Got into Frankfurt at 6:30 this morning after a gruelling 10 hour bus trip from Wrocław. Managed to fall asleep during the second horrible American movie only to be woken by a van full of polizei who came aboard to look at everyone’s ID. They took a few IDs (I think all names beginning with S) back to the van and spent 15 minutes comparing them to a list before handing back the IDs and arresting no-one. After that I sat uncomfortably and admired the German autobahns, including a tunnel about 7km long through what seemed like a fairly unmountainous region.

Those horrible American movies on the bus were — as most TV is — narrated by the Lektor. It has always amused me how the Polish Lektor is capable of emotionlessly distilling entire phrases of rich African-American dialect into one or two words. Often words starting with k or ch.

My hostel is just over the road from the Hauptbahnhoff, in the nice area with Turkish grocers and sex shops. So I don’t have to carry the bike box very far. It’s somewhere between 20-30kg so I’m going to get stung for excess baggage. The bike itself isn’t very heavy but the panniers, shoes, tent, etc, add up. Had to make a brown packing tape carry handle at the bus station in Wrocław. The builtin carry hole on the box tore out after walking it 100m, damn. Hopefully the box won’t tempt the destructive natures of Qantas baggage handlers.

Frankfurt is nice enough for a few hours of tourism. There is some nice old town architecture and the Main river banks are great. I think I managed to see most of it before sunrise. It was clear weather today but cold. At lunch I had a cup of glühwine by the old town hall and watched workers install lights in a huge christmas tree.

Tomorrow I think I will mostly stay inside, currently lacking the motivation necessary to visit the art galleries which will be open tomorrow. Hostel is nice in that it has a big luggage room and wifi for laptop nerds and facebook weirdos. On the downside my room really bloody stinks and I think I saw little insects jumping off the mattress. Hopefully I was just imagining them…

I wanted to implement a draggable save button in my GTK+ app. This lets the user save his file by dragging the document’s icon from the application onto the desktop or a file browser window.

Drag and drop (DND) is an intuitive approach to file management and XDS avoids the problem of novice users trying to use the file selector dialog as a file manager. However it’s not suitable for mouseless or limited-mouse users, so applications must also provide the conventional file selector.

The protocol used for drag to save is called Extensible Desktop Save (XDS) and is supported by ROX, Thunar, Konqueror, and Nautilus file managers.

This entry will describe what the programmer needs to do to implement saving with XDS in his own GTK+ app, with a small example. The example is in Python because the language is succinct and good for prototyping.

At some point, I recommend reading or skimming this good introduction to DND in GTK+, and the XDS spec. I referenced these, and the file-roller source to write the example.

How to save with XDS

In your UI you need a widget that the user will drag from (the source widget), and perhaps a text entry for the user to choose a filename.

The following steps correspond to the ones detailed in the spec, except they are translated to GTK+, and details about what the file manager needs to do are omitted.

Step 0 — Declare support for XDS

Create two GDK atoms called “XdndDirectSave0″ and “text/plain” and keep them in variables to be used later. The atoms will be used to refer to the XdndDirectSave (type text/plain) property of the source widget. This property is a communication channel between source and destination. It is used by the source widget to provide a filename to the file manager, and by the destination to specify a path to the application.

fixme: charset

XDS_ATOM = gtk.gdk.atom_intern("XdndDirectSave0")
TEXT_ATOM = gtk.gdk.atom_intern("text/plain")

Set up the widget as a drag source, with the single target name XdndDirectSave0. The 0 at the end represents the protocol version you’re implementing.

TARGET_TYPE_XDS = 42  # this can be any integer
 
def init_xds(self):
    # self.save is a button widget: the drag source
    targets = [("XdndDirectSave0", 0, self.TARGET_TYPE_XDS)]
    self.save.drag_source_set(gtk.gdk.BUTTON1_MASK,
                              targets,
                              gtk.gdk.ACTION_COPY)

Connect the widget’s drag-begin, drag-data-get, drag-end signals up to handlers.

    self.save.connect("drag-begin", self.on_save_drag_begin)
    self.save.connect("drag-data-get", self.on_save_drag_data_get)
    self.save.connect("drag-end", self.on_save_drag_end)

Step 1 — On drag-begin event

Once the user starts dragging the source widget, set the widget’s XdndDirectSave property to the filename (just the filename, no path) that was given by the user.

def on_save_drag_begin(self, widget, context):
    filename = self.filename.get_text()
    context.source_window.property_change(self.XDS_ATOM, self.TEXT_ATOM, 8,
                                          gtk.gdk.PROP_MODE_REPLACE,
                                          filename)

Step 2 — On drag-data-get event

This event is caused by the file manager, after the save widget has been dropped on a folder. The file manager puts the full path and filename into the source widget’s XdndDirectSave property. Get the value of this property and save the file.

def get_xds_filename(self, context):
    if self.XDS_ATOM in context.targets:
        typ, fmt, data = context.source_window.property_get(self.XDS_ATOM,
                                                            self.TEXT_ATOM)
        return data
 
    return None
 
def on_save_drag_data_get(self, widget, context, selection, info, time):
    if info == self.TARGET_TYPE_XDS:
        destination = self.get_xds_filename(context)
 
        if destination is not None:
            error = self.save_file(destination)

Your app must return a status code to the file manager, depending on the result of saving the file. It is put in the selection that is normally used for DND. There are three possible status codes, but only two are important for GTK+ apps: “S” and “E” — Success and Error.

The third, “F” for Failure, is used when the file manager gave a network URI that isn’t supported by the app. In that case the protocol supports sending the file through a selection. But all new GTK+ apps should be using GIO, and with GVFS, this supports saving pretty much anywhere except to Bruce Schneier’s brain. So it’s not necessary to send “F”.

            code = "S" if error is None else "E"
            selection.set(selection.target, 8, code)

If there was a need to present some dialog to the user, for example “Could not save file: Permission denied,” then do it after selection.set(). Otherwise the file manager will be waiting for a response until the user closes the dialog.

            if error is not None:
                self.show_error(error)

Step 3

If the file manager received “S” or “E”, it sends a drag finished event. In the case of Success, it might need to refresh its view so the user can see the new file.

Step 4 — On drag-end event

After the drag operation has finished, your app can delete the source widget’s XdndDirectSave property.

def on_save_drag_end(self, widget, context):
    context.source_window.property_delete(self.XDS_ATOM)

Summary

As you can see, it’s fairly straightforward to implement drag to save in an application. It should be enough to copy and paste this code and translate it to the language you’re using.

An app could also support DND of URIs, depending on what you’re trying to achieve. The example application allows dragging a file onto the window to load it. It also illustrates a simple use of GIO.

Full example source can be downloaded here:

• xds.py
• xds.ui

EPSG:900913 is better known as the google projection and has the property that the world (most of it) becomes a square. The square can be divided into 4 smaller squares, and so on, and this is how the tiling works in google maps.

Unfortunately the projection suffers distortion which makes Alaska look bigger than Western Australia¹, and for technical reasons Father Christmas’ house must be left off the map — this is really what makes the geographers angry.

So you won’t find many free GIS (Geographic Information Systems) software packages that project into EPSG:900913, and up until recently, unless you had a PhD, you couldn’t layer your own data on top of a google map without using their javascript API. Javascript is crap for drawing 90 days’ worth of GPS tracks across Europe, so I needed something else.

Luckily, I found MapServer and TileCache, and some good instructions on how to configure MapServer to render into the google projection.

So after far too much time spent fiddling around with different bits of softare, and lots of cut&paste javascript programming (the best way to write javascript), the end result is this:

(Each colour is a different day, the dots are where I took photos. The gaps are because of GPS problems. Train trips are from Venice to Vienna, and from Zakopane to Wrocław)

Behind the coloured lines are my dodgy collection of scripts which take NMEA data from the GPS, correlate them with photos and my written notes, and arrange them ready for MapServer. Languages in use are Python, Perl, awk, sed, m4, and a big nasty Makefile which ties them all together.

Anyway, that’s enough fiddling and reminiscing about bike tour for now. I hope you enjoy the map, bye!

1. Wikipedia: W.A. 2,645,615 km², Alaska 1,717,854 km²

Not that it matters.

Anyway, as you can see from the image at the top of this blog, we have a nice view of the cathedral up here on the 7th floor. However, there are a block of flats being built by the river, and I can see it going up brick by brick.

Already, we can’t see the charming high-rise student dorms “pencil” and “coloured pencil.” And quite soon, the cathedral will be completely obscured by this new block.

Alas!

I haven’t been very productive lately, and I’m a bit angry at myself for procrastinating. I think I’m looking forward to a change of environment, going back to Perth.

Some of the small things I have done over the last few weeks were to introduce SBP datalog support to GPSBabel, post a tiny tiny patch to librsvg (needed for something else), which is of course being ignored by the maintainers (usually a little prodding is needed), and do a little OpenStreetMapping.

On Sunday, on the way to the zoo, I went to the islands on the river and traced their borders with my GPS. This operation involved potential risks, such as slipping into the river, stepping on numerous dog poos hidden in the grass, and looking like a wierdo with GPS and pencil and paper. It needs to be done this way because the freely licensed satellite imagery is too low-res to get a decent outline. Anyway, I think the two islands that I traced look pretty nice, even if the osmarender map looks crap in general. After Thursday you can view the Mapnik render, which has a neater appearance.

View Larger Map

You can see the tram lines as well. I think I have mapped about 50% of the tram stops in Wrocław. I have a little program which tracks the status.

Anyway, the zoo was nice enough. Though I think the mournful look of this giraffe sums up the general mood of the animals that day. The kangaroos did seem to accept their situation and not let it affect them too much. They were just sitting in the sun. The sloth was my favourite animal. He hung from the roof of the monkey enclosure building, but wasn’t in any cage.

The sloth is called “leniwiec” in Polish, and it comes from the word leniwy which means lazy, and which also describes my recent approach to learning the language. I have learnt shamefully little since coming back from tour. So I might go and open the Polish book now.

Or not…

I recently played a CD which was scratched and skipping, making a tick tick tick sound out of tempo with the music. So I applied toothpaste to the affected area and it fixed the skipping.

Super.

While on bike tour, my mobile phone charger stopped working. This was because of the way I kept it with the wire wrapped around it. So I attacked it with a knife, made it good again, then taped it back together with gaffer.

Grand.

My laptop died last week. I won’t go into the reasons why, but to fix it, you must open the laptop, find a small chip, wedge something (e.g. cardboard/small rubber feet/a coin/chewing gum/etc) on top of the chip, then put the laptop back together.

Terrific. In summary, nice easy household solutions, lots of fun, especially the knife bit. Unfortunately, in the world of software it’s not possible to apply Macguyver fixes/the FBH and there are far more problems.

For example, I have been plagued by a problem with WordPress where it would sometimes spawn thousands of web requests back to itself. I had the Apache “MaxServers” variable set too high, so this caused the server to run out of memory and basically puke. I found out that the 1000′s of requests were caused by a buggy footnotes plugin¹, of all things!

Actually, WordPress is a continuing source of pain because once you have it, you must upgrade it every time someone finds a security problem, and that seems to happen every other week.

I had major problem with one upgrade, because they decided to support UTF-8 and other encodings for the database tables, and in the new config file it was set to UTF-8. Nothing mentioned in the upgrade notes that the old default was latin1. So all special accented letters got munged in the upgrade process, and I couldn’t get them back even after deleting the offending lines from the config. At this point it was too late to go back to the database backup I made.

Speaking of character sets, I sent an e-mail to a friend asking him to mail something to my address in Poland. I made the mistake of writing the e-mail in a correctly functioning unicode capable mail client, and using all the special characters necessary, encoded in UTF-8. Unfortunately his client was not so good, being some dodgy webmail rubbish probably being viewed through some dodgy rubbish web browser defaulting to ISO-8859-1 (latin1 again). So it was mailed to “ul. Åšcinawska, WrocÅ‚aw.” But it got through alright — the posties weren’t defeated by technology.

Most problems are caused by software. My GPS fell off the bike at 50km/h and rolled down the hill. It’s scratched up but it still works, apart from a really annoying and completely unrelated software problem which causes it to freeze, and you just need to wait for the battery to go flat, which takes 24 hours if it’s fully charged. Since I upgraded the firmware however, the device now only occasionally powers off instead of freezing — a welcome improvement. It’s not too bad though, my phone is much worse in this respect.

I suppose you’re wondering where this is going… well nowhere really so I think I’ll stop listing the many ways in which I have been thwarted by technology and focus on the positive.

For some reason my Internet has been slow for the last 3 weeks… like 30KB/s or less. Then two evenings ago it just got literally 10 times faster. Incredible! So I did that “apt-get dist-upgrade” I have been waiting so long to do on my laptop which I had just fixed with a piece of cardboard. Of course, the software distribution being Debian unstable, the upgrade of course totally hosed everything, requiring an hour or so fiddling around putting the pieces back together.

I want to include a success story, so I have to say it is Git and rsync. Git helped me merge together my diary, notes file, and todo list, which due to bike tour were partially updated in 3 separate locations. And rsync with its algorithm helped me escape the nightmare of partially uploaded photos done with that dodgy windows internet explorer FTP client rubbish which uploads the files in random order, and often stops uploading files halfway through. So yay. I’m sure no-one cares, but yay.

Now to the real subject of this blog post.

Everyone knows about the iPhone, but perhaps not everyone knows about the OpenMoko Neo FreeRunner. This is a mobile phone which runs almost entirely free software. Even the hardware design is released under a free license, so anyone who has a spare factory can make them. It’s an incredible project, and I have been looking for some Internet capable smart device, so OpenMoko seems perfect.

Except that the phone is somewhat underfeatured in the 3G or even EDGE department, it costs about the same as an iPhone, and the software barely works, not even for calls and text messages. If I ever owned one I would be forever fixing its problems. Its lure is that all the software is free: if it breaks you get to keep both pieces, and you are free to fix the problem yourself, and you don’t need to be Macguyver to do it.

The temptation to get this gadget is terrible… a tormentation in fact. But if I bought one it would probably be my worst IT procurement decision ever. I don’t know what to do.

1. it makes footnotes like this

Two Sundays ago, Magda and I went to Wielka Parada Rowerowa (The Big Bike Parade), which was held as part of European Mobility Week in Wrocław.

The “happening” was basically a planned and legitimised version of Critical Mass. I’m not sure what the official goals were, but for me the action served as a reminder of how awful it is to cycle in Wrocław.

Earlier I prepared a lengthy and partially researched discourse on why cycling more would be good and driving cars is bad, especially for a city like Wrocław. However I realised this is obvious to all sensible people, and if it’s not clear then you’re stupid or dishonest and you wouldn’t understand or care for my argument anyway. So I deleted it.

Nonetheless, here is one good reason why driving cars is bad. Motorists kill kittens. It’s true, I have seen them flat on the road. This isn’t even counting other animals dead due to the environmental effects of motorists. About the worst damage you can do on a bike is to kill a few insects, maybe an unlucky rat. Pretty bad if you believe in reincarnation, but nothing compared to little dead kittens.

Anyway, the parade was fun, and even though it was cold and drizzly, lots of people showed up. I was recording a GPS log until my GPS stopped working. There should be some of a route on the above map, however it looks like there is a problem with OpenLayers and the map is showing nothing.

Inside the psyche of every cyclist there is a small exhibitionist. I am not an exception to this rule, and therefore I decided to bring my bike fully loaded with panniers and tent, ready for touring. There were other crazier bikes such as a “chopper” bicycle, long bikes, tandems, etc.

So a nice day, fun, interesting. I hope the action helped to make it easier for cyclists in the city, but I’m not optimistic about that. So in the near future at least, this is the reality in Wrocław (and most other cities probably).

Got back to Wrocław on Sunday evening after 9 restless hours on the train from Zakopane.

All up it was an 89 day tour, 5750km cycled, through 9 countries, estimated 36kg bread & 13kg cheese eaten, 600L water drank, 460 hours sitting on the bike, est. €2200 spent, stayed in 58 different campsites, about 1 banana per day on average, so 89 bananas…

I’m sorry about the lack of updation since Torino. The only place I had time to write a blog entry was Venice, and the net cafes on that floating bourgeois ghetto were too expensive for contemplation. So here’s a short summary of the last month.

Torino to Venice

Map of Italy

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This was my caffeine-fuelled dash across the plain of the Po river, which started as soon as I received my passport from the courier on Friday afternoon. Highlights were the cities of Piava, Cremona, and Ferrara, and the Po delta national park. The weather was fine enough for eating ice cream, and I frequently did. As you can imagine, the plain is dead-flat, and dead-boring, so I travelled 790km in 6 days, 179km on the Tuesday.

There isn’t much camping in the region, so one night I wildcamped in a tree plantation. It was nice. Another night I was in the wrong place to find a nice wildcamping spot, and as it was getting late a thunder storm came in. I had to stay in a hotel. It had a brothel behind it, and the manager discreetly asked me if the room was for one person, or otherwise.

I was a little unprepared for Venice. When I tried to take a ferry there the ticket cashier told me bikes are not allowed at Piazza San Marco, the place where the tourist office is, the only place where I could find out about hostels/camping places, etc. So I was a little bit stuck. I decided to take the ferry to a camping I knew about on terra firma. On the way was Lido de San Servolo (island next to Venice), and there was a camping here, so I took it.

Venice

The camping on this island was the best in Italy, apart from it being really full and the thick swarm of mosquitoes. As it happened there was some Venice international film festival or something going on. Limos, red carpet, press, everything. I entertained the notion that I was sharing the island with Pierce Brosnan. What an honour for him! In reality I was just sharing a campsite with a lot of non-celebrities and film students. And mosquitoes. Received a small amount of amusement from my co-campers who were typing up assignments on their laptops, talking passionately about film while chain-smoking cigarettes, parading between their tents and the grubby showers in their bath robes, doing make-up and using their hairdryers, etc.

Met a Victorian girl called Debbie who was bike touring her way from Poland to England, with a little train trip here and there.

The city of Venice was nice and it didn’t even smell too bad but I kept thinking “it’s a bit of a slum” because it was, albeit a slum where rent is about €100 per m² per second. On Saturday I had an evening in Venice… alone of course. The original plan was to sit at the back of a ferry and look at the grand canal, but some Germans made this intolerable for me, so I jumped off and ran into a big dinner being put on by the local communist party. I got a plate with about 8 different kinds of dead sea creature and sat down at the benches with the comrades.

After dinner I went back to San Marco and listened to the bands playing in the restaurants and cafes. A crowd had assembled in the square to look on, and it moved between the restaurants as the bands started and stopped playing. Out of four bands I saw, one was definitely off their game, two were average, and one was good and quite enjoyable to listen to. They were all putting on a big act, appearances count the most in this case. Along with the gondoloas, it seemed like a bit of a tourist circus.

I bought a ticket for the 8:46AM train from Venice to Vienna, and on Saturday morning I got up reasonably early in order to catch it. Took a ferry from San Servolo at about 7:48, and according to the timetable it is a 56 minute trip to the train station. Had to endure a “leisure cruise” on the ferry along grand canal, putting along at 8km/h, stopping at every stop, waiting for every slow old person to get on board. The Germans from last night also got onto this ferry. After an agonizing hour looking at my clock and the map, we got to the station, somehow on time. I ran with my bike past the departures board, to platform 14, the furthest away of course. Conductor told me “1 minute until departure” and I got on. I was putting my bike on the rack in the luggage compartment as the train pulled out of the station.

Getting onto the train was like stepping into Austria. They are nice trains, except I accidentally asked for a coffee instead of jagermeister. It was a truly horrible coffee after becoming accustomed to the nice, cheap, coffee in Italy.

Vienna

I returned to my old favourite camping place in Vienna, the one near the river, in between the autobahn and a porta-loo depot. This time it was full of drinking yoofs, there for the DonauInselFest. It’s a big free festival on the island, lots of different music on different stages, alcohol, unhealthy food, other things.

On Sunday I resumed my sight-seeing from where I finished when I was last in Vienna. Ran into the “Dankfest”, which was an agricultural/food/folk tradition festival. I hovered around the free tasting tables for a while, then had a glass of “sturm” which was very refreshing. The red sturm is best. I think it’s apple cider. There were a couple bands playing, in various humiliating band uniforms. The best was a 5 man brass band who were very good until someone kept buying them rounds of schnapps. On receiving their glasses from the waitress they had to stand in a circle and sing a song before drinking the schnapps.

Also during the day there was a vintage car rally, which wound up at the dankfest. Various cars were represented, including an old U.S. army jeep. The two drivers wore uniforms to go with the jeep, I have a photo of them. Also participating was a man driving an old BMW motorcycle, wearing an unmarked dark green army uniform. For some reason he wasn’t quite as popular…

Slovakia

Map of Slovakia

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(Sorry, GPS failed on 2nd last day, so some track is missing)

From Vienna, I cycled down river to Bratislava, then north through the Male Karpaty (the small Karpaty mountains), along the Váh river for a while, over the Demänová pass, along the Kysuce river, through the Liptovský region, then to Vysoke Tatry (high Tatra mountains).

The Tatra mountains form some of the border between Poland and Slovakia. There is no road through the Tatras, but there is a nice way around their base, at about 1000m high.

Slovakia is pretty nice for cycle touring. There are some marked routes but they are a bit annoying sometimes. Unfortunately it’s often necessary to use busy roads and roads with lots of trucks. There are lots of beautiful forests, hills, and rivers. However I noticed that most rivers have a lot of rubbish in them, even the ones quite high up.

The towns are similar to those in Poland. That is, high apartment blocks, and large pedestrian malls, large parks, open squares, and many people always around going to the shops, etc. There is lots of public space, and people using the public space. It is quite pleasant for the visitor to see some life in the place they’re visiting. Towns in other countries have hardly any people around — they are mostly in their cars if outside at all. Particularly in France and Italy, the towns are completely dead from 12-2PM.

I was warned by some Poles about the existence of gypsy ghettos in Slovakia. These were something that I planned to avoid, however I was unlucky one night; in the beautiful Manin gorge I managed to find a campsite completely occupied by the Roma people. When I arrived at the campsite (the only camping within 100km, by the way) there were lots of big caravans, and some people were at work washing big drill bits, etc in plastic tubs. It took me a while to click about who I was camping with until the lady told me seriously “Pozor” which means “warning”. She seemed a little unhappy and stressed about her guests. She also suggested I might take a bungalow instead of the tent.

Anyway it wasn’t too bad, I had nothing stolen and I don’t believe any gypsy woman put a curse on me. The main problem was that they drove their cars to go to the toilets/showers which were 100m away. The campsite had two fields and two ablution blocks. One side was occupied by the gypsies and their caravans, and the other was completely empty, except for me. And I had put my tent quite close to the block. By the way, they all drove big Mercedes or BMWs. So all night they were flogging their mercs across the grass, parking right next to my tent, sometimes leaving the engine going and the stereo playing gypsy music. Then talking loudly in gypsy Slovakian, opening and slamming closed the car doors, doing their business, then reversing out and gunning it across the grass back to their side of camping, cutting up just a little bit.

Nonetheless, I was glad I visited the Manin gorge, which consists of two limestone mountains – Velký and Malý Manin (big and small Manin) cut in half by a little brook. It’s quite popular with rock climbers, and probably quite challenging too, judging by the number of memorials placed at the bottom of the cliff — about 20 over a period of 60 years. Supposedly lynxes live there, but I only saw lynx food (deer).

The Tatra mountains were impressive, of course. However, the weather in Europe just turned bad, and at 1000m it was quite cold. Thankfully it didn’t rain. On my last day, the sky was clear, except for a little cloud around the mountain peaks, and there was no wind. It was a really crisp morning, and the sun was shining but it hardly warmed you up. Though my hands and wrists went numb, I really enjoyed cycling under the mountains. After a long 7% slope, I crossed the border at Lysá Pol’ana.

Zakopane

The roads are considerably worse in Poland than in Slovakia, and they aren’t particularly good in Slovakia. I had a bumpy and freezing cold ride down from Jaszczurówka (it’s a hill), into Zakopane. Stayed at the Goodbye Lenin Hostel again. Apart from the stupid name, it’s really nice, due to the two girls who run it.

I was glad to stay in luxury again, and in a way I was glad that tour was over and I could return to a more or less normal existence. I was also glad to be back in Poland. Strangely I feel at home here. I didn’t feel like doing any hiking (besides I had no shoes), and there being nothing else to do in Zakopane, the next day I caught the train back to Wrocław.

Survived the tour

Thankfully my bike survived the tour (i.e. I didn’t completely wreck it), except for needing to replace the back wheel, and replacing worn parts such as the chain and gears, brakes, tyres. I am probably lucky that nothing major went wrong because I really didn’t have many tools. The cable ties were essential.

This year I didn’t have any crashes or injuries. I have numerous scars from last year and during the final weeks of last year’s tour my left knee was painful all the time and I had to pop ibuprofens (this was from a crash). This year the knee was a little sore at the beginning but it got better. My worst problem was that by the time I got to Venice my bum hurt like anything because the padding in my cycle shorts had worn out. Wearing both pairs at the same time gained a small amount of comfort. But it got better after four days rest and of course washing and drying the shorts.

What now

In the next few weeks I am going to continue a few of my programming tasks, and hopefully finish them. I am going to enter some of the cycle routes I took (EV-9 in Poland and Czech Republic, and the Destra Po in Italy) into OpenStreetMap, and of course do more mapping in Wrocław. In November, a trip to Stockholm to visit Stu, then back to sunny Perth.

Torino is pretty ordinary. I would never have come here if it wasn’t for the passport. I arrived here 2 days ago. On the roads around the city there are African prostitutes waiting for truck drivers. Not sure which country they’re from but the one I spoke to gave good directions in English. Last evening in the city I saw a junkie sitting on a park bench shooting heroin.

Yesterday I got a new chain and gears for the bike, a new tyre, a new tube, and new brakes. So the day wasn’t completly wasted. One of my tubes is a bit leaky which is annoying because it was new.

The camping is up on the hills on the other side of the Po river. It is situated on a decadent estate called Villa Rey. Apart from being next to a nice old mansion (which seems to be used as offices or something) with a view over the apartment blocks to the north of the city, the facilities are horrible. And it is the most expensive camping I have been to, even more than Vienna. Also it’s a long steep hill to cycle up to.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of Italy. Perhaps olive groves, vineyards, arid mountains, friendly people, Italian style residential architecture like in the suburbs of Perth, clothes drying hanging out of windows and balconies. Well it was all of that. The houses even have little lion statues — or eagles, or doves — on the front gates. Passed by a lot of car horn beeping and shouting outside a restaurant in a little village. Thought it was an argument but it was actually more or less normal conversation.

Came in from France along the coast, which is busy. Finally I had a swim in the mediterranean. It was warm and quite salty. My camping was 2 minutes walk from the beach… but most of it was private beaches were you had to rent a chair and umbrella!

Cycling was at times exhausting, because I headed inland (into the hills) to avoid the traffic near the seaside. I am now going in the general direction of Venice.

So yesterday while browsing the local Fnac, seeking a small respite from the 6-senses oppression that is Nice, and with the faint — alas vain — hope that I might find in there a Nokia N810, I wandered into the libraire’s Romans Anglais corner.

As expected, choice was limited if one isn’t interested in Harry Potter. The literature books either seemed too academic, too thin, or too heavy, or I had read them already, or I didn’t like the picture on the front.

Eventually I instantiated a shortlist, length 2. One — a woman’s nostalgic story of colonial life in Kenya; the other a troubled ex-colonial woman’s short stories about life in New Zealand, abroad in Europe, and on the French Riviera.

Perhaps I should explain why I made this a colonial female writers list, and not a 17-books-by-John Grisham list. Firstly, at Fnac they have a noticeable preference in this direction, though I ruled out everything by Jane Austen. Secondly, I’m staying next to Rue de George Sand, and clearly this means something.

Thirdly, I have recently been told that in Poland, the news from Australia — apart from the usual crocodile wrestling stories — is that the mayor of Mount Isa has called on the ugly women of the world to move there, and help address the 5:1 male to female ratio. So I thought they should send Germaine Greer there, and it put me on a slight sympathy for feminism bent.

After a short contemplation, and comparison of price stickers, I chose “The Garden Party and Other Stories” by Katherine Mansfield. Will let you know how it goes.

Apologies for the shortage of full stops in this entry. I have a tendency to waste them on ellipses. Further and sincere apologies for the underlying chauvinist tone and hidden assumptions about classic authors’ genders that have been left unchallenged in this blog entry.

My lodgings are campsites or youth hostels, though I have received a good handful, of accomodation offerings from locals, which for various reasons I couldn’t make work. I would like to try warmshowers.org but unreliable access to e-mail, or fiddling with public telephones, the necessity to meet a schedule, has made me reluctant so far.

At camping, if I talk to anyone, I talk mainly to Dutch people on holiday, but there are not often campers my age. So then there are the hostels with foreigners who have pretty much the same idea to me, but it has been a bore and I’m starting to dread the dorm friend process — hello, where from, where to, standard questions, leaving tomorrow, oh by the way are you on facebook? No, well I guess we can’t be friends then…

And the majority of conversations I have with the locals are related to business transactions. These are usually enjoyable and return useful goods and services, except in France where contempt for anglophones (or is it just me?) is de rigueur. I dread every time I need to ask a baker for a yummy long white loaf of bread. My ineptitude with the language is obvious, but they can sense fear, and know the meekness which belongs to my culture. Anyway, these
are only genuine European experiences within the scope of doing commerce in Europe.

So unless you are exceptional or willing to fool yourself, the European experience is an unattainable ideal, so one should at least be comfortable while spending money to be fed the tacky tourist lie.

Which brings me to the hostel I’m staying at today. It has an intense holiday vibe and there seems to be some enthusiasm for the well-being of guests. At breakfast, the normal din of conversation, cutlery on china, chairs scraping, the occasional glass smashing… today was mixed with assorted piano sonatas by Beethoven, some movements from some of his symphonies, and one song by Chuck Berry. I appreciated this small effort (though they could have had all movements, and in the right order), but the best breakfast music I have enjoyed was in the Boomerang Hostel, Antwerp, where the hostess Megui every day played one Norah Jones CD, on repeat. Every day! Because she liked it. I imagine when I come back to the Boomerang Hostel and sit at the big circular table in the smokey living room, Norah will still be singing for breakfast.

So today, I will sit in this hostel on the hill and not go out, because I think I’ve seen all I need to see in Nice, and the noise is really stressful after the solitude of the mountains. Tonight I will probably go into to the hostel bar, make an effort to talk to someone I will never see again, tomorrow I head along the coast, and try to grasp the European experience.

So, aglow with the accomplishment of having crossed the alps and reached the mediterranean, and setting eyes on it for the first time, I rolled down, around the switchbacks, past the bright green foliage of the occasional tree on the dusty brown hill. Bathing in the hot wind, I reached the outskirts of Vence and stopped to refold my map.

The noise was horrible. This came from expensive cars and SUVs coming and going from the disgustingly expensive houses perched on the hill, speeding removal trucks and furniture trucks, motorbikes, and — worst of all — scooters. Then into Vence, another historic and picturesque walled town built for the medieval tourism industry, and still continuing the tradition. The traffic was crazy, and all the drivers were in a hurry, flooring it, beeping horns. This is August, so high tourist season, and the carnival is at its worst.

Nice is pretty much the same. I came in on the 4-lane palm-lined boulevard, along the sea, past the airport with f. loud jets landing every 2 minutes, endless traffic lights, exhaust fumes, scooter drivers always with fully open throttles. This is actually worse than I remember L.A. being.

Then to centre ville which is just a lot of old hotels, villas as everywhere, and one measly strip of public space in the middle of a road.

The whole idea of this place is to get sunburnt on the beach, then stuff your face with expensive food and drink, then maybe drive somewhere in the car.

I went to the hostel, which is up the hill a bit, where it’s not as busy. The streets smell of either dog poo or urine. There is dog poo everywhere because this is France, and the urine I suppose because the public toilets are expensive, or maybe it’s the dogs again.

Nice is an assault on the senses and sensibility. This is not a holiday. I’m here at the wrong time, and doesn’t fit in with my bike tour. I have to get to somewhere quieter and not as stupid.

Do you like muddy grass on an awkward slope, with views of the dripping sewerage pipe of the caravan next door?

Do you like earwigs? They like sleeping bags and towels, and I’m told the way to get one out of your ear is to shine a torch at it.

Do you like self-deflating mattresses?

Do you like dusty clay and gravel to pitch your tent on, bent tent pegs, and banging your finger with a rock?

Do you like swimming pools? Do you like swimming pools infested with screeching tourist spawn, running, jumping, splashing, floaties, shouting, screaming, bawling?

Do you like the smoke and smell of steaks grilling, well done, seasoned, hot, juicy, not for your dinner?

Do you like the sound of a child bawling, due to some illness, injury, or injustice done to it? From 6PM–10PM, then from 7AM–

Do you like BYO TP, and holes in the ground?

Do you like it when the couple in the tent closest are singing songs from “The Sound of Music?”

Do you like cold lonely nights in your tent when an unseen German couple in a caravan have showed up, parked far too close and… “if the van’s rocking, don’t bother knocking?”

Do you like presto taps? 6-second ones, 8-second ones, or 60-second ones?

Do you like being in a place where everyone is watching TV; the nearest: a French version of Braveheart?

I like camping. I’m not sure of the reason why.

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.

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.

Not going to Toulouse any more… the plan is now to head southish, then on to Italy. Here is the tour so far. Google maps is a bit dodgy with the KML, so hopefully you can see it all.

View Larger Map

Wrote a few tour reports… but I’m getting really behind on these.

• Day 31: Rainy day in Salzburg
• Day 32: Salzburg – Sankt Johann im Pongau
• Day 33: Sankt Johann – Zell am See
• Day 35: Big birds, Boats, and Burkas
• Day 36: Zell am See – Zell am Ziller
• Day 38: Zell am Ziller – Innsbruck

And here are some digital camera videos. Quite banal…

BusCam I
TourCam I
TourCam II

Went to the ATM in Bischofszell to withdraw some Swiss Franks, and discovered that I had most probably left my card at the Chinese restaurant the night before. Oh well, no worries. I have a second card and can cancel the lost card. Must get going, to get to Zürich early so there’s time to visit the bike shop. Oh and by the way the restaurant was bloody expensive, more than twice what the same dish would cost in Perth.

Then I was cycling through the nice woods, and my foot came out of the pedal and I kicked my front pannier bag. The cleat on my shoe had finally worn out. My foot kept coming out all day, and I would either kick the bag, or hit my ankle on the crank.

Arrived in Zürich and, with only moderate difficulty, found the centre, then the camp site. And it wasn’t cheap camping. Plus you had to pay for warm showers, so I had a cold shower. For reference, I visited the youth hostel. They were 48 franks for a night in a 5 bed dorm (the exchange rate for AUD to franks is 1:1), so that made me feel better about the price at camping. There was an internet cafe for 18 franks / hour. Daylight robbery! Since then I found one for 6 fr. Still, not cheap. So be thankful, you’re getting a gilt-edged blog entry.

Everything is closed on Sunday. A lot of bike shops are also closed on Mondays. I found one which wasn’t, but they had no room for repairs, until next Monday! But the guy offered to change the wheel on his own time Tuesday (today) afternoon, which was pretty nice.

Anyway this morning I checked one of the smaller bike shops which was closed yesterday. He replaced the wheel today. The rim he had is slightly wider, but I think that’s OK, because it should be stronger. Wasn’t too expensive either.

Found VB in a supermarket for 2.60 franks. Had to buy one for me, and one for the dude in the bike shop.

Despite these troubles, Switzerland has been a really lovely place to visit. It’s obvious how stinking rich this country is. I believe this is because they all have Swiss bank accounts. The countryside is great. Outside the alps it’s hilly but not soul-destroying. All the cows have bells. The cycle route signs are so good I got from Austria, through Liechtenstein, to Zürich with only a 1:4.000.000 map of Austria. (On it you could see a few Swiss towns on the Rhine). There are also good rollerblading routes. Whatever tickles your fancy I guess. There are national routes as well, so you can look ridiculous and rollerblade across the country.

Back to how disgracefully rich the Swiss are. I had to check the Omega shop on Bahnhofstraße. All the display watches were set to 10:10AM, but the prices were wildly different, and some prices were just wild. This totally put Heinz’s €20.000 each speakers into perspective for me. There are a handful bums and beggars around but they are negligable, compared to the total wealth. Perhaps the rest all got ran over by BMWs.

I haven’t got time to upload my GPS tracklogs and photos. Take my word, the photos are gorgeous, and the altitudes are quite high. Last Wednesday afternoon I took the bus from Krimml to Königsleiten (the top of the Gerlospaß), saving a 500m climb. It was raining that day and bloody cold on the way down. But on Saturday I pulled the finger out and cycled Arlbergspaß. This was my exit from the alps for tour 2008. From Feldkirch I went through the top of Liechtenstein, across the Rhine to Switzerland, north to the Bodensee, then across the middle land to Bischofszell then Zürich.

(Unfortunately google have eaten my map. So this only shows the route up to Innsbruck. Sorry.)

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Dep , arr , dst km.

Wet morning. Most of my things were wet because I let water get on the groundsheet under my tent, and it just soaked up through the floor. Wet.

After an easy downhill with the wind, I spent a while finding an imaginary “Inntalradweg” — the bicycle route which supposedly follows the Inn river. It just isn’t there. So instead of the bicycle way I took a couple B roads, which are fast and direct, but noisy and stressful. At times there were some local routes haphazardly signed, but it was just easier to use the main road.

Got to Innsbruck — it was pleasant enough, with a cute rathaus and a big colonade with mountains behind it, but I thought the tourist interest — the number of tourists around — was unjustified for what it was.

Anyway, the evening was fine. In the Subiaco-like neuestadt some local marketing company put on a “New Orleans Festival,” which seemed to be a blues band playing, and a beer tent, and all the oldies rocking on. I sat nearby and listened for a while and ate a take-away Thai green chicken curry I got inside the yuppie supermarket nearby.

Tried to upload some photos from the world’s slowest net cafe. Returned to camping 6km away, in the dark, with my headlight. It was nice and peaceful cycle. Got back to my tent which was pegged onto a muddy slope with views of the sewerage outlet of the neighbouring caravan. Some Korean boys in their tent were singing to pop music, which was funny.

Dep 10:30, arr 4:45, dst 83km.

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A ski resort town is essentially a lot of guesthouses, shops to buy or rent sporting gear, and places to booze up and eat. The end result is a bland, expensive town, with the picturesque mountains obscured by slightly too quaint guesthouses.

During a break in the rain, I went for a walk around. The town was just full of bored old people. I went back to camping and in a rush finished Anna Karenin for the second time. This was because the post office closed at 6PM and I wanted to send the weight away, along with some old maps and 2 pairs of socks which I inexplicably brought with me.

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Reached the start of the Tauernradweg today (was doing it in the wrong direction), got rained on at the Krimml wasserfall, and the best spent €3.80 ever.

It was a slightly rainy morning; the highlight was passing the valley entrance to a national park. At this point the sun came out ever so teasingly.

Got stuck for several minutes at an electric cattle gate, pondering how to get through without getting zapped. I supposed beast or human would get zapped if it connected the circuit between the two sides of the gate… but then again they had insulators over the ends… what if one made a circuit between ground and gate? Ended up using the bike wheel to push it open.

The last climb up to the Kriml waterfall was on a gravel track through the forest. I was pretty slow on the climb, not sure why. During a break I had a proper look at the map to see where to go after Krimml. And I realised the pass towards Innsbruck was 1600m — another 400m on top of the rather pathetic 200m I had just done.

It was 3:30 and just as I saw the waterfall and was getting out my camera, it started raining cats and dogs. So I stood under the Tauernradweg start point shelter for a while feeling quite helpless, wondering whether to attempt the pass in the rain or go back down to camping in Lahn.

But I visited the tourist information office in Krimml town and found there would be a bus to Königsleiten, the top of Gerlospass at 4:20. So I got on the bus with bike and tried to hold on as the driver flogged it around the hairpins up the pass. Beautiful views of the waterfall.

Got dropped off and the bus driver flogged away in another direction. I was a bit disoriented and left off down where we came from. The big blue road signs aroused my suspicions however and I corrected my bearing, passed back over the top of the hill, and began my descent.

Really nice views flashing past, but the rain stung my face and eyes. Also it was quite cold up there and my hands and legs and nose were cold and wet. If it wasn’t for the spectacular lake and valley panoramas I would be quite miserable. The road flattened out at about 1200m and I passed through some rubbish ski resort towns. Then, just before the day’s final descent I got a great look at the towns spread out over the valley. I’m afraid my photography doesn’t do it justice but here is the picture anyway:

Reached another ski resort town of Zell am Ziller, saw a camping sign, and took it. Unfortunately it was one of those expensive 4-star campings: open winter and summer, almost fully occupied, swimming pool, restaurant, things for the kids to do, etc. And they are usually laid out for the convenience of caravanners, which means the muddy debris-strewn remains of lawn on an awkward slope for me to put my tent.

At least the showers were hot… but I forgot to bring my towel and had to dry myself with my undies. No worries. Even though I wussed out and took the bus, I felt another section of the tour was complete.

Dep 10:00, arr 5:45, dst 98km.

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Took the bus from Krimml (1100m) to Königsleiten, the top of Gerlospass (1600m).