Lost in Beijing - MIFF

A few more posts coming to round out my blog on our (amazing, incredible) 8 week trip, but we're now back and I'm into the Melbourne Film Festival for the 18th consecutive year.

My first film this year was Lost in Beijing - a Chinese film set in contemporary Beijing and showing off the city to full effect (though I didn't see streets as empty as those shown in the film when I was there last week!). The stock plot revolves around a young couple and an older couple. Through a plot device the younger woman has sex with the older man. She also has sex with her husband. She becomes pregnant. The older couple have no children as the wife is infertile. Who is the father of the younger woman's baby? (dramatic music plays)

Actually there is much to like in the film. Apart from the older woman, the acting is good. Tony Leung (the older man) is excellent as always. The film really does give a sense of life in contemporary Beijing and some of the scenes (particularly the sex scenes and the birth scene) feel particularly 'real'. Horrible camerawork.

7.5 out of 10.

Beijing

Another short one.  Having a great time in Beijing, being shown great hospitality by K.

 

Great Wall yesterday - absolutely amazing, a tourist attraction that lives up to the hype.

 

Awesome peking duck.  Great Iranian food last night.

 

Shopping and massages today.

 

Forbidden City and Tiannanmen tomorrow.

Portofino

It already feels like a long time ago, but last Thursday afternoon we took the train from Levanto to Santa Margherita (spelling?) then walked to Portofino.  SM is a very resorty seaside town.  Portofino is a few kilometres away and is a very exclusive port attracting an international crowd of yachties, playboys and wannabes.  And us.  The walk from SM is boring in parts, but most of it is beautiful and meanders past some amazing clifftop houses.

 

When we arrived we sat at a bar on the harbour for a drink with all the other beautiful people, then went for dinner.  Again with all the beautiful people, except for the woman with the scary plastic surgery at the next table.  Then the best pistacchio gelati I'm ever likely to eat. 

 

All followed by a long, painful train ride back to Levanto.

 

Portofino had the most amazing selection of shops - pretty much every top-end designer name had its own shop there, even though probably only a few hundred people live in the village.  The harbour is extraordinarily pretty and absolutely crammed with boats.  The town square is very pretty also.  Overall a good but slightly surreal experience.

Amsterdam

I still need to blog about Portofino, but right now M and I are staying with D & K in Amsterdam.  They have a beautiful huge and light apartment in the 9 streets; very central.  A great dinner last night at Nomads - a north african feast - then a wander through the central city and the red light district.  Off to Bruge for the weekend.

Cinque Terre

A few great days in the Cinque Terre, staying in Levanto. 

 

Walked from Levanto to Riomaggiore on Tuesday - about 7 1/2 hours.  The walk from Levanto to Monterosso was fantastic - far less busy than the 'cinque terre trail'.  We saw only a few people and it was very beautiful and a fantastic start to the day.  From Monterosso to Vernazza and Vernazza to Corniglia were great walks (very hilly!), Corniglia to Manarola and Manarola to Riomaggiore are nowhere near as interesting. 

 

Levanto, where we were staying, is 1 town further along than the cinque terre.  An italian-style seaside resort - the beach was pretty crappy (at least to Australian eyes) but the europeans all seemed to love it.

 

Tuesday night we had a fantastic pizza right on the Vernazza waterfront.  An amazing view and a fantastic evening.

 

 

 

 

 

Lucca

Our travels roll on.  We are now in the beautiful Tuscan town of Lucca and looking forward to exploring.

We spent the weekend with A & F in Florence at their fantastic new(ish) apartment near Piazza Santa Croce.  An amazing location.  It's great seeing A in her home environment - it's been more than 6 years now she's been in Florence.  M and I did much wandering around Florence's streets and taking in the atmosphere and had a great dinner at a local Osteria with A & F.

Dinner in Panzano on Thursday night was an experience - the local celebrity butcher (!) has opened a very trendy restaurant which has a set menu of 6 meat courses.  A & F drove down and we all had a fantastic meal in the little town. 

Also this week we visited so many places - Montepulciano, Montelcino, St Gimingano ... the list continues.  Tuscany has many, many beautiful towns.  And some great hiking quite near our base in Lucolena.

It was incredibly rejuvanating settling into a base for a week - the constant packing and unpacking is very draining.  Our little farmhouse was cute and a great base to see the Chianti region and Tuscany more generally.

Chianti

As you will have read, we are presently in siena for the Palio. 

 

We are staying in a little farmhouse in the Chianti Classico region of Tuscany, near a little village called Lucolena.  Lucolena has a few hundred people, a shop and a pizzeria which is fantastic but is open only 3 nights a week.  It is an agricultural village.  We are very lucky - our little farmhouse is very cute and recently renovated and has its own cute little garden with an amazing outlook over tuscan hills.  The satellite TV is eccentric.  2 channels of Al Jazeera, Algerian TV, Abu Dhabi TV, Syrian TV, lots of shopping, an arabic childrens channel, Azerbaijan TV and so very many more.  500 plus channels of TV and radio.  2 channels in english.  BBC International and Bloomberg.

 

In fact the views everywhere are incredible.  We are getting sick of telling eachother to look at the view - they are always good.

 

Food is great.  Pizza, pasta, cheese, bread, olive oil, tomatoes, wine, pastries and so much good coffee.  I had better not get started on the coffee or I will never stop. 

 

So far we've visited Panzano (for an arts festival), Greve, Arezzo, Cortona - and a number of small towns whose names presently escape me.  Such a beautiful part of the world.

 

 

Early post on the Palio

Am in Siena at the Palio - the famous bareback horse race. 

 

It just finished a few minutes ago and was raced and won in sensational circumstances.  There were numerous false starts - the horses simply would not line up in formation.  The race itself was sensational - 3 very very fast laps around the Piazza del Campo on the dirt track.  The end was amazing - green-and-white (GAW) was winning easily but blue was catching up fast.  To M and I it looked like GAW held on for the win.  And GAW fans certainly celebrated.  When the winner's flag was raised, however, blue had won.  Much emotion from green and much jumping up and down and celebrating from blue fans (including many standign near us).  After protests, however, GAW was reinstated as the winner.  It appeared a popular decision overall, but led to much emotion in the blue quarter.  I write this in the blue part of town, and there are many tears and much emotion.  Children and adults are openly weeping in the streets.  The mood is sort of ugly.

 

The horse I was backing - pink and yellow - lost its rider about halfway through the race.

 

An amazing experience. 

 

Perugia and Assisi

Today we visited Assisi - home of St Francis of ...

A beautiful, hilly town with an incredible, massive basilica and shops selling some of the crappiest souvenirs imaginable.  Though I did pick up a very nice St Francis snowdome.  And we ate absolutely spectacularly good pasta.

This afternoon Perugia's huge and impresive gallery of Umbrian art.  Housed in an incredible 13th century building and with more paintings of Madonna-and-Child than you can poke a stick at.

Tonight great pizza and a stroll around the beautiful streets of Perugia.

travel fatigue

One month in.

11 beds.
packed and re-packed my luggage 11 times-
most of my clothes are now stained and/or faded from over-vigorous washing.  And I am sick of the sight of all of them anyway.

Nevertheless having an awesome time.

today in italy

A long logistics day today.  Get up at 4.30, drive to Rhodes Airport, flight to Athens, flight to Rome, train to Rome Central, wait an hour and three-quarters then a 2 and a half hour train to Perugia then a bus then a walk to the hotel.  We made it.  Eventually.

We are now in Perugia - the capital of Umbria and a beautiful city/town.  Had a great wander around town earlier and looking forward to food and further exploration shortly.

Gennadi part 2

M and I are having a very greek time of it here on Rhodes.

 

After my last blog post, yesterday evening we drove to Prassonisi - a famous windsurfing and kiteboarding beach where the Aegean meets the Mediterranean.  The beach is wide and windy and the ocean is literally packed with really really good windsurfers and kiteboarders. 

 

Later that night we returned to Gennadi, where we played more backgammon, ate gyro and drank retsina (one of the most unpleasant drinks I've ever tasted - crappy white wine with strong overtones of pinocleen), then continued playing backgammon while drinking ouzo.  I won the backgammon of course.  In accordance with fine Turkish tradition (taught to me whilst losing to K earlier in the week), upon winning I shoved the board under M's arm and suggested we play again once she'd learned to play the game.

 

Today we drove most of the day and saw much of the island, with lunch at a highly recommended (but unimpressive-looking) fish restaurant called Lucas on the harbour in a little port town.  Awesomely fresh.  Rhodes is a beautiful island - once you get out of Rhodes town.  A very quiet and rural place.

 

Italy tomorrow.

what?

What the hell's going on while I'm away from Australia?!?!

I just checked The Age online and John Howard appears to be issuing passionate emotional appeals about Aboriginal welfare - using Hurricane Katrina metaphors. Weird!

Drop

We shared our 3 night cruise in Turkey with 11 dutchmen. We discovered (painfully) the Dutch obsession with Drop - foul-tasting dutch licorice.

It comes in a variety of forms - from soft to hard and sweet to insanely salty. The soft, sweetish variety is tolerable (but not good). The hard and salty types are beyond bad.

Amazingly enough, among the 11 dutch people on a 1 week holiday they had brought 5 varieties of Drop with them (to make it through those long turkish nights). They were keen to ensure that we tasted all 5 varieties.

Luckily I have a strong stomach and I kept them all down and luckily M is good with people so she avoided the worst few types. The turkish couple on the cruise had neither defence - they were struggling to spit it out before it was too late.

Gennadi and Amos Beach

M and I are presently in Gennadi, a small village on the coast of the Island of Rhodes in Greece. Gennadi (pronounced Yen-adi) is a world away from the horrors of Rhodes Town. It is pretty much unchanged from the first half of the twentieth century, except it's much smaller. More than half of the village's population moved to Australia in the 1950s and the population went from 3,000 at the time of WWII to 650 today. It's a pretty little town with awesome souvlakis and a long pebbly beach (i'm starting to get used to them - i don't think sand has been invented yet in europe). There are few tourists and it is pretty quiet... we're having a great time here.

We are presently caught in a heatwave. In both Turkey and Greece it has been 40 degrees plus for quite a few days now. I saw a thermometer yesterday which had been placed in the shade of a huge tree and it read 41 degrees. Much hotter in direct sun.

M and I are both very brown - me especially. In Turkey people kept talking to me in Turkish and in Greece everyone I meet asks me what part of the country my family is from. I was just told I look like a Greek tv star - I was a little insulted as I'm usually told I look like a film star. As yet no-one has mistaken M for Greek or Turkish.

Turkey was fantastic. Friendly, warm people, sun, beaches (mostly pebbles), backgammon, raki (the national drink - actually it was missable), Efes (the v good local beer), great food and much more. Amos Beach, where we stayed when not on our boat trip, is a beautiful cove near-ish Marmaris.

M's friends K&C - whose holiday house we were staying in - came over from London for a few days and we had a great time hanging out with them. We hired a boat for the day on Saturday and the four of us cruised to a few coves, jumped out of the boat for swims when we were hot and generally had an absolutely fantastic and memorable day. The captain was also memorable. Late 60s, huge white moustache, even bigger smile, so many gold chains it was amazing he could stand up and just a total dude. He thought so too of course - he had a big photo of himself (in slightly younger days and with even funkier hair) up in the boat right next to the wheel. I will post photos of him in due course.

The Kite Runner

Just read The Kite Runner - a novel about a man who had a privileged childhood in Kabul, Afghanistan in the 1970s before fleeıng to America after the Soviets invaded.  It returns to Kabul in modern times towards the end.  It ıs beautıfully written by a man who clearly has much affection for hıs homeland - although it ıs a little "neat" for my tastes in the way that all of the threads are wrapped up by the end.  Lıfe tends not to be so neatly packaged.  Thanks to my afghani friend W for the present!

Marmaris to Fethiye

M and İ have just disembarked from a 3 night cruise from Marmaris to Fethiye.  A very relaxing few days - periodically cruising to a new cove, jumping off the boat for a swim, readıng, eating and relaxing.  The water was extremely warm - and perfect to jump ınto gıven how hot ıt has been - it was 37 degrees by 8.30 thıs morning.

 

The passengers on the boat comprised 11 Dutchmen, 2 Turks and us.  Much smoking, reasonably extreme levels of politeness and a barrage of Steve Irwin questions.  Last night saw a very multicultural game of Uno. 

10:30am

Throughout our travels ın Turkey and Greece we contınue to see Englıshmen and Germans gettıng stuck ınto 1-lıtre beers from 10:30am and even earlıer. Very ugly.

Torunç

M and İ are presently stayıng in Amos Beach, a collection of holiday bungalows near Torunç, which ıs about 20km from Marmaris - which ıs sort-of near Dolaman Aırport ın Mediterranean Turkey.  İt ıs very hot here - 35 degrees plus every day (and apparently 50 plus in August).  Tomorrow we are off for a 3 nıght cruıse on a Gullet (a wooden turkısh boat) - then back to Amos, then on Sunday off to Genadi in rural Rhodes in Greece for a few days - then Italy.  We caught a catamaran here from Rhodes - an easy 1 hour ride.

 

Life is sımple here - eat, sleep, walk, swim ın the beatıful waters, clamber along the rocks and pebbles of the beach (ı keep comparıng the beach ıtself unfavourably to sandringham, but the water and the clıffs behınd and the dramatıc views cant be compared).  We have hıred a car - otherwise impossıble to get around - and I am sort of copıng with drivıng on the wrong side of teh road, though am not fındıng it so easy.  There are power blackouts lıke clockwork every mornıng and every evenıng.  I wrıte thıs from Torunç - the nearest shops to Amos.

 

Sitting on the balcony of our bungalow lookıng at the ancıent ruıns on the cliff opposıte and the dramatıcally blue-green waters whilst drınkıng an Efes beer ıs a pretty relaxıng way to spend an afternoon.

 

 

 

Greece

After leaving Israel on Tuesday, we had a day in Athens and are now in Rhodes.  Tomorrow we leave by ferry for Turkey, where we'll be staying in Torunc (a village some way out of Marmaris).

by ferry

The Acropolis in Athens was interesting, though surprisingly badly kept.  The Parthenon is heavily supported by scaffolding which hugely diminishes the effect - and the Acropolis Museum is only half-open.  Walking in the Plaka was fascinating for the sheer scale of the horrible souvenirs.

 

We are staying at a very cute little hotel in Old Town Rhodes.  The Old Town is surrounded by a wall built by the Crusaders and there is a huge Crusader fort here.  The town is absoutely overrun by tourists, many of whom are extremely pink englishmen and women who start drinking beer by 11 in the morning.  I had a huge culture shock on our first day here when we visited the main beach.  A long expanse of ugly pebbles, completely filled with umbrellas and fat, half-naked europeans slowly baking themselves.  And the restaurant touts are particularly irritating.  Yesterday we visited Lindos, another town on the island.  It was pretty much a smaller version of Rhodes Town although with a nicer beach.  We have had some excellent greek food though.

 

Today we visited the beatiful (and beautifully restored) sixteenth century synagogue and new Jewish museum.  There was a Jewish community here for millenia, until it was wiped out in the twentieth century by immigration and the Nazis.  1600+ Rhodes jews were deported to Auschwitz. 

Yad VaShem

Today visited Yad VaShem, the Holocaust Memorial.  It's an architecturally stunning set of new (2005) buildings on Mount Hertzl, just outside Jerusalem.  As you would expect, it has a very powerful emotional pull and is very sad.  It tries (and succeeds) in humanising the holocaust by telling individual stories among the greater horrors. 

 

 

Yemin Moshe

We leave Jerusalem tomorrow (sadly).

 

We've been staying in a (sort of crappy) apartment in the most amazing area-  Yemin Moshe.  Just outside the Old City walls.  It's pedestrian only, and paved with Jerusalem stone and all of the buildings are made out of the same material.  These photos don't really do it justice.  This one is better but still doesn't really capture the experience of walking down the paved streets.

Travel update

On Friday evening we returned to the Western Wall for the start of Shabbat. Lots of singing, thousands of people - all dressed up, many Haredi (ultra-orthodox). An incredibly emotional experience being at the epicentre of judaism.

Saturday *everything* was shut, except in the Arab sections of Jerusalem. We walked around the Old City before entering at Damascus Gate and wandering around the Muslim quarter. So different to the Christian and Jewish sections - incredibly vibrant and colourful. Then we continued into East Jerusalem and had coffee in an Arab cafe, before going to the Rockefeller Museum of Antiquities. A great collection of objects dating back up to 100,000 years. Absolutely worth seeing with some beautiful statues, old skeletons, ceramics, glass, metalware and amazing old objects. We then walked as far as the Mount of Olives before it became a little too unfriendly. We jumped in a taxi and in 10 minutes were back standing outside the King David hotel. Sat in the sun in Yemin Moshe (the area where we're staying) then dinner in Ein Kerem (a village near Jerusalem) with the son of friends of my parents and his Israeli wife.

Today the Western Wall tunnels which were absolutely incredible. A voyage into Jerusalem at the time of the Second Temple and even earlier. The tunnels travel most of the way along the Western Wall (the Western retaining wall of the temple complex) and were dug out after 1967 - they are fascinating beyond description. Followed by the City of David (Jerusalem as conquered by David - it sits outside the Old City and is even older than it). Not as impressive as a tourist site. Then shopping in the Old City and a quick walk through the City Centre. Tomorrow the Holocaust memorial and more.

Diversity

Coming from Melbourne, where the Jewish community is relatively homogenous - most (but not all of course) are of Eastern European origin and have relatively similar traditions - Israel is showing me the diversity of the Jewish people.

Ethiopians, Moroccans, Indians, Sudenese, it seems like there are Israelis from everywhere ... as well as the usual mix of jews of European background. Last night we had dinner with an Australian-Israeli and his Israeli wife, who is half Afghani and half Iranian by background.

Guns

I'm getting used to the guns in Israel; actually it has been a lot easier than expected. Semi-automatic weapons are everywhere in Jerusalem. And they're not there just for effect - they are carried loaded, with extra clips on the belt. It's a little disconcerting (as an Australian) to look up and realise you're sitting next to a soldier taking a drink of water with his gun dangling and pointing straight at you. But you get used to it.

Today was a new experience, though. After our (fascinating - probably the best thing we've done so far) tour of the Western Wall Tunnels [they run right under the Western Wall starting from the Western Wall plaza through the Muslim Quarter, coming out in the Muslim Quarter] we were escorted through the Muslim Quarter back to the Plaza by 2 guards with handguns drawn.