Off adventuring again. A few days hanging out in Hakon with Yale before Mr K comes over and we get stuck into some work and some serious onsen hopping. Having this trip booked has been MAJOR motivation to stick to the rehab program on my knee and make sure I am ambulant enough for this.
Hmmm Qantas slacking off on the menu again. Lane Lois Blanc de Blanc is the sparkling wine on offer atm, and I made the mistake of noting the step down from the Grant Burge to Yale, who relayed it to his wine-snob friend, Gamer. Gamer who immediately started hanging shit on me for preferring Grant Burge! Yes, I do! To this swill… but only because it isn’t the Vintage Dom Perginon I’ve become accustomed to on Emirates flights this year! Sheeesh. When I asked when we were coming over to raid Gamer’s wine racks, I noticed he backed down pretty quick!
Made it into the Qantas First Class Lounge in Sydney and thankfully, there was some superior French offerings here… a bit of Pommeray and Tattinger. Phew that was close!
I only had some nuts with my wine on the plane, so had some salt and pepper calamari and tried a mushroom dish. Tasty, and they serve you so quickly here, which is nice.
2A.. it’s my favourite in the A330. Closer to the window than the aisle. Yes, even in business class there are ‘better seats’ on the ‘right side of the plane’.
More champagne, yes please.
Pyjamas for the people…
The Japanese set meals on the flights to and from Japan last year were really nice… this one was a little on the ordinary side. I was wondering if maybe it’s because it was prepped in Australia rather than Japan. I guess we will get a chance to compare with the meal on the way home.
Still very pretty presentation though – and there’s saké so we aren’t writing complaint letters just yet!
Arrived safely in Japan! Oh no… it’s stupid early in the morning and we can’t pick up our hire care for hours yet. But, guess who skipped breakfast so we could hunt down some breakfast sushi! This chick. Not my first 0600 arrival in Haneda! 🙂
Oh dear god – how much trouble are we going to get into!
Okay, it’s official. There are ZERO ‘on-airport’ rental cars at Haneda airport. In fact, I’m not sure the companies operating from here understand the concept, because they will tell you they are ‘on-airport’ but you’ll find they mean, ‘yeah, there’s a desk cut you’re going to need to take a shuttle to collect a vehicle’, which will e somewhere in a nearby industrial neighbourhood. Oh well, guess that means we can stop hunting for ‘on-airport’ rentals in future. Hired this cute little Nissan Kicks… nice little car actually.
The drive to Yugawara onsen, which was down the coast past Yokohama… overcast and moody.
First things first though… it’s not a road trip in Japan until your first visit to the konbini, and because it was cool and overcast (compared to Brisbane at least) that means, sweet caramel tea and curry bread! 😀 Curry bread quota: no more than one per week in country. That’s a hard rule!
“Don’t judge crime!”… but why not?
We didn’t have much of a wander around before making our way to our ryokan. We were tired, and both hoping to check in a little early… can’t wait to slip into the onsen with a saké!
Being in Germany for the last month, the news that has permeated the zeitgeist (and the language barrier) most readily was Spain prevailing over England in the World Cup. But there has been a LOT going on globally and I’ve been catching up on the past month’s news over the last 24 hours since I got home. Over the last couple of weeks: the UK booted out their conservative government, France also rejected right wing extremism, there was an assignation attempt on Trump, J.D. Vance was announced as Trump’s running mate, Israel’s occupation over Gaza has been declared illegal, Crowdstrike and Microsoft demonstrated some stunning global IT vulnerabilities, Biden withdrew his candidacy, Harris has emerged as the presumptive Democratic nominee and is steaming ahead with a record breaking campaign (in terms of donors and volunteers). I have no idea what’s been happing in Australia, haven’t got that far yet… other than Gina Whatsherfart and Dutton deciding they like nuclear power a couple of weeks ago (?), but I’ll get into that later.
Any way, one thing I saw stood out a LOT, even among all this noise, was these signs at the fascism-fest that was the Republican National Convention…
Yeessss… subtle they are not! They are fucking huge alarm bells going off.
A couple of weeks ago I was at the Jewish Museum in Berlin and was struck by a room that was lined on both walls with displays of the chronology of legislation that was enacted to slowly restricted the freedoms and rights of the Jewish people under the Third Reich. It started in 1933 and it showed how the lives of the Jewish people in Nazi Germany and eventually Nazi occupied Europe, were slowly and steadily having their rights eroded.
One week, it was Jewish lawyers losing the rights to practice law, the next it’s Jewish student teachers being sacked. The following week Jewish people can’t serve in the civil service, then Jewish doctors can’t treat non-Jewish patients, then Jewish tax accountants had their licences revoked, then civil servants can’t be married to Jewish people. And so on and so forth, until the edicts were codifying that Jewish people can only live in certain parts of various cities, that the property of Jewish people will be forfeited to the state, then Jewish people will be deported and they end up in walled and patrolled ghettos, then they get pushed out of the ghettos to concentration camps, and we all know where this tragic history ended up going.
(If you want to know more about how and when these insidious and pervasive laws were rolled out click HERE.)
The Jewish people in Nazi Europe were frogs in a boiling pot – slowly but inevitably having their rights and humanity stripped away from them, and if they (and the global community) had known where it was going from the outset, history might have turned out completely different.
It is not alarmist to say the Trumpian vision of the US is on the same trajectory – only they’re not planning on boiling that frog slowly. Trump and his advisors are stating unequivocally that they plan to forcibly remove ‘illegal immigrants’ from the United States via forced expulsion and deportation camps. DEPORTATION CAMPS. They are promising to remove 20 million ‘illegal immigrants’; this is a number that far exceeds the estimated number of undocumented residents currently living in the United States, many of whom have been born in the US and have never seen the countries they would be theoretically deported to… And if anyone thinks these deportation camps would be run with any administrative rigour or with any humane consideration whatsoever – just remember the family separation policy that was instituted under the last Trump administration. From April 2018 to June 2018, families arriving at the border saw adults prosecuted and held by in federal jails and subsequently deported, and their children were placed under the supervision and control of the US Department of Health and Human Services. This resulted in over 5,500 children being removed from their parents and the short lived ‘children in cages’ media outrage. No one is talking about it anymore, but as at March 2024, this year – just four months ago! – there are still 2000 children that haven’t been able to be reunited with their families.
“MASS DEPORTATIONS NOW!” is not a slogan for a slow and inexorable removal of rights for people who land on the wrong side of Trump’s bigotry… it is a massive red flag heralding the systematic xenophobic persecution of immigrants based on the ultra conservative values outlined in the Project 2025 manifesto. Trump has stirred and stoked the worst type of fear in these people with his asinine assertions that migrants are ruining their lives. Crime is statistically much lower than during his tenure, but he’s at those rallies and on Fox News bleating about ‘migrant crime’ and, ’Biden migrant crime’ and it’s feeding the worst impulses in his followers.
The pot is already boiling. The whole world can see where this is going… I find myself hoping that the average American is more decent than deplorable, but whenever I think about it too long I worry that most of them are largely apathetic.
In September 2023, I received an email saying that Rammstein were bring back their famous European stadium tour for what sounds like ‘one last time with feeling’! I had though that 2023 was going to be the wrap up of the tour – Till and some of the other band members had various creative solo plans all on the go, and to be honest, how much longer do guys pushing 60 want to be performing songs they wrote 30+ years ago. The 2023 tour ended up surrounded by a fair bit of controversy so perhaps they wanted to go out on a bang without any salacious scandal hanging over them – whatever the reason, as soon as I saw they were touring in 2024, I started machinating to figure out how to get not just Angus, but BigSal and SurLee there too!
It took about two days of research to decide which stadium would be our best option – nothing outdoor in a park setting, covered seating if possible, and preferably a smaller stadium than the 100,000+ seating at Lyon in 2022. After much googling and translating, I decided on Klagenfurt am Wörthersee. Well located, smallish stadium (all the same fire power, itty bitty space!).
Then the tickets were released and the German ticketing website was painful! It wouldn’t let me choose tickets in any particular section of the stadium and would only offer me 5 seats ‘best available’ and every time you went out and back in again it would give you 5 different seats in a different part of the arena. 🙁 Having seen a very similar show in 2022 from the corporate boxes on the west side of Lyon stadium, I was really keen to get a front on view, with enough elevation to be well over the top of any beer tents or raised sound booths etc. I kept coming back to the website until FINALLY it offered up some seats that matched the criteria … then the countdown was on!
Sadly Stephola was unable to come with us, so her ticket went to waste, but after some logistical dramas for our BigSal & SurLee, the four of us managed to rendezvous in Villach and make our way to Klagenfurt for the concert! To say I was excited to share this experience with these guys is a huge understatement.
Creating memories, people! That’s what travel is all about!
Perfect! Just right of centre, and not too obstructed by the central flammage tower. 😀
Four random Aussies in a huge crown of German and Austrians. 🙂
I think it was right after this pretzel that BigSal ‘friended’ a strange Nazi who was sitting right in front of us… his English was as broken as my German, but we had a short conversation where I managed to impart that we were from Australia, and he asked to ‘friend’ her on FB. Which they did – because why not? A few minutes later, she saw a selfie he had taken with her tagged on FB, and he had called her a ‘Comrade from Australia who was here to protest the ban on some super right-wing neo-Nazi magazine!’ Man, did that escalate quickly. Needless to say, mental notes to ‘unfriend and block’ him were made immediately!
The concert was amazing. The playlist was different enough from when I saw them a couple of years ago, but still with all the major highlights and their greatest hits. Additionally the smaller stadium call was a good one! Klagenfurt with it’s <50k people in it had far better sound quality and less distorted volume than the Lyon show, which was an awesome bonus… also, I was right about the flammage – all they high impact, burning-your-eyebrows pyrotechnics in a much smaller space was just so much more in your face!
We were having a much better time than the people behind us! 😛
Du Hast… with the flaming arrows.
Concert landscape photography!
No Rammstein gig is complete without the ol’ penis foam cannon. lol.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how many truly memorable days I have had in my life, and so many really great memories I have also feel heavily clouded in pain. But this concert? With these amazing people? Well, fuck not even the 152 steps I walked up and then back down to get here (thanks for counting Angus!) on a severely torn meniscus will dampen my memories of this! So much pain, but I’d do it again tomorrow!
Did I mention that we were in the Austrian alps but it was 32C that day? Thankfully as soon as the sun passed over it was much cooler – but the locals weren’t having it at all.
BEST. DAY. EVER! I will never forget this. Big thank you to these guys, for joining in on one of my ridiculous flights of fancy.
^ This was our view as we waiting in line for a solid 30-40 minutes to get out of the car park. This and drunken locals staggering and yahooing, swaying and peeing on the side of the roads. lol. Didn’t care! Too hyped!
A few days later, I saw this from the Rammstein FB page… the smiley is where we were seated. <3
Today the little DuoLingo app told me I’ve been spending way too much time on my phone trying to learn German, and then French, and then back to German again. It’s helpful, I can read a lot more than last time I spent any time in Germany, but it’s not as useful in the way that I had always hoped. I mean, I’ve been at this for years now and am nowhere near able to hold casual conversations when meeting new people.
I can manage targeted conversations: “Hello, I’d like to order the x, y, z, please.” or “I’d like two tickets please, one adult and one student.” or “Excuse me, is this seat free?” or even, “We need a car park, can you help me?” … but when it comes to chatting about the weather, what someone does for work, or even interacting with sales people to buy a new winter jacket in the right size, and ‘oh, is this on sale?’ Not so much.
And every time I try to start a conversation with someone in German, they can immediately tell I’m not a native speaker and will either respond with “English?”, or just reply in English because I assume it’s quicker for them as their English is way better than my German! So practice is hard to come by, even in those everyday transactional sorts of conversations. More and more I’m finding that people speak English wherever we go now, so having local language skills aren’t as necessary as they were 30 years ago.
I’m hoping English isn’t taking over the world… I mean, if one language has to, I’m glad it’s the one super weird one that I’m completely fluent in! But I think the rapacity with which English is become so globally pervasive is a symptom of the Internet Age. So surely that can’t end anywhere good!
EDITED TO ADD: Local language skills still very much needed!
We got to talking with the man in front of us at the Rammstein concert – he was named Sasha and seemed super excited to meet some Australians who had come all the way to Austria for the concert… said we ‘win the people who travel the most far!’ He was so excited he added BigSal on Facebook and wanted to tag himself in a photo with her… which she obliging did.
Only then she looked up her new ‘friend’ and found she was his new ‘comrade’ in a post that said:
So, yeah… a little bit of Googling later and it seems our conversational skill were good enough for us to accidentally make friends with some full on Nazi white supremacist wanker, and then everything he said to us after that I enthusiastically translated for Sal as : “Ja! I fucked a horse in Berlin!”, because we obviously had no idea what he was saying to us at all!
So Bratislava is a stone’s throw Vienna… and well, it’s a place that has been our collective social group’s popular imagination since the movie, Eurotrip came out several years ago and the main characters ended up in Bratislava instead of Berlin. Which is why I guess it ended up on my List? Who knows? It was only a 50km drive, so off we went. Good timing as it turns out; Austria and Slovakia did away with their hard border in 2023, so no BS coming and going from the Schengen countries. Small win, we’ll take it!
Back to German speed limits, sweet… Austria put a bit of a harsh on our German autobahn buzz as they have stricter speed limits and severe penalties – up to like, €7,500 for high infringements, and strict hooning laws that can see vehicles confiscated and surrendered. Freedom…!
Immediately the architecture changes – feels like we are back in Bulgaria, or anywhere in the Balkans really. Vienna feels very much all fancy and Baroque and Rococo even in the ‘burbs; here there’s definitely more of a 60s Soviet toilet block vibe going on.
One of Bratislava’s famous landmarks – a revolving restaurant high above a highway? Colour me confused. Why would you want to have dinner above a highway? And where exactly do patrons park to dine here?
This whole trip, I was taking for granted just how much I was able to read directions, signs and advertising in German – now I might as well be in Greece. Can’t read a thing… though thanks to American capitalism, you can’t mistake this shit:
The Námestie Slobody or Freedom Square. This fountain was installed in 2023 to reinvigorate what was a rather depressed, run down area full of government buildings. We were here around 10am, and there were loads of people running about in the fountain in their bathers enjoying the sun and the water… and not just kids either. Don’t they know it’s too cold for these sorts of shenanigans?
The Slovak National Theatre is the main centre for opera, ballet and theatre. The building was designed in the late 1776 and renovated in the late 1800s, so maybe the city isn’t entirely made of Soviet 60s toilet block architecture.
The pedestrian area of the town turned out to be really kinda cute and artsy. Even the touristy souvenir shops make a bit of an effort. I imagine that Bratislava was a cheap tourist destination until recent years. It is apparently becoming a prime destination for Bucks Weekends and Stag Nights for Brits, because it’s so much cheaper than Amsterdam… or at least it was. We found prices here were comparable with Germany which is to say, slightly cheaper than Austria but definitely not in line with other Balkan counties.
Weird souvenir stuffs… slingshots? What could go wrong.
Slovakia is apparently known for it’s distinctive local folk pottery – and gotta say, it ain’t my thing at all. I mean, it’s not as bad as Portmeirion pottery, but it’s a fine line.
Čumil is one of the most famous sculptures in Bratislava – arguably in the entire Slovak region to be honest. He has become one of the city’s most recognised landmarks and is one of the biggest attractions in the city centre. He is a bronze statue created by Viktor Hulík, a well known sculptor, graphic artist, academic and painter. Čumil was install in 1997 at a massive party called the Korzo Party that the city held to celebrate the completion of a major pedestrian urban city centre renewal. Apparently 30,000 people were at the Korzo Party including the President of Slovakia, Michal Kováč – which sounds kinda cool. Gotta say, kudos to the Slovaks if this urban renewal stuff has only been going strong for 20years or so… the town looks great and is a lovely place to visit.
Čumil is located outside a small local jeweller who sells overpriced amber, and who is probably totally sick to death of the tourists milling about outside his store and never coming in! 😀 He’s a bit hard to miss, and you find yourself walking past him repeatedly as you move about the city centre.
I like him! He has real character.
The Main Square and the 16thC fountain of Maximilian I.
More quirky little artsy shops and stuff.
It turned into quite a warm day and got pretty hot walking around by midday – and we weren’t musuem’ing so we were out in the sun and Angus decided to have a mango gelato (as you do!) but he meant to ask for it in a cup. When he belatedly mentioned the cup, the server just dumped it upside down in a cup for him. LOL. Efficiency, I like it.
Walking back past Čumi again, I think I caught the best shot – wonder how often some pupper lifts his leg on him!
After wandering around the town centre, doing a bit of shopping and having a bit of lunch, we went to have a look at the Bratislava Castle which apparently has, 1) really good views over the city, 2) a small local history museum which is nowhere near as fancy as the Schonbrunn or the Nymphenberg that we have seen this week, and 3) a small treasury – which we were going to go in and visit, but the people selling the tickets made it sounds so crap. ‘Er, de objects are mostly of de coppur and not very old you’no, and most of dee reel treasures are in da Vienna Musuems, and it cost you €14 to come iin, each’ and blah, blah, blah… they totally talked us out of going into the Treasury! LOL.
Bratislava Castle is a large rectangular castle with four corner towers on an isolated outcrop of the Little Carpathian mountains. It looks directly down onto the Danube River which cuts through the centre of Bratislava. It’s massive and looks over the city, so it kinda hard to miss – you see it as soon as you get near the city. The original fortress built on this site was from the 9thC, and it, like so many castles, has been rebuilt continuously up until the 18thC. It also had some major reconstruction in the 20thC.
These tall three slender bronze statues didn’t have any inscriptions – we kinda assumed they might be magi (so much religious iconography has been consumed lately!) but this is more an orthodox region, so there could be some symbology we were missing.
Entrance gate to the Castle… there are four gates in total.
The views over the city and the Danube were pretty cool.
Front forecourt to the castle – it actually looks really clean and all shiny and new… which isn’t what you expect from castles as you get closer to the Balkans.
King Svatopluk I of Moravia (840-894) on his horse out front of the castle.
Courtyard of Bratislava Castle
We had a pretty good day poking around Bratislava, absorbing the artsy vibe and doing some shopping. It felt like a short day visit off a cruise ship though, and while I don’t think you’d need more than a weekend to check out the city, we didn’t get in amongst it much… back to Vienna we went.
