First Impressions of Amsterdam

I went to Amsterdam recently to attend a conference. The thought of traveling to a European city alone was daunting and exciting all at once. However, my initial fears of not speaking the local language were not realised. Signs everywhere were in English as well as Dutch and most people were bilingual. It was the traffic system in Amsterdam that presented the most difficulty in adjustment.

For most of my visit I was in danger of being run over by a tram or bike. Not only did they drive on the opposite side of the road to what we do in Australia, but their roads had parallel lanes for cars and bikes separated often by an extra curb. These double lanes in both directions had to be negotiated when attempting to cross safely from one footpath to another. Often I forgot the bike lane was there, intuitively expecting I’d arrived at a footpath only to find I was in immediate danger of being roller-coasted (the equivalent to being stampeded but with wheels). In American cities and Rome and Paris I adjusted quickly to the different travel direction learning to look the opposite way to what I am accustomed before crossing, but with the added bike lane and the volume of push bikes and motor bikes using it, my confusion lasted much longer. Even by the end of the week I wasn’t fully adjusted.

I would have liked to have had more free time to develop the confidence to commute by bike. A bike tour would have been a good place to begin; having someone to follow initially, and then branching out on my own to tour the city by bike and even ride to the conference venue daily.  Alas, attending the conference daily limited my time for such pleasures.

By the end of the week, however, I had mastered their public transport system, found some excellent restaurants in a variety of  restaurant districts, found a couple of shopping spots, been for a long walk around Vondell Park, a short walk into the red light district,  experienced a concert at the Concertgebouw, immersed myself in the evidence collected at the Anne Frank Huis Museum, contemplated Van Gogh’s life and work at the Van Gogh museum and attended a Dutch language and culture course put on by the conference organisers.

Most of the time I spent with my favorite colleague from Melbourne. Exploring the city together was a delight. She did not want to ride and that was another reason for not pursuing my desire to join the Dutch in their riding culture. However, on the day I walked through the park my colleague rested in our hotel. I walked alone. I decided to capture their riding culture in a photographic study. I will share some of the photos with you now. I was amazed that no one wore helmets, both on push bikes and especially on motor bikes. In Australia it is compulsory. The other difference is that the Dutch wear street gear on simple bikes and in Melbourne we tend to ride complex, geared bikes in lycra riding gear and cleated shoes. Also, our baby bike seats are protectively designed with extended backs and sides enfolding the toddler in racing-harness-style seat belts for their own safety. In Amsterdam, it seemed any box or seat would do, without seat belts!

Hampsterdam, here I come!

Next week I’m off to Amsterdam for a conference. ”Can we come to Hampsterdam with you?” my children asked. I’m not sure what they expected to find there, but Hampsterdam afforded them a lot of appeal.

Usually when I travel interstate or overseas for conferences, I choose to stay in a room by myself. I’ve said “No thanks” to many offers to share because I enjoy the space. It’s a contrast to my busy home life. But when my favorite Melbourne colleague, Chiara, asked me if I’d like to share, I deviated from my habit and accepted her offer. Her easy company and fun attitude to life will add to the travel experience I’m sure.

On her insistence, we booked our accommodation months ago. The hotel we chose overlooks a canal and has historical charm. It appealed to us by contrast to Australia, where we lack a sense of having been here for thousands of years.

I have official engagements such as presenting at the conference and attending breakfasts and dinners with colleagues but I also intend to balance these commitments with absorbing the rhythms of this famous city.

Chiara and I have put up a calendar at work and we’re crossing off the dates, counting down.

Gastronomic Anticipation

My annual conference trip to the US approaches. This time I go with a sense of slightly more pressure than other times for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I’m presenting. Its quite an achievement (I’ve been told) to get on the program. And secondly, I’ll be missing easter with my family for the third time and feel the pull to stay at home.

This year its in San Diego. I’ll be there for six days. Already I have dinner dates at the following restaurants:

el Agave, apparently the best Mexican restaurant in the Old Town. I have also been told it has an amazing variety of tequila. I’ve already posted about my tequila learning experience. Prior to this I thought tequila was a clear liquid, end of story! Now I know the Mexicans know tequila like a Melbournian knows wine. 

de’ Medici, an Italian restaurant. I haven’t heard anything about this one yet, but the name Medici is infamous. This I discovered on my relatively recent European holiday during a guided tour of the Uffizi Gallery.

A reception aboard the Berkeley Ferry Boat at the Maritime Museum of San Diego. I’m not sure what to expect of the meal here but I do anticipate live music and dancing. The consortium of universities that hold this reception annually have musical staff members who provide the entertainment for the evening. Two years ago I attended the reception in Chicago, danced the night away and was inspired to write about meeting a self-taught pole dancer.

Rama on Saturday night.  Candelas on Sunday night. Both of which I know nothing about (yet).

And two breakfast dates. These are at Cafe Choe and Bondi Australian Beer and Food. I’m looking forward to experiencing how the people of San Diego do “Australian”.

Unexpected Detour (Part 2)

My taxi driver had engaged with me in animated conversation on the way from Brisbane airport to my hotel. Our conversation flowed easily and had occasioned laughter, even though on balance he did most of the talking. He was naturally talkative and opinionated, but I sensed that my responses surprised him out of possibly habitual monologue, especially when he was challenged to justify or explain his views. I became aware that he had begun to look at me more often as the conversation progressed.  However, I was quite at ease with him until he turned off the main road into a church car park without warning, other than flicking off his meter and saying, “I won’t charge you for this detour”.

This unprecedented move was alarming. It had been in the context of him explaining the history and significance of the church to Brisbane and to himself personally. However, the car park was not lit well and there were no other people around. Although my outer attitude would not have changed perceivably, I panicked inwardly. My mind began to work at a hundred miles a minute. My senses heightened and my body readied to respond in a reflex of fight or flight. I reasoned to myself that there could be no escape while the vehicle was moving. I thought of my suitcase in the boot of his cab and consciously decided to give it up as lost should the need arise to make a run for it. At the same time, I decided to consciously stay put and take the risk that his intentions were as harmless as his monologue about the church.

He pulled into one of the vacant parking lots but left the motor of the vehicle running. I waited for signs of danger like a coiled spring, acutely aware of the position of the door handle and lock. I sat stiffly like a traitor with my seatbelt already quietly unlocked but held in position. At the first sound of the door lock being activated I was ready to pounce, open it manually and spring out of the car. 

It turned out that the car park he had chosen enabled a view of the church which clearly showed the new wing. He pointed out the difference in the stone colours to me. “Can you see the old stone? It has weathered. And here is where the new stonework begins”. 

“Oh yes”, I replied, but I was too agitated to really take it in. He continued describing aspects of the construction and I continued to reply as of before. But I only relaxed completely when he reversed out of the parking spot and turned back onto the city street. For him there could hardly have been a blip in his consciousness. For my part, I felt as though I had endured a trial and the seeds of this post were sewn. I reflected that I felt as though I had taken a risk. The risk was retrospectively traceable to the moment where I began to engage with him in conversation deeper than chit-chat. Would I take the risk again? Yes, I would, I thought. 

We passed through the city traffic, towards my hotel in Southgate. Along the way he pointed out the random-looking architecture of the council buildings. The windows were all on oblique angles, at artistic odds with the shapes of the tiles on its facade. I tilted my head as he described the view from the inside of the building and remarked how weird it would be to work in that space. “It would be difficult to get a painting straight on the wall!” I joked. We crossed over the Brisbane River again leaving the CBD behind. As we approached the Southgate precinct, he pointed out places of interest like the museum and concert hall, mentioning that these were all walking distance from where I was staying. Finally he said, “And here is your hotel”. I felt relieved but instead of stopping the taxi, he drove straight past it and turned the meter off again!

He took me on a tour of Southgate along the Brisbane River, pointing out good restaurants, places to walk and the site where the craft market would be set up the following day. 

After a slow loop of the Southgate precinct, he pulled up into the circular driveway of Ridges. To onlookers, there would have been nothing unusual. How many times would Ridge’s double glass doors have seen a taxi driver pull up and dispatch a client? He fetched my case. I paid him. He wished me well for my conference. I thanked him for the tour and he departed. The difference was imperceptible. I felt caught between a sense of relief that the journey was over and a reluctant farewell.

Unexpected Detour

I arrived at Brisbane airport late in the afternoon. I knew I would be heading straight into peak hour traffic, but it didn’t matter. All I had to do was check in. The conference didn’t begin until the following morning.

I collected my bag and wheeled on out of the airport following signs to the taxi pick-up area. There was a row of taxis and I was swiftly directed into the second waiting car. A tall man in his mid fifties driving an upmarket cab loaded my bag into his boot (that’s ‘trunk’ for anyone not from Australia).

My driver pulled away from the taxi rank and joined a queue of taxis exiting the airport. As the boom gate opened for each of the preceding cars, we inched forwards in the queue. 

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Rydges on Southbank”, I replied, “Do you know it?”.

“We’ll find it somehow”, was all he said. I couldn’t see his expression and didn’t know quite how to respond. It was likely he was joking. The laconic attitude is common in people of his generation, particularly in the North. My favorite cousin from Brisbane would have said something similar. I decided to let it go and sat uneasily as he pulled up to the boom gate.

I wouldn’t have noticed the gate had we passed through within the expected rhythm of pausing and slow driving. But for us the gate didn’t open. My driver buzzed the control desk.

“Your bloody gate isn’t working”.

“Its not our gate. You don’t have a tag. Please put two dollars into the chute to exit”.

“Yes I do have a tag. Your gate doesn’t work”.

“Our gate works perfectly. Put in your two dollars. You are holding up the queue”

“My tag has been scanned and now you want me to pay again! I’m not paying double. Open your bloody gate if you want the queue to move.”

In this way my driver and the young man at the control desk argued to and fro. I looked up at the meter and noticed it was continuing to click over. He noticed where my attention had been drawn. “Don’t worry, I’ll turn it off”.

Finally the young man’s voice blasted through the intercom with, ”If you’d been less selfish and just put your money in, the other drivers wouldn’t be held up”, before finally opening the gate.

My driver clicked the meter back on and drove through quickly, continuing his argument with me as surrogate other, “Yes, well, I’m not going to pay twice!”. 

As we entered the throngs of peak hour traffic, his mood shifted from argumentative to conversational. He went on to explain the tag system to me.

“I’ve never noticed it before. They may not have it at Melbourne”, I replied, happy to participate in any conversation to pass the journey. He assured me that every air port creamed money from the taxi industry, it was the method only that was different. Some airports charged drivers on entering, and some upon exiting. Taking in that I was from Melbourne he asked why I was in Brisbane and whether it was my first time. I had only been twice. Once as a kid and once over ten years prior. I didn’t know Brisbane well and had come this time to attend a conference. He questioned me about my work and when he established that education was my field mentioned that he had been a teacher before retiring early.

It was as though learning my field of interest gave him a feeling of connection, because he began to speak frankly and openly about his life and work. He believed teaching was an important profession, but his simplistic views on education were vastly different from mine. His retirement was stress-related. He would have been an authoritarian teacher, I thought to myself. I listened and asked the occasional question. But I did not feel like sharing my views.

It was his opinion that taxi drivers should be made to sit an exam before getting their taxi license.

“What? A pen and paper exam?”, I enquired.

A pen and paper exam was exactly what he meant. He believed that the majority of Brisbane’s taxi drivers not only did not know the streets of Brisbane well enough, but that their English was too poor. “They put themselves in danger when they don’t know the language and customs”, he asserted.

I quizzed him to establish his meaning. His main argument centered around situations where the customer could be either drunk or abusive or both. He drew on his personal experience with such customers to illustrate that someone with less local nouse than he, would have ended up in a violent situation. His point was that drunk or aggressive people did not have the patience to cope with drivers with limited language or knowledge of the streets. 

“Couldn’t the driver choose which customers to pick up? You could minimize your personal risk by refusing to stop for people obviously drunk?”, I enquired.

“No. A driver has to have a reason that would stand up in court for refusing to stop. And often its just their word against ours”. 

I hadn’t realised taxi drivers were obligated in such a way. It made more sense to me that they should be able to regulate their own business and make decisions that affected their own safety without having to justify them. But my driver stressed the possibility that persons could be left in unsafe situations by a driver’s refusal to stop. He believed strongly in his obligation to stop.

We drove alongside the Brisbane River and over the Story Bridge. I remarked on the beautiful aspect of the river in the sunset. He spoke at length with pride about the history of their river, and suggested that I take a ride on one of the restaurant boats.

Leaving the river views and turning into a city street, he continued talking as my tour guide, commenting on prominent architecture, points of interest and historical facts. As we neared the city centre and the traffic slowed, he pointed out an Anglican church further along the street. We slowed to a stop behind other cars banked up at a set of lights. Once the traffic was moving again he changed lanes to get a closer view of the church. Its steeples loomed as we approached it slowly, stopping and starting. He explained that the church had remained unfinished for over one hundred years. Appropriately skilled stone masons could not be found in Australia anymore. To finish the church, stone masons had been brought out from Italy. The last wing had been finally completed only recently. He had been christened and married in that church. 

Suddenly, without explanation, he turned out of the traffic into the driveway of the church. It was dark by this stage and the driveway was not well lit. I wondered what he was doing. I was sure this was not the way to my hotel. I shifted in my seat and he must have sensed my uneasiness. As he drove into the deserted church car park, he reached across to the meter and turned it off.

“I won’t charge you for this detour”, he said.

… to be continued.

Two new Billie’s for Melbourne

Tonight I met Libby at Her Majesties Theatre to see the preview to Melbourne’s Billie Elliot. The show begins here in December. Libby was invited to the preview because she coordinates group bookings for the school where she teaches music. I used to work with her. She often invites me to join her when she takes her students to shows, but this was the first preview I’ve been to.

I admit, I was expecting to see the whole show tonight and was initially disappointed when I sat down in the Stalls after complimentary champagne to learn that this was not going to be the case. However, tonight I heard one of the producers and one of the key actors speak about the show, I was introduced to the four “Billie’s”, I watched them perform together and saw the DVD of the audition process. 

A big deal was made of the fact that two new “Billies” were joining the show for the Melbourne performances. Like many of us who are not aware of the logistics of staging shows of this scale that employ over fifty children, it tickled me to listen to the producer talk of their “Billies” in plural. It was an education for me and a delight to have ‘met’ all four of them.

Each of these Australian boys, when interviewed, spoke in familiar Aussie accents, yet in character produced a thick Irish twang. Their performance of the song at the moment when Billie describes how he feels to dance brought a tear to my eye.  These four boys danced sublimely, each of them obviously gymnasts as well as classically trained. 

I came away from the preview rather inspired on a number of levels. Firstly, the quality of dancing in the Billie’s performance was astonishing. It would be for this reason alone that I will see the show, and take as many family and friends as I can with me. 

Secondly, I came away with a feeling of pride for Australian theatre. Billie Elliot has been running in Sydney for a year. Australia is the second home of the musical Billie Elliot. It doesn’t open on Broadway until later in the year!

In April I was in New York, staying on Broadway. I was there for a conference, but saw Chicago the day I arrived. Aspects of the show were disappointing. For example the lawyer was poorly cast (played by a non-charismatic character who couldn’t tap), and the set and costuming were unexciting. 

A couple of weeks later in Melbourne, I saw Guys and Dolls with Libby and was impressed with it in comparison to Chicago on Broadway. At the time I remarked to Libby that I needn’t have gone to New York to see a great show. I’m feeling the same way tonight after previewing Billie Elliot: Its all right here at my finger tips in Melbourne!

This time last year: I was in Florence

This morning I was waiting for the kettle to boil for my first cuppa at 7.15am. I was in my pink toweling dressing gown and hadn’t even washed the sleep out of my eyes, when out through the kitchen window, I saw the builder and the plumber. The builder waved and smiled as our eyes met but he didn’t stop. The two men were walking with far too much momentum down the side of our property to slow. The heavy work boots probably also make it harder to decelerate. 

I knew the builder, but didn’t recognise the plumber. In fact when I saw him I thought he was the builder’s apprentice. The lad looked too young to be a tradie in his own right. The two men (young and older) stopped near our water tanks and began a conversation with each other. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about because they were out in the back yard and I was inside eating breakfast at the table (by this stage) and we were separated by a distance and double-glazed windows. 

They stood with their backs to me. I admired the form of the young man. It was then I remembered that around this time last year I was in Florence. 

In Florence I experienced being surrounded by statues of the male form in public squares. I queued for three hours in forty degree heat (celcius) to view the statue of David. How the sculptors of those times must have seen beauty in that form! I wonder now whether the sculptors reflected their society in this reverence. If so, it seems to me that I have grown up in a society vastly different on that score.

Does our society tend to revere female beauty more than male? I think it might. 

When I was a young woman, it was female beauty I noticed more. I compared myself to the standards of female beauty set by fashion and media. When I went to night clubs, I noticed what other women looked like. I would critique them in my head and compare myself to them. Now I wonder if I had been swept up in societal values, to the detriment of my own sexuality. Its almost as though I looked through a male perspective at myself and other women.

As I have often said, when I was young I didn’t appreciate young men. But now I do – I really do. I find the male form incredibly beautiful and sexually attractive – much more so than I did in my teens or my twenties. (In my teens I went for the pretty boy face, and in my twenties I was too busy establishing my place in the workplace and treating men as equals to really take stock). 

I discussed my sudden attraction to young men with lots of women around my age. When they confessed similar feelings, I decided it was cruel trick of mother nature’s played on older women. But two years ago, the return of sexual desire after a period of intense motherhood hit me like an avalanche. I’m much more comfortable with it now. I’m content to admire from a distance…

… and I might see about getting one of those statues for my garden!

Change was in the air

I was feeling different. I had survived the turmoil that was my mid life crisis. I had learnt (and changed), and decided it was time for a New Chapter.

I have opened Comfort Food like a new piece of slate upon which to start afresh. I can’t predetermine the content of this new blog, only that the things I choose to write about here will reflect the differences I feel. Some of the epossums themes will be left behind and new ones will begin.