Nine months, five continents, twelve countries, one principality, eleven currencies, thirty-eight cities and waaaaaaaay too many drinks later, I’m finally ‘home’ in Australia. I put home into ‘ ‘ because I’m not entirely sure what home is right now, never mind where. But that’s a new blog for a new beginning. In the meantime, let’s summarise the travels that were.
A smattering of highlights:
- catching up with old friends and family
- making new friends and then meeting up with them again in various locations
- meeting Dr Jaime Lerner (thank you for showing that visionary leadership and politics are not mutually exclusive) and seeing his city (Curitiba)
- seeing Garth Brooks play in Las Vegas
- dancing in Brazil (I won’t limit it to classes in Rio because festivals in Paraty were also excellent dance experiences)
- seeing New York City for the first time, including the uproariously hilarious Book of Mormon on Broadway
- conquering the Grouse Grind in Canada
- wine tasting in the northern hemisphere
- road trips in the USA (one from Northern California through Yosemite to Las Vegas and one from Dallas through Austin to San Antonio)
- feeding ‘gators marshmallows in the Bayou in Louisiana
- ballooning above the Loire Valley
- spending so many months just doing whatever took my fancy on any given day - freedom is not at all over-rated.
Great innovations and general good stuff spotted along the way (warning: contains matters subject to nerd alerts):
- Galeria Malta in Poznan has an outstanding system of signs with number of available spaces and lights in the car park which glow red for filled spaces and green for vacant spaces, making it easy-peasy to locate a parking spot.
- Signage in Singapore is both entertaining and thorough. Singapore wins the World Signage Wars hands down. There is never an excuse to not know something in Singapore.
- Singapore ties first place for public transport excellence with their brilliantly designed MRT. Fast, efficient, frequent, clean, well sign-posted (there is a route map above each door with lights indicating where you are as well as audible and understandable audio information) and trains level with the platforms, the SMRT is a winner. Curitiba takes equal first with their excellent bus system - a metro above ground. Special attention needs to be paid to the fabulous bus-stops which are designed with passenger comfort and efficient loading/un-loading in mind. Honourable mention to Switzerland for their very useable public transport system.
- San Antonio’s riverwalk and floodworks deserve major cudos. As well as providing a fabulous public space full of art works of various kinds and a brilliant tourist experience on board the frequent punts, the renovated and highly engineered river provides extraordinary flood protection. It recently saved the city from a 1 in 100 year flood event.
Speaking of public spaces, New York’s High Line Park is the hands-down winner for urban planning brilliance. ‘Nuff said.
- Austin’s 6th Street. It’s not the only “music street” in the world but it is the most pleasant I’ve seen, the one with the most diversity and the funnest crowd.
Dallas’ multi-storey roads need to be seen to be believed. Public transport is a better ideal (sadly, not in Dallas) but these roads are really quite extraordinary in their own right. And they remind me so much of the Jetsons that it makes me happy to see them.
- Las Vegas entertainment. There’s too much to list but for entertainment value, Vegas wins.
- Best effort at providing tourist information goes to Prague. They really do try. Actual success in providing tourist information goes to Singapore.
- Rio wins the “best lifestyle” award for constant music, dancing and festivals.
- Paraty, Brazil wins Best Small Town and Best Music Festival categories.
- City planners of Vancouver need a big nod of appreciation. Creating wide boulevards lined with trees and a city of glass was a stroke of genius.
- Skype and wifi need to be thanked.
- Mad Men, True Blood and Pan Am. It may be television and not documentaries but they are a great experience. The Tudors also needs a wave, even though it is almost a documentary.
- Rio’s Copacabana foreshore walk and bikeway with periodic work-out stations needs big celebrations both for encouraging citizen health and providing beauteous aesthetics to appreciate.
Minus points have been awarded as follows:
- Poland - road and driver quality. Democracy is not a synonym for anarchy, people. You are not more important than anyone else on the road, I don’t care who your father is or what brand of handbag you sport. And councils please note, dirt is not an adequate road surface. Poland also gets a dishonorable mention for pumping out groundwater in order to lay sewer pipes under a roadway. Dear Engineer, next time, re-route.
- “Computer says no” winners are Jetstar in Singapore and Gmina Czerwonak in Poland. And the whole of France.
- Lack of signage. Yes France, I’m looking at you (although Rio’s bus stops could do with a revamp).
- Design flaws, such as trains that are several steps up from platform level - why was this ever a good idea? Even prior to trolley-cases this can’t have been convenient. Toilets in airports that are not big enough to accommodate an accompanying suitcase. Aeroplane seats that do not recline. Carpet near check in counters at airports that make it difficult to wheel your bag through.
- Inefficiency is a large category - there was so much of it, so I’ll limit it to the overall winner: the payment system in Brazilan shops. Is it really necessary to send customers to three different counters in order to buy one thing?
- Bad public policy. Again, a very well populated category. I’ll settle for naming and shaming open water delivery channels in the desert in the USA.
- Random room numbering dis-awards go to hotels in Prague (room 401 on the fifth floor) and London (room 507 on the third floor). I cannot even begin to imagine an explanation for this kind of chaos.
It’s surprising that some of the following haven’t been addressed yet:
- suitcases haven’t come a long way since they were first invented and even the latest versions from high quality brands such as Samsonite have serious design flaws. Are they paying cats to design these things?
- luggage weight allowances - why isn’t there an average per person overall weight allowance that includes your body weight?
- un-controlled numbers of car sales in countries where the road infrastructure is not designed to accommodate them. Why? No one wins.
- electing politicians that lack vision - it is a world-wide epidemic. Why do we demand so little from our leaders? Why do we tolerate so much? I’m disgusted.
- standardising clothing and shoe sizes according to measurements, rather than arbitrary numbering. When is a 36 not a 36? When it’s in Mexico rather than Europe or when it’s referring to a shoe size rather than a clothing size. Similarly a 3.5 in the UK would be a 5 in Australia in shoes while an Australian 10 would be an American 6 in clothing. Usually. But sometimes it’s a 4. As for Brazil, well, they just helpfully use letters - P is a small and S is a medium in case you need to know. For goodness sake manufacturers, just measure in inches and centimetres and whack that on the label.
Things that used to exist that sadly no longer do:
- a volume button on the external housing of Nokia phones - why would you remove this? Now what am I supposed to do when the ambient noise exceeds the vocal projection of the speaker?
- a camera where the switch to video was made via the top control. Now it is in a spot where you tend to hold when taking a photo (constant loss of gigabytes for the unsuspecting, inattentive or digit-ally challenged (thank you English language for the ability to do that!)...)
- sensors/displays that tell you how fast to travel (within the speed limit) in order to optimise your travel time and reduce unnecessary stop-starting at lights (apparently this used to exist in Poland in the 70s - if my father is to be believed)
All in all: 9 months well spent. I’d love to tell you something profound, but I think my experiences are still percolating and I suspect the real insights will come as I try to shoe-horn my penchant for enjoying freedom into some semblance of a normal, sensible life (at least for a while...ooo, I smell a sequel). In the meantime, the most profound thing I can tell you is that wherever I went, despite the differences in language, culture and landscape, it’s a true fact that we’re all pretty similar. The Thai t-shirt vendors had it right all along: the world at large is same, same but different.
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