Christmas done and dusted

That’s Christmas done for another year. This year’s festivities took place at Nicole and Jason’s in Rouse Hill. As we did last year, Garry and I slept over on Christmas Eve. We also took time out to see Mitch’s new apartment. It’s an impressive investment. I’d be happy to live in it. 

The weather also played its part. It was stinking hot out West on Wednesday, but dawned much cooler on Christmas Day. Once the mandatory present unwrapping was done, we spent the rest of the day relaxing outdoors, including a late lunch on the patio. We even squeezed in a traditional game of cricket with some quirky backyard rules.

In the lead-up to the big day, Garry and I spent much of the week preparing for our extended overseas trip. On Tuesday, we went shopping at the DFO Outlet Mall in Homebush. What was meant to be an hour-long excursion turned into a four-hour shopping frenzy. We’re now stocked up on clothes, underwear and shoes for our cruise. Jon and Colm came over for dinner shortly after returning from DFO. It was another one of our memorable catch-up sessions.

Christmas Eve was a last-minute flurry of activity, preparing for Christmas itself and tomorrow’s early morning flight to New Zealand. I got my haircut. We did some final grocery shopping, wrapped gifts, ironed clothes and did the laundry before heading out to Rouse Hill for the night.

Last night, after driving back from Rouse Hill, we had four friends over for Christmas drinks and leftovers at our apartment. The last guest finally departed around 11pm. Today we’ll pack our bags and complete final preparations for our time overseas. We used to fly around the world once a year, while living in London, so these lengthy trips aren’t anything new. However, this trip seems to require more planning and preparation than I recall having done before. I guess we’re out of practice.

Counting down the days

We can finally use the fingers on one hand to count down the number of days until our Round the World extravaganza begins. Five days from now, we'll be boarding an early morning flight to Auckland. This is the first leg of two flights that'll get us into New York for a series of business meetings.

However, it's the 14-day Caribbean cruise that follows that's got me most excited.  Above, you can see the awesome itinerary. We'll visit a total of 12 ports (i.e. 12 nations) by the time we're done. This is something that Garry and I have talked about doing for decades.  It's hard to believe we're about to make it a reality.

Venice for the first time

Venice is a magical place. There’s something about this aquatic city that instantly captivates every first-time visitor. It's like walking into a fairy tale. Elegant Byzantine marble facades greet you at every turn. Picturesque cobblestone pavements and gracefully arched bridges tempt you down shaded lanes and along water-side paths. As for its iconic canals, they churn with vessels of all descriptions in constant motion. Venice is simultaneously static, timeless and alive.

I visited this former mercantile city-state for the first time while backpacking through Europe in 1990. At the time, I was travelling with Dean Keiller, a Victorian sheep farmer, on a Eurail Youth pass. We arrived in Venice in the late afternoon on 7 September after travelling from Munich via the Brenner Pass.

For five days, we stayed at a campground in Fusina, a coastal town on the edge of the Venetian Lagoon. It was by far the cheapest option, with a nearby ferry wharf providing quick and easy access to Venice. Every morning, we took the ferry to Zattere, where we disembarked onto Rio Terà Foscarini, a street leading directly to Ponte dell'Accademia, one of three bridges crossing the Grand Canal.

The image opening this post was our first sighting of a canal in Venice. We literally walked around a corner from Calle Larga Nani, a side street off Rio Terà Foscarini, and stumbled upon this truly iconic view of the Cannaregio Canal. This is exactly what Venice is like. Around every corner lies something unexpected that either inspires or delights. The photo above shows the Grand Canal at sunset. Just another of the numerous Instagram moments we experienced.

According to the guidebooks, Venice comprises 116 islands, 177 canals, and 423 bridges. Dean and I filled our time exploring as many as we could, walking from one end of the city to the other. Along the way, we took in all manner of traditional tourist highlights, including the elegant white marble arch of the Rialto Bridge and the majestic Piazza San Marco, also known as St Mark's Square. Like all good tourists, we visited St. Mark's Basilica, the city’s famous 12th-century cathedral, admired its pilfered bronze Byzantine horses and ventured up its landmark red brick bell tower.

Getting into the bell tower required some planning. Our first attempt was thwarted by a queue stretching out the door and through the plaza. We decided to beat the crowd and returned first thing the following morning to purchase a midday tour ticket. As you can see above, the view was well worth the effort. The red-tiled roofs were breathtaking, as was the unobstructed view of Basilica Santa Maria della Salute with its stunning white marble dome.

We both loved Basilica Santa Maria della Salute. It’s a baroque-style church with a unique octagonal design decorated with 12 works by Titian. You’re also treated to a spectacular view of the Grand Canal, St Mark's Square and the island of San Giorgio Maggiore from Fondamenta Salute, a promenade that marks the start of the Grand Canal.

As penny-pinching backpackers, we decided against taking one of the gondola rides relentlessly touted to passing tourists. Instead, we spent our days catching the city’s vaporetti, or public ferry boats, which traverse its canals like buses on a city street. A Vaporetto literally took you anywhere you wanted to go. As a result, we visited Arsenale di Venezia, the city’s Byzantine shipyard; Murano, the island of glass-blowing artisans; and Lido, the barrier island that protects the lagoon.

Venice was a surprisingly expensive location. We discovered this very early on after retracing our steps one afternoon to grab lunch at a quaint restaurant we’d spotted earlier in the day. It was a tiny, hole-in-the-wall venue with concertina doors opening onto a cantilevered canal-side balcony. However, waterside dining does not come cheap. We took one look at the menu posted outside and decided a local pizzeria would do just fine.

The experience of retracing our steps was eye-opening. Dean and I had spotted this restaurant mid-morning while wandering its lanes and canal-side paths. An hour or so later, we decided it would be the perfect lunch venue. I then retraced our steps, lane by lane, from memory until we reached the spot where we’d originally seen the restaurant.

Dean was flabbergasted that I could recall every twist and turn of our walking route. Until that moment, I’d never appreciated that this was a unique skill. I naturally assumed anyone could do what I had just done. Sadly, my short-term memory is no longer as sharp, and so this navigational talent now eludes me. What is it that they say about youth being wasted on the young?

As a once-powerful city-state, Venice is filled with all manner of ornate and imposing churches. Dean and I visited plenty of them, marvelling at their decadence and ostentatious excess. However, every so often, a venue would surprise us. San Giorgio Maggiore Church was one of them. Its grand white marble façade hints at decorative overkill inside. 

However, the interior, while grand and imposing, is relatively minimalist in nature. I loved it. The photos above were taken when Garry and I visited the church with Garry’s parents in April 2007. Every other image posted here comes from my Kodak-era photo album.

After five days of pounding the pavement in Venice, Dean and I packed up our pup tent and headed west. We caught a local train to Florence on 12 September, ready to kick off our next backpacking adventure, which included an impromptu gig as a fake Contiki Tour inspector. I'll reveal all in a future post.

Terrorism next door

At approximately 6:45pm this evening, we started hearing police and ambulance sirens going off around the neighbourhood. It was clear that a major incident was unfolding somewhere in the inner city. Within half an hour, reports of a mass shooting event at Archer Park, a grassy area at Bondi Beach, began coming in.

At 10:00pm this evening, the New South Wales Police Commissioner, Mal Lanyon, confirmed that at least 12 people have died in a terrorist attack and 29 others have been transported to various hospitals around the city. The injured included two police officers who are in serious condition. A car containing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) has also been found parked in Bondi. In the last hour or so, a massive police raid has taken place on a property in Western Sydney.

The police have confirmed the involvement of two shooters. One is dead, and the other is in a critical condition in the hospital. Video footage broadcast this evening indicates that a third shooter may have been involved. Police have yet to confirm this. Sirens continue to race through the area as I write this post. The noise has been relentless since 6:45pm.

Without a doubt, a major terrorist attack took place just six kilometres from our home this evening. The Jewish community was the intended target. More than a thousand people were celebrating the first day of Hanukkah, an ancient Jewish candle lighting festival, at a beachside event in Bondi when the shooting began.

It’s the second such incident in the Eastern Suburbs in the last two years. In April last year, a deranged man killed six people in a Bondi Junction shopping mall. This evening's live coverage is showing locations along the seaside promenade that are all too familiar to Garry and me, including an arched pedestrian footbridge I've walked across many times. Once again, just as in July 2005, we find ourselves living in a city under attack. It's senseless, shameful and insane.

UPDATE: 7:45am, 15 December

The confirmed death toll is now 16 people. This toll includes one of the gunmen and, tragically, a ten-year-old child who passed away at Sydney Children’s Hospital in Randwick last night. 42 people have presented with injuries at hospitals, including four children who have been transferred to Sydney Children’s Hospital. 

Police have confirmed there were only two gunmen involved, a father and his son. The father died at the scene yesterday, while the son remains in critical condition under police guard in the hospital. The father was a licensed gun owner and had been for at least a decade.  This is Australia's worst mass shooting since the tragedy that unfolded in Port Arthur almost two decades ago.

UPDATE: 8:25am, 15 December

The lives of yesterday’s victims are being steadily brought to light. One story has moved me deeply. Alex Kleytman, an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor and native of Ukraine, was attending the event with his wife, Larissa Kleytman. He died shielding his wife from bullets. 

Garry and I toured Auschwitz-Birkenau in 2019. The experience was profoundly moving. It breaks my heart to think that Kleytman survived this monstrous place only to have his life cruelly taken by anti-Semitic violence decades later. Australia is not Nazi Germany. He should have been safe here. The BBC claims Australia has more Holocaust survivors than any other nation outside of Israel. I had no idea.

UPDATE: 18 December
It didn’t take long for politics to enter the fray in the aftermath of last weekend’s massacre. In a stunning, and clearly politically motivated, act, former Prime Minister John Howard held a press conference on Tuesday to disparage the current Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese's call for gun reform. Until now, John Howard has kept largely to himself since leaving office in 2007. 

I’m dumbfounded by his actions. In April 1996, in the wake of the Port Arthur tragedy, both sides of politics rallied behind Howard as Prime Minister in a bipartisan effort to reform Australia’s gun laws. Fast forward two decades, and when similar tragic events engulf our nation again, he chose not to express a reciprocal measure of grace and goodwill towards the prime minister of the day.

Without a doubt, gun law reform is required in the wake of last weekend’s events. Therefore, it astounds me that Howard would actively strive to undermine any bipartisan initiative by describing calls for gun reform as a diversion. His comments strike me as Machiavellian and politically motivated.

I am by no means endorsing anything the current Government has done or failed to do. I’m simply noting my disappointment that the one man who benefited from bipartisan support in the wake of a similar atrocity chose a different path when the roles were reversed. Howard has done many great things as a leader, and our nation is the better for them. However, this week’s press conference isn’t one of them. 

To quote former Astronaut Frank Bowman, a failure of imagination enabled the events of last weekend to occur. In other words, there's work to be done in the weeks and months ahead to learn from last weekend and make lasting changes that keep our nation safe. This requires constructive debate and bipartisan support, not political point scoring.  Naturally, the debate will be fueled by high emotions.

For example, yesterday's blistering statements from Josh Freyenburg, while superficially sounding like a political play, proved authentic when challenged. He angrily hit back at television host Sarah Ferguson, who asked the former treasurer if his call for stronger action on antisemitism by the prime minister was politically motivated.

The former politician said his motivation comes from his daily life as a Jewish citizen and the simple fact that there are armed guards outside his kids’ school and police cars outside local Jewish sporting clubs.  

“Why should we live with this? If I’m not going to speak out, who is? If not now, when? If not me, who?” he told Ferguson on 7:30, the flagship ABC program.

While I don't endorse some of his rhetoric, I certainly respect the real-world experience he and his family have endured. Like all peace-loving Australians, I want our Jewish community to feel safe and embraced. It’s the same experience I sought for our nation’s Muslim community in the wake of the horrific Christchurch Mosque massacre six years ago, and for the LGBTQIA+ community during the same sex marriage debate in 2017.

Antisemitism is evil. Islamophobia is bigotry. Injustice is injustice, no matter who the victims are. Our modern nation has been built on the notion of a fresh start for people fleeing or being forcibly removed (just ask the convicts) from their home nation. Dear John, let’s keep it that way.

Pompeii and Pisa

It's retrospective post time again. Back in 1990, a Eurail Youth pass was an incredibly inexpensive and effective means of travel. Overnight trains, including sleeper trains, were common, and trains linked major cities with surprisingly high frequency. As a result, you could reach almost any European location with a railway station with ease and schedule your travel to maximise the ground you covered without compromise.

Dean Keiller and I used a 15-day flexi pass to explore Europe in the Summer of 1990. You could use these days whenever you wished on almost any train within three months. The pass also included conditions that offered incredible flexibility. For example, you could board a train in the evening to another city, and only the following day would count as a ticketed travel day. I don’t recall the details, but I imagine this flexibility was limited to trains departing after a certain time.

Likewise, you could get off a train at an intermediary stop and spend time sightseeing before continuing to your destination. The only caveat was that you had to arrive before midnight to avoid using a second day on your Eurail pass.

I made good use of this flexibility several times. For example, we got off the train between Stockholm and Copenhagen to explore Gothenburg, and again between Copenhagen and Munich, where we spent several hours exploring Hamburg. However, my scheduling skills came to the fore while traversing the length of Italy.

First, on 19 September, we squeezed in a half-day exploring the buried city of Pompeii while travelling to Brindisi to catch an overnight to Corfu. Then, upon returning to Brindisi, on 25 September, we stopped for several hours in Pisa while en route to Zurich. I timed our stopovers to perfection. Dean and I later agreed that we’d had ample time for everything we’d wanted to see in each location.

Pompeii was fascinating. As we all know, the city was buried under metres of volcanic ash and pumice during the eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Its deadly covering preserved the city for the next two millennia until a major excavation in the 1950s. Pompeii was a wealthy town containing up to 20,000 residents at the time it was destroyed. As a result, its ruins offer a unique snapshot of Roman life at the very moment it was buried.

To get ourselves oriented, Dean and I walked Via dell'Abbondanza, the main street in Pompeii, marvelling at its truncated marble pillars and abandoned buildings. A visitor’s map helped us locate many of the paved thoroughfares’ popular attractions, including preserved mosaic tile floors and walls decorated by frescoes in some of the wealthiest homes.  The streetscape above was sourced from the web.

The final image of Dean above was taken in the Basilica, a covered complex that acted as the local law court, and possibly a mercantile trading exchange. It sits on the edge of the city's expansive Roman Forum piazza. According to archaeologists, the Basilica was a hive of activity with large numbers of people bustling about their daily business. Evidence of this is visible in the hundreds of examples of graffiti, including some particularly vulgar expressions, scratched onto its walls. 

Without a doubt, a highlight for both of us was the remains of residents who'd been buried by the ash. I’d heard so much about these uniquely preserved bodies. Curiously, these crude statue-like figures aren’t actual bodies. They’re plaster reproductions created by filling cavities left in the hardened ash long after the original corpse has decayed. 

I was surprised by how few victims were on display, only three or four at best. Likewise, their condition was equally disappointing. We stumbled across them without any fanfare, stored in a rather dusty building housing all manner of artefacts, including rows of clay amphorae. In the decades since, if online images are accurate, the archaeological park has dramatically improved the quality of these exhibits.

The Amphitheatre of Pompeii was also particularly memorable. It is one of the oldest surviving Roman amphitheatres in the ancient world. It once seated 20,000 spectators. Unlike many earlier stadiums, it was built entirely of stone, rather than timber. The amphitheatre was first partially excavated in 1748. It was later completely excavated between 1813 and 1816. 

However, even today, much of its tiered seating remains partially overgrown by soil, shrubs and grass. As a result, you feel like you’re an explorer stumbling across an ancient ruin for the first time. Interestingly, much of the vegetation we saw has been excavated in more recent years.  I count myself lucky enough to have seen it in a more atmospheric state. The first image shown above was taken by me, the second was pulled from the Internet.

Our return journey via Pisa proved equally memorable. Like all good tourists, we disembarked at the main train station and made our way across the Arno River to Piazza del Duomo.  The walk along Via Rome takes about half an hour. For the most part, it’s a fairly unremarkable walk until you reach the Duomo.  I still recall how excited we were upon entering the piazza and seeing the Leaning Tower of Pisa for the first time. Its collonaded white marble facade looks exactly as it does in all those iconic photographs.

We were equally stunned by the carefully manicured lawn surrounding the piazza's three main buildings. Elsewhere in Europe, the entrance to a church was typically marked by a paved plaza. However, on this occasion, the vivid green expanse that greeted us was the perfect foil for these dazzling white buildings.

However, we didn't climb the famous bell tower. It had been closed to the public nine months earlier as a major engineering project designed to stabilise the structure and prevent its collapse got underway. According to Wikipedia, more than a decade was spent carefully removing 38 cubic metres of soil from underneath its higher end. The tower's tilt was ultimately reduced by 45 centimetres. The tower eventually reopened to the public in December 2001 and was declared stable for another 300 years.

Naturally, we took an obligatory image of us diligently propping up the bell tower.  That's the image of me which opens this post. Dean and I also took time to explore the neighbouring cathedral and the baptistry. The piazza was largely crowd-free thanks to some rather damp and overcast weather. While it was great to experience Pisa without the crowds, we never did see the famous white marble facades glistening in the sunlight. I'd finally see them on a sunny day, almost two decades later.

One final observation. It took some careful planning to get to Pisa. We initially caught a long-distance train from Brindisi to Bologna, then transferred onto a regional train to Florence, before transferring a final time onto a local train bound for Pisa. Once our sightseeing was done, we retraced our steps to Bologna and rejoined the long-distance train to Zurich. Remember that all of this was planned while we were on the road in an era before the Internet or personal computing devices. Instead, we used nothing more than a printed DL-sized timetable book, a folded map, a notebook and a pen.

With Pisa ticked off our bucket list, it was back onto the train for a journey back through the Alps to Zurich. Follow this link to learn more about our time in Switzerland.

Out for the afternoon

Garry and I hosted our annual staff Christmas lunch yesterday. This year, we dined at Nour in Surry Hills. I pre-ordered the slow-cooked lamb shoulder and had a glass of champagne ready and waiting for us upon arrival. Garry, Mitch and I then continued on to the Clock Hotel for a beer before heading for Bar Cleveland to play pool and down a few more beers. I headed home about 9:30pm, while Garry went next door to continue the party with our neighbour, Nat. The food was superb and a relaxing way to finish what could only be described as another challenging year for our business.

Deadly memories of Munich

Let’s continue our Eurail journey through Europe. Regular readers will recall that I spent three months backpacking through the continent with Dean Keiller, a Victorian sheep farmer, in 1990. I’m unsure why we chose Munich as our next destination upon leaving Copenhagen. All we knew of the city was its infamy during the 1972 Summer Olympics.

Munich was hosting the Games in 1972 when, on 5 September, eight Palestinian terrorists from the Black September militant group broke into the Olympic Village, killed two members of the Israeli team and took nine hostages. The hostages were later killed by the militants during a failed rescue attempt, along with five of the terrorists and one policeman.

The Olympic Games were suspended for 34 hours, and a mass was held in the main stadium to commemorate the victims. In defiance of the terrorists, the Games continued at the insistence of the IOC President Avery Brundage, who famously said, "The Games must go on!" His decision was endorsed by the Israeli government and the Israeli Olympic team.

We arrived in Munich early evening on 4 September. Our arrival coincided with the 18th anniversary of the infamous Olympic siege the following day. As a result, Dean and I made it our mission to visit the Olympic Stadium and see its arena for ourselves. I recall floral tributes lying at the base of a modest and rather austere memorial. The image of it above was sourced from the web. In more recent years, a partially enclosed memorial with exhibits and photographs has opened at Olympiapark.

Dean and I also ventured up the 291-metre-high Olympic Tower (Olympiaturm), a telecommunications tower located on the edge of the Olympiapark. Halfway up the tower, at 190 metres, sits an observation deck. It offers a superb view of the expansive park grounds and the surrounding city.

However, one location we visited in Munich has always stuck with me. On September 6, we took a local train to Dachau, approximately 16 km north of Munich. This town was home to one of the first concentration camps built by Nazi Germany. It opened in March 1933 and remained in operation until the end of the war. It was established to intern political opponents of the Nazi Party. However, in time, its mandate expanded to include forced labour, and eventually, the imprisonment of Jews, Romani, Germans, and Austrians that the Nazi Party regarded as criminals, and, finally, foreign nationals from countries that Germany had conquered.

Dachau was a sobering experience. It was the first Nazi concentration camp I’d ever visited. These days, much of the complex has been demolished. In its wake lie row after row of brick foundations for the 32 wooden barracks that once stood here. At one end of the complex, a handful of administration buildings have been retained. These now house exhibits that tell the harrowing story of the camp’s history. I've sourced a couple of images from the web that give you a sense of what remains.

Dachau wasn’t Nazi Germany’s largest concentration camp, or one of its notorious “Final Solution” outposts. However, as one of the first camps, it pioneered and refined features synonymous with the concentration camp system. As a result, its activities were often highly experimental, including barbaric scientific research testing the limits of human endurance and subjugation.

For example, "high altitude" experiments subjected victims to rapid decompression to pressures found at 4,300 metres. The doctors wanted to understand what happens to a Luftwaffe pilot when their aircraft suddenly decompresses. Victims of these experiments experienced spasmodic convulsions, agonal breathing and eventual death. 

Hypothermia experiments involved immersing victims in vats of icy water or strapping them down naked outdoors in freezing temperatures. Attempts at reviving the subjects included scalding baths and forcing naked women to have sexual intercourse with the unconscious victim. These experiments killed many victims, while others were subsequently murdered to conduct autopsies.

On other occasions, victims were deprived of food and forced to drink only salt water to simulate the experience of sailors marooned at sea. Surviving prisoners tell stories of victims licking floor tiles that had been mopped in a desperate attempt to source fresh water. The list of unbelievably inhumane experiments just goes on and on.

Ultimately, hundreds of prisoners suffered and died, or were executed, in medical experiments conducted at Dachau. The exhibits on display are incredibly confronting, as are the medical records and scientific photographs documenting the camp’s inhumane experiments. Room after room of exhibits continually overwhelm the senses. It’s an unforgettable experience. One that remains with me to this day.

Although our most visceral moment was possibly a tour of Dachau’s crematorium. While its ovens were never used in conjunction with a gas chamber, they were constructed to dispose of a growing number of corpses. This includes inmates murdered by medical experiments, those killed by disease or malnutrition running rampant through the camp, and those executed for trivial misdemeanours.

On a lighter note, we also took advantage of the late-summer sunshine and spent an afternoon wandering the grounds of Schloss Nymphenburg. This magnificent Baroque palace was the summer residence of the Bavarian royal family for over two centuries. The gardens and surrounding parkland feature a stunning garden parterre and an 800-metre-long grand canal that culminates in a semi-circular, marble waterfall. 

Years later, I'd return to the palace grounds while on business in Munich. At the time, my company's German office was located in a neighbouring suburb. The eastern end of the central canal was approximately 900 metres north of Hotel Rotkreuzplatz, the hotel where I regularly stayed. I'd occasionally take a walk in the grounds with one of my regional executives as we debated EMEA's most pressing needs.

After three intense days in Munich, Dean and I boarded a train for Venice on 7 September. We scheduled a daylight journey to experience the German countryside and the Austrian Alps. Our route took us over the Bremer Pass and down the Upper Wipptal valley into Italy. We loved watching the verdant landscape and iconic villages rattle by as we climbed the pass. Above is a photo of me somewhere south of Innsbruck.

We eventually reached the shores of the Venetian Lagoon late afternoon. We based ourselves at a campground in Fusina, a coastal town popular with backpackers. From here, we caught a ferry each day across the lagoon to Zattere in Venice. I’ll share more about our time in Venice soon.

The Silly Season begins

The Silly Season is off and running again for another year. Garry and I kicked off the festivities with a lazy BBQ on a friend's rooftop terrace last weekend. The socialising (and drinking) began at 1:30 pm and eventually drew to a close shortly after 9:00 pm.

On Friday this week, EO Sydney hosted its annual Christmas Party. This year's event was held in the Penthouse at the Ivy. The Ivy was once the ultimate "it" venue for body beautiful trendsetters.  I recall more than one glamorous cocktail evening by the poolside at the Ivy more than 20 years ago. Text 100 Sydney even held its staff Christmas Party here one year. 

The Ivy was always a little too fake and facile for me, so I was dubious about going back there. However, the company was enjoyable, and the afternoon flew by.  This year, partners weren't invited to lunch, so it was a more modest affair. Garry also decided not to join me for kick-on drinks afterwards at The Royal George. Needless to say, it was another big night!

Yesterday afternoon, our apartment building hosted its annual get-together on the courtyard podium. It was a perfect day to be outdoors as the temperature peaked at 38 °C shortly after 3:00 pm. Afterwards, we invited friends back to our rooftop terraces for more cocktails. It was still a cosy 29 °C at 11:00 pm last night. It's no surprise we're a bit worse for wear this morning - and I confess -  I pre-emptively drafted most of this post before we ventured down to the courtyard.

On Wednesday next week, my EO Forum will hold its annual Christmas Party. Once again, I'm the event organiser. This year I've booked a private dining room at Pilu, a Sardinian-style two-hatted restaurant overlooking Freshwater Beach.  Then on Friday, Artiwood's annual staff Christmas Party kicks off at Nour in Surry Hills. We're keeping it local this year!

Garry's also planning an impromptu cocktail hour on our balcony before Christmas finally arrives.  Phew! As I say every year, we'll need a vacation once these events are over.

One final comment. This post is officially the 1,500th post I’ve published on this blog. How cool is that? If I’m honest, I’m secretly proud of the fact that I’ve successfully maintained it for more than twenty years. 

UPDATE: 11 December

Garry and I enjoyed a fun evening at Pilu with my EO Forum last night. Everyone loved the venue, the food and the wine. As the organiser, I was relieved that it all went well and everyone was happy.

An Olympic sprint

In 1990, Dean Keiller and I had grand plans for Greece as part of our European backpacking odyssey. As I’ve previously recounted, he and I were travelling through Western Europe on a Eurail youth ticket. In addition to free train travel, the ticket also provided access to heavily discounted fares for local trains, ferries and buses. This included ferries sailing between Italy and Greece.

Our original plan was to sail from Brindisi, Italy, to the island of Corfu, spend a few days exploring the island, then continue to Patras, Greece. We set aside a week or more for a whirlwind Greek itinerary exploring the nation’s most iconic sights. This included plans to visit Olympia, Athens and possibly a quick dash to one or more islands in the Aegean Sea. If everything went to plan, I’d celebrate my birthday on Santorini or Mykonos.

However, what ultimately unfolded was completely different. We caught an early morning ferry from Corfu on 23 September (my mother’s birthday). The dawn departure gave a brief glimpse of Albania. That's it above. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to visiting this once highly reclusive Communist nation. Three decades later, it’s still on my bucket list. 

We eventually docked in Patras mid-afternoon. As we disembarked, we were greeted by an unexpected cultural experience – one that dramatically transformed our plans. Patras has been Greece’s seafaring gateway to the West for thousands of years. It boasts a busy sheltered port and a well-connected rail network linking it to Athens, the capital, and all points along the Peloponnese peninsula. It was the perfect place to kick off our Greek adventure, or so we thought.

At this point in the story, I need to provide a little context. Dean and I were travelling in an era before the introduction of the Euro. As a result, whenever we crossed a national border, we’d visit a local ATM and make a cash withdrawal. We’d decided early on to manage our finances by loading my VISA credit card with funds. Unlike today, back then, cash withdrawals attracted modest fees while offering a highly competitive exchange rate.

Years later, I recall my father telling me he and Mum used my monthly VISA statement to monitor our progress through Europe. At the time, my VISA card was issued by the Bank of Zealand, and I’d nominated my parents’ home address for receiving monthly statements (which back then were always posted to you). Dad worked at the bank, so he also managed the transfer of any top-up funds that Dean sent across from Australia.

In case an ATM supporting foreign cards was hard to come by, I’d also carry enough banknotes to cover our first day or two of expenses. This approach had served us well until we landed in Patras. However, we hadn’t planned for one of Greece’s popular pastimes. That is, a national strike.

In April 1990, a conservative Government led by Constantine Mitsotakis came to power, introducing a range of austerity measures. Its policies triggered a wave of protest, including nationwide strikes. By the end of 1990, more than 1.4 million people had participated in almost 200 strikes. Of the strikes, 103 were held in the private sector of the economy (both large- and small-scale industry) and 60 in banks, state-run utilities and enterprises.

As luck would have it, Dean and I arrived in Greece during one of these massive strikes. The port was in complete chaos. Banks were shut. ATMs didn’t work. Buses weren’t running. Ferries were cancelled. Supermarkets were running short of essentials. Rubbish was left uncollected. Tourists were flooding the port, desperate to escape Greece.

Our plans for Greece were clearly blown, even more so after discovering the ATMs weren’t operating. A sympathetic supermarket cashier let us pay for groceries with my credit card and included a modest cash withdrawal. This gave us enough money for a few meals and incidentals. We decided to make the most of our limited funds with a quick dash to Olympia on the west coast of the Peloponnese. It was only a few hours away, a genuine tourism hotspot, and close enough to make a quick exit from Greece the following day.

We bought a couple of discounted train tickets and headed out of town. We reached Olympia early evening and checked into the local youth hostel. The following morning, we made our way to the Archaeological Site of Olympia. This is the birthplace of the Olympic Games, a place of worship for Zeus, and a site of art and culture, with roots in Western society.

The partially restored site is situated on the banks of the Alfeiós River, about 18 km inland from the Ionian Sea. For more than a thousand years, the ancient Olympic Games were held here every four years from the 8th century BC to the 4th century AD. Incredibly, the actual games district was uninhabited throughout the year. There were no permanent living structures for spectators. As a result, visitors, rich or poor, made do with tents.

Dean and I spent a full morning touring the ancient site. There are plenty of ruined structures, including at least 70 temples, and dozens of toppled Corinthian pillars to explore. Its most iconic sights include the ruined Temple of Zeus, and of course, the stadium itself.

The stadium is basically a field with start and end lines marked off by transverse stone curbing. The athletes entered under an archway of a vaulted corridor at one end. Spectators sat mainly on the field's sloping flanks. The length of this field became the archaic standard of measure known as a stadion, a metric found in numerous ancient records.

Sadly, the Temple of Zeus is little more than a field of rubble these days, with weathered foundation stones marking its original footprint. The temple once housed a gigantic cedar wood statue of Zeus, finished with gold panels, ivory and precious stones. This 12.4-metre-high masterpiece, which took 13 years to create, was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Sadly, nothing remains today. 

Likewise, the nearby Leonidion, or athletes' lodging, is another impressive pile of rubble and fallen pillars. I was surprised to learn that the Olympic Games site was abandoned around 600 AD. In time, it was buried by landslides and flood debris and remained unknown until its rediscovery in 1766 by the English antiquarian Richard Chandler.

On the afternoon of 24 September, we retraced our path back to Patras and purchased tickets for an overnight ferry to Brindisi, Italy. As we waited to board, the lights went out inside the terminal, plunging us into darkness. Any doubts we had about abandoning our Greek itinerary were immediately vanquished.

As we’d done previously, we slept outdoors on the deck of the ferry in the company of other backpackers, waking the following morning to the sight of the Italian coast. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to visiting this once highly reclusive Communist nation. It’s still on my bucket list.

However, despite the trials and tribulations of our 36 hours in Greece, one positive thing came of it. The extra week it released on our calendar was subsequently filled with a trip to Morocco, easily the most fascinating place we visited during our entire backpacking odyssey. You can read about our time in Morocco here.

Corfu

In September 1990, I spent four days on the island of Corfu while backpacking around Europe. After exploring Italy’s iconic northern cities, Dean Keiller and I decided to visit Greece. Getting there required us to catch a ferry from Brindisi. The cheapest option included a stop in Kerkira on Corfu. As a result, we decided to get off and spend a few days exploring the island.

The ferry departed Brindisi around 10:00pm and arrived in Corfu the following morning around 7:00am. As we’d done in Norway, Dean and I slept a night outdoors on the deck alongside other backpackers. Upon docking in Kerkira, disembarking passengers were besieged by a swarm of touts offering accommodation on the island. We eventually settled on a campground in Karousadhes on the island’s northern coast.

However, upon arriving at the campground, we discovered the price we’d been quoted on the wharf was misleading, to say the least. Additional charges suddenly appeared, including a transport fee and a tent fee. The price we’d been offered was just a basic site fee. The campground was also rather poorly maintained. The following morning, we returned to Kerkira, where a sympathetic and more humble hotelier invited us to stay at a campground in Dassia. The new location was much closer to the main port and boasted one of Corfu's finest white-sand beaches.

We made the most of our time on the island by hiring a couple of mopeds. Dean’s haggling skills came to the fore, and he secured us a bargain price for a full day’s hire. We took to the road, ultimately traversing more than half the island. The map above shows the ground we covered. Beach after beach, and bay after bay, were breathtakingly beautiful. I’ll let the images below speak for themselves. 

Note that we aren't wearing helmets. In fact, now that I think about it, we didn't have travel insurance either. What can I say? We enjoyed a classic backpacking experience. Although getting out and about allowed us to see the locals in action. As novice travellers, we were fascinated by the donkeys we encountered everywhere. It really was like something from a black-and-white Hollywood classic.

Highlights from our moped tour included the Canal d’Amour (Channel of Love) in Sidari on the island’s north coast. The coastline is famous for a series of Instagram-worthy channels carved into its white limestone cliffs. Supposedly, any couple who swims together in the waters of Canal d’Amour will remain forever in love. Dean and I certainly fell in love with its crystal-clear waters. It was also the perfect spot for a memorable picnic lunch. Did you notice me in the image that opens this post?

We also made it to Paleokastritsa, famous for its picturesque, white-washed monastery. The monastery of the Most Holy Theotokos is one of the oldest in Corfu, dating back to 1225.  Nearby is the equally impressive Angelokastro, a Byzantine castle situated on a prominent headland overlooking the village and its tranquil harbour.  The image above, sourced from the web, gives you a great sense of its unforgettable location. 

The furthest south we rode was Kato Garouna.  The village located here sits on one of the island's highest points. Not far from the road, you're rewarded with the most stunning view of Corfu's west coast and the Ionian Sea.  Another image taken from the web, above, captures the scene perfectly.

We originally planned to spend two full days on Corfu. However, thanks to a rookie mistake, we ended up spending a third day on the island. In essence, we’d forgotten that Greece was an hour ahead of the rest of Western Europe. As a result, we failed to adjust our watches after docking at Kerkira. We didn't discover our mistake until we arrived at the port on September 22, only to find that the ferry had already sailed. If truth be told, we had an early hint that something was amiss after hearing fellow campers around our tent pack up and leave at what seemed to be an ungodly hour of the morning. Little did we know!

However, all wasn’t lost. We decided to make good use of the extra day and used the campground’s coin-operated washing machine to wash our sleeping bags. It was the first time we’d laundered them since arriving in Europe in May. I’d hate to think what microscopic critters and fungi were living it up inside. Although, as you can see below, we got to enjoy a relaxing afternoon siesta under the olive trees.

The one thing that strikes me about this image is the plastic shopping bags sitting around our tent.  I'd forgotten our regular ritual every time we set up camp. We'd always go shopping for supplies to last us for a few days: bread rolls, salad, tomatoes and cheese for lunch, plus a few tinned goods used to pull together an evening meal. Our pup tent was tiny, so we often left our dry goods outside. When I look back now, our campsite must have looked like a garbage dump to other campers.

One final story about our time in Corfu. Greece has a police division dedicated to looking after visitors and tourists. After our first night camping in Karousadhes, we caught a shuttle van back to the main port to find a new campground. It was here that we encountered the deceptive tout who’d misled us the previous day. I took it upon myself to warn disembarking passengers that he was a crook and a fraud.

Let’s just say our dishonest friend didn’t take too kindly to my impromptu warnings. A scuffle soon broke out. In the ensuing melee, he knocked my spectacles to the ground, breaking the frame. I reported him to the local tourist police. I can still recall being interviewed by a slightly bemused officer in a small white-walled office in Kerkira. I have no idea what came of my complaint. This was the pre-Internet era, so it was almost impossible to follow up once we left the island. Fortunately, I was travelling with a spare pair of spectacles, so all wasn’t lost.

Early in the morning, on September 23, we boarded the ferry for Patras in Greece. What followed next was another unexpected encounter with the volatile Greeks. Follow this link to learn more!