Leg Joints

The weather in Iceland

2009-03-14T02:06:00.005+02:00

A strong gale warning (more than 20 m/s) is in effect for many parts, except in the east.

There's a snow storm outside at the moment. I took a walk around the back gardens of the flats I'm staying in. There's a semi-communal grassy area with benches, though this evening the grass has become covered in snow. It's just gone midnight. The wind has become stronger. It was a struggle walking against it back to the back door of the flat.

It wasn't that cold yesterday. Above zero, but I think today has been about 4 below.

They don't call it Iceland for nothing. And they don't call Greenland Greenland because it's green, because it isn't, and probably never has been. There's a myth that the Vikings named Greenland Greenland because it was green, but this is untrue. Eric the red wasn't red after all. The Vikings probably named it Greenland because they wanted volunteers to come forward to settle the place. If they'd called it Icywildernesscoveredinglaciers they might not have got many volunteers. Did they get many Vikings volunteering to settle in Iceland? Not that many I don't think. It's always had a pretty small poputation. Went down to 1800 at one point apparently, in the middle ages. They say about a third of Icelanders can trace their roots back to that 1800 people. But there are more immigrants these days. Quite a few Thai restaurants around, and we went to a Mexican place yesterday which put way too much salt in the soup.

Iceland has the largest glacier in Europe.

Vatnajokull covers an area of 8,000 square km (5,500 square miles) and is, at its deepest point, more than 900 metres thick.

But glaciologists say it's now melting at a rate of a metre a year

Iceland

2009-03-13T15:05:00.002+02:00

Iceland has a population of 300,000 people, most of whom live in Reykjavik. The tap water here smells of sulphur. According to the National Museum of Iceland, 65% of the original female settlers came from the British Isles whereas most of the original male settlers were Scandanavians.

Iceland sits on the geological divide between the continental shelves of North America and Europe. Reykjavik sits on the American continental shelf, but most of the rest of Iceland is in Europe.

Last night, after spotting some Northern Lights, we listened to (and watched) some Icelandic punk on YouTube:

Purrkur Pilnikk - this is a made up name - it doesn't mean anything

Here is a young Bjork in Tappi Tikarass in 1982. She was very young, 17 or 18 perhaps, and pregnant with her first child.

Þeyr - "Rúdolf". Þeyr means them. Þ is pronounced like a th. Them seem to be obsessed with goosestepping Nazis.

Why is America going to go bankrupt and what are going to be the effects of this?

2008-03-17T19:45:00.001+02:00

This was shot just over a year ago in Paris but it seems quite topical now.

Ritzy Cafe, Brixton

2008-03-14T17:51:00.002+02:00

Listening to some people on the other side of the cafe talking about cycling: cyclists breathe in less pollution than car passengers apparently, according to a woman who sounds like she knows what she's talking about, though often the people who sound like they know what they're talking about are the ones who don't. It's because of the height, she says. Cyclists are higher up, unless they're children or recumbants, so the air they take in is better quality, whereas cars take in air from lower down which is where the pollution hangs.

Grudge Monkey

2008-02-17T19:16:00.005+02:00

Discovered the Parfitt brothers' new band on MySpace and listened to some before getting cut off, perhaps for having too slow an internet connection. Still no internet at home so sitting in the Ritzy cafe, where the wifi is a bit unstable, but free and comfortable. Also warm. No heating in the flat since I can't get the boiler to light, and British Gas want a minimum of £200 to come out and take a look at it - and then would probably charge me for the matches, so I'll make do with a hot water bottle.

Brixton, London

2008-02-07T11:26:00.000+02:00

There is a hole in the roof of the house I am living in and people are coming in, down a ladder. I don't know where they're coming from but there are loads of them. Some of them I know but most of them are strangers. They're making themselves at home. I'm not sure if this is my house or not. Maybe it isn't. Most of these people are quite friendly. I don't really want to kick them out, and I think if I asked them to leave they would just be baffled.

The hole in the roof doesn't really bother me. It's not raining and it's not cold. It's nice to get some air in the place. If there wasn't the hole it would probably be very stuffy. Blue sky is visible beyond the rafters.

I think this dream is related to the work I'm doing at the moment. I'm working on a website for the BBC, to go with a TV series about white British people. The work involves writing a script that scans through discussion forums looking for certain key emotional words: happy, sad, angry, confused etc.. As a result I've been looking at a lot of posts by people who don't like immigrants, people who feel their country is being swamped by foreigners. I don't think that, but maybe reading all that stuff has seeped into my subconscious.

I go into a room full of women. It's a bedroom. Many people are sitting on the floor. They invite me to join them. It's like a party. I'm just another person at the party. I don't feel like the host. Someone asks me why I'm so grumpy. She's someone I know, someone I knew when I was in another country.

In a bar in Vilnius a drunken Lithuanian thought I was Turkish. He told me to go home. He started to get aggressive. I told him to take his hands off the table we were sitting at. He'd come over and was standing in front of our table. In the end we left.

Vilnius is now a very expensive city by Lithuanian standards. Prices there have gone up a lot more than wages in recent years, largely because of wealthy westerners going there as tourists or buying up property there. Some locals told me that many people could no longer afford to live in the city and were being forced to live on the outskirts and commute long distances to get to work. Others were moving away altogether. About a fifth of the population has gone to western Europe in order to work. Someone told me his brother, a qualified engineer, was working as a cleaner in Denmark because he could earn more than he could if he were doing the work he was trained to do in Lithuania.

In a bar in Lviv, Ukraine, I got chatting to some locals. One of them wanted to know what I was doing there and why I didn't speak Ukrainian. Why come to Ukraine if you don't speak Ukrainian? Why not? was the only answer I could give. Most of the places I'd been were places where I didn't speak the language, but where it was quite easy to get by if you spoke English. In Ukraine it wasn't so easy to get by with just English. Russian would have been useful. In Odessa, where people speak Russian rather than Ukrainian, a couple of people shouted at me for not speaking Russian. One was a woman who thought I was taking a photograph of her. I wasn't - she just happened to be in the background.

Part of my reason for being there, in countries where the cost of living was cheap compared to London, was so that I could live without having to work in jobs I don't really want to do just to earn enough money to pay the mortgage, which is how it is at the moment, though this work for the BBC isn't bad. Better than doing dull corporate websites, though I worry that this thing I'm working on, if it does go live, might just have the effect of promoting the views of bigots.

It seems wherever you go you meet British people, and in many cases they don't have a positive effect on the places they go to. Krakow was full of British and Irish, mostly large groups of men over there to get drunk. So long as there are cheap flights and big differences in wealth between these countries there's going to be movement in both directions. People from the poor countries will come to the rich countries to work, and people from the rich countries will go to the poor countries to get drunk, to get laid, to buy property or set up call centres.

Brixton, London

2008-01-14T19:37:00.001+02:00

Back after almost a year away. Things don't seem to have changed much.

Getting the train up here from Eastbourne, where I've been staying for the past week, took about 3 hours since no trains were running between Lewes and Three Bridges, and then the Victoria Line wasn't running so there was another replacement bus, though taking the bus gave me a chance to look at London. After Paris it looked quite chaotic, a lot more messy, though a woman from Hong Kong I met in Paris last February was telling me she thought London was much cleaner than Paris. But I mean messy on a larger scale. Not litter on the streets so much as the buildings and the layout. Central Paris has quite a unified feel about it, whereas London has various bits and pieces that don't seem to be part of any overall plan - if Paris is an organized garden like Versailles

London is more like an area of wild scrubland.

As I walk up Brixton Hill with my backpack I notice the Housing Benefit offices have been done up, with new glass doors, and there are some new blocks of flats opposite. A woman I overtook a minute ago calls out: Got a cigarette, love?

I go into the Costcutter shop that used to be my local to buy a bottle of wine. I recognize one of the women working in there but I'm not sure if she recognizes me.

A new restaurant has taken over what used to be the camping shop on Brixton Hill. It has a load of blue lights in the windows a looks more like a nightclub. That building has had about one restaurant per year for about the past five years. None of them seem to do very well. The last one, that was there just before I went away, was an Ethiopian restaurant. I don't remember ever seeing any customers in there.

On Blenheim Gardens estate they've cut down some elm trees, though the trees behind my flat are still standing. Just before I went away I had to pay about £600 for works on the estate. If I'd known I was paying for them to cut down trees I would have refused.

Paris, France

2008-01-06T19:49:00.000+02:00

Went to see JLG / JLG, a Jean Luc Godard film / video / home movie / essay. My French wasn't really good enough to understand most of what he was saying, and I kept dozing off, but there were some nice images of snow covered landscapes and waves and some good sounds. May try and watch it again with subtitles when I get back to England, which could be tomorrow.

Paris, France

2008-01-03T01:48:00.000+02:00

At midnight on 1st January 2008 it became illegal to smoke in public spaces throughout France. Due to a concession it remained legal to smoke indoors throughout New Year's Day.

Sitting in a bar just after midnight. The floor is clean, white tiles, and there are no ashtrays on the tables. I sit at a table with a beer, not smoking. A man who was propping up the bar steps outside for a cigarette, moving about in an attempt to keep warm. He comes back in complaining about the cold. Usually there would be a mound of cigarette butts lining the foot of the bar so you can't see where the bar ends and the floor begins. In France prices are lower if you stand at the bar, and though ashtrays were usually provided, people seemed to prefer using the floor.

A group of men dressed in black walk in. One is desperate for the toilet. A couple of the others want to buy cigarettes. This place is not a tabac. Tabacs are the only places allowed to sell cigarettes, but late at night when the tabacs are closed many bars sell them under the counter at an inflated price - about €8,50 for a packet, whereas you would pay €5,50 in a tabac.

A man in an overcoat walks in holding a lit cigarette, apparently having forgotten the new law. No one notices, but he seems to suddenly realize, perhaps spotting the lack of ashtrays and smoke. He drops his cigarette on the floor and discretely stubs it out with his foot, then, after shaking hands with a couple of people he leaves. One of the bar-props notices the butt and points it out to the barman. The barman comes round to the front of the bar and they both stand staring at the butt for a while, neither one of them speaking, as if a turd has just appeared on the floor. The barman kicks it over to the foot of the bar, where today it would have found many friends and relatives but now it is all alone. The barman wipes away the black marks it has made with his foot.

The following night I'm sitting outside another bar, warmed by a gas heater. A number of bars and restaurants have canvas covered outside areas with such heaters blasting away. Sometimes these areas have canvas or perspex sides, making them almost interiors, but not quite, at least not as far as the law is concerned. Others just have small canopy, with the vast majority of the heat dissipating into the atmosphere. The one I'm in has one partially open side to it. Though it is a cold night it is quite warm sitting directly under a heater, though not warm enough to take my coat off. Some passers by stop in to warm themselves and smoke. This outside area of the bar has more people in it than the inside.

There are no ashtrays. The floor is littered with cigarette butts. I decided before Christmas, after a brief period of not smoking, that I would quit when France quits, but France doesn't appear to have quit, it's just moved outside.

My prediction for 2008: France's carbon emissions will increase due to its outdoor heating pour les fumeurs.

BBC: Smoke ban 'threatens environment'

Top garden centre to ban patio heaters

Energy Saving Trust

Montreal Dream

2007-12-30T18:52:00.001+02:00

Click to Play

A dream I had whilst in Montreal, taking a break from cycling across Canada. It is illustrated with some basic animation.

Montreal Dream

2007-12-30T17:07:00.000+02:00

Pompidou Centre, Paris, France

2007-12-29T15:38:00.000+02:00

I was taking photographs in the Pompidou centre when a guy in a black suit came up to me and asked me if I was filming. I said no, I'm taking photos. He ordered me to show me the photos I'd taken, which I did. He stopped at one of them and said: Delete that one. I'm in that. I couldn't see him - if he was in it he was very small and in the background. But now standing next to me he was big and intimidating, so I deleted it and he was happy. I guess he was a secret service government agent or something.

Paris, France

2007-12-26T13:21:00.000+02:00

Warsaw, Poland

2007-12-02T13:33:00.000+02:00

Memes are like genes. They are passed from one generation to the next. But memes are knowledge, conventions, things we learn, like brush your teeth twice a day, what goes up must come down, say your prayers before you go to bed. Like genes, some memes thrive and flourish, others die out.

For a meme to thrive it needn't necessarily be true and it needn't necessarily be useful to people. People are just the carriers for memes. Memes are selfish. So long as the human carrier passes the meme onto others the meme doesn't care what happens to it. The suicide bombing meme for instance. If the suicide bomber generates plenty of publicity before blowing themselves up, the meme will be spread to others.

I listened to Keith Stanovich on a podcast yesterday who's written a book about all this called The Robot's Rebellion. The title comes from a line in Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, where he says we're all like robots, programmed by our genes and acting in ways that are in the interests of our genes, but not necessarily in our own interests. He suggests that now, having realized we're slaves to our genes, we can rebel and start doing things that are in our own interests.

It's the same with memes. Many memes are not in the interests of their carriers. Possibilities include the religion meme, the make lots of money meme, the don't question authority meme.

Today the people of Venezuela vote in a referendum on changes to the constitution. It looks like Chavez might lose this one.

The cleaners are making a lot of noise clearing away the breakfast things in the kitchen. Breakfast here, included in the price, is sliced bread and jam. I rebel against that meme and have a yoghurt and a banana. And filter coffee, which they provide.

Vienna, Austria

2007-11-27T02:04:00.000+02:00

Looking for the entrance to the sewers that Harry Lime escapes down in the Third Man, somewhere near Karlsplatz. No sign of a cobbled square. Instead a major road junction and a number of modern buildings including a technical university. Some of the trams look like they could date back to 1949 though.

There's a cinema near here that shows The Third Man every Friday, Sunday and Tuesday.

Giving up I go to a cafe which has a sign saying spaghetti bolognaise and green salad for €5,60. It comes with a started of soup of some kind filled with cheese, plus quite of bit of bread so it ends up being quite a filling lunch. Two men are in there smoking cigarettes. Two elderly English women come in and order glasses of which wine, which they down quickly then one of them says: shall we sally forth. That's an expression a physics teacher at school used to use when dismissing the class. Then a woman comes in, greets one of the smokers before sitting somewhere else and ordering food. A man comes in with a small dog on a lead, which reminds me of the man with the small dog in The Third Man, though he doesn't look anything like him and his dog is a different breed. The woman spots this guy sitting over the far side of the café and gestures to him. He comes over and joins her, kissing her once on each cheek.

I've been trying to avoid eating beef because it's not good for the environment, but I like spaghetti bolognaise, and it's not bad here. They've actually cooked the pasta properly. When I've had pasta in other places... in Ohrid the town was full of pizza restaurants and not wanting pizza I ordered pasta but it came smothered in cheese and was overcooked to start with but because it was sitting in juice it was even more over-cooked by the time I got to the bottom of it.

This is my last afternoon in Vienna. I've not done much here. Been to one art exhibition - Titian - and seen two films - Atonement, based on an Ian McEwan novel (worth watching, but the story was better than the film) and The Third Man - and spent a lot of time sitting in a cafe. They like their cafes here and have some good ones. The one I've been going to doubles as a bookshop and DVD shop, specializing in films and with a good English language section. They also have wifi internet, coffee and chocolate cake. The place is called Phil.

Before visiting Phil I go to MUMOK or MOMUK, which is the museum of modern art and looks a bit looks the Tate Modern, all industrial and metallic, though is quite a bit smaller, but not that small, It has 9 stories. There's an exhibition of contemporary Chinese art, which includes some video re-enactments of famous events - 9/11, the trial of Saddam, the assassination of MLK (I think) - done with puppets and shot in black and white. Some of the events being re-enacted I didn't recognize so maybe they weren't all famous events. China has quite a vague law against violent and obscene images so it's supposedly quite hard to tell what work will fall foul of the law and what will be allowed. As a result a lot of the work seemed to deal with sex and violence and gore but in quite indirect ways.

That was all on the top few levels of the gallery. Down in the basement there was Austrian art from the fifties and sixties. After the war there was, it said, quite strict censorship in Austria which by the fifties and sixties people were rebelling against, sometimes in quite extreme ways. There were pictures of Rudolf Swartzkogler who cut off his penis in installments and documented it as a work of art. Supposedly. I'd heard of him before and I'm not sure if he actually did cut it off or whether he just mutilated it a bit. There were pictures of him with his penis wrapped in bloody bandages, but none with it not wrapped in bandages or not there, so it could all have been a bit of a media stunt.

They have power points on the train. I have a compartment to myself. It's now 23:22. The train gets into Warsaw at about 7 tomorrow morning. Passport inspectors just come round, two lots of them. The first were Czech, not very friendly, spent ages looking at my passport side on, as if he was trying to see if the pages had been inserted by a forger. In the end he accepted it as genuine and handed it back to me without saying anything. The second one was Austrian and was more friendly. I asked him who he was and who the previous lot were. I had thought they must be Polish. We must just clip the edge the Czech Republic before heading into Poland. Perhaps that's what pisses the customs officials off, having to check the passports of people just passing through the edge of their country but not actually stopping there, or perhaps it's just a shit job.

It's actually not just through the edge of the Czech Republic that we go. It's now 01:46 and we haven't yet crossed the Polish border. There's someone else in the compartment, sleeping with his feet on the opposite seat in front of the door so I can't get out without moving his legs.

We stop at a deserted station. There are faint and muffled announcements. A woman's voice. A few flecks of snow in the air. Today has been colder than yesterday. Something to do with the weather. This place is Ostrava-Svinov that we're now pulling out of. The train creaks and it takes the corner, tilting slightly.

They've been doing experiments with Random Event Generators for the past 12 years, seeing if human thought can influence a string of randomly generated ones and zeros. The results show a strong deviation from pure randomness, suggesting some subjects do indeed have an effect. The ones that are most successful are those who relate to the Random Event Generator in an anthropomorphic way, believing they're bonding with it, making friends with it and persuading it to do what they want. On average men seem to be better at this than women, but the best three subjects were all female. Geographical distance does not appear to be a factor, nor does whether or not the machine is actually switched on, suggesting that distance in time is also not a factor. There can be a delay.

It's now 01:58 and we've stopped at another station. Some people have gotten on and are noisily opening and closing compartment doors further up the carriage. The place we're now pulling away from is Ostrava hi. n.. More creaking and tilting. It sounds like the train is in pain, or extasy.

One of the exhibits in the Chinese art exhibition was a video installation with an image of an inverted city bouncing up and down to the sound of a woman moaning.

Belgrade, Serbia

2007-11-08T20:36:00.000+02:00

Now I'm in Belgrade, in a place called Hot Spot Cafe, just uploading some pics of Macedonia, pausing briefly to read about the conviction of the lyrical terrorist.

Saw a demonstration today against (or for) a writer, with demonstrators all in combat gear. Also went to the Nicola Tesla museum - he who invented electric motors and radio (Marconi stole the idea apparently).

Getting the train to Hungary tonight, via Budapest.- which reminds me of an old Goon Show:

Grytpype: Now, Captain Seagoon
Seagoon: Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes?
Grytpype: Please don't do that. Captain, you have been specially selected for a specially dangerous mission
Seagoon: Does this mean I've been specially selected for a specially dangerous mission?
Grytpype: So you guessed, eh? Seagoon, you are to make your way to Hungary via Budapest
Seagoon: Will I have to go abroad?
Grytpype: If all else fails, yes. It's dangerous work
Seagoon: I suppose I'll have to take risks?
Grytpype: Oh yes, and a small pot of tea
Seagoon: What does this mean?
Grytpype: It means you've been chosen to go abroad with a packet of Risks and a small pot of tea
Seagoon: For what reason?
Grytpype: Reason? Does there have to be a reason?
Seagoon: Ying-Tong-Iddle-I-Po
Grytpype: Very well, if that's the way you feel about it, I'll tell you. Pull up a chair

Ohrid, Macedonia

2007-11-06T20:41:00.000+02:00

I've been staying with a family here for the past week: a man, a woman - who approached me at the bus station, or actually it was a guy with her who approached me asking if I needed somewhere to stay, which I did - and an occasional 20 year old son. They invited me into their living room this afternoon for a coffee and then some wine and some pumpkin. They live in the living room at the moment, at least whilst I'm there. The man told me the room I'm now staying in is actually his bedroom. I'm paying 45 euros for the week. The man, after a stroke 7 years ago, is paralysed down his left side and can no longer work. He gets a pension of 100 euros a month, which he says is not enough, particularly in winter when they have to have the heating on. It's cold here. I've put the fur lining back in my coat. Only a couple of weeks ago in Greece I was lying on a beach and swimming in the sea. And a week ago in Athens I was walking around in a T-shirt. Athens is not that much further south than here, but Ohrid is 600m above sea level. Lake Ohrid is one of the oldest in the world, and Ohrid is one of the oldest known European settlements. Ohrid is the Jerusalem for Slavic peoples, he said.

They have a picture of Tito on the wall in their hallway. Things were better in Tito's day, he said. Tito was very popular. He looked after the working people, the middle classes. Then there wasn't a big difference between rich and poor. There was a law that in a company the person earning the most could not earn more than five times the salary of the lowest paid worker. So the director could not earn more than five times what he paid the cleaner. But then, either after Tito died or when Yugoslavia broke up and the companies were privatized, the workers were given shares but the lion's share of the shares were given to the directors, effectively making them the owners of the new companies.

Now everyone in Macedonia pays the same rate of income tax, 12 percent, regardless of how much they earn, and there are some who are billionaires and others who can barely afford to buy bread and not much in between. The prices of bread and milk went up today, he said, because of the hot dry summer. The wheat, or whatever it is they use to make the flour to make bread... there was a bad crop so they're having to import it from Argentina. And the same goes for what the feed to the cows.

His wife went off to the bus station to see if there were any tourists getting off the buses. They still have two spare rooms, or maybe just one since there son is there.

The woman comes back on her own a few hours after she left. She's partially trained as an accountant and does occasional book-keeping work for local businesses. She doesn't like working for bosses.

He talked about the name Macedonia. When they became independent, which happened peacefully, they wanted to call the country the Republic of Macedonia but the Greeks objected since there's a Greek province called Macedonia and they felt the Macedonians might claim this as their own. He thought this was ridiculous. Most ethnic Macedonians had left Greece when it was under military dictatorship after the 2nd World War, and Macedonia is a small and poor country whereas Greece is wealthy and a member of NATO so they're hardly likely to invade. Still, they inserted a clause into their constitution saying they had no claims over the Greek province, but still the Greeks objected and made the Macedonians change their flag as well. Something to do with Phillip of Macedonia or Alexander the Great, not sure which. Anyway, it's now officially known as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

I pointed out that there's a French region called Bretagne and then across the Channel there's a country called Grande Bretagne, but as far as I knew the French hadn't objected.

He'd watched the Arsenal v. Man United match and wanted to know why the English fans were so well behaved at English football matches but when they come to Europe they get into fights. I think you English look down on Europe, he said. When all of Europe is metric you still have the old measurements, you didn't join the euro and you drive on the left. We feel like part of Europe but you want to be different.

He flicked through the TV channels, showing me five Macedonian channels. I didn't notice the fashion channel, which is what I've seen on in every bar and cafe here, always with the sound turned down. He then went through the Serbian channels. He could understand Serbo-Croat. They had to learn it at school, but now the kids don't. A new law came in this year stating that as soon as children start school, which is when they are 6, they will be taught English. When his father was at school, before WW2 when Macedonia was ruled by the Serbs and was known as Southern Serbia, a Serbian inspector came to his father's school to check they were being taught correctly. The inspector asked his father what nationality he was. His father stood up and said: I'm Macedonian. He got hit by the inspector and went home crying. His father asked him what was wrong and he told him about the inspector hitting him. Then his father got a visit from the school inspectors and he was forced to pay a fine for not teaching his son his correct nationality. The fine was a lot of money, enough that he had to sell some of his land to pay it. The boy got another beating, this time from his father.

Macedonia now has good relations with Serbia. When they became independent they asked the Serbs not to fight and they didn't, though a few of them wanted to. They left their army bases and went back to Serbia, but they took everything with them - all the army equipment I guess he meant. The Macedonians didn't mind that, he said, as long as they didn't fight.

He flicked onto the English language new channel and they're talking about Kosovo, some meeting going on. The Serbs have offered autonomy but the Albanian Kosovan majority want full independence. The Serbs regard Kosovo as a sacred part of Serbia; some of the oldest churches are there. He doesn't have a high opinion of the Albanians' ability to run things. They all like anarchy, he said. They all have guns in their homes and they're not well educated. He talks about an Albanian who sold his daughter to a neighbouring family for marriage when she was very young. They don't want to send their daughters to school. A law was passed recently in Albania requiring children to stay at school until 16, he said. Before they only had to attend primary school.

I asked him about religion in Yugoslavia. He said it wasn't banned, but it wasn't encouraged. If you wanted to get ahead in society it was best not to go to church. His father was a partisan, fighting with Tito against the fascists in the 2nd World War, and so he was a communist and an atheist. Many of the fascists he was fighting were Croatian Ustasi and Serb Chetniks. There is currently an Ustasi political party in Croatia. The Serb's animosity towards Croatia during the breakup of Yugoslavia can be traced back to the 2nd World War. Many Croats had been Nazi sympathizers, or were actively fighting for the Nazis. Though Tito was born in Croatia, so perhaps feelings were mixed.

Thessaloniki, Greece

2007-10-30T07:51:00.000+02:00

I've just taken the overnight train from Athens. Sitting in the smoky station cafe waiting for the connection to Skopje, Macedonia, having just eaten a sickly sweet king-size chocolate croissant with Nutella-type chocolate oozing out of it.

I just had a seat on the train but managed to sleep a bit. Four hours maybe.

Athens was a messy city, despite the fact that the pavements seemed to be constantly being cleaned. Roads cracking up, cars and scooters parked over the roads and pavements, other cars and scooters weaving around them and the pedestrians who are forced to walk on the roads for much of the time due to obstacles on the pavements. The Acropolis was covered in scaffolding and looking like it had seen better days. A sign said restoration work was being done to repair the damage done by previous restoration work.

Prices in Greece are high, and usually higher than you expect in restaurants since they charge you for extras they give you that you didn't ask for. I just deducted the charge for the extras off the 10% tip I would've given them. After a few days I expected to be charged a euro for a few slices of bread, but in one place, a while ago in Mykonos, the most touristy of the islands, I was with someone else and the waiter brought over an olive dip and bread which then appeared as 5 euros on the bill. People have said prices went up a lot here after they joined the euro.

There's an advert on the radio here that sounds like something from the Fast Show's Channel 9.

A woman goes around the cafe clearing the tables and sweeping up. She's smiling and chewing gum. The Greeks seem to like their cafes. Even though a coffee can cost more than 3 euros most of the seats outside cafes seem to be occupied most of the time. It seems like people buy one drink and make it last.

The Greeks also like their democracy, which means not taking rules or the authorities too seriously, particularly the rules relating to driving. Like if you get stopped for speeding or drink driving you just buy the officer a bottle of ouzo or something. And when I've seen TVs on here they've frequently had political discussion programmes on.

In the old Greece democracy was something everyone participated in. The Athenian Boule, or senate, had 500 members, ordinary citizens selected by allotment from the ten tribes of Athens. So in their lifetime every citizen would probably at some point be a senator.

Perhaps this is something Britain should replace the House of Lords with. One Lord and one Lady could be selected at random from each constituency, using the electoral roll, a bit like how they select for jury service. Though this would be optional. If you were selected and didn't want to serve they could just select someone else, but if you did do it, which would be for a limited term, you'd be paid a salary that's above the average wage, £50,000 a year say, so there would be a good incentive, just in case the incentive of getting involved in politics and having some power wasn't enough. It would be a full time job so you'd be expected to attend a certain proportion of debates and do constituency surgeries. If Lords and Ladies didn't perform their duties they could be dismissed by the House and a new Lord or Lady would be selected from their constituency.

Lords and Ladies wouldn't all have to travel to London for the debates. There could be regional assemblies with video links to Parliament in London, so geordie Lords and Ladies would go to Newcastle, those from the West Midlands to Birmingham etc..

One of the pros of this system is that you'd get ordinary people being directly involved in political decisions. The Lords and Ladies would talk to their families and friends about their work, so involvement and interest would spread, and constituents would now have three Members of Parliament they could turn to, at least one of whom would be a woman, and the Lord and Lady, being ordinary members of the public rather than toffs or party hacks, might be more approachable. However, there's a chance they might be ignorant bigots or bone idle, but that's the chance you take with democracy. If you don't trust the people, stick with the present aristocratic or some similarly elitist House of Lords. Anyway, with a Big Brother style eviction system you could weed out the worst Lords and Ladies, but probably most of them would be okay and some would be very good. Give people some responsibility and they'll live up to it - perhaps. Bigoted opinions frequently come from those with no power and so no hope of ever actually making their bigoted opinions law. When you're in that kind of position you start to think: What does it matter what I think? It makes no difference, so what's it matter if what I think is obnoxious?

The House of Lords (and Ladies), as at present, would be a reforming chamber, not actually making laws but approving or rejecting legislation sent to it by the Commons, and the Commons as the elected chamber would still have supremacy.

Maybe people earning high salaries, more than the £50,000 a year they'd get as Lords and Ladies, would not choose leave their present job for a few years to take a cut in salary and so would turn down the opportunity to serve their country, but that would be no great loss. The rich are over-represented in the Commons as it is and have too much political power anyway through lobby groups, owning media and making donations to political parties - but at least under this system they wouldn't be able to buy peerages - so a House of Lords with a preponderance of people from low and middle income backgrounds would restore some balance.

Samos, Greece

2007-10-09T21:54:00.000+03:00

Paying the bill in the hotel today the woman went through the things I'd eaten or drunk then started saying two and a half hours internet, three hours internet etc.. They had wifi access and I'd been sitting there with my laptop, assuming it was free, not realizing they were noting down how long I was sitting there and charging me for it. There were signs saying internet 3 euros per hour by the computers, but when there's wifi that's usually free, except when some charging thing comes up on the screen and you have to put in a credit card number. I mentioned it to them but I still paid it.

The last place I stayed in in Turkey was a pension I'd found over the internet with the prices in euros and a deal saying five nights for the price of four. I emailed to make a reservation and asked them to confirm the five nights for the price of four deal, which the owner, Ali, did in his reply. When I arrived there he gave me a complementary beer then asked me what the price said on the website. I said 15 euros a night, which was the price for a room and dinner, but then later when I went up to the rooftop restaurant to see if it was worth having dinner there or going out for it - it was 11 euros a night without dinner, so I'd thought it would be cheaper to eat there - but the restaurant was closed. Four days later, the day before I was due to check out, I mentioned to Ali about payment and he got out his calculator and multiplied 15 by 5 and told me 75 euros.

No, on your website it said...

He brought up the website on his computer and was pointing to the 15 euros per night summer price. But it's now October, so winter prices should apply, I told him, and the winter price is 11 euros. But I've written 15 euros down in my book, he said, showing me his book, though I didn't bother looking at what he'd written down. He got on his calculator again, saying okay, he'd charge 11 euros a night but for 5 nights, not 4, so 55 euros, which he then converted to Turkish lira.

No, it should be 44 because I get 5 nights for the price of 4.

But I'm already giving you a discount!

I decided it wasn't worth arguing for now. I had to go and get cash out and wanted to see what the exchange rate was. Usually when these places show their prices in euros or dollars they convert to their local currency using an inflated exchange rate.

At the cash point I found I could take out euros, and since I was heading to eurozone Greece I took euros out rather than liras. On my laptop I checked my email archive which confirmed the email he'd sent me. I also checked the exchange rate and saw the one he was using was slightly inflated, though not excessively.

I handed Ali a 50 euro note.

But this is... 50 euros?

Yes. 4 times 11 equals 44 plus 4 for the laundry comes to 48, so you're getting 2 euros extra.

I told him I'd checked my emails and he had emailed me confirming the 5 nights for the price of 4 so I was sticking to that, and I was sticking to the prices that were on the website.

He started saying his website prices were out of date and he'd forgotten to change them. He wanted to show me a message he'd sent to his web developer but I wasn't interested in seeing it, and he didn't seem to be able to find it anyway.

If the prices on your website are wrong you need to update them, I said. Those are the prices I saw so they're the prices I'm paying. If it had been more expensive I might have gone somewhere else.

But I can't change it myself and my web designer has gone away, I don't know where.

If you give me the password I can update the site for you.

I don't have the password. The web designer has it and I can't contact to him.

Ephesus Museum. Selçuk, Turkey

2007-10-02T17:09:00.000+03:00

American woman talking to museum warden:

- I like Turkish people. So would you describe yourself as a European? I've been to other countries in Europe and they don't like us much. The French don't like us, but in Turkey the people are so friendly. Your Ataturk was a great man, he really brought your country into the modern age, and look at you now: a developed country that's neither muslim nor christian...

- Well actually...

- And you're such friendly people. Believe me, I've travelled a lot, I've been to a lot of places but is unique and thanks to Ataturk you're such open and friendly people.

- Actually Turkish hospitality goes back many hundreds of years.

- So would you say you were a European? You're not like the rest of Europe.

- I'd say I am who I am.

The American woman went on talking for a while longer but I lost track of what she was saying. More of the same I think, just phrased differently.

The museum, containing statues from the old Roman city of Ephesus, had signs up indicating no flash photography - a picture of a photo flash crossed out - and they actually had wardens enforcing it. I saw one of them going up to a woman, another American I think, and showing her how to set her camera so that it didn't flash.

Selçuk, Turkey

2007-09-29T11:57:00.000+03:00

This is a small town near to the ruins of Ephesus, the capital of the Eastern part of the Roman empire. I have been told to procure photos of the site so that they may be entered into a database.

Now it's 10pm and I'm sitting in an outdoor restaurant waiting for a chicken shish kebab. One other table is occupied by a large group of about 20 people. At the cafes opposite men play some kind of dominoes, others just sit staring at the group of young people. I think the same people were sitting at the same tables when I went out for a walk about 8 hours ago. Then they weren't drinking, smoking or eating, but I assumed that was because it was Ramadan, but now that the sun has gone down they could drink chai, smoke or eat if they wanted to. Allah wouldn't mind. Though most people here appear to be observing Ramadan many aren't. Passing one of the cafes today the owner started chatting to me and invited me to a cup of chai, on the house, and he had one as well.

Most of the people in the cafes just seem to be sitting and looking. Mostly they're not talking. A younger guy takes a call on his mobile. The older men sit and watch, like the cats and dogs which don't appear to be owned as pets here so they're out on the streets. In Ukraine as well. There were dogs sleeping all over the place in Odessa.

I was feeding a cat some of my chicken until the restaurant owner came and shooed it away. But then it came back and I gave it some more. I think it's the same cat, a kitten, that I was feeding last night at a different restaurant. Then I'd ordered too much food, or got more than I ordered due to a breakdown in communications. The first thing I asked for, grilled chicken, I was told wasn't available so I said in that case I'll have spaghetti bolognaise and a salad but I ended up getting all three. After its food the cat fell asleep on one of my feet, the left one I think.

Women don't seem to go to bars or cafes here, except for tourist women. I'm the only customer left in the bar I'm in now, which is closing for the night, the owner taking in the tables and chairs. The bar next door is still going, playing Turkish music, and a cafe and a restaurant opposite are still open.

It's about midnight.

My hotel room is opposite the mosque. I was woken this morning by the call to prayer, though rather than going off and praying I went back to sleep. I can understand why some fundamentalist islamists despise Turkey. Islam seems to be becoming like the Church of England, something that's there for those that want it but which doesn't dominate society in the way it used to. But Turkey has been an officially secular country for a long time, though it has just elected a moderate islamist president whose wife wears a headscarfe, and though current laws prohibit her from wearing the headscarfe in public buildings, the president wants to change that.

Istanbul, Turkey

2007-09-26T18:01:00.000+03:00

Sitting on the sea wall where the Bosphorus meets the Sea of Marmara. It's Ramadan though it doesn't seem to be as strictly observed here as in Morocco, the other islamic country I've been to during Ramadan. There, in Casablanca, I was stopped by a couple of policemen who had spotted me taking a swig from a bottle of water. Though they weren't so bothered when they realized I wasn't Moroccan, they still told me it was forbidden. In the more touristy places, such as Marrakech, some cafes were open during the day for tourists, but I only ever saw one Moroccan breaking Ramadan and that was a guy with no fingers, just stumps, with a tiny hand-rolled cigarette wedged between two of his stumps. I only noticed it because a group of kids were standing in front of the bench on which he was sitting, tormenting him.

The old town of Istanbul is very touristy so perhaps not typical of what goes on in most of Turkey, but I have noticed a few Turkish people not observing Ramadan. One was a policeman, driving through the narrow streets of Sultanahmet with his left hand hanging out of the window, holding a cigarette.

There's about an hour of daylight left. The sea is filled with large container ships and small fishing boats. A brown haze hangs over the Asian coast on the other side of the Bosphorus.

Istanbul has a population of 20 million.

On the western horizon the ships merge into one.

I arrived here yesterday afternoon, on the ferry from Odessa. The ferry docked at about 3:30 but it was 6:30 before we were allowed to get off. They'd collected everyone's passports and handed them over to the Turkish police. In customs they went through them, calling out people's names. When my name was called and I got to the desk I found they wanted £10 or $20 for the visa. I asked if I could pay in Ukrainian Hryvnias since I didn't have any pounds or dollars. No. Can I pay on my card? No. I went through what money I had. I found a 10 euro note. The guy behind the desk spoke to someone else then said in euros I'd have to pay 15. Don't you have pounds or dollars? No. I have some Ukrainian money, some Slovakian money and my card. I'm told to try the duty free shops, but none of them will change money for me and the only cash point is on the other side of customs, which I can't go through without the visa. I go back to the window and now I'm told to return to the ferry and get them to change my money for me. It's a Ukrainian ferry so they should take Hryvnias. I think the problem with the duty free shops was they would have changed pounds or dollars or euros, but they didn't want to take Ukrainian Hryvnias, and it turns out the ferry won't change them either, so I return to customs and this time speak to someone else. I have a purse of loose change from various countries and find I have a 2 euro coin and about £2. That would give me about 15 euros, but they won't take the change in different currencies, and I think they don't want coins at all, just notes.

So what do you want me to do? You don't have a cashpoint here, you don't have a bureau de change, you won't take Visa, you won't take payment in the currencies I have...

He agrees to escort me through customs to the cashpoint outside. With the guy standing right behind me I put in my card and typed in 1000 Turkish liras, and got a message saying transaction refused. I was trying to think what the exchange rate was. Turkey had recently devalued their currency by a factor of a million. Everything used to be in millions of lira, but they just decided to get rid of the millions. I asked the guy what the exchange rate was then typed in 200 liras (about £80) and the machine gave me the money. I had to pay 30 Turkish lira, which is a bit more than £10.

Hunting muslims in the Carpathians

2007-09-17T20:52:00.000+03:00

Sitting on the sofa of the small common room area of the hostel in Lviv with my laptop, a two year old Mac Powerbook whose battery has pretty much died so it now needs to be constantly connected to a power supply. In the area just outside, covered by a leaking plastic roof, where building work is going on, occasionally, some men sit around a table drinking vodka and beer. One of them is the owner of the hostel. He invites me to come and join them for a drink. He speaks a little English but none of the others speak any. I'm introduced to them by immediately forget their names. The owner pours out vodka into small plastic cups, except I get a metal measuring cup.

What do you say in England? Prost? He speaks more German than English. Cheers. Here they say nasdrovia, or something like that. I say what I think he said but apparently I'm saying it wrong. Perhaps I was saying nasdrovnia, or just putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable.

I'm not sure if nasdrovnia is Russian or Ukrainian. The owner tells me he's Russian. from Moscow. People here seem to speak both Russian and Ukrainian, usually mixed together, though it's hard to tell since I only know a few words of each. I notice they say da (= yes in Russian) but I haven't heard anyone saying nyet (= no in Russian) so maybe they're saying the Ukrainian no, or maybe they're not saying no. Vodka? Da. Pivo? Da. Pivo is beer, which is what's poured into the cups after each vodka.

A couple of vodkas later, when offered another, I say nyet. Das ist verboten. The owner pours vodka into my cup. After the third or fourth round, when I've been sitting there mostly not saying anything, listening to them talking, occasionally having something translated for me by the owner, each time starting with him saying: You understand? and me saying: Nyet or No or Nein. We are going to the Carpata mountains to look for champignons, he says. How do you say champignons in English?

Mushrooms.

Muslims.

Mushrooms.

We are going to look for the muslims high up in the Carpata mountains. You understand these are not the kinds of muslims you eat, they are just for the smoking. Would you like to come to the Carpata mountains with us and look for muslims? You can take a bag of muslims back to London with you and you can tell your friends these muslims came from the Carpata mountains.

What time are you going?

We will get there at 2 o'clock.

2 o'clock tomorrow or 2 o'clock tonight?

2 o'clock tonight. So you will come with us? You understand these are very beautiful mountains. You will breathe in and the mountain air will fill your... He pats his chest.

Lungs?

He demonstrates how I will take a deep breath and let the mountain air fill my lungs. You will feel very good. Gutt fur der gerzunt (good for the health).

Much of what he was saying was in German so I was only catching bits of it. I decided I'd go.

But before we can look for the champignons we must have a small drink - and another round of vodkas is poured. Due to the language barrier and having had a few vodkas I'm a bit confused about what's going to happen, when exactly we're leaving, how long it takes to get there, whether we're going to sleep somewhere there or just go and pick the mushrooms and then come back. I have been introduced to the designated driver though, a young guy who hasn't been drinking vodka or beer. He is a bit young but he can driver, the owner explains. It's bad to drink and drive, but I do it. The police never catch me because I turn off my lights and I go very fast and they don't know where I am. I just go.

That was a few days ago. Now I'm on a train from Lviv to Odessa. I walked from the hostel up to the station to catch the 19:52 night train and only just made it, with 2 minutes to spare. It's about a 45 minute walk. I would have taken a bus or tram but I never know where they're going. Very few people here speak English and signs are all in cyrillic.

There was a large political rally going on in the main square of Lviv. Several thousand people. Enough to fill Trafalgar Square perhaps. A stage had been set up, with a large screen next to it. Loads of orange flags in the crowd. The Victor Yushchenko party. I heard the speaker say President Yushchenko a few times, along with Ukrainia and economica. I didn't understand anything else. Earlier on, in the hostel office they had the radio on and I heard the name Yanukovych mentioned. I asked one of the women who runs the hostel about the elections that are coming soon for the Ukrainian parliament. She told me: Yushchenko is our president and Yankovych is the errr... prime minister. But she didn't know anything about the elections.

The elections were called after President Yushchenko dissolved parliament, though his rivals in the Yanukovych party said he didn't have the authority so the decision went to the high court. All I know about their politics is that Yushchenko is pro-western and Yanukovych is pro-Russian. In the presidential election of 2004 they stood against one another. Yanukovych was the preferred candidate of the out going president and he was backed by Putin. Initially Yanukovych was declared the victor, but Yushchenko and his supporters claimed their candidate the victor and they contested the result, alleging fraud. People took to the streets in what was called the orange revolution and the result was overturned by the courts.

I read a few days ago that Viktor Yushchenko is now opening accusing the Russians blocking the investigation into his poisoning in the run up to the 2004 presidential elections. Russia is refusing to provide samples of dioxins its laboratories produce, which would enable investigators to see whether the Russian dioxins match those that Yushchenko ingested.

The Russian hostel owner had some opinions on British politics. He said the British government had done a very bad thing in taking in Boris Berezovsky: He is a very bad man. He is a killer. But he has a lot of money, that's why Britain wants him. I said I didn't know much about it, which I don't.

I don't know what he thinks about Ukrainian politics. I tried to prompt him into giving an opinion but he didn't. Maybe it's a touchy subject. Western Ukraine is the heartland of Yushchenko support. People here will mainly speak Ukrainian rather than Russian, and a few do speak a bit of English, or at least they want to try. I've not been to the East, but I think there they speak Russian and really don't want to speak English at all.

On the train the woman sitting opposite me asks if I'm going to Odessa. (I understood the word Odessa, and guessed the rest.) I buy some chocolate, pistachio nuts and juice from the passing trolley and after eating the chocolate I share the pistachio nuts with the woman, having read in Lonely Planet that it's customary to share your food on trains in Ukraine. It pays off because later she offers me one of her two sandwiches. I feel a bit guilty about taking it, but don't let that stop me. I haven't eaten since lunch which was 8 or 9 hours ago.

I need to get a Russian or Ukrainian phrase book. I had a look round the book shops in Lviv but they didn't have anything. There were a number of book shops but they were all quite small, about the size of a Charing Cross Road second hand shop, but whereas a Charing Cross Road shop would be packed full of books from floor to ceiling with barely room to pass between the shelves, these just had books around the edges, the centre left open and empty, and mostly they were behind a counter so you couldn't just browse, you had to speak to a member of staff if you wanted to have a look at something.

Now in a cafe in Odessa train station. I had hoped to get some breakfast but can't see anything I want to eat. On display there's half a chicken (cooked), something that looks like it might be a pancake, a sausage, some biscuits and bars of chocolate. I asked for a Bounty but was told the chocolate was not for sale or something, so I'm just having a chai - tea with sugar and no milk.

I had a chai on the train and bought one for the woman opposite. She poured the two sachets of sugar into it. I don't usually have sugar in tea, but I guess chai here, like in India, comes sugared, though in India they brew the tea with sugar already in it, and milk as well.

It's quite hard to find edible food to eat in Ukraine. There are plenty of bars and cafes but mostly they seem to be just for drinking - either vodka, beer or chai. There aren't that many restaurants, and in the shops there's not much food that you can take away and eat without having to cook it or prepare it in a kitchen in some way. They don't seem to sell ready-made sandwiches. Maybe you could ask them to make you a sandwich if you spoke the language.

Five of us got into the car. After driving the wrong way down a one-way street we pulled into an estate of flats, Soviet era. The hostel owner pissed against a parked car then leant against it smoking a cigarette. A young guy came over and there was an argument. It seems it was his car, though he didn't look old enough to drive, but then neither does our driver.

People kept saying things to me in Russian or Ukrainian, I couldn't tell which. The owner would then say: You understand? and I'd say nyet and get a translation.

Whoever's flat this was comes back with a bag that he puts in the boot of the car. Someone else comes back from a shop with a bottle of vodka (vodka), a bottle of beer (pivo) and cigarettes. We drive off to another block of flats in the same estate where one of the others goes and gets his change of clothes. A round of vodkas is poured and drunk while we wait. As we drive off the hostel owner is on his mobile. He hands the phone to me and asks me to say something. I say hello but no one answers. Later he says: You understand? and I say nyet. He says he was telling whoever it was on the phone that the Americans and British are invading Ukraine, it's a krieg, how you say in English? War? Yes, I say it is war and we need all able-bodied men in the centre of Lviv to fight Americans and British and he [whoever he was talking to] say that's problem because I am in north Lviv and it will take time to get to centre. The hostel owner laughs. Later we meet the guy he was speaking to, at a bus stop by a kiosk, the same place we were at about an hour ago. He's a big guy wearing a camouflage combat jacket. He has a small moustache and looks a bit like Alec Guinness in Bridge on the River Kwai, only fatter.

Another round of vodkas to welcome Alec Guinness, who then squeezes into the back of the car. With four of us in the back it's a bit cramped, particularly since Alec seems to have a whole seat to himself so three of us are all on one side, and we drive off to the hostel owner's flat. His estate appears to be a bit more up market than the others. There are some trees in the parking area. I make use of one of them to have a piss. In the other estates everything was a mixture of concrete and tarmac.

the owner, who, along with two of the other guys, is called Andrey, comes back with a bag and a bucket. He says his wife has told him to come back with the bucket full of muslims or she'll divorce him.

We stop at a supermarket and buy a load of food, plus more vodka and beer. I notice how people are quite assertive when ordering something at the meat or fish counter. You don't wait for the server to make eye contact or to say: Can I help you? If you do that you'll be waiting there all day. And you don't take any notice of people who might have got there before you. Instead you demand what you want and the exchanges all sounded quite aggressive, though I couldn't understand exactly what was being said, so perhaps it was more friendly than it sounded. The server didn't seem too bothered. She was just as aggressive in her replies. In Odessa I saw a guy at the cheese counter demanding four pieces of cheese, in English, though it didn't sound like English was his first language. He kept saying it, getting louder each time and holding up four fingers, but the server was just giving him a baffled look.

At the checkout I offered to pay something but they tell me I'm a guest so I don't pay anything. Another vodka in the car and then, about 10 or 15 minutes later, just outside the town, we stop for a piss, another vodka, beer, a bit of food and cigarettes. In a foil bag there are lumps of meat, I couldn't tell know what sort of meat, but 50 percent fat and 50 percent meat. I eat both the fat and the meat though. With all this drinking I need to get something solid in my stomach. The empty bags, bones from the meat, empty vodka and beer bottles are thrown onto the grass verge.

It's now dark. Must be gone 9 o'clock. We've been driving around like this for about two hours. I'm told it's another two hour drive to the Carpathians. An ex-student of Andrey, the hostel owner, has a hotel out there. In Soviet times he was a trainer for the women's alpine skiing team.

Lviv, Ukraine

2007-09-07T20:56:00.000+03:00

Things are difficult in Ukraine. Even though I didn't understand the language in Slovakia, Poland or Lithuania, at least I could read the letters, and then it's often possible to get an idea of what's going on. The culture here is also quite different. East Europe by comparison is very European. I'm in Lviv now, which is a big town. There don't seem to be many restaurants or bars here. There are stalls where they sell beer and you can sit outside to drink it, but last night the only place I could find to eat was a McDonald's. I think I might have signed up to the KarmaBanque boycott of McDonald's, but I lapsed last night. At least Big Mac is the same in any language, and even looks similar the way they write it in cyrillic, but it's just as repulsive in Ukraine as it is in any other country.

Chop, Ukraine

2007-09-06T13:58:00.000+03:00

I got on the train for Lviv at Kosice, Slovakia, at 7:24 but I didn't have a ticket. I'd gone to what I think was the Kasa, ticket booth, in kosice station but the woman behind the curtains didn't speak any English. I showed her my print out with the train I wanted to get on it, but she just wrote down the time of the train on it, even though the time was already on there. I told her I wanted to buy a ticket but she was just pointing to the train. It was about 7:10. I should have said billet instead of ticket, she probably would have understood that. Anyway, I assumed I'd be able to buy a ticket on the train.

There was a train going to Kiev, then further up the platform there was a coach going to Lviv. I asked a ticket inspector on there if I could buy a ticket, showing him my printout. He was saying billette and I was saying I wanted to buy one. I took out my wallet to show him my money. In one of the compartments there was another guard, a woman, eating breakfast. I couldn't buy a ticket on the train, at least not for Lviv. I had to get off the train, which wasn't yet moving, and get on the carriage behind that was going to the border town of Chop. I could buy a ticket on the train for Chop and then at Chop I'd have to get off and buy a ticket for Lviv.

Just before Chop, at the border, passport control got on. There train was stopped for ages at this customs post, a number of men in uniform hanging around outside on the platform. At Chop there was another passport control in the station. I had to fill out an entry form, twice. Getting through I could see that the train for Lviv was still at the platform. Passing a number of taxi touts and money changing touts, one guy holding out a handful of notes, I found the ticket kiosk and said Lviv, pointing to the train outside. The woman in the booth wrote down 15:10, which at first I thought was the price, but then she pointed to the clock. It was now about 11 o'clock. I thought maybe the train out there was going to sit there for 4 hours, but she gave me the arrival time which was a couple of hours later than the time on my printout, so I guessed it would be another train I'd be getting. She wouldn't take payment on my card, and said bank, so I had to go outside and find a bank. At least the cash points here speak English, though everything is written in cyrillic so it's not easy to work out what's what. I could see some people standing at what looked like a cash machine, and it was.

When I got back to the station with my cash the Lviv train was still at the platform, but it left as I was buying the ticket for the later 15:10 train. I don't know why they didn't give me the option before of buying a ticket for the earlier train, but I wasn't in a position to argue. At least I'd have some time to have something to eat in this town. I hadn't had any breakfast.

I found a place that looked like a restaurant, with tables outside on a terrace and some women inside sitting at a table eating. I sat down at a table and waited. One off the women from the eating table came over. I made eating signs, pointing to my mounth. She said no, or nyet. But she offered me coffee. I noticed some slices of what looked like cake on the counter and pointed to them. She took out one. I saw it wasn't that big so asked for another. It turned out to be some kind of garlic bread.

I eventually found the town's restaurant, but could read anything on the menu. The waitress went through a number of options. She suggested borsch, which I know - a soup - she said the word soup. I'd had borsch in Lithuania where it was a cold beetroot soup served with a plate of boiled potatoes. Didn't like it much, but I needed to eat something. Then the waitress was suggesting a main course, going through various things I didn't understand and I was just saying yes, or da. People do seem to speak and understand Russian here, though it's no longer the official langauge and according to the Lonely Planet they don't like speaking Russian in the west of Ukraine, which is where I now am. I understood fish and nodded, and pomodora (tomato). She was asking what kind of garnish I wanted and I was just trying to say I don't care. Just bring me food and I'll eat it. I'm not fussy.