Don't Forget '93

I'm in Mostar, which sounds like a spaceship but isn't. It's actually a marble-clad, old town in Herzegovina with a famous bridge.

Let's rewind. Today I have done four border crossings, which I think is a personal best.

You want me to rewind some more. Okay then.  Yesterday we arrived in Montenegro, which is crazy beautiful. We arrived in Podgorica, then took the Montenegro greatest hits bus ride past the old capital, along the hillside above Budva before arriving in the Bay of Kotor.

We spent last night in Kotor proper. A tiny place full of old town charm, cruise ships and sirens. It meant that this morning's visit to the mountains wasn't quite as tranquil as it might have been.

Today's marathon bus journey was so scenic it was a joke. Bay of Kotor, Dubrovnik, Dalmatian Coast. Big landscapes a-gogo.

Weirdest thing I've eaten: black risotto. Disappointingly bland.

Another Belgian Waffle

Well I've been spending most of the weekend trying to come up with a good Ghent-based pun, but I can't find one. There must be one there - I feel like my punnability has deserted me.  All through the city there were signs with "Gents" on and each time I assumed that it was either a toilet or a male only do (e.g. Gents Circus).  It never was.

Still Ghent is a spectacularly ugly name, especially for somewhere that is (in the main) spectacularly pretty.  I say "in the main", I get the distinct impression that they don't expect visitors to walk from the (fairytale) railway station to the centre of town. Not exactly chocolate box stuff.

So yeah, I've been to Belgium, I spent a day in Ghent doing Ghent-type stuff wandering around cobbled streets, eating noses and whinging that the light show is somewhat over-hyped. And drinking beer. Them Belgians seem to have a different view to beer to us, there's no way that they could drink it in England quantities, not with so many unfenced canals about.  I had a low alcohol beer - "For the ladies" - it was 6%.

Spent yesterday in Brussels.  It's weird for me to take an instant dislike to cities but me and Brussels didn't get on. Couldn't quite pin my finger on why. Maybe it was because everyone I encountered was rude.  Or because the street sweepers didn't street sweep until tourist crowds were fully mobilised.  Or because it was really hard to get a map. Or because the Manneken Pis is easily the least spectacular "site" I've seen.  Or maybe it's just a rubbish city. That said, the Grand Place is impressive (even if it does have an wieldy amount of idiots in it), as is Atomium and I stumbled across a neighbourhood between Gare-midi and The Courts of Justice that seemed like a lot of fun, pity I had to get a train before exploring. It didn't seem interesting enough for me to rush back. Ho hum.

I ate me my first steak tartar.  That's another one of those weird food boxes that needed a ticking.  Not been a bad week for firsts, this one.

In other news, I spent the travelly part of the trip reading Half Plus Seven; definitely worth a read if you fancy jumping on the new Welsh literature bandwagon.  And frankly who doesn't?

Wem Bah Lee Wem Bah Lee Wem Bah Lee

I went and saw that England play at that Wembley. That's a box tick, right?

As with most of my forays into watching sport, I am not wholly sure that I "got" it.  It seemed a bit like watching football at home, only with a bit of a breeze amd a lot more squinting. 

The whole experience wasn't unpleasant - a bit of a calming lava lamp vibe going on.  Although that may have been due to the anaesthesia of the match. Almost like the football was sedate enough that it wouldn't distract you from the adverts. Since leaving the stadium I have bought a Vauxhall and texted the antisocial behaviour number. Those youths on the bus were making a mighty rumpus.

A Little Bit on the Primitive Side

The Battle of the Cut.  The two biggest shows of the summer on the same street at the same time.  Old Vic vs Young Vic. Tennessee Williams vs Arthur Miller.  The Crucible vs A Streetcar Named Desire.

For my money, there was no competition.  

Maybe I'm just a Philistine but I just didn't get The Crucible.  Without watching it during the McCarthy era, it just seemed to be overblown, backward-peasant voyeurism.  It played like Game of Thrones filler but without the special effects.  Or the sense of fun. 

Streetcar wins.  That is all.  

The Ian Hunter Museum

I went to the Ian Hunter Museum - or the Hunterian as it styles itself - now I don't know all that much about Mott the Hoople but it's fair to say that some of the early stuff wasn't quite so pop. A sloth foetus in a jar. A sliced up dogs head. A presentation about the reproductive organs of sparrows. A skeleton where the muscles have turned to bone...

You can sort of see why they didn't go mainstream until they did a Bowie song.

Silly Season

Aah, I remember festival season as a whippersnapper Dead keen on music and trying to see everyone. When two bands that you wanted to see clashed you chose and stuck with it for fear of missing even a bit of one. I'd hardly drink anything to make sure I didn't miss anything.

Now I'm not sure what has happened. I guess I don't take festivals as seriously. I seem to have become one of those people that goes to a festival to escape from reality, to wander about getting distracted by shiny things rather than trying to see as many bands as possible in a day - I used to hate those people. Or maybe I just don't like music. 

Standon Calling was this weekend. And as ever I had a great time. But I'm not certain that I saw any bands. Well not the whole way through, by the third song they'd normally been dismissed as sounding like a not-as-good Toots and the Maytals / Longpigs / Freakpower and I'd wandered off to try to get a hit of something genuinely new. Or watch some Mexican wrestling. Or Rockaoke.

Bands that I did enjoy:
Interiors - terrible name. Kind of like Belle and Sebastien.
Imperial Leisure - not certain if that's a terrible name or not. Sound like Audiobullys.
The Cuban Brothers - you know the Cuban Brothers, you saw them at bestival that year, more vaudeville than band.

And Beans on Toast. What kind of festival gives Beans on Toast an hour set on the main stage? A ridiculous one. And what a set. He won the crowd over early on. Bigg Jeff sang along to Who is Bigg Jeff. He did all the 'hits' - I was surprised that MDMAmazing was an actual singalong with an actual amount of actual people seeming to know all the actual words to a fairly obscure and quite wordy folk song. But I guess that that's the Standon Calling way.

1066 And All That

Nothing says British seaside town like needle disposal points in public toilets.

I've been to Hastings.  It was ace. It was the first day of carnival and they take that nonsense seriously. Beach parties.  Street parties.  Pop up restaurants. Heroic volumes of alcohol. Got it covered.  The kick off event is the Tug of War - we got there for the 10.30 start: we felt that we had a heap of catching up to do; everyone seemed to be about four pints in - and the whole town seemed to be there.  And the drinking continued.

It was like 28 days later in Old Hastings this morning.  A sea of crushed plastic glasses. Candy floss tumble weed bowling across the street. Herring gulls pecking at beerstained corpses.  We got the hell out of dodge and headed for Battle, to try and get some of that history stuff.  What we actually found was a touristy ghost town with overpriced parking - who would have thought?

Speaking of history, isn't it strange that the only dates that everyone knows end in '66? The Alamanni attack on the Roman Empire; the Battle of Benevento; the Death of Frederik V of Norway - all of the dates that everyone knows...

To fully embrace the staycation vibe we camped in that Hastings. Aside from festivals I've not camped anywhere in over five years. I don't remember ankle deep brown water in the showers being a thing when I used to camp.  It appears to be a thing now.  Not certain that it added to the camping experience for me.