Once upon a time there was a beautiful forest each day the wind would blow though the forest and create the most delightful sound. The squirrels, birds and bees, in fact all the creatures in the forest chirped and whistled and buzzed in harmony with the forest. Then one day a wood chip company turned up and cut down almost all the trees, all the animals moved away and from then on there was just quiet except for the buzzing of the last few bees.

What’s this got to do with industrial deafness and holidays……

Inside your ear there is a forest of hair cells which behave much like a forest, when noise enters the ear they sway in the breeze. In the ear this movement creates an impulse that is transmitted to the brain and we “hear”.  Exposure to loud noise over a long period of time is the equivalent to having a wood chip company in your ear, loud noise destroys the trees and pretty soon you have a few sticks of wood left and the odd bee making a buzzing noise (sometimes they are more like cicadas). The bad news is these trees in your ear NEVER grow back which is why over you’re lifetime your hearing will deteriorate and if you live long enough or expose yourself to enough noise you WILL go deaf. The good news is for the price of a small car you can get little amplifiers and speakers mounted each side of your head which, in a way, half fix the problem. These are called hearing aids. A hundred years ago the partial cure involved the theft of some unsuspecting tuba players instrument and mounting it to a trolley to move it around.

As a long time sufferer of industrial deafness I could go on for ages about this so lets just say when you ask me, “Would you like a cup of tea”,  I’m likely to say “could I get a pup and see……What!”.

Franks Knees? Oh simple…..we are at CANFRANC which is near the French boarder in the PYRENEES.

One of MANY villages

By the way, be sure to look after the forests.

In the Modernist corner ……. Antoni Gaudí i Cornet.

In the Surrealist corner…… Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, 1st Marquess of Dalí de Púbol.

AND THE WINNER IS………………….

We left Barcelona this morning via rent-a-car almost event free. The phone charger did catch  fire before we left the parking lot and filled the car with an acrid and no doubt toxic mix of noxious fog  however we pressed on determined to leave the city dent free.

Despite the left hand drive car, no signs in English, seemingly no real road rules, and a car still emitting fair volumes of malodorous gas we finally made “The Freeway”.

“The Freeway” is a clever contrivance designed to frustrate you by requiring regular stops at strategically placed intervals where you are required to insert your credit card in exchange for multiple pieces of paper which are probably receipts, but who knows they’re in Spanish, as are I might add all the instructions. Learning by trial and error we now have a wad of chits about the size of a raffle ticket book and probably no credit on the well used credit card. On the plus side we only had to back up out of one of the many cash extraction bays once due to not converting the Spanish symbols to English symbols quickly enough.

By the way the purpose of all this was to get to Figueres a delightful village just short of the French boarder and home of the Salvador Dali museum…. WooHoo liquid clocks and long legged elephants who could resist that?

Cadillac convertible with the mother of all hood ornaments and a boat on a pole in case of really, really heavy rain.

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Welcome to Barcelona,  city of speciality shops

I spotted four of these shops and only two McDonald’s. The Spanish are obviously more enlightened consumers than the rest of the world. Five female shoppers and one male who appeared to be window shopping.

Jen was unsure of the services supplied at this Salon, it appeared well patronised.

A place where people with acute coulrophobia can live secure in the knowledge that they are safe from predators, no smiles here and balloons confiscated. Definitely no public clowning without a licence. You can’t run from the law in Barcelona (not in clown shoes anyway).

On the city tour bus yesterday we narrowly missed a large explosion in the main street followed by a cloud of smoke and automatic weapon fire. Presumably this is a  normal occurrence  as there was no news on the net about it.

If that wasn’t enough on the way home from the gay pride festival (walking past not attending) we witnessed about twenty police including the riot squad arresting a side walk Rebok/Nike salesperson, there was a good crowd just like football, split about fifty fifty in their support. The police,using their batons to great advantage, won the match   when the salesman kicked an own goal by falling backward down the nearby subway stairs……Shoes everywhere what a match!

Spanish facts.

The first “modern’ novel came from Spain, Miguel de Cervantes. wrote “Don Quixote”  in 1605.

Chocolate. During the fifteenth century Spaniards traded with the American continent and North Africa, and introduced oranges, avocados, cacao, potatoes and sugar to Europe.

Spanish is the second most used language in the world, just after Chinese and ahead of  English. Despite this Spain has four other spoken languages, Catalan, Basque, Galician and Aranese.

The Pacific Ocean was once called “The Spanish Lake”

By the way seventy percent are catholic and about thirteen percent of the total population go to church. God will be happy about the seventy percent but a bit miffed about the thirteen percent.

And most importante:

Gaudi. Antoni Guadi, Spanish architect best known practitioner of Catalan Modernism. Gaudí’s works have a highly individualised, and one-of-a-kind style. Most are located in Barcelona including his the magnum opus The Church of the Sagrada Familia, due to be finished for the 100th anniversary of Gaudi’s death in 2026. If you think that’s a long time to build a church, forget it! The Ulm Cathedral in Germany took over 500 years.

Gaudi’s work is a absolute artistico and ingenieria delight, blending surreal imaginings with engineering genius, they are mathematically precise and aesthetically alluring……………..

A fair climb

But the veiw

Isn’t that bad from half way up

Sagrada Familia

I think Gaudi deserves a separate page maybe later.

I was initially baffled by the dramatic rise of this place literally from the desert, amazed by the architecture the development and the total excess of just about everything. But think about it…. Dubai is a Kingdom so it has one ruler who sets the rules to suit himself and his country, and what better way to benefit yourself and country than by appealing to other people’s greed.

By offering a flat tax rate of five percent Dubai has attracted the biggest and more importantly wealthiest companies in the world. They have thrown billions at Dubai in exchange for a safe low tax haven that saves them millions and gives Dubai 5% of every dollar of profit they earn. This unfortunately robs the home country of revenue, but there you go that’s economics for you. The king who by default owns Dubai becomes Mr Five Percent and he is probably one of, if not the richest man in the world. We will never know because he does not reveal his wealth as a matter of religion.

So what about the people? There are basically three divisions.

1. Original citizens who get looked after with the best jobs (police, administration, customs etc.), free health care, housing, education (including living allowances and costs at overseas universities). They are the family.

2.Expatriates. They fill in the gaps, they do the menial jobs. Expats can never be citizens (unless they are a female who marries a local boy). These are the hangers on keen to earn the best living they can even if they have to leave their families in Pakistan, India etc.

3. Rich investors. Obviously are well looked after and if they do something for the glory of Dubai the King may offer them citizenship. I suspect a requirement would be conversion to Islam.

The best way to sum up Dubai is by quoting a really friendly Pakistani Taxi driver (who shall remain unnamed because I don’t know his name and I wouldn’t tell you if I did).

Driver: “What did you think of Dubai?”

Me: “Well…. Um….. Worlds biggest everything?”

Driver : “Yes, yes worlds biggest shopping mall, worlds biggest tower, worlds biggest water fountain, worlds biggest ferris wheel, worlds biggest dry dock for ships, worlds biggest man made island, if someone builds a big thing Dubai builds a bigger one and Dubai has the worlds biggest number of poor people. All the money is in the hands of the King  and about six or seven of his relatives you know”

Our driver is not really correct on two counts:

1. There are many poorer people in other countries than in Dubai but the wealth distribution in Dubai is staggeringly inequitable.
2. Australia still has the worlds biggest Banana, Prawn, Trout, Crocodile, Apple, Ugg boot and what about Uluru? Now that’s a Rock with a capital Ahh!

If I’ve been a bit harsh and serious today I’m sorry so I leave on a happy note. Dubai claims to be the safest country to live in the world (another world beater god love em!) so if you lose your wallet in the airport lounge along with your phone and newly exchanged euros ready for Spain, don’t panic someone will hand it in and you will most likely get it back two minutes before boarding the plane.

By the way we’re headed for Spain.

Worlds biggest playground attraction.

World biggest smart phone shoot.

Dubai’s history can be traced  back 3000 years but don’t panic I’m not interested in that either. Today Dubai is the trading hub of the middle east. The Souks, or old trading markets, have given way to multi story buildings , financial centres and tourism. Dubai is not even oil rich, that would be Abu Dhabi which bailed out Dubai financially a few years back. Dubai is the most populous of the seven United Arab Emirates. Today Dubai owns the largest shopping mall, tallest building, and the world’s first man made islands, as well as a very flash airport for the huge fleet of Emirates air planes to fly from. In short the old Souk has given way to a new Souk and it’s as chic as a sheik.

We are here for an overnight stop and a half day tour after fifteen hour flight and a ten minute nap so I guess we might not get a lot out of it. I’ll let you know a bit later …………..

SOME CONSIDERABLE TIME LATER

Well…… first they put us on the wrong bus, then we had to convince the driver that we didn’t want to go to the beach or the Dubai Mall (even if it was the worlds biggest). We finally convinced him we needed to connect with the REAL tour so he kindly dropped us back at the hotel where we then caught a taxi to meet up with the tour. All this on Vodaphone’s special “no deal with Dubai – Pay through the nose plan”.

So the tour was good, very good in fact despite the obvious connection between the tour company and every dodgy spice, gold, and art dealer in the greater Dubai area. The guide was informative without being critical of the social structure in Dubai (they lock you up for being critical).

Dealer…. “Yes yes very cheap 50% off, very cheap” Tourist…. “Yes yes but there are no prices on anything!”

Old is new again, re purposing the the Abra for the tourist trade on Dubai Creek.

Dubai skyline from the worlds biggest man made island.

We fly tomorrow so more on today, tomorrow. Plus the “common man’s” take on Dubai as solicited from a local.

The Grampians was the last item on our “hit list” for this trip, as we have to be back home early next week for various reasons. On the way home we will be driving through the middle of Victoria via Great Western (great Sparkling whites), Pyrenees (great reds), and Rutherglen (great desert wines). Hey! That’s a three course meal. Might be an extra day or two.

For all you dedicated blog followers. Yes all six or so of you. You know who you are. Especially that guy in Hungary, and no I don’t have a younger sister. I do have a older one though, what was the deal again, six goats, a cow and……?

So for all of you…here’s a bunch of flowers, hand picked by Jen, especially for you in the Grampians. The view was lousy but the flowers were, well, you judge….

We are the Grampians, We are The Grampians,…………

“Its we are the Champions”

Who sings we are the champions?

“No it was Queen not the Who”

So the queen sang we are the champions.

“Not The Queen, just Queen”.

Who said anything about The Queen?

“No they didn’t, they sang about Tommy though”

Tommy who?

“That’s right Tommy by The Who, We are The Champions by Queen”

Apologies to Freddy Mercury and Queen, but I’m sure they wouldn’t have minded being associated with the following rock.

So “The Grampians” were named by some pioneering type ( a certain Major Mitchell in fact) who thought that the mountains looked just like Scotland. Never having seen Scotland we decided it would be worth the walk (seven point four kilometres with a vertical component of five hundred metres, according to our three dollar map) to see what Scotland looks like.

The Pinnacle.

My first clue should have been the quizzical look we got from the mob of kangaroos at the start of the track (there’s that word “track” again) they were in hindsight unused to the presence of human kind on days like today. My second clue should have been that we had the car park to ourselves, not only the car park but the track as well.

All good hikers check the weather forecast before they leave on a four-hour hike, and yes we did. “Rain developing in the afternoon”. Noon is early in these parts apparently. If Scotland is overcast, wet, dreary and cold, which I suspect it is, having watched several episodes of Hamish Mac Beth, then the Grampians have been well named.

The Art Sites

Our rather chilly and wet sojourn in the AM did not dampen (Ha! Dampen) our enthusiasm for Victoria’s largest collection of indigenous art.

My fist clue should have been the mornings effort, and the still numerous cloud formations. My second clue should have been the overgrown nature of the track.

Being dedicated tourists however we toughed it out and before long we were rewarded with more “rain developing in the afternoon”. The track got steeper and the track got narrower until we had to push our way through the undergrowth, collecting the accumulated wetness from the undergrowth on the way. Jeans are well known for their uselessness as hiking clothing and yes we were wearing jeans, so it didn’t take long for them to become saturated.

We made the art site a little wet but not discouraged, this was after all Victoria’s best art site according to the publicity. The art here is referred to as tally marks, a collection of vertical marks made with ochre. There are also a couple of stick figures painted on top. One of my two favorite sisters in law (I only have two by the way) once went to great pains to tell me that just about anything can be described as art. These tally marks may well be art however I suggest the marks are a tally of the number of days it has rained without stopping. Further, the stick people clearly list who’s turn it is to go out in the rain and club some hapless wallaby to death and drag it back to the shelter for tea.

All this aside, we now had to walk back to the car. The rain had stopped, there was a strange light overhead, which may have been the sun, it wasn’t there long enough to really say. Things were definitely looking up. Wrong. The undergrowth that we had cleared the excess water of on the way up the track now presented a fresh supply from the other side on the way down. This ultimately led to an upwardly mobile soakage problem that could, and in fact did, lead to a degree of dampness in that region way north of the knees. We repaired to camp and the medicinal alcohol.

Going to walk where????

A long way up.

and a long way down.

You have to suffer for you art.

What a view!

Clearing….clearing….. no, more cloud.

Bob’s turn to get the take out.

forty days and forty nights….

Roads can be described on a sliding scale, starting from the very popular and generally smooth “freeway” and ending up at the less popular, less traveled, and nearly always rough, “track”. In between there are various degrees of road including streets, toll ways, secondary roads, development roads, tourist trails and so forth. The track however is unique, its description simple and concise, it’s a “track” and as such is ideally suited animals like emus and kangaroos, and wayward Boy Scouts in search of wayward Girl Guides.

It’s a sad fact yet true that to arrive anywhere in the outback of Australia worth seeing you need to put up with the “track” and we should know we’ve put up with a few.

Now that’s cleared up let’s look at the pictures of the Painted Desert on the Oodnadatta Road, sorry, “track”. Oodnadatta? Who comes up with these names? I’m sure half the time the local indigenous persons make this stuff up so they can have a laugh when we try and pronounce names like “Jaminjung”, “Ngaliwurru”, “Ngarinyman” and “Wurlayi” and these are just peoples names. It’s all sounding a bit Welsh to me except the letter “L” has been replaced with a “G” or an “N”. So the good old Welsh name, “Llewellyn”, would become “Nnewggyn“. See now it starts to make sense. The Welsh now have even more explaining to do (apart from Tom Jones that is).