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After a week spent battling against a cold and addressing such vital necessities as, "where is my next meal coming from ?", "do I need any more toilet paper ?" and, "how can I ride dragons in Skyrim ?" I finally ventured out into the big wide world to see my latest adopted home.

Whenever possible I prefer to explore on foot and without any kind of set plan. I grabbed my free map from the airport taxi, hopped on to the Metro and for no particular reason, got off 20 minutes later at Wenceslas Square. The guide book doesn't have much good to say about it :

"Wenceslas Square should be the central and main attraction of the capital. Instead it is quite dilapidated and noisy, and after dusk it is better not to venture there at all."

What the frak ?? This is categorically NOT TRUE. If you want a dilapidated town square, see Arecibo, where the buildings are full of trees.

Whereas in Wenceslas Square, you'll find this :

The particularly grand building is the National Museum, sadly closed for renovation until 2016. But dilapidated ? Utter nonsense. Nor is it noisy or or a bad idea to visit it "after dusk". I was there after 8pm on a Saturday and it seemed little different to how it was in the morning, except that it was dark, and if anything less busy.

I decided to head up to the Astronomical Clock since this entailed a walk through the really rather nice square and looked easy to find on the map. And it was - just follow the crowds. The narrow, labyrinthine streets are crowded, no getting away from that (the wide open squares, however, are not - Wenceslas Square "can and has comfortably held 400,000 people", says my guide book).  But the crowds don't really matter, because the atmosphere is very pleasant. I mean this literally as well as figuratively. I don't know what it is about Czech food, but the smell of cooking from the vendors at the end of the square is particularly intoxicating. In the end I opted for a sausage in a baggette*, which, unlike most other street food, tasted as good as it smelled.

* This is the basic unit of street food. You can probably find it on distant planets where the atmosphere is mostly methane and the inhabitants have seventeen different words for "marmalade".

The Astronomical Clock was more impressive than I was expecting. For a start, it's almost at eye level, so it's easy to see. Parts of the mechanism are original and date back to 1410 (perhaps even earlier - no-one's really sure), but over the centuries it's suffered many disasters and reconstructions. Nonetheless, it's an ornate and beautiful feature.

What really won me over was the fact you can can go up to the top of the tower for a proper look at Prague. Here's where not reading the guide book pays off, because that way everything's a surprise bonus. £3 is well worth it for the view alone, though I maxed it out by walking up (instead of taking the lift) and reading the information panels.

Just as the clock itself isn't too far above ground level, so it is with the tower also. It's low enough that you not only get a good view of the nearby buildings, but you also hear everything happening at street level, like the street musicians. Prague, in short, seems to have a convivial atmosphere not found in other cities except at Christmas.

From the tower I decided to make for the Charles Bridge, which in this case is something I did actually plan to visit. Built in 1357, it's lined with gothic statues and is a major tourist attraction, so it seemed like a safe bet. Unfortunately it's a victim of its own success, because by 11am there's really no point going. It's simply rammed, verging on impassable. Why this should be I'm not sure. It certainly is a very nice old bridge, but it doesn't let you see into the future or turn base metals into gold.

There's a bridge behind the crowds.

The bridge is also lined with street vendors, mostly artists selling pictures, and also entertainers. In this case a string quartet playing.... Britney Spear's Toxic. I did a double-take when I walked past. Though I'm not sure how I recognize the song at all, because all I remember is that the video is one definitely best enjoyed with the mute button on (Britney may have the musical abilities of a dead duck that's just been sat on by an irate hippo, but she did have other... talents).

From Charles Bridge I walked up to Prague Castle, sipping a hot mulled wine from a polystyrene cup as I went. There needs to be a word meaning complete and total contentment, because that's what walking through Prague on a crisp October afternoon sipping hot wine is like.

I only wanted to have a look at the castle, because the guide book says that visiting every part of it can take at least 4 hours. It's not really a castle in the traditional sense (maybe it was once, I don't know), more a collection of historic buildings. Like this one - St Vitus cathedral, which has been an unsightly blot on the landscape since 1344. Honestly, I don't know why the locals put up with it.

St Vitus is practically youthful compared to St George's basilica next door, which was founded in AD 920. I mean that's just silly. Later, after I went back to the institute for a short while, I went there for a concert featuring Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Suffice to say that I now only wish to hear music if it's played in an 8th-century stone resonance chamber.

After that I went back, buying some trdelnik from one of the many street vendors in Wenceslas Square. This is something I thoroughly recommend, and I hope it becomes popular worldwide (but gets a better name). Charles Bridge remained crowded, but nowhere near to the extent it was earlier in the day. Possibly this was because there were now two huge eyes keeping watch on everyone at either end of the bridge.

The waterfront also featured a bizarre yet undeniably interesting art sculpture :

This is a mass of illuminated plastic spheres arranged - I suppose - to look like a cloud. The tendrils hanging down are pull-cords so that passers-by can turn the lights on and off. Wonderful - even if it does look like something that's about to attack the Enterprise.

Off I Go Again

Immediately following the ridiculous Alpine jaunt I visited Prague - ostensibly for a short workshop but mainly for a chance to meet everyone ahead of time. I don't actually remember much of this at all, on account of being clinically brain dead at this point. I saw virtually nothing of the city, retreating to my hotel every night with all the grim determination of a tortoise that's being chased by a larger, slightly faster tortoise with big nasty teeth. Or something.

It was quite a nice hotel. No tortoises though.

I recycled the last talk I gave at Arecibo, even though it didn't really relate to the workshop topic. These days I've gone for maxing out the theatrics rather than the science. I start with a movie of 11,710 galaxies, go on to unveil a large glass brick* and end with the hydrogen detections of galaxies more than a billion light years away. Next time I give this talk I plan to get the audience to wear old-style red-green 3D glasses.

* At least I would have if it didn't cost £40 for checked baggage with easyJet. No way is any airline going to let me bring a two kilo solid hunk of glass in my hand luggage.

The one thing I do remember about Prague is that the head of the Astronomical Institute lives above his own bar (at least he co-owns it) in a 12th century water mill, which is reached via a small bridge that's illuminated by two flaming torches. I don't think I need to say anything more at this point.

Then I went back to Cardiff, collapsed for a week, then spent the next week failing miserably to install FRELLED on a Linux network. Apparently this is a Herculean task which is even less fun than having to use Linux in the first place.

I left for Prague again (this time actually leaving) immediately after my 30th birthday. That would have been a scarier event had I not been ID'd in a pub that evening (bearing in mind that the drinking age in the UK is 18) when no-one else was. Two of the latest PhD thralls (aka minions, aka students) decided to get me a Playboy mug (I've known them for 5 days ! must be doing something right...) and then insisted I drink a wide variety of drinks from it. Which at some point involved the dregs of everyone else's drinks...

Stay. Classy.

I just about managed to fly business class from London to Prague - "just" because I reached the gate with 10 minutes before it closed, there having been extreme traffic early in the morning. I now reap the rewards of air miles from my gruelling transatlantic flights, so can fly around Europe from £25 with BA. Truth be told there wasn't much difference flying business class on a 2 hour flight except for the food, which was objectively good. That is, it was good even by the standards of restaurant food, and not just compared to airline food in general.

There's not much to tell about Prague yet apart from some passing observations. Obviously, it's nice to be sweating profusely the whole time. It's also nice not to have everyone instantly realise I'm not a local (blonde, bearded and bespectacled not being a very Puerto Rican look). Someone even handed me a leaflet advertising... English lessons.

Err, yeah, thanks ! Let me just run this through Google Trans... oh.

The language barrier is definitely rather thinner than in Puerto Rico, though of course some people don't speak a word of English. I'm about 3 miles from the city center here, very much on the outskirts of the city (this is Europe, so everywhere is tiny and ancient). Fortunately it's pretty obvious which foods are which (there's even Marks & Spencers, which sells proper British bacon and tea, thank heavens) and the public transport tickets machines have information in English.

Familiar as brands like Marks may be, they are in very unfamiliar settings. Marks was only the second thing I saw on entering a shopping center. The first thing I saw was a pair of iguanas mating. Either that or they were very good friends. They were in a large tank in the side of a wall but not actually in a shop window, making the whole thing a bit mysterious.

I'd heard that Prague had a hedonistic underbelly, although live
iguana sex shows in a shopping center weren't what I anticipated.

That's all for now. Tune in next time when I report on the nice bits of Prague that everyone is actually interested in, without any shopping centers at all. I promise.

(and to those who only signed up because of all the CG projects I was posting a while back, fear not ! They shall return... soon.)

The Rewards of Victory (II)

Last time I left readers as I was leaving Interlaken by means of a time-travelling funicular. Something like that, anyway. From Interlaken we went to Zermatt, which I give huge brownie points to for being a town where cars are banned. The reason being that smog could obscure the view of the town's very famous and very pointy mountain. Bloody marvellous. An example to us all, if you ask me.

The very famous and very pointy mountain was not immediately visible because it was raining. Zermatt in the rain is... well, it's alright, I guess, but you'd be hard pressed to understand what all the tourists are doing there when they could be in the much larger, better-equipped Interlaken. Fortunately (we were only there for one night) the weather cleared up in the evening and I discovered how to take long exposures with my camera.

That was the view from the hotel room.

The next day the weather continued to time itself with... well, Swiss precision, but especially for us. We took a train to Gormenghast (OK, it's really called called Gornergrat, but they should change it for obvious reasons) where we discovered a second mountain observatory, again with no information for passing scientists on holiday, but this one overlooking one of Europe's most famous mountains. And some glaciers and whatnot too. Also, Rhydian continued his search for his falcon, now named Caruthers for reasons that escape me.

We also found that Swiss German is a downright strange language, featuring multiple place names with no less than 3 consecutive g's. What were they thinking ? Countdown in German must be a boring game :

"Consonant please Carol."
"Consonant please Carol."
"Consonant please Carol."
"Consonant please Carol."
"Consonant please Carol."
"Consonant please Carol."
"Consonant please Carol."
"Consonant please Carol."
"Consonant please Carol."

From Zermatt, to Chamonix. This time we had to make do without the efficiency of Swiss trains and catch a bus part of the way. That involved a transfer, in which we were unceremoniously dropped at a (closed) bus station and waited, with as much hope as expectation, for the second bus. It wasn't the prettiest - or driest - part of the expedition.

This minor bout of being stranded in the middle of nowhere was soon forgotten on reaching Chamonix, which is a very pretty town near Mt Blanc. We're still not sure if we saw it or not, because Mt Blanc may be nearly 5,000 metres tall but it doesn't have a particularly distinctive profile. In any case it was raining when we arrived.

The next day the weather once again co-operated with stoically un-British grace, so we went for a walk inside a glacier. Mer de Glace was actually a rather depressing place, because there are markers showing the level of the glacier at various years. Fortunately the view above the glacier is of Les Drus, which is surely one of the pointiest mountains in the entire world.

We then encountered our one and only spot of poor timing from the weather, as it was too windy to journey up to the summit of the really insanely high Aiguille du Midi cable car. We could only go to the halfway point, but no-one minded because everyone was completely high on mountains (terrible pun intended). The midway point turned out to be the most Skyrim-esque of all our destinations, and there is video of me tooting my souvenir Swiss horn to accompany the Skyrim theme on a mobile phone. Which I will duly post here when I have it.

Then we walked down to the Restaurant and the End of the Universe, or at least that's how I remember it, ate some cake and went home.

... except that we didn't go home at all. First, we went to Marseille - twinned with Glasgow. This is somewhat bizarre, because most of Marseille is lovely. The highlight was undoubtedly visiting the island of Frioul, a tiny, beautiful place that I'd like to buy, if I could.

In the distance the Chateaux d'If, home to Marseille's least interesting fictional prisoner.

And then this happened.

That would have been an absurdly perfect point to go home, but instead we went to Monaco the next day, although I don't know why. As far as I can tell it's a very small country full of yachts and soulless tower blocks. Can't see the appeal of it. In fact, I'm not going to spoil this post with any photos of it.

And then I went home and collapsed, and while I was still collapsed I went to Prague, but that's another story.

Oh, and if you're wondering, yes, Rhydian did find Caruthers. He was in Zermatt.

The Rewards of Victory (I)

Having escaped the madness of the tropical Americas, I proceeded almost immediately upon an absurd whistle-stop tour of Europe. First, Milan. Pretty place. Pretty people. Nice church. That's about all there was time to see though, because we left the very next day for Zurich.

I didn't have anything to do with the planning of this trip - I was 4,000 miles away and not at all certain I could go at all at the time - but apparently the purpose of a holiday is to do as much as possible in a short a time as possible and not to sleep, ever. That's, err, not quite my definition of a holiday, but never mind.

The train trip to Zurich was relatively forgettable, except for one building suffering from a silly mistranslation, and  the clear abundance of cranes in Switzerland. Building a two-storey house ? A 50m crane should do the job. Hanging some curtains ? There are smaller, more portable cranes available for that. I don't think we saw a single village without at least one crane.

Zurich itself is a fairly forgettable place, certainly compared to the rest of Switzerland anyway. We stayed in an equally forgettable place, though to read the reviews you'd think it was swarming with writhing hordes of hookers. It isn't. It was a decent little budget hotel in a slightly seedy area. The historical part of Zurich is quite nice, though not magnificent.

Cranespotting is a popular Swiss pastime.

We didn't do a lot in Zurich apart from go on a very pleasant boat ride, and a Pink Floyd concert. These were separate events, as even Mr Floyd isn't crazy enough to have boat rides at his concerts. There was a small spitfire that crashed into the stage and exploded though, which is pretty impressive even to non Pink Floyd fans like me.

On the boat ride Rhydian accidentally started a meme.

Thence to Interlaken. Another train ride and some really freakin' blue lakes.

Interlaken makes Zurich look about as appealing as Splott.

Having endured somewhere with one of the least public transport systems anywhere in the world, I now found myself somewhere which surely has the most. Whereas Wales occasionally umms and ahhs as to the virtues of sticking a train up to the top of a mountain, Switzerland has no such petty scruples. Blessed with an abundance of mountains, the Swiss realised long ago that everyone likes mountains, but not everyone has the will or capability to climb the things. Why should they ? They're bloody enormous.

And thus you can take a really quite astonishing train ride to Jungfraujoch (young-frow-yoch), a.k.a. the Top of Europe, a.k.a. High Hrothgar. The Swiss also realised that people might like to get out, look at the view, have a cup of tea and maybe do a spot of hiking. Which is exactly what we did. I mean, for crying out loud.

Then we got back on the train until we reached Jungfraujoch itself. This is what made me unable to refuse this trip : the stupendous Sphinx Observatory, overlooking Europe's longest glacier, the Aletsch. I was first made aware of the Sphinx - by complete coincidence - just a few months ago by this article. While it's a good article, it's somewhat deceptive and there are several points I think should be clarified. After the pretty pictures, though.

Firstly there's the claim that the Sphinx is the highest-altitude built structure in Europe. This claim is repeated in many other places, but I don't see how it can be true - Aiguille du Midi goes up about 400m higher.

Secondly the article makes it sound as though the Sphinx stands in glorious isolation. Well... it does, but it isn't the only thing there. Far from it. It isn't even the main reason people visit (which is the stunning view rather than the observatory). There are cafeteria, shops, multiple viewing areas, an ice palace and outdoor winter sports facilities. It's really very civilized. What's really impressive is that it's all arranged so as nothing ever, ever spoils the view. Well done, Switzerland, well done.

In mid-September it was about -6 C, busy but hardly crowded.

Finally, the remoteness of the site the article describes isn't really that awful. Yes, getting to the summit and back is a full day affair from Interlaken. What that neglects is that the journey there and back again is full of jaw-dropping scenery. So the hours spent on the trains are absolutely a part of the experience, rather than something you have to slog through for a reward at the end.

If I had to describe Switzerland as succinctly as possible, I would call it scenery porn. It really is. The next day we went up the much-overlooked Niesenbahn funicular, based solely on a picture we saw (on the back of a beer mat) of an incredibly steep train virtually suspended in mid-air. This one, in fact :

And indeed, it is very, very steep.

The view at the top is as awe-inspiring as you would expect.

That same afternoon we went to visit the Reichenbach Falls, made famous by Arthur Conan Doyle as the place where Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty plummet to their mutual doom. It's basically a very scenic 250m drop waterfall.

The funicular to the base of the waterfalls probably wasn't as steep as the Niesenbahn, but it's all relative. On the train ride back to Interlaken, we decided to work out what would happen if the cable snapped. The answer ? We'd reach the bottom at around 88mph, just fast enough to travel through time with a flux capacitor. Back to the Future IV could certainly be an interesting film.

That's about it for Interlaken. Tune in next time (whenever that is) for more of Europe, in which the scenery remains so beautiful it should be illegal and the mountains get even pointier.