After spending the last couple of weeks investigating fictious cults, the time has come to enjoy the sun, emmmm sorry clouds. On Saturday we went to Brittas bay to celebrate J's birthday. We walked along the beach for about 2 hours, just in time to avoid the heavy downpour.

  

On the way back home, we passed through Wicklow village to visit Wicklow Goal (historic prison), but we missed the last tour by 10 minutes. We strolled around the village for a while and discovered the pearl of Wicklow village - Carlos the Clipper! The Miss was also here for the weekend, which might explain my less than cheerful mood. Withdrawal symptoms!

  

With a bit more than a month to go for the Japan holiday, there’s a lot of planning to be made. Expect to see at least a couple of posts on the subject very soon.

From Strange Maps - Africa

Via

Just came back from an important/eventful weekend in Slovakia. The miss had her 30th birthday, and I prepared a small surprise for her. All went very well and according to plan, so at least the 3 months of planning for the event weren't for nothing.

As usual, the pictures are in the pipeline :)

With fuel prices soaring, these last two months have been devastating for airlines. Today another airline, Euromanx, the airline of the Isle of Man declared bankruptcy. In April ATA, Aloha, Skybus, and EOS have been among the other victims of this crises. Smaller carriers are facing bigger financial challenges as the costs of operation keep increasing, while the revenue from passengers doesn't match this cost increase.

Money Blue Book Blog has some advice on how to protect yourself against companies who are at risk of going bankrupt. In essence the advice is to use your credit card for any payments where there’s a risk of the company going bankrupt, be it an airline, a tour operator, or any other similar business.

This weekend it was the turn for an Irish trip. We decided to go to Westport, in the west (duh!) of Ireland in County Mayo. The trip from Dublin took around 4 hours, with a short stop-over for lunch in the lavishly decorated PV's pub, in Longford. The GPS on my IPAQ worked perfectly and took us exactly to the entrance of the Glenderan B&B where we were staying.

The B&B was an excellent choice. The room was newly furnished with old style furniture, and was tastefully decorated with hand-made candles and dried flowers. The attention to detail like the two wine glasses, digital TV, supply of tea and coffee, and room service, made this place one of the best B&B's I've ever been to. The breakfast consisted of a selection of cereal, a choice of full Irish breakfast or yoghurt cheese and fruit, and tea or coffee. It's also well priced at 38 Euro per person per night.

Westport is a nice local Irish town which even on a bank holiday weekend was not full of tourists. We got the impression that even though the place is well catered for tourists with a considerable number of B&B's, it's mostly Irish tourists that visit the place. We got further proof of this when we went into a pub on the main street on a Saturday night, and people were looking at us like we had 5 heads.

Westport is also a good starting point for visiting other attractions spots in Mayo. On Saturday and Sunday we visited Achill Island and Croagh Patrick. Achill Island is a postcard picture of the typical Ireland, with rolling green hills, 40 shades of green and an Irish traffic jam with sheep blocking the road. The place is scenic, relaxing and easily toured by car in a day. It reminded me a bit of the Isle of Skye in Scotland.

Croagh Patrick is the mountain (hill for people who live in places with real mountains) where St. Patrick reputably spent 40 days fasting. The mountain which is about 8km away from Westport is a popular pilgrimage site, and some people walk up the mountain barefoot as an act of penance. This must be a really awful experience considering how many rocks of literally all shapes and sizes litter the path. With our hiking boots tightly fastened, we walked up the mountain on Sunday morning in a rare day of glorious weather. The slope gets quite steep at the end, but it's something most people can do. It took us about 2 hours to go up and about the same time to go down. You can rent a stick before starting the ascent, something that's highly recommended if you don't have your own walking stick. On top of the hill there's a small white chapel which is open on the last Sunday in July.

Pictures to follow

Just got back from a wedding weekend break in Warsaw. All the hype that I heard about Polish weddings was well justified, and even though my expectations were high they were completely satisfied. Warsaw itself wasn't the major attraction though, the place is rather dull and the weather didn't help make it any better. I will write a bit more about the Warsaw trip when I upload the pictures.

In the mean time I'm rather busy writing a literature review on Social Network Visualization, interesting but quite time consuming. Hopefully I'll be back to normal in a week's time.

In the same way A white shadow posts about Michael Mifsud's success, and dmiessler posts about atheism, I'm being taken by this Ryanair ad posting habit. After Sarkozy and Bruni won the lawsuit against the O'Leary's airline, the "low fares - high surcharge" airline put up this ad in Italy. It says "Pay your taxes - Not for waste (collection reference to Napels) but to escape". The irony is that Ryanair don't fly to Naples.

Is it a coincidence that they don’t learn? Probably not. The self propagating nature of these ads probably pays many times over, for the damages they incur.

Salon.com has an interesting article on what constitutes “visiting” a country? If you go to the Iguazu Falls and move from one side to the other, does that mean that you've been to both Brazil and Argentina? If you land in Frankfurt in transit to Malaysia, does that mean that you've been to Germany? The article (found via Vagablogging) by Patrick Smith, gives some similar examples and asks what does it mean to visit a country, and should it really matter which countries you’ve visited.

I'm all in favour of making lists of the places I’ve visited. I consider travelling as a hobby and most people keep lists of their collections. Birdwatchers have their birding records, beer fanatics have their beer logs, probably even stamp collectors have their stamp lists, so why shouldn’t a traveler have a places list? Travelling is like collecting experiences in different areas, so it’s no different from any other hobby in this regard. (I’m also a bit of a sucker for lists, and lists will be really handy when the good old Alzheimer’s starts settling in.)

Now to the main point of the question, what does it mean to visit a country? Well, for starters if you never venture beyond the airport’s perimeter that doesn’t mean you visited anywhere except the airport. By certain airport naming conventions, you might end up in a different country than the airport name. For example, Ryanair’s idea of Vienna’s airport is in Bratislava, which isn’t even in Austria.

Probably the commonest way of attributing a visit to a place is to attribute the visit to being physically in the place, and maybe visit some of the most representative sights of the place. For example a visit to Paris would mean seeing the Eiffel Tower, Louvre etc. On a deeper level, one can immerse himself in the ambience of the place, try to interact with the locals, eat their food, and learn about the culture. There are many different levels you can visit a place, but there needn’t be a clear cut judgment on what a visit should mean.

Any country is living organism, always evolving and changing. In some countries the change is more visible than others. In places where there has been war, poverty, oppressive political institutions, the change tends to be more drastic and more visible than the more gradual change happening in more stable countries. This added time attribute to a visit makes each visit unique.

As for what you’re going to write down on the list. I list cities in my “have-been-to” list. I find cities more manageable in terms of size and more representative in what you have really seen. If I visit Moscow that doesn’t mean that I’ve visited the whole 6.5million sq miles of Russia, but I can still say that I’ve been to Moscow.

At last I've uploaded some pictures from the Budapest trip in June. I had to lookup some places in the guidebook again because I forgot what they were. The pictures are uploaded at Smugmug in the Hungary 2007 album. These are the best 2 pictures in my opinion.

  

It's that time of the year, time to start planning a nice holiday escape out of Europe. As soon as I realized that the Russia/China plan fizzled, my mind started racing and exploring alternatives. Also, I haven’t really had the opportunity to choose a place for holiday in quite a while, so this is also part of it (the Venezuela trip wasn’t entirely 100% my choice).

At the moment I'm looking for interesting destinations and still open for suggestions. I had to park Japan and Madagascar options but they’re just slightly postponed to a later date. South America and Australia are also parked because of the recent visits and that leaves options in Africa and Asia. These are the options under consideration (in no particular order):-

China - For the cultural heritage and loads of other interesting stuff. Was already thinking of going there last year but again that didn’t happen. This year there are the Olympics so there’s a hope that road signs and the like will be translated in English. The Olympics period is not a runner but because it will be busy, but just after the Olympics should be good. China is cheap and there may also be some discounts after the Olympics.

South Africa:- This is a very good choice too, relatively safe and quite a popular tourist destination. The definite must visit places here are Kruger Park and Cape town, which happen to be on different sides of the country but that’s ok. I already have some planning done her because I was going last year with my travel mentor.

Namibia: This is probably the safest spot you can visit in Africa. I know 3 different groups of people who went there. All of them said it’s very cheap and very easy to get by. Like South Africa we can go on a safari, but in Namibia there’s the desert and some very unique scenery.

India: Again a good destination with loads to see and explore. The only thing is that I don’t know much about the place and planning might be a bit tricky with all the options available.

Cambodia/Loas/Vietnam: The Cambodia/Vietnam thing is also very interesting. This area is getting quite a lot of attention from tourists supposedly being beautiful and cheap. Vietnam is probably the most interesting of the 3. Probably might end up choosing 1 of the places to see it properly depending on the time available.

So basically there are spots in Asia and Africa. The Asian part is more concentrated on culture (especially China and India) and the Africa is more concentrated on nature. All of the countries are cheap to visit. Probably the most expensive option from the lot would be South Africa.

If anybody has been to any of these countries or has any alternative suggestions please feel free to comment.

Update: NY Times list of places to visit in 2008

Tuesday 1st
To start the year on the right track we snoozed till 10.30 then crawled down straight into the kitchen for yet another filling breakfast. In the afternoon we went for a walk in Laskomer forest, which is just behind her mum's house. There was a frozen stream along the path, and like a 4 year old child who never saw frozen water I went about throwing stones at the layers of ice, giggling with pleasure with each crack. In the evening a friend of the Miss came over and we spent the evening chatting near the palm tree in the piano room.

Wednesday 2nd
Went skiing to Donovaly, but this time to make sure that there were skis left in the rental shop we arrived at 9am. The weather was perfect because it was sunny and not so cold. We skied on both sides of the resort, Zahradiste (Donkey Meadow) and Nova Hola (Zvolen), until the last lift closed. In the evening we ate beef broth and roast pork with mashed potatoes and peaches. The beef broth is exactly like the broth my mum used to cook back at home. After a whole day skiing we just happily vegetated in the evening.

Thursday 3rd
Had the usual breakfast, but today instead of the 2 or 3 varieties of sausage, there were 5 different types. Even though at times I could almost feel the fat clogging my blood vessels, I still kept savouring them with pleasure. One of them tasted quite like the traditional Maltese sausage with some added paprika and chili. After breakfast I went for a walk in the forest and found a path uphill off the beaten track. I tracked up to the top of the hill hoping to get a good view of the village but it was too foggy to take any good pictures. Later in the evening when I told her relatives where I had been, they said that I shouldn't have gone there because there was the risk of meeting a bear.

In the afternoon we went to one of her cousins who's just had a baby girl. At her cousin's place nobody spoke English so I ended up nibbling finger food and staring at the 3rd Stephen Seagull movie of the week. At least the gunshots and punches were not difficult to understand.

After meeting the cousin we went to see grandma and the aunty and uncle she lives with. Like her cousin they also live in Liptovska Osada. Grandma gave me one of the warmest welcomes ever. I could see it on her face that she was very happy to see me, and my personal translator confirmed my impressions. I gave her a small souvenir from the dot, and when she saw it, full of excitement she replied "danke schon" in German. The aunt and uncle were also very warm, but grandma was special.

Apart from meeting grandma in person, the highlight of this visit was visiting her place. She lives in a smallish house attached to, but separate from the main house, where the aunties live. Grandma's place has a total of 3 rooms; the kitchen, the living room and bedroom. In the kitchen there's an old wood powered cooker and oven. On the right hand side of the oven there's a square drawer with burning wood which heats the metal hotplate on the surface. Near the oven granny had some mandarin peel drying. She uses the peel in the oil burners, with some added water, to scent the house.

In the living room there were many glassware sets and holy statutes. Grandma is the only real practicing catholic of the family, and her house is full of holy pictures, icons ans statuettes. In the library under the glassware sets there were a couple of books which I obviously scrutinized. Amongst them there was a Czech copy of one of my favourite books, War with the newts. Also, hidden underneath the the coffee table there was a fitness ball. Yes, grandma has a fitness ball and she uses it regularly. In her bedroom she has a double-deck cassette player and a music CD player for listening to music whenever she cannot sleep.

If you imagine a shortish, fit, smiling lady with untamed gray hair and add it to the description of her house, then you've got a good idea of what grandma is like. Just before we left the grandma's house tour, she took out a brown paper bag and gave it to me. It was nothing less than her own dried apples. Granny's dried apples. The best present I received this Christmas.

After the tour we went back to the main house and unsurprisingly there was a cold meat platter with different types of sausages, potato bread (which is almost identical to the traditional dottian bread), homemade biscuits, and sweets, waiting for us. I'm not the sort of person who needs a push to eat in these occasions but here they kept on asking me to eat more and more, just like my aunties and own grandma used to do at home.

At around 10pm we left back home in the frosty weather. Liptovska Osada is about 36km away from Banska Bystrica but it usually has colder temperatures.

Friday 4th
Today was shopping day. We started off with a visit to Lidl and then we went to Europa again. I got a Slovak picture dictionary in the hope of learning some words for my next visit. After I paid for the dictionary I tried to be polite and say "thanks" in Slovak but instead of saying thanks (Dakujem) I said "cheers" (Na zdravie). Typical of me isn't it. LOL! In the evening we ate soup and pork.

Saturday 5th
The end of the holiday was coming closer and we started chilling out and preparing for the inevitable return. We stayed at home most of the day since the Miss had some unpacking and repacking to do. In the evening I went to watch American Gangster with her brother and his girlfriend.

Sunday 6th
After praying for snow the whole week it finally came - obviously on the day we were leaving. It was snowing heavily all night and it continued till the morning so we had to leave to the airport early. Abdul, an Egyptian friend of the family, drove us from Banska Bystrica to Bratislava airport, then he continued to Munich with her sister. At first he had to drive at about 70km/h on the highway because of the snow. We arrived at the airport in about 3 1/2 hours which wasn't that bad. At the airport we met two friends of her, a couple, and then it happened. It finished!

The rest of the pictures of the Slovak holiday.

This weekend I watched Borat for the second time, and by coincidence today I came across and series of articles on gadling on how to distinguish between the ex-Soviet countries that end in 'Tan'; Kyrgyztan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan. Steppe Magazine, a magazine focusing on central Asia, also has a good map to help you distinguish between the 5 different countries.

Obviously the suggested way to remember Kazakhstan was to associate it with Borat. This association though is not looked upon favourably by the Kazakhstan government, as the government plans on running four-page ads in the NY times and other US media to counteract the bad press that Borat created. I sincerely hope that people in 2008 have the common sense to realise that the film wasn't meant to be taken literally. I hope nobody thinks that Kazakhstan space program launches toddlers in space and a traditional beverage is fermented horse urine. I still think it's a good idea to capitalise on the exposure Borat gave to Kazakhstan, and continue marketing the country hopefully people will be interested in seeing what the real Kazakhstan looks like.

Friday 28th
The flight to Vienna was delayed by an hour so I busied myself reading Rivers of Babylon by Peter Pist'anek, the only Slovak author translated to English I know about. From Vienna airport I got a bus directly to Bratislava airport which took approximately 1hr. Met the Miss and her sister at the airport, and we drove to her parents house in Banska Bystrica (BB), about 200km away from Bratislava. After a warm welcome by all the family I was treated for a late dinner with duck and sweet purple cabbage. We spent the rest of the evening drinking Ballantines whisky, which quickly became the signature drink of the holiday.

Saturday 29th
Visited BB centre and from the few remnants of the Christmas market we tasted Trdelnik, punc and gorg. Tredlnik is a piece of warm, soft pastry, coated with sugar, walnuts and cinnamon. Punc is a sort of mulled wine but not quite so, and grog is like hot whiskey but with rum and other spirits instead. We went shopping in the newly built Europa shopping centre, and I was impressed two things:- a) finding Murakami and Chuck Palahniuk English books in a bookshop, and b) the number of miniskirts in clothes shops.

In the evening we went for dinner in a Slovak Coliba (wooden restaurant) called St. Christopher Coliba. Tried Halusky the Slovak national dish and liked it alot. The dish is made from potato dumplings covered in a sheep cheese called bryndza. In the middle of the dish there were some cubes of bacon for the taste. Apparently in Slovakia the bacon is 5/6 fat and 1/6 meat. Although it's quite unsightly it's still very tasty. After dinner we went to an oriental style bar serving a full menu of teas and shisha pipes.The place was really cool and very informal. We say, or rather lay down on carpets, and there were even people playing chess and other board games.

On our way back home we were wandering around the city outskirts and passed through the village of Malachov. We discovered a new world full of snow and frost, as if coming out from a fairy tale. The place was only a couple of minutes away from BB but it was full of snow unlike the town. There was even a skiing resort with night skiing, something we made use of on the following day.

Sunday 30th
In the afternoon after breakfast and lunch we tried to go skiing at a popular resort called Donovaly, but all the skis and boots were rented out. It was a bit annoying because the weather was perfect, sunny and not so cold. We then went to Malachov and managed to rent boots for me there. Skiing in Malachov was ideal as the piste was not so steep and wide, with enough snow and not so many people, the best scenario after about 7 years away from the slopes. It seems that skiing is like riding the bike though, you'll remember what you have to do once you start going down the hill with that funny feelings of the alien boots and skis.

In the evening we had vegetable soup with dumplings, and chicken legs with rice and stewed fruit. Even though I'm not a big fan of soup I liked all the soup I had here, because the soup is not very thick and has lots of water. Another interesting thing is that they eat sweet stewed fruit with the main dish, some of which her mum (mamka) prepares herself, like the sour cherries, pears and plums.

Monday 31st
The highlight of the day was the end of year dinner, which traditionally in the family is a replica of the Christmas dinner. The table was prepared in the main dining room near the real Christmas tree. An extra chair and plate with waffles for the "potential visitor" was prepared as per tradition. The dinner started with a tape recording of grandma saying grace, then we ate a clove of garlic with honey for good health, and mamka made a cross with honey on everyone's forehead.

The dishes were:-
Kapustnica - Sour cabbage soup and first class mushrooms collected from the forest
Pork and cod fillets in a homemade breadcrumb crust and potato salad
Opekance s makom - A desert with small sweet breadcubes, loads crushed poppy seeds made into a paste with some milk

Traditionally poultry is not eaten during the end of the year because otherwise luck will fly away with the bird.

After dinner I gave everyone a little present and then watched some Slovak TV about national celebrities. At around 10.30pm we went to the town square where there was some live music (folk and later some Slovak songs played with a disco beat). Before midnight we went back home and as the clock struck we drank champagne and fired some fireworks. Father fired his pistol in the air several time too. After our celebrations were over we watched some of the other major fireworks that were fired from all around the city. Before we went to bed we watched a Russian fairy tale called Mrazik, which the misses kindly translated for me in English.

The rest of the pictures of the Slovak holiday.

Saturday 22nd: Arrived home and chilled out recovering from the previous night drinking with my work mates after the Christmas lunch.

Sunday 23rd: Met my ex-work pal, and gave him the laptop I smuggled for him from Dublin. I also tried to convince him to become my work pal again in Ireland. Watched Milan lose 2-1 in the derby because of an abysmal mistake by Dida, the Brazilian keeper. In the evening we went to the farmhouse and caught up on some card playing with the pals, ate some delicious lamb with mint, and vol-a-vents with seafood and meat. Slept on the refurbished farmhouse couch.

Monday 24th: After a lazy morning start with a game of canasta which we were losing miserably, I went to KFC for the traditional meeting in the dot. Went back to the farmhouse afterwards, and played pictionary. We had a late dinner with quail, stuffed chicken, and meat balls. After dinner we played a new game called Mafia, that Y and B thought us . We weren't enough to enjoy the game fully but we noted its potential for a large group game.

Tuesday (Christmas): The most boring day of the whole break. Had Christmas lunch from 11.20 to 11.40 and a long siesta. In the evening I went out with the pals to a loud overly pompous club that was so annoying we stayed outside.

Wednesday 26th: Went shopping to the crafts village with my pal, the one who got the Dell XPS. I caught up a bit on the gossip and some local food (octopus sandwich and cheesecakes). In the evening we went for a traditional Maltese meal with all the village pals, and a newcomer from Finland. Went to the nightclub area after for more drinks.

Thursday 27th: Went to the usual visit to the dentist and chilled out. We had a dinner at our local pub in the evening. Ate rabbit, horse and all sorts of local delicacies (sausage, cheeselets, bigilla etc.). We also played a proper game of Mafia amongst about 9 people in the pub. Stayed there drinking till about 3am (the place usually closes at 10pm).

Friday 28th: Packed and left to Slovakia for part 2 of the holiday.