Intermission

I'm still traveling, and still blogging, but my love of technology has ham-strung me. I'm typing the entries up meticulously on my laptop, but due to the limitations of wireless networks (ie: there's none available), I can't upload them.

Good stories are on their way, I promise.

Day 12 – Poland and Propaganda.

We wake around midday, starving and wanting to see more of our new city, but before that, let me wrap up yesterday.

Firstly, our passports were not checked between Berlin and Krakow. Whether this isn't done, they do random spot checks or we successfully avoided a more thorough examination, I don't know, but we did. Secondly, the hostel we are in has a massive thick wooden door. Through this door, you have a broad tiled hallway, leading to a second wooden door. Through this door is a small courtyard, with a door in the opposite side leading to the hostel reception and rooms. Our room is on the fourth floor, and the reception staff are nice. (he looks a bit like a guy I went to high school with) Thirdly, my cold is getting worse, and I'm sick to the back teeth of it.

I wake to find D and J have headed off for food. Only having one key, and not knowing where they are, I send an SMS telling them I'm out and about, and will meet them back shortly. I am yet to get any currency, so my first port of call is an ATM, where I find out quite quickly, I have NO money. NONE. Panic enters, stage left.

Racing back to the hostel I jump on the computer and check my accounts, the resulting information calming me completely, and allowing me to form a new understanding of ATM's overseas. I use a credit card for all my banking, having all my accounts linked through it. My new info now shows that unless you get a choice of account on an ATM, they use the card type as a default (ie: credit), and draw the funds directly from there. So, I'm not out of money, rather my credit card is dead broke. A simple remedy of funds transfer applied once sees me happier with the state. J and D return shortly after, and we talk about what they saw. The exchange rate has really impressed them, and means we'll be eating like kings for our stay (plus, the size of the dishes is GINORMOUS).

Having regrouped, we head out for another walk around the city, and dinner. We traipse around the Old Town, and see some of the sights. Krakow as a city, is built around Vavel Castle, in two areas. The first area, is Old Town, which inhabits the space the original city would have (most buildings are fairly new, only a few hundred years old). The middle of Old Town is dominated by an open air market, that seems to run almost all hours of the day. Here you can by crafts, souvenirs, and a wide range of foods. We walk the square, and head down a street to walk by the castle itself. Sitting on the peak of a large hill, Vavel Castle overlooks all of Krakow, in remarkably good condition. After sighting a human sized beer tankard heading our way on it's own two legs, we continue our way out of Old Town.

J noted with some irony, that Old Town looks better and newer than the rest of Krakow, This can only be explained by the cycle of tourist money that is required to make an area more enticing, so as to make more money itself. Krakow itself is quite grey. There are tram lines, running an assortment of models, one that is the spitting image of the current 'new' trams in Melbourne. We head on and finally find a burrito bar for dinner. The burritos we order are massive, and leave us worried that we won't be able to finish the order. We make it through, feeling swollen, and head down the street for a drink. Finding a rather ramshackle looking place called “Propaganda”, we head in to find a liberally decorated bar, full of communist-era relics, posters and very very dim lighting. We drink, enjoy the gloom, and then head into the night again (D says the wine is atrocious). I head back to the hostel, my head feeling heavy and sore with cold symptoms again, the other two hunt down a jazz bar. Sleep shouldn't be a problem, tomorrow it might be as we are aiming to visit Auschwitz.

New Thing Learnt Today – Mexican food outside of Mexico is a varying affair.

Day 11 – Border Hopping and Secret Police.

Our final day in Berlin, we leave the hostel to make arrangements for our next leg. The working plan evolved last night quite quickly, the initial idea being that we head to Belgium to eat all the chocolate. Not a bad plan, but like so many, it did not survive contact with the enemy: ie timetables and expense. We could do Belgium, at a cost of 100 euros each, on a 12 hour train trip...and then not actually have a way back to London. (Ryan Air, the domestic/international european version of Jetstar and Virgin Blue, doesn't leave from Belgium for London!) Or...we could look elsewhere. We settle on Poland, it's new territory for the three of us, and it's also blessed with a way back to the UK. Buying our train tickets, we figure we have enough time to see some more of Berlin.

After learning about the struggles and political strangleholds that have afflicted Berlin, I was really curious to learn more about what was going on within the city itself. By now our knowledge of the Nazi movement, WW2 and the East/West Berlin scenarios are pretty good, but they are quite large-scale. Life within the city during those events was a very interesting, and in many cases terrifying, time. Our map had the “Stasi” museum marked on it, and like many important museums and displays in Berlin, it was totally free. We head there, and find it's not far off the track we've beaten for ourselves.

Supplied with english translations of the important displays, we make our way around. The Stasi started out in a dangerously flexible fashion. Being appointed for security, their charter was quite open and allowed them a lot of lateral flexibility. Over time they gained more and more powers, and became more and more aligned politically. Their role evolved to the point that they were becoming a secret police force tasked with monitoring the general populace for signs of insurgents, anti-party activities and espionage. The department grew and grew, at one time having 91,000 full-time staff, and 170,000 “unofficial collaborators” (snitches, informants, etc). The estimated ratio at it's peak was one Stasi member for every 24 Berliners, a hideous saturation and covert repression of all manner of basic rights.

The Stasi were involved in all kinds of clever and immoral activities – they tapped phone lines with abandon, could censor mail in any manner they deemed appropriate, counter-espionage tactics and equipment were created in meticulous manners. Their spycraft was mostly gained from stolen western technology, but advanced and re-applied in all manner of equipment. On top of that, it wasn't uncommon for someone to be pulled in off the street, made to sit on a special chair, and interrogated about their loyalties and activities. The poor person would be panicking and stressing, and in most cases, let straight back out on to the streets. The catch was that the chair had a piece of cloth attached to it that soaked up the sweat of the prisoner, and was then kept so that if that person ever went rogue, they had a method for tracking them down with their tracker dogs. People lived in fear of the Stasi – they could be anywhere, anytime, and working for the Stasi paid well, so the unofficial collaborators were often living quite good lives (covered by official Stasi legends to explain their wealth.) An oppressing time indeed.

As it turns out, this over-saturation appears to be also part of the death-knell of the Stasi's power. Having so heavily infiltrated communities and groups, if that group (such as a church congregation) decided they were going to march in protest, the Stasi spies had no choice but to join in – to step out would blow their cover. Eventually the department was disbanded, and their thousands and thousands of dossiers, reports and profiles were made available. The amount of paperwork they had generated is mountainous, and yet even more documentation was destroyed so as to keep the contents secret. Good riddance to them.

We retreat to the train station, and experience our final Berlin bar. The system here is quite high-tech, with the waitress wearing a mobile order device that allows her to type our request in, and then go serve the next table. The order has been transmitted to the bar/kitchen, and so she can just go pick it up once it's ready – genius!

Boarding the train, we have a cabin to ourselves, but as the tickets read 21, 22, 24 we think that's too good to be true. The train takes off and we start our voyage hurtling north through Germany. We stop at various places along the way, and pass through a barrelling storm that rocks the train ever so ungently. I slip in and out of sleep, mostly as we approach stations, fearing our cabin being invaded – and yes, it happens. A pair of german men join us, but keep fairly to themselves. I doze, and finally we pull screechingly into Warsaw Centralna.

Warsaw Centralna is a dark, concrete cavern. We shuffle up the escalators and find ourselves in concrete corridors, lined with small fluro tube-lit shops. to one side is a roped-off area containing a massive TV camera and crates of gear. We find an ATM, determine the exchange rate is highly in our favour (1 zloty is worth about 50c, or 22p), and get some cash. Further exploration of the station finds us a small smoke-filled bar, where we drink some much needed caffeine before heading out again. Not wanting to get trapped by choice as we were in Berlin, we decide to book our flights home now. A smart move, as we manage to find one at half-price. After wandering the station for another 20-odd minutes, we make our way down to the platform that we earlier determined as sort of being where we need to be (they don't mark the departures and arrivals by platforms, but rather by the group of platforms, ie: platforms 1 and 2 are back-to-back, you get the number of the entire area)

We wait patiently, as a train pulled in a few platforms away steams itself ready. Out of the window hangs 30-odd soccer hooligans waving scarfs, banging windows and chanting various soccer songs. I distinctly recognise the tune to “When The Saints Go Marching In.” Their train begins to pull out, backwards, and the chanting continues...then the train comes roaring back in, the chanting getting louder and more excited, before the train grinds to a halt. Chanting continues, and then abruptly stops. We hear a voice on a megaphone, and finally put two and two together – that camera from earlier is filming them. The director doesn't seem quite happy with that take, and so runs everyone back to their starting positions – train and all.

Ten minutes after our train was due to leave, we start getting a bit anxious. Not being able to speak Polish, our choices are limited. Suddenly, an announcement comes over, and everyone starts moving towards escalators. Figuring that they were waiting for the same trian, and that whatever affects them affects us, we follow. J bumps into someone who does speak english, and gets the gist of what's going on – due to our unruly actor friends, trains are being redirected to different platforms. We follow, happier in this knowledge.

The train backs in and out at least four more times that we see, the scarves waving more and more limply, the chanting becoming more discordant. Our train finally arrives, and I get my first truly eastern European experience. Everyone rushes to board, not caring on the carriage they got on, rather that they are on before it leaves. The train pulls out and we have to battle our way through four over-full carriages before we get to the sleepers. Thankfully we had paid additionally to have a sleeper, and it's well worth it. The beds are not brilliant, but they are mattresses, they have pillows and blankets, and I fall asleep in minutes.

We are woken at 6am by the helpful guard, who repeats “Krakow” as a mantra. We get ready and spend the last 20 minutes of our journey watching the Polish countryside trail by. Arriving at Krakow Glowny, (a much nicer station) we stumble off through a town that has an air about that says to me “Ballarat”, and find our hostel. We get in, we crash.

New Thing Learnt Today – Second Class travel is really not a great idea in Eastern Europe. Pay the premium.

Day 10 – Reichstag and Memories.

Today we have a day of wandering, armed with Tour Guide Mike's stories and knowledge. He very thoughtfully graffiti'd our map with an assortment of circles, acronyms and arrows to indicate places of interest that we really should see, but wouldn't on his tour. We deciphered the hieroglyphs, and recalling our newly gained geographic knowledge, decided to hit the Reichstag as a primary goal.

Marching down the Unter den Linden, we were stopped and asked for directions to a good restaurant. We had to laugh, as the question was asked in the vain hope that we were locals – see? A day here and already we've blended in! We're good. We sent them back the way we came, as we had seen eateries, value and quality being unknown.

The walk continued and took us past the main embassies. The british embassy is a modern design, with street blockades of silver vertical cylinders topped with bright red LED's. We saw a car approach, stop, and two of the cylinders retract into the ground to allow egress. Very slick! In contrast, the current American embassy has a 100ft danger zone surrounding it, with concrete emplacements, armed guards patrolling and checkpoint booths. I can't quite convey the feeling this evokes, but it's a mixture of sadness, irritation and being slightly bemused. They are so paranoid of terrorist attacks, they are exuding aggression in all directions. It's disappointing.

We reach the Reichstag, and are glad to find the oft-murmured tales of day-long queues are not true at this particular time. We do have to line up, but the line moves fairly fast, the doors opening and accepting approximately 30 people at a time. When the queue moves up sufficiently to allow us in, we see that there's an airlock setup, followed by a rather rigorous security check. The gruff german guard is directing people to put jackets, bags, etc on his x-ray conveyor, and not understanding a word of it, I watch closely to see what other people to, so as to be able to follow his instructions, language barrier withstanding. He must have overheard J, D and I talking, and switches to fluent english – these guys are good! We pass the muster, and head for a large lift, which takes the 30 of us directly to the top of the Reichstag.

The Reichstag was suspiciously burnt to the ground just after Hitler gained the power as Chancellor and just before Parliament could elect a new majority, and remained in a state of ruin for a long, long time. After the politics and breakdown of Berlin was resolved, the Reichstag was reinstated as the house of parliament, and a new glass and steel dome has been built to replace the original domed ceiling. A walkway corkscrews up through the dome to a viewing deck at the top, allowing panoramic views of the city. To be blunt, a lot of the view is quite unspectacular: roofs of buildings, grey smoke-stacks, lots of boring looking industrial emplacements. This is quite mundane, until you think about what this view represents – 17 years ago, a lot of this area was poorly built, and a great deal of what can be seen just wasn't there. Thinking in this frame of mind throws the view into perspective, and makes me appreciate it a whole lot more: I'm not just looking at Berlin, I'm looking at Berlin that wasn't here less than two decades ago. After walking the rooftop, braving the freezing rain and taking photos, we head back down the super-lifts.

From here, we're on the out-skirts of West Berlin, to our right is the new Government Quarter (shiny buildings of square and circle designs), and to the left is the Tiergarten. We decide to head left, and walk through a section of the garten as we head back towards the Brandenburger Tor. Something I noticed on the train ride into Berlin from their airport was the extremely common tall leafless trees. Tour Guide Mike had told us these trees were Linden trees, and that they are everywhere – he's right, they truly are everywhere. We stop at a Wurst stand, and eat some genuine german wursts (one wurst, many wurst?), which are truly some of the most delicious sausages I've ever had. The walk continues past the Tor, and takes us the grey expanse that is the Jewish Memorial.

Lining up, we are met by a multi-lingual guide (I love these people, yet am simultaneously hideously jealous) who informs us of a 15 minute wait, and a security check. The Memorial is a lot more than meets the eye – above ground it is the symbolic city of grey blocks, and all that may be represented by this, yet below ground is a startlingly in-depth Memorial that adds gravity and stark realism to what happened. A quote that Mike used was that “a death is a tragedy, one million deaths is a statistic” is fairly true – we cannot truly comprehend the horror and wickedness of such an act, as it's too enormous. The Memorial has stories of individuals who died during the Nazi regime, telling of their lives before, during and ultimately their ends. There are displays dedicated to families, again telling of their lives and the events they suffered, and ultimately where they are now, or how they died during the war. The atrocity is astounding. An organisation based in Israel is trying to gather a list of all those who died during this time, as records are incomplete, and entire families disappeared – Hitler's evil goals were almost achieved in some areas.

We leave the Memorial in a sober state, a much greater understanding of just how important this Memorial is, and what it represents. Now knowing this part of Berlin quite well, we guide ourselves back to Hackse Markt, and find a fantastic Turkish restaurant, it's décor a mish-mash of various mediterreanean styles (we spot greek plates on the walls), before retiring for the night to plan tomorrow's journey – that's right, off again!

New Thing Learnt Today – "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana

Day 9 – Walking The Streets and New Nationality.

It happened again. The amusement of this was quickly silenced by the authority on the topic held by the proclaimer.

We met at the designated point for the guided tour, and were instantly welcomed warmly by Tour Guide Mike. An enthusiastic man, he did introductions with the three of us, then found out a little about us, quickly determining that J and D lived in London, and I was on holiday from overseas – New Zealand to be exact. I laughed, and said no, but close. He was a little embarrassed, as he said I sounded like one of his. He was a Kiwi! And he mistook me! He later covered this by claiming I have a very international accent – inflections on certain words from various places, but nothing definite. Considering how many people have mistaken me so far, I think he may have a point.

Kiwi or not, Mike was incredibly knowledgeable of Berlin. We started at the Berlin Ufa Palace Theatre, famous for hosting the premiere of “Triumph Of The Will”, quickly running through the history of the partial church and more contemporary church across the way, before we left to meet the rest of the group. We meandered through some of the same areas we had touched on the day before, but he gave us a greater understanding of where we stood in regards to East and West Berlin. This is where my education began, and still has me reeling. The easiest ways to figure out where you are, are as follows: if you can see tram-tracks: East Berlin. If your pedestrian traffic signals are being provided by cartoon-like men with hats, East Berlin. Enter Ampelmann!

When the Soviets occupied East Berlin, they altered a great many things, outside of the economic and social climates. One of the most obvious was the changing of the traffic signals to the aforementioned character. After the Berlin Wall fell (more on that soon) and the reintegration began, Ampelmann began to disappear. Realising how important it was as a cultural symbol, this assimilation of signals halted, and Ampelmann has remained in all areas of East Berlin. He's now to Berlin what the Flinders St Clocks are to Melbourne.

Mike took us through many areas, we saw the Bebelplatz again, we learnt about why some statues are currently in boxes, (being made of marble the freezing weather can actually crack and destroy them!) why all the construction work on buildings is devoted to massive banner ads (they can't afford the construction without the ad money!) and a whole lot of more important history.

Symbolism is a big thing in Berlin. Nothing seems to be done without symbolistic reason, from the traffic light guy, to the double-bluestone line that now traces where the Berlin Wall stood, The new ministry building has a bridge through the centre of it, that also intersects the line the Wall once stood on. The Reichstag has a glass dome over the parliamentary meeting rooms to symbolise the transparency of the country's running. The victory monument representing three victories for the country, and facing France...

*Friedrich The Great always took to battle at the front of his men, in a red outfit - this was to hide any bleeding and wounds he might suffer, so his men would see him fight on, and not give up whilst he was at the front.

*To satisfy a lot of the French migrants who took up the city's offers to replenish it's populous, they built a Calvinist church, and then to mollify the disgruntled Lutherans, built a near identical one opposite.

*During the war, to protect a lot of the historical statues, they were removed from their pedestals and buried in caves, pits and other safe areas. After the war, they were reinstated, allowing the buildings to be redecorated as before.

*A number of the famous buildings in Berlin were totally destroyed by bombing raids. TOTALLY. These buildings have been re-built using as much of the original stone as possible, and new material used to help recreate the original architecture. This disproves what I thought I knew yesterday...

*A great deal of the city that was built after the Wall fell is built of glass and steel. The symbolism here is to represent the transparency and modern outlook the country now has. A number of older buildings have also embraced this style, and plated their upper-stories with glasshouse-like installations.

*The Jewish Memorial is a field of grey concret slabs. No two are the same height or angle of lean, and the meaning of the entire installation is ambiguous. The only meaning the sculptor gave was that he used the Jewish cemeteries as inspiration to his work, and you can definitely see that.

One hell of an amazing city...

New Thing Learnt Today – The Germans built no monument, no building, no detail without good reason.

Day 8 – Berlin and The Pergamon.

Getting up at 3:30 at either end of the day is disgusting, but the early one moreso. Shuffling around in the dark we packed our gear, grabbed our passports and rugged up against the darkness still outside. Anyone would think this kind of plan was to avoid the authorities, but we had a better, greater motivation: cheap flights to Berlin!

We raced out of the house, just narrowly catching a night bus to Stratford station (an hourly opportunity). From here we travelled in air-conditioned comfort to Stansted, an airport far more to my liking than Heathrow (with the exception of the female cops carring machine guns – although that did raise a Skyhooks-related smirk). We get to the gate and sit calmly waiting. It's now almost 6:30, and I feel pretty awake, but in need of caffeine and pain-killers. My throat is beginning to really give me grief. The ground crew come out in their fluoro-laced jump suits, and mumble to the stewardesses – we hear nothing, but it continues, and then boarding begins. We shuffle through getting our tickets ripped one by one, and are led out to the tarmac where a plane has stairs awaiting us. I thought planes with stairs like this only appeared in Hollywood movies and footage of the Beatles arriving to be screamed at – shows what I know.

We board, find our seats, and are waiting calmly for the thrum of the engines to kick in. I wait so calmly, I fall asleep. (not surprising really) We are soon woken and informed that there is a fault with the plane, and they are trying to fix it. i have a quick flashback to Hong Kong, but calm myself – these things don't happen twice? HA!

It's unfixable, and so another plane has been called for. They finally get us off the plane to a bus waiting on the tarmac, now being pelted by gale-force wind and icy rain. We race across to the bus' security, and cram ourselves in. The bus then takes off, winding through the planes and detritus present, before pulling up at a plane with stairs, but firmly closed doors. A ground crewman runs out, waving and shaking his head – not our plane. We trundle off again, and after a bit more winding, find our way back at the first plane. J, D and I realise this, and when the doors open, we don't move...unlike the 18 year old morons that race for the plane, only to be turned back by a guy who looks suspiciously like Linus Roache, aka Thomas Wayne from 'Batman Begins'. Eventually we are led to our plane, which we all eagerly board. We are then told that due to the change, they have no idea how long it will be before take off, and that there are no refreshments on board. In fact, the best they can offer is boiling water with ice – the plain water is not fit for drinking. We arrive in Berlin three hours late.

Language barrier aside, I like Berlin, I really like it. Everything is set out in very sensible, logical ways to be as efficient as possible. The hilarity here is that whilst the efficiency to get the task done is present, there is NO efficiency or thought given to the next step, ie: there are entrance queues, very neatly ordered, but nothing in the way of exit queues or ways out. The airport actually had an additionally walkway built outside the building to get us from Customs to the carousels! The train ride into Berlin is smooth, and we see an awful lot of the city. We quickly find a hostel, get a room and go find lunch. J has been craving sausages, and so we find a hearty meal of...Doner kebabs. Surprisingly good, these sate our hunger and we ramble off down Karl-Liebknecht Strasse.

Having been here before, J does a good job of tour-guiding, taking us past the Berliner Dom and through to Museum Island. Sitting in the centre of town, the Island houses five museums of different types (one's actually an art gallery, but I'm nit-picking- it's old art), and we weave our way through to the Pergamon Museum. A great big slightly deco slab, this building houses the most tremendous display I have ever seen – they have rebuilt the temple and altar from the city of Pergamon within the museum itself. Walls are covered in the intricately carved friezes that ran around the temple, depicting the gods in battle against the giants – the enormous children of Gaia. This art runs around three of the room's walls, whilst the entire eastern component of the temple has been re-created (with new material where required) and fills the massive hall. This truly remarkable display is accompanied by a collection of statues and carvings from the city, including the Apollo gate, and ionic columns so tall they go from ceiling to floor in this cavernous building. (Being a certified moron, I left my camera in London, but wikipedia has some INCREDIBLE photos of the above)

The other displays include the Ishtar Gate, a brightly coloured brick entrance way into the fabled city of Babylon, and a large number of the Assyrian carvings and decorations. The scale and completeness of it all is ridiculous. We don't build anything like they did: No scale, no beauty. All of a sudden, I felt like a member of a truly boring culture.

The rest of Berlin did an incredible job of reinforcing this. We continued to walk down the Platz, which soon became Unten den Linden, the main avenue. All around us were palaces, royal armouries, the Humbolt Unversity and Staatsoper (State Opera). All of these buildings are hundreds of years old, their ornate structures adourned with statues, regal proclamations across their entrances and other wonders. J took us through the Bebelplatz, most famous for the atrocity which was Joseph Goebbels' Nazi book burnings. To remember this event, a symbolistic monument has been built into the ground – a square room can be viewed through plexi-glass below the platz, entirely white with book-cases floor-to-ceiling, completely empty. The starkness of this statement is obvious, and when I'm later told that you could fit one copy of each of the forbidden 20,000 titles in there, it rings true.

We retire back to the hostel and plan the next day's activities – a guided tour of the city, to really cover all bases and figure out what else we want to see, before heading out for true german food. We settle on a steak restaurant not far away, where the ever-helpful germans quickly determine our speech impediment, and alter their approach accordingly. This is a hallmark of the city – anyone who can, switches language and trips through it to assist us. I feel stupid, but very grateful.

New Thing Learnt Today – Traffic light men are of great cultural significance...

Day 7 – Shakespeare and Tradition.

We had left Lorna and Ben at the Holborn Tube station with rushed goodbyes and shouts of catching up together for a theatre show the following night (today). I half-remembered this upon waking, one because Lorna and Ben were cool, and my first real english friends (i'm discounting Shen at GW, he could only talk shop), and two because I have a bit of a sneaking desire to see a real-life West End show.

D and J finally rise from their slumber, like beasts awoken after aeons of hibernation. But not as many tentacles. We have a massive cook-up of various foods for breakfast, and decide to continue their long-standing tradition of trying to visit the Tower Of London. I do some e-snooping and discover that the Tower is still standing (a good thing), and is open for tourists. I'm a real detective like that.

The Tower has been standing for a hell of a long time, having served as a palace, an armoury, a place of torture and now the resting place of the Crown Jewels. Legend has it that if the ravens-in-residence are ever to fly from the Tower then the monarchy, the empire, the tower itself, will fall and be nothing but ruin. To avoid this, their must always be six ravens present. The Brits have dealt with this admirably – they currently have nine, and have clipped the wings of them all. (Incidentally, the oldest raven lived until 44 and was named Jim Crow. These birds live well)

As far as a resting place for the Crown Jewels goes, this is something the Brits have also developed to a fine art. This has been due to necessity, as they have proved to be a bit too tempting in the past. The best example of theft I could find (quite possibly the first), was by a man named Colonel Thomas Blood (yes, a military man!). At the time of Col. Blood's attempt, the routine was thus: a visitor paid a “viewer's fee”, and the Custodian unveiled the crown jewels for viewing. This is not a euphimism. Anyhow, Blood was a genius – he bound and gagged the Custodian and took them. Not exactly rocket science, but definitely a wake-up call.

As it turns out, J and D have a tradition too. In his two years, and her one in London, they have attempted to visit the Tower three times. On all occassions they were foiled by timing, delays or other (I never found the 'other' out, and think it's probably best not to ask). Anyway, today marks attempt #4. We arrived with time before closing, but only 15min before final admittance, which would give a maximum of 45mins. This wasn't enough time to do it justice, so we decided we'd try next week. We then decided there were numerous other objects of interest in the near vicinity, so we did them.

The monument to the Great Fire of London is a monolithic statue of great importance. Important enough to get it's own Tube station. (that's important.) It stands at such a point that if it were to fall directly north, it's gleaming tip would land precisely at the location of the King's Bakery – the starting point of said fire. It's also closed for repairs.

We hitch a ride on a Thames Ferry, and tootle on down to an object of much curiosity to myself, at least. Amongst the various buildings on the south bank, is the only building in London allowed to have a thatched roof (these rooves have been outlawed due to the above Fire), it is none other than Shakespeare's Globe theatre, a great white circular building most recently famous for it's real-life cameo in 'Doctor Who'. (p.s. the current build has more than 14 sides, just so you know...)

The Globe is not the original. No, the original turned to ash when a stage cannon fired a little too pyrotechnically and burnt the place down. The second one suffered a similar fate when the puritans decided that theatre was a 'den of sin'. Considering how prostitution was not only condoned but encouraged in certain parts of the theatre, this isn't too radical an idea. The third was built on a new location, close to the original, using traditional methods yet created slightly out-of-scale. Still in use, it's an open-aired theatre with seating, standing room (no mosh pits), and no stage cannons. A beautiful construction, we took our time trolling through the museum having a look at the stagecraft originally employed, the costumes used, and a great deal of props and scenes currently in use.

We left Shakespeare at closing time, along with a sighting of the strangest sundial I've ever seen (no really, it was on the side of a building and made very little sense). Down the way was a pub that we decided was worth a shot, and soon made our way home. D knew the area well due to working nearby, so this was a quick-n-easy activity. Getting home, I collapsed into bed not feeling myself, and also aware of the next morning's requirements.

I don't normally get up at 3:30...

New Thing Learnt Today: “The Walrus And Carpenter” is an eatery that doesn't serve Oysters. Shameful.