a while ennui sets in and that many security guys (and girls) are just looking for the obvious. It becomes apparent when you have to pass through security several times in one day and only one guy, late in the day, picks you up for something that has been in your bag or pocket all day.

Such was the case with me.  I had packed a small radio frequency scanner in my carry-on bag so that I could dial up the airport and security frequencies while waiting in the lounges, and listen to the things going on. I also had a small wire connector/adapter that connected a much bigger HF antenna to the scanner so that I could listen to Radio Canada International and get the Stanley cup games.  The entire business was the size of a tic-tac box and (I realized later) looked extremely suspicious on an x-ray machine. I successfully passed through security in Victoria, flew to Calgary, successfully passed through security in Calgary, flew to Amsterdam but was stopped, after flying 14,000 km, by a sharp eyed security guard in Schiphol who spotted the unusual electronic bundle in my bag. He made me take it all out and prove to him that it worked and that it was not a transmitter, simply a receiver. It was all very easy, but made me question the attentiveness of the first two security checks.

In a similar vein, Nancy bought a bundle of Gouda cheeses to bring home.  She stuffed them into her carry-on along with her iPod shuffle and headphones and the AC adapter for her laptop (which I was carrying).  I went through security first, and I looked back at the x-ray screen and saw Nancy’s bag up on the screen at the same time as another bag was on the screen. I was somewhat alarmed when I saw the row of cheeses and wires and what looked like a homemade bomb.  But here is the rub, another bag beside Nancy's had a half empty coke in it. The security guy pressed the panic button and the bag with the coke in it was taken aside and the man who owned the bag had to take everything out. They took the half a coke away and threw it in the garbage. Meanwhile the cheese made it through! I thought, if you think the coke it dangerous then why do you put it in the garbage right beside the x-ray machine? Why not just make the guy take a drink and then let it go? The art of slight-of-hand (or distraction) allowed Nancy's much more suspicious looking package through!

I have come to the conclusion that the same folks that run the security companies also run the drink concessions (that charge $5 for a tiny thing of water) inside the secure area. They are uniquely situated to make sure that tired, sweating, nervous, hungry and thirsty passengers are stripped of anything to eat or drink before being locked in a too hot, boring waiting area for two or three hours. It is a license to print money!

Ever notice that the security guys and the people that run the concessions could all be related? And that they all look like terrorists? 

Just sayin'.

Places to stay.

I just wanted to put my thoughts down regarding using the internet to find private places to stay when traveling. Recall that we booked all our accommodation on this trip through internet resources such as VRBO (Vacation Rentals by Owner) and AirBnB. During this trip we rented three apartments, one in Brixton, one in Budapest, and one in Amsterdam. Despite some of the quirkiness of the rental in Budapest, all three were better than we expected and were a bargain when compared to hotels. They were all clean, close to either public transport links, or right in the city center. The prices were as advertised (there were no hidden costs).

Two of the three were small one bedroom apartments complete with some food and everything else needed. The rental in Budapest was a two bedroom apartment (because there were four of us) and came with no food. It did however have a bunch of wine and bottled water available to purchase in the apartment.

The owners in both Brixton and Amsterdam were great hosts. Fiori (in Brixton) left us enough food for several days. The place was fully stocked with condiments and all the other stuff that you only need to buy once in a while. Her tea was the best we've ever had. Daniel (in Amsterdam) left us a bunch of breakfast stuff in the fridge (bread, eggs, yogurt, cheese, milk, and butter) and someone came and restocked the stuff while we were out. All three places had great kitchens with all the facilities of home. Daniel even had a housekeeper come in three times over the week and clean up. All three places had washers and dryers, and two had dishwashers. They all had complete bathrooms (Budapest had two), but in Amsterdam there was only a shower, no bathtub.

The experiment of finding private places to stay through the internet was a huge success. Try it the next time you travel and save some money.  The other bonus is you get to meet people who are not connected to tourism to the same degree as hoteliers. Nice!

A Tourist in Amsterdam

We have been doing the classic tourist routine since we arrived here in Amsterdam. We decided that we would visit one “must see” tourist attraction each day. Day one we went to the Van Gogh Museum. Day two we went to FOAM, the FOtographic museum of AMsterdam. Day three we went to the Roots Music Festival. Day four we went and saw the Anne Frank House.

Without exception we have been somewhat dissapointed with what we found at each attraction. This harkens back to Alain de Botton's observations in The Art of Travel, where he notes that travellers are often dissapointed when the reality of a destination does not live up to the imagination of the traveller.

The Van Gogh Museum is a good example. Before leaving Victoria, Nancy and I went to the IMAX Van Gogh movie. It dealt with the life and art of Van Gogh in a very high tech and spectacular fashion, comparing actual scenes with his paintings of them, revealing clearly how he saw the world. The Museum, however, simply has the paintings hanging on the walls, with minimum descriptions of what was going on in Van Gogh's life when he did the painting. The museum was also full of kids getting their compulsory cultural development. It was hot, and and there was no place to sit down and relax in the shadow of a Van Gogh painting. The IMAX movie, one the other hand, was comfortable, very engaging and full of information and details on the artist and his life. The paintings shown in the movie were the same as the ones displayed at the museum. The Museum was 14.50 euros ($21) each, and the movie was $10.50 each. We could have saved the 29 euros.

Similarly, the Anne Frank House, another “must see” in Amsterdam, was also a let down. We queued for about an hour (despite arriving just after it opened in the morning) with dozens of young teenage girls swarming the place in school groups. The access is very carefully regulated because there is not much room inside. It seems that once they reach capacity (not very many people), they only let the same number in as come out. That is fine, but it does mean a long wait.

Inside the house it is quite dark to reflect what it was actually like during the stay of the Frank family. There is no furniture in the home because Otto Frank, the only survivor and Anne's father, didn't want any furniture in the house when it became a museum. There are small one paragraph descriptions of the Frank's life on the walls, and some pictures, but they are hard to see because they are not lit up. The entire experience is a one way trip along a route through the house and then into a neighbouring house with a small installation on the German concentration camps. A big chunk of the real estate is the coffee shop and the book store. The book store sold The Diary of Anne Frank in a zillion different languages and that was it. The cost to get in was 8.50 euros. You would be better served to read the book, watch the movie, and read about Anne Frank on the internet.

It is risky to criticize these landmark attractions and maintain any credibility at all. After all, they are supposedly “must see” attractions. I suppose my main criticism is not that they exist, or that they are universally thought to be the thing to do when in Amsterdam. It is that they are so expensive and so disappointing. Couldn't the Van Gogh Museum show some films about the artist and provide something other than passing glimpses of the paintings through a crowd? Couldn't they provide a bench to sit on and ponder the works of the master? Clearly the idea is to get as many people, in the minimum time, through these places as is possible. Sitting and thinking is not encouraged except in the cafeterias, and only then if you buy something. 

Anne Frank queue.

Roots Festival, Tuareg blues music.

Signs outside the Anne frank house.

 Art and history as business I suppose.

In between visiting the museums, we have been walking all over Amsterdam. The place is fascinating. It is concentric rings of canals and the associated roads with radials that run straight out out the city. The bicycle reigns supreme on the roads and the sidewalks. They seem to have priority over everything else. If you are crossing the street looking for cars, you may miss the bike screaming at you with their obligatory bell ding-a-linging to warn you of the impending collision. We find crossing roads very interesting because we have to deal with successive layers of bikes, scooters, cars and trams coming from each direction. It really is an interesting dance avoiding everything each time you need to cross a street. We have yet to figure out the lights. There are lights for the cars, the bikes, the street cars, and the pedestrians and they are all different. It seems the scooters are able to use the bike paths if they don't wear a helmet, and must use the road if they do wear a helmet. It really is good sense to check and check again when crossing the street.

Scoots on the bike paths.

Shoppers.

Mom on a pickup bike.

 

Bikes everywhere.

The action on the street is fabulous! There are young people dressed in odd costumes everywhere. They stand on boxes and you can have your picture taken with them for a euro or two. Dam square has many buskers doing all the usual stuff. Every corner seems to have someone playing the accordion. If you take pictures of any of them they want money.

A Canadian Houdini act.

Pictures?

 

Every cafe and every drinking establishment has tables and chairs on the sidewalks. There is a distinct difference between cafes and coffee shops. Cafes sell coffee, coffee shops sell weed. The smell is the big clue. If smoking dope in a coffee shop doesn't appeal to you, you can visit smart drug stores where they will sell you some to take home and smoke or some “space cake” so you don't have to smoke it at all.

Lunch time cafe view.

 The red light district is another must see. It was not disappointing. The streets are full of stoned/drunk men, generally speaking English, wandering around from bar to bar looking at the women. There are also many tourist couples (like us) wandering around looking at the women, who are looking at us, each wondering what the other is doing. Of course pictures are strictly verboten and the reaction to picture takers is nasty, brutish but maybe not short.

There are also hookers elsewhere other than the red light district. It seems to be tolerated just about anywhere.

Amsterdam is a vibrant fun place to visit. The museums are expensive and mediocre, but the walks to get to the museums are full of interesting things. Everything is within walking distance of downtown. The whole city is not that big; 750,000 people and 600,000 bikes, all in a couple square kilometers.

Beer bicycle. Everyone pedals an drinks except the guy steering.

Check it out sometime.

Amsterdam in pictures.

Some bad rides.

Proper bike parking.

Alternative transportation.

Alternative parking solutions.

Character bikes.

Proper locking systems.

Company in the shitter!

Trendy sprague gear.

Shoe central.

Part time employment.

All kinds of mushrooms... yes those too.

Rene Descartes' opinion of the city.

After eating the mushrooms.

Budapest

They say that travel is a form of education. Certainly, our three days in Budapest were an education.

Our learning started when we went to catch our flight from Weeze airport, near Dusseldorf. Weeze was an RAF base (RAF Laarbruch) that used to house squadrons of various fighters over the cold war years. It is now an airport for low cost airlines. When we drove up it was interesting to see all the old base buildings still there, but not being used. Even the fighter shelters in the dispersal areas were still there, all grown over with weeds and grass.

Our plane was an Airbus 320 flown by Wizz airlines out of Hungary. The plane was bright pink and purple. It looked like a Barbie plane! Because Weeze is a low cost airport and Wizz is a low cost airline, things ran a little different at the check in gate. We had only one carry on bag each (to keep things simple) and it was limited to 6kg. The departure gate was a pack of people all milling around waiting to be the first on the bus to the plane, because there was no assigned seating. You can imagine that I was keen to be first on board and score an emergency exit seat with some extra legroom. The gate opened and it was a mad rush to get on the bus. We were among the last people on the bus, but THE FIRST OFF! Nigel and Moira, our travel partners, sprinted on ahead and GOT THE EMERGENCY EXIT SEATS! In fact the stewardess, a tough Hungarian woman, gave us four seats of the six and kept everyone else away from the other two vacant seats. It was brilliant! Best seats on the plane! Well done M & N!

The flight was uneventful and the connecting train ride into Nyugati station in Budapest was about 20 minutes. The flat that Moira had arranged was 5 minutes walk from the station. Yanos, our host, met us at the door into the apartment building. His sidekick Josef, was waiting in the apartment. The apartment was the kind of thing you would expect in a big ex-communist city. It was a peculiar design in an old building (1880) that had seen a bit of renovation. It was very clean however, and had all we needed. The interesting part was the handover from Yanos and Josef. We sat down at the kitchen table and they went through the detail of how to lock the doors and how to keep the place clean and to take care of it, but they didn't stop there, they actually made us lock and unlock the door so they could see we could do it. They wrote down the reading on the electric meter and gas meter and told us they were worried that we might use too much gas and electricity. It was quite bizarre. When we were leaving, three days later, they checked every glass and plate to see if we had chipped any. They even smelled the pots to see if we had burnt any. It seems that suspicion runs deep in the Hungarian psyche.

The hole is where the Soviet crest used to be.

Budapest itself was an interesting contrast of the falling down decrepit buildings left over from the communist era, and the buffed up renovated classic building that western companies have bought and improved. There was graffiti everywhere. Beautiful buildings stood next door to ones that looked horrible. The people were not friendly or helpful. We were almost victims of a scam where unscrupulous tram inspectors ask to see tourists' tickets knowing full well that many tourists will have had difficulty figuring out the ticket system. I had moments earlier taken a picture of the inside of the tram and the inspectors told me to delete the picture! Fortunately we had figured the tickets (and I deleted the pic). We saw the same group of inspectors with another tourist victim minutes later, trying to get the 6000 forint (30 euro) fine out of her.

Facades coming off the building.

We did enjoy the food in Budapest very much. Our worst meal was in a touristy place up in the castle in Buda. Our best meals were in little homey places in Pest. The price of food and booze was great. 10,000 forint ($50) was lots of money for a couple drinks, appies, a meal and duff for four. The food made the visit.

The other thing that was fabulous was the thermal spas. We visited the Szenchenyi Bath (a short walk from our apartment) and had a fabulous time. It had 3 outdoor and about 15 indoor pools. They were all different temperatures and sizes, with varying mineral content as well. Some are as hot as 40 degrees Celsius, while the coldest one was 14! There were several saunas and steam rooms (all required bathing suits on) with different scents mixed in the steam. It was really invigorating. We spent more than three hours there soaking up the benefits.

We also visited the House of Terror. It is a building (right around the corner from our apartment) that used to house prisoners of the communist and fascist regimes. Many people were tortured and spent many years in the cellars of the building as political prisoners. They have done a good job of organizing the exhibits and the visit had a leaves you wondering just how low man can go. 

We spent our final day in Buda (across the Danube from Pest) visiting Buda castle and visiting the huge market in Pest. The Castle was a great walk and has 800 years of history. However it is full of tourists and school kids and even a coffee needs a mortgage. The market was similar, full of tourists, just like us, buying vast quantities of paprika to take home, just like us. They are both 'must see' things despite the touristy feel.

All in all, our visit to Hungary was pleasant enough. It is not the best place we've visited this trip, but it did make us appreciate having the good fortune to be born into the western world.

P.S, We also got the exit row seats on the way home. Those Hungarian stewardesses were taking good care of us!

For Will

Proof:

Bavaria

After returning from our Baltic blast, Nancy and I winged our way to Munich for a quick visit. We were greeted at the Munich airport by our gracious hosts, Marilyn and Eckhart, and whisked back to their fabulous central Munich flat on the S-Bahn (stadtsschnellbahn or city fast road) train. The train took us into Munich and dropped us a two minute walk from their flat. Central living at its best.

Street Art

Olives in the Biergarten.

The real McCoy!

After a bite to eat our hosts took us on a walk around the area, and we were pleasantly surprised to find just how close to everything they actually were. The Isar river park was about three buildings away. The park runs the full length of the Isar river as it passes through Munich splitting the city in halves. It provides many miles of walking and cycling paths as well as other forms of recreation including swimming, and surfing (yes surfing). The city has gone to great lengths to clean up the river and bring it back to its natural state as much as possible. The people of Munich are making good use of the resource.

Surfing uder a bridge on the Isar.

Munich is a city made for alternative travel. There are many ways to get around without using the dreaded automobile. There is the previously mentioned S-Bahn, the U-Bahn (underground), trams, bicycles and, of course, foot. We used them all. We stayed with Marilyn and Eckhart for four nights and didn't even see their car (they do claim to have one).

Bike path traffic lights.

The first day we spent walking around town visiting various historical sites, including the spot where Hitler gave many speeches, and the spot where the first assasination attempt on him was made by Johann Georg Elser. We visited the largest (and most expensive) outdoor store ever, Globetrotter, where we spent as little as possible. The store was so big that there was a pool inside where you could try different kayaks and canoes before you bought one.

After dinner we spent the last couple hours of light learning to play boules (bocce) in the park before walking over to one of the ubquitous beirgartens for a beer. Who knew that you can't get beers in smaller than one liter steins after four oclock? That is probably why the public transport is so good! Boules is big in Munich. Apparently, on some days you can't walk on the gravel paths in the parks because there are so many people playing.

The next day we were off early on a Bavarian adventure. We caught the S-Bahn across the city and then transferred to the BOB (Bavarian Overland Bahn, full of hikers) to take us up into the Bavarian alps to Schliersee so we could go hiking and swimming Bavarian style. By Bavarian style, I mean that whenever the urge to swim strikes you, you drop your strides and leap in. We reserved west coast Canadians brought our bathing suits, but they were not really neccesary. One of the local hazards, particularily for naked hikers, is the all too common Lxodes Ricinus or Bavarian tick. Nancy was fortunate enought to be the meal for two of these little buggers. They are easy enough to remove but I had to spend some time searching her nether regions looking for them. Wonderful!

The BOB full of hikers.

Schliersee

We spent that evening in a grudge match of boules with a couple who are friends of Marilyn and Eckhart. They are 67 and 72 and live on the 6^th floor of a walk-up (no elevator) apartment building. How's that for a fitness program? Everything they have had to be carried up the stairs. How's that for reducing clutter? They won an award for the unique design of the apartment when they built it over 20 years ago. The view from the terrace across the top of Munich is terrific. Nancy's beginner's luck carried the day at boules and we won!

Our final day in Munich involved a long walk across the city along the Isar and a visit to the Deutsche Museum of technology. We wound up the long day of standing and walking with a swim in the Mueller'sches Volksbad Munich, a very old classic pool. Of course the same rules applied in Munich as in Damp, and no-one was making waves.

A vertical takeoff 104!

Schindler's lift.

Munich is a great place to visit (and live)!