Berlin it to win it

I got back this morning from a short trip to Berlin, my birthday present from the lovely Suzanne. We spent three nights on Turmstrasse in Moabit, not far outside the Mitte neighbourhood. We had a brilliant time, it was only a pity we couldn't stay longer. We arrived on Wednesday afternoon and chilled out for a bit, before heading out for some snacks and beers in the local cafes and bars. We might have had a few too many of the beers, in retrospect, as we didn't manage to get up until midday. However, we did have an excellent night, especially once we found our way to a craft beer place run by a barmaid who could somehow keep fifteen tabs straight in her head. We made some friends and crashed a Tinder date, and sampled some very good beers. A couple of shots, too. That might explain the missed morning as well.

Once we managed to get ourselves out of bed, we walked along Alt-Moabit to Mitte to visit the Museum fur Naturkunde, one of my main reasons for wanting to visit the city. One of the best natural history museums in the world, the Berlin museum is famous for holding the largest mounted fossil skeleton in the world: the great Brachiosaurus brancai. Also known as Giraffatitan (respect to the museum for sticking with the traditional classification), this gigantic beast was uncovered in Tendaguru, Tanzania and is 13 metres tall. It shares its central podium with a Dicraeosaurus and a Diplodocus carnegii, the latter a cast from the Carnegie Museum specimen. That's the same as Dippy, currently on tour from the London NHM, and its incredible that the huge dinosaur that usually dominates that museum's entrance hall is dwarfed by the brachiosaur. Dippy is longer, but doesn't have the sheer size of the brachiosaur.

I got plenty of snaps - I'm not photographer, so not everything came out well - including the Allosaurus, Elaphrosaurus, Dysalotosaurus and Kentrosaurus. I got too excited explaining the significance of the Berlin specimen of Archaeopteryx lithographica to remember to get a pic of it. Plus there were some plesiosaurs and sundry pterosaurs (Flugsauria!), a huge gallery of taxidermied animals, including extinct species such as the thylacine and quagga, some alarmingly large models of insect and spiders and a gigantic display of organisms preserved in jars of ethanol.

Other than the dinosaurs, which I got far too excited about, the best part of the museum was the Earth and Space room, which had a huge display unit projecting the evolution of the universe, suspended over a sort of sofabed. The excitable kids made it, although my back didn't survive quite intact, it was a lot of fun. Plus I learned that the German for Crab Nebula is Krebsnebbel, which is not only hilarious itself but when run back through Google Translate comes out as Cancer Fog. (Also, German for seal is seehund, which is adorable.)

This wasn't the only bit of culture we took in. Friday was our sightseeing day, thanks to a hop-on/hop-off tour bus which took us right into the heart of Mitte. We got off to see Checkpoint Charlie and the Berlin Wall Museum that sat at the old site, which provided a brilliant multimedia experience that really brought the bizarre situation in Berlin in those days too life. It's weird to think that was just over thirty years ago, well within living memory of many people in the city. We were, appropriately enough, staying in the old British Zone, but nowhere in the western part of the city is far from the line with the east. Suz and I can just remember the Wall coming down, but we were very young indeed and the significance we pretty lost on us back then. It certainly looks pretty American around there now, with KFC and McDonalds immediately dominating the road across from the museum. We focused on currywurst, kebabs and waffels while we were in town. (We also accidentally ordered a mixed grill for four at McDarwich, but we salvaged the remains for later snacking.)

We followed the Wall with the Spy Museum, which wasn't very secret at all, but was fascinating and a lot of fun. The dressing up area was a bit poor, since the spy look seems to be just my normal hat and coat (I thought about swapping my hat for a less well-worn one, but they were all tagged.) The history of spies and cryptography is astonishingly long, though, and there was a lot to learn among the kid-friendly activities.

It's a shame we didn't have more time for a few more museums, but we also wanted to get in plenty of restaurant and chilling out time as well. We're definitely planning on going back, now that we vaguely know our way around and have a better idea of where else we want to see. There's enough museums to keep us busy for a couple of weeks at least. And plenty of beers and currywurst still to try.

(Photosauruses to follow)

A little catch-up

It's been a pretty good week off, apart from the oppressive virus that has infiltrated my system. Understandably, I think, I'm not overjoyed to be dragging myself back to work tomorrow. However, it has been a fun few days. Suz and I spent last weekend in the West Country with her family, and then I spent the middle of the week helping my mum and my sister out with some stuff. Thankfully all pretty chilled, aside from the heavy lifting. I found time to take in the new Power Rangers movie, which I expected to be complete rubbish but I actually quite enjoyed. I've set up a Limitless card for the Odeon, so I'm planning on taking more time in the cinema. It's all about finding the time, of course.

This weekend, Suz and I went over to Dublin for a couple of days to stay with some wonderful friends. Suz has family from Ireland and has been over to both Dublin and Belfast a couple of times, but this is my first time. I've actually seen quite little of the British Isles, having spent a long while making longer trips abroad, so some little trips to Wales, Scotland and the two parts of Ireland are much overdue. As well as getting to spend some quality time with friends, we got to do a nice bit of touristy sightseeing. Our friends live in Ranelagh, which is in easy walking distance of the center of town but so quiet in itself, A really nice spot to stay. On the Friday we wandered about town and then took the tour bus up to Dublin Zoo, which is an impressive place and the third largest zoo in Europe, within the gigantic Phoenix Park. It's where they bred the legendary MGM lion named Slats. The history of the zoo is rather exploitative, which is par for the course for such institutions, but nowadays it has a focus on conservation, holding many critically endangered species. I was impressed with their great ape enclosures - they have chimps, gorillas and orangs and they all have free reign over a large open area. The elephants were hiding though.

We did plan to do the Guinness factory on the Saturday, but I wasn't feeling great and really needed an easy one, so instead the four of us had a jaunt into town. We went to Dunne's department store, and got lost in The Largest Lingerie Department in Ireland, in tribute the legendary scene in Father Ted. I did learn that Guinness is not black, but very very very very very very very very very dark red. Considering how much of it I've drunk over the years, I'm surprised I'd not noticed before. While we didn't make it to the Guinness factory, I did drink a significant quantity of the stuff, which I think is medically sound as I am suffering from mild anaemia. It really is better over there. We also spent some time in the National Museum of Ireland's archaeology site, which is the huge building on Kildare Street. It's full of remarkable prehistoric artefacts going back to the Paleolithic. The Bog Bodies exhibition was fascinating and quite chilling. Suz spent time in the Ancient Egypt exhibition, but I was still creeping around the corpses. I definitely plan to go back to the city to see more of it, particularly the Natural History Museum or "Dead Zoo."

Worky-wise, I have a ton of reviews I've been planning to write, both for here and Television Heaven, so expect some of those fairly soon. Nine Lives, the charity anthology featuring the Richard E. Grant version of Doctor Who has gone to the printers, and includes my story "Frozen in Time." I've also been asked to contribute to the second volume of Time Shadows, which I'm pretty excited about. The first volume was absolutely excellent and I'm very pleased to have been chosen from among the many submissions. I hope to find time to write up some of my own fiction ideas that I've been mulling over for a while, both fanfic and original. Before that, there's still work to be done with CP Studios on both Doctor Who and The World's Greatest Detective, the latter of which is assembling an impressive cast.

Also, in recent news, a carnivorous mushroom has been discovered down the road from me. So that's cool. 

Americaaaaaaaa, Americaaaaaaaa

Gorgeous silly person.

Well, that was a very nice week that was. Six days in the company of my very beautiful and very silly friend Ashley, aka Iso Suicide aka Papyrusaurus aka Fishstixandcustard aka assorted pseudonyms. Six days of hanging out in Erie, Pennsylvania, with her and her two tiny boys, the very awesome Finn and Cabbie (aka the Super Mankoski Bros).

Super Mankoski Bros.

This is actually my second trip to the States, but my week in Boston, Massachusetts was almost ten years ago, and was not nearly so fun, since I had no pink-haired friends to enjoy it with. Erie is a beautiful city. It has Lake Erie, of course, one of the Great Lakes (read: huge bloody inland seas) which is stunning. Sometimes afloat in the lake is the USS Niagara, the flagship of the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812, between the USA and the British Empire. Nowadays it's a museum ship. We chose to spend our money on the ExpERIEence Children's Museum, which had magnets and train sets.

Americans are very good at BIG food, although I am better at eating large amounts than Ashley, which calls into question what kind of stomach training we've both been receiving. Ashley does, however, make fantastic empanadas and quesadillas, and can pick out the best places to buy gigantic burritos. However, the finest place to feed is ThreeB's, which promises "Beer, bacon and barbecues." You receive sweet bacon with your first beer, and it only gets better from there. We hurt our stomachs. Erie has many fine beers, but not enough tea. There was a day in which I almost missed having a cup. Don't worry, I sorted it.

Between many trips to the park with the kids, we explored some of downtown Erie, ate more fantastic food, met up with some very cool people and spent a great deal of time in the largest second-hand bookshop and comic store I've had the fortune to visit in many years. I stocked up on some classic Trek, and Ashley presented me with some vintage palaeontology and anthropology tomes. But most of all, I took a much-needed break from my everyday life and chilled out with my friend and some old sci-fi. There's nothing better than watching City of Death with a beautiful woman, probably.

The British Aisles

Lighthouse at Presque Isle

Snazzy tourist bus

Lake Erie

They have unusually large acorns here.

And unusually large and happy frogs.

Flesh and Blood

This was my entry for the 2013 World Nomads travel writing scholarship contest. I made the shortlist - twenty-five people out of 1150. Would have preferred to win and get the trip to Beijing of course, but still, I'm pretty damned pleased at that. 

It's well worth reading the winning entry (he also wrote about the Maasai) and the other shortlisters. Here's my entry though, under the topic heading "Understanding a Culture Through Its Food." And yes, it's completely true - this was part of a three-week stay in Tanzania in 2006.

The blood wasn’t the problem. I was prepared for the blood.

We’d spent a day and half in the company of the Maasai. Most of the time had involved walking tremendous distances, embarrassing our poor white selves as we struggled in the heat of the dry season. That said, there had been a brief wet spell the previous weekend, for which we had been thanked. Clearly, being British, it was we who had brought the rains to Tanzania.

I’d expected blood. That the Maasai drank goat’s blood was common knowledge, and I was ready for it. Indeed, I was looking forward to it, eager to taste something well outside my comfort zone. Never again would a rare steak be seen as a mark of manliness – I would forever be able to counter it with my guzzling of goat’s blood. It would demand respect, a visceral experience of tribal life.

The evening drew in and we gathered round, as a group of warriors began preparations for the slaughter. The goat was killed by the slow but reasonably humane method of suffocation, although I wonder if this was a sop for our delicate western eyes. All the while, the tallest of the warriors sharpened his knife. There was an almost tangible sense of time bearing down on the procedure, an ancient historical rite that had been performed again and again in this very spot, for thousands of years. The effect was, admittedly, somewhat spoiled when the knife-wielding Maasai had to pause to answer his mobile phone. “No, I can’t talk, I’m slaughtering a goat…”

It was the kidney that took me aback. Usually, there would have been at least one elder present for this custom, but tonight they were all otherwise engaged, and the prized kidneys were free to go to the warriors. Being one of only two men present in the tourist group, and the only one who had expressed a desire to taste the blood, I was singled out for the honour of taking a bite from the steaming kidney. I was ready for blood; the raw, gristly kidney was something else. I’m told I went rather pale.

Nonetheless, I recovered with, I feel, commendable speed, and happily scooped the rapidly clotting blood from the goat’s carcass. It’s difficult to sup still warm blood without spilling it down ones face and front.  I’d become quite close to one of the young ladies of the group during that trip. For some reason, she wasn’t so eager to kiss me that night.

Farewell, Great Macedon!

It’s been a couple of years since I got to do any proper international travel, but finally, I managed to get myself out of the UK for more than a day and spent a good week in the Macedonia. December isn’t the best time of year to visit the country . I’m no fan of the cold – in fact, I despise cold weather and my immediate instinct in the presence of snow is to return to bed and hibernate until it’s warm again. So visiting the city of Skopje during the winter, when the temperature happily dips ten degree below zero on the centrigrade scale, wasn’t the best decision. However, since my sister insists on having her birthday in December, and this trip was to be an extended birthday celebration for her, that was the time we had to go.

Becca had already visited Macedonia four times. One of her closest friends, Nena, lives there. As she hadn’t seen Nena for about four years,  and I hadn’t since she was here in England a couple of years earlier than that, it was definitely long past time for a visit. It’s a place I’d never been before, which is in itself enough to make me want to go, and since Nena is one of the loveliest people anyone is ever likely to meet, I was  very much looking forward to the trip. Even if it was going to be in the snow. So, a week away in a country that most Brits haven’t even heard of, with my sister and her boyfriend (who happens to be my good friend, Jim, with whom I go way back). 

The Republic of Macedonia lies north of Greece, landlocked by its fellow Balkan states. For years it has been at the centre of a dispute with Greece over its name; most of the ancient region of Macedonia lies in modern Greece. Why this is so important, I couldn’t say; there are plenty of places in the world that share names, after all. Macedonia, the nation, is the one that shows up on sporting events as “The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,” which is an incredible mouthful often shortened to FYROM. Or better shortened to Macedonia, since that’s the place’s bloody name. still, calling the main airport “Alexander the Great” was perhaps not the best move if they were trying to avoid pissing off the Greeks even more.

Skopje is the capital city, up in the north of the country, not far from the border with Kosovo. We stayed in the Urban Hostel, on Mother Teresa Street . Mother Teresa being one of two famous historical figures born in Skopje, although in her time it was part of the Ottoman Empire. The other famous figure, by the way, was the Byzantine Emperor, Justinian the Great. Anyway, the hostel was fantastic; we weren’t staying the in the main hostel bit, but on the top floor in a separate apartment, but even the bunkbeds and shared rooms looked nicer than most I’ve seen in my time. Not only did they provide slippers to all the guests (immediately putting them in my top ten places to stay), but they also gave us a bottle of wine, and a pretty decadent chocolate birthday cake for my sister. You can’t be made to feel more welcome than that.

Skopje’s not a large city, so we saw a fair bit of it during our stay. The days were mostly spent happily wandering to one corner of town or another, after a healthy lie-in, taking our time and stopping off in one of the many coffee shops along the way. The Macedonian denar has a very favourable rate of exchange to the euro and the pound, so for once we all had plenty of money to spend. It’s an odd sort of city, and it apparently looks completely different to the last time Becca visited, just a few years ago. The government has gone to great lengths to revitalise the city, but a lot of this has entailed some very artificial attempts at providing visible history. There are statues everywhere, particularly in the main square, portraying everyone from Alexander to a jolly jazz band, and in every style from baroque to modern surrealist. The addition of Christmas lights only made the mixture stranger, especially considering that Christmas isn’t until January over there (Macedonia being one of the few nations that still runs its Christian fellows according to the Julian Calendar). I rather liked it. (Incidentally, apologies for the lack of photographs – Becca was camerawoman, and shall be supplying them to me in the future.)

We took in the museums, of art and city and natural history, and even the national zoo. This was, I am told, pretty horrible a few years ago, but it has happily been the recipient of much of the revit-funding and is now a decent place, with some proper pens and enclosures for the animals. A highlight of the trip has to be visiting a zoo in the snow, and seeing a pair of lions slipping about on the ice – not something I ever thought I see. Also, the rabbits seem to have the run of the place; possibly they are, in fact, in charge. Being in a zoo made me feel quite at home, even though my zookeeper experience lasted only four weeks over four years ago.

Much time was spent at the Old Bazaar, the last bastion of the Ottomans in Skopje. Galleries are held in the Turkish bathhouses, tiny bars and cafes sit amongst shops and stalls along cobbled roads, and the whole place has the most appealing atmosphere, although I was unable to buy a hat due to the shop displaying being seemingly abandoned for the week. Evidently shopkeepers can trust their fellow Skopjens, since the wares hung outside for the course of our stay and never disappeared. However, as much as we enjoyed the architecture and the shopping and the snow-sprinkled hippos, what we shall really take back with us and treasure forever is the food and drink. Nowhere have I ever felt so full. Nowhere have I ever eaten so much meat, fat and salt. I could happily have eaten kebabs and feta and chillis, and drunk Skopkso beer and local wine all week. In fact, that’s just what we did.

Some things I learned in Skopje:

-          The Cyrillic alphabet isn’t all that hard to get used to; I reckon I’d have mastered in a couple more days, although that doesn’t mean I’d have understood any of the words.

-          Fast food places sell toast – spelt TOCT – which is actually a vast, cheesy toasted sandwich of joy.

-          Ketchup is better in Macedonia.

-          The local moonshine, rakje, could be very dangerous.

-          If you order “bacon chips” in a posh restaurant, go get a huge plateful of bacon. You may, as Jim did, follow this up with a whole pork loin.

-          The authorities have tried to curb disorder and drunkenness by banning the retail sale of alcohol after 7.pm. It hasn’t worked.

-          Pretentious arty folk look just the same in England and Macedonia.

-          Young women in Macedonia are all stunningly attractive. Young men are all tall with impressive beards. Older folk are all mostly short and haggard-looking with unhappy expressions, meaning that either things were once very different there, or that a terrible change comes upon the Macedonians in their forties.

-          If you order hot chocolate in a café, you risk getting a bucket-sized mug of thick, molten milk chocolate.

-          Television in Macedonia is terrible, the local music is very odd, but all the radio stations play eighties classics and the bars and pubs play jazz.

So, we learned a little about the culture and the way of life. Most of all, however, we relaxed and braced ourselves for out nights out, when me met Nena and her friends and went for drinks. Becca already knew many of these people, but for me and Jim the faces were all new, which is a wonderful thing, and made it all rather like a week-long party. I made a lot of new friends, drank with a lot of fascinating people, and was thoroughly embarrassed by inability with even basic Macedonian and their proficiency at English. On the Friday, Becca’s birthday, we went to Nena’s home and met her wonderful and welcoming parents, and were presented with a meal which surpassed out ability to finish. My god, though, it was good. Those Macedonians know how to eat.

All good things come to an end, of course, and after seven nights were flew home – via a quick stopover in Zagreb, allowing a swift visit to the Christmas market and the chance for some boozed-up hot chocolate. Macedonia was my sixteenth country, Croatia my seventeenth (plus one if you’re counting my home in the UK). Not too bad going, although there are many, many more to visit yet.

On Sunday night it was Christmas drinks with the workmates. That made it eight nights on the trot, and I am getting far too old for that sort of behaviour. Certainly worth it, though. You’re only young-ish once.