Hey Bruce Willis, I like your sister

I've spent the weekend in Morocco and all I've got to show for it is mild food poisoning. Nothing too bad - not like last year's Valencia incident or that time that we don't mention - but it really isn't a convenient time for the flush on my toilet to stop working.

So yeah, Fez, that was a weekend. Bit of a culture shock. It's a city of two halves is Fez, a new town and an old town and I think you'd struggle to find a more strangely juxtaposed set up. The old town was a medieval maze of markets and mosques - spices and donkeys everywhere - as stereotypically Arabic as you like. The new town could have been just about anywhere. I say that, they sold pigeons in the market place; you don't really get that in, I dunno, Wigan.

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FYI I finished Poisonwood Bible, my assessment was correct, the story finished well before the book.

This week the countries reading this blog are UK (understandable) and Moldova (less so).

Growing up

I seem to have started reading the business section of the paper. I'm not sure I approve of myself. Combined with the facts that cryptic crosswords are one of my preferred ways to waste time and that all music released in the last ten years sounds the same, I can't help but think that I'm getting old.

Things that I've enjoyed over the last couple of weeks:
- The middle bit of the Collaborators - the first bit was too slow, the last bit was too serious, the middle bit was a riot.
- Dawkins casual undermining of Michael Gove.

See, even the things that make me smile are curiously middle aged.
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I'm currently reading the Poisonwood Bible, I feel like I've been reading it forever. I'm fairly sure the story finished fifty pages ago but I've still got another 100 pages left. Is it worth finishing?

Rotterdam or Anywhere

Now I can just about see how you could confuse Rotterdam with Liverpool (both big port cities with shiny new waterfronts) but Rome? Really? I've been to very few cities that are less like Rome than Rotterdam. The only similarity is that capital R.

Rotterdam gets a big fat thumbs up. The buildings are well architecture (I was able to namedrop Renzo Piano and sound like I knew what I was talking about) and there seemed to be a background hum of exciting stuff happening across the city. You know? Like art and culture and stuff?

Just been on a bike ride through that there rolling Utrecht countryside. Cycled through the red light district - most bizarre - just like the Amsterdam one, with its knocky windows, but on a series of houseboats right next to a motorway.

One thing I've learned this weekend is that my phone doesn't work abroad. I don't know what's more surprising, that in 2012 there are phone networks which don't have international roaming as standard, or that it's taken me four countries to notice.