Further purchasing

Have now purchased:

• travel insurance,
• a backpack, and
  
• some accommodation in Vienna and Amsterdam
  

I wandered along the camping shop strip in the city (that would be the Town Hall block of Kent St - there are at least 5 or 6 camping stores along there) and asked a lot of people about backpacks. I ended up buying the one from the shop with the nicest sales assistant...

Well, I had to choose somehow... :)

Have ticket, part ii

Have now bought my actual ticket to the Netherlands - it's a train on the Pollux line of CityNightLine from Munich to Amsterdam, leaving 28.02.07 22:40 and arriving 01.03.07 08:56 - which is the day I was always planning to turn up in Holland on in the first place.

So there you are - it was obviously "meant-to-be".

Insurance confusions

I have been looking at travel insurance providers recently and I am still totally confused by it all.

The quotes vary from about $260 to $530 - all for exactly the same three month period to the same part of the world! I am assuming they all cover varying amounts of events for varying amounts of money, but every insurance provider words things differently. You can't just assume that two companies mean the same thing when they say "Additional Travel Expenses."

I'm probably going to go with one of the expensive companies, just because I know the name!

Jenufa and Favourite Plots in Classical Music

Last night I went to see the Opera Australia production of Leoš Janáček's opera Jenufa (or rather, Jenůfa, with what I now know is called a "kroužek" - in Czech, it makes it a long "u".) Anyway, I loved the opera - I thought it the music was wonderful and the plot was moving and believable. I put it on my list of Favourite Plots in Classical Music - a list which includes Der fliegende Holländer and Verklärte Nacht.

Verklärte Nacht is a string sextet by Schoenberg (yes, the crazy atonal Schoenberg back in the days when he wrote using tradtional keys) based on a poem by Richard Dehmel. It premiered around the same time as Jenůfa - in 1902, as opposed to 1904. Verklärte Nacht (it means "Transfigured Night", by the way) tells the story of a man and a woman walking through a wood on a cold, dark night. She says to him, "I'm carrying a child, but it's not yours." He says to her, "Look, it doesn't matter. Our love will transfigure the child, so it will be as if it were mine." And they walk onwards through the high, bright night. It's pretty and heart-warming :)

Two people are walking through a bare, cold wood;
the moon keeps pace with them and draws their gaze.
The moon moves along above tall oak trees,
there is no wisp of cloud to obscure the radiance
to which the black, jagged tips reach up.
A woman's voice speaks:

"I am carrying a child, and not by you.
I am walking here with you in a state of sin.
I have offended grievously against myself.
I despaired of happiness,
and yet I still felt a grievous longing
for life's fullness, for a mother's joys
and duties; and so I sinned,
and so I yielded, shuddering, my sex
to the embrace of a stranger,
and even thought myself blessed.
Now life has taken it's revenge,
and I have met you, met you."

She walks on, stumbling.
She looks up; the moon keeps pace.
Her dark gaze drowns in light.
A man's voice speaks:

"Do not let the child you have conceived
be a burden on your soul.
Look, how brightly the universe shines!
Splendour falls on everything around,
you are voyaging with me on a cold sea,
but there is the glow of an inner warmth
from you in me, from me in you.
That warmth will transfigure the stranger's child,
and you will bear it me, begot by me.
You have transfused me with splendour,
you have made a child of me."

He puts an arm about her strong hips.
Their breath embraces in the air.
Two people walk on through the high, bright night.
(Translation: Mary Whittall)

Interestingly, I can see a number of parallels in plot between this work and Jenůfa, mostly because they both tell the story of women who have had other lovers, and children to those lovers, and yet the men they end up with deal with that and move on.

If these were Hollywood movies, there'd be bitching about betrayal and "how could you do this to me" and all that rubbish. Here, however, both Dehmel's Anonymous-Man and Janacek's Laca may mind just a little bit (who wouldn't) - but they accept that everyone makes mistakes sometimes, they get do over it, and they do move on. That way everyone lives happily ever after.

And it is heart-warming!

Have Ticket, Will Travel!

Yesterday I went into the city to compare plane ticket prices. Then I actually bought one... I leave Australia on Saturday February 24th, 2007 - travelling by Austrian Airlines to Vienna, via Kuala Lumpur.

I arrive there at 6:10 am on Sunday February 25th for a 24 hour stopover (this was voluntary - I figured, if I'm going to pay hideously large amounts of money to go to Europe and I'm going to change planes in Vienna anyway, I may as well have a look around the place while I'm there! Not that anything will be open on a Sunday in Vienna....)

I then mosey on back to the airport to catch a flight at 6:45am, reaching Munich at 7:50am on Monday February 26th. I'm then going to visit Hugh, Isabel and Stuart and impose myself upon their hospitalty for maybe two days - I have asked and they did say it was fine! I quote: "stay as long as you like - if longer than a month then you pay rent" - which sounds reasonable to me :)

Having seen sights (sightseen?) in Munich, I then plan to catch a night train with CityNightLine from Munich direct to Amsterdam. The prices look reasonable, and all the other train journeys I've looked up have involved between 3-5 train changes. This apparently goes direct (I'm still looking for the catch!) I haven't booked that far ahead yet (I don't think the train timetable's even up yet.)

Then I'll be in sunny Amsterdam, which, according to most, isn't really...

Planning stages...

Currently working on a number of things:

• working out my itinerary
• comparing prices of tickets
• organising to visit friends in Munich
• working out how to get from Munich to Amsterdam (it's not quite as easy as you'd imagine, but it looks like there's a direct night train :)
• working out what to take
• working out what I need to take that I don't own
• reading about the merits of different backpacks on the Internet
• suffering through work to earn money so I don't have to come home quite as fast!

It's all very exciting - I'm going into the city to compare travel prices this afternoon.

Words and pages

Has anyone else ever noticed how beautiful a blank page can be? Or considered the possibilities for greatness that are inherent in it? Every page contains possibilities: the next great novel or work of art, a symphony, even a simple idea that could change the world. Blank pages and their beauty are not a topic that consumes me, but rather one that - every time I start to write - intrigues me.

One of my favourite things to do is to go into a newsagency or book shop, buy myself a pen and notebook, and sit down to write. Most of what I write is of very little import: some beginnings of stories, some descriptions of characters, some abstract ideas, and sometimes scribbled drawings. Most of the things I scrawl onto the blank pages are fairly meaningless, and very rarely go beyond a page of writing. It still amuses me: playing with words amuses me. It probably helps my intellect along as well - I have a weakness for using long words, just because of the way they trip off the tongue. There are some books I read merely for the vocabulary; the plots aren't great - but who cares when you can read words like theirs! It's all about the words really.

At the moment I'm sitting in a noodle restaurant waiting for a very large meal. I'm probably not quite that hungry, but the side dish I'm getting is very tasty and worth the subsequent bloated feeling.

See, there's another "words" example; I could have just said "the food's good enough that I don't mind feeling stuffed." But I didn't, because it wasn't as elegantly phrased...

Holland again...

Have re-changed my mind to Holland - I just like tulips :)

And windmills...


...and clogs (which are apparently called Klompen - with a name like that, you can see why the style never took off in Australia) ...

...and putting random pictures on the net...

... and here's Dennis - she finally sat still for long enough!

destinations

Having first decided to go to Holland (the Netherlands, really, but I just can't say that without stuttering!) and then rethinking and considering Scotland, England, France, Germany and Finland - I think I may have settled on a new country: Belgium!

Belgium is surrounded by the Netherlands, France, Germany and the UK - and they speak French, German, Dutch and English - and it's the capital of the EU (e.g. admin HQ, which is possibly professionally interesting) - and I know nothing about it.

(Except that Hercule Poirot is Belgian)

Thus my destination for the week is Belgium!

(Church in Brussels / pretty picture from larscapes.com)

first post

This is my first post - the title of this blog is from Banjo Paterson's poem The Man from Snowy River.

Then fast the horsemen followed, where the gorges deep and black
Resounded to the thunder of their tread,
And the stockwhips woke the echoes, and they fiercely answered back
From cliffs and crags that beetled overhead.