A Pinay in Europe

We’ve always been fascinated about this old abandoned building sitting above a tunnel where everyone drive past on their way to the coast.     It’s always been my dream to stop the car, take the best vantage point for a good photographic shot.   This was taken from the car as youwill notice from the cloudy glass.

Our chance came one day when, while driving towards the area, we decided to stop at a car park nearby to do some exploring.

Seen from the railroad level

Piena in French or Piene in Italian used to be part of Italy but ceded to France in 1947. 

It is home to a hydroelectric power plant, which exports most of its energy in Italy.

Unfortunately, since its cessation, it was never used by the French to serve the purpose, that of  train station.

It is now abandoned.  As you can see, the etiquettes are still in Italian; Uomini means men; Donne as ladies  and cessi means toilets.

Only weeds now are queueing up at the Telegraph office

   
The glorious yesteryears are still evident.

Seen from the old station.

Herbs like thyme dot the sides of the footpath.   

  
The footpath which is cleared of weeds regularly

 
This mysterious house is the only neighbour. 

No Comments yet »

After 3 days of continuous rain, the sun finally came out, and what a better time to do our food shopping in Italy than today! 

The mountainous area were we live in, though stunningly beautiful, is prone to erosion after a torrential downpour. That’s exactly what happened today. Many parts of the road going to the coast were blocked due to repair works being carried out.

The beauty of our region is, even in small disasters like this, it is still a great place to watch life go by…

Big boulders have fallen off the road tearing open the metallic nets securing the rocks so public workers have been dispatched to repair the damage.

Because of road repairs, the way to the supermarket was closed so we had no choice but to trek the only road available, that is, going uphill. We drove and drove in a zigzaggy fashion until we realized that we lost the way to the supermarket. However, getting lost in this beautiful part of the world has its price, that of discovering places that you didn’t think existed.

Olive trees, the view of the turquoise-blue mediterranean sea, terraced gardens, rural houses interspersed with beautiful villas, all this sight right in Italian soil. We thought, “how about taking our picnic here?”

It was past lunchtime and we were getting hungry. We already did the first-phase of our food shopping earlier in another supermarket so coupled with our picnic basket which we never fail to take with us (to avoid eating out), we stopped to take our al fresco lunch using the car bonnet as our table.

picnicking at the summit

After the impromptu dining, I took time out taking shots of these wild flowers

It’s only in Italy that we see hilly farmlands like this one. 

Still feeling lost and all we could do was to follow the main road blindly. But we kept stopping for some photo opportunities like this one. This is the foot of the motorway bridge.

Wonderful feats of engineering like this one really amaze us! But I wouldn’t want to live right underneath it!

We finally found our supermarket, hurray!

No Comments yet »

H and I had our first ever driving holiday to Spain ten years ago. I made a travelogue scrapbook for that trip with maps showing our route, tickets of boat trips made, flyer of a Flamenco show we attended, brochure of the hostels/campsites we stayed in.. and many more. I am looking at the scrapbook as I type and it brings back happy memories  
I will post extracts of our travelogue and some (poor quality) pictures as we only used a video camera that time and the pics were just digitally captured from the video recordings.

Map of Spain divided into her 17 autonomous communities + 2 autonomous cities.

The white broken line on the map indicates our route. We started in Catalunya, proceeded to Valencia, then Castilla La-Mancha and finally Andalucia.

12 August 1999……. we were on our way with the intention of getting to Granada (Andalucia) that day - some hope! We began to realize just how damn hot this country is! While trying to find our way out of Valencia, H made plenty of mistakes on the road. We had no intention to go inland but we just found ourselves heading towards Albacete (Castilla La-Mancha). Meanwhile, the day seemed hotter and hotter and we saw more and more olive trees. 

Olive trees as far as the eye can see!

Inland Spain this time of the year is dry and the heat is vicious! There are no shades to stop by and we were just driving in the middle of boundless and never-ending olive groves. The sun pounded us down all day, unrelenting. We were getting dehydrated so we kept stopping for water.We soon realized with the progress we are making that we would not make it to Granada. We started looking for hotels at around 6 pm but only succeeded in finding small villages with smouldering piles of evil-smelling ash - unbelievably disgusting! How can people live in a place like this?

Albacete

 One thing that H and I still talk about to this day is the desert-heat-olive-grove-country that is Albacete. And since all we saw were olive groves upon olive groves (Hey..Spain must be the world’s largest exporter of olives or olive oil!), we made fun that if we did decide to buy our first home there, the mailing address could easily have been:

Mr and Mrs H
The Olive Cottage
Olive Road
Olive Village
Albacete, Spain
——————————-

It was around 2pm that seering hot day on the road when the first sight of civilization came upon us. A village comprising of white washed houses. But where are the people? There is not a single soul around.

(I learned later that in Spain, people take their lunch at 2pm, have their siesta, then go back to work at 5pm. Don’t expect to see humanity between 2pm and 5pm, sometimes until 6pm. Dinnertime is at 10pm. If you get hungry before that, better find a Chinese fastfood!) Badly in need of rehydration, you cannot imagine how delighted we were when we saw a bar, its facade so typically rural Spain! Upon entering, I saw three men sitting on high stools by the counter, two in their cowboy hats as if the scene is in the Wild West. Nineteen ninety-nine (1999) was my first time to travel to Europe and also my first time to enter a bar so the sight of men holding bottles of beer kind of intimidated me, so I asked H if it was safe to be in the same room as these men. “Of course it is safe! you have nothing to worry about!”What was fascinating about the bar was the several gigantic hams hanging from the ceiling! Like any ignorant Pinay whose full knowledge of a ham that size was only limited to the Chinese hams I saw in Chinatown (in the Philippines)  and they are actually smaller and fewer. The Spanish version and the huge number of them hanging just one after the other really blew me away!

 
A ham kiosk in a Barcelona market. The arrangement of the hams is exactly the same as the one I saw in the bar in Albacete

Granada

The 14th century Alhambra Palace sitting on a hill overlooking the city of Granada.

I still have the entrance ticket on my album and it shows we paid 2000pesetas for the 2 of us (in 1999), wonder how much is that now?

The gardens

The Alcazaba which is part of the fortified wall of the Alhambra. The mountains you see are part of the Sierra Nevada range

The hostal where we stayed. We can see the view of the palace from the terrace where we were served breakfast (included in the price)

At the back of the hostal’s business card is the map showing how close they are to the Alhambra Palace

The old town of Granada where we walked past a workshop of a guitarmaker. H fell in love with one of their guitars that he bought one at 39,000pesetas. It almost melted and its strings went haywire because we left it at the backwindow of the car never realizing how the sun could bake it like a cake!

On our first night in Granada, we went for tapas in one of the restaurants in town. Different kinds of eatables were served on a chopping board which H and I shared. Although they were meant for 2 people, we enjoyed it so much that we asked for another one!

This is the restaurant where we had our tapas. Big paprikas tied up in bunches hang on the terrace. It was so charming. I don’t know what those dots on the wall were.

While we were having our tapas, we could hear traditional dance music being played on the square. Then people started dancing, and the (dusty) square was getting filled with locals and tourists alike, dancing to the beat. H and I, after thoroughly enjoying our tapas, went to join in the fun!

That same night, we went to watch a flamenco show. That was one of the most unforgettable moments of our Spanish trip! As the dancers moved and danced at the pulsing rhythm of the guitar and their faces cringing with orgasmic-like expressions, I was totally enraptured, almost crying in awe! Huh! I love to dance it myself!

1 Comment »

Garden of Vence, marvel of Provence (Nostradamus)

We went to the historic town of Vence yesterday (next to the famous St Paul de Vence village, one of the most beautiful villages in France) for H’s regular check-up. We were like walking down memory lane for this is where we used to live (1999-2002), in an apartment where 2 of the 4 exterior walls are lined with a long terrace where yours truly was responsible for making passers-by heads turning because of the flower display, and every square meter of that terrace was exploding with colourful blooms coming out from the upright, climbing and crawling plants practically covering the two-sided facade of our property.

No amount of manicured or immaculate gardens of Vienna, London or Paris could equal the ecstasy I feel everytime I see the chaotic charm of window garden displays of Provence (in France) and Liguria (in Italy). I don’t know why.

4 Comments »

What a business!  This changing of address in France!  We just find all this administration ridiculous, totallly unnecessary, a complete waste of time!

After selling our house in the Var 2 months ago, we had to declare our used-to-be-second-home as our principal residence and as a consequence, we had to go through a lot of unnecessary administration like changing our car plate numbers (from departments  83 to 06)  changing the address of our Carte Vitale (the card which allows us almost free medical cover),  of our tax return, changing from one bank branch to another, and today, I started the first phase of changing the address in my French residence card,

The window transaction took only 3 minutes, but it’s the waiting at the queue outside the building exhausted every nerve cell out of me.  It’s reminiscent of the queues infront of the Dept. of Foreign Affairs in the Philippines for applying or renewing passports.  The advantage in the Philippines is, you can pay someone to do it for you.  This is not the case in France.

 
The Prefecture in Nice opens at 9am.  H dropped me at the gate and I got to the queue at 7:30am where 80 to 100 people were already ahead of me.  This month of April, the Spring weather is still cold and rainshowers are recurrent.  I’m glad I came well-protected from both as the showers started pouring as soon as I arrived.  What gets me about Prefectures is that: you could be snowed over, hit by lightning, soaked wet or washed away in floodwaters but the functionnaires in their glasscovered counters wouldn’t care an inch as to install a waiting shade with benches or provide us each with an umbrella as it is common knowledge that these French civil servants take delight in making an applicant’s life miserable for a day.  One classic example:  you queue up for hours and hours, armed with a foot-thick transparent file containing all the imaginable documents you have ever since you were born to this earth but as soon as your turn comes up, she would ask you for an insignificant document that you haven’t thought related to your application so how ever you dramatize your situation, that you cannot possibly get hold of that document because your house just caught fire yesterday and all you were able to save was that foot-thick transparent file and the clothes you are wearing now, he will nary a chance sympathize with you as these functionaires are made of stony heart.

To be honest with you, my readers, I actually suffered the same fate few days ago, but not because our house caught on fire - it’s just my unnecessary stupidity.

To recant: Last week, I arrived at the queue at 6:30am complete with all the documents you could imagine.  The previous day, the weather was so lovely, with blue skies and I actually had my first wear of duster this year, at home, as it was quite hot.  So basing my weather prediction of that previous day, I went to the Prefecture in an almost summer dress.  Lo and behold, I didn’t listen to the Weather News and I was caught unprepared.  That day was particularly cold and it started to rain just as soon as I installed myself behind the 30th person in the queue.  So imagine, I stood there for 2 1/2 hours shivering to the bones, but at least, I had an umbrella!  When the main door finally opened,   everybody ran inside like there was a stampede!  I arrived at the room where I thought was the place intended for Changing Address of Residence Cards.  I must have stood on the line for 40 minutes.  When my turn came, the functionnaire said I am in the wrong room and that I must go to the other room next to the entrance.  I was petrified! I almost wailed to the lady as I am sure I would be queueing up again. 
“Don’t worry! the lady said. She said it in a magical way that I instantly believed her!

So I went to “the other room next door”. 
“Huh, another queue, but no worries, only 10 people on the line.”

And guess what?  As soon as the applicant infront of me reached the glass-covered counter, a notice was being put up stating “No more tickets!”  (the “take-a-number” ticket system)

And I assumed that they just ran out of ticket because they didn’t bother to order from their printer.  So when I reached the counter and explained to the man that I have been at the Prefecture grounds queueing up since 6:30 in the morning but committed the stupid mistake of waiting in a different room for 40 mins, and now finally that I reached “this” room that they have the gall to announce the depletion of their ticket supply? 

“Desole, madame!  (sorry, madam)  Come back tomorrow!”
Believe me my dear readers, it’s not like I left the building without putting up a fight.  I went back to the lady where I wasted 40 minutes queueing up, asked for her help, went into hysterics, went back to the room (the one next to the entrance), threatened them that I am going to shoot myself if they don’t give me a ticket…but to no avail!

You can cry blood instead of tears but as I’ve told you, a functionnaire is made of stony heart.

Luckily today, I got through the first stage.  I just have to wait now for their notice (via the self-addressed envelope I submitted) that my newly-addressed residence card is ready for pick up.    And that means queueing up as early as 7:30am and going through that stampede again. 

By the way, after my transaction this morning, and after ecstatically calling up H to say “he could now pick me up as I was done”, and on my way out of the building, I noticed that the room where I just did the transaction had its shutters closed down, i.e., no more receiving of applicants for the day…and it was only 10:30am! So that explains why it’s really important that you are already there at dawn and, if possible, pitch tent the night before so you are assured to be the first on the line!

1 Comment »

If Italy has tiramisu, then Austria has sacher torte!

A must-do when in Vienna is to try their cakes and pastries… delicious!
Taken at a coffee shop in Hundertwasserhaus Village. I was planning to have an appelstrudel, but the sight of this chocolate cake was more tempting! Great choice because it was beautifully moist with its oozing jam filling!

The cute boxes on display at Hotel Sacher’s boutique.

Did you know…
That sachertorte is a chocolate cake, invented by Franz Sacher in 1832 for Klemens Wenzel von Metternich in Vienna, Austria. It is one of the most famous Viennese culinary specialties. The Original Sachertorte is only sold in Vienna and Salzburg, and is shipped from both locations.Until 1965, Hotel Sacher was involved in a long legal battle with the pastry shop Demel, who had also produced a cake called the “Original Sachertorte.” Numerous tales have circulated to explain how Demel came by the recipe. The cake at Demel is now called “Demels Sachertorte” and differs from the “Original” in that there is no layer of apricot jam in the middle of the cake, but directly underneath the chocolate cover, covering the entire cake. (wikipedia)

2 Comments »

The Kiss
1907 - 1908

One thing Austria is famous for is The Kiss.

The most famous oil painting in the planet is a creation of Gustav Klimt, a follower of the Impressionist, Symbolist and Art Nouveau movements. It is said that Klimt has taken the top spot as to the sales of his paintings over Vincent Van Gogh’s although the latter’s Starry Night and Cafe Terrace still take 2nd and 3rd spots respectively.

“Fulfillment”

Another of Klimt’s work, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I was the most expensive painting as of 2006 when it was sold at auction for US$135 million .

“The Friends”

Adele Bloch-Bauer I, the most expensive oil painting as of 2006

A Klimt souvenir shop infront of Hundertwasser Haus

I wonder if this umbrella is Made in China

No Comments yet »

Flowers of Vienna

Let’s start our talk about Vienna by virtually smelling her flowers:

Muscaris or grape hyacinths

The white blossomed plant above is all over Vienna the two days I was there. I found out its significance later…..it is used as “palm” for the Palm Sunday commemmoration (as opposed to the olive branches we use in France).

Tulips!

Hydrangeas and hyacinths

No Comments yet »

Flowers of Vienna

Let’s start our talk about Vienna by virtually smelling her flowers:
 

Muscaris or grape hyacinths

The white blossomed plant above is all over Vienna the two days I was there. I found out its significance later…..it is used as “palm” for the Palm Sunday commemmoration (as opposed to the olive branches we use in France).

Tulips!

Hydrangeas and hyacinths

Vienna is UTOPIA!
It’s clean. Everything is mechanized or computerized. Their infrastructure is excellent and they are excavating yet more land to extend their UBahn, tram and rail network! They have rubbish bins every 2 meters, recycle bins every 5. It’s a wealthy city, people are chic, which I must advise you to dress smart when you get there so you don’t feel out of place. The architecture range from the classic to the modern. There is obviously a trend of experimental architecture here. It’s a must-visit for architecture students. Their patisserie is great, too!

Colours of Vienna

Colours. I can only guess that there was a law passed few years ago to turn Vienna into a colourful city. The pinks, the greens, the oranges, the yellows are very prominent in people’s clothes, in the colour of buildings, in the colour of trucks, in every packaging, in babies’ prams. And speaking of prams, it’s like there is a fashion show for prams.

People in Vienna

It’s mainly Indians who sell magazines on the street. Never have I venerated Indians as much as in Vienna, for they were the only ones who can speak English like it is their mother tongue, and you can always rely on them to help you in finding your way. Majority of Austrians don’t speak English so forget about asking them “Where am I?”

Left:  An attendant of the Toilet Museum of Modern Art

 Out for a smoke (and a phone call)

Statues of Vienna

oooppsss…. that’s a mimic artist, not a statue!

An unusual sculpture of Bruno Gironcolli at the U.N. complex

This sculpture is about to get out of the fountain!
New market square

Posters in Vienna

Souvenir-shopping in Vienna

Shopping in Vienna

Of all the cities I’ve been to, I can say that Vienna is THE PLACE FOR LUXURY SHOPPING! I didn’t have the luxury of shopping, but I truly enjoyed window-shopping (and photo-taking!)

Here are my shots…… get ready …… and if you have a weak heart, I hold no responsibility in causing any cardiac discomfort, hehehe!!

Maddy advertising for Louis Vuitton

Watched a concert on my first night at St Peter’s church. 

A beautiful Baroque church!

Epilogue:

It’s nice to be able to see Vienna but ive seen all those palatial architecture in Budapest and Paris.  It’s more the way of living that is different.  In Vienna, people are more disciplined and sticking to the rules whereas in Budapest, you feel relaxed already as soon as you get off the train in Keleti.I got a cheap deal offered in Budapest.  For 4 days stay in Vienna, it’s 29 euros return (Budapest-Vienna) + free public transport up to zone 1öö. Add the cost of my hostel 49euros for 3 nights - a room with 6-beds sharing.  I thought I have to try this and it’s ok.  The ladies, all students i was in staying with, were ok and decent.  Free breakfast too.  The hostel is set up a hill amidst green grounds and easy access to the UBahn.My hostel in Vienna

The grassy ground of my hostel in Vienna is blooming with primroses.

all in all..i spent 8Ö euros + 5Ö (for food, misc) during my 3 night stay in Vienna, eating on shawarma, pizza, feasting on their beautiful patisserie and coffee. Belvedere Palace
This Baroque palace was built by Prince Eugene of Savoy (France). After getting kicked out by King Louis IV of France, he went to Austria and transferred his loyalty to the Hapsburg Monarchy. This palace now houses the paintings of Gustav Klimt and others.

On the side of the Belvedere Palace is a huge garden open to the public. These “cacti ” are actually sculpted stones. Almost real!

4 Comments »

Daffodils, tulips and primroses

The 10th century St Nicholas Church, West Sussex

There..I finally was able to take pics of this springtime’s daffodils which the UK is famous for. Wherever we went, these flowers are just about everywhere,  growing on the side of the roads, but I couldn’t really take my camera out lest the rain would damage it.

For the entire two days I was there, it was continuously showering! And the more we travel to that country, the more we get frustrated, only her flowers now is making our sojourn bearable. We feel like we are surrounded by everyone always wanting to make money out of us! Everything is expensive, and what you get is not even good value for your money and one classic example is the food! It’s not enjoyable to eat in the UK, it’s not even healthy eating in the UK. We could not even leave our bags at the airport’s Left Luggage so we could perhaps do some galivanting around because they charge 8GBP per bag! Ridiculous!   I don’t blame the tens of thousands of Britons who emigrate each year. Living in this country has become unbearable, not only about the high cost of living but also the poor service you get from practically every establishment you deal with - public or private.

As to the tourist attractions of the UK, I don’t deny that there are still few towns left that have retained their charm. But try going to 3 other towns at random…any of the towns you can poke your finger to in the map. Go to Town 1 today, to Town 2 tomorrow and to Town 3 the following day…I am telling you, you will not see the difference. Town 1 could easily be Town 2 or even Town 3, why? because of what England has now become and they have a term for that….CLONE TOWNS! Exactly the same set up, the same shops (Boots, Marks and Spencer, WH Smith, HSBC,etc), the same Anne of Cleaves pub or King’s Head pub, the same fish and chips, the same Pay and Display, etc etc..

No Comments yet »