James & Heather Travelogues

Just a quick posting to vent: we have just suffered the misery that is Charles De Gaulle Airport. I have been through some dodgy airports (the one in Lanzarote springs to mind) but seriously this CDG is the worst by miles, or more accurately lightyears.

On arrival at the airport station, you are presented with 3 choices of terminal to go to but no information as to which airlines fly from each terminal. Not a problem except each terminal is a couple of miles from the station and you have to catch a shuttle bus to each one, except terminal 3. We took a random guess of it being terminal 1, but it turned out to be terminal 3- naturally. We caught the shuttle bus back there and then had about a 1km walk to get to the actual terminal itself. During this walk, I suggested to Heather that the airport has to stop the traffic when a plane takes off because it looks as if they share the same road.

On arrival, we had a queue of hundreds in front of us and the check in staff quite frankly were not only slow but at random intervals wandered off for no apparent reason. When we eventually got to check in, the check in clerk said "your boarding time is now" - and we still had the joys of passport control to get through. However, that was not a problem as there were still people stuck behind us, so they had to delay the flight to get them all processed.

On getting through passport control, we were keen to get something to eat & drink because we had left the hotel at 6am. €19 Euro later, we were the proud owners of a sandwich and a coke each. I was tempted to get them preserved in isopon rather than consume them at the price we paid.

In short Charles De Gaulle airport is terrible and I will never whinge about Heathrow terminal 4 again.

We boarded our overnight train in Prague; fortunately we had a sleeper to ourselves so were able to relax a little. By 10pm however, we were both pretty tired having watched the Australia vs Brazil game earlier that evening. We turned the light off and looked forward to a good night´s sleep.

At around 2am, we were woken by the noise of our door being repeatedly bashed in and a harsh voice telling us to open up. It was the bundescoppers, and they were probably hoping for a couple of untermensch that they could play with. However, like good herrenvolk we handed over our passports, and seeing that we were both English, left us alone. It was at this point that I noticed the difference in the styles of border police: most glance at my passport photo and wave me through. This bundescopper examined my picture carefully and then looked at me. Unlike in Thailand, he didn´t laugh and seemed to be itching to arrest me. I think if I had not had Heather there, I would have been doing my own remake of Midnight Express.

Eventually we arrived in the town we were staying in (Aachen) and checked into our hotel. It was the day before the England game, so we took the opportunity to explore the town. It´s a pretty small one that was the regional capital under Charlemagne and seems to have an interesting attraction towards horses. Everywhere you look, there are statues of horses.

On the 20th, we headed in to Cologne proper for the game. On arrival at the station, it was a sea of people bedecked in national colours, whether Germany, England, Sweden or whomever. Fortunately, not a single person was in the mood to cause trouble and good natured bantering was the order of the day. We had planned on visiting the stadium before kick off but decided that it was more important to find a decent spot to watch the game. This is where German efficiency really kicked in...

After so many tournaments with fans turning up without tickets and hanging out in pubs before getting in to fights, the German authorities created outdoor stadiums with huge (6 metre or so) TV screens showing the games. Within these stadiums, they provide eating, drinking and toilet facilities and have a DJ playing music and keeping the crowd entertained. That way, fans do not need to get in to cramped pubs, get in each others way or cause trouble. The stadium we were in was along the Rhine and was packed with 35,000 fans - both Swedish and English, plus a few others thrown in for entertainment. The atmosphere was really good and it was nice to see England top their group. What was not so nice was that it was not a win, and Michael Owen´s injury has forced Crouch in to a first team position. England´s chances of winning the World Cup have just evaporated.

After Slovakia, we got back aboard another train and headed to the UNESCO-listed city of Prague.

On arrival, our first task after checking in was to find a suitable tavern to watch the next couple of days of football matches, including two particularly important games: England vs Trinidad and Australia vs Brazil. The one we eventually decided on was an Irish bar that had sattelite feeds from the UK, so we were able to get ITV or BBC coverage for the games. A good result!

When not giving our livers a pounding, we spent our time wandering a round the old town centre of Prague. The variety of architectures that abound in Prague, and the fact that it has managed to avoid being flattened during one of the many wars that have taken place on the European mainland. As such, it is a very beautiful city where even an ´ordinary´street will contain many pieces of beautiful architecture.

The two of the most noteworthy aspects of the city are the Gothic castle on one side of the river, overlooking the main town on the other side. The other noteworthy building is the old cathedral, the best way I can think of describing it is Sleeping Beauty´s castle, as seen on the Disney cartoon.

After too short a time, our time in Prague had to end as we had an overnight trip to Cologne for the final England group game.

Having spent a day exploring Hong Kong island, we decided a trip to Kowloon was in order.

Kowloon is the home of the Hong Kong film industry, and is also the mecca for most backpackers coming to Hong Kong. The reason for this is that is where you can find cut price tailors, knock off DVDs, watches, etc. We took a commuter ferry across the water to get there on a Sunday and the place was heaving, even on the day of rest.

Having wandered through the markets, we headed towards Kowloon park as it was recommended by the Lonely Planet guide. Instead an oasis of green in the a concrete jungle, it was a flat concrete clearing in a concrete jungle. Not quite what we expected, to say the least. One benefit of going on a Sunday though is that there is a Kung Fu demonstration that runs for a couple of hours every Sunday afternoon. We watched it for about half an hour, before our interest waned. Although I have done a couple of forms of Kung Fu in my life (Lau Gar and Choy Lee Fut to be precise), I found the was an over emphasis on Tai Chi, which I don't find that interesting and most Westerners do it wrong anyway - this made what was being demonstrated a bit boring to be quite frank.

After this we were gagging for a coffee, so we thought we would head to a Starbucks (yes, I know its a monolithic corporation but these were desperate times). Unlike Hong Kong island, where you can find a Starbucks every 30 paces or so, it took as an hour to found anything (which turned out to be a local Hong Kong chain of coffee shops rather than Starbucks anyway). Rather than get takeaways, we decided to relax and read the local paper. Pity that the first article I saw was Wayne Rooney breaking his foot - that Royally stuffs England's chances...

Later on in the day, we did an hour long cruise around the harbour on the commuter ferry and watched the sun set on our fourth day in Hong Kong. Then it was back to Kowloon for a spot of dinner in a restaurant.

After Slovenia, we stopped off in Bratislava in Slovakia for a couple of days. We caught the train from Slovenia to Vienna, and then from Vienna to Bratislava, taking about 6 hours all up and arriving on Sunday afternoon.

First impressions were not favourable, we were in this dump of a city with no local currency, no where to change any of the Euros we had and our bank account would not let us draw out any money. Never mind, it was only a ten minute walk to the place we were staying, our so we thought. Unbeknownst to us, there are 2 stations at Bratislava and we had exited at the border stop of Petrajelka, miles away from the main station where we were meant to get off. After yomping around for 20 minutes, we decided enough was enough and flagged a cab down and convinced him to take payment in Euros.

We arrived at our apartment, having a brief conversation with the person that was going to let us in via the taxi driver as their English was better than our Slovakian, but not enough for us to explain where we were. Our apartment was in the old part of Bratislava, which is a beautiful city in central European style and much better than the rows upon rows of ugly housing estates that were constructed during the Communist era. Things were looking up, already...

Our second day was spent waiting for Australia to play their first World Cup match in 34 years, with Heather getting more and more anxious as kick off approached. When the final whistle blew, I had an elated Heather to deal with and we celebrated with a little bit more beer (at $1.50 Australian for half a litre, you can imagine how much more was consumed .

Our third and last full day (today) was spent wandering around the old town, which is dominated by a Gothic castle, until a thunderstorm set in. It was pretty cool walking around a central European castle with thunder and lightning, pity it wasn't night and there were no werewolves out.

Tomorrow, it is back on a train for a trip to Prague and a couple more football matches.