Lost backpack with embroidered blanket in taxi

Niamh has left her backpack in a taxi cab. With her precious embroidered blanket inside! And as we hailed the cab in town, we have no idea of which cab company it was, or the license number. We’ve called them all, and we’ll see if one of them turns it up. Or maybe an internet search will work – the blanket has her name on it – Niamh Catherine Ryan, and her date of birth. In which case – please mail us at ryans@ryanz.com so we can organize a reward for its return.

A year ago today …

It seems impossible; this time one year ago we were on the plane, off to Frankfurt. Our cheerfull house pared back, cleaned, and ready for its first visitors. The kids glued to their seats with the cornucopia of a seemingly infinite movie library in front of them, Phil & Lisa tired and excited at the same time, trying to sleep a little, innocent of any knowledge of the Linda Blair fit that O would perform in another couple of hours as we approached our midway landing at Singapore.

What a great year we had.

Copenhagen, London, Singapore, Stanmore

We woke up at 4am in Copenhagen so that we’d have ample time to do our last minute cleanup and packing, make the beds with clean sheets, dress and feed the children, and catch a taxi to the airport. Planning to be there by 6am, for our 8am departure. As it happened, we were a little slow but still on time, even after a scare with no large taxis seeming to be available at first. The checkin queue at the airport was long even at 6:30am, and BA looked to be both the most popular desk, and the one least populated with staff. They had self-checkin booths, where you could scan your passports and get boardng passes in return, but the bottleneck remained the luggage checkin. Everyone seemed a little tense and worried about the time, but the line did move inexorably forward and before too long we found ourselves in our BA Airbus A321, ready to take off. The flight to London was uneventful, until 10 minutes before we expected to land, when we got diverted into an orbit due to deteriorating weather at Heathrow. Forty-five minutes later we were on the ground.
Where the first officer had more news – because of the snow and ice and the massive number of cancelled flights out of Heathrow, the hard-stands (maybe ex RAF) were all populated, and we’d have to taxi to the back of the airport and wait until one became free. Our 2 hour transfer gap between this flights arrival and our anticipated departure on QF31 was starting to narrow. Luck was still with us – only 15 minutes after landing we were taxying around the back blocks of Heathrow on our way to a gate in Terminal 3. A bit of running, a bus trip from Terminal 3 to Terminal 5 (or perhaps it was the opposite), and a bit more running, and we were inside the A380 to Sydney with a couple of minutes to spare before the doors were sealed!

Can you imagine that a major international airport in a country known to have snowy winters would run out of deicing fluid? Yup. Having raised a sweat to get on, we spent three hours on the ground waiting for the plane to be deiced. Outside we could see a Singapore A380 also waiting. At first the Captain thought that the Singapore plane was about to be done and we were next, but as time wore on it became clear that the Singapore A380 was in the lurch too.

It wasn’t a drama for us – it was just like being in the air – the kids had their movies running, the cabin crew were feeding us ice creams and lollies, and the airconditioning was running. Outside we could see ice breaking off the wings and flaps and falling to the ground. Eventually three trucks were found on the airport which between them had enough liquid to do the Singapore plane, and we would be next, if they had 1000 litres left. Which they did. And before we knew it we were in the air and traveling over France for the last time on this trip. The rest of the flight was uneventful, give or take the smallest child losing it once or twice and being inconsolable. The crew had loaded up with extra fuel, and we raced towards Singapore, trying to make up time so that we’d be able to make it into Sydney before the 11pm curfew. In the end, we made it in at 22:55. Our luggage didn’t. But that made it easier for us – we could get a not so big taxi home for the 5 of us and our carry on bags, and Qantas delivered the rest on Sunday afternoon. Home at last.

Our last day in Denmark

It’s much too late to be writing anything. We’re packed, the house is clean, the car is full of petrol and has had a wash, the bags are (almost) all at the front door, the children are asleep. And soon so will we be.

Today we spent our last day in Copenhagen cleaning the house (Lisa), and visiting the Danish National Art Gallery (the rest of us).

Tomorrow morning we get up at 4am, to get to the airport at 6am, for an 8am flight to London. Then London – Singapore – Sydney!

Bon voyage to ourselves.

Ice ahoy

On Saturday 9 Jan we went for a canal tour around Copenhagen. In ice. The weather has been unseasonably cold, as the news keeps reporting, and the canals were littered with 10cm thick chunks of ice – in some cases iced in. Inside the boat it was warm and toasty (relatively – no-one was taking their coats and gloves and beanies and scarves off), but 5 minutes outside with gloves off to take some photos was more than enough to make you think you’d got frost bite. The sounds of the ice scraping alongside the boat were interesting in that “So it was a little colder than this when the Titanic went down” way. At one of the scheduled stops we couldn’t reach the dock due to ice in the way, and we skipped one section as it was iced in. After enjoying the trip for an hour, as we were leaving Owen (who was leader for the day) announced that he hadn’t liked it, and it wasn’t the boat he’d expected it to be – he thought it would have been something more like the Titanic. His ploy for a second trip didn’t work!

We like books, we really do

Sledding in Dyrehaven

While the news tells us that the rest of Europe is struggling with snow and cold temperatures, in Copenhagen it’s brought more fun than disaster. For us, it’s meant the chance to go toboganning in the countryside. On Thursday we drove to Dyrehaven, a huge “Deer Park” to the north of the city. Its centre piece is the Eremitageslottet or Eremitage Palace – a grand hunting lodge in the french style.

We ran into one of the few areas without english warnings – no cars allowed. So we just drove right through the red gates on the boundary of the park, and headed to its centre, where we parked in fairly splendid isolation right next to the Eremitageslottet. Niamh and James did a spot of sledding, and then returned to shiver in the car with Lisa and Owen, while I wandered off to take some photos. While that was happening, a truck pulled up next to the car, and a hunter expalined to Lisa that she shouldn’t be there, as you need a special permit. All the while he was telling her about this, in quite a friendly way, he was jiggling bullets in one hand. He had the gun for them too, and in the truck behind, four legs of an ex-deer pointing skywards. I guess it’s not a terribly good haven for deers. The hint should have been that the full name is Jægersborg Dyrehave.

After we drove out of the park (the strange looks of the walkers and skiiers now explained), we headed to the coast, for another spot of sledding, on the seashore. By the time we got home we were pretty icy and tired; time to buy more wood for the fire.

Doing nothing much in Copenhagen

I know without the shadow of a doubt that some time soon when we’re back in Australia, one of us will have a conversation with someone that runs something like “But you didn’t see the Soren Sorensen centenary exhibition while you were in Skane? OMG how did you miss that?” or maybe “You didn’t go there? How could you spend three months living near Bordeaux and not visit St Emilion for an afternoon of wine tasting and relaxation?”.

And the answer in both cases is: Easy. We were just living somewhere different with three children, trying to experience a little of the vibe of living there, stay sane at the same time, and not be visited by DOCS or the local equivalent. And I think we’ll manage to achieve that. Unlike Natasha Verco.

In keeping with which, today we did nothing much. We were going to go out en-masse, but some of the kids dug their heels in and didn’t want to get dressed. And it was snowing outside too! How could they miss it? Instead, Lisa went out for a few hours on her own to get a glimpse of Danish design, and after she got back, Phil & James went out for a late afternoon look at the shopping streets of Copenhagen in the snow. Which was very beautiful, and if we’d taken a camera this post would be graced with a fairytale image of golden lights, snow, statues, and shopfronts. James mentions that todays fresh snow gave us a chance to have a snowball fight on the way back from the metro station.

Elsinore

Today we saw Colleen off on her trip back to Sydney, and then bundled up against the snow and went into town to visit the Guinness World of Records Museum. Surprisingly, it was lame, lame, lame. Who would have thought? And I lost my super warm beanie to boot. Damn it.

But not all is rotten in the state of Denmark. Saturday and Sunday we visited castles – and if I ignore the overload which cuts in for me about three rooms into a gilded onyx brocaded portrait encrusted castle, they were pretty good. The train system around Copenhagen runs pretty regularly, the travel time is short, and the ticketing is integrated with the buses, metro, and S-trains (read and weep Sydney), so it was a relatively quick trip from our flat in Svanemollen to get to Helsingor on Saturday, and Hillerod on Sunday.

I’m not sure what I can say about the castles. Mostly due to the overload which did kick in a few rooms in. I feel like Homer Simpson – the castles were full of portraits, they had a couple of real and a couple of reproduction suits of armour, the rooms themselves were incredibly overwrought with decorations – the walls covered in tapestries, the ceilings decorated to the nth degree, a beautiful chapel, gardens that looked like they were modelled on Versaille, frozen moats, and hardly any people. The joys of being a tourist in the off season!

The Viking Ship Museum

On Wednesday 30th we went to the
Viking Ship Museum at Roskilde. And sometime soon I’ll write about it. In brief – one of the best museums we’ve seen – we all got a great kick out of the remnants of five viking ships they have on display. And it was f.r.e.e.z.i.n.g.

Christmas in Copenhagen

We’re in Copenhagen. It’s Christmas. The kids had a couple of days of snow. They’re all asleep now after a day of playing with new lego and dolls. What else is there to say?

Merry christmas everyone.

Traveling North

A guest post from Lisa:

Six people, 13 pieces of baggage, two maxi taxis, four trains, six train platforms, 14 escalators, three lifts, 1800km, four countries, and 30 hours of travelling through a snowy winter wonderland. Written like that it sounds like fun. And we have arrived in Copenhagen – a bit frayed, but blending in with the exhausted world leaders going the other way.

The apartment is beautiful and warm and so was our greeting from Hilde, who showed us everything and made us coffee, even after we stood her up for three hours due to slow train connections and SMS’s that disappeared into the ether. Ahh!

View Larger Map

On the train to Cologne.

We left Fontcouverte this morning at 8:45 – a taxi with 6 people and all their luggage. The trip to Niort was beautiful – as we left, the lower limb of the sun was still just below the horizon, and the rest was a bulging distorted golden oval, wavering through the denuded branches of the trees on the far side of the paddock from the house. The driver took the scenic route to Niort, spurning the A10. The autoroutes are fast, smooth, and divorced from the world – you could be anywhere. That’s hackneyed, but no less true. The secondary route on the other hand was fast, smooth, and full of beauty. The fields on either side were dusted with snow, light fog gently swirling along the hillsides, stately rows of trees (mute and bare in the winter) leading us forwards, grand and fallen chateaux peeking from behind their stone walls, and le beau soleil sliding low across the winter sky, pale and red behind the lines of dark cloud.

Because of the snow the TGV was running at reduced speed – 220km/hr instead of 300km/h. We left Niort on time, and were only 30 minutes late into Montparnasse. Which still left us three and a half hours to make our next connection from Gare du Nord. Fortunately it wasn’t the planned four hours. Because Paris was freezing, and Gare du Nord is the coldest place I’ve waited since … longer than I can remember. Maybe since I fell into the wintry Shoalhaven at the bottom of Bungonia gorge during a cadet trek at school. As we waited, slowly losing sensation from our noses inward, the reports over the PA started to sound a note of alarm in my head – everything was being reported as running half an hour late – the train before ours to Brussels (we’re going to Cologne via Brussels) was half an hour late leaving. And the train from Brussels had been cancelled (supprime). With only an hour to make our connection at the other end in Cologne (seemed ample when I booked), it was starting to look a little dicey. Each time one of us tore our blue and freezing arse from the super cooled aluminium seats to go and check for updated details on the departures board we’d return bereft of good news – i.e, a listed departure platform. And then, just as the kids were about to reach the end of their patience with freezing in a train station, platform 9 was listed as ours, with an on-time departure. Five minutes later we were onboard the Thalys to Cologne via Brussels, luxuriating in the warmth, pushing our luggage onto the racks and throwing ourselves onto our seats.

An hour and a half later we’ve all finished dinner and are settling down to read and listen to ipods. For reference, the kids tickets were 19€ each, ours were 48€, and that included dinner and wine. Oh, and web access. Which is the real reason I’m writing this now – just to brag. Not bad, is it?

Au revoir, Fontcouverte

After three months, we’re resuming our peripatetic lifestyle and moving on. I’ll edit this and add more later, probably when we’re in Copenhagen. (Today’s a heavy day of travel – Fontcouverte to Niort via taxi, Niort à Paris par TGV, Paris à Koeln par TGV, Koeln à Copenhague par train dormir.

Au revoir – Annicke, Dominique, Laurent, Sabrine, Jose, Nadia, Mado, Brigitte, Phillipe, Colette, M. Contet, Mlle Moyet, Mme Fouqet, M. Classique, et tout-le-monde de Fontcouverte.

l’Isle d’Oleron

After weeks of anticipation, this Sunday we finally made it to l’Isle d’Oleron! Following four successive rain filled weekends, Sunday 11 December was forecast as brilliant sunshine and low temperatures. As it happened, the forecast was right. Except for the brilliant sunshine – which was ok, because it wasn’t raining. And I’m not sure that James and Alexy would have allowed that to stop us anyway. Soon after James met Alexy, Dominique & Annicke suggested they would take us for a day trip to Oleron. It’s only about a 45 minute drive from FC.

The scenery was bleak and forbidding – looking over dark choppy seas to an island prison, rising darkly from the seas with stark rocky walls four storeys high a few miles offshore, between the mainland and l’Isle d’Oleron, made me instantly thankful I was not a political prisoner of Louis’s, banished from Paris to the ends of the earth (he didn’t have Australia to send prisoners to). The beaches were reminiscent of Windang or the south coast – scrubby saltblown trees and bushes, sand dunes, and long deserted sweeps of beach. But I don’t think it gets the same level of freezing wind at home. We were running around with huge smiles, gasping and laughing with the cold. We were chilled to the bone – even with the huge fluffy coats that Dominique had foreseen we would need (our thin Aussie coats didn’t cut it); so much so that Owen spent a lot of the time with le nani in the car, and likewise Vik and mum high tailed it after a bit too. We drove top to bottom of the island, visiting a soaring lighthouse that’s older than european settlement of Australia (where Annicke bought us some caramels, the local sweet delicacy – yum), and looking out the Atlantic towards America, far away.

This island is best known for its mussels and oysters – both of which are plentiful and cheap in Charentes-Maritime. (As an aside, at the market at Venerand there’s a bloke who sells 7 different categories of oyster -fine, claire, especiale- ranging in price from 1.90€ to 3,70€ the dozen. So say AUD$3 to $6 the dozen. And the mussels are around 3,40€ a kilo.) The island is small, maybe 20km by 5km, and is business is divided between holiday houses and aquaculture. In the middle of winter, near the shortest day of the year, on a day when it was overcast and blowing a gale, … there weren’t many tourists. It felt a little like the inhabitants might have upped sticks one day and never come back from lunch.

The nearby I’sle de Rê is famous for it’s salt, and it caramel del sel. And it’s great. I’ve suddenly realised that I haven’t stocked up on the caramels like I meant to. Damn – they’re available in the supermarkets here and are absolutely delicious. But I doubt they have them in Coles Leichhardt.

Weekly wrap up

It’s been a while without a post – so time for some catching up. Big event for the week: Lisa’s mum arrived on the train Saturday a week ago, and the kids got to go to Saintes station for a late night pick up. Since then we’ve done the usual – school, markets, trying to sell the car, starting to get ready to move on to Copenhagen. Which has involved shipping home boxes of things we’d prefer not to carry with us on the train (thanks K, and A!). Our next happiest event was the kids finishing off their final SDEPS schoolwork on Sunday, scanning it, and boxing it up to be sent home! We made certificates of appreciation for J & N, and had a ceremony congratulating them on the hard work of concentrating on school over the last 7 months while traveling. The catching up has been hardest – they’ve been doing French school at the same time. Today we ship the box of work for weeks 5,6,7,8 back to Stanmore. SDEPS was a fantastic experience. But what a relief to have packed up – it was also a lot of work.

Song of the day – Poker Face

As Louis XIV once said, nothing happened today. Kids went to school, Owen stayed home with the cold that’s doing a depth first traverse of the family tree, and we went to the market in Saintes for food. Moules (mussels) are in season, and so are delicious and cheap right now. As are scallops – coquilles Saint Jacques.

For our working in the kitchen music today we’re listening to … Poker Face – from Lady Gaga. Mixed up with Owen’s choice from yesterday – “I gotta feeling”.

Patinage sur glace

Wednesday this week fell on a dreary rainy day, but that didn’t matter to us, because we loaded the kids into the car and drove to Niort for … ICE SKATING. It’s the first time we’ve taken the kids skating, and we think it’s the first time we’ve been ice skating in … well, maybe, … 20 years? There’s a chance we went at Macquarie with Tom & Barb in the late nineties, but otherwise it might not have been since 1987 when they still had an ice rink near Central at Sydney.

It was a good result as measured by my first-time-skating metric – we finished the day without any broken or cut limbs. There were some icy legs and hands, and there might be a couple of bruises tomorrow morning. Niamh was sold on it by the end, James less so, and Owen frankly terrified of it. Niamh wants to just keep on doing it, which will cause problems when we return to Sydney, but we’re going to take advantage of the outdoor skating in Copenhagen next month!

Th song of the day, courtesy of Owen, is “I gotta feeling” from the Black Eyed Peas.

Walking in the fog

A perfectly normal weekend where nothing unusual happened. Mostly, we stayed inside and watched the wind howl and the rain pelt down outside, and downloaded old movies to watch. Although James and I did go for a walk through the fog and mist, exploring around the roots of the vines to see what we could find. Which was that rural France is no more clear of litter than Stanmore – five minutes got us a plastic yoghurt container, a beer bottle, and two used shotgun cartridges. FWIW, the movie we downloaded wasn’t “Smiley Gets a Gun”.

Bourse d’échanges rétro

Last week we went to the “Retro Market Exchange” – a market day for retro car and motorbike fans. We’d hoped that it might be directed more towards buying and selling newish second hand cars (and so find a new home for the Laguna), but discovered instead the largest collection of old car paraphenalia we’ve ever seen.

Imagine every car enthusiast and shed owner in Sydney empyting out their collection of random parts and setting up a table at the showground to sell them. The professionalism ranged from people with custom built market stalls with their goods carefully sorted and lined up, to others with a trailer full of unidentifiable rust encrusted machinery. If you like old French cars you would have loved it.

Today in Fontcouverte it’s wet but not too chilly. Really dumped the rain down earlier in the day. We’ve spent the time on SDEPS schoolwork, spellodrom, mathletics, and packing some boxes of things to send home (rather than lug from here to Denmark and then home). Mostly summer clothes and books.

Next Page »