A-travellin' Again

They've spruced Doha airport up a fair bit since the last time I was here. There's all kinds of bells and whistles now - TV booths, children's play areas, enormous teddybear/desklamp art installation - which is kinda nice as my flight has just been delayed.

Not too worried about the delay, I was due to arrive in Yangon at 5, which is a pretty antisocial arrival time, so a couple more hours makes the whole caboodle somewhat more civilised.

I quite enjoy time at an abroad airport; hearing flight announcements for Islamabad and Beirut just sound a bit more exotic than the departures you get from Stansted. 

Anyway, the adventure has begun...

Actual Stuff I Liked

Not certain why I feel the need to do an end of year review - but I sort of feel obliged to. 

I think it helped looking through the year end charts and realising I actually liked music this year. Which is perversely disappointing. Like the Kate Tempest album.  Like the Gruff Rhys album.  Like the Run the Jewels album. Like the Madlib album. That's four albums I actually like - been ages since that happened.  And, as things stand, I've got more gigs booked than theatre trips - I feel like I'm back in my early twenties.  

Saw me some pretty good theatre this year. Last thing I saw was Golem - if I actually was still in my early twenties I would have loved it with it's anti-capitalist stance.  As it was I thought it was clever and fun, rather than blow your mind amazing. Not certain what the thing I liked most was.  That's a lie, I am fairly certain.  Streetcar... was ace.  Skylight was ace. A View... was ace. Titus Andronicus was suitably gory and I really enjoyed Urinetown.  But it wasn't any of them. It was The Play that Goes Wrong. Somehow it managed to live up to my ridiculously high expectations. 

Not been too shabby a year for travel.  Got into double figures for countries (yes, I'm aware that that's more in a year than a lot of people go in their life time), managed seven new European capital cities (think Sarajevo was my favourite, although Athens ran it close) and saw three of the most famously spectacular coastlines in the world. As I said, not too shabby.

Improv

Now I'm not averse to a comedy night. I've been to one or two in my time so I feel like I can stand in a relatively informed position when I sneer belittlingly in the direction of improv.

The speed people come up with things is no doubt impressive but ultimately it feels like you're watching a parlour game played by professionals. And if that was worth watching Pictionary would be in the Olympics, Scategories woukd be on the telly and there would be illicit Taboo gambling in the back rooms of shady pubs.

It's like real comedy but without the jokes.

Something else I don't get: ello. Apparently it's the hip new face of social media. I feel out of my depth even thinking about it. I reckon I'm a decade too old and 82% too uncool to understand it.

Lux Interior

I was promised snow. Stamps foot like a petulant child. I wanted Europe's Most Spectacularly Sited Capital (TM) to be all snow covered and pretty. I bought boots and everything.  Instead I got drizzle.

So yeah, I've spent the weekend in Luxembourg. Now if there's one thing I know about those Benelux Low Countries is that they are all flat as the proverbial flam. This Luxembourg place has confounded that assumption, I tell thee. It's a double decker city, with the two levels split by towering rockfaces. I wasn't really expecting that.

It was way more interesting than I was expecting too. Quite a bit of that culture stuff around and chock full of Christmas markets (it's not Christmas until we get our plugs, which is a reference I just won't understand if I ever read this back).

I ventured out of the city today. I went to Echternach, up on the German border. I think it's a pilgrimage town, but can't be certain as the tourist information was closed. At a pilgrimage town. On a Sunday. When the town is up to its eyes in Christmas Market and, for some reason, a medieval fayre. Guess everyone in Echternach is getting ocarinas this Christmas. 

I didn't manage to spend all that long in Echternach (thanks to the very inconvenient Sunday public transport - for the record, public transport within Luxembourg is crazy cheap. Four euros for all you can eat) but I did manage to sneak a couple of miles along the Müllerthal Trail, Luxembourg's foremost hiking route. Way more spectacular than I was expecting - I blame the lack of flat, these not so low countries and their lack of flat...

Better than Parmesan

I went to that there Sam Wannamaker Playhouse to see everyone's favourite incest thriller Tis Pity She's A Whore . Quite liked it I did, both the show with its strangely modern stylings and that there theatre with its atmospherics and lack of electric lighting.

Wasn't a massive fan of the view tho - it took restricted to a whole other level - this is going to sound like I'm exaggerating but I'm not, I could only see half the stage. Stage left. And it seemed that most of the action was hanging out on the right. The fascist.

Finn McCool's Mighty Pipe Organ

I have been a bit surprised that a handful of my friends (who I generally consider sort of intelligent) hadn't heard of the Giant's Causeway. It's one of those things that I assumed everyone knew about. Much like Loch Ness. Turns out I was wrong. So for those of you who don't know, the Giant's Causeway was made by Finn McCool, an Irish giant with a hexagon fetish, so that he could get to Scotland without getting his feet wet. It was later broken up by Benandonner after some griddlecake-based hijinks leaving only a pile of wonky hexagons.

Turns out that the wonky pile of hexagons is pretty impressive, way better than I had expected. My only real gripe is that public transport timings meant that it was something of a smash and grab affair, rather than a leisurely appreciation. 

I stayed in Derry. I'd not been to Derry before and don't really see why I would go back. Don't get me wrong, the city is interesting enough, it's just the whole pro-IRA vibe that they had going on made me feel conspicuously English.

Ate me an Ulster fry. Possibly the least healthy thing I have ever eaten. The whole thing had had the flavour and texture deepfried out of it. Even the beans.

Vampires and That

So my second time in Transylvania. And this time it was the Transylvanian end of Transylvania where there are vampires and tourists and that, not the other end where there's amazing scenery and foreigners are a bit of a novelty. Hell no. If I can't get a set of novelty Vlad Tepes coasters then it's not Transylvania regardless of what the map says.

Brasov is pretty pretty though, I can see why that's all touristy. Ideologically it's about as far as you can get from Bucharest with its communist chic and hard to cross intersections. Brasov is all toytown tranquility and fairytale eaves. And vampires, obviously. The Black Church looks like prime vampire real estate.

Talking of vampire real estate, we took a jaunt out to Bran Castle to see the so called home of Dracula. That's a place that does a turret well, albeit in an Exit Through The Haunted Gift Shop kind of way.

Back in Bucharest now. Had a trip to the National Peasant Museum (odd, obviously) and am now in the airport, swallowing annoyance that they told me I couldn't use Romanian currency in duty free, made me change my money, only for all food and drink to be in local currency. Which meant my cola cost more than any meal I've eaten this weekend. The rotters.