Archive for August, 2008

Torino

Friday, August 29th, 2008

I’m in Torino this morning. I hope to leave this afternoon. Waiting for the DHL courier to show up to camping… I left my passport at the camping in Laiguegia — well they forgot to give it back to me. But I should never have given them the passport… prefer to pay in advance anyway.

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New book

Friday, August 22nd, 2008

After a desperate rainy day reading sprint to finish Anna Karenin and — eyes still moist — put it in the mail before the post office closed, I was left with lighter bags, but wanting for reading material.

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Beethoven for breakfast: cereal sonatas

Friday, August 22nd, 2008

It is an object of repeated worry for me that the view of Europe that I experience is not true European life, or even something close. Would my time be better spent participating in real Australian life, and seeing and learning about the world through the lens of Foreign Correspondent, and late night SBS movies?

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It’s not Nice

Friday, August 22nd, 2008

Côte d’Azur, or the French Riviera. It sounds nice, but it’s just a centuries old surfers paradise. My first impression of the coast was as a sparkling sunny seaside sprawl. Tiny boats zipping along the water, leaving white wakes. Silent jets soaring out from the city, others circling then gliding in. This was looking through the haze from the relative serenity of the mountain at Col de Vence.

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Do you like camping?

Friday, August 22nd, 2008

Do you like to wake up with everything wet because the rain got in?

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Prepare yourself

Friday, August 22nd, 2008

Prepare yourself for some quite negative messages. As you know I am generally contented and eager to be agreeable. And I am savouring the joy and challenge of this bike tour. I really think it’s a worthwhile undertaking, though in reality it isn’t. See… there you are, negative messages.

For some reason it’s necessary to point out what’s wrong and what makes me unhappy. To complain. Don’t read if you don’t want to. Actually, do read or there’s not much point me writing this. Just don’t be mislead by the tone of some of the blog entries.

Lastly, avoid inconvenience: load this into your feed reader.

It’s not working

Friday, August 22nd, 2008

This blog isn’t working. The entries are really dull, and they take too long to write. Day-by-day reports don’t really work because pretty much every day is the same — I wake up, observe the weather, pack tent, go somewhere, get lost, find a camping, chat with some Dutch campers, go to sleep. Also the daily format makes it difficult to write about interesting things.

So the new format is shorter entries on specific topics, and daily reports will go into a KML file viewable in Google Earth, perhaps the web browser also if I can make it work.

Instead of writing in a stinking net cafe, I am writing on A4 pieces of paper folded into quarters. So if the entries still aren’t interesting, then at least they won’t be too long.

Lyon

Sunday, August 10th, 2008

In Lyon today. A whole tour map, some older tour reports from Austria, and some pitiful camera work, preserved forever on YouTube.

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