Travel Journal Copenhagen 21 Amalienborg Palace

Today we took a Hop-On, Hop-Off bus to Amalienborg Palace. Actually, it is a complex of 4 palaces in a diamond shape. One is occupied by the queen when she is in town, one by the Crown Prince, one is for guests, and the 4th is part museum and part a residence for another member of the royal family.

We got back to our drop-off point, and I went into the Visitor Center to get more information, then we started looking for a place to eat. The clerk at our hotel recommended a place with Danish food, so we walked about 4-5 blocks, only to find it closed. So we went to Rio Bravo, across the street, which was in the style of the Old (American) West, but we ordered fish dishes that I think were fairly Danish. Both had plaice (steamed or fried), white asparagus, small shrimp and caviar. Larry’s had both fried and steamed plaice, and toast. Mine was just steamed plaice, and also had small boiled potatoes. The steamed plaice was pretty boring, but the meal was otherwise okay. We had draft Tuborg Special beer with it, and that was good.

After dinner, it was still raining, so we just came back to the room and hung our coats and hats to dry. Will work on the journal and plan for tomorrow.

(to be continued)

Travelling by airplane

From the chapter: Travelling by airplane:

 overzelaous travellers will often tell you that the only real way of travelling is the so-called surface travel (by earth, water) in contrast to air travel. The real traveller, you will be told, has to be prepared to endure all the difficulties and trouble included in travelling and not act as an unworthy turist who has everything served for him.

 I don't object - it is true that one will experience the countries better and deeper travelling always with one's own vehicle or using the same transportation as the natives - but one is only able to do that providing he has loads of energy and time. To reach the Fillipines or Peru one will have to "take a really long walk" on the surface and the travel will cost much more than the plane. It is also doubtful that one will find the two-week trip by transsyberian rail for the fourth or fifth time as delightful as for the first time.

To be continued

Janin 

Travelling By Public Transport 3

Also the rhythm and timetables are sometimes pretty exotic. In some places the bus will not depart until it is full ("full" meaning stuffed to the last space, seated with passengers on the roof and at least three people hanging from each door), elsewhere the bus will depart before the anticipated time if it is full already. One will be irritated by the conductors tirelessly jumping around the people on the street and inviting them into their bus. If there are two or three buses destined for the same direction, the first to leave is the first full one. Get ready to be dragged into different directions by several conductors. The one with a foreigner on board becomes more attractive for other passengers…

To be continued

Janin 

Travelling By Public Transport 2

Get ready for merengue music playing non-stop with a loudness that verges on pain, and get ready for watching your own breath clouds in a freezing cold in a tropical country.

Get yourself ear corks and warm clothes before the drive!

 These buses mostly have their regular stops every three hours when you can eat and get refreshment. However, the stops are usually boring and situated outside settlements. Unless you are hungry, you will have nothing to do with yourself during that time.

 The regular buses are exceedingly less comfortable of course, but much more genuine and interesting. It is a good idea to enquire a bit before the drive: such buses sometimes stop at every village by the road, which means arrival at a considerably later hour.

To be continued

Text & photo: Janin 

Travelling By Public Transport:

From the chapter: Travelling By Public Transport:

…However, "luxurious" buses do have their disadvanteges. The drivers, very proud of the technical achievement built in their vehicles, are trying to get the most out of them. The passengers as well are eager to take advantage of the luxury gadgets they paid for, demanding the television to work even if the driver only posesses one videotape, the music to play really loud and the air-condition to work with full power. Get ready to watch HongKong films, sinchronized into Malaian, with chinese subtitles, which you will have the oppurtunity to see at least five times in a ten-hours drive.

To be continued

Text & photo: Janin 

Hitchhiking 2

In Great Birtain a much older signal is often used: the middle and forefinger pointed aside. If the hand is raised, the meaning of the sign is "peace on earth" or "victory". But if the hand is raised and turned towards the observer with its back side, it means, "go to hell!". One can send this message into the rearview miror simply by raising the hand.

    In Africa, in Greece and in some other places, the raised thumb means an obscene gesture, similar to a raised middle finger. Therefore, it's better to stop the car by waving one's hand towards the ground as if trying to make the driver slow down in these countries. This is done by the natives in all third world countries…

To be continued

Text & photo: Janin Klemenčič

From the chapter: Hitchhiking

There are two established methods in Europe - using a thumb and using a destination placard. The thumb stops everyone driving on the road in your direction. It is not a problem if one is using an interurban road. But it is better to use a sign with the direction of one's travel if one is standing on the drive to the motorway or by the bypass which leads to numerous different directions…

Thumb hitchhiking was established in the sixties. The first to use this sign were presumably the Romans: a thumb pointing downwards meant they wanted the gladiator to die, a thumb pointing upwards meant they wanted him to live. The meaning of the simbol later expanded: it means approval, best wishes or appeal to something positive, "do me a favour and give me a lift".

To be continued

Text & photo: Janin Klemenčič

Travelling With Your Own Vehicle 2

Another accquaintance of mine was not allowed to leave Jordan until his film was developed and the shots looked over. The good news: they developed the film for free! Bad news: slide film was developed in a negative developper. Good news: he was allowed to cross the border when they saw the films were blank and they even regretted the whole incident!

In Bolgaria, Rumania and some other Balkan countries, one has to drive the car through a small pool of disinfectant liquid. Moreover,  the car will be sprayed from the outside, so that you will enter the country clean. The undercarriage is inspected using a mirror fixed on two wheels with a handle, whereas a drugged police dog - much more reliable than manual examination - is released into the interior of the car…

To be continued

Text & photo: Janin Klemenčič

Travelling with your own vehicle

From the chapter: Travelling with your own vehicle:

...If you come by van to the Iranian border you will be shown an actual small-size museum of smuggling. There are pictures, objects or parts of vehicles in which someone tried to bring drugs (rarely anything else) across the border. Their owners are still spending educational years (even a few decades!) among Iranian prison rats getting "nan" and water twice a day. 

Iranian border

You will have to park your vehicle beside a long wooden table and spread on it everything from the car. The emptiede inside of the car will be thoroughly scanned (with an electric bulb at night), and your baggage will get a precise examination from one end of the table to another.

Much worse are the Greeks and the Turks: five or six customs officers will rush into the van to ransack it completely. Some objects are not examined at all, other are examined by all officers one after another. A fellow traveller of mine had his film pulled out of its cartridge, because the customs officer wanted to see what was on it. When we all screamed at the officer, he started to stuff it back into the cartridge.

to be continued

text & photo: Janin Klemenčič

How to Travel

From the chapter: How to Travel:

    …Travelling is a kind of sport: testing your skills, capabilities, body condition and courage; competing with yourself and with other travellers. Similar to other sports, it has different forms and disciplines. Swimmers compete in different track lenghts and styles, boxers in different weight categories, climbers are divided into alpinists, free climbers and extreme climbers.

    Likewise, travellers could be divided as regards the number of travellers, the amount of money to be spent, and the means of transport. I myself have tried most of travelling styles and it would be hard for me to choose my favourite one. As well as there are different feelings about each of these travel disciplines, there are also various advantages and disadvantages of a particular style. Let's take a look at each:

BY YOURSELF OR NOT

    Who to go on the road with? Am I able at all to go on my own? Won't that be dangerous? Wouldn't I be lonely and bored? Will I survive on my own and, if I do, what will I benefit from it?

There is no generally valid answer to these questions. The answer depends on your needs and wishes. Certainly, there is always a chance of trying both and than decide… 

Turist Vs. Backpacker

A turist is a person, picked up at the airport by a special bus, which will take him directly to the doors of a uniformed hotel, where he will spend the next seven days on the beach. He will spend the first day lying on an air mattress on the beach, watching shapely girls and imagining all he could do with them if he were 20 years younger. He will spend the remaining six days lying in the hotel room recovering from the terrible sunburn and watching well-shaped girls at night in the bar, discussing with his friends all he could do with them if his nagging wife was not around.

    A turist is a person who is taken from one turist sight to another following a boring turist guide with a flag in his hand telling the same joke in seven different languages. Wearing strapy pants, a jamaican shirt, a shieldhat and sandals, he is taking photos of the same things as everybody else with his snapshot camera, and wonders what country they are in. Since it's Friday, they must probably be somewhere in Spain…

to be continued  
text & photo: Janin Klemenčič

Backpackers’ Handbook

Read some paragraphs from my traveller's advice collection which will be, if all goes well, published some day in English as well. Write some remarks and comments and send them to me!

1.    From the Introduction:

    …In general, the word "traveller" denotes every travelling person, or at least a person travelling out of genuine pleasure, with a wish for exploring. More specifically, the real traveller is one who travels either alone, with a partner, or in an unorganized group. Such a person wants to travel as far as possible, spending as little as possible. That means that he will hitchhike, travel with a bike, a motorcycle or a van. He will sleep in a sleeping bag under the sky, in a vehicle, or in the cheapest hotel; he will get around by lowest-class train or bus and carry all his posessions around in a backpack.

Orthodox backpackers strictly distinct themselves from turists.

to be continued

text & photo: Janin Klemenčič